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shibaraki · 5 months

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STEADY BEGINNINGS ┊ TODOROKI SHOUTO

tags: GN reader, developing relationship (eventual friends to lovers), touch starved shouto, physical affection (hand holding + long hugs), good god the yearning, obliviousness, jealousy, fluff + angst, pro hero shouto, reader works at hero agency

wc: 3.8K

series masterlist: 2/5

Shouto was born to be a hero.

It is a sentiment shared by reporters and fans alike. Todoroki Shouto, the pride of Endeavor, the saving grace of his family name. True, his development had been entirely up to chance—no matter the intent or cruel desperation behind his father’s actions, he had to rely on the probability that the next offspring would win the genetic lottery—but low and behold, he did, and to many people that alone was a sign of destiny at work.

Ultimately, he chose to continue the path of being a hero himself, but no higher being put him there. His father did. At the time of his birth Shouto had not been a son, not even a baby. He was a project. A small, shapeless, squirmy thing. Malleable, like any young mind. It’s a miracle he retained any will and individuality.

Sometimes when alone with his thoughts, Shouto would hypothesise on the whys and the hows. The conclusion he always comes to is this: any sort of reality in which Shouto succumbs to his father’s ideals and manipulation would have to be a world in which his mother does not exist.

While his existence was planned, and wanted, he was to be a hero and as such, wasn’t cut from love—that came after. He loved his mother. So much so that when she hurt, he hurt. When she cried, he cried. She taught him what it meant to be gentle, to have hope, to aspire to be his own person. Years spent amongst the country's finest heroes and Shouto still regarded his mother as the bravest woman he knew, strong because she refused to be hardened by her circumstances; soft so that she can’t be broken again.

You are like his mother in that regard. Those same echoes of reassurance that softness isn’t weakness, and it isn’t earned. You’ve been touching him more as of late, as if determined to prove it. Static between brushed fingertips, words expressed by simply pressing your knees together, the weight of your hand on his bicep to garner his attention. The build up is subtle and cumulative and yet each instance strikes him with the magnitude of a thermodynamic explosion.

Nobody bats an eyelid to this shift in physicality, which makes it all the more difficult to determine whether he is reading into things or not. It could be that he’s noticing those small instances only because it’s you, and you are all he can think about lately.

You’ve given him permission to reciprocate. He merely has to ask for more if he wants it. What Shouto hadn’t accounted for is the unbearability of being vulnerable enough to ask. An innocent “can you hug me?” becomes so much more daunting to voice with all that longing crowded up behind it. He can’t help worrying you’ll see right through to the bottom of his desires.

A hand comes into view. Bakugo’s ash-smudged finger and thumb pinch and snap together in front of his face. “Come back to Earth, dumbass. Your thousand yard stare is scarin’ my new assistant”.

Shouto blinks out of his stupor and the blurred vignette surrounding his vision recedes. He glances at the skittish man sitting outside Bakugo’s office currently sending worried glances over his shoulder. “I think he’s more scared that you’re back,” Shouto intones dryly. “Isn’t he the fourth one this year?”

“Not my fault they’re all wimps,” Bakugo huffs. A slap reverberates around the office as he throws down a manila folder onto his desk and drops heavily into his chair. He regards Shouto with suspicion overtop his computer monitor. “Whatever you were just thinkin’ about—stop”.

“You don’t know what I’m thinking about”.

“I know you always manage to make Olympic level leaps in logic,” Bakugo rolls his eyes and tears open the folder. He slides out what Shouto assumes is a debrief and flips it between his fingers. Shouto keeps quiet. He reclines into the couch cushions and returns to reading the incident report on his lap, counting down from ten in the privacy of his mind. Anytime now.

Three, two, one.

“So what is it?” Bakugo asks, trying too hard to sound flippant but landing squarely on irritation. “Spit it out before you give yourself an aneurysm”.

Shouto opens his mouth and closes it again. A wave of hot embarrassment washes over him. He knows Bakugo will do him the kindness of being blunt and honest but it doesn’t make it any less humiliating to admit.

In their younger years Shouto saw something of a kindred spirit in Bakugo. He too did not like touch and aggressively voiced his distaste for it whenever he got the chance—which was often, because divine intervention sought fit to give him the most tactile, handsy friend group possible.

As they got older though, Shouto began to realise that the protests and threats were hollow. Despite being vehemently against affection, Bakugo would allow it anyway, and sometimes even seek it out. The aggression was bravado. Bakugo liked having his friends draped around his shoulders. He liked when Mina kissed his cheek, or Kaminari played with his hair, or Kirishima gathered him into a too-tight hug, or Sero tangled their ankles together on the couch.

Only, for him to comfortably accept it, Bakugo needed to act as though he were doing them a favour by allowing them into his space. And Bakugo’s friends played along without complaint.

From what he’s observed you are also an affectionate person. You are liberal with your warmth and adapt seamlessly to the boundaries of those around you. But you were also visibly uncomfortable whenever people took that affinity for intimacy as an open invitation, and recoiled if they encroached on your own.

Shouto has imagined reaching out only for your body to flinch away from him more times than he can count. It’s a battle staged in his head, ingrown fears. The possibility alone was enough to keep him from reciprocating, set in a state of fawn-like inertia.

“There’s somebody I want to get closer to. A friend,” he begins. Bakugo makes an inquisitive noise, props his cheek against his fist and narrows his eyes as he listens. Shouto retells the story in part, deciding to omit your name, and by the tail-end of it Bakugo’s forehead is deeply creased in dissatisfaction.

“You make all your own problems, Halfie. Y’know that?” he mutters, rubbing at the bridge of his nose and sinking back into his chair. “Fine, you don’t want to make this person uncomfortable, or whatever. If you need a hug so damn badly, why not ask Deku? Not like he’d say no”.

Knowing Bakugo would make his dilemma sound ridiculous is one thing, actually hearing it is another. “How do you know it isn’t about Midoriya,” Shouto returns petulantly.

“It ain’t Izuku or anyone else from your nerd squad,” Bakugo says, dropping his hand to drum on the desk. “I would’ve heard about it”.

“Why?”

“Because you don’t touch people. And that’s fuckin’ fine, yeah? But if you had, I know for a fact any one of them would’ve burst into tears and told everyone in a five mile radius”.

“Oh,” it leaves him a little off-kilter to hear. Shouto leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, setting the report on the dark wood coffee table. The corner of the page is curled, and the spine is creased, and the ink annotation has smudged under his thumb. He details these things as he deliberates, the excuses cloying in his throat and thick like he might cry too.

Bakugo was right—if he craved close contact so badly, why couldn’t he go to Midoriya? He knows he would likely be met with enthusiasm.

“You don't have to tell me who. I don’t care. But you’re overthinking it,” Bakugo grunts at his lack of response, in a way that very much suggests that he cares. “Go ask. If they say ‘no’ it’s tough shit, but the world isn’t gonna end. From what you’ve told me they wouldn’t say ‘no’ anyway. Dumbass”.

Shouto nods and gives up the pretense of reading the paperwork. He feels coltish as he stands and brushes down his front, straightening the creases.

“You’re right”.

“I know”.

“Thank you, Bakugo,” he says. A small smile unfurls across his anxiety-bitten mouth. “You’re a good friend”.

“Shut up,” Bakugo grumbles. It’s a testament to his concern that he hadn’t cursed Shouto there and then. “Now get out of my office. What are you doing here in the first place? You got your own!”

“Yours gets all the sunlight. And it’s always quiet because nobody comes in here,” Shouto ignores the baleful slit of an eye Bakugo turns on him. “I’m going to take my lunch now”.

“Do what you want,” Bakugo dismisses haughtily, and Shouto smiles while thinking, not for the first time, that he’s very lucky to have friends like these.

The fidgety assistant bows as he exits and turns into the sun-drenched hallway. Warmth drapes around Shouto’s shoulders, lingering at his nape while he descends the dark stairwell where the light doesn’t reach. His boots thud against the linoleum, and he counts each footfall to keep his face neutral as his legs carry him toward your department.

Somewhere between one and one hundred and thirteen, a fraction of Shouto’s courage starts to dwindle. He grits his teeth. A hundred steps can’t be enough to dissuade him after decades of denying himself any kind of indulgence.

The further he goes into the support wing the more elaborate the layout becomes. You’re in research and development, assigned a workshop close to the quirk analysts. Heads turn as Shouto rolls through. Heroes didn’t often make personal visits to this area. If he thinks hard enough he could count a grand number of two past visits and neither of them were for you.

His stride falters when he catches sight of your nameplate. It is fixed to the wall outside your door, polished and gleaming proudly. Shouto traces the characters of your name engraved into steel before raising his hand to knock.

Your voice rings out from inside, “Come in!”

A pitched beeping sound comes from overhead. The workshop doors begin to open in a theatrical fashion, receding like curtains to reveal your space. The floor is mapped out with tape. Clear boundaries drawn between the work benches, the fume cupboards, the vault and your personal office, in an attempt at organised chaos. He might have been more interested in poking around for the first time if he had not felt on the edge of intrusion.

You’re tucked behind your curved desk surrounded by numerous monitors that dwarf your frame. Shouto furtively takes in your cute, rumpled appearance. The upper half of your coveralls have been undone to reveal an undervest, sleeves tied tight around and accentuating your waist.

“Take a seat, I’ll be with you in…” the dull tapping of practiced keystrokes comes to a stop as you notice him in the doorway. The professional veneer disappears. “Shouto?” you say, mostly to yourself. Your gaze slides beyond his shoulder, looking for whoever might be accompanying him. “Is everything okay?”

There’s a worried twist in your mouth that he wants to smudge away. A look in your eyes—a combination of warmth and weight that tugged at his being. Shouto rolls his shoulders, shaking off the tension, and moving deeper into your office. The doors close automatically behind him. “I’m okay,” he assures, taking the seat across from you.

Your expression gentles, and he likes how your gaze follows him. “I was wondering if you wanted to have lunch with me,” he continues. “But if you’re working I can head back”.

“Lunch?” you repeated. Your eyes darted to the corner of the monitor closest to you and promptly widened. “Oh, shit. When did that happen?”

An upswing of fondness catches him like a blow to the chest. His mouth quirks into a smirk. “How long have you been here?”

“Too long. I got lumped with a new project a few days ago and it’s almost done,” the monitors shut off one by one as you sheepishly press each button. Then you gave him a soft, apologetic look, “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy. Must’ve missed me if you came all the way down here”.

Dread shriked through him. The low whirring from the equipment scattered around your workspace is suddenly inordinately loud. Was he that obvious?

You, however, fail to notice Shouto’s anxiety and grab him around the wrist as you pivot the desk. “C’mon. Let’s go before the good stuff is gone,” you tell him.

Shouto had absolutely no clue what the ‘good stuff’ entailed—maybe he should’ve bothered to ask. Atleast it would take his mind off your hand. It’s wrapped around his sleeve, right where the fabric ends, loose enough for him to unshackle from if he wants. When he doesn’t protest the contact you stroke your thumb in an arc over the heel of his hand and squeeze.

Shouto falls into step, too caught up to realise you’ve taken him to the cafeteria. He expects you’ll drop his wrist in the presence of your colleagues, yet you adjust your grip and glance back at him with an encouraging tilt of your head.

“I’m starving. I think I’ll get a rice bowl. Smells pretty good today, don’t you think?”

Shouto hummed his agreement. He felt out of his depth, and he didn’t trust his voice. The spark of giddiness was doing embarrassing things to his throat. The line is mercifully short and before long he has a warm bowl of food held against his front.

“Did you want to sit in here? I can take us to one of the senior staff lounges instead if you want,” you cast a nervous look across the sparse crowd. “I mean, support engineers aren’t really gossiping types but…”

A petty part of him hoped the whispers would escalate. To have your name linked with his, to be known as a person that you cared about—he found that deeply satisfying, for reasons he couldn’t yet put his finger on.

Then again, being alone with you far eclipsed the appeal of flaunting your friendship. “The senior staff lounge sounds best,” he answers after a minute of feigned consideration. You nod, regretfully having dropped his hand, and motion for him to follow once more.

The lounge is a modest room with a kitchenette, a breakfast nook and a few bean bag chairs. It smells faintly like peeled oranges. There are post it notes and blueprints haphazardly stuck to the pinboard, covering an out of date calendar filled out in illegible scrawl. This is no shop awning. There is no rainfall to lend to the ambiance. But you are together in an enclosed space, and that is enough to make his heart beat in anticipation.

You scoot into the breakfast nook. He sits on the same side of the table and tries to subtly spread his knees enough to nudge your thigh. You side-glance in surprise but choose not to mention it. Instead you smile through your first mouthful and ask, “How've things been since I last saw you?”

Achy, like he’s used an atrophied muscle. Lonely, and frustrating beyond words. But he doesn’t say any of that. He digs crescents into his thigh through his pant leg and says, “Boring”.

“Figured that might be the case. I saw the livestream of you fighting Haywire,” you bump your shoulder against his. “The Commission probably dumped a whole load of paperwork on you, huh?”

Shouto wrinkles his nose. He hoped you hadn’t caught that fight. The pursuit of Haywire—an eco terrorist with an electrical quirk—managed to cause an unprecedented amount of damage to the city infrastructure.

“You handled it as best you could. The power grid can be fixed. What’s important is people are alive because of you,” a warm weight covers the fingers restlessly whittling at his pant leg. You pet his hand, “I’m glad you weren’t hurt”.

Guided solely by his impulses, the instant you start to draw back he envelops the top of your hand and sandwiches it between his own. He goes hot and cold all over in quick succession. Boundaries, he reminds himself. But you’re not pulling away. You’re studying him with a knowing gleam in your eye.

Shouto clears his throat. Heat pricks across his skin, concentrated in his cheekbones. “Sorry,” he says. You can ask, a memory echoes. “Is this okay?”

“You don’t have to apologise. I told you it’s fine,” you reply firmly. “I’m happy to remind you if you need to hear it”.

“No, I…” his brow furrows. “I’ve been thinking”.

“That’s not good”.

Shouto snorts and shakes his head, his amusement petering out into a shallow breath. “I want to ask. I’ve wanted to ask like you said I could,” he explains vaguely. “I’m not very good at it, I think”.

You make a soft, understanding sound that immediately sets him at ease. “I guess, after denying yourself something for so long it can be scary to let yourself have it again,” you murmur, a faraway look in your eyes. After a pensive moment the sheen fades and your laughter lines deepen, “I’ll do what I did before, then. If you look like you need a hug I’ll ask you instead”.

“In what way do I ‘look like’ I need a hug?”

“You get this—I don’t know how to explain it,” you gesture vaguely at him. “This blankness about you, but not your normal resting face, I mean you don’t seem all there. I don’t like it. I like it best when you’re happy”.

“Ah,” comes his eloquent response. Shouto drops his gaze to where your hands knot together. Every quark in his body is urging him to get closer, and remain close. “Bakugo thinks I should try to hug Midoriya, too,” he adds, oddly flustered.

“Huh. You talked to Bakugo about—? That’s a surprise. A nice surprise, I mean! Well, Midoriya does give great hugs. It would be good for you to…”

Shouto’s thoughts grow louder and he frowns down at his rice. You’re saying something about physical touch and wellness and friends. Dopamine and serotonin. It barely registers. Two truths are pinging around his skull.

You have hugged Midoriya. Of course you have. You’re friends.

You think he’s great at it.

Why is that so unsettling? Teenagers think like this. Single minded and overly emotional.

He feels the shifting of your knuckles under his palm. “Hey. You’ll need one of these back if you’re going to eat,” you say.

“Right,” he lifts his left hand and picks up his chopsticks to take a pinch of rice from his bowl. He chews until the clamouring in his mind has settled, and you patiently accept his stoic silence without explanation. Shouto hasn’t been this awkward since highschool, and even then he was too wrapped up in his familial problems to be aware of it.

“What’s the project you’ve been working on?” he eventually asks.

You take the change of topic in your stride, leaning closer and lowering your voice to an excited whisper, “I’m not supposed to tell you but—it’s for Deku’s new costume”.

“Midoriya is getting a new costume?” Shouto replies. You playfully shush him and he pouts a little.

“Don’t sulk. He doesn’t know yet either,” you poke a chopstick at the corner of his jutted mouth. “It’s my job to prepare a design portfolio and talk through everything next week. You’ll get a new one too, when you break the top five”.

“If,” he amends.

“You don’t think you’ll move up?”

“Reaching the top was never really a priority for me,” Shouto’s attention splinters, half of his focus on the conversation and the other on the sensation of your skin. He considers overturning his hand to entwine your fingers. “I just want to be the best hero I can be”.

You hum, and as if plucking the desire right from his mind, absentmindedly slip into the gaps between his fingers. Shouto steadies his breathing and takes another mouthful.

The rest of the hour passes, syrupy and slow like molasses. By the final minute Shouto’s palm is sticky and reluctant to part from yours. You usher him out from the breakfast nook first, stacking the empty bowls before directing him back toward the emptied cafeteria.

You slide the bowls along the counter for the kitchen staff to take. Then you wipe your hands down your front as you pivot to face him, thrusting out both arms as he stands frozen.

“Can I hug you?”

Shouto touches his face and you laugh.

“This is because I want one,” you clarify with a warm grin, beckoning him closer.

Shouto inhales steps into the embrace, his arms instinctively wrapping around your back. There are less layers this time—the heat of your body is overwhelming, alongside the gentle rise of goosebumps across your bare shoulders. Your breath fell gently on his collarbone, his head lowering to curl into you. He thinks, were he not born to be a hero, he must surely be born for this.

“Thank you,” you mumble, squeezing his waste a final time as you retreat. “I’ll talk to you later, yeah?”

Shouto nods. Your presence moves away like the sun being blocked out and he watches you go, departing words caught in his teeth, an incessant buzz in his fingertips. The walk back to his office is a gauzy yellow haze. Every physiological response in his body told him that he was in a free fall, despite his feet being firmly on the ground.

“Shouto!”

Shouto halts mid-step at the familiar voice. He turns to look at Izuku, at the tentative beginnings of his smile. “Izuku,” he says.

“We missed you at lunch—are you feeling alright?” Izuku asks, slightly bemused. “You look kinda… floaty,” his eyes are dark, softened in the afternoon light as they sweep over Shouto’s figure and his face.

"Izuku," Shouto said before he could convince himself otherwise, “Do you want a hug?”

The innocent question appeared to crash into Izuku with the levity of a bullet train in motion. Tears sprang to his eyes, brighter now. Shouto tenses as he is swept into a solid hug. Izuku smells like fresh air, sweat and sweet-salty broth. He holds Shouto as though trying to keep his seams from bursting; thick arms are secure around his shoulders, and a rough palm rubs broad strokes down his back, smoothing the tension until Shouto is relaxed.

You were right. Izuku does give great hugs. Shouto came away doughy, and fuller, and with the stark realisation that while touching Izuku soothed the ache, it still felt completely different to touching you.

Later, as he leaned his head against the desk surface, he sluggishly contemplated the implications of that.

#bnha x reader #todoroki shouto x reader #todoroki x reader #shouto x reader #mha x reader

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enavstars · 7 months

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Cyberpunk au

RGB designs for a new au

Important things:

The inspiration for this was the game Stray (that I finally played).

This is a hyperfixation that I don't know when it's going to end. I'll probably draw things from it as much as my motivation lets me but don't expect it to be a constant thing like Eclipse or On the road.

I love worldbuilding so there is a lot of details of this au already, feel free to ask questions.

The world is dark and very corrupted but the tone of the au is chill because the sibs dgaf about the world.

Worldbuilding details (my friend wrote this because this is complicated and I suck at writing) [very long text under the cut]:

The key element of this AU’s worldbuilding is a new biohazardous artificial plant which was originally genetically engineered by the scientist of the RGB’s city-state to fight the air pollution that plagued the region by attempting to reduce the amount of CO2 from the atmosphere (yes this is a biopunk universe :)). However, because they are an ugly reddish colour, have a bitter taste and are extremely nutrient-deficient and unhealthy, they have no natural predators and can spread like wildfire across both fertile plots and forests like weeds. On top of that, due to that nutrient deficiency, which stems from the slow absorption ability of their roots (not nearly enough to keep the heavy rate of photosynthesis), they evolved on their own to attach themselves to other living beings as parasites and basically invaded the entire area around the metropolis. With them being potentially lethal, this caused a massive problem that made the city panic; although they have plenty of weak points (like fire and a vulnerable immune system) and it takes them very long to get their roots to the rest of the body, their grip is so deep and strong that the only option is to remove the infected body part. So their special ability became a critical issue when the plants unexpectedly ended up liking animals better, and with them humans themselves, because they could carry them to other places and infest those too while still sucking the life out of them until they die (oopsie). Ultimately, with the lack of proper information on the parasites, and because the situation was handled very poorly overall, they ended up taking many people’s lives and made the most vulnerable species of the area (like cattle) go endangered or extinct, which in turn altered the balance of the ecosystem and the working class’ means of living :).

Sorry this chunk was so technical, we (@kaigoesbrr and I) are biology nerds, but basically the plants were so good at making more oxygen and so ass at getting what they needed to do so that they became parasites, and now they get what they need from plants and animals (and they like animals better, like humans, because they have more stuff and help them spread further). Then society collapsed :).

All of this caused a deep economic crisis that brought about high rates of poverty, and with it, a deep fear of the infested world outside the city walls. So this whole conundrum led to the city closing off to the lands around it, implementing absurd levels of security like a tight border control and a slower, more strict business traffic, and making a huge dark translucent dome that encapsulates the whole city to keep any potential smuggled plants from ever growing by blocking the natural sunlight. They even made a ditch around their walls (kind of like a moat) and burnt and bombed the fields and suburbs around them to make them extremely infertile. So yeah, this city-state is a terrible place to live, a gloomy prison where not even the sun and stars can be seen, but most the inhabitants never leave out of that paranoid terror and the heavy bureaucracy needed to just go outside and touch grass.

(haha with poor funding corrupt scientists who didn’t know what they were doing made a mess, shocker how that would backfire horribly).

However, the outside isn’t as bad as they make it out to be. In the end, the plants did clean the air as they were supposed to, and, as nature does, it did somewhat recover from the disaster to where human life is now sustainable again.

Taking advantage of their thick crust, trees were the least affected by the plague, and the other plants in the forest developed new natural defences against the parasites, which was yet another reason why they in turn became best at infecting animals. And many of the fungi, abundant in the now more humid forest (haha cooler air equals more rain), took advantage of their weak immune system (due to their fucking incompetent creators making a mess of the original plant’s DNA) and infected them (haha scammer get scammed). So basically, the fields and farmlands were lost to the people, but the forests are still intact. Also, even though one of the rivers around the city, the one which makes its ways under it and is therefore connected to the water supply and sewer systems, is trashed, the other, which is further away, is now perfectly healthy due to the city closing off and therefore leaving it alone for enough time. The real issue here lies within the actual government, which obviously does not want to expose how corrupt and lazy they are when dealing with problems and so they keep fueling the paranoia of their most vulnerable citizens since they are kids :). One way they do so is by manipulating the information their people get, claiming bullshit like “the current ecosystem is wild and polluted, it cannot offer our economy anything anymore!” and “the plants are dangerous and will kill you if you ever come into contact with them, and they have infected virtually every living thing around!”. Another is by not educating their population about “the Outside”, treating it like a sort of taboo. Therefore, they refuse to explain, or hush those who try to, the actual danger of the plants and how to deal with them (they do have many weaknesses, after all).

But the people in this world have yet another nasty problem. In this AU there are beings believed to be anthropomorphic demons due to their pointy ears, fangs, and sometimes strange behaviour. But in fact, these people are descendants of the dragons that once lived in these nations, but their origins were forgotten as the world gradually lost touch with its spirituality and ancestry, and now those who were once revered for their “godlike attributes” (yes, they kinda worshipped dragons, I mean, who wouldn’t) are today facing discrimination. However, even though they aren’t considered exactly “people”, the pure humans are still kind of afraid of them, so they usually choose the subtler kind of racism. In most governments, “Demons” get less job opportunities and are denied high positions, can be freely banned from any establishment, and face unmatched prejudice just for existing, especially those with a stronger blood relation with their ancestry. In the city, they are treated as less than even the robots (nindroids of all kinds), who are treated like any other respected social group by now because they have grown so advanced that most of them are just like humans in metal armour. In fact, many of them are mechanics, who are held in high esteem for making the many bionic implants for the humans.

And all of that combined made the RGB siblings (who are obviously demons, especially Lloyd), decide never to leave the Outside, where they grew up, to go live in the city.

When they were younger, Kai and Nya adopted Lloyd when they found him asleep in a box in the middle of nowhere, after having been abandoned themselves a few years earlier. This time, though, their dynamic in this AU is more of a team than Kai being a mom to them both like he always is, so even if Kai feels the most responsible for being the eldest sibling, they rely on each other almost equally. They fend off the plants that threaten them with fire (no they do not have powers, but Kai uses a fucking flamethrower because it’s Kai), and usually live on whatever they can find in the wild: mostly by making traps for game, fishing in the cleaner river and occasionally foraging edible plats (that’s more risky and they are more carnivorous anyway). Also, Nya routinely strolls through the ruins of the suburbs to collect scrap junk to turn as much of it as she can into useful trinkets, the rest of which she sells to Ed and Edna’s junkyard and their son, who is an amateur mechanic (wink wink but no shipping actually). Apart from that though, they usually sneak into the metropolis to cause a bit of mayhem here and there, which over time and on top of the fear over their species has earned them a reputation of People You Don't Wanna Mess With (or "Demons", more like). More than once they’ve even messed with a few of the gangs around town, which started sprouting up after the disaster, so overall their presence in the city is tolerated, but frowned upon. They manage to bypass the annoying border control thanks to the faulty assistant robot who raised them, named Echo (wink wink), who cannot perform any other social job (what he was made for) than to be the ferryman for those few people who decide to cross the wide moat and venture out into the Outside. They usually take a secret tunnel that a few smugglers managed to make, and the Guard do nothing because they do not give a fuck about demons anyway (in fact, only a few people know that their actual names aren’t Red, Blue and Green because nobody gives a fuck indeed). They do actually know a few people there, some of whom are also demons (like Mistake and Ronin), but especially as kids (which is when the story starts) they spend most of their time in the wild chilling and going on adventures :³.

(no the city and the plants are not named, we’re lazy :))

Anyway this is what I'll say for now. There's a lot more info, and hopefully drawings, coming. Hope you like this au because I love it for now ^^

(Btw let me know if you want me to make a post/reblog explaining the designs for the Rgb siblings and some info behind them)

#Idk how I come up with these things but I love them #I hope you enjoy them too #ninjago #art #ninjago au #ninjago cyberpunk au #ninjago kai #kai smith #ninjago nya #nya smith #ninjago lloyd #lloyd garmadon #rgb siblings

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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Fighting junk fees is "woke"

“Populism” isn’t intrinsically left or right. The distinction between the two is often obscured by jargon, but there’s a simple litmus test (courtesy of Steven Brust): “ask what’s more important: human rights, or property rights. If they say ‘property rights are human rights,’ they’re on the right.”

Which is to say, both the left and the right can be populist, but the populist left seeks to improve peoples’ lives, no matter what that takes, while the populist right is only willing to make the world better when that doesn’t interfere with the interests of property owners.

This is how you get the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire equating publicly produced, free insulin with forcing enslaved Black people to pick cotton in the fields:

https://newrepublic.com/post/174485/libertarian-party-suggests-former-black-lawmaker-pick-crops-free

For right populists, the property rights of pharma giants are human rights, so anything that interferes with those rights is equivalent to any other human rights violation.

This is not only wrong, but it’s also a huge vulnerability in the right populist mindset. It’s a button that, when pushed, produces a reliable and reflexive outrage.

This is essential for the creation, maintenance and expansion of plutocracy. In a plutocracy, a small minority owns most of the property (we live in a plutocracy). By definition, plutocracy isn’t popular, since it’s a system that benefits a small minority at everyone else’s expense. In its natural state, plutocracy is only popular with its winners, and not the vast majority of losers it creates.

So plutocrats need to find ways to get turkeys to vote for Christmas. One important trick is to convince us all that the system is fair, guided by an invisible hand that performs mystic passes over our heads at birth and locates the very best of us and elevates us to the apex of the social pyramid.

But there’s a problem with this: plutocracy is self-sustaining. The story that we’re all just “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” who can rise to the top with hard work and smarts falls flat in the face of the reality that nearly everyone at the top was born there. If the system selects rulers based on merit, and if everyone the system selects was born rich, then the rich must have some genetic trait that makes them destined to rule.

This is why plutocracy always turns into aristocracy: the idea that some people are suited to rule because they have “good blood.” Eugenics is, above all, a way to excuse inequality. Fitness to rule is determined primarily by whose orifice you emerge from, and only secondarily by any obvious competence or skill.

So right wing footsoldiers are mired in a terrible and shameful swamp of self-loathing. By definition, their lack of wealth and power is their own fault, and not merely their fault, but the fault of their genes. Being on the bottom is proof that you deserve to be there. Your failure to rise proves that you don’t deserve to rise.

No wonder the right is so irony-poisoned. Remember 2020, when gun-nuts got “revenge” on gun safety scolds by photographing themselves pointing loaded guns at their own penises? The participants insisted that they were just trolling, and they were…by pointing loaded guns at their dicks:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/28/holographic-nano-layer-catalyser/#musketfuckers

Plutocrats understand that there are limits to irony, and that at a certain point, irony poisoning becomes so acute that your rank-and-file literally start blowing their balls off. To relieve the pressure, plutes scapegoat other people based on their gender, sexual orientation, race, or nationality.

This provides an important resolution to the cognitive dissonance of meritocracy. The reason you’re doing so badly isn’t that you lack merit, it’s that affirmative action has elevated unworthy people to the positions that you deserve. You are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire — but the riches you deserve have been snaffled up by welfare queens and DEI consultants.

Cruelty isn’t the point of culture war bullshit: the point is power. Cruelty is merely the tactic:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/09/turkeys-voting-for-christmas/#culture-wars

Culture war bullshit is a very reliable way to get turkeys to vote for Christmas. Take the campaign against junk fees, which have ticketmastered every part of your life with “fees” for things like “paying your rent by check” and “not paying your rent by check”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/30/military-industrial-park-service/#booz-allen

There is no broad constituency for junk fees. Scam artists (including scam artists in the C-suites of Fortune 100 companies) love them, sure, but junk fees make everyone else furious.

What’s a plutocrat to do? Well, it turns out that culture war bullshit can make right wingers point (metaphorical) guns at their own junk — all plutocrats need to do is put the word out that getting rid of junk fees is “woke” and low-information right-wing thumbsuckers will demand the right to be charged junk fees.

Here’s an example: one especially pernicious form of junk fee is the “swipe fees” that credit-card companies charge merchants. In an increasingly cashless age, these companies — dominated by the Visa/Mastercard duopoly — have figured out how to scrape 3–5% out of every single retail transaction in the entire fucking economy.

Every merchant you patronize has to charge more — or reduce quality, or both — in order to pay this Danegeld to two of the largest, most profitable companies in the world. Visa/Mastercard have hiked their fees by 40 percent since the pandemic’s start. Forty. Fucking. Percent. Tell me again how greedflation isn’t real?

A bipartisan legislative coalition, led by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) have proposed the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA), which will force competition into credit-card routing, putting pressure on the Visa/Mastercard duopoly:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/1838/text?s=1&r=3

This should be a no-brainer, but plute spin-doctors have plenty of no-brains to fill up with culture war bullshit. Writing in The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein unpacks an astroturf campaign to save the endangered swipe fee from woke competition advocates:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-08-04-wall-street-culture-war-swipe-fee-reform/

Now, this campaign isn’t particularly sophisticated. It goes like this: Target is a big business that runs a lot of transactions through Visa/Mastercard, so it stands to benefit from competition in payment routing. And Target did a mean woke by selling Pride merch, which makes them groomers. So by fighting swipe fees, Congress is giving woke groomers a government bailout!

It’s literally that stupid. It’s being pushed by a dark money group based in Kansas, which is targeting Senator Marshall’s constituents with mailers that warns voters they’ll “lose their credit card points” because he’s thrown his lot in with “liberal politicians”:

https://punchbowl.news/caf-marshall-mailer-kansas/

The fliers also warn that competition could result in “your financial data could be processed by partners of the Chinese Communist Party” (the bill bans foreign companies from routing transactions, and bans China UnionPay by name).

The fliers are anonymous. The only ghoul shameless enough to put his name on the campaign is Grover Norquist, whose Americans for Tax Reform tells its Christmas-voting-turkeys to “side with consumers, not woke retailers.”

The dark money org pushing this line have placed op-eds in newspapers across red states, comparing transaction routing competition to your kids’ data being snaffled up by Tiktok:

https://www.theflstandard.com/senators-rubio-and-scott-must-protect-the-personal-financial-data-of-floridians/

This nonsense was peddled by League of Southeastern Credit Unions president Samantha Beeler, whose org has spent $20,000 fighting the CCCA, claiming that a “cheaper” system would be “less secure”:

https://disclosurespreview.house.gov/ld/ldxmlrelease/2023/Q2/301493985.xml

But that’s small potatoes. Millions are being spent, right now, lobbying against CCCA — $5m from the American Bankers’ Association, $2m from the Credit Union National Association, another $400k from Mastercard.

For these rentiers, corrupting our government with millions is a stellar bargain if it lets them continue to collect rent every time we spend money. And millions of people who’ll end up paying that will demand the right to do so, provided they’re told that they’re fighting “woke capitalism” and China.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

[Image ID: A mechanical credit card imprinter (AKA 'zipzap') emblazoned with a US flag Punisher logo. It is imprinting a blank credit-card slip with a red Visa card bearing the GOP logo. It sits on a weathered wooden plank table, stained a dark brown.]

#pluralistic #finance #junk fees #ripoffs #turkeys voting for christmas #culture war bullshit #useful idiots #visa #mastercard #swipe fees

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cowboyfromh3ll · 5 months

Note

You know how in the epilogue John works on Mr Geddes ranch and the wife invites him inside the house (basically hinting at you know what) well that sparked an idea for a request. Could you do an Arthur fic where the reader is in a similar situation where she isn’t on good terms with her husband and she knows he’s cheating on her so after Arthur starts working on their farm she takes a liking to him and they have sex.

Sugar On My Tongue

(Arthur Morgan x Fem!Reader Smut)

FINALLY UPLOADING A ONE SHOT YALL

Warnings: smut, infidelity

You found it hilarious that people thought you and your husband were the perfect couple based solely on looks. During the celebration following your wedding, his brother loudly and drunkenly declared just how attractive the two of you were, “a genetic match made in heaven.” he said, his words slurring together with noticeable envy. Later that night, his brother would have attempted to put a hand on your ass before throwing up in the grass behind your ranch.

The two of you were needlessly attractive, and in your days working as a handmaid, you would have bragged endlessly about what a catch you got. Your fellow handmaids would’ve also raved on about just how good-looking he was, expressing their jealousy through lighthearted jokes. The wealth he possessed was another determining factor of your marriage to him. You supposed marrying him was worth it for his massive ranch alone. However, the real problems began just mere months after your wedding ceremony. What should have marked a beautiful beginning to your lives together quickly deteriorated into something else.

The ring on your husband's finger didn’t seem to slow the frenetic pace at which he flirted with women and picked them up, never in the comfort of your own home but under the guise that he was headed into town to take care of business. You often wanted to argue back that all the business that needed doing was here on the ranch, but you did not want to risk your life of comfort. Part of you learned to put up with it only because it meant you could sit around all day, spend your husband's money, and watch loads of sweaty men work around your ranch. In the same vein as your husband's infidelity, his time away from the ranch meant being able to flirt with the ranch hands subtly.

You were well aware of how attractive you were and were more than well aware that the ranch hands thought the same of you. You’d feel their leering gazes whenever you bent over to pick something up, the whole world suddenly stopping behind you just to stare at your ass. You found enjoyment in the act of undoing the top buttons of your shirt to expose your cleavage before heading out the doorway of your home, looking straight ahead while doing your best strut past the working hands. You would smirk openly as you heard their chatter between each other die down and fall silent, feeling all their eyes transfer to you as you walked past. Once you were several feet away, you’d hear the low whistles of the men, followed by their lewd comments: “She’s smoking hot.” “If I had a wife like her, hell, I’d be home all the time.” “Too bad she’s married to the ranch owner.”

You knew this was the mindset you had to conquer in Arthur’s mind. In your conquest of the new aforementioned ranch hand, you had to rid him of the idea that what you were doing was wrong; it’d appear more as taboo flirting than actual infidelity. Arthur could also be described as needlessly attractive. He seemed to highlight every aspect that made up exactly what it was that you loved so much about your ranch hands: his sultry low drawl, his big arms with bulging biceps that would flex from any form of strain, his rough hands, callused from all the work he had done in his life, his full beard that he’d occasionally trimmed down to a fine stubble, and his wonderfully welcoming gentle blue eyes that contrasted every other bit of his begin. The sweat on his skin made him appear glossy and slick, and you’d taken a liking to the fantasy of licking his entire body clean of it. The perfect cherry on top.

At times you wished your urges for the man would remain dormant, but the silent cries from between your legs were hummed just loud enough that you were constantly aware of them; like a soundtrack to whatever it was you were trying to do with Arthur. And every time you ventured outside your ranch home, you’d spot Arthur in the distance, splashing his face with water and watching the way the droplets of water raced down his jaw and neck to see which was lucky enough to make it under the collar of his shirt first. Other times you’d see him shoveling dirt or hay, and you’d focus solely on the way his hands and arms worked. Your favorite was being able to watch him heave large sacks over his shoulders, often multiple at once. By the end of the day, the scent of Arthur’s sweat as he stood by you or walked past you was so pungent that it clung to your nostrils and made you dizzy with desire.

You clung onto the hope that during one of these encounters, you might come across the best scenario possible: Arthur fixing a fence at noon when the sun was highest in the sky, freckles of blown dirt sticking to his sweaty shirtless torso, his dirt-stained denim jeans hanging lowly on his hips; one tug away from freedom. Your husband gone. In that case, you might be able to stumble across his working form and feign concern for his sunburnt skin. Would he mind taking a break? Allowing you to take him into your home for a cold glass of water? You’d been in the sun all day, you were both likely parched.

Your greatest bouts of confidence came during moments when you were able to find yourself alone with Arthur. You knew seducing any of the other ranch hands would be ridiculously easy, but Arthur had a little resistance to him, and you loved a little challenge. You pounced on the opportunity to talk to Arthur when you saw him standing inside the stables, soaked in sweat from head to toe while trying to evade the sun’s harsh rays in the shade provided. You saw him wipe his sweat off on the back of his sleeve, feeling as though it was a blatant misuse of a precious resource. ‘No!’ you wanted to shout ‘Don’t wipe it off! Let me clean it off you!’

“Real hot today isn’t it, Mr. Morgan?” You sauntered up behind Arthur, leaning your weight on the door of one of the stables. He pitched his pitchfork against a wall and turned back before smiling politely at you.

“Certainly is, Miss. Why ain’t you inside, huh? You could get sunburnt.” Arthur warned, which you found incredibly endearing. It could’ve been just a simple show of concern, but you believed it to be far more than that. It sounded more to you like a declaration of love.

“I just like making my rounds around the ranch, taking nice walks. It is my ranch after all.” You reminded. You found that an admonition of your position of power around here would cement you as someone with far more influence than any of your hands. It proved effective, as Arthur began nodding in understanding.

“Right, my apologies, Miss.” He said, bowing his head slightly.

“No need to apologize, say, do you wanna come into the house for a cold beer? Sure seems like you need to cool off.” Not just a beer, a cold beer. You had a way with words. How many hours had Arthur worked in the field, the skin of his back stinging from cruel sunburns while his vision blurred from his own sweat dripping into his eyes, parched beyond any relief the tepid tap water could provide, dreaming of a really cold beer? You shifted your weight onto one hip and allowed a small smirk to crawl onto your face. You began to shed all polite pretenses as you looked Arthur up and down, reveling in the way his body noticeably tensed. You weren’t being too forthcoming, but just enough that if Arthur decided to come onto you, you’d be doing him a great favor by entertaining his advances.

“I don’t think I should, Miss, I-”

“Nonsense! You live on this ranch, after all, I see no harm in stepping inside my house. Especially since I’m allowing it.”

Arthur looked at you hesitantly, then quickly around him as if he didn’t want anyone to see him talking to you. Arthur wasn’t oblivious to the fact that every single ranch hand found you attractive, as well as himself. He just didn’t want to receive an endless stream of questioning as to why and what he was talking to you about.

“If you insist.” He said, removing his hat from his head and following you out the stable.

“I’m more than happy to.” You smiled, blithely patting his shoulders before sliding your hand down his arm. You passed it off with clueless laughter, shivering at the feeling of his eyes on your backside. Arthur fiddled with his fingers as he followed you up the path to your house. The glaring sun made the green grass appear brighter, creating a luminous passage toward salvation.

The sounds of your footsteps up the wooden porch pulled him out of a trance he didn’t realize he was in. Arthur looked up at you from the bottom of the steps, still hesitant to make his way up. You looked down at him from where you stood, reveling in the faux height difference that made you far taller than he was; you felt half god to his mortal.

“Come on,” You beckoned. “It’s just my house.” You shrugged and smiled, your lips twitching in an attempt to hold back a smirk. Arthur took one last cautionary glance around before finally making his way up. You opened the door and allowed Arthur to walk in first, stepping inside afterward with a large smile. The sound of the metal clanking as the bolt shut into place felt like a small kick in your loins that spurred you on in your pursuit.

Arthur stood awkwardly in the center of the living area as he looked around. He became hyper-aware of his limbs, his arms hovering over his torso, unsure what to do next. You walked past him and smiled at him, motioning with your hand for him to follow you.

You led him to your ornately papered kitchen, making a show of bending over in front of him to retrieve the box of chilled beers below the counter. You set the heavy box down on the table, digging a beer out, and popping the lid off on the corner of the table. Froth rose from the beer bottle, sliding over your hand and soaking the skin. Arthur watched, as if hypnotized, as the foam slid over and dripped onto your floor. He swallowed hard and squinted his eyes, the kitchen window behind you draping you in a soft sheet of sunlight as you eclipsed it; only adding to your godly image. Your movements seemed to play in slow motion as you stretched your arm out and handed Arthur the beer. Every turn or twitch of a limb felt somnambulant, his arm feeling like a sandbag as he lifted it and took the beer from your dainty hand.

The condensation, combined with Arthur’s nerves, caused the bottle to slip from his hand and crash on the floor. The shattering sound caused Arthur to snap out of his daze, as thought it more some sort of anecdote to the hypnosis he was under.

“Oh, Miss, I’m so sorry.” Arthur crouched down and began gathering the large pieces of glass in his hand, afraid of the possibility that if he looked up, he might see your disappointed face. Being able to step inside your home to be able to enjoy a cold beer already felt like a blessing. You bent down in front of him, placing your lithe hands on his wrists. He looked up at you, swallowing hard and preparing for any chastising he would receive. But it never came.

“It’s okay. I’ll clean it up. It’s my fault anyways, I should’ve wiped it down before I handed it to you.” Normally, Arthur would have argued back, but he seemed to fall under your spell again. It was as if against his own will, he let the glass side from his palms onto the ground again and rose. You looked up at him with a smile, still kneeling before him. Arthur felt his cock twitch.

“Why don’t you go sit down at the table over there? I’ll get you a new beer.” You smiled a bit longer, watching for any signs of refusal before getting back to cleaning up the mess. You waited for the view of Arthur’s boots to disappear from your peripheral before you decided to dispose of the glass in the trash. You turned your back to retrieve another beer, hearing the scrape of a chair against the floor. You took the opportunity to unbutton two extra buttons from your shirt so that it hung open and exposed some cleavage. You expected him to stare at you as you spoke inane details about how the ranch was doing in terms of business, then you could act surprised that his gaze had med your open shirt and possibly get a confession that he was indeed looking at your chest—information you’d pretend to find so overly flattering you’d offer to give him an even better look.

The moment you turned around to face him, beer and bottle opener in hand, you caught his eyes flickering to your chest before quickly looking away. You would’ve passed it off as sneaky if not for the fact you were actively seeking for him to look. You walked closer, grinning widely and continuing to approach him until you stood closely next to where he sat, perhaps too close for comfort. Your hip bone brushed against his arm, something you pretended not to notice—you also pretended not to notice the way he shifted in his seat, trying his best to keep his gaze on the table.

You popped the cap off the bottle, handing it to Arthur and ensuring he had a firm grasp on it. Arthur thanked you quietly before taking a sip. For the first time since Arthur entered your home, he felt comfortable and almost content as he sipped the beer. He took a large swig, his nerves washed away by the golden liquid as he allowed himself to slump in his chair. It was almost enough to make him forget that you still stood closely by his side, your hip pressed into his tricep at this point.

Arthur continued to drink, trying to ignore the satisfied smile on your face that bordered on unnerving. He nearly dropped the bottle again when he felt your hand slide onto his shoulder before giving it a heavy and firm squeeze, full of intent. He nearly convinced himself he was hallucinating, hesitant to look up. Was this all just a mirage he had dreamt up, brought about by the scorching heat? But as your hand slid down to his firm bicep, delivering a gentle squeeze, it was confirmed to him that this was real.

“Miss… What are you doing?” Despite having downed an entire bottle of beer, Arthur’s throat became instantly dry. He finally willed himself to look up at you, a chill wracking through his body when he made eye contact with your icy eyes. Eyes colder than any drink you could offer him, and it suggested that perhaps, you had something that could quench his thirst better than any drink as well.

“Why don’t we celebrate a little more?” You swiped your tongue over your bottom lip, maintaining that same innocent smile. But the two of you were beyond the point of ignorance for what this was leading to; all it would take for this to escalate was for someone to say it.

Your other hand slid around his shoulder, both of your hands coming to knead at his shoulders. You skillfully worked the muscles in his shoulders, making occasional comments about how hardworking he must be in order to be this tense. Meanwhile, Arthur sat in his seat, trying to weigh out in his head whether this was okay or if this was already too far. How much farther would this get? Would it go beyond the point of being able to say he didn’t engage in adultery? How long would your husband be gone for? Would he find out? You could say Arthur came onto you and he’d have no reason not to believe you.

“Miss, I really don’t think I should be here anymore.” He didn’t turn to face you, occupying himself with playing with the bottle.

“Why not?”

Arthur was unsure of how to proceed. There was no way he was reading your signals wrong. You were feeling his chest up at this point, and so far, he’d made no movements to get your hands off of him. He’d be lying if he said part of him didn’t enjoy this. But what if he was reading this wrong? But how could he? It couldn’t have been more in his face.

“Well, you’re… married…” He finally mustered up. Being reminded of your husband at a time you were supposed to be enjoying yourself nearly drove you to anger. You rolled your eyes and scoffed, confirming something in Arthur’s head.

“Let’s not be dumb here.” There was a sudden seriousness in your voice that made Arthur nervous. “I’m tired of looking dumb to everyone on the farm while my husband goes out and fucks some birds in town.” You squeezed Arthur’s shoulder and moved around his body to face him now. Perhaps it was your honesty or your assertiveness, but not much else needed to be said. There was a sacred moment of understanding between the two of you that did not need to be verbalized.

When your husband later found out, you wouldn’t have been able to recount to him the details of the time it took to get from the kitchen table to your shared bed. Time sped up the instant you crashed your lips onto Arthur’s, any tinge of hesitance leaving him as he kissed back hungrily. He gripped either side of your button-up and yanked, causing buttons to fly all over the bedroom floor—buttons you never bothered to pick up. You wore no chemise that day, so Arthur got an instant eyeful of your bare breasts. Arthur worked his shirt off while you slid off your skirt and drawers, leaving you completely naked. Arthur himself was only wearing his jeans at this point.

You wasted no time in pushing Arthur on his back, the same spot where your husband slept; he had a moment of clarity when his head hit the pillow where he realized just how quickly this was moving. But before he could reach the point in his train of thought where he would begin defusing this sexually charged situation, you were on all fours facing him. You lowered yourself onto your elbows as you began undoing his belt buckle, sliding the leather out the loops of his jeans and discarding it next to the bed. You hastily undid his button and zipper, making Arthur feel like he was being pounced on by a panther in the woods, ready to be mauled by your lust and desire.

Arthur rested his body weight on his elbows and watched you pull his cock out, looking on in amusement as you gawked at its size and held it next to your face in comparison. His breath caught in his throat when you licked up the side of his cock, reaching the tip and spitting a fat glob of saliva, allowing it to slide down his shaft. The two of you watched it in mesmerization before you began slathering his cock with it, swiping your thumb over his tip and circling your pad on it.

You lowered your head onto his cock, your hair coming down and framing your face while you sucked him off like curtains to a show. Arthur eyed the way your ass lifted in the air, curving into a perfect heart shape that was begging to be slapped. You wasted no time shoving his cock all the way to the back of your throat, swallowing around him as you tried to ease away a gag. You salivated around him, your body’s attempt to aid you. You slid your head back up slowly until breathing became difficult, various strings of saliva connecting you to his tip as you sucked in a breath. The strings broke and dripped down your chin, the sight so filthy and lewd Arthur almost didn’t feel bad about this.

You licked up the side of his cock before reaching the tip and licking down again. You repeated the same motion while maintaining eye contact, smiling widely as you did so. Arthur was utterly debauched, his limbs feeling too jelly-like to continue to hold himself up. He crossed his arms behind his head, relaxing fully and claiming your husband’s spot like he was the new lion that crawled into the den. You began deepthroating Arthur, bobbing your head up and down as you moaned around him. You had never blown your husband with such vigor, and much recently, you had begun refusing to sleep with him. Probably spurring him on to keep seeking out sex work. But you couldn’t care less about his history of infidelity at this moment. You could only focus on the way Arthur's face contorted and tipped back in pleasure, his lips parting to pant.

You lifted your head from Arthur, wiping your mouth on the back of your arm and eyeing him. The two of you synchronized as you climbed on top of Arthur, his hands taking hold of your own as he guided you on top of him. Arthur watched you take his glistening cock and line it up with your cunt, and in the blink of an eye, you had sunk down fully onto him.

Arthur’s eyes went wide as he watched you instantly begin to ride him, not taking a second to adjust to the sudden intrusion. Your moans began loudly, throwing your head back as you bounced yourself on his lap. You supposed this was a bigger moment than this was for Arthur. A sense of control washing over you, feeling more powerful than ever. You imagined your husband’s face if he were to walk in. The horror that would cross his features.

“Oh fuck! This is so much better than my husband…” You gasped. You gripped his shoulders and supported yourself on his, the burning in your legs increasing as you continued to ride him. Arthur eventually gripped your hips, moving you up and down with much greater force. Initially, it felt like you were fucking yourself on Arthur, but now it felt like he was the one fucking you.

Your bodies move in tandem, heavy moans and pants and groans filling the room. The sheer scandalousness of it all tipped you over as you came all over his cock. You continued to ride Arthur, despite having been satiated yourself, set on having him cum inside you.

“Finish inside me.” You demanded. His thrusts stuttered, a tinge of bewilderment in his eyes.

“Are you sure? What if-”

“Just do it, dammit.” You said through grit teeth.

After a few more minutes of thrusting, Arthur emptied himself inside you, your cunt now a spent pool of pleasure. It felt as though a deep itch inside you had finally been scratched, and Arthur began to wonder how long you had been planning something like this or if this happened completely by chance.

Golden rays began pouring in from your bedroom window, indicating a lot of time had passed. To the two of you, it felt so short. Your body shone with the afterglow of sex, the sweat glistening on your skin. You had never looked so heavenly. Arthur allowed you to be his god for the day, his savior. To you, godhood was just like girlhood, begging to be seen.

Sugar On My Tounge - Talking Heads

#red dead redemption 2 #red dead fandom #red dead redemption 2 x reader #red dead redemption community #red dead fanfiction #writing #van der linde gang x reader #arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan smut #arthur morgan x reader smut

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kadextra · 3 months

Text

Thinking hard about the organization of the federation again it’s just soooo interesting to get more peeks into how they operate through the hints we’ve gotten

like the “9 keys” thing in the most recent cinematic seems to imply there’s 9 authority figures in the federation, each holding a key. is Quesadilla Island’s manager “Mr. Duck” one of them? is each keyholder in charge of running a different island, but they all work together to make major decisions like island resets? bc having the key clearly gives the ability to make drastic changes to an island

then I wonder if the Watcher got rid of the previous Egg Island manager and stole their key to make purgatory. or still is the original holder, and is actually a member of the federation, but got corrupted by shadow virus and went nuts? I mean if his rank outclasses Cucurucho then it’d make sense why it doesn’t know who he is, probably isn’t authorized to

and Elena’s talk about there being different departments in the federation, she’s part of the Genetics department. only two others have been blatantly namedropped in the lore before, which are the Census Bureau & Design Bureau. tbh there has to be security & tech departments too, trained security guards exist and so do complex federation machines

I love how lately we’ve been getting lots of clues about the federation, please give me more qsmp. keep showing us more of the inner workings of your big bad dystopian organization qsmp I’m eating it up

#qsmp #qsmp federation #starts shaking I remembered the ice chamber dungeon had 9 floors #qsmp theory

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is-the-owl-video-cute · 1 year

Note

okay, i have no one else to say this to, and ARAs make me feel rabid. Sorry for this, lol. I get constantly frustrated by vegans using specism as a reason for their choice,,, outside of the irony that most of the ones i’ve seen online are super racist and ableist with more care for animals than the people who farm their food. I just think the argument is incredibly hollow. There is constantly more evidence that plants have sentience, so why are animal lives prioritized over plants? with this knowledge wouldn’t an omnivorous and sustainable diet be the most ethical from an anti-specist perspective?

They will never care about plants because many of them go by the “I don’t eat it if it has a face” mantra despite that being quite reductive and not even inclusive of most animals let alone plants or fungi which function on such a high level humans can’t even fully perceive its scope.

They’ll say omnivores only eat animals because we see them as “less than” which they acknowledge as being wrong but if you mention plants they go on about how OBVIOUSLY that’s different because a plant doesn’t have REAL feelings because they don’t have brains or even a basic central nervous system, which, is arguable, but more to the point is really not any different from saying a pig doesn’t have REAL value since it can’t read and doesn’t even have opposable thumbs.

They will flaunt that it’s difficult to argue that speciesism is fake without using an argument a white supremacist would make about poc, but it’s difficult for them to argue for the life of a plant or fungus not mattering without it sounding like something a filthy carnist would say about steak.

Point being, the tactic they use to claim comparing black people to livestock as not being racist is a very easy tactic to redirect at them because the fact of the matter is that humans have a very limited perspective. No matter what you do, you’ll always see the world through the lens of a human being.

It’s easy for a human to sympathize with something they can relate to. A pig? One of the closest genetic relatives to humans and express a lot of human-like opinions through their actions. That’s actually why I don’t personally eat pork. It’s easy to sympathize with a pig. Many people are more okay with eating fish because they’re cold blooded, slimy, don’t have arms or lungs or legs or anything a human can easily relate to, they don’t even have eyelids or a complex heart, so of course they don’t bat an eye to fishing in comparison to hunting because a fish is more primal and feels less human. Then there’s invertebrates, very few people feel guilt eating a crab, they’ll even justify boiling lobsters alive if you tell them it tastes better! After all, is that even REALLY a face? Which part is their mouth? What are those creepy antennae? Perhaps it isn’t even fit to eat since it looks so alien to humans.

Even for the plight of an insect most ARAs can stand by their principle, but what is it that makes plants and mushrooms different? No, they don’t have a face, but they still respond to different stimuli, plants and fungi can even send messages to others in their colony to warn of danger and more that we don’t really understand yet.

The average person doesn’t care about squashing a bug because they don’t see enough of themselves in it to care about its life, so why do ARAs see no issue in harming plants and fungi just because they don’t see enough similarity between them and animals?

To live, you have to take away from the life of another. That’s how life works. You can adjust your diet to suit your ethics, I certainly do, but if you’re going to try to guilt and force it on others then you could at least try to be less hypocritical.

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theriu · 4 months

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Just reading Genesis and now I’m thinking about how even some Christians argue that Earth can’t literally be 6,000–7,000 years because of all the varieties of animal subspecies, like microevolution doesn’t WORK that fast, it MUST be a metaphor that Creation only took seven days!

But if you’re going by the Bible, it also says people used to live over 900 years? Which def isn’t how we humans work anymore? And all humans and animals today descended from those on the Ark, yet inter-family marriage wasn’t banned by God for many centuries, suggesting intensely rich genes pools that hadn’t yet been spread out enough for closely-related unions to cause genetic deformities?

I’m just saying, we might be assuming a lot to think biology today is anywhere NEAR identical to what may have been goin’ on in the early days.

#River ponders #Microevolution #Old earth #young earth creationism #Christianity

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dhampling · 3 months

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one more fem!reader, 2.9k

“You are truly selfless, Astarion. Ilmater in the flesh.” He rocks her slightly. Kisses her small head. “Don’t listen to your mother, darling. If you’re alone in your perfection you’ll be fighting off every eligible hand in Faerûn when you’re bigger. Wouldn’t want that burden solely on you now, would we?” - Your home is quaint. Astarion continues to insist it isn’t busy enough. astarion x fem!reader word count: 2.9k a/n: this is VERY FLUFFY and VERY SMUTTY. VERY, VERY SMUTTY. ALSO VERY FLUFFY. breedy stuff, graphic descriptions, milkers, basically filth. read parts one, two, and three respectively but can probably be read alone. afab reader.

Your home is quaint. Astarion continues to insist it isn’t busy enough.

Not enough chaos, he argues; sipping from a glass as a king may a chalice, ruminating, swilling; tipping his head from side to side in measured consideration, often with youngling in one arm as you talk late into the early hours. Incense clouds you in a rich haze of ashy whirls.

How perfect would it be if we could both hold one? Or even two in tandem?

“Just think. If we continue now, they’ll all have left sooner. More time for us.” He reasons with an airy gesture, a satisfied smile.

You hum

“If we’re arguing along those lines then there’s certainly a case to be made for no more now, don’t you think?” You whisper, running a finger down the infant’s cheek as he holds her.

Astarion sighs. Looks down at the small gurgling thing in the crook of his arm with a quiet grin, too lovestruck to have any real belief in your rebuttal.

You sit in a huddle on the lounger, blankets swallowing the three of you. He keeps her close while you work inroads into a book you’ve been meaning to read since before she was born. The open shutters across the room give a perfect view of the speckled night sky.

He’s genuinely proud. Smiles like an idiot. Often forgets the frightfully draining toll that your pregnancy and her subsequent birth took on you when he waxes lyrical to his patriars about his plans to expand the brood as soon as possible. The women tend to look straight your way with a relatable pity.

On occasion he even has the tendency to talk like he had a real part in any aspect of her nine month gestation beyond conception, which you’ll remind him fast with a sharp elbow that he certainly did not.

He’s an idiot. A beautiful one, but an idiot nonetheless.

“But look at her! She’s perfect. Absolutely perfect. We can’t simply deny the world more of this. It’d be criminal. ’

He turns and presses a soft kiss to your cheek.

‘I’m past that now, obviously; so I do feel my bare minimum, most humble contribution to society can be in the spreading of our perfect genetics throughout the whole of Toril.”

His hand lifts as if in visualisation. You paw it back down, eyes returned to the pages.

“You are truly selfless, Astarion. Ilmater in the flesh.”

He rocks her slightly. Kisses her small head.

“Don’t listen to your mother, darling. If you’re alone in your perfection you’ll be fighting off every eligible hand in Faerûn when you’re bigger. Wouldn’t want that burden solely on you now, would we?”

You scoff with a smile.

“That’s if any of them are able to get remotely close with you lurking about, love.”

He grimaces in good humour and tilts his head once more. Clicks his tongue.

“We’ll cross that barrier when we come to it, I’m sure.’

Gently he shuffles even closer to you, leaning to smatter your candle-warm face in a surprise flutter of giddy kisses. Eyes soft, unhindered.

This may just be the most gooey you’ve ever seen him.

‘You are right, though. I am missing the gory beauty in a good pile of viscera. I don’t necessarily see that fading in the coming decades.”

“I am always right.”

Astarion brushes a wayward hair down by your ear and gives one last kiss.

“That you are, my dear. Always.”

His sentiment rattles in your head for a while. Sitting in the shop with babe in arm, balancing the books while he trances back home, you find yourself driven to wreck by the unholiest visions of him.

Burning heat. Underclothes missing.

Fingers ghost the burgeoning swell under your immaculate dress skirt.

Molten hot, sticky linen; keening desperately into the palm of his hand as you lean over the counter.

Fraught.

A veritable army of his children born from you.

There’s a charm in the way he pleads his case to you. You’re not one to deny him when he finds his joys - gods know he’s endured enough of that during his life - and you know all too well you bartered on the idea of three that first night.

You think long back to the night you met out in the wilderness.

How scared he must’ve been in retrospect; how haughty he came across. The rake. The rogue. How you’d slept with a knife strapped to your garter because you simply couldn’t get a grasp on his energy, what he wanted from the tadpole.

Astarion. Now every part the housecat.

You weigh the pros and cons in your mind.

Admittedly, the cons list is large.

You dislike delving into your own complications regarding the birth of the dhampling now sleeping soundly in your arms because for the most part, they feel trivial. Moot. So many beings across the realms rear young every single day.

However, you remember refusing to let yourself forget the sheer scalding pain many do.

The days of fraught groaning in that dark sweaty chamber. The awful, awful hunger. Blood.

The paranoia over any possible gaps in the heavy shutters. Asking Astarion to step in front of the window time and time over to check for the smallest of notches or splits, the hysterical fear of the sun coming into contact with the infant. Both breaking into tears from sheer exhaustion and heightened tension more times than you can recall.

The blood from your womb. Rancid. He later assured that if anything it was a genuinely indulgent smell; but to you it smelled of rot. Decay. White sheets covered in brown spidery spatters.

Then the relief. Unbridled. Wailing and wailing and wailing.

A part of you enjoys it. He knows you do. The quiet dominance carrying his child implies; the lifelong commitment it ensures.

And her.

The love of your life. Small and warm and breathing yet coloured with the pallid tones of her father. Reddened eyes, pointed ears. When she latches you now feel the sharp pins of burgeoning fangs.

He gave her to you. He gave you a life of normalcy; where the prospect of a future is real, as opposed to a far-flung hope shared over a bottle of cheap ale. Devastatingly beautiful, life-ruiningly stupid; and all yours. You had to teach him how to use a kettle, for Lathander’s sake. You still want him to fuck you, even after that.

But you love him. Ridiculous as it is, that love is more than enough. More than you ever hoped your lot in life to be.

If he wants you to give him babies, he can have babies. You want babies, but only if they are, indeed, his.

You sigh with a content resolve. Though life is long, these moments feel shorter and shorter.

Your home together will never see hazy stasis again.

The moment dusk begins to blossom you head home in new rain.

You whip through the door after balancing the close of your parasol with the carrier, satchel forgotten in the entryway and shoes quickly slipped under the bench. The wind outside whips furiously against the shutters and the unending downpour of rain threatens to encroach on your worn terracotta tile.

You carry the youngling carefully up the stairs as Astarion calls after you and place her in the cot, planting a firm kiss on her head and watching for a few moments until she settles.

He’s still sat whining in the den when you descend and turn the corner.

Glasses balanced on his nose, cross legged and covered in patchwork throws. Book balanced on one leg.

“What have you done to her? Why can’t I see her-’

You flit to him and close the book while he continues to protest loudly, placing it onto the carpet and sitting snugly in his lap. Legs astride his thighs, calves wrapping around his waist. Glasses placed on the sill.

‘What have you done?! Answer me woman!” He shrieks as you laugh, bringing his hands to your own waist and holding you tight. Shaking you up and down on his thighs like a bottle of Soldier’s Champagne. Eyes wide as yours in fresh glee.

“I love you. I love you.” You murmur through giggles, pressing your forehead to his. He laughs loudly.

“I love you too! But where is my daughter?!” He is taken aback in the most pleasant of ways - mouth wide in a clueless grin, brows furrowed. Puzzled.

You still in a wide smile.

“You saw me take her upstairs! She’s fine! Idiot!”

“Okay! Brilliant! Why-’

He gestures up and down at your bubbling form.

‘Why this!?”

You lean into him once more - not missing the way his eyes blow out when looking at your joyous lips - and bring him straight by the lapels before pulling him in for the deepest kiss you can give. Hungry, jubilant; life-worn and yet happy. So incredibly happy.

“What in the hells is going on?!” He laughs into your mouth between the little kisses you press to his lips in quick succession, cupping his face in your hands then wrapping your arms over his shoulders.

“Another one. Let’s do it.”

It takes him a few moments of blankly staring with the same wide smile plastering his face.

“What?”

“Another little child thing. With you. With me. Ours. Yes?”

It almost looks as if Astarion is going to crumble under the weight of your words.

The same stupid smile, unchanged. Eyes on the precipice of an incredibly serious emotion entirely dependent on your next words.

“Really?”

“No.”

“What?”

You shake your head and laugh.

“Of course really. Really really.”

Every single part of him switches alight. He bounces you in his lap once more and you see it in him. The joy. The plan coming to fruition. His stupidly reverent love for you and the dhampling asleep upstairs, the many ways in which he wants to see just how full the heart can grow with each one.

“Really really really?”

His voice drops to a low whisper. The honey tone. Dulcet and laced with ribbons of clandestine hope.

You roll your eyes fondly.

“Really really, really, really.”

Shirts delicately washed ruffle by intricate ruffle hanging beside the wood stove in the glass-room. Hands fresh of suds. Towel dried, oat balm. The faintest whiff of Noblestalk.

You smile knowingly.

“She’s asleep?”

You whisper a whine; crawling forward on the counter with your elbows, panting, intuitively angling at where you anticipate him once he sees you.

“Not for long, I-’

Astarion’s voice spasms on seeing the subtle shake of your hips. The reverberation of your ass.

‘I think.”

A growl.

“Quick. Now.”

He bunches your skirt at your waist by the hem and loosens the soft ties of his night trousers. Presses his newly freed cock flush against the pillow of your ass and reaches around your front to run icy fingers down the centre of your already keen wetness. A fire tool, a glacier, the hiss-relief of his incendiary touch as his hips curl up into your core.

“Bend over. Keep that skirt up.”

Your underclothes are tugged unceremoniously to the floor as he kneels, lifted leg-by-leg from you and shimmied aside. Lifts his perfect head under the front of your houseskirt and his nose unexpectedly pressures your clit, his forehead resting into the flesh of your pubic bone as he licks a wanton stripe along your sex. Affixes his lips around your sodden hole and indulges himself in tongue fucking you for a brief minute, savouring ever drop of your lust-hazed salt. Your back arches and you wish for not a single thing than to suffocate him between your burning thighs as he gives you the most immense pleasure with that infamous mouth.

Not now. He would probably cry.

Wasted opportunity.

Wasted opportunity to fuck you full of his cum.

Every chance you’re fertile is one he wants his cock filling you to the very hilt, rocking shallowly against the very barrier of your cervix just so he can be sure every last drop carries, to impregnate you once more.

His hand - pooling with your free-given spittle - strokes his aching prick with learned urgency as he takes his fill from your soak into his waiting mouth.

“Fuck me. Please, fuck me.” You stutter as you buck your hips, fucking yourself on his tongue.

He has the nerve to laugh, soundwaves resonating deep within the attraction of your heated core.

Shifts to take your clit between his lips and suckles, rolling over the bunch of engorged nerves with a thoroughly debauched tongue.

“Go on. Beg for it.” He speaks barely above a whisper, gravelly in intonation.

You can’t see his face but you just know his eyes are heavy-lidded in the anticipatory pleasure of hearing it.

Hearing that you want him to fuck you like a bitch in heat.

That you need him to pump his swollen head to white-hot relief between your spongy soaked walls; to smatter your cunt with his cum, to make you round by his doing once more.

“All the prespill you’re wasting in your hand could have had it, you know.’

You whisper quietly, knowing you don’t want the youngling asleep in her room to wake. You’re seething with pure lust.

‘Could’ve had the fertile seed. The one to give us life again.”

He growls, leaving his latch on your clit with one last long lick before standing and moving flush to your ass once more. He smacks the plump flesh as quietly as he can muster.

“Say that again and I’ll have to fuck you with my fingers first next time. Make sure we don’t miss anything.” He hisses.

You stifle a wanton laugh.

“Don’t threaten me with a- ah!”

He bobs at the entrance to your cunt, soaking his own weeping slit.

Astarion doesn’t waste time with ceremony as he takes your eager cunt in one fell swoop; cock bruising your insides in an agonisingly beautiful burn. His moans are shaky with sheer pleasure. Every one of your nerves are set alight as he stills for a moment at the hilt.

You’re almost sure if you moved even an inch now while he adjusts he’d ejaculate there and then.

“Say it.” He whispers, leaning over you as you arch over the counter. His hand moves to your belly and presses the skin over his cock hard.

The searing feeling of every single inch of him. The ghost of a whimper. Your eyes roll into your skull.

At any other time you’d joke.

But you - at the very hottest moment of your heat cycle - picture nothing aside from the leaking red slit of his cock currently rubbing in the slightest of ruts at the tip of your cervix, leaking prespill into your hungry womb like glacial water at the height of midsun.

Your walls tighten around him as he presses even harder into the spot just below your tummy.

“Take me.”

He snaps.

Pulling back to secure either side of your waist in both hands, he starts rutting furiously into you over and over, shallow wet glubs, hellbent lust evident in the cream ring crowning your waiting hole. The crease by his brow as his face crumples in desperation time and time again.

His fixation on your point of connection is unbreakable, watching the bounce of his cock as he fucks it into you; each twinge potentially giving the leakage that gives you it. The thing he desires most.

Another baby.

You’re cresting on the edge as it is. Between your duties to your young daughter, your own intellectual pursuits, and Astarion’s tailor shop; it’s been far too long since you’ve copulated as frantically, as desperately as you are now. Every pump inside you is another closer to glory and your fingers work your clit with the joyous fervour of a newly anointed priest.

He continues to fuck you against the counter.

The press of your heavy tits against the solid wood, the pebbling of milk-sodden nipples through your thin nursing blouse giving the dark oak a parallel run of glossy streaks with each of his thrusts.

Fucking hells.

Another one. Another dhampir. Mother of two, his again and again. Three become four. You will it to be as you watch the milky swirls on the counter.

You’ll be bursting with him once more. The sheer ruin.

The white hot glare of your orgasm comes thick and fast, and it takes everything in you not to shriek in sheer pleasure.

He sags.

Stutters.

Groans silently, aching cock kicking violently against your walls as he releases through the clench of your own spasms. Ropes upon ropes of cum plugged deep at the entrance to your cervix with the engorged head of his prick.

You roll your hips to aid him through his release, rocking a little back and forth to ensure the pointed tip spears every bit of his seed where necessary.

It takes a few moments for the white-blind to subside, for the beleaguered groans to give way to sloppy, soft kisses down your shoulder blades.

He stays until you hear the sound of stirring upstairs, lifting a hand to ensure you’re hearing correctly.

“I’ll go. Lie down, hips up?”

You laugh.

“Got it. Glad to see the doting in full effect so soon.”

One last kiss on the stretch of your neck. Thoughtful. Quiet. He holds you like he never wants to let go.

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

#astarion #astarion x reader #my writing #bg3 #astarion ancunin #dadstarion #nsft #three. minimum.

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cyren-myadd · 3 months

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Rant about Eywa theories

Eywa is one of the most interesting concepts in the Avatar universe, imo. The concept of an interplanetary consciousness that every native organism can "interface" with is so cool. One thing that really fascinates me about Eywa is how she goes about "protecting only the balance of life" as Neytiri explained to Jake. As of Avatar 1, Eywa did not react to the human threat mining and destroying the forest for several years, nor the genocide/abduction of the Sarentu clan, even though Eywa would've been aware of what was happening when the Na'vi shared their memories with her soul trees. She only reacted to the threat AFTER she was exposed to human memories of the destruction of earth when Jake interfaced with her via his avatar body, and then again when she interfaced with Grace’s human body. The reaction was similar to an immune response within a body attacking a foreign virus, with native fauna mobilizing to attack anything that registered as alien. One interesting thing of note about the immune response is that the animals were not physically connected to Eywa when they attacked, which means Eywa can somehow send commands to organisms “wirelessly.” This phenomena could also explain how the atokirina conveniently show up to stop Neytiri from killing Jake. Anyway, the immune response won the final battle of A1, in A2 we saw the immune response can't protect Pandora in its entirety. The recoms could get past the immune response undetected, and Bridgehead and the whaling ships didn't face an immune response at all.

Another interesting thing about Eywa we learned from the original script for Avatar 2, is that she is confirmed to have caused Grace’s pregnancy. Norm describes Kiri’s birth as “parthenogenesis,” which is a biological process in which an egg produces viable offspring without sperm from a male. (idk if the script needs a spoiler warning, so I'm putting one just to be safe) Based on the fact that Jake describes the pregnancy as “a mystery,” we can assume parthenogenetic birth isn’t something normal to the Na’vi’s alien reproductive cycle. On earth, parthenogenesis is only found in invertebrates and some plants. Assuming that Na’vi reproduction is somewhat similar to earth animal reproduction (which I think we can safely do since the Sully children clearly have inherited different traits from their parents, implying that they get half of their DNA from each parent just like on earth, but they are aliens so I could be completely wrong here), Grace would’ve had gametes inside of her avatar’s reproductive system, which are cells that only contain half of the genetic material to produce a viable offspring. A complex, multicellular organism like a Na’vi couldn’t exist without a full set of genes, so in order to produce a zygote (a new cell with a full set of genes that can grow into an embryo), the other half of the genetic material must’ve come from somewhere else, and the only place it could’ve come from is Eywa herself. This means that Eywa, to some capacity, can create or at least copy and reproduce genetic material. Since Kiri is so similar to Grace, it’s possible the other half of her genes are just a complete copy of Grace.

From all this we can conclude some things about Eywa.

We know she is not:

All powerful

All knowing

A “god” in the traditional sense

We know she is capable of:

Storing memories, including memories of the deceased from the last time they connected with her

Making decisions to react to threats based on those memories

Interfacing with an alien’s nervous system

Commanding fauna

Sending signals to organisms without physical contact

Creating/changing genetic material

What is still unclear is how Eywa’s consciousness works. Is she:

A sentient individual?

A hive mind of the deceased Na’vi?

An amalgamation of consciousness built from memories?

Something akin to a biological artificial intelligence?

Now that we’ve established the things that are confirmed about Eywa, I want to get into some speculation about what else she might be capable of. Note that from this point on I’m being purely SPECULATIVE and I’m not saying any of this is for sure possible in canon, I’m just coming up with hypotheses based on info we already have. After the end of Avatar 2, it looks like Jake and the Na’vi are planning to make their stand against the RDA, but if they want any hope of winning against the RDA’s superior technology, they’re going to need a combination of a Na’vi war force and divine intervention, just like in Avatar 1. The question is, how will Eywa help them? The one form of defense we’ve seen from her is the immune response, but that can only go so far. It can be fooled by avatars and recoms, and it is not strong enough to attack a heavily fortified base like Bridgehead. Eywa is going to have to step up her game, and I’ve created three theories on how she might do that.

📢potential spoiler warning for the last theory!📢

Theory 1: The 880 Virus

Project 880 is a screenplay James Cameron wrote in 1995 that eventually morphed into the Avatar we know and love today. One element in 880 that never made it to Avatar was the counter-viruses. For every earth virus the RDA brought with them to Pandora, Eywa created a counter-virus that would stop it, protecting both native organisms and the humans from getting sick from the viruses ever again. The RDA was even planning to create vaccines using the counter-viruses and sell them back on earth. At the end of Project 880 when the RDA is forced to retreat, Jake tells them that if they ever come back, Eywa will unleash a deadly virus that will wipe out any human that dares set foot on Pandora again. Even though Project 880 is not canon, I could see James Cameron revisiting his old idea to help the protagonists shake off the RDA forever. The problem is they’d need to find a way to protect the friendly humans like Spider and Norm.

Theory 2: Avatar Kiri

Between the parthenogenetic birth and Kiri’s ability to control vines (seen in The High Ground comic) and anemones (seen in Avatar 2), the movies are clearly setting up for there to be something special about her. In both the comic scene where she controlled plants and the movie scene where she controlled the anemones, the characters around her expressed confusion that she could do so, from which we can assume those are not normal abilities of a Na’vi. Since Kiri is also established to have a deep connection to Eywa, it is possible she is meant to act as an “avatar.” In the original context of the word, an avatar is a manifestation of a deity in mortal form, so Kiri would act as an avatar for Eywa. Since Kiri is a person and not a… whatever Eywa is, she can make her own decisions and react quickly to problems without having to absorb memories first. There’s no more information to speculate about what other abilities Kiri may develop in the future, so unfortunately, there’s not much else to discuss here that we can base on any evidence.

Theory 3: If you can’t beat em, join em

📢Here’s where we’re getting into potential spoiler territory.📢 In the BTS footage for Avatar 2, there were some scripts accidentally shown which described some very interesting scenes: Spider, breathing without a mask, and Kiri confessing to Mo’at that she caused it to happen. There was also some concept art shown in Las Vegas that depicted Spider with a neural queue plugged into the underwater spirit tree with Kiri. Full disclaimer, it’s entirely possible these are scrapped ideas and will not be seen in the Avatar franchise, but for the sake of this hypothesis, let’s assume they’re legit. I’ve seen a lot of people asking the question of HOW would this happen, but I haven’t seen anybody asking an equally important question: WHY? I’m very interested in the HOW and maybe I’ll make a discussion post on it later, but for my hypothesis let’s just talk about the WHY. Even though Kiri claimed responsibility for it, I don’t think this is something she could do without the help of Eywa, since Na’vi aren’t established to have the ability to radically alter other organisms. So why would Eywa want to give a human kid the ability to breathe the Pandoran air? Sure, he’s Kiri’s friend, but Eywa has never intervened to save an individual’s life just because people cared about them before (otherwise we’d still have Neteyam RIP). As Neytiri said, “The Great Mother protects the balance of life.” Eywa did not intervene to stop the destructive mining or protect the Sarentu, she only intervened AFTER Grace’s memories showed her that the RDA could potentially cause planet-wide destruction like on earth. So if she gave Spider this life-saving ability, there must be a bigger reason for it other than just Kiri wanting him to survive. My hypothesis is that Eywa has realized what a massive threat the humans pose to Pandora, and that her immune system response is insufficient to protect her biosphere. Her solution is to behave like a virus and weaponize the humans against themselves. When a virus infects a healthy organism, it “hacks” into healthy cells and reprograms them to attack uninfected cells and produce more viruses. Eywa will “hack” Spider’s biology the same way she “hacked” into Grace’s nervous system to interface with her, and will “reprogram” him to breathe the air and have a neural queue. Spider is already loyal to the Na’vi, so she doesn’t need to do anything further to him, but what if she repeated the process with other humans? Any human who gained a neural queue would be able to experience tsaheylu and the connection between all living things. Humans who are already loyal to Eywa would be able to fight back better with their new abilities, and it would give Eywa more access to more memories to gain a better understanding of the enemy. Humans who are loyal to the RDA would be more inclined to switch sides after experiencing Eywa’s consciousness, much like Jake did. I’m aware this final theory is a bit more out there than the others, but it spawned from me trying to answer the question of WHY would Spider get the ability to breathe the air and I felt like there had to be a bigger reason than just Kiri wanting to save him. Unlike Kiri, there’s not some special significance about Spider (other than his connection to Quaritch, but I don’t think Eywa would care about that) that would make him vital to the fight against the RDA, so I thought, what if he’s not special, he just happened to be the first piece of a much larger plan? And the result is this theory.

What do you think of my theories and do you guys have any of your own to share?

TLDR: Eywa is really cool, and in the future I think she could possibly defeat the RDA by unleashing a deadly virus, giving Kiri special powers, or "converting" Spider and other humans.

#avatar #atwow #avatar the way of water #eywa #project 880 #atwow kiri #avatar kiri #kiri sully #spider socorro #avatar spider

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slugcatmusings · 5 months

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What is the Rot? Why is the Rot?

Spoiler Warning and Holy Wall of Text Batman Warning. I got WAY too into questioning the turbo-cancer here, hopefully my rambling makes sense.

So, the Rot is… weird, from a biological standpoint. Really weird, if you stop to think about it. It’s most frequently described as some variation of cancer, and it certainly fits the criteria for it. Caused by damage to DNA? Check. Multiplies uncontrollably? Check. Comes in both benign and malignant forms, one stationary and the other mobile? Big fat check. Heck, even the Rot cysts eating other creatures kind of fits, according to some research I’ve done – there are apparently cancer cells that will eat other cells, which makes sense in hindsight since cancer cells are cells that have lost important genetic restrictions, which may include whatever lets cells identify other cells as “do not eat.”

(I ain’t a biology whiz and I’m doing research on the fly while getting my thoughts out here, so take whatever I say about biology with a grain of salt)

So, Rot is clearly cancer of some kind, right? Case closed. Except when me and a friend of mine were talking Rain World theories on Discord, she brought up some interesting points that got me thinking.

First point: Rot cells obviously mutate in a way that affects FAR more than just cell replication and termination. Some of the cysts can HEAR. As far as I know, cells in the body do not hear sounds. They communicate via chemical signals and maybe, MAYBE react to temperature. Hearing involves complicated, specialized sensory apparatus to pick up on vibrations in the air. Even if you simplify it and say that it’s only vibrations, that’s STILL a multicellular thing, not a single-cell thing. It’s something that took millions of years to evolve on Earth, if not billions.

And while Rain World’s timeline goes on for long enough that it those kinds of mutations might happen eventually, Rot cysts have the ability to hear pretty much right from the start – because even the Proto-Long-Legs react to your presence like the Daddy Long Legs do, and the Rot in Spearmaster’s campaign, where Pebbles has recently contracted it, reacts the same way as it does in later campaigns. It’s already able to hear.

As far as I know, cancer just means the same cell duplicating over and over again. Are more mutations possible with each division, as errors are made in the DNA during splitting? Probably. But not to THAT extent. There’s no way a lump of cancer somehow mutated the exact complicated genetic blueprint needed to grow organs, at least not without outside interference.

Second point: Cases of Rot are way too consistent across the board. Now, we don’t have a huge sample size to work from, but from what we see from both Pebbles’ Rot, and Hunter Long Legs, they’re… pretty similar. Hunter Long Legs is basically a mobile Rot cyst. They move the same way, seem to grow the same way (starts as a growth inside/on the body before eventually freeing itself from whatever wall/flesh it grew from in some capacity and moving elsewhere), they have the same senses, and they even eat the same way, via something like phagocytosis (how white blood cells “eat” invading organisms via engulfing them and breaking them down in a sac in their main “body.”)

Now, this doesn’t tell us much, because cancer, when it does emerge, is pretty consistent in symptoms/what the mutated cells do once they start replicating. It’s pretty much the same regardless of whatever organism the cancer is happening in. But what ISN’T consistent is what causes the DNA error in the cancer cell in the first place. IRL, cancer can be caused by all kinds of things – smoking, radiation poisoning, being out in the sun too long, drinking deadly chemicals and whatnot, anything that damages DNA. But in RW, the only time we ever hear Rot talked about, or see it present, is in the context of an iterator having f*cked up while mucking around with DNA. Pebbles was trying to create an organism that could change his own genome, and No Significant Harassment created Hunter as a messenger and probably mucked something up in the process in his haste to get them to Moon.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t other causes of it, of course, we’re working with a sample size of two in an apocalyptic world with who knows how much potentially DNA-damaging stuff around, but… that’s still awfully consistent.

So, combining these points and everything we know to be canon, Rot is:

an organism that lives inside another organism

Until a certain condition is met, it cannot harm said host organism.

Once said condition is met, it goes out of control, wreaking havoc on the organism’s systems and mutating, giving it sensory capabilities and an appetite

Said condition is apparently someone messing up when re-arranging genomes, in yourself or others

It is widespread across multiple different species, at least iterators and slugcats but potentially other species as well.

Once you have a bad case of it, it is apparently NOT CURABLE. Pebbles tried everything he could think of but apparently exhausted all of his options by the time of the Survivor/Monk campaigns.

So, with all the context FINALLY laid out, here’s my wild theory: Rot isn’t a cancer. It’s a symbiote turned parasite. Specifically, I believe it’s a symbiotic microbe that lives inside the cells that make up every other creature in Rain World, and is held in check by a specific gene that all species share, and altering or getting rid of that gene causes it to go berserk, taking over and eventually mutating the host cells.

Yeah, I did watch Parasite Eve let’s plays as a kid, why do you ask? Anyway, hear me out here.

There is precedence for single-celled organisms living inside of other single-celled organisms. They’re referred to as intracellular endosymbiots (hopefully I got the spelling right there), and the most well-known one is probably the mitochondria. The powerhouse of the cell is thought to be descended from some bacteria way, WAY back that was engulfed by a larger cell and not only survived it, but BENEFITED from it. Since then those ancient proto-mitochondria and eukaryotic cells have mutually evolved to be dependent on each other. So it’s entirely possible for something similar to have happened in Rain World.

However, I don’t think it happened NATURALLY, here. Because something that’s able to take over a cell entirely and begin wildly mutating it is NOT something your average cell wants inside of it. There’s a VERY high chance of extinction if you do that. Which means that of course those funky bio-tech loving Ancients either took a look at a wildly dangerous cellular parasite and went “hmmm we can use this” or made one themselves.

Why did they do this? Who knows! Currently, I’m tied between “they needed a better powerhouse for the cell to power the various weird adaptations they’re building into various creatures,” “there was some sort of disease that this parasite gave immunity against and they wanted to make use of it,” and “it gave their creations massively powerful regeneration factors that made them much easier to maintain.” Possibly it was all three. Whatever the reason, the Ancients either found or created this parasite, and put it into their creations’ cells, hoping to reap the benefits.

Well, they got the benefits, but they also got a microbe that hijacked the cells and harnessed their pre-existing DNA blueprints to build organisms disguised as great big blobs of cancer. Which is not exactly ideal, but hey, they just had to figure out a way of keeping the cell hijacking from happening! And the way they ended up going about it was to alter the thing so that so long as there was a specific DNA sequence in the cell, it laid mostly dormant. All the benefits, none of the risks – so long as that specific string of genes remained intact.

And then BECAUSE it was so beneficial, they spread their artificial symbiote and it’s genetic reins throughout ALL of their creations, from the smallest pipe-cleaning slugs to the iterators. Which meant that as their purposed organisms replaced most of the original ecosystem, they spread the symbiote as well. Thus making it possible for pretty much ANY creature on the planet to come down with a bad case of the Rot. And with the iterators, I wouldn’t be surprised if this symbiote is tied to their self-destruction taboos. Try to cross yourself out? Well, it’s gonna maybe happen now, but it’ll be a slow painful death as you’re eaten alive from the inside and all your own parts turn against you, so was it really worth it?

And they never told their creations this perhaps even actively hid it, because why tell them the cause of the main deterrent to them mucking with their taboos? They might find a way around it. The iterators were left ignorant of how Rot works, and because of this they never figured out that Rot HAD a cure after all: rebuilding that genome that reins in the symbiote. Because why in the name of the Void would they repeat the same mistakes that gave them Rot in the first place, and potentially make it worse?

#rain world #rain world worldbuilding #serious musings #rain world headcanons #rw rot #the rot #rain world rot #rain world turbo cancer #which is not actually cancer #yes i Parasite Eved the shit out of the Rot #yes that is a verb now I take no criticisms #anywho the Rot is a byproduct of the ancients Fucking Shit Up on Purpose #and it DOES have a cure damn it #I'm not giving the robots not-actually-cancer and NOT giving them at least a chance to cure it #not mentioned above is the fact that depending on the genes altered along with the restraining gene #you might get rot with fun mutations like being able to jump from organism to organism #or Rot that outright assimilates cells from other organisms #amongst other things #plenty of FUN stories to play with there >:D

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hwsing · 26 days

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hi hi hi! i’d love to request america for the nsfw alphabet (if you want to!!!) please and thank you!

america nsfw alphabet

notes: 18+, reader is gender neutral and includes both bottom and top reader. includes: america (alfred f. jones). as always, reblogs are appreciated!

cws: me yapping as always; alfred is a bit weird but nice, creampies, roleplay, vibrators, switch! alfred. wc: about 1.7k words. not really proof read.

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

generally speaking — alfred is a wee bit dense, and so i dont think he’s the type to go above and beyond everytime, especially at first; unless you give him some specifics to work with, he’s going to provide some stuff like water food etc a shower if you want, cuddles, just general decompressing. he’ll usually ask how you’re doing as a check in, but he’s not overly inclined to pressing if you don’t say you need something hdhddh. whatever you want is yours though!! he is a sweetie deep down and is Very prone to being. ahem. whipped

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

on himself…. the general shoulder/arm region. i dont think hes particularly buff bc i dont think hes even remotely consistent with exercise but, yk those guys that like. hit the gym for six weeks and suddenly are almost ripped? he’s like that,,, just his genetics so no matter what he looks a lil beefy, esp with how much he eats. he likes how big/strong he looks

on his partner, it’s cheesy, but he’d *always* say eyes or your smile. your eyes preferably when you’re smiling, really! even if it’s from you scoffing at something stupid hes doing. what can i say he got the hopeless romantic trait from arthur

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

i Must be honest. his cum does not taste particularly good. and he cums A LOT like … i think he’s quite into creampies because he really does have the necessities to make it happen. his favourite places to cum: your mouth/face, makes him flustered to see you have to lick it off

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

this was hard because i don’t think he keeps many secrets about this, and he isn’t overly kinky to begin with. i would say that maybe he can be a bit of a creep? he’s just very enamoured by his partner and fantasies a lot, which leads to him mentally sexualizing his partner. you can argue that’s just being horny, but he feels creepy whenever he realizes he’s staring at your ass or down your shirt.

by extension, he doesn’t usually have the balls to steal your underwear but if your laundry is out in the open in any way and you aren’t in the room…………….. you cannot blame him for touching them and taking a sniff okay?

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

in our day and age? definitely a good amount of experience. i dont think he’s quite as experienced as he may seem, which embarrasses him on the low but he compensates with his outrageous confidence anyways. by no means close to a virgin though. he still gets around

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

okay so he might say reverse cowgirl but in reality it’s missionary doesnt matter if he’s top or bottom. he just thinks its a lame answer. side note, he loves to hold hands during missionary.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

YOU ALREADY KNOWWWWWWWWWWWW.. he can be more serious (especially if roleplay is involved, he gets oddly invested…) but for the most part he really really really just wants you n him to have a good time so he’ll put a lot of pressure on himself to be entertaining

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

he trims and washes well but basically never shaves down there. he will if you ask but he just prefers to keep it trimmed and let it be for the most part. isn’t insanely hairy anyways though

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

alfred values the intimacy of sex quite a bit to be honest. he may not showcase this if you two aren’t close yet, but if you are, it’s so obvious how much he loves you. he’ll say it a lot too when you two are at that level — he borderline worships you in the bedroom honestly. he’s just kinda obsessed and cherishes the relationship he has with you DEEPLY

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

i really do believe he had a small addiction at one point. not much to say about that so let’s move on… back in prime playboy days he absolutely read them and other lewd magazines; nowadays, he’s actually a bit more imaginative because i think in recent years he’d pick up the belief that most visual porn on like pornhub and sites of that nature tend to be exploitative. so, he tends to break out some music and get it done. he usually doesn’t get particularly horny unless prompted, so, he can find something to think of with ease.

kind of sucks at masturbating though. he’s horrible at pacing himself, and ends up edging himself accidentally a few times because he gets too close too soon and he has to back off immediately. his poor dick is not cared for well…

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

i’ve already talked about some obvious ones throughout this alphabet, but another that randomly comes to mind is roleplay. he can feel a bit cringe about it but if he’s in the headspace he can get SO into it. obviously hero roleplay where you should reward him for saving you from the bad guy; he’d humbly dismiss the idea like a good hero, but he’s certainly not complaining when you tug down his pants and suck the life out of him in thanks!!

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

house/apartment, doesn’t matter where too much but in the privacy of your own space is what he prefers. would question god what he did to deserve it if he EVER got caught with his pants down so he’d just… prefer to keep it safe

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

so easily turned on it’s not even funny. i don’t think his sex drive is super high and sometimes it can feel a bit random — he’s just. So attracted to his partner. he’s losing the idgaf war every. single. day.

there’s the obvious — you bend over to pick something up, your lounge clothes are revealing, you eat something creamy; but, sometimes, it’s just your smile or you fixing up your clothes after they shift. it just gets him thinking…. unholy things….. he wishes he wasn’t so easy but, if you like to initiate, it’s very rare that it doesn’t immediately get him in the mood.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

not really an orgy kinda guy

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

https://www.tumblr.com/hwsing/716154815799066624/giving-head

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

depends a lot of his partner’s preferences to be honest, but generally, middle ground of rough/slow and deep. he’ll speed up and get messy as he gets close when he tops. if he’s bottoming, he prefers slow and gentle or mind numbingly rough and fast depending on the kinda day he had. sex in general can be a productive way for him to burn off stress!!

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

not a quickie lover but is a quickie truther. sometimes they’re just what’s most convenient, especially during busy times of the year for him when he’s trapped working. you’ll *know* how much he misses you, though, with the needy texts you’ll receive.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

not as much as you’d probably expect but he’s still quite experimental! he can just feel a bit embarrassed/shy experiencing or doing something new in front of someone, especially if you already are knowledgeable/have done said thing, but he’ll put on his big boy pants and manage.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

as long as you need, and after. doesn’t last all that long himself unless he tries really hard to pace himself, but his recovery time is terrifying.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

i have a hard time imagining he owns one himself, but he’s most certainly down to incorporate them, whether he has to buy them or you already own them. i think he’s particularly fond of vibrators (simple but he quite likes what he can turn you into with them!) and butt plugs

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

over all, i dont think i’d consider him a particularly big tease. he has his moments, but i think it’s more likely *you’re* the one teasing him, even if you don’t mean to be. his teasing would usually come from you being flustered or easily aroused, because not only is it cute to him, but a massive ego boost to him. win win!

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

so sorry if you have a roommate and you guys do it at your place because boy is he ever LOUD he triessss not to sort of not really but he really cannot help it. will not and cannot stop yapping, let alone the *sounds* he makes — so much moaning and groaning and blah blah.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

has sneezed when he was yanking it and it was the most uncomfortable orgasm he can ever imagine

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

a shower, 7” long 6” girth he’s thicc, notably veiny but nothing overpowering. slightly curved. safe to say he’s quite satisfied with his package.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

not particularly high. he usually needs a reason to be turned on — however, once he has a partner, suddenly a reason is often presenting itself…..

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

usually won’t fall asleep fast unless it’s past his bedtime already. just doesn’t tire very easily.

#my work #hetalia #aph hetalia #hetalia hc #hetalia x reader #hetalia headcanons #hws hetalia #america x reader #aph america #alfred f jones #alfred f jones x reader #aph america x reader

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