#we must destroy all evidence

[dark-and-kawaii]

꧁༺ 𝒞𝑜𝓂𝑒 𝓊𝓃𝒹𝑜𝓃𝑒 ༻꧂

Astarion loses sight of you in a fight, he fears the worse has happened to you. He finds you and manages to bring you back to shadowheart for healing, only to discover he has more to protect than just you…

Angst - Hurt - Comfort - Pregnancy

(Click For Part Two)

You were fearless. He watched as you swung your dagger effortlessly, piercing into the necks of their enemies.

He wondered how you still managed to look elegant even when covered in the blood of fallen warriors.

His gaze never left you for too long, making sure you were safe, while he stealthed around the makeshift arena, racking up his own share of kills. How glorious this was! There was so much blood splattering all around them and with his love at his side it truly couldn’t get any better.

Astarion’s eyes couldn’t be everywhere though, and at some point, he lost sight of you. The last person to recognize him for what he’s worth, the one person he truly couldn’t afford to lose.

His head darted across the battlefield, desperately trying to find you. His panic plunged into sheer dread as fear overcame him. It was happening all over again, he’d seen this before… Alone.. No, please, he couldn’t let this be his fate.

He hadn’t felt fear this whole day; why should he? He was free of Cazador, had you- A subtle manic laugh drew from his throat, he’d never be free of fear, instead of fearing for himself or what his old master would do to him he now feared what would happen to you when in danger.

His red eyes turned a dark shade of black. The expression of a crazy man etched onto Astarion’s face. No, he wouldn’t let fear consume him, no more! He’d finally be the protector! Overcome with fury he went on a rampage. Cutting through the battlefield, slaughtering anyone and everyone in his way, determined to find you. He raced over to where he last saw you, faster than a blue dragon's lightning splits through the air in a storm.

Was he truly going to be the reason you passed on to the next life. Was his fate to destroy everything he held near and dear to his heart? He nearly killed you before with his own fangs and now, no! He wasn’t the cause of that, was he? He hadn’t ever tasted human blood before, but if he was stronger it wouldn’t have happened! If he would’ve ascended he would’ve been able to stop this, however he’s still just a spawn… How could you have fought for his love, a fool who couldn’t even protect you. A fool who was going to be the reason you die.

“FIND HER” He roared at the top of his lungs. “FIND TAV!”

The group of companions didn’t dare hesitate and instantly started searching the grounds, Gale being the second most worried.

Astarion was about to collapse to his knees before hearing Gale's voice, “I’ve found her!” in the distance. It filled him with more apprehension. All he could think is, ’what if she’s dead’.

Staggering up the hill where Gale’s voice had come from, Astarion can see a figure laying in the dirt next to the wizard, “No! You can’t die dammit! Get up!!” he rushed out his words, dismay evident in his tone as he knelt next to you.

“She is unconscious, but alive. There’s hope.” Gale replied.

Astarion let out a shaky breath of relief.

“We must get her back to camp,” Astarion demanded. “She needs Shadowheart, she’s the only one who can fix this!” His voice cracked despite his efforts to mask it.

“I agree.” Gale, mere inches from grabbing you to lift you in his arms until the pale elf stopped him, “Don’t touch her!- I- I will carry her.” Trying to compose himself he lifted you bridal style.

Astarion never left your side during Shadowhearts attempts to heal you. Time never bothered him, not after his 200 years of torment, he waited as “patiently” as he could.

“Honestly, how long does it take! You could at least give me some good news!”

Shadowheart continued to focus on you best she could, everyone including the gods were used to Astarions fits at this point. Gale on the other hand not so much, he could hear Astarion all the way in his own tent which caused the wizard to scrunch his nose. Eventually, leading him to where you were being treated, “Astarion, why don’t you join me in some wine. I’ve got quite the choices, besides… It might be best if we give her some space.”

Astarion scowled, “You expect me to leave her side to join you in some cheap wine? Really? I didn’t think you could get anymore annoying, Gale.”

“It’s done. She’ll be fine after some more rest.” Shadowheart stood from your side and wipes the blood off her hands. She’s been traveling with you and these two men for far too long, toning out their bickering was a skill of hers at this point.

Turning to face you, if his heart could beat he knows it would’ve dropped in his chest this very moment… “Leave us-“ kneeling down next to your bedroll, his eyes fixed on your bandaged wound, “please.”

“I was able to save her,” -Shadowheart bent down towards Astarion- “and the child, but it took most of my energy and resources… Don’t ask for me again for a while. Keep them both safe.”

He was quiet, his eyes wide after the news he was just told.

“Ahhh,” Shadowheart’s voice was surprised, “she didn’t tell you yet? Hmm or perhaps she hadn’t known yet? Curious.”

Astarion could only stare at his love, “A-are you for certain?”

Gale interjected, “I doubt her magic would deceive her, congratulations.”

Dark bruises and cuts decorated your once perfect skin. A deep purple shade surrounded your right puffy eye. His eyes traveled further down your body, stopping at your stomach.

He caressed your still flat stomach, causing you to wince and awake. Retreating his hand, he awaited for your eyes to open and look up at him.

A-Astarion?” You spoke with a small smile carved on your lips.

“Yes, my love. It’s me.” He struggled out, trying his best not to crumble.

You were both silent, hands entwined with one another thankful that you both can spend another day alive in the presence of another.

He was the first to break the silence, “thank you.”

You were so weak, but you wanted to know why he was thanking you out of the blue, “For what?” Your voice barely heard.

“For this,” his hand stretching out to rest on your abdomen, “for giving me purpose again.”

Your eyebrows furrowed, not knowing what he was talking about until it finally hit you. Your arm wavered as you lifted it to place your hand atop of his on your belly. A gentle smile forming on your lips as you stared into his vermilion eyes.

When your breath became labored indicating you had fallen asleep again, Astarion’s attention was back at your torso where the bandage was slowly being stained by your blood. This moment of relief turned to anger again as he lashed out, slapping a metal canister of water out the tent with force. The absolute intrigued him at first, more power meant being stronger to protect you, but now… He was beyond ever considering it again. The cultist not only almost killed you, but the child growing from within you!

“How dare they…” He seethed, “How dare they harm her and my child!”

Astarion was pacing around angrily, how could he have allowed this to happen? He started to blame himself.

“Astarion-“ You spoke up, attempting to calm him down.

“I’ll show them, my love-“ he cut you off, “that nobody is allowed to touch what is mine.” He growled.

His eyes darkened again: “I’ll make them pay.”

#bg3 #baldurs gate #baldurs gate 3 #astarion #astarion ancunin #astarion bg3 #astarion x tav #astarion x reader #bg3 x reader #tav #Gale #astarion x you

[opencommunion]

please read & share on all platforms. Palestinian resistance groups have asked us to pay close attention to the plight of imprisoned Palestinians, as the occupation believes that since all eyes are on Gaza they can abuse and assassinate prisoners out of sight

Statement issued by the Office of Martyrs, Prisoners, and the Wounded of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, via RNN Prisoners:

“Horrific testimonies about the crimes committed by the occupation and prison administration against prisoners and detainees in its jails.

The information and data we receive from inside zionist prisons about the systematic crimes committed by the occupation's prison administration against prisoners, since October 7th, are terrifying. There is a systematic decision to assassinate the prisoners through punitive measures carried out by the prison service, and evidence of this is the martyrdom of several prisoners.

The magnitude of crimes, both collective and individual assaults on prisoners—which occur during the raids on sections and cells and which are continuously escalating—is alarming, in addition to the adoption of a starvation policy against them, as the prisoners only have tuna, corn, and sometimes inedible eggs as food.

The aggression against the prisoners began on October 7th. The prisoners face ongoing aggression, with continuous punitive operations and retaliatory measures affecting them and their families.

The Office of Martyrs, Prisoners, and the Wounded for the PFLP is closely following the issues of prisoners and detainees, which is challenging. We consider the silence of human rights, humanitarian, and international institutions unjustifiable. They must fulfill their humanitarian duty and what their conscience dictates, obliging the occupation to respect international laws and conventions established for this purpose. We hold them fully responsible for their lives.

The Office highlights the measures that the prison administration continues to impose on prisoners. The prison administration cuts off electricity to the prisoners' cells and rooms, deliberately cuts off their water supply, enforces a starvation policy, has withdrawn food supplies from prisoner sections, reduced meals to two times a day, closed the canteen, and deprived prisoners of other basic necessities.

Furthermore, heavily armed suppression forces raid all prisoners' sections and rooms, maltreat them, physically assault them, and use police dogs. They have escalated policies of depriving prisoners of medical treatment, forbidding visits from families and lawyers, and denying them treatment in hospitals, especially for sick prisoners. The prison administration also reduced the space available to a prisoner inside a cell, where the number of prisoners in one cell reached more than ten, and many prisoners were transferred to solitary cells. Solitary confinement was imposed on prisoners and some sections were isolated from others.

We note that the prison administration has removed available television sets and electrical appliances, destroyed all of the prisoners' belongings, confiscated their clothes, leaving only one change of clothing for each prisoner. They have also confiscated radios, blankets, and shoes from them, prevented them from bathing and going to the courtyard, closed the sinks used for washing, and carried out collective transfer operations, including moving prisoners from one section to another and from one prison to another.

We, in the Office of Martyrs, Prisoners, and the Wounded of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, want to reassure our people that the General Secretary of the Popular Front, the comrade, leader, and prisoner Ahmed Saadat, and his comrades are well. They are at the heart of the battle with the prison administration, and they will achieve a great victory over the jailer and will soon gain their freedom. We are closely following all the developments inside the prisons, as well as the ongoing communications and negotiations for a prisoner exchange process being carried out by the Palestinian resistance to empty the prisons and release all the prisoners.

Freedom to our heroic prisoners.

Glory and eternity to the martyrs.

Speedy recovery to the wounded.

Victory is the ally of our people, and the occupation will inevitably come to an end.”

#palestine #I’m so worried about the prisoners and my posts about what they’re facing consistently get a fraction of the notes on anything else I post #probably because white westerners are conditioned to view incarcerated people as disposable 🫥

[owenthetokencishet]

Warhammer 40,000 as a universe is trying to do the impossible.

Warhammer 40,000 is, broadly, a grim satire of fascism. It takes the fascist's worldview, all the xenophobia, conspiracism, hypernationalism, and militarism, and amplifies it to a galactically ridiculous scale.

"The Imperium of Man has ruled for 10,000 years, warring endlessly against heretics, traitors, aberrant humans, and aliens galore, all of whom are so wildly different from humanity that peaceful coexistence will simply never be possible. The only emotion stronger than our hatred of them is their hatred of us. So, we war. We war and war and battle and slaughter until the end of days. We throw our sacred human form, untainted by mutation or the hideous sciences of our ancestors, against the barbarian hordes by the millions, most of us dying in the process. We revere and worship the warriors elevated by the hand of our divine god-emperor, the apotheosis of our glorious, eternal state. These warriors, reborn in the Emperor's image with His sacred eugenics, to become the ultimate fighting men. And yes, they are all men. We are never safe, while we must constantly be defending our borders from our enemies, we must also be ever-vigilant within. Anybody, from our comrades on the front lines to our commanders, tech-priests, preachers, or politicians, could be a traitor. Nobody can ever TRULY be trusted, and those who truly are heretics, must not only be destroyed, but erased. They, and all memory of them must be eradicated. One heretic can sign the death warrant of his entire world, and sometimes, for the preservation of the human race, billions must die."

Warhammer 40k presents a world where all of this(asterisk) is true (VERY BIG ASTERISK)

Through this lens, a lot of the more... questionable aspects make sense.

T'au Empire Mind Control: The T'au are how fascists view liberals. They CANNOT understand that an integrated, multicultural society could ever POSSIBLY work. They cannot FATHOM that different communities can just... agree to work together, it HAS TO BE the woke mind virus. "Can you believe these fucking idiots tried to NEGOTIATE with TYRANIDS???? These fucking losers tried to make PEACE WITH ANOTHER RACE??? PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT"

Why the chaos gods are what they are: The followers of chaos represent everyone of the 'ingroup' the fascist hates. Because nothing, not even their sacred ingroup, is sacred to the fascist. The followers of chaos are the germans who resisted, the jewish antizionist, the rebel (Khorne), the intellectual (Tzeentch), the sick and disabled (Nurgle), and the queer (Slaanesh). "There is no reason ANYBODY, ESPECIALLY not those of our sacred ingroup, could object to our glorious genocide. And the runts of the litter must be eliminated to not be a drain on the rest"

And EVEN WITHIN 40k, a lot of this is bullshit.

The T'au mind control thing is provably bullshit because the Farsight Enclaves exist. A whole T'au society that exists free from the apparent mid control of the ethereals

The imperium feeds as much into the chaos gods as the traitors do. A stagnant, decaying empire (Nurgle), with an incomprehensibly vast and byzantine bureaucratic structure (Tzeentch), where a select few live appallingly lush and lavish lives of hedonism and pleasure, completely detached from the people they're supposed to govern (Slaanesh), all for the purpose of making ever more destructive and bloody war with everybody else (Khorne)

There is evidence of peaceful human coexistence with xenos empires during the Dark Age of Technology, including one humanity CREATED, and many inquisitors and rogue traders will GLADLY incorporate xenos into their retinues. Trade and coexistence with aliens DOES still happen in the imperium.

Hell, the parody of fascism is in the very MECHANICS OF THE WHOLE LORE. Fascists don't believe in "facts" or "truth", if they did, they wouldn't be fascists. Therefore, in 40k, "Everything is canon, nothing is true". This allows players to EITHER

Think critically and try to connect the dots to form their best guess as to what "canon" is

Or buy wholly into one side or another's propaganda

And one of those groups is going to find a "truth" they can accept and treat as fact a LOT more quickly than the other.

40k lays out in perfectly plain low gothic, all of the bullshit and hypocrisies of the Imperium. They'll let entire sectors die in the interests of preserving human life. The way the imperial guard are lauded as heroes but treated worse than the lasguns in their hands. The way that in order to become a space marine, one of humanity's great guardian angels, you must have everything that makes you human either beaten out of you or surgically removed. The priests who worship science and technology viewing scientific progress as the most abhorrent of heresies. The divine worship of a man who scoured entire worlds for the crime of worshipping him as a god.

Actually hang on lemme derail the flow of this post and talk more about the emperor. The Emperor is the chief hypocrite in an empire of hypocrites. "I AM NOT A GOD" says the 10-foot-tall gleaming golden immortal psychic god-man, "NOW GO FORTH MY ANGELS ON YOUR GLORIOUS CRUSADE TO BRING SCIENCE AND REASON, and by science and reason I mean doing exactly what I say without question and turning a blind eye to fundamental truths of the universe, TO THIS BENIGHTED GALAXY"

The problem is that parodying fascism is impossible. Fascism is already so inherently, fundamentally ridiculous a worldview, for all the reasons explained above, that distinguishing sincerity from irony is nigh impossible.

If you, an antifascist, read The Turner Diaries, you will probably assume it's satire. The book ends with Earth as an irradiated hellsacpe where few can survive and nothing about its resulting culture is explained. But nope! This is fascist propaganda! It was written by actual neo-nazis who committed actual hate crimes! It is an enthusiastic YAAAAAAAAAY APOCALYPTIC WARFARE!!!!!! YAAAAAAAAY GENOCIDE!!!!!!!! At least all the black people are gone! Hell, when Rogue One came out, Lucasfilm got all sort of shit flung at them for portraying the evil space nazis... as the bad guys... which they always were.

This is why both we, the fandom, and Games Workshop as a company, are DIRECTLY pushing SO HARD against the fascists in the space, and must push harder. 40K IS NOT FOR THEM. And no amount of clever writing or obvious parody will ever convince them otherwise. It does not matter how unfathomably stupid you make fascism look to people with functioning brains, fascists will gobble that shit up. You cannot make fascism look worse than it is, and you cannot make it stupid enough to convince fascists its stupid.

The problem isn't that Games Workshop isn't doing a good enough job writing the imperium as bad (although they aren't), the problem is that it will never be an adequate mockery to make the fascists feel unwelcome. It's not a bad parody of fascism, fascism is just beyond parody.

#warhammer 40k #ramblings. musings even #40k #imperium of man

[headspace-hotel]

against the logic of the lawn

Imagine a box.

This box is sealed with tape or adhesive, which shows you that it has never been opened or re-used. It is in pristine condition. Apart from that, the box could hold anything. It could contain a Star Wars Funko Pop, a printer, a shirt ordered from some sketchy online vendor, a knockoff store-brand cereal, six individually wrapped protein bars.

As a Consumer ("the" Consumer) this is your fundamental right: To purchase a box that is, presumably, identical to every other box like it.

When you Buy Product, it arrives in a box, entire of itself and without context. It has not changed since its creation. If and when Product does change—whether it is broken, spoiled, used up, or eaten—you can Buy Product that is identical in every meaningful way to the original.

It's okay if this doesn't make sense yet. (You can stop imagining the box now.)

Imagine instead a suburban housing development, somewhere in the USA.

Imagine row on row of pristine, newly built houses, each constructed with small, meaningless variations in their aesthetic, all with beige or white vinyl siding and perhaps some decorative brick, all situated on identical rectangles of land covered with freshly unrolled sod. This is the Product that every consumer aspires to Buy.

I am not exactly—qualified, or entitled, to speak on the politics of land ownership in this country. My ancestors benefited directly from the genocide of Native Americans, which allowed Europeans to steal the land they lived on, which is where a lot of wealth comes from in the end, even today. However, I have eyes in my head to see that the act of colonizing a continent, and an economic system that formed as a supporting infrastructure to colonization, have embedded something almost irreparably dysfunctional into the dominant American culture's relationship to land.

This dysfunctional Thing, this Sickness, leads us to consider land to be a Product, and to consider a human upon the land to be a Consumer.

From this point of view, land is either locked into this relationship of control and "use" to varying extents, or it is free of human influence. People trying to reason about how to preserve Earth's biosphere, working within this framework without realizing, decide that we must "set aside" large areas of land for "nature."

This is a naive and, I would reckon, probably itself colonialist way of seeing things. It appears to be well-validated by evidence. Where human population is largest, there is less biodiversity.

But I find the broad conclusions to be strikingly unscientific. The plan of "setting aside part of Earth for nature" displays little curiosity about the mechanisms by which human presence impacts biodiversity. Otherwise intelligent people, perhaps caught up in the "bargaining" phase of climate grief, seem taken in by the idea that the human species gives off a magical anti-biodiversity force field, as if feeling guiltier will fix the problems.

(Never mind that lands managed by indigenous folk actually have MORE biodiversity...almost like our species' relationship to the planet isn't inherently exploitative, but rather, the capitalist and colonialist powers destroying everything.......)

Let's go back to the image of the new housing development. This image could be just about anywhere in the USA, because the American suburban home is made for universal interchangeability, where each little house and yard is static and replaceable with any other.

Others have written about the generic-ification of the interiors of homes, how houses are decorated with the most soul-killing, colorless furnishings to make them into Products more effectively. (I think @mcmansionhell wrote about it.)

This, likewise, is the Earth turned into a Product—razed down into something with no pre-existing context, history, or responsibility. Identical parcels of land, identical houses, where once there was a unique and diverse distribution of life. The American lawn, the American garden, the industry that promotes these aesthetics, is the environmental version of that ghastly, ugly "minimalism" infecting the interiors of homes.

The extremely neat, sparse, manicured look that is so totally inescapable in American yards originated from the estates of European aristocracy, which displayed the owner's wealth by flaunting an abundance of land that was both heavily managed and useless. People defend the lawn on the basis that grass tolerates being walked upon and is good for children to play, but to say this is *the* purpose of a lawn is bullshit—children are far more interested in trees, creeks, sticks, weeds, flowers, and mud than Grass Surface, many people with lawns do not have children, and most people spend more time mowing their lawn than they do doing literally anything else outside. How often do you see Americans outside in their yards doing anything except mowing?

What is there to do, anyway? Why would you want to go outside with nothing but the sun beating down on you and the noise of your neighbors' lawn mowers? American culture tries to make mowing "manly" and emphasizes that it is somehow fulfilling in of itself. Mowing the lawn is something Men enjoy doing—almost a sort of leisure activity.

I don't have something against wanting a usable outdoor area that is good for outdoor activities, I do, however, have something against the idea that a lawn is good for outdoor activities. Parents have been bitching for decades about how impossible it is to drag kids outdoors, and there have been a million PSAs about how children need to be outside playing instead of spending their lives on video games. Meanwhile, at the place I work, every kid is ECSTATIC and vibrating with enthusiasm to be in the woods surrounded by trees, sticks, leaves, and mud.

The literal, straightforward historical answer to the lawn is that the American lawn exists to get Americans to spend money on chemicals. The modern lawn ideal was invented to sell a surplus of fertilizer created after WW2 chemical plants that had been used to make explosives were repurposed to produce fertilizer. Now you know! The more analytical, sociological answer is that the purpose of the lawn is to distance you from the lower class. A less strictly maintained space lowers property values, it looks shabby and unkempt, it reflects badly on the neighborhood, it makes you look like a "redneck." And so on. The largest, most lavish McMansions in my area all have the emptiest, most desolate yards, and the lush gardens all belong to tiny, run-down houses.

But the answer that really cuts to the core of it, I think, is that lawns are a technology for making land into a Product for consumers. (This coexists with the above answers.) Turfgrass is a perfectly generic blank slate onto which anything can be projected. It is emptiness. It is stasis.

I worry about the flattening of our imaginations. Illustrations in books generally cover the ground outdoors in a uniform layer of green, sometimes with strokes suggesting individual blades of grass if they want to get fancy. Video games do this. Animated shows and movies do this.

Short, carpet-like turfgrass as the Universal Outdoor Surface is so ubiquitous and intuitive that any alternative is bizarre, socially unacceptable, and for many, completely unimaginable. When I am a passenger in a car, what horrifies me the most to see out the window is not only the turfgrass lawns of individuals, but rather, the turfgrass Surface that the entire inhabited landscape has been rendered into—vacant stretches of land surrounding businesses and churches, separating parking lots, bordering Wal-Marts, apartment complexes, and roadsides.

These spaces are not used, they are almost never walked upon. They do nothing. They are maintained, ceaselessly, by gas-powered machines that are far, far more carbon-emitting than cars per hour of use, emitting in one hour the same amount of pollution as a 500-mile drive. It is an endless effort to keep the land in the same state, never mind that it's a shitty, useless state.

Nature is dynamic. Biodiversity is dynamic. From a business point of view, the lawn care industry has found a brilliant scheme to milk limitless money from people, since trying to put a stop to the dynamism and constant change of nature is a Sisyphean situation, and nature responds with increasingly aggressive and rapid change as disturbance gets more intense.

On r/lawncare, a man posted despairingly that he had spent over $1500 tearing out every inch of sod in his yard, only for the exact same weeds to return. That subreddit strikes horror in my heart that I cannot describe, and the more I learn about ecology, the more terrible it gets. It was common practice for people in r/lawncare to advise others to soak their entire yard in Roundup to kill all plant life and start over from a "blank slate."

Before giving up, I tried to explain over and over that it was 100% impossible to get a "blank slate." Weeds typically spread by wind and their seeds can persist for DECADES in the soil seed bank, waiting for a disastrous event to trigger them to sprout. They will always come back. It's their job.

It was impossible for those guys to understand that they were inherently not just constructing a lawn from scratch, and were contending with another power or entity (Nature) with its own interests.

The logic of the lawn also extends into our gardens. We are encouraged to see the dynamism of nature as something that acts against our interests (and thus requires Buy Product) so much, that we think any unexpected change in our yard is bad. People are sometimes baffled when I see a random plant popping up among my flowers as potentially a good thing.

"That's a weed!" Maybe! Nonetheless, it has a purpose. I don't know who this stranger is, so I would be a fool to kill it!

A good caretaker knows that the place they care for will change on its own, and that this is GOOD and brings blessings or at least messages. I didn't have to buy goldenrod plants—they came by themselves! Several of our trees arrived on their own. The logic that sees all "weeds" as an enemy to be destroyed without even identifying ignores the wisdom of nature's processes.

The other day at work, the ecologist took me to see pink lady's slipper orchids. The forest there was razed and logged about a hundred years ago, and it got into my head to ask how the orchids returned. He only shrugged. "Who knows?"

Garden centers put plants out for sale when they are blooming. People buy trees from Fast Growing Trees dot com. The quick, final results that are standard with Buy Product, which are so completely opposite the constant slow chaos of nature, have become so standard in the gardening world that the hideous black mulch sold at garden centers is severed from the very purpose of mulch, and instead serves to visually emphasize small, lonely plants against its dark background. (For the record, once your plants mature, you should not be able to SEE the mulch.)

Landscapers regularly place shrubs, bushes, trees and flowers in places where they have no room to reach maturity. It's standard—landscapers seem to plan with the expectation that everything will be ripped out within 5-10 years. The average person has no clue how big trees and bushes get because their entire surroundings, which are made of living things (which do in fact feel and communicate) are treated as disposable.

Because in ten years, this building won't be an orthodontists' office, in ten years, this old lady will be dead, in ten years, the kids will have grown, and capitalism is incapable of preparing for a future, only for the next buyer.

The logic of the lawn is that gardens and ecosystems that take time to build are not to be valued, because a lush, biodiverse garden is not easily sold, easily bought, easily maintained, easily owned, or easily treated with indifference. An ecosystem requires wisdom from the caretaker. That runs contrary to the Consumer identity.

And it's this disposable-ness, this indifference, that I am ultimately so strongly against, not grass, or low turf that you can step on.

What if we saw buying land as implying a responsibility to be its caretaker? To respect the inhabitants, whether or not we are personally pleased by them or think they look pretty? What creature could deserve to be killed just because it didn't make a person happy?

But the Consumer identity gives you something else...a sense of entitlement. "This is MY yard, and that possum doesn't get to live there." "This is MY yard, and I don't want bugs in it." "This is MY yard, and I can kill the spiders if I want to."

Meanwhile there is no responsibility to build the soil up for the next gardener. No responsibility to plant oaks that will grow mighty and life-giving. No responsibility to plant fruit-producing trees, brambles, and bushes. None of these things, any of which could have fulfilled a responsibility to the future. Rather, just to do whatever you damn well please, and leave those that come after with depleted, compacted soil and the aftermath of years of constant damage. It took my Meadow ten years to recover from being the garden patch of the guy that lived here before us. Who knows what he did to it.

The loss of topsoil in all our farmland is a bigger example, and explains how this is directly connected to colonialism. The Dust Bowl, the unsustainable farming practices that followed, the disappearance of the lush fertile prairie topsoil because of greed and colonizer mindset, and simple refusal to learn from what could be observed in nature. The colonizing peoples envisioned the continent as an "Empty" place, a Blank Slate that could be used and exploited however.

THAT is what's killing the planet, this idea that the planet is to be used and abused and bought and sold, that the power given by wealth gives you entitlement to do whatever you want. That "Land" is just another Product, and our strategies for taking care of Earth should be whatever causes the most Buy Product.

It's like I always write..."You are not a consumer! You are a caretaker!"

#plants #native plants #no lawns #kill your lawn #anti lawn #consumerism #capitalism #colonialism #genocide tw

[t4rt4gl14]

Cockwarming the genshin men and watching them squirm 😻😻 in public or not is fine [drool]

#.c0ckw4rm1ng…

-> 𝙁𝙀𝘼𝙏𝙐𝙍𝙄𝙉𝙂 : DICKZ!! — diluc. itto. childe. kaeya. zhongli. [ BONUS : PANTALONE !! thoma. xiao ]

☻ — 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 : mndi. DARK CONTENT AHEAD. FEM!reader + c0ckw4rming duhh 🙄 + edging + sub!reader & dom!reader + spanking + degradation + praise + brat taming + body praise + hickeys <3 ( giving and receiving ) + kinda public s3x ? ( diluc — childe — kaeya ) + b3lly bulge ( itto — pantalone )

A/N : y’all 🔥 I ADDED PANTALONE AS A BONUS cuz i didn’t know if i could write him well 💀 but first time 4 everything ig

DILUC !!

🌀 — here you are, sitting on his lap, his chest snug against your back, you patiently wait for him to do his paperwork whilst you sit on his lap however you cannot ignore the pleasure pulsating yet unsatisfying as you sit in your spot with dilucs cock deep inside of you. your soft gummy insides make him want to bend you over and pound you right there and then but he convinces himself to sit still so the pleasure will be fucking delicious later on. “d-diluc..please move! i cant~ i wanna feel good”, you whine with a small frown on your face, “i wouldn’t want to punish you dove, now do a small favour and keep your lips sealed as i finish off this paperwork, i assure you once i am finished you’ll be in bliss.” and he wasn’t lying..30 minutes later he’s destroying your insides, reaching so far inside as you he uses you like a personal fleshlight..you’ve no choice but to take it and enjoy it like the good girl you are!~

ITTO !!

🌀 — “c-cupcake m’sorry just for a little while more, m’kay?? my good girl”, his thick cock stuffed inside of you, reaching all the deepest places, you knew it was big but not this big. “itto! please m-move mmmghh!”, your pleads and cries fell on deaf ears just as he snuggled up to your hips even more, biting and nipping at your neck whilst you tug on his horns, at which, the bulge becomes evident at some point especially when you sway your hips back and forth, just yearning for some sort for friction! even when you scratch and claw at ittos back- he still can’t help himself. is it wrong that he’s been edging you despite no punishment being deserved, in fact you’ve been good to him the entire week! but he can’t help it!! the tightness of your gooey cunt, the unexpected contractions and squeezes, you two might be here for a while <33

CHILDE !!

🌀 — well i must say this is a punishment for you both, whilst he signs off his paperwork and you patiently sit there with his cock nudged inside. so big that it presses right up to your cervix and each time you cry and beg for more, the tears cascading down your flushed cheeks, he only tuts and adds on 10 minutes, patting on you the back, occasionally he’ll allow you to move, a thrust or two just to edge you tease even more but that’s about it however he admires your patience and courtesy..constantly reassuring you that once your punishment is over he’ll fuck you so good that you won’t even remember your own name. the thought alone causes you to contract around him— if childe were not holding back he would’ve cum long time ago- painting your inside a pretty white but none the less he holds it all in just so he could torture you more ! <33

KAEYA !!

🌀 — kaeyas only intention was to have you sit on his lap whilst marking knight of favonius paperwork however the plans seem to have diverted..now both of you are here kissing each other, practically snogging, you wonder when you’ll take a break for air although it seems as though it’s not needed. the tip pressing right up into your sweet spot which only causes you to tighten, “s-snowflake-! a-angh you’re c-clamping down mm~”, and it’s only a matter of time before kaeya sets all the paperwork to the side and place your back gently on the table, railing you and claiming your insides as his own. which we all know, eventually leads to your cunt being so full that his seed leeks out whilst some sloshes inside <333

ZHONGLI !!

🌀 — despite handing over his gnosis to the fatui and attempting to live the rest of his life as a mortal— he still gets such symptoms of when he was rex lapis; for example! the horns and even a tail can be seen from time to time but only when he’s extremely horny…and today he demanded you to sit on his lap and take it all in despite it being much larger than usual! if you whined, he would only shove his fingers down your throat and order you to be quiet, “such sluts do not have the right to whine. let alone disrespect an archon”, however for your sake, he’ll rub your clit ever so slowly just so the pleasure doesn’t die down but only increase >:)

☆ BONUS ☆

-> PANTALONE !!! : edging with pantalone is certainly something. he’ll keep smiling with that ‘innocent’ smile of his even when you’ve been sitting on his cock for hours. massaging your tummy, pressing down on the bulge just to make you even more sensitive, he just loves it when you arch your back, the way your face contorts- it turns him on so much! he wonders how long you’ll be able to stay in this position until you break.

-> THOMA !! : thoma is so cute! his skin etched red as he tugs on the ropes, gaze clouded with lust whilst eyeing your body, the spot where you two connect- wondering when you will move; just do something..anything!! move up or down or back n forth! he doesn’t care he just wants to feel good :( his cock engulfed by the warm of your sweet cunt. thomas completely at your mercy just to be your good boy~

-> XIAO !! : xiao is just skfbjsdbsn, cheeks flushed as he hides into your neck, his precum smearing across your gummy walls whilst he clutches onto your shirt, almost tearing it. you could hear the slight mewls and whines even when he tried hiding, biting his lip found no avail so eventually in the end he just attempted to get you to move…which only caused you to prolong the time of his punishment— truly you show no respect for the adepti >:(

TAGGING : @kxisuke @itthoee @currysrealm @leathernourishingshoepolish @stygianoir

#genshin headcanons #genshin impact headcanons #genshin drabbles #genshin impact drabbles #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x you #genshin x you #genshin impact smut #genshin smut #diluc x reader smut #itto x reader #childe x reader #kaeya x reader #zhongli x reader #pantalone x reader #thoma x reader #xiao x reader #diluc smut #itto smut #childe smut #kaeya smut #zhongli smut #pantalone smut #thoma smut #xiao smut #diluc x you #itto x you #childe x you #kaeya x you

[mavrintarou]

Lord Gojo Satoru [1]

Hi All, hope you all have been well. I'm going through a writer's block for Toru & Mateo. Bear with me. In the meantime, I can distract you with Lord Gojo #hearteyes

Lord Series masterlist

Part two

Warning: angst, violence (TW: description about past physical abuse Y/n suffered through), smut (18+)

.

Lord Gojo Satoru tossed the last scroll into the flame, destroying the evidence of details about the last remaining elder.

Satoru was known as the young Lord who rosed into his high position by diminishing the elders of his clan.

He was now the head of the Gojo clan.

He now reigns over the clan and will rise to make changes to his desires.

. .

“You must consider marriage and make haste to produce an heir, my Lord!”

Rolling his eyes, Satoru looked out the window, ignoring what the clan members he had chosen were saying.

Approaching the age of 27, he knew he could no longer delay marriage and the prospect of producing an heir. His only challenge was that he found none of the recommended ladies to be deserving of a significant role.

The only woman Satoru has ever believed to fit the role of being his wife and the mother of his children was the very one that he could not have. 

Yet.

As soon as she is found, he will bring her back to his kingdom.

“Any news on her?”

They did not need to ask who he meant, everyone knew he was looking for Y/l/n Y/f/n.

Gojo Satoru has sent special men to search for the woman who has occupied his heart, mind, and soul.

The eleven members glanced nervously amongst each other before one finally replied, “no, my Lord. We will continue to keep searching for her.”

.

.

Y/n turned her head towards the breathless maid running towards her. “Yuko, what is the matter?”

The young maid whom Y/n had watched grow up from a little girl stopped in front of her, leaning against her for support as she tried to catch her breath. “Y/n, someone is looking for you!”

Frowning, Y/n asked, “me? Who?”

Yuko shrugged her shoulders, “I was running errands for our Lady when I heard many talk about the new Lord who has announced a reward if anyone knew any information about…” she paused and looked around before whispering, “Y/l/n Y/f/n.”

Y/n was under a new name given to her by her new house, Yui. She has been using the name Yui for six years. Yuko only knew of her birth name by overhearing a conversation between her mother and Y/n.

Yuko pulls out a heavily folded-up piece of paper, handing it to Y/n. “I took this off the pillar.”

Y/n’s eyes widen when it’s a drawing of her.

.

Y/n served her Lady her evening tea. She bowed her head, bidding her Lady a good night but before she could exit her chamber, her name was called.

“Yuko, you may leave but Yui, please stay for a moment. I have something to discuss with you.”

Y/n nodded her head at Yuko, sliding close the door after her.

Lady Komatsu gestured to the spot across from her.

With carefulness, Y/n set her cane down and was about to lower herself onto the cushion on the floor when she was stopped. “Please, have a seat beside me.”

Taking a seat on the soft couch across from her lady, Y/n quietly asked, “what is it, my Lady?”

Lady Komatsu has been nothing but kind to Y/n, taking her in and generously treating her like a family rather than a maid.

“It has brought to my attention that…” she sighs softly, “someone is looking for you.”

She knew of Y/n’s real identity.

Looking up, Y/n inquired, “do you know… who?”

“Lord Gojo Satoru.”

Y/n’s breath hitched, she was sure it was him but a part of her hoped it was not.

“That was the previous family you served, is that correct?”

Nodding her head, “yes, that is correct. He is the young master.”

“Who is now the head of the Gojo clan.”

Y/n’s eyes widen at the news. Satoru couldn’t have become the head of the clan yet, his father and the other elders…

“He is searching for you…” Lady Komatsu raised a brow at her, “my next question is, do you want to be found?” She threaded her fingers together and placed them on her lap. “If you do, I will release you. If you do not… I will turn a blind eye and not know who this Y/l/n Y/f/n is.”

.

Y/n rubs the achiness in her right knee. Even after almost ten years, the pain would linger now and then…

Reminding her of her place.

Reminding her of her status.

That she was merely a maid for the Gojo house and falling in love with the young master Gojo Satoru was forbidden.

Horrific memories came flooding back as she shut her eyes tightly.

Beaten and bruised Satoru stood before her.

He smiled softly at her even with a swollen and broken lip. “Y/n…”

They both knew their love for each other would never flourish with their different statuses.

Y/n has tried many times to cut it off, to destroy their sad and pathetic love.

Her request to be relocated to a different Gojo site was approved. On the day of her relocation, Satoru caused a predicament and enough was enough from his father.

Y/n cried and tried to pull away from the guards as the other guards beat the young master in front of her.

“Heed this warning, Satoru,” his father gripped the chin of his son, “know your place.” He points a finger at the guards holding Y/n down.

It took Y/n by surprise, the next thing she knew, she was writhing in pain on the ground. She gasped loudly, clenching her teeth as she gripped her right leg. Her knee was bent awkwardly, blood began seeping through her kimono.

Satoru screamed Y/n’s name, trying to crawl towards Y/n but a heavy weight held him down by the back of his neck.

With one foot pressing down on his son,  he looks down at his son with cold hard eyes, “this is all your doing, Satoru. Next time,” his tone is icy, “it won’t end with just a broken knee.”

That was the last time they saw each other. Y/n was moved to an unknown location, sold, and served under a different master and family.

It has been six years and she couldn’t deny the knowledge of hearing him search for her after all these years.

But why?

“If you do, I will release you. If you do not… I will turn a blind eye and not know who this Y/l/n Y/f/n is.”

Y/n closed her eyes.

“Can I have some time to think about this?” she asked after a few minutes.

“Of course, think about it.” Lady Komatsu smiled, “I want you to be happy, Y/n.”

Can she truly be happy?

What was Lord Gojo’s motives?

.

Weeks passed and rumors continued that a young Lord was looking for a woman.

Locals have all turned down when being asked because only very few have ever seen Y/n and are aware that she is assigned to the Komatsu house. Maids leaving the compound were restricted and only a few were assigned to be the designated one to run errands outside the compound.

Y/n was serving her lady their afternoon tea when loud commotions were coming from outside.

“I’ll go check,” Y/n assured, setting the kettle down.

She hurried out to the corridor and froze.

Standing no more than twenty feet in front of her is Lord Gojo Satoru.

His eyes trail down to the cane she used for years. He swallows the lump in his throat and looks at Y/n in the eyes once more.

“My… Lord,” she barely whispered against the wind.

He stood before her in a blink of an eye, he closed the last remaining distance between them. His long arms wrapped around her frame, holding her close.

.

“Come with me,” Satoru squeezed her hands firmly, he had not been able to let go of her since he touched her. “Come home with me,” he pleaded softly. He looked across at Lady Komatsu and turned his body. “Please, allow Y/n to leave with me. I will compensate for the time you’ve taken care of –“

Lady Komatsu held a hand up, silencing Satoru. “You will not need to, Lord Gojo.” She looks over at Y/n, who is still looking down at hers and Satoru’s hands. “If Y/n wishes to leave with you, I will release her.”

Y/n lifts her head and at Lady Komatsu, her eyes brimmed with tears. “I do, I want to leave with… Satoru.” She turned her gaze to Satoru’s crystal blue eyes, tears slipping down her cheeks, “I want to go home with you.”

.

Satoru watched as Y/n strolled through the compound she had once called home, a place filled with both beautiful and painful memories. It was where their love had initially blossomed and later suffered.

The place where they last encountered years ago has undergone a beautiful transformation into a flower garden, adoring exclusively with her favorite flowers. He made sure only her favorite flowers bloomed there.

He could not see her face, but he knew the painful memories of that day were replaying in her head. Taking a few strides, Satoru hugged her tightly from behind. His left hand moved to cover her eyes, “I cannot erase that moment from your life, but what I can do and I promise you, I will create new moments to overcome them so that you will never have to fear it anymore.” He felt her tears against his palm and he slowly moved his hand away. “I have planted all your favorite flowers, see how it’s blooming for you… each time it withers at the end of each season and blooms at the beginning of the new season… it is a means of new life and starting over…” Satoru turned her around and tilted her chin upward. “It is a new season, Y/n. Please, start over with me?”

Y/n gazed longingly into his beautiful eyes. She reached up to cup his cheeks, her thumbs rubbing his cheekbones. She still could not believe that he was in front of her. “Satoru…”

Satoru gazes longingly at Y/n, “let us start again, together, with no one to interfere with our love.” The spark in her eyes turned into pain and sadness. He frowned, “do – do you not want to start again?”

“We are too different, my Lord.”

His light blue eyes darkened. All his life, he had only ever loved Y/n, yet everyone, Y/n including now, always told him they were different. “How? You are a human just like me? Are you not?”

His breath hitched when she pulled away from him, taking a step back. “You know how, my Lord. We are from different statues.” Her head bows, “you know clearly how it will not work for us.”

“Then why did you agree to come home with me?” He gritted through his teeth. He sees her flinch and he takes a step back, releasing a deep breath while running a hand through his hair.

Her sharp inhale before she spoke, “forgive me, my Lord. I was selfish and greedy at that moment and acted without the right mind. If – if you want to send me back I will gladly return.” She bowed.

Satoru closed his eyes and exhaled quietly. He opened his eyes, they were hard and cold, “look at me Y/n.”

She straightened her posture and looked straight ahead, but not at him. He found no light in her eyes like he did before.

A low growl rumbles from his chest before he tugs her swiftly into his embrace, locking his arms tightly around her. He won’t let her go. If he has to chain her by his side for the rest of his life, he will.

“I don’t care about our status. I love you,” he emphasized the three last words. He pulled away abruptly and cupped Y/n’s face to force her to look straight into his eyes, “I love you, Y/n.” His large hands gently tighten around her head, emphasizing his words. “I. Love. You. You, Y/n.” Satoru’s eyes softened and their touch lightened, “I have loved you for a long time and all these years.”

Y/n shut her eyes, tears spilled down her cheeks. “Satoru…” she wept quietly, “can you love someone like me? I am damaged.”

“Nonsense,” he growled, “you are not damaged at all.” Satoru was aware of the societal stigma associated with a woman perceived as ‘damaged’. Society would label her as such because of the limp she now bears.

“I am selfish,” Satoru whispered. “I am the reason why you now bear this limp for the rest of your life and I should do the right thing and let you go,” his fingers brushed her hair behind her ear, “but I cannot.”

“No my Lord – “

“But it is my life and my heart that I will offer to you,” his eyes stared deeply into her soft hazel ones, “I will give you everything I own, everything I possess,” he wiped her tears away, “so please, be with me. Stay with me. You are all I want. What I need to live.” He pressed her palm to his lips, “marry me, be my Lady, Lady Gojo.”

Y/n shut her eyes, tears rolled down her cheeks before she let out a soft sigh. She opened her eyes, and this time, they filled with hope, “you still wish to marry me even though I have no family and dowery to offer to you?”

“Yes. I have everything for us,” his blue eyes twinkle brightly. “You only need me and I only need you.”

She smiled, “yes, I only need you. I would love to marry you, my Lord.”

. .

“What are you doing?”

Y/n froze as she poured water to fill the tub. “I am getting the bath ready?” She answered warily, she wasn’t sure why the head maid was stunned.

Sumiko quickly marched forward and gently took the bucket out of her hands, “my Lady, if Lord Gojo hears about you getting your own bath ready he will fire us all.” With a hand motion, four other maids entered the bathroom and began filling the tub with hot water. “I understand you have done this all your life but starting now, it will be far different. You must let us know and we will prepare it for you.”

Y/n nodded speechless as Sumiko guided her to the living room, “please wait here, my Lady. Give us five more minutes, we will have your bath ready.”

“Of course,” Y/n waited patiently until a voice informed her that her bath was ready.

Y/n was amazed that within five minutes they were able to fill the large tub with water and added essential oil that calmed the air in the room.

Putting her cane aside, she began to undress before entering the tub. Releasing a gentle sigh, she lowered herself further into the water until she was completely submerged.

Emerging slowly above the water’s surface, she gasped at the sight of Satoru standing before her, naked.

She gawked at his toned chisel body before looking away, cheeks reddening. Her arms crossed over her chest. She looked up at him again when he moved to step into the tub, her eyes catching a glimpse of his manhood, semi-erect. “My – my Lord…”

Satoru submerged himself up to his chin and moved towards her until he was in front of her. “Satoru.”

Y/n avoided his eyes, “o – okay…”

His lips curve upward, “say it.”

She looked into his eyes, confused.

“Say my name, Y/n.”

“S – Satoru…”

“Again.”

“Satoru.”

“Again.”

“Satoru. Gojo Satoru.” Y/n growled slightly frustrated at his persistent requests.

Satoru let out a chuckle, “that is all you can call me.”

“Don’t tease me,” she murmured, looking away.

Sitting down, Satoru grabs her legs and puts them on his lap. “But you look so adorable fluttered.” He grabbed her right foot and began massaging it. His grip tightened when she tried to pull away. “Relax, Y/n…”

She bit her lower lip and stopped struggling. “I’m – I’m not used to this…”

“Not used to what?” His thumb pressed into the arch of her foot and smiled when she let out a soft and quiet moan. “Not used to being pampered?”

“Y – yes…” she nodded, “having… things done for me… it is weird, my L – Sa – Satoru…”

A smile tugs the corner of his lips, “well, get used to it my love, you are my queen and you deserve to be treated like one.” His fingers shifted to her ankle and then her calf, and slowly his fingers reached the scar. He heard Y/n’s sharp inhale. “I was stripped away from you, I was weak then and could not protect you…” his thumb rubbed the long scar. “I am sorry.” He lifted her knee gently above the water and for the first time, he was able to see the horrendous scar. “If only…” his voice croaked, “if only you received the best care…” then you wouldn’t have a limp now, Satoru swallowed the rest of his words in silence, pressing his forehead against her knee. “Nothing will ever harm you again, I promise. I’ll protect you.”

A small hand lifted his head, “I believe you.”

Like a puppy, Satoru leaned into her palm. “I have waited for a long time to be with you again, I won’t ever let anyone take you away from me.” He moved closer to kiss her lips softly.

Y/n cupped his face, bringing him closer.

Satoru shifted over to situate himself in between her legs, his fingers tracing along her inner thigh until they reached her sacred moist spot. The tip of his fingers tickled her folds, his eyes on her, attentive to her reactions.

She let out a soft sigh, one of her hands trailing down his arm and to the hand waiting for her permission. She peered up at him at the same time as she guided his finger to slip past her folds. Her breath hitched at the intrusion but he continued to push his finger deeper inside her.

His heart beat loudly and rapidly as her warm and soft walls clenched around his finger tightly. Instantly, his cock became erect, begging to replace his finger.

Y/n’s soft whimpers encouraged him to pump his finger faster until he was easily slipping one finger through her tight hole, he added another finger. “Am – am I the first to touch you like this?”

“Yes. Yes, Satoru…” she confirmed, easing his anxiety away. “You – you are the only one I’ve ever wanted…”

His crystal blue eyes gleamed, and she left him speechless. She could make him weak to his knees for her.

His fingers continued to thrust in and out of her, her whimpers gradually turned into moans echoing softly throughout the bathroom. He pressed down on her clit, circling the needy nub until she trembled under his touch.

Her small body curled up, eyes shut tightly as her small hands covered her mouth to prevent her moans from leaking.

Satoru chuckled lightly to himself, finding her adorable.

Very gently, he withdrew his fingers and let out a shaky breath.

“Y/n,” he called her name in a pleading tone, she opened her eyes and stared into his darker blue eyes. Her eyes drop down, seeing his other hand fisting and stroking his hard cock. “Give me your permission, Y/n. Permit me to take you, and make you mine?”

Without hesitating, she nodded, “yes, Satoru – my body is yours…”

Satoru’s radiant smile caused Y/n’s heart to flutter; in her eyes, he was the most captivating man.

“I have been waiting for this moment and I cannot wait a second longer.” Satoru easily lifted her out of the water, stepping out of the tub. He set her down on her feet, an arm wrapped around her waist as he reached for her yukata and helped her slip it on. Once it was in place, Satoru swept her off her feet, carrying her like a child in the crook of his arm.

“S – Satoru!” Y/n exclaimed, wrapping her arm tightly around his neck. It shocked her that he could carry her with just one arm.

Without covering himself, he walked down the hall naked until he stopped in front of a door. “This is our room.”

Y/n gasped at the size of it, it was a large room filled with decorations and furniture. Against the wall was a platform bed.

“But we aren’t married yet?”

Laying her down in the middle of the bed, Satoru hovers over her, “we will soon. As soon as I can orchestrate it. I don’t want to wait another second without you being where you belong, in my arms every day and night.” He brought her hand up to his lips, pressing her knuckles to his lips. “I know I am being greedy, but please, don’t deny me.”

Y/n’s lips curve into a smile, “how can I? I could never refuse you before, how could I now?”

His head rests against hers as he closes his eyes and murmurs, “I can’t believe you’re really in front of me.”

Y/n’s nose intimately brushes his, “I can’t believe it either… it has been so long…”

The second Satoru opened his eyes again, they were once dark and filled with lust. His hand loosens her yukata, revealing her beauty. He first pecks her lips, chin, and chest before stopping at the valley of her breast. Both his hands grasp her bosom, groping them.

Y/n’s legs widen to accommodate his body, she gasped each time she felt something graze her sensitive clit. “’Toru…”

He missed his name as he was distracted by her perky dark pink nipples. Unable to decide which one he should first suckle, he opted for the left side first.  He had been dying to taste her small nipples the moment he saw them during their bath.

Satoru moaned, swirling his tongue against it. He peered up, watching her face twist in pleasure.

Y/n whimpered when he shifted to the other nipple, she couldn’t believe how turned on she felt just from him suckling her bosom like a baby.

An image of a baby, with platinum white hair and blue eyes appeared before her imagination, her heart wanting nothing more.

“’Toru…” Y/n implored, “g – give me a baby… put a baby in me – please?”

When Satoru’s eyes bulged, Y/n felt foolish at her request. She looked away, hiding her face. “Ignore my request…”

Her eyes widened when she felt something push in between her legs, push into the passage where his fingers were thrusting in and out of moments ago. This time, it was of something bigger and thicker.

“Shh,” Satoru purred, slowly inching his cock deeper into her pussy. His body tensed at her tightness, thinking he had loosened her up enough to accommodate his cock.

He nearly lost his control at her request to put a baby in her. If he was honest with himself, the idea of children wasn’t on his mind. For several years, all he wanted was just to reunite with his love once again. To hear her innocent request, he was willing to oblige. He will give her as many of his children as she wants.

Satoru groaned when he could no longer push further into her pussy, she had taken all of him, just as she was meant to. He glanced between their now sweaty bodies, they were one, a unity. “Haa,” he choked, he shifted his weight to his elbows and knees so he would squish her. She was so tiny compared to him. Staring down at her, his whole body dwarfed hers.

He let out a husky chuckle, “my love, you humor me. You say that it is too early to share a room because we are not married yet but you request for me to put a baby in you…”

“Don’t – don’t tease me,” Y/n stammer, blushing. “Oh – Satoru… you’re – you’re so big…” her nails dug into the skin of his arms. She has been educated that the first time being intimate would bring discomfort but with time, it would bring nothing but pleasure. Letting out a deep breath, she relaxed her body the best she could. She looked into his dark eyes, “I love it…”

Satoru’s ears were ringing as he tried to control his urge to thrust. He was nearly coming undone at just being inside of her alone, he didn’t know how much longer he could hold off once she allowed him to move. “Love – love what?”

“I love how you feel… inside me,” she rested a hand against her bulging abdomen. “Here… I can feel you here.”

“Oh, Y/n…” Satoru groaned. “Please… let me move…” he begged.

Her arms wrapped around his neck, “do as you wish.”

Satoru kept a steady slow pace at first, giving her time to adjust to his movements. He was attentive to her moans and the way her body reacted before speeding up his hips.

The room filled with their sweaty skin slapping skin.

“Going to fill you up… fill you with my seed… give you my heir…” Satoru whispered hotly into her ear. His arms slipped behind her back, hugging her close as he neared his orgasm.

“Yes! Yes, Satoru!” Y/n chanted, widening her legs so he could impale her deeper.

Satoru’s body anchored her petite one down as his lower region was the only part pounding deeply inside her. The bed rocked with his hard and heavy thrusts.

“Ah,” they gasped in unison.

Lifting Y/n upward, he settled her on his lap, still embedded deeply inside her. She clung on to him while his cock continued to convulse.

Her head buried into his chest, she mumbled something he couldn’t understand.

“Hmm, what did you say?”

She lifted her head, her face flushed from their passionate lovemaking. “It was amazing…”

Satoru let out a laugh, Y/n joining him with her giggles. “I’m glad… you enjoyed it. There will be plenty more of it…”

. . .

E/N: This is going to be literally porn with a plot.

>>> @queenelleee @mfreedomstuff @erintaro @callmeraider @chaotic-fangirl-blog @wolffmaiden @cloud-lyy

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[erosia-rhodes]

Speculation on Mizu’s heritage

Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix is one of the best things I’ve seen all year. As I’ve been rewatching it, I couldn’t help but speculate on Mizu’s heritage, and I wanted to share my theory so we can all laugh at how wrong I was in a few years. (I am notoriously bad at guessing plot twists. I was totally wrong about how Wandavision and Loki season 1 would end.)

Spoilers and speculation behind the jump.

Short version: Mizu’s mother was a white woman and her father was the Shogun. The Shogun’s wife, Lady Itoh, put the bounty on Mizu’s life because she was proof that the Shogun broke his own laws.

Who Would Want to Kill a Baby?

We know that there has been a bounty on Mizu’s head since she was a baby. There are only three reasons I can think of for putting a hit out on a child who’s just been born and couldn’t have personally wronged anyone yet:

1) To deny them an inheritance.

2) To eliminate proof of an affair.

3) To eliminate proof of a crime.

The woman that claims to be Mizu’s mother is Japanese, so Mizu assumes her father must be white. But once Fowler reveals that Mizu’s “mother” was actually her maid, it opens up the possibility that Mizu’s mother was white and her father was Japanese.

We know that someone is willing to a pay a lot of money to kill Mizu, but the maid also ran off with enough money to take care of Mizu for several years, so at least one person in this mess is wealthy. We also know that someone still wants Mizu dead when she's an adult because men come to kill her when her husband rats her out, so she’s still a threat to someone else’s interests at that time.

If the Shogun slept with a white woman and fathered a mix-raced child as a result, that would fulfill all three reasons to put a bounty on a baby. Killing her would remove any chance that a bastard might try to blackmail her way into an inheritance, it would remove proof that the Shogun had an affair, and most importantly, it would destroy evidence that he violated his own laws against Western influence by sleeping with a white woman.

But the True Culprit is…

But I don’t think the Shogun put the bounty on Mizu’s life. I think it was the Shogun’s wife, Lady Itoh, for several reasons:

1) Lady Itoh is willing to kill people who learn that her husband broke his own laws.

When the nobles are trying to escape the fire in the finale, Lady Itoh makes her sons lock the door behind them and sentence the other Lords to death because they witnessed the Shogun’s shame, the revelation that he broke his own laws by dealing with Fowler, a white man. She’s demonstrated that she’s willing to kill people to destroy proof of her husband’s violations, so she’d do the same to a mixed-race baby he fathered. It would also explain why Mizu’s maid never claimed the bounty herself; she would have been targeted for death too because she knew about the Shogun’s crime. She probably took whatever money was in the house when the killers came for Mizu, and went on the run as much to save her own life as Mizu's.

2) The woman’s a sadist.

Lady Itoh does everything she can to make Akemi’s life hell once she marries into the family. She saddles her with bitchy attendants and serves her disgusting food at the banquet, and finishes it off with the cooked remains of the bird Akemi tried to free. Then she sends her two more birds the next day, claiming they’re breakfast and lunch. I have no trouble believing this woman would put a hit on a baby!

3) She’s a hardliner against Western influence

After the fire, Lady Itoh orders her sons to destroy 2000 guns which they could have used in the future against their enemies because she’d so fiercely against Western influence. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one who came up with the law banning white people and talked her husband into enacting it. That would explain why the Shogun was willing to violate the law, because he didn’t completely believe in it and only enacted it to get his wife off his back.

It Fits a Common Theme of Revenge Stories

Another reason I think Lady Itoh is the ultimate villain is because it fits the common theme that revenge is futile. Revenge usually destroys the person seeking it just as much as anyone they go after. There is a famous quote from Confucius that says, "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." The implication is that the second one is for yourself.

If it turns out that Mizu has been going after the only four men in the country who couldn’t be her father, it would demonstrate how misguided revenge quests are. She’s spent her whole life pouring hatred into the wrong mission.

It would also be a painful twist to know that Mizu was in the same room with Lady Itoh in the finale, but she was focused on killing Fowler instead of realizing that her true enemy was fleeing out the back door with everyone else.

How It Will All Sort Out

I predict that Mizu will eventually learn the truth about her parentage and ultimately target Lady Itoh for death, not just for revenge, but so she can permanently remove the bounty on her head and live her life freely as a woman.

Akemi might end up assisting Mizu since Lady Itoh is also her enemy. Akemi will probably spend season two battling Lady Itoh for control of the household, and thus the country. If Akemi can put her husband in place as the Shogun, she could remove the bounty on Mizu's head.

If Taigan ends up working as a castle guard, this might put him in conflict with Mizu and Akemi if they target Lady Itoh since he would be honor bound to protect her.

It will be interesting to see how it all sorts out!

ETA: I misspelled Lady Itoh's name, sorry! (According to the subtitles it's Itoh, not Ito) I think I fixed every instance.

#blue eye samurai #netflix #blue eye samurai spoilers #mizu #taigen #akemi #mizu blue eye samurai #lady itoh

[vaguely-concerned]

it probably says something either sad or deeply unfortunate about me as a person, but I'm darkly amused to see some people react to the reveal of the ultimate permeability of souls in tlt as a triumphant thing -- the "you can't take 'loved' away!!!" side of it all -- when my first reaction was such an immediate wave of 'oh, oh so this is why this series is horror, I truly understand now' distress haha. ngl the final confirmation of the self not being inviolable in the deepest way freaks me the fuck out far more than any moment of body horror in the series has managed. (these two elements are of course the two sides of one thematic coin; it's about the horror of our bodies and minds and selves not being inviolable things, and about the effect of violence on them on so many different levels. violence psychological and interpersonal, physical, subtextually sexual, emotional, medical, political, a whole unlovely smörgåsbord of indignity and violation a person can be exposed to, and on a broader scale the spectrum of violence colonialism wields). The world and other people being capable of leaving indelible marks on us for good or ill through their presence in our lives is of course a pretty self-evident demonstrable truth in the real world, but somehow having it be proven metaphysically just uh. Fucks me up! 

It also drives home to me just how perfectly Muir has captured the dilemma at the heart of human connection and intimacy: the fact that the thing that gives us life and meaning is also capable of harming us so deeply. the same thing that can be so beautiful — even in a bittersweet, violently transformative form like with the creation of Paul — when done mutually and consensually and compassionately, is the same process that means someone like John can touch someone else's soul and 'after he's put his fingers on something, you'll never find anyone else's fingerprints on it; too much noise'. I think the text itself — the whole series, because to me this is what it is ultimately about, this tension between individuation/self vs. love/connection/enmeshment — is far more ambivalent in its treatment of it than saying it’s inherently a good thing or inherently a bad thing. The only thing it says for sure is that it is always a thing, that thinking you’re ever getting away from it is the height of futility, and that through being alive (or even through being dead lol) it is something you have to engage with in some way no matter what. Contact with other people is deeply necessary — without it we sicken and die. it can be the most beautiful and meaningful thing in a human life, and the most unspeakably horrific. All of these people are searching for some way to be whole, whether in total self-contained sufficiency on their own or in melding with someone else as their ‘other half’, and stumbling around in the dark they reach for each other and score deep wounds into the thing they’re trying to touch even when they don’t mean to. Taken to horrific extremes with the form of lyctorhood John guided his disciples to when they were ‘children — playing in the reflections of stars in a pool of water, thinking it was space’, because while people hurt each other all the time with differing levels of intentionality behind it, what John did was deliberate. It weaponizes the misapprehension of what closeness must be and destroys everyone involved in the process… and all because it leaves John the one sun their ruined lives have left to orbit around, because that’s the closest thing his soul will allow to connection. He doesn’t understand that to truly touch something you have to truly let it touch you back, and then wonders why he’s never satisfied.   

‘The horrors of love’ has been memed to death, I know, but… yeah. That is what it is, isn’t it.

#the locked tomb #the locked tomb meta #the unwanted guest #the unwanted guest spoilers #I wrote most of this right after reading tug for the first time but it's been so hard putting exactly what I mean into words #this is my best shot so far haha #I feel like a lot of a people have approached this lil 'revelation' a bit too... idk mechanistically? for my personal taste #I think it's far more thematically and metaphorically true than a scavenging hunt to see who's been rubbing off on who #spiritually. of course. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[cobragardens]

The 3 Falls of Anthony J Crowley

So far, Crowley has told three different stories to three different audiences about why he Fell, and there's some important information that can be inferred from them. Let's get nerdy.

(Nb. C. 25% of this is from a previous post I made about Crowley's memory problems.)

Here's Crowley's 1st story (gifs courtesy of Fuck Yeah Good Omens), in 1867:

In Book Omens this line is narration about Crowley, and means that Crowley didn't embrace evil and side with Hell so much as he just wasn't into the whole Heaven shindig.

In Show Omens, this phrase becomes a little more fraught, because Crowley says it about himself, and he says it to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale has just disagreed with Crowley's assertion that the two of them have a lot in common. Az thinks Crowley means their origins as angels, and demurs, "I don't know. We may have both started off as angels, but you are fallen."

But what Crowley means, as we find out in pretty much every other scene the two of them share in S1 and S2, is that that he and Aziraphale have a lot in common now, in their current positions. He wants Aziraphale to see him as a friend--and to be his friend--so he elides the difference his Fallenness makes to Aziraphale, all "Ehhh, it wasn't really a fall kind of Fall, it wasn't that bad."

Also, given the conversation they have in the Final Fifteen, I feel like his phrasing is kind of important here, because falling is not voluntary, but sauntering is. In saying this Crowley is claiming that to some degree he chose to reject Heaven.

It's entirely possible that Crowley may have been lying to Aziraphale in 1867--he is, as he says, a demon, and he's lied to him before to make something bad seem less bad--but maybe not. Remember what the Metatron says about Crowley:

And this is another interesting point: The Metatron knew Crowley as an angel. The Metatron. The being who, after shepherding Aziraphale out of the bookshop, turned back and looked at Crowley with hate.

(And tense music playing, in case you weren't sure.)

So maybe that's it. Maybe Crowley just chose to be on his own side.

But in 2019, and addressing God, Crowley's story of his Fall is slightly different:

I think we can take this as Crowley's sincere belief. It's unlikely that he would lie when speaking to God, because that is Aziraphale's job because he doesn't have any reason to do so: God hasn't been listening to Crowley for 6,000 years at this point, and if She were listening, lying would not work. So Crowley probably believes he's telling the truth here with this story: Crowley believes one reason he Fell is that he asked questions.

But is he right?

Another line from the Metatron:

The Metatron seems to speak of Crowley's habit of asking questions as though he finds it obnoxious rather than damning, so maybe the questions weren't the problem. Then again we know that the Metatron is a lying piece of shit and an authoritarian who doesn't want his regime questioned, willing to erase memories and destroy lives to cover up the 'institutional problem' that Heaven doesn't know what the Plan is and is run by a handful of warmongers who want everyone dead or indentured.

Either way, this is the third time in the series someone has talked about the problem of Crowley asking questions, so my guess is his questions were probably a salient feature of his Fall.

Onward!

Before we look at the 3rd story, remember that we have strong evidence now that Crowley has had his memories erased by Heaven.

But we also know Furfur, another demon, still has his memories. Inference: Heaven don't erase the memories of every angel who Falls. This suggests that Heaven erased Crowley's memories because he had knowledge in those memories Heaven didn't want him to have anymore.

This may not be specific knowledge. We know Crowley has a high security clearance in Heaven and therefore must have been a high-ranking angel, and we know he created a nebula with Saraqael, so presumably there was a lot of stuff in his head Heaven wanted stripped out.

But I think there was something specific, and here's why. Firstly, there's no reason to assume that importance in Heaven is a guarantee of importance in Hell. Furfur could have been a high-ranking angel too before ending up an admin in Hell. (Hell does not seem to be any more of a meritocracy than Heaven does.)

Secondly, it's clear that Crowley doesn't know his memories have been erased. If he knew, then when Furfur says "We were in the same Legion? Just before the Fall? Doing dubious battle on the Plains of Heaven? Remember?" he'd say something like "Don't be stupid, of course I don't remember, Heaven erased my memories."

Instead he says,

Now, maybe Crowley is just being a dick here. Certainly we're supposed to take it that way until he goes up to Heaven with Muriel and doesn't remember Saraqael either.

But what if he's being truthful? If Crowley is being honest (and a dick), that would mean the Fash didn't erase all of Crowley's memories of his time in Heaven. We know this because Furfur says he and Crowley fought together "on the Plains of Heaven," and "just before the Fall" [emphasis added].

This suggests that Maybe Heaven didn't erase time from Crowley's memory. Maybe they erased people.

Okay, now here's Crowley's 3rd story about how he Fell:

It's a cute line, but what if it's not just a throwaway joke referencing what people say about kids who go down the wrong path and become criminals?

Crowley mutters this 3rd story to himself, so we can be confident Crowley believes this to be true. But Crowley doesn't know who the wrong people are. He doesn't know whose company got him thrown out of Heaven, because his memories of all those people have been taken from him.

And taken together, these three stories and Crowley's stolen memories suggest a bigger, more disturbing inference: Crowley doesn't know why he Fell. (Or sauntered vaguely downwards.)

Like Crowley, Job was once a favorite of God. But he has fallen out of that favor and been delivered to demons for reasons God refuses to tell him.

We the audience are meant to draw a parallel between Job and Crowley. We know this not just because of the speech Crowley cathartically gives Job's goats, in which everything he says to the goats can be just as easily applied to Job or himself, but from two other indications. Here's one:

Job is wearing Crowley's color.

The other is the minisode title, "A Companion to Owls." This phrase comes from the Book of Job, specifically Job 30:29. Job, lamenting what has happened to him, says,

 I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.

In Biblical symbolism, dragon=serpent=snake=demon. And in some Mesopotamian beliefs--one of them Judaism--owls were associated with demons as well:

and

and

So the Job of the Bible is saying in this verse the same thing the Job of Good Omens says: God has forsaken me and delivered me to demons. Or even: God has forsaken me and I am now being treated like demons are treated.

And he's also saying something else. In the Bible, owls symbolize loneliness, desolation, and solitude. They're consistently depicted as living in barren, abandoned, isolated places. Seriously. Go search owl(s) in a Biblical concordance and read all 30 entries: it comes up a lot. If you're a companion to owls, you're alone (except for the owls) in the wilderness. You're forsaken.

WHOMST do we know whose signal color is yellow, who's a brother of demons, and who admits at the end of the episode that being alone and forsaken in the wilderness is lonely?

So. Job, a character whose claim to fame is that God punished him and he didn't know why, is a mirror character to Crowley. This on its own isn't enough to say definitely that Crowley doesn't know why he Fell, but combined with the three different stories he tells about his Fall, I think there's enough textual evidence to conclude that Crowley isn't entirely sure why he fell; he only has educated guesses. Either he knew and the memory was erased, or he was never told at all.

My question about Crowley's Fall is this: Who pushed him?

Was Crowley's Fall an act of God Herself, or was it an act of Heaven? What did the fucking Metatron have to do with it? What was Crowley's crime? When Aziraphale takes charge of Heaven and the Second Coming, will he read Crowley's file?

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens s2 #good omens meta #crowley #aziraphale #the metatron #good omens analysis #crowley's fall #3 falls of crowley

[kisakis-boyfriend]

I have a Halloween-esque Bennett request. He lives in a really superstitious village that hates him bc of his bad luck. So on Halloween they try to sacrifice him in a ritual. They wind up summoning Incubus!Reader and we decide to keep him as a pampered pet. And maybe we use the power we gain from Bennett’s pleasure to get revenge on those fuckers who hurt him

Sacrificial Lamb

Pairings: Bennett x reader

Warnings: Male!reader, dom/top!reader, incubus!reader, sub/bottom!Bennett, blowjob, descriptions of violence, descriptions of gore at the end, implied deaths at the end

Genre/Format: Smut, hurt/comfort; Oneshot

Author's Note: Bennett is 18-19 in this story! — Hell yeah, incubi!! This is such an intriguing concept, it was super fun to brainstorm for this one :3

Please check my blog title to verify whether requests are closed or not! Thank you!

This child is cursed, they all thought. This child is a curse sent to destroy our village from the inside, they all said. This child, no...this thing must be removed before it brings total calamity upon us all, they screamed

The booming voices of the townspeople echoed within the church walls during an emergency meeting. A meeting that was held during one of the young boy's daily journeys into a neighboring town, sent out there to collect several items for his own town. They knew that Bennett wouldn't return until nearly nightfall, so there was more than enough time to conjure up a plan to remove the young boy from their village

During all of that commotion, the young boy known as Bennett traveled on foot to the other town, tripping several times on the way to and back. His usual bad luck never leaves his side even for a second. Sometimes the bad luck was inconsequential, only affecting him or the other townsfolk in small ways. Other times the bad luck caused the entire village to panic as their water supply became contaminated once again, or as a horrific accident occured during Bennett's watch

Whatever the case, these things always circled back to Bennett. The entire village blamed him for any wrongs or catastrophes, even when they didn't have any evidence of Bennett, or his bad luck rather, being the culprit. It was always his fault in their eyes

So just what was their brilliant plan to remove the bad seed from their pristine town? Why, they would simply kill the poison before it could spread any further. The conclusion of their secret meeting was the local witch agreeing to search for a spell that would summon a demon that they could all sacrifice Bennett to, removing him without ever getting a single drop of blood on their hands

Weeks went by until the witch called for another meeting, announcing their proposed plan based on the information that they had gathered. The date of this sacrifice would be Halloween night, when the veil would be at its thinnest and it might be a bit easier to reach the demonic underworld. The townspeople agreed upon this date and worked out several details before dispersing back to their nightly activities

Months passed until the fated month of the young man's untimely death would approach. Spring came and went, Bennett's eighteenth birthday flew by, summer scorched the land and autumn soothed the previous heat wave. Then, the end of October arrived, and every soul within the village grew antsy as that day inched closer and closer. They continued with every last autumnal festivity as if they weren't plotting the murder of an innocent young man, their minds completely corrupt by selfishness and arrogance

-

On the night of the thirty-first, a restless Bennett tossed and turned in the small bed situated against the wall of his tiny wooden house. He lived alone, with no relatives or friends or even livestock to accompany himself, and was forced to occupy the smallest structure within the village. He knew better than to complain though, after all he did at least have a roof over his head and a bed to sleep in. Even if it wasn't luxury, it was preferable to sleeping outside on the hard ground or under a tarp that would so easily blow away during a harsh storm

Sighing as he rolled over for the nth time this night, Bennett tried to distract himself from the uneasy feeling that filled his gut. It was probably just because it was Halloween and this holiday always seemed eerie compared to all of the other celebratory days of the year, what with that ‘thinning of the veil’ schtick and the townsfolk reciting all manner of terrifying tales to the kids. Everything about this time of the year centered around spookiness and horror, and the combined atmosphere of that and the townsfolk being extra cruel to Bennett around this time was the most likely cause of his uneasiness...

...Or so he thought. Just when Bennett had begun to drift off to sleep, his front door was kicked open with a loud bang, startling the poor boy awake. He had little time to react as several of the men from his village stomped towards his bed and roughly grabbed him, squeezing his frail arms while they dragged him outside and towards the dark forest

Upon arriving at the prepared space, they threw him onto the dirt, circling around him so that he had no means of escaping his fate. Their many faces scowled at the young man, spitting curses and harsh accusations while he trembled in confusion, salty tears quickly pricking the corners of his eyes

“W-wait! What are you doing?! What's going o-on?!” Bennett whimpered, instinctually curling in on himself. Some of the people laughed at his fearful expressions, others just grew angrier for reasons that he couldn't understand. One of the village blacksmiths stepped forward and swiftly kicked Bennett over, landing another strong kick to his ribs and causing the boy to cry out in pain. Another large man joined in, grabbed the collar of Bennett's shirt and forced the boy to face him, lifting his torso so that he was almost sitting up

Tears slid down Bennett's cheeks as he stared at the man, confusion swirling behind those emerald green eyes as he tried to make sense of this. “Please...why are you doing this?!” The question was ignored as a heavy punch landed square in his face, causing him to fall onto the ground with a loud thud as blood trickled out of his nose. The boy's hands quickly fly up to hold his nose in agony, crying out harder while the menacing people watch on in amusement

While cruel laughter flooded his ears, the two men began to remove his clothes, stripping him of everything and pushing him back down once they were finished. He lay there humiliated and shivering as the cold night air nipped at his bare skin painfully

“Tie him up.” Said one voice; the town's mayor. Tossing rope to one of the larger men so that they could bind Bennett's arms and legs together tightly, not caring about the rope burns already forming on his tender skin because of how harshly they bound him. The same men then carried the young boy over somewhere else, over to a magic circle drawn on the dirt and surrounded by torches where they planned on carrying out their deed

Bennett's head spun after being thrown back onto the ground, with no clue what was happening or why, he simply cried harder. Broken sobs spilling forth while the chanting of the townspeople drowned him out. Though tears clouded his vision, the poor boy still noticed when the torches changed colour, the flames growing impossibly high as the chants of the people grew quiet

The next thing he knew, the ground had begun to swallow him up, the strange circle he had been placed on sank into the earth slowly while the purple flames flared up dangerously, blinding his vision. Bennett screamed for help, desperately hoping that anyone would hear him and have mercy. Once again, luck was not on his side since the loud roars of the people still in the village drowned out his screams, their celebratory cheering covered up the vile acts committed within the forest next to the town conveniently

-

When Bennett finally awoke it felt as though many hours had passed. His mind was still a bit hazy as he lazily turned his head to check the environment around him. This is...a room? Ugh...where am I? Aah–!!

A sharp inhale alerted you to the fact that the human had finally woken up. You excitedly rushed into the room that he had been resting in, stopping yourself from slamming the door open so that you wouldn't scare him though

“Hi~” Your sweet voice whispered while you poked your head into the room, cracking the door open just enough to allow the human to see your face. His eyes immediately snapped open in fear and his breathing sped up while he tried to scoot away, the effort unsuccessful since he hit a wall almost instantly

“No no, relax. I'm not here to hurt you, little one!” Attempting to make yourself appear as docile as possible, you chose not to move closer until he had given you permission. “Can I come in? I promise I'm friendly.”

Bennett contemplated your question. His mind was racing as he tried to recall everything that had happened to him before he woke up here, the memories of what happened in the forest slowly crept back into his mind and brought a single tear rolling down his cheek. This detail caused you to frown, clearly this boy has been through something terrible. You really didn't want to upset him further, but you wanted to understand what had happened for him to get sent to your abode in the state that he was in when he arrived

Carefully leaning into the room a bit further, you tried to talk to him again, to get even a single word out of him. “Are you in pain? You look pretty beat up... I'd like to help you, if that's alright.”

“Y-you...you can...come in.” Bennett sniffled, averting your gaze as his head hung down. With the softest steps that you could possibly take, you entered the room and stood next to the bed that the boy had been sleeping on

“Mind if I sit?” He nodded, his entire body tensing up when he felt the mattress shift under your weight. “My name is y/n. Do you have a name, dear?” Silence. The human was probably still shaken up from whatever had happened to him previously to trust you yet, though you were more than willing to ease the information out of him and gain his trust. “You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I'm sure you're still confused as to what's going on...”

“–ennett.”

“Hm? I didn't quite catch that, darling. Can you repeat that for me?” You asked, leaning over just the slightest bit to hear him better

“Bennett....my name is Bennett...” He repeated meekly. His knees were tucked into his chest while he sat there, curled in on himself and still obviously frightened by everything

A smile found its way onto your lips at the mention of his name, “That's a lovely name. How old are you, Bennett?” The next hour or so was spent coaxing answers to simple questions out of the nervous human. You learned that his name was Bennett, that he had turned eighteen around six months ago, he had no family and he lived alone in a village just south of some mountains. Trying your best not to bombard the boy with questions and allowing him to answer each one at whatever pace he felt comfortable with

As gently as you could, you explained who and what you were; a type of demon known as an incubus. While the human was nervous at first he did eventually relax after you assured him that you wouldn't touch him without his explicit consent. Eventually you coaxed him off of the bed so that you could tend to his wounds, tenderly rubbing soothing ointment onto his burns and wiping some more blood from his nose

-

Over the course of the next few months you managed to earn Bennett's trust. You did everything that you could to treat the little human like royalty; cooking foods that he loved, buying him only the most comfortable clothing, talking about anything and everything with him and becoming fast friends. In the beginning, you had explained that Bennett could provide a certain type of energy that your kind feeds off of, and that you would require that energy at some point. Though you promised not to throw him into the deep end right away

Being inexperienced as he was, Bennett would need to be eased into this new life of his. It began with gentle touches; brushing your fingers against his when you were hanging out or taking a walk in nature, moving on to holding his hand, eventually giving him a peck on the cheek before bedtime. All sorts of small things that got him used to physical affection in general

Then it escalated to things such as pulling the human into your lap, though he still squirmed a bit within your grasp. The way he became so flustered at simple things was too cute. A light shade of pink would blossom on his soft skin as you leaned in to steal his first kiss, breathing words of encouragement and praising him for his sweet reactions

It wasn't long before your darling decided that he was ready for his first time... nervous, yet eager to relinquish his virginity to someone that he trusted. You questioned him, just to make sure that he was truly ready, and he insisted that it was time

You began as always, pulling him in for a gentle kiss and placing your hands on his hips while he wrapped his around your neck shakily. A whimper escaping from him when you licked his bottom lip, asking for permission to take this one step further, which Bennett granted. His soft moans slowly filled the silence of the bedroom while your groans complimented them as you slipped one hand under his shirt and began to feel him up. Exploring the expanse of your darling's chest and soon playing with his nipples, earning more cute whines against your lips

Eventually, you had to part so that you could breathe, giggling in between chaste kisses to each other's faces. “Can I touch a little lower, Benny?” You asked, brushing your fingers through his soft hair while your forehead rested against his. The human nodded with a breathy ‘uh-huh’, his hands now resting on your shoulders

With another kiss to the tip of his nose, you gently slid your hand down until you reached between his legs, feeling just how much this was turning your pet on as his dick was already pretty hard. Bennett gasped at the unfamiliar contact, growing warmer with every new touch to his sensitive body. When you began rubbing him through his clothing, he humped your hand hungrily, chasing the electric pleasure from your touch down there

You took this as a sign to speed it up and be a bit rougher, to which the human responded with a wanton moan directly in your ear. “Oho? Did that feel good, Benny?” You purred, causing another moan to fall from his lips as he nodded again. Taking it another step forward, you helped Bennett remove his shirt and pants, then your own swiftly joined them on the floor

The boy's hips jerked when you returned to stroking him, spreading the strings of precum along his shaft as your hand glided up and down, kissing Bennett with a new hunger as you, too, grew excited. Staring into his emerald eyes while you jerked him off roughly nearly caused the human's legs to give out. The fire behind your eyes spurred Bennett on, enticing him to let go and release every sound that bubbled to the surface

Your next move surprised Bennett a little bit as a small 'wha–!!' escaped from him. His back came in contact with the soft sheets on his bed, legs naturally spreading open when you crawled on top and hovered over him. The nervous boy breathed another beautiful moan when your hardening cock brushed against his virgin hole, the tiniest taste of what was to come soon

An insatiable need to taste your pet took over and you leaned down to take him into your mouth, licking the shaft before swallowing every inch greedily. Bennett's hands flew to the sheets above him, clenching them within his fists as you bobbed up and down his length like a starving man. His cock kissed the back of your throat and the feeling was as close to heaven as a demon could experience; precum dribbled down your esophagus with every downward movement of your head, causing tears to gather in the corners of your eyes as his decadent taste filled your mouth. You couldn't help yourself when your hips began grinding against the end of the bed, humping the mattress like a horny dog while you did everything within your power to make Bennett cum

“Gghh! W-wait I'm...Hah! That feels too good, y/n—!! ” Your pet screamed as you massaged his balls, gagging on his cock until he finally shot his load into your mouth. He nearly began to cry when you refused to pop off and continued sucking more drops of cum from his aching dick

When you were a bit more satisfied, you let his dick slide out of your mouth with a loud plop when it hit his stomach. You licked your lips and complimented your darling, telling him “You did so good, Benny! How did that feel?”

With a heaving chest Bennett gasped out an answer, bucking his hips when you rubbed little circles into his skin. But that wasn't where you intended to stop. Oh no, you hadn't even touched on the main event yet

“I'm so glad you enjoyed that, lovely. Mm but now it's my turn, you're going to make me cum too, right?” You said, faking a pout while your finger trailed up Bennett's pale chest. The boy eagerly nodded, beginning to sit up on the bed and maneuver himself so that he could suck you off as well. Though you swiftly pushed him back down with a dull thud against the cloth. “Where are you going, sweetie?”

Bennett blinked at you as he said, “G-going to put yours in my mouth? Isn't that what you want me to do?”

His misunderstanding was kind of sweet and you couldn't help kissing his pretty lips before correcting him, “Aw baby, that's very sweet of you...but you're not giving me a blowjob yet, not tonight at least.” Your hands traveled downwards, gliding over his nipples, then abs, then over his hips before finally reaching his inner thighs

“No, love, you're going to take me riiiight here~ ” You drawled, tapping on his hole and then rubbing the pads of your fingers around it. Bennett's response was a pretty arch of his back accompanied by a shuddering inhale, rolling his hips into the air as his dick twitched at the idea. Truly a sight to behold, especially with that look on his face. A mixture of excitement and uncertainty, eager to experience his first penetration yet nervous all the same

“Hold your legs up for me, 'kay?” You winked, retreating for a second to grab some lube so that you would slide into Bennett a little more easily. Squeezing a bit of the substance onto your fingers and rubbing them together before you pushed in a single digit, slowly pumping in and out, then adding a second finger. Curling your fingers and hitting that spot that made the pretty boy's back arch again, accompanied by moans as his ass was touched for the first time

After scissoring your digits for a bit and drawing more beads of precum from Bennett's dick, you removed them from his hole and gave your own cock a few pumps to slick yourself up. Spreading more lube on your shaft while you stare into your darling's eyes, asking one more time if he was ready for this

A confident ‘yes’ was all that was needed for you to breach the orifice. Bennett's eyes widened when the head pushed past his ring of muscles, stretching him further than your fingers did a minute ago. Pushing in a bit more drew out the sweetest noises from your pet as your thick shaft stretched him even more, filling his tight hole so much that it caused an embarrassing bulge in his little stomach. His insides were forced to accept the new object as they squeezed around it and molded to its shape, a sensation that would happen countless more times within the young man's lifetime from now on

“B-big...so big...aaah...” Bennett whimpered, weakly thrusting his hips to take more of your length. Though it was a little hard to take something so thick when he had never taken anything before, your hands lovingly caressing his body, carding through his hair, and your words of encouragement compelled the eager man to take more. To push himself more and be good for you. And then your velvety lips made contact with his again, warm and so gentle in contrast with the speeding up of your thrusts as you chased the pleasure that his hole brought you

Your cock drooled within Bennett's walls, desperate to release all of the cum built up inside of you. It was just part of your nature to fuck adorable humans like this; to fuck and breed and cum until your partner was exhausted. To absorb the sexual energy that a human releases whenever an incubus or succubus ravages them. To devour that energy and become even stronger so that you could, in turn, give your human more pleasure. Creating an endless feedback loop of pleasure and power

“Aa-aahh! Y/n...it feels...feels good– ” He screamed, bucking wildly into the air as his own dick leaked all over his pretty skin, neglected while you were busy losing yourself in the feeling of his insides clenching around your cock

“Ah...I'm sorry, my love. Didn't...oh fffuuuck... didn't mean to forget you like that.” Swiftly bringing a hand up to his sensitive member, you stroked his little dick with a skilled hand. Your palm smeared the precum around before returning to pumping his full length while you fucked into him a bit harder, throwing your head back in ecstasy as you moaned out, “Cum for me again, Bennett. I know you can give me one more, yeah? Oh fuck...mmm uh-huh~ ”

Bennett's fingers wrapped around your forearms as his second orgasm drew near, desperate for anything to ground himself with while he shot another load of cum all over his chest. Meanwhile, you were so lost in pleasure that you roughly snapped your hips into his while continuing to pump his dick long after he came, overstimulating the poor thing. It wasn't until you spilled inside Bennett that you stopped stroking his soft cock, growling as your cum flooded his ass with a sticky warmth that was all too new to him

-

Several more months passed by and the boy had grown accustomed to sex being a part of his daily life. You were well aware that a human's stamina was not endless, so you were kind enough to give him frequent breaks. Oftentimes you'd spend an entire week simply spoiling your pet with non-sexual sentiments

The days would start off either cooking breakfast together or you cooking for him and serving it in bed, sharing giggles and kisses as you placed a tiny bit of syrup on Bennett's nose and he returned the playful gesture. After cleaning up you would brainstorm activities to do together; practicing new skills or hobbies, finding games to play together, or simply cuddling for a bit while music softly played in the background. Some days you might offer to give your lover a massage to ease his aches from your recent rough endeavors, kneading his body with your skilled hands until Bennett felt weightless and drowsy from the treatment. Then as nighttime took over, you'd draw the loveliest, most romantic bath to settle down in. Complete with candles and anything that would make your darling happy while the warm water melted away everything except pure bliss, surrounding your bodies as they pressed together inside of the bathtub

Nothing could make you happier than this sweet young man that was gifted to you, albeit under horrific circumstances. No matter how many times you attempted to suppress those feelings, they would always bubble up again. The horror stories that Bennett related to you regarding his time in that village...that god-forsaken village full of heathens...

It's not like the human would be able to go back to that village...not that he wanted to anyway. No one would care if something horrendous happened, right? Certainly no one would be able to tie it back to you; a mere incubus that only those deemed the town's heretics, drunkards, and witches had even a sliver of knowledge of

With that in mind from day one, you decided to store up portions of the energy that Bennett frequently provided your demon self with. Stockpiling small amounts — and spending the week prior fucking the boy into oblivion, therefore gaining large bursts of sexual energy right before your big plan — everything was set for your little revenge plot

They never saw it coming. The whirlwind that was your anger and resentment towards every last soul confined to that land. It was once again hallow's eve; an entire year after a young man with beautiful yet terrified green eyes and the prettiest face you had ever laid eyes on fell into your grasp. An entire year filled with such lovely memories, the brightest smile you'd ever seen from a human, and countless intimate moments had taken place. None of these heartless creatures could ever guess that one whole year of boiling anger — from a demon, no less — would come back to haunt them

-

Light footsteps paraded through the dirt roads that ran through the town, a small bounce in your step, though it was more twisted, manic excitement than happiness. Your little wings twitched behind you while your (e/c) eyes glowed dangerously, drowning out even the brightest harvest moon shining above the destroyed houses that lined the roads

Deep, sadistic laughter fell from your lips as they curled upwards into a smile. The sight of your signature purple flames engulfing the many crumbling buildings filled your demonic heart with glee, unable to hide your feelings of disgust towards the village responsible for such atrocities as the ones they have committed

Screams pierced the chilly night air all around you, harmonizing together with the howls of distant wolves and the many crows that passed overhead in large flocks. The sources of the screaming would pass by you, begging for help that fell on deaf ears. “Help? Where was the help that you so desperately crave when an innocent boy was beaten and sacrificed?! Where were you when those sins took place?! All of you are stained with guilt, and you will pay for the crimes enacted here one year ago. I will make damn sure of that.” You spat, immediately flicking a tiny ember onto the crying human as they became consumed by blinding flames. Falling into a pile of ash within seconds and blowing away from a strong breeze as you walked past them without even blinking

Continuing on until your grand prize practically ran into you, slamming into your chest and falling onto the ground with a painful thud. His fearful, cowardly, angry gaze met your stone-cold stare as his head tilted up. “Wh-what...what are you? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!?!”

You couldn't stop the enraged chuckle that escaped from your lips. “Funny... that's exactly what I heard him say while you sacrificed him. The faintest, broken voice that cried out for help. Begging for an answer or a reason behind the cruelty inflicted upon him.” You paused to lean down, hovering just inches away from the man's face before spitting, “But, tell me...did you ever feel an ounce of remorse for your sins?”

The selfish rage burning behind his eyes had already given you the answer to that. You never even expected an answer in the first place. As if someone like this, who was consumed by his own ego long, long ago, would ever feel guilt or shame for his actions. You knew better than to believe that there was a single kind bone in this one's body

“You FREAK!! Begone, foul demon! In the name of the Lor–” One swift kick shut him up real quick, nearly breaking his jaw with the amount of strength that you packed behind the motion. Blood trickled from your clenched hands as you slowly walked towards the man

Crouching down to his level, your hand latched onto the back of his neck and yanked him up, twisting his body so that he couldn't look away. “I am going to enjoy breaking you, human. Every millisecond of your suffering will become my pleasure~ ” A heavy poison dripped from your lips with each word, a dangerous glint in your eye complimented the promise as sharp nails tore at the human's flesh. His pathetic wails filled the center of the village as you took your time dismantling the weak body. Blood staining your skin and splattering across your deranged features

Slimy entrails were ripped painfully from the mayor's stomach one by one, torn in half right before his eyes. Meanwhile onlookers gasped and choked up bile while the gorey scene played out before them. Occasionally your gaze would snap over to one of them, challenging a single word to come out so that you could rip their tongue out and shove it elsewhere in their disgusting corpse

By the time you were done no one would even recognize the pile of meat and viscera as human. Not that there would be anyone left to recognize anything, of course. The history of this village would become forever stained with crimson, wrapped inside of a mystery as to how hundreds of people died in gruesome ways all in a single night

Who knows how long the bodies would rot there; left to be picked apart by wild animals or buried by nature. It didn't really matter to you. They were history. The only thing concerning you now was a nice bath to calm your mind and cleanse the gore off of your body, and returning to a sleeping Bennett that you could snuggle up to

Reblogs are extremely appreciated <3

#my writing #genshin impact smut #genshin smut #genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin bennett #bennett #bennett x reader #sub bennett #male reader #dom reader #top reader #demon au #incubus au #halloween specials 🎃 #oneshot #requested

[ukrfeminism]

Music colleges and conservatoires are deterring women and girls from playing “masculine instruments” such as drums and trumpets, a parliamentary report laying bare sexism in the music industry has revealed.

Female students are “cat-called in rehearsals”, held to a higher standard with “masculine” instruments and being told they cannot play properly if “they didn’t sit with their legs open”, the report states.

The Misogyny in Music report by parliament’s women and equalities committee found female musicians faced “endemic” discrimination in the industry which they described as a “boys’ club where sexual harassment and abuse is common”.

A series of female musicians and DJs including Annie Macmanus, Rebecca Ferguson and Katie Waissel gave evidence to the committee about discrimination and abuse they had witnessed or experienced.

Waissel, the former X Factor contestant, told the inquiry how “at the age of 16, she was grabbed by a much older man and placed on his lap in the recording studio while they were reviewing the track she was recording”.

The report found that many female performers who had been the victims of “discrimination, harassment and abuse” continued to be silenced through the widespread use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).

It said: “Women in the music industry have had their lives ruined and their careers destroyed by men who have never faced the consequences for their actions. 

“People in the industry who attend award shows and parties currently do so sitting alongside sexual abusers who remain protected by the system and by colleagues.”

The report went on: “Much of the evidence we received has had to remain confidential, including commentary on television shows and household names.

“That is highly regrettable but demonstrates the extent of the use of NDAs and the culture of silence.”

The report outlined gender disparities throughout the industry. For example, less than 5 per cent of the producers or engineers on the top streamed tracks in 14 genres were female or non-binary, while of all the songwriters and composers who received a royalty in 2020, only one in six were female.

It also pointed out that the record label departments charged with finding new talent were dominated by men, concluding: “Women have significant additional barriers to pass to get a foothold in the music industry and must navigate acts of passive aggression, ridicule and misogyny to have a sustainable career. 

“Female artists are routinely undervalued and undermined, endure a focus on their physical appearance in a way that men are not subjected to, and have to work far harder to get the recognition their ability merits. Despite increases in representation, discrimination and misogyny remain endemic.”

The committee also called for music colleges, conservatoires and other educational establishment “to do more to address the gendering of instruments, roles and genres.”

Its members heard that “in many cases women are discouraged from playing certain instruments at all’, with one witness saying: “There is this idea that if you’re a girl you can’t play the drums, or if you’re a girl you can’t play the trumpet really loudly because it will make you look ugly.”

The report said that the Musicians’ Union had described female students being “cat-called in rehearsals”, “made to feel uncomfortable by male lecturers” and being told “they couldn’t play their instrument properly if they didn’t sit with their legs open in orchestra rehearsals”.

Caroline Nokes, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, said “endemic misogyny … has persisted for far too long within the music industry.”

She added: “A shift in the behaviour of men — and it is almost always men — at the heart of the music industry is the transformative change needed for talented women to quite literally have their voices heard and be both recognised and rewarded on equal terms.”

#Articles #community #mvawg

[wordsinhaled]

the thing about crowley’s confession is… he must have thought about it in the bit of time he had before doing it. i mean... he went and sat outside marguerite’s with his wine, and thought. he thought very hard about how there was a threat—a sleeper—a ticking time bomb in aziraphale’s bookshop that could explode at any moment, take away all their hard-won peace, their safety, their comfort.

but most importantly, a threat to aziraphale. gabriel had tried once to destroy aziraphale already, and only hadn’t because they'd swapped bodies. and crowley's clearly terrified that this time, what they're doing feels reckless, feels like playing with something far too important at stake. it's like... already knowing someone is so important to you—and then having the possibility that it could really be something dangled in front of you—and then knowing there's an existential threat to that potential? awful. horrifying. no wonder he can't find the words.

we know crowley is a romantic. we know how much joy it brings him to see other people fall in love. and... honestly... i'm not sure it’s that nina needed to spell the nature of his feelings out for him, exactly. crowley's known where he stands towards aziraphale for a long time if we're to judge him by his acts (which are always acts of service, care, and attention, which always speak louder than his words). so i don't think it was that, as much as just—the experience of being perceived by someone else, sort of jostling something for him.

because crowley's watched the romance films, hasn't he, he knows the exact tropes he's working with, but the idea that they could apply to him—to him and aziraphale? i don't think he considered that until it was offered to him as an option. and once it was, there was crowley's mind far exceeding the speed limit trying to wrap itself around all of this.

and so he must have looked at it, and all signs, all signs, were pointing to aziraphale being receptive.

crowley probably thought about all the times aziraphale had touched him in the last day alone. all the little glances and looks aziraphale had been giving him, which crowley surely hadn’t missed because he’s always staring right back. he probably thought about how aziraphale thinks the bentley is their car and the bookshop is their shop, about how aziraphale told him that he thought they’d carved a peaceful existence out for themselves. and after the ball, he probably thought about how aziraphale asked him to dance, at this event that was meant to get other people to fall in love, but aziraphale had wanted to dance with him.

so crowley most likely looked at all of this and thought he’s finally ready. he’s finally caught up. when i ask this time, he’s going to say yes. and he watched aziraphale so warily, too, after the realization, because there's a way that it feels, to be holding on to a truth so direly important and so terribly exciting and so very requited, as far as crowley can tell. it's like, am i holding myself differently now? can he tell? has he always been able to tell? am i about to muck it up? i'm about to muck it up. i muck everything up, but not this. not this. he's the center of my universe so it's worth it. and it's alright, even if i muck it up, because he's going to say yes. dear god: i'd only ask if it was important.

and so he queued up their song in the bentley and he talked to muriel like they’re a them, like they’re going to be a couple, a couple who needs us time. he gave himself the luxury of imagining it, of planning it all out in his mind—how everyone was going to finally leave off pulling them toward some greater purpose and just let the two of them be together, and aziraphale was going to at last let crowley be to him what he’s always wanted to be—what he’s been being already, evidently, to the point where strangers on the street ask how long they’ve been together.

and then in the end, to be rejected like that. to be rejected even while the love is pouring off aziraphale in anguished waves—and if he loves me too, then why won't he say yes? to be rejected and to know this isn't how it's supposed to go, even though it's the way it's always gone. crowley always asks and aziraphale always says no. somehow, this time was supposed to be different. he'd dared to hope properly. and how had he misjudged it so terribly this time? how much of it had been wishful thinking? and he had to have felt aziraphale's hands grasping at his shoulders, had to have felt the start of a kiss returned, and thought that maybe there was a spark of hope yet.

but there wasn't.

because nothing lasts forever. apparently.

#aughhhhhh #good omens #good omens 2 #ineffable husbands #aziracrow

[liberalsarecool]

South Africa on Thursday began making its case that Israel is acting with “genocidal intent” in Gaza, citing as evidence the words of Israeli officials including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who said Israel would impose a complete siege on the territory because it was fighting “human animals.”

Israel's defense amounts to 'Hamas are hiding inside some small children, so we must destroy ALL the children'. And their schools. And their hospitals. And their refugee camps. And UN staff. And the press.

Interesting juxtaposition of two countries who have witnessed/engineered apartheid firsthand.

#south africa #israel

[sserpente]

A/N: I’ve been meaning to write this for so long. If you’re in the mood for some angst, you’re in the right place!

Words: 1743 Warnings: angst, poisoning

You didn’t know what hurt more. Was it the fact that the man—god—you had fallen for was on the brink of death, taking his last breaths? Or was it the very circumstance that no one but you cared?

Tony Stark had been very clear about it. He tolerated Loki only per Thor’s humble request. The God of Thunder himself was less than pleased that the Trickster was to serve his sentence on Earth of all places. It was Odin’s magic that restricted him, keeping him from causing even more mayhem after the chaos he unleashed in New York City.

They were even less delighted about him joining their self-proclaimed superhero group on missions even though Thor himself claimed that Loki’s wit and skills could prove useful.

You had nothing to say in the matter of course. If anything, you were declared crazy because you had expressed your affinity for the God of Mischief and that included Loki himself.

You couldn’t help it. The way he smirked, the way he talked, the way he sat in the corner buried in a book—one of the very few instances you ever saw him relaxed, not to mention the occurrence with the cat… oh, the cat. A stray—black and white, young, purring and dancing around Loki’s feet, desperate for his attention. And when he’d bent down to pet it and even conjured some food for it, it was the last piece of evidence you had needed to conclude that this man was not evil. Misguided, betrayed, hurt? Yes, all of those things and more. But not evil.

It was the latter. The very circumstance that no one but you cared hurt more.

Thor had left for Asgard already, seeking the advice of their healers. It was ridiculous, truly. In a life-threatening emergency like this, how could his banishment still hold any weight? He needed help.

Your enemy had been thorough, researching each and everyone’s greatest weakness. And Loki’s had proved the most fatal. Whatever the extra-terrestrial had coated their weapon in before it fired its arrow at the God of Mischief, it prevented him from healing, had him break out in a sweat and slowly lose a battle against the poison now spreading in his body.

“Loki? Can you hear me? Please stay with me. You got to stay awake, alright?” He was on the sofa, with his head placed in your lap. You stroked his forehead in an attempt to soothe him. Blue eyes found yours and you were unsure whether he wanted to tell you to stay with him or let him die in peace. You’d been singing to him too. Trying to keep him in the present, in the now.

By the time Thor finally burst back into the room, Loki’s breathing had become dangerously shallow.

“Did you tell them about the symptoms? What did they say? What’s wrong with him? How are we gonna heal him?” The questions gushed out of you like a waterfall before he’d even set his hammer down.

Thor, however, grew silent for a moment. “There… Loki was poisoned. The rat knew what he was doing. The arrow was likely infused with blood from a Memphis of Muspelheim mixed with a deadly dose of mistletoe essence.”

You put one and one together immediately. “So… you’re saying this poison was specifically made to kill a Frost Giant?”

Thor looked down. “Yes.”

“Well, did you bring the antidote then?”

“There… there is no antidote. Not on Asgard. And I fear… there is no time to search the realms. The Jötuns have spent millennia destroying every last drop of this poison. There is hardly any antidote left.”

Your heart sank. No… no! You were not going to let Loki die!

“There has to be a way. Somewhere we can…” Your lips parted. “There is somebody. Someone who has everything. You mentioned him before, you said you brought the Aether to him!”

“The Collector?”

“He has it. He must have it.”

“What, and you think he will give it to you without anything in return?” Tony said.

“I didn’t say that. I’m sure we can offer him something in return to make it worth his while.” You turned back to Thor. “Heimdall can take us there. Please, Thor. This might be our only chance.”

Perhaps you should have been surprised that the God of Thunder relented. There was no doubt he too wanted his brother to survive. The entire time you’d been preparing to leave, Thor was brooding and lost in thought. He wasn’t one for big words—but he cared and for the moment, that was good enough for you.

The Collector’s place was dimly lit, eerily quiet and… it smelled awful. You took a deep breath regardless and gave a nod to Thor to venture forth.

“An Asgardian. And… a human?” The Collector tilted his head when you stepped into view. “What an… honour. What brings you to my humble domain?”

“We need your help. We’re looking for something rare. Thor’s brother Loki is Jötun and he’s been shot with an arrow drenched in a rare poison.”

“Hmm… yes, I’m familiar.”

“There is no antidote. If… if anyone has any left, it must be you.”

“So it must be… I do indeed have this antidote you speak of.” Your face lit up but judging by the Collector’s body language—a smug and repulsive expression, truly—he was not going to give it up easily.

“Surely, your Asgardian friend has told you of how the Jötuns have ensured every last drop of this poison gets destroyed. There was a need for an antidote no longer. The bottle that I have in my collection is… an antique, almost.”

“Fine,” you spat. “What do you want in return?”

“You see… I’ve never had a human in my collection.”

Your eyes widened, lips parting to respond.

“No!” Thor roared.

“Then I am afraid we have reached a dead end.”

“She’s not an object to be collected, she’s a person!”

“Thor!” Gnashing your teeth, you turned to him and took a deep breath. “It’s fine. Just take the antidote to Loki, alright?”

“No. There has to be another way.”

“Take the damn antidote to him, Thor!”

“I cannot let you do this.”

“You can and you will. He’s your brother, Thor! And I’m…” I’m in love with him. Heavens, was that stupid? Loki didn’t even know. It was absurd, wasn’t it? To sacrifice your own life in this way to see the God of Mischief live another day?

Yes. It was. But it… it felt like the right thing to do. Loki deserved another shot. A chance to redeem himself, to show the world that he was more than he let on. And a chance to have the damn world apologise to him, too.

“Tell him… tell him to live his best life, okay? Tell him… tell him not to be too harsh on himself. To… to love himself.”

“To love himself?” Thor frowned.

“Shut up and listen. Loki hates himself, don’t you see that? He hates what he is, he hates what he’s become. He hates himself. And you all played a part in that.”

“Why would you do this… for him?”

Your lips parted. “Tell him… tell him I fell for him.” There. You’d said it. But it didn’t matter anymore whether he’d reject you, right? You’d be here, wherever here was and Loki would be back on Earth, recovering. You’d never have to face his reaction after your confession and yet, he could live with the knowledge that he was not, in fact, so terrible, that no one could love him beyond a family bond like the one he shared with Thor.

“I… fine. I will. Mark my words, I will come back for you,” he added quietly.

You nodded. Was there hope? Possibly. Possibly not. But you did not doubt for a second that your sacrifice was worth it.

You didn’t know how many days had gone by since Thor’s departure. One? Three? Ten? There was no sunlight in this place, no clocks. One of the Collector’s lackeys made sure to feed you regularly at least, other than that… you were on your own, caged in a pretty glass box until he figured out what to do with you. Unless of course… he was just going to keep you on display like this like the maniac he was.

If you didn’t know better, you would have asked him for a book. Surely he had some in his collection. It was boredom and solitude that would drive you mad sooner or later, that much you were sure of.

Every sound nearby became more interesting than the next. The cracking of the metal tiles, the flapping of wings of the caged bird opposite your own stupid box, the ruffling of clothing whenever you moved… a massive explosion forcing everything in its vicinity several feet into the air. Wait, what?

Your eyes widened and you stood. Were you under attack? Oh heavens, no, you didn’t want to be killed inside of a glass box! Would there be another explosion? What if the cage broke and you bled to death because of the shards piercing your body?

Chaos erupted, yet the Collector was nowhere to be seen. A scream escaped your lips when with a start, a figure appeared right before your cage, remnants of green shimmering light enveloping them whole. It took you a moment to realise that it was Loki.

“My… that is quite the predicament you have landed yourself in, pet.”

“I… w-what? Loki… you’re alive, you’re fine. What are you doing here?” Unable to process what was happening, you inched back when the God of Mischief broke the lock and opened the cage for you to climb out. Electricity rippled through you when he took your hand in his.

“Rescuing you, of course.” His sly smirk had you gasping for air as you leaned against him. Your knees and legs hurt from having to sit for so long.

“Thor told me what you did.”

“Did he also tell you…”

Loki nodded. Without another word, he leaned forward and stole a chaste kiss, leaving you breathless and wanting more.

“Come. The others are waiting on the ship. And then, my dear, I shall show you the proper Asgardian way of courting a woman.”

You smiled, relief flooding your entire body as he picked you up and carried you home.

#loki #loki imagine #loki x you #loki x reader #loki x female reader #loki angst #loki laufeyson #loki laufeyson imagine #loki laufeyson x you #loki laufeyson x reader #loki odinson #loki odinson x reader #loki odinson x you #tom hiddleston #marvel #marvel imagine #mcu #mcu imagine #thor #thor imagine #the avengers #the avengers imagine

[antianakin]

I find it very interesting to look at how different it feels when Padme and Luke both say "There's still good in him" just based on the context and lead-up to that line for both characters and why audiences might view the characters differently because of it despite the intentional parallel.

Let's start with Padme. Yes, Padme's dying words are intended to parallel her son's line from Return of the Jedi and we know that she ultimately ends up "right" about there still being good in Anakin. But the context of Padme saying this gives a very different tone to that scene.

Because Padme is a character who actively tries to pretend that Anakin has no darkness in him at all despite repeated evidence being shown and told to her that he DOES simply because it's more convenient for her to do so.

In Attack of the Clones, Anakin straight up tells her he believes in dictatorship and Padme's response isn't to be disgusted or report him, but to just decide that he must have been making fun of her because it's a lot easier than dealing with the reality that the guy who is supposed to be taking care of her is in fact a fascist. And then just a few days after that, Anakin screams in Padme's face that he just massacred an entire village of people down to the last child because he sees them as animals and her response is to decide that this is just a totally normal response to trauma rather than, again, being disgusted by it and reporting him. And of course that movie ends with her deciding to marry him, despite knowing he's a murderer and a fascist and that this is against the rules for BOTH of them.

In Revenge of the Sith, there's an entire scene where Padme and Anakin sit there joking at each other about how love blinds you. They're joking around and you can see the scene as just a sweet little nonsense scene if you choose to, but it's also very intentionally foreshadowing a lot and has the subtext of the thing that is going to destroy both of them in a few days. When Obi-Wan comes to Padme to ask her about where Anakin is and tells her about what Anakin's done, Padme's response is to deny it. She argues that Anakin would never kill children, despite the fact that she knows he HAS killed children before. And then she lies to Obi-Wan, obstructing his ability to figure out the truth about what happened to his people or to gain justice for the genocide that was just committed against them. And her next response is to go find Anakin so that she can ensure he escapes any consequences for what he's done while still insisting that he hasn't done anything wrong at all.

So when Padme says "There's still good in him" it comes with the context of Padme spending two entire films refusing to actually see Anakin for who he actually is. It comes after MULTIPLE scenes of Padme rejecting the reality that Anakin has darkness in him that he is fully capable of acting on. Sure, she's not wrong that there's still good in him, but the line feels more like Padme just continuing to pretend that Anakin didn't just commit a genocide and bring down the Republic rather than Padme being right about Anakin. It doesn't sound like "Yes, I know that he's done a million terrible things, but I have hope that he can still make the right choice if we approach him the right way" and more like "He was probably just brainwashed or something, he didn't REALLY mean to genocide an entire people."

And this then directly foils Luke later on.

Because when LUKE says it, it comes with the context of the entire character journey Luke has been going through over the last 2.5 films. Luke's had to learn to accept his OWN darkness and face his own worst fears about his heritage and what he could become. He's had to face the reality of losing the people he cares about and seen the consequences of what happens when he lets arrogance and fear blind him. Luke has had to accept that Darth Vader is a part of who he is, he's not infallible, he could fall to darkness just like his father did if he isn't careful. But this comes with the ability to recognize that this could mean that Darth Vader might yet be able to turn around and make the opposite choice. If Luke has the ability to fall, Darth Vader has the ability to rise. Luke knows that it's always about making the right choice, and while Darth Vader has made a LOT of bad choices, it doesn't mean he can never make the right one. Choosing to believe that Darth Vader could still have goodness in him is a result of accepting that Luke has darkness in himself, too.

So when Luke says that there's still good in him, there's no attempt to pretend that Anakin hasn't done monstrous things. Luke really can't pretend that Anakin didn't do them, he's literally stood there and watched as Anakin did some of them. He's down a hand for the rest of his life because of Anakin, he'll have to live with the evidence of what Anakin is capable of forever. He CAN'T sit there and pretend that Anakin didn't do those things the way Padme could, it isn't possible for him. For Padme, Anakin will always be "that little boy from Tatooine," just like she says in Attack of the Clones. But Luke knew Darth Vader first, he's known the villain and the monster longer than he'll ever know Anakin Skywalker. Even when he figures out how to reconcile that these two people are the SAME person, he doesn't know enough about Anakin Skywalker to be able to pretend that Darth Vader didn't do the things he's done. Luke says that there is still good in him with the full awareness that Darth Vader has made a LOT of horrific choices in his life. There's never any attempt to try to convince himself or anyone else that that isn't true.

He sees Anakin in the full truth of who and what he is. He knows EXACTLY what kind of darkness Anakin has in him and is choosing to believe he can still make a better choice ANYWAY. Unlike his mother, Luke knows who Anakin is, he's never been given another choice.

That's why Padme comes off as wrong about Anakin while Luke is right even though they both say the same thing. The line doesn't MEAN the same thing to both of them and the audience can pick up on that because both of them have had several films' worth of context letting us know that.

#star wars #luke skywalker #padme amidala #padme critical #padme amidala critical #anti anidala #anidala critical #anakin critical #anakin skywalker critical #anti anakin skywalker #anti anakin

[perishrad]

Exactly 2 years ago, Russians dropped a bomb on the Mariupol Drama Theater, where civilians were hiding from shelling.

an inscription on the ground, "children" is written. In Russian.

March 16 marks the anniversary of one of the largest terrorist attacks carried out by Russians in Ukraine. On this day, the occupiers dropped two powerful bombs on the building of the Mariupol Drama Theater, where about a thousand people were hiding.

Immediately after the attack, the Mariupol City Council reported about 300 civilians killed. Later, The Associated Press in its investigation put the number at 600.

But untill now, the exact number of victims of this terrorist attack is still unknown.

All evidence was destroyed by Russian monsters after the occupation of the city, but we will not forget.

"The world must remember everything that Russia has done against Ukraine and Ukrainians, and every Russian murderer must be held accountable for what they have done. We will ensure that they are held accountable," Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

#20 days in mariupol #mariupol #russia invades ukraine #russian terrorism #genocide of ukrainians #human rights #russia is a terrorists state