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#But this is admittedly also a factor

noisytenant · 6 months

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sorry, i think this might come across mean, but it is simply how i feel.

almost always i genuinely enjoy writing alt text and im glad im in the habit of doing it. but also, the idea of having someone else describe my images instead of me is so viscerally repulsive. I wonder if we could use this to get more people to write alt text. if you dont wanna write alt text then someone else decides how your post looks to people using screen readers (or people with slow internet). shudder !

and i want to be clear. the people who add image descriptions are incredibly kind and doing a great service often for little to no recognition or appreciation. And a lot of them are good at it. But it isnt about the quality of the description--they could be the best damn writer in the world, they could knock my piddly description into smithereens--if someone else ever became the voice to describe my art, or my face in a memey selfie, or literally anything i posted for public viewing, i would explode. i was born a control freak and i will die a control freak. ONLY I DECIDE MY NARRATIVE ‼‼‼

#indexed post #It would be noble to say that making my work accessible is the only reason i do it...#But this is admittedly also a factor #And as usual I recommend the “alt text as poetry” workshop which informs how i approach alt text. i want to make a summary sometime #also bc like we live in an instant gratification timeline #lots of times i share something privately on discord or on a locked acct where i know nobody needs the descs #so i can be like yayy everyone like my picture like 2 mins after i post it and get 100000 notes #and then after like an hour or the next day if its late i write the alt text which almost always takes like 2-5mins tops #and post it publicly and then im like yaayyyy ayyaya yayayyayayayyayyyay ayayayayyay #but yeah i think like as a sighted person writing alt text is its own expressive form that grants you extended control over your art #so even if you dont personally know or feel the impact of alt text on others #You can come to appreciate it for self-serving reasons HAHA.#the optics of this are obviously not as good but personally i think the pragmatic results outweigh the purity of the sentiment imo #and curb cut effect etc.#anyways. just my musing for the night

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reinabeestudio · 6 months

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Still thinking about the Rednecks (frozen Red, S!3v3n and Glitchy Red).... some random thoughts.... Namely, I don't think the original pokepastas are scary.

I mean, sure: a game directly interacting with you can be a scary concept. But considering how much the concept of 'the game is self-aware and knows about you' has been done the last decade, it isn't as impactful as 10 years ago or so. Add the trope of 'child-friendly media is actually not so friendly' because many kids like getting scared to some extent (as long as things ends nicely☝).

Anyway, my point is that I don't think these three are that scary (ok S!3v3n strangling his brother as revenge when it wasn't Mike's fault is kinda insane). Perhaps eerie within their own contexts but I always thought they were rather tragic characters.

One died slowly & unknowingly killing him and his Pokéteam after waiting atop of a freezing mountain by himself for years. His decaying body, mutilated by frostbite, probably forever frozen in time due to the low temperatures (<- assuming it's similar to Mt Everest)

The other one is a sentient glitch that can feel every bit of pain the players put him through, vengeful and holding a tranquil fury inside of him. Whose existence is deemed as a mistake—being left to rot inside a glitched cartridge and forgotten by the world (“Am I joke to you?”). It's no wonder he eventually snaps during the story.

The last one, a guy filled with such deep, wrongly-processed grief and loss after an accident that costed the life of his most beloved friend. Seeking the power of IT to bring her back, he becomes a remorseless shell that will do anything to bring her back—or avenge her death. Losing much of his humanity on the way as he seeks that power. Which doomed his brother (in his eyes, the one that killed his friend) once he obtained it.

And like, I'm aware that's the point of most creepypastas: stories rarely end well. But I still think it's rather saddening, what these characters became due after tragedy strikes them. 'It's unfair' could be said, as childish as that thought is.

Anyway thanks for coming to me TED talk ✨

#im not being like ''oooh im so brave i dont find them scary🤨' I SWEAR AKJSDFKDS'#i get scared easily. even as a kid. so its not that i promise SDKLFDLSD #this is not a well thought post btw its just me saying whatever the hell crosses my mind AHAHSDFGJ #so dont expect like. a Smart analysis #this is also probably not an Original thought either AHAHAHDSFJ #but yknow. my two cents & such #also admittedly these pokepastas are kinda Edgy(tm) DSKLFJDK reading them years later when you're older-it loses that Scary Unknown factor #specially Glitchy Red's. like.... idk I always thought his pokepasta was the saddest. even as a kid #bc the others had choice in some way. within their own stories #but he had no choice. he truly was Doomed by the Narrative huh #man dot png #yomiel speaks

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oldscratch-thebigd · 1 year

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Anyway if anyone's getting nervous abt my thoughts on crispr since. Y'know. Some ppl want to use it for eugenics. I don't think that editing our own dna is a good idea and I think it should be approached with caution however I am very interested in learning abt it and I also think that xenotransplantation is very cool

#aero.txt #eugenics mention #I like the idea of being able to use it to cure lethal and uncurable diseases however I admittedly still am not too informed on it #And also think that it should be approached with a lot of caution since uh. There is a LARGE risk factor #But also it's cool as shit to learn abt

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yeleltaan · 2 years

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//Hello everyone! Alright, here’s an update on things:

I’ve got one more exam to do before I’m done. The good news is that I’ve got plenty time to prepare it, and I’ve decided I’m not going to wait until then to do the things I want to do. That being said, I know it’s going to take me a little while to truly pick up the pace here and I’d like to give a little priority to adopting some healthy habits and improving my lifestyle.

There’s one thing I wanted to address though. I realize that I haven’t really engaged much with the dash and most blogs, both the newcomers and the returning faces (which, by the way, I’m very glad to see back- seriously, it’s lovely to see characters embark on new stories when they seemed to have reached a conclusion, and watching writers come back to the fandom after some time away).

Truth is, I’ve found the dash overwhelming lately. This comes partially from me being too busy to engage, and therefore experiencing something like FOMO because I can’t quite keep up with stuff and be a part of it. The Soulsborne RP community is either getting bigger or becoming more visible to me, and that’s great, but it does also present a challenge to me because if I’m engaged in your character and/or blog, I want to see what you do! I want to see all these things you’ve put effort into, I want to give you feedback, send an ask here and there, have my muse interact with yours!

If I give your post a like, I haven’t just looked at it. If it’s a drabble/headcanon/thread, I’ve read it and re-read it to get a good understanding of it and try to find whatever clues or references you’ve put in there. Perhaps it’d be better for me and the other mun if I gave likes more liberally, but I don’t know, it’s important to me that if I give your post a like, I’ve genuinely had a moment where I’ve stopped and paid attention to nothing but that exact post.

Anyways, where I’m getting with this is that I do feel rather bad that I haven’t quite been able to... welcome? you with the attention and energy I would have liked to have given you. I hope that despite the delay with which I approach you or continue our interactions, we can make up for lost time later.

I’m unsure how I’m going to handle this. I don’t intend to unfollow anyone because of this, as my issue isn’t a lack of interest but my difficulty displaying it and putting it into practice. I do think I’m going to keep a fairly passive attitude (for now) when it comes to seeking new RP partners though, because I cannot comfortably seek and approach some of the blogs I’ve seen mutuals interact with when I’m already struggling to give my time to said mutuals. I’ll still be happy to plot and write interactions with blogs that approach me though.

Anyways, thank you for your patience once more and hopefully it won’t take long for you to see me more here. May things go well for you!

#posting this at late hours (for me!) because I am driven by impulse #ooc #I'm also admittedly hesitant to start liking posts sometimes... it's silly but when I haven't really engaged with someone for a long time #it feels odd to break the ice with certain things. It's probably not worth it to think that way and I am working towards fixing that #working towards feeling less anxious about the simple stuff. Because we all need some feedback and interest from people to keep going #and feel appreciated #and I don't like that this flaw of mine gets in the way of me showing my appreciation to the things you put hard work into #nothing prompted this btw- it's just that I've been thinking about this a lot last year #and with the resurgence that came with Elden Ring. I hope people don't interpret my quietness like there's some 'bad blood' going on #I don't want to like... limit myself to one spot in the fandom either #I think that's one of the biggest factors to how I initially lost my drive to write Ornstein: got too comfortable in one spot of the fandom #so when most of those people started to leave or become inactive I had a really rough time approaching the others #even though I genuinely had nothing against any of them. I don't want that to happen here and I want to be engaged in the community #'Croc don't use the tags of your ooc post to add 50% of the information' challenge when #jokes aside. I hope you're all doing alright. Looking forward to making these posts less necessary! ^^#also I hope the 'this is how I treat likes' part doesn't come off as pretentious. I only want to give a little perspective and clarify that

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fma03envy · 2 years

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It kind of bothers me when people talk about how they don't think Chara's evil but then interpret the Soulless Pacifist ending as Chara killing everyone

To be clear, I'm not implying that these two views are mutually exclusive- they aren't. What bugs me in particular is the implications this would have about Frisk

Flowey gives the player the same message about letting Frisk be happy after the True Pacifist and Soulless Pacifist endings. So we know for a fact that Frisk is happy in both versions. Therefore, if Chara did kill everyone in the photo, that would also mean that Frisk is perfectly happy with all their friends being murdered

Saying "Chara's not some sadistic murder enthusiast. Frisk may be though" is very much Not Better you know?

#admittedly I'm also not big on this bc it ties into the ''chara was corrupted by the player'' theory #but I can't really complain there because I do accept that that's a perfectly valid interpretation #(it's just not *my* explanation for why Chara isn't evil)#(and it's slightly annoying when people act like it's the only interpretation that doesn't demonize them)#but anyway #I feel like there's a ton of Undertale interpretations that just. don't factor in at all the implications on Frisk's characterization #adrien says stuff #utdr #chara #frisk #headcanons analysis au ideas and such

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opaiescents · 11 months

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ive been spending the last 36 or so hours just absolutely fully consumed by making a rhythm heaven custom remix of one of the songs off of of montreal’s objectively ‘worst’ record. im putting so much time into making it perfectly timed and intuitively composed and completely playable at that too. it’s 3 minutes long. im almost finished. i forgot to eat today

#blog time #really specific combination of my autisms going on here #it’s admittedly not very difficult but i wanted to prioritize inuitive gameplay bc one of my biggest custom remix irks is when it sounds rly #good but is completely unplayable because of sporadic and confusing inputs #also the song changes tempo 3 times im proud of factoring that in

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sunshine-zenith · 10 months

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A thought — Ballister and Ambrosius’s relationship probably wasn’t public in the movie until the end. They probably weren’t secretive about it, given how Todd (someone neither of them like or would confide in) was clearly antagonistic to Ambrosius after Ballister’s jailbreak, but even then that just might be because their connection was well known — they liked each other more than any of the knights liked them, most being neutral overall to Ambrosius and outright bullies to Ballister. No one in the public seems to know about them

Media perception is a reoccurring factor in the movie, with the opening scene giving exposition in the form of a news cast. During it, Ballister is shown to be controversial, with a there being a few comments questioning the Queen’s choices related to him. Ambrosius is also brought up as someone everyone’s looking forward to seeing officially knighted, with no one questioning his relationship with Ballister or even bringing it up

While everyone is fearing and hating Ballister after the Queen dies, Ambrosius is still popular among the masses — people stop him in the streets to get his autograph. Nimona, who admittedly probably didn’t do much digging into Ballister beyond the initial news reports on the Queen’s deaths, seemed surprised that Ballister and Ambrosius had a connection. She even had an “ohhhhhh” moment after picking up on their vibe the first time they saw each other post-arm chop (and yeah she initially calls Ambrosius Ballister’s nemesis, but she clearly clocks that something romantic was going on given the “arm chopping is not a love language!” comment). She also asks if he wants to die in a (literal) closet, which like. Y’all.

Before the Queen’s death, all their PDA is in private (on the catwalk) or subtly around other knights (helping each other put on their armor with lots of heart eyes and lingering hands). Otherwise, their interactions are those of Two People Who Are Close but aren’t necessarily explicitly romantic (Ambrosius wanting to throw hands on Ballister’s behalf, teasing each other, Ambrosius cheering with the crowd). Granted, there wasn’t a lot of screen time for them to just be happy before Everything Went Wrong.

We can’t really judge whether they were private from their interactions after the Queen’s death, since most are focused on a “so this traumatic thing happened and I don’t know where we stands right now” vibe or have them just fighting. The three times Ambrosius says he loves Ballister, one was just the two of them on the catwalk, one was in a mental rant and not actually out loud, and one was while they were trying to hide their identities. Ballister continues to defend Ambrosius, saying he’d believe them if they could just talk and that the arm thing is just “complicated,” “part of their training, up until Ambrosius outright tries to arrest them (which might as well be a breakup without saying “we’re breaking up”).

In the comic, the Director says she knew about their relationship and that she disapproved. Given how much she manipulates things, it wouldn’t surprise me if she knew in the movie, and encouraged them to downplay things at least — “you should keep your private lives private so you don’t taint your public images/yes we support you, obviously, but you’re here to protect the people, not show off to them/you don’t want to overshadow things with more controversy, wait a few years until after you’re knighted/what if this is just a phase, it would be a mess to clean up if you go public now/people will talk if they hear Gloreth’s only current descendant, a promising young man, is being courted by someone they aren’t certain about who comes from nothing and can’t pass your genes on/you have each other, shouldn’t that be enough?/etc.”

We don’t see them be in a relationship publicly until after the wall — the symbol of fear of the unknown, systematic abuse and oppression, refusal to learn and grow, and let’s be real homophobia/transphobia — comes down and the Director — the one going to murderous extremes out of fear of change — is dead

I dunno. This movie is a large celebration of being queer, but it’s also about how queer people are demonized by society to the point of everyone suffering. Ambrosius is the model minority everyone loves but no one knows because all eyes are on him; Ballister is both tokenized and targeted from the moment the public meets him, having to prove himself over and over until the public unquestionably turns on him entirely; and Nimona is called a monster for just being herself. All three already had to hide who they really were. I’m not 100% sure if Ballister and Ambrosius were out or not about being together, but it’s not a stretch to see, and it fits in with the themes/arcs of this movie

#this is a mess #nimona #nimona movie #spoilers #ballister blackheart #ballister boldheart #ballister x ambrosius #ambrosius goldenloin #the sun shines #meta #cy meta #long post #broke 100 #broke 500 #broke 1000

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galaxysugarr · 4 months

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Hi All! I thought it was time i gave a lil update from this game and how its been going.

I'm one that tends to keep to myself till a project is fully complete or close to complete, but I've gained a lot of asks about this over time and more as of late lol. So thought I'd cut the radio silence a tad and answer a few repeat questions id gotten!

Are you working on the game?

Surprisingly, yeah.

Will this be a completed game to buy?

Definitely not, least not now. My plan is to make a basic demo of the game as building a complete game with the script and everything would take a very long time and a lot to learn!

It would also be a free to play game, as Its a fan game.

When can we see it, are you almost done, videos and updates!!!

Well... 2023 was a busy year for me personally. And as a person who is still learning to animate along with barely any knowledge of game coding. Led to me needing to learn a lot and do trial and error.

A lot of things are temporary placeholders and incomplete textures with testing. So I didn't feel they where good to share progress of.

a lot of it was me learning, trying different styles to work with the game, and sketches throughout.

Can i help with the project????

I do appreciate you all asking for help,But I don't know much about game development and working with a team on this. So it's more of a passion project for me, and so far what I have learned has been nice :>.

I didn't wanna rely and give up on the project or delay it so much due to factors so I'm workin on it alone right now till the project is farther along and more stable.

Will it look exactly like the trailer, what kind of game is it, what all do you have planned for the demo?

Admittedly I had originally made sprites and everything to match the video, but i ended up going for a more chibi type style as its easier to work with.

Its a side scrolling game with rpg like elements.

The current plan is to have two fully completed stages, a mini game, 4 playable characters (2 being Sun and Moon), and some extra features.

Will the demo be out this year?

I can't say, it all depends on how much time i work on it and learn ;o! I don't like to get hopes up, but I work it on it when I can.

Crumbs, please

Some of the daycare and model updates. It's not much, but I find it fun to run around and interact with things lol

So all and all for those really wondering about the project, its still a heavy work in progress. A fun and frustrating one for sure, but Its been nice actually learning to code and design it so far.

Hope this answered a few questions and of course you can ask other stuff about it, I don't mind.

Thank you!

#I feel like I rambled on accident #long post #tsams #tsams game

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solaariia · 2 months

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the self-concept

hellour! this is gonna be a long post!

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

i was studying for my social psychology course today (for context i'm a psych major) and read something that might be helpful for everyone who's been having doubts about manifestation subconsciously being part of our everyday lives—as opposed to something made up by the internet.

the information i'm about to provide is from actual sociologists and psychologists, so this is rooted in studies. i promise i'm not about to pull info out of my ass! this is mainly just a very very brief summary of the self concept chapter we're reading about in class.

side note, i named all the researchers in case you wanna check out their work yourself! i made this post to provide insight about our self-concept and clear limiting beliefs. :)

what is self-concept?

so we hear the term self-concept a lot in the manifestation community. Neville, Edward, Sammy, Dr Joe Dispenza, bloggers on tumblr… all of them talk about it all the time. but what does it actually mean?

the self-concept refers to the total sum of beliefs that people have about themselves. it consists of cognitive molecules that social psychologist Hazel Markus called self-schemas. these are the beliefs about ourselves that guide the processing of self relevant information. but what does this actually mean?

well, self-schemas are to the self-concept what books are to a library. if someone asks about yourself, you will probably answer with something quick like: “i am a woman” or “i am a student.” those simple attributes are part of your self-schema; if we want to go deeper, body weight is also a self-schema. for people who regard weight as a crucial part of their beliefs, something simple like a gym trip with friends or buying stuff at the supermarket may trigger thoughts about the self. but if a person is aschematic (not concerned by a certain attribute) about body weight, no thoughts will pop up.

we already know that the self is a special object of our attention. whether its a thought or a song, our consciousness is like a spotlight. this means that it can shine on one object at one point in time, yet shift rapidly from one object to another and process information outside of awareness. in this spotlight, the self is at the forefront of our minds. its what's most important to us at that moment. keep this in mind for later!

to finish with the explanations, neurologist Oliver Sacks highlighted two important points about the self:

🩷 there is a private “inner” self, and an “outer” self we show to others. if we don’t self reflect to understand how were feeling, how will we understand our emotions and actions?

🩷 the self is heavily influenced by social factors.

now–what does that last point mean? well, what we think about ourselves is rooted from childhood. if we grow up hearing “you’ll never amount to anything” or “you’re my favorite child” (extreme examples i know), then that's what we’ll ingrain in our self-concept. this notion brings me to the fun stuff–the studies!

is self-concept scientifically proven?

psychologist Gordon Gallup performed a series of studies where he put animals in front of a mirror to test if they could recognize themselves. at first, they vocalized and greeted themselves in the mirror (my dog did this too when he was a pup, he would bark at his own reflection and play with it), but after several days, only great apes seemed capable of self recognition, using the mirror just like any other human would. grooming themselves, making faces… in short, they recognized themselves!

why do i bring this experiment up? well, this proves that the concept of “me” is necessary to define our self-concept. we must first recognize ourselves as Something to become Someone.

using that same study in humans, this process of self-recognition begins between 18-24 months. which means that from this point onwards we start to define Self (consciousness).

you might read this and–admittedly–think: “oh this blog post hasn’t said anything about manifestation!” true, but i want to present the basics or self-concept first to understand how it affects our daily thoughts!

there was another experiment we talked about in one of my lectures (i do not remember who performed this study specifically, but Dr Patrick Heck did one similar to this one and the results were the same), where participants were told to take a test. half of them were told to boast about themselves, and the rest were instructed to describe themselves modestly. naturally, participants who spoke highly of themselves scored higher on these tests than participants who didn’t. so… you all see where i’m going with this.

remember how i said to keep the “consciousness is a spotlight” paragraph in mind? i’ll finally touch on it with this next and last thing i’m gonna talk about (in this post at least!).

we already established that the first step in the evolution of our self-concept is the ability to recognize ourselves as Someone. the second step, however, involves social factors. sociologist Charles Horton Cooley introduced the term looking-glass self to suggest that other people serve as a mirror in which we see ourselves. and another sociologist by the name of George Herbert added that the only way to know ourselves is by imagining the opinions of our significant others and applying them to our self-concepts. sounds familiar?

how do i change my self-concept?

Neville mentioned the “mirror-self” on his conferences too. he said that one of his favorite techniques to better his Self was to imagine a loved one speaking kindly of himself. in his book Your Faith is Your Fortune, Neville wrote: “Stop trying to change the world since it is only the mirror. Man’s attempt to change the world by force is as fruitless as breaking a mirror in the hope of changing his face. Leave the mirror and change your face. Leave the world alone and change your conceptions of yourself. The reflection then will be satisfactory.”

since the self-concept is a library (our perception of Self) made out of self-schemas (books brought to us by our peers), we can see that sometimes, what we think of ourselves is just an amalgamation of beliefs implanted to us by the people in our lives. so if we were given these books we don’t like, why should we keep them in our library?

to change these negative beliefs we have about ourselves, all we have to do is replace them with positive ones. i know, i know, this is what every person who studies loa and manifestation regurgitates over and over. its nothing that hasn’t been posted to numerous blogs or twitter threads before.

however, the point about this whole post is to tell you why that is the only way to change your self-concept. if your daily thoughts are filled with phrases like: “my sp doesn’t want me” and “i’m so broke” or “what’s the point? this is all worthless anyways.” STOP. DROP. CHANGE.

journal. write your limiting beliefs in your ipad, paper, wood, stone–whatever.

use your hands to apply muscle memory. once you have them, CROSS THEM OUT!

i can’t manifest = I CAN MANIFEST EVERYTHING I WANT

i hope i shift tonight = I KNOW I SHIFT EVERY NIGHT

i wish i had money = I HAVE ALL THE MONEY I WANT AND MORE

just those small changes are enough to rewire your entire self-concept. also, exposure. the more exposure you have to something, the more insecure it will make you. if you’re having a hard time manifesting, remove all blogs, twitter accounts, and people that limit your beliefs. less exposure to negativity = less negativity reflected in your self-concept.

problems with the Self will always be there. if you remove a negative belief, another will pop up. all you can do is learn more about your “inner” self and recognize how you’re feeling. what you can do is focus on the positives, and automatically, your self-concept will change.

persist in the assumption until it becomes your reality!

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

thank you all for making it this far! just in case, the book i got this information from is Social Psychology 11th Edition authored by Kassin, Fein and, H.R. Markus. there’s a lot of interesting information on this academic book that is similar to the ones Dr Joe Dispenza has written, so i could make another post like this in the future! take care!

#loa tumblr #law of assumption #loassumption #self concept #informative #social psychology #neville goddard #reality shifting #psychology #shiftblr #reya singh #shifting #edward art #quantum jumping #void state #research

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somedaylazysomeday · 2 months

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You catch Silco's eye at The Last Drop, but he isn't the only one interested in you.

Silco x fem!reader x Sevika

Rating: Explicit. Minors, please do not interact.

Word Count: 5,900

Warnings: Clubs, predator/prey vibes, sex, interrupted sex, minor voyeurism, threesomes, anal fingering, double penetration, anal sex, sex toy use.

Masterlist

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You were on a bed, sandwiched between two warm bodies. You were trying to stay afloat in the wash of touches, your body stretching in ways it never had before. With the all-encompassing sensations, you were struggling to remember exactly how you had gotten to this point.

You hadn’t been drugged or anything. That much needed to be said, especially somewhere like The Last Drop. But no, the fuzziness of the evening had started from the first time you had caught the Shimmer-glowing eye of Silco himself, and you were drunk on everything that had happened since.

Catching Silco’s attention wasn’t something you had set out to do. Just the thought would have made you dizzy with nervousness and intimidation. Those weren’t emotions you had very often. Growing up in the deepest shadows cast by Piltover had left you with the distinct impression that there was no further you could sink.

And there were always predators in the deep.

When you had first noticed that mismatched gaze fixed on you, you had put on your best blank expression. Every Undercity resident worth their air knew that Silco wasn’t someone to fuck with. And if he had decided that he didn’t like the look of you, it would be better to leave The Last Drop before he had a chance to kick you out personally.

Admittedly, he would be more likely to send his second-in-command, Sevika, to get rid of you. That didn’t make it any more pleasant, though she was easily as attractive as he was - just with a different sort of danger.

In any case, you lost sight of him after that, though you couldn’t help but scan the crowds regularly for a sight of that glowing eye. Every time you didn’t see it, you relaxed a little more, though you couldn’t help recognizing that there was a part of yourself that rode a wave of disappointment.

Silco was known for being dangerous, but he was also undeniably handsome. That trim body and sharp fashion sense were paired with the keenest wit the Undercity had seen in decades, and he used it to his best advantage. Silco could take apart his enemies with a few well-placed words and a single command to his army of followers.

And he fucked.

Very few people could claim the distinction of having been with the Eye of Zaun, but everyone seemed to have a story about the time their friend’s older sibling’s cousin had spent a few glorious hours in the chem-baron’s company.

You would be willing to dismiss those stories as urban legends, a simple desire to make Silco’s power personal by having it exercised over you directly, but the stories all shared a few too many details. Firstly, they almost always started with someone catching Silco’s eye in The Last Drop.

Second, he was always very much in charge. It wasn’t something you would struggle to believe. If Silco was going to hook up with a stranger, it was only smart to make sure he was in control of the situation, if only to keep from being double-crossed.

Third, the person was never contacted again after their initial encounter with Silco. If they met him somewhere else, he was cool and indifferent toward them. It was clear that he was interested in short-term pleasure, not long-term commitment.

There were a few other factors that featured in most stories, but they weren’t entirely consistent and you didn’t count them. For instance, a lot of stories had Sevika involved, but not all of them. Some listed favorite positions or toys that were used, but those reports were so varied as to be pointless.

Overall, you considered the stories a fascinating look at how folklore supported shadowy figures in the Undercity. It was an interesting way to pass your time, even if it felt a bit voyeuristic. But you were simply interested in a major Undercity player, and found the pursuit of trends in stories a good indicator of that. You were watching solely as an academic exercise, not from any personal interest.

That was why you had regularly chosen to drink at the Drop for the past few months. The only reason.

Still, despite the stories - nay, Silco’s sexual exploits had reached the level of legend - you hadn’t expected to actually make eye contact with Silco himself. Even then, your tipsy-but-watchful demeanor hadn’t been enough to see him a second time.

Perhaps it had been a fluke. You weren’t stupid enough to think it had been anyone other than Silco, but you were also willing to concede that he probably observed the goings-on of The Last Drop. It wasn’t impossible that he had been watching the crowd at the same moment that you had been looking around. Still, there was something about the way his gaze had slowly slid away from yours that made you think he had been watching you for a while.

And you had to consider the tingling feeling of being watched, dancing invisible fingertips between your shoulder blades.

But you hadn’t seen Silco again. Not until you had gone to the bar. The bartender had slid you a drink before you had even ordered, directing you to a hallway that led from one side of the room. There, you found a staircase, and the door at the top had been unlocked…

When you opened the door and stepped into the darkened room beyond, Silco had been inside. You couldn’t claim to be completely surprised - who else would have a bedroom in The Last Drop?

You also weren’t stupid enough to believe that the room was actually where Silco slept. No, the bed was ridiculously big and the shelves against the walls held a variety of lascivious-looking toys. This was clearly where Silco hooked up with people from his club.

That, at least, ended up being correct. Silco had shared a drink with you, telling you bluntly that he was interested in fucking you that night. He asked if you were interested in that, too. Your immediate and resounding ‘yes’ was embarrassing, but he only gave a small smirk and told you to finish your drink while you discussed preferences and limits.

When that was settled, you found yourself on that giant mattress, flat on your back under him as he ravaged your mouth. He explored you thoroughly, taking control so casually and naturally that it only seemed to make sense.

And then he was inside of you, pushing himself deep as you arched your back and cried out for him. Your voice was loud in the room - too loud, but you couldn’t help yourself. He was thick and hot, and you could feel him throbbing. Or maybe you were the one throbbing, your inner muscles working around him as your body tried to decide whether to pull him deeper or push him out of you entirely.

Just as you were beginning to relax around and under him, a loud bang made you jump. You couldn’t see much from under the canopy of Silco’s body, but you managed to spy that the door was now open. More importantly, someone was standing inside.

“Scoop told me to come find you- Oh.”

The voice was low and rough, so much so that it took a moment for you to realize that it was female. And there was only one person you could think of who wouldn’t be apologizing profusely by this point: Sevika.

To your mingled surprise and embarrassment, Sevika stepped around the bed until she could see you more clearly past Silco’s shielding body. Her lips curved into a sardonic smirk as her dark eyes wandered over every bit of you visible in your current position.

“Nice going, boss,” Sevika congratulated lowly. “If you didn’t wreck that pretty pussy, I was gonna do it myself.”

Your breath caught at that, the muscles of your core fluttering at the unexpected filth.

Silco rolled his hips, pressing further into you and driving a gasp from your lungs. “Mmm, she liked that. And, as it happens, I’ve already started working on ruining her.”

“Everything I’ve seen so far seems pretty tame,” Sevika said with a scoff. “I think you’re losing your touch. Maybe you should let an expert take over.”

Silco bared his teeth, holding your hips tight against his to keep himself buried deep as he rolled. When you were on top, still laying with your chest pressed to his, Silco raised his eyebrows at Sevika. “I am the expert here. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you should see for yourself.”

Sevika grinned, teeth flashing brightly in her smile. Her lightning-quick wink was the last thing you saw before she stepped out of view once more.

When you would have turned your head to keep her in view, Silco gripped your chin and held it steady to press a kiss to your lips. When he let you pull away, he murmured, “Pay attention. You’ll hurt my pride.”

The feeling of his chest rubbing against your stiffened nipples made your eagerness surge, but the sharp gasp was pulled from you by a different sensation: fingertips running upward along one side of your entrance, trailing around where Silco’s length had you spread wide around him. You couldn’t help a squirming shiver when that touch traveled up and between your cheeks.

“Sensitive little thing, isn’t she?” Sevika asked, a warm chuckle rumbling through her voice.

“If you could feel her the way I can, you would not need to ask.” Silco punctuated it with a pulse of his hips that made you gasp and cling to him.

Normally, this was not your kind of thing. You preferred to be an active partner in your sexual encounters, and the fact that most of the comments being tossed around were pointedly not directed toward you should have made you nervous. Probably would have in any other situation, if you were being honest.

But you felt exposed like this, knowing someone was watching. Someone who had plainly stated that she was also interested in your body. That, combined with the knowledge of how dangerous both of them were, kept you calm as they spoke around you rather than including you in the conversation. You felt as if you were slowly turning into a pile of flesh and nerves, able to do nothing but limply receive the pleasure you were offered.

Somehow, it was working for you.

“But you have yet to tell me,” Silco continued, giving another lazy thrust that made you squirm down onto him more firmly. “How does she look?”

“Needy. Hot. Desperate. Sexy,” Sevika said with a hum. Her attention was still between your legs as she scattered adjectives through the conversation. She played idly with you and - if you were to guess from his low growl - with Silco as well. Her fingers pulled you wider, as if testing how far your folds would spread. “The only way she’ll look better is dripping with cum, too fucked-out to move.”

You were listening intently to her, but a sound in the room made it hard to focus. It was only when they both chuckled that you realized the sound was a whine, coming from between your own parted lips.

“I can think of something else that may be better still,” Silco mused. His voice sounded teasing, but he didn’t continue. The silence felt heavy, weighed down with expectation and more than a hint of anticipation.

Silco’s hand smoothed over your temple, making you twitch with surprise. You glanced up to find him watching you. “What do you think, pet? Shall we invite Sevika to join us?”

Your mouth went dry. You didn’t want to risk trying and failing to speak, so you settled for a fervent nod. Silco’s lips curled as he glanced behind you. There was a knowing light glowing in his mismatched eyes, but they were aimed at Sevika, not you.

“Where do you want me?” Even Sevika’s low voice and brusque tone couldn’t disguise her interest. There was a stab of satisfaction in your gut - you may have been needy, but she wasn't as unaffected as she wanted to seem.

"Hmm…" Silco drawled, tracing circles on your skin that made you shiver. "If we truly want to ruin her, there would seem to be an obvious choice."

His touch lifted your chin once more, pulling your touch-drunk gaze toward his. With that orange eye burning deep into your mind and soul, Silco asked, "Shall Sevika and I share you? Take you at the same time?"

You nodded again, but Silco stared harder. "And has your lovely rear ever taken anything before?"

Feeling inexplicably disappointed in yourself and your past sexual partners, you slowly shook your head.

"And would you like to try?"

Your eyes snapped back to Silco's face, core throbbing. "Yes, I would."

Silco's lips curled into a pleased and slightly predatory smile.

Behind you, Sevika barked a laugh. "She can still speak." The chill of metal fingers against the side of your face made your eyes flutter closed. "We'll fix that."

"Get harnessed," Silco ordered, and Sevika's artificial touch disappeared from you. "Use the smallest toy. I want her ruined, not destroyed."

Even as your body gave a throb, clearly of the opinion that it wouldn't mind either way, Sevika said, "I’ll get ready. You keep doing what you were doing."

Silco took her at her word. He started slow, guiding your hips up and down on his length. When you had found the right combination of movements on your part and the right amount of Silco thrusting into you from below, your pace naturally built back to where it had been before.

The sound of your panting breaths filled the room, pairing chaotically with the sounds of sex. You had almost forgotten about Sevika entirely in the sprint toward your impending orgasm. But Silco stopped you with a steady press of fingers against your hips, his attention moving to something behind you. When he gave an approving smile, you glanced back as well.

Sevika was standing behind you, baring more skin than you could remember seeing her display. Her muscular arms were on full show, leading up to broad, strong shoulders. She was wearing a black breastband, but it could hardly contain the rounded swells of her breasts and your mouth watered at the idea of seeing them without any cover at all. Her abdomen was taut, a hint of muscle definition casting shadows on the flat expanse of her stomach. There was a suggestion of a rounded lower belly that made you itch to touch Sevika’s dusky skin, but that bit of softness was covered by a pair of black, form-fitting boxers.

When your eyes finally fell between Sevika’s legs, you could see that the boxers doubled as a harness. The toy held in place by the boxers was also black, and you struggled to pick out its edges against the darkness of the background. Sevika helped you - perhaps inadvertently - as she worked the short shaft, coating it with shining lube.

You watched her fist the toy, laying a thick coat of slippery gel over the surface. Your mouth was dry, but you did your best to pretend that you weren’t utterly entranced by the sight.

Silco gave a rumbling laugh, and it buzzed pleasantly through you. “Like what you see, pet? Do you think you can take her?”

Sevika smirked at you, hand spreading open between the toy and the boxers so you could see it more clearly. It was… smaller than expected.

“That’s it?” you asked, cringing at yourself a moment later.

Sevika laughed out loud. “For your first time? It’s plenty, trust me. Anything bigger and we really would destroy you.”

You smiled back, but Silco was already moving on. “Sevika is going to prepare you. I want your eyes on me.”

When you turned back to face the man beneath you, Silco nodded slowly. “One moment.”

Silco’s hands were firm around your hips. He used the leverage of them to spear himself as far into you as he could get, pressing deep and deeper until there wasn’t a fraction of space between your pelvis and his. Your mouth had fallen open somewhere along the line as you dealt with the flood of sensations, but he wasn’t done.

His palms slid up either side of your spine, pulling you forward until you were lying flat against him again, your breasts crushed to his chest and his length shifting oddly inside of you. You weren’t sure what look you were wearing when you stared down at him from inches away, but the pupil of Silco’s green eye was blown wide and you thought you would drown in the darkness of it.

Sevika’s touch made you jump just a bit, but it was enough to pull you free of the trap in Silco’s gaze. She must have been touching you with her metal arm, since her hand was cool and firm against you. She found the place where your spine met your ass, the spot where the sway of your spine rose past your tailbone and into the swell of your hips.

When her hand was on that anchoring spot, Sevika pressed down. It wasn’t painful, even with the unyielding metal of her replacement arm. However, it did lock you in place against Silco, holding you steady even when you tried to squirm at the feeling of him inside of you.

The feeling of warm, slippery fingers came a moment later - hardly a surprise, even as a gasp fought to escape you. That touch traveled closer and closer to the center of your ass, working its way toward that secret place hidden between your lower cheeks.

She quickly found your rear entrance and pressed a finger against it. You made an inhuman sound at the firm touch even as you fought to wiggle your hips closer. When her hand on you and Silco’s anchoring grip made that impossible, you settled for arching your back to give her better access.

Sevika laughed, and the sound warmed your face. “Responsive. I like her already.”

“Just wait,” Silco told her lazily. “She’s the best I’ve had in some time. Not overly chatty, either.”

“Just the way you like ‘em,” Sevika remarked. Her fingers playing against the small of your back made you shudder - or perhaps that was the way her other hand was poised and ready to breach you. When Sevika spoke again, her voice was closer to you, as if she had leaned in. “Don’t worry, we’ll get some sounds outta you either way.”

Somehow, you managed a halfway sexy laugh. "Promises, promises."

A firm slap to your ass took your breath away. It was a good spank, but it also forced you further into Silco's cock and ground your clit against his pelvis.

"Sevika," Silco's voice lashed lowly through the room. "Enough teasing."

As if to prove his own point, Silco used his grip on your hips to pull you up off of him and slam you back down. The suddenness of it made it all the more intense, and you started riding him without any further prompting.

"We'll start you off slowly," Silco said, offering a nod past you.

A cool drop of liquid landed just above the crack of your ass, sliding slowly downward. The first drop was followed by another and another, until the slippery gel had started working its way down to your heated core.

Searching fingers slipped between your cheeks and you tensed reflexively. Sevika's voice was low and close as she said, "Relax."

That wasn't going to happen any time soon, not with her touching what she was getting ready to, but you made an effort anyway. The tension drained slowly from your muscles, and you were so focused that you hadn't noticed the way Silco had stopped moving again.

His hands traveled upward to splay across your back once more, holding you steady as one of Sevika's fingers found your rear entrance and began to press against it.

Your vision seemed to dim. Not from the sensation itself - though that was certainly a source of interest - but because you were concentrating so hard on the way it felt that you weren’t fully using your eyes anymore. Beyond a vague recognition that Silco was watching you closely, all of your focus was on something you couldn’t see.

With the lube that was coating you, Sevika’s finger provided almost no friction. If not for the press of her knuckles against the softness of your cheeks, you would hardly know what she was doing. Her finger was equally slick (you suspected it had been coated with a fresh sheen of lubrication), but far more noticeable with the way it pressed against you.

Your entrance braced against the intrusion, fighting to keep it out. As the pressure increased against you, you drew tighter and tighter. Silco made a surprised noise at the way your inner muscles squeezed around him. It was quiet, but just enough to distract you. You relaxed as you glanced at Silco, and that was all it took for Sevika’s finger to breach you.

Naturally, you tensed. It was an unfamiliar sensation. Not uncomfortable, but different in a way that stole your focus. That ring of muscle seemed to stretch impossibly wide around the invader, and that feeling only grew as more and more of her finger sank into you.

“You’re a fool not to take her ass yourself,” Sevika informed Silco. “She’s gonna be perfect.”

“Perhaps I consider the privilege a reward for your excellent work,” Silco countered. “Besides, she is strangling my cock now. I think this will prove pleasurable for both of us. And even more so for our lovely guest.”

Sevika hummed in agreement, the fingers of her free hand dancing over the small of your back. “If she can walk after this, we haven’t done enough.”

With a twisting motion, Sevika curled her finger all the way into you, stopping only when her knuckles were pressing against the cheeks of your ass. The noise you made was short and sharp, an audible expression of your pleasure.

“Are her eyes crossing yet?” Sevika asked.

Silco caught your chin between his thumb and forefinger, carefully turning your face from side to side. “I do not believe so, but we have plenty of time. Sevika will keep her finger in you, pet, while we resume our activities. I want you used to taking something in two places at once before we start in earnest.”

It wasn’t a question - no part of it had been, but you nodded anyway. Silco grabbed your hips again, guiding you in a new rhythm. He stayed deep inside of you, his tip never quite leaving your core even as he thrust. You picked up the pattern and started to follow it eagerly. There was a different dimension to the pleasure with something in your ass.

Sevika followed your movements with her hand, keeping her finger buried in you. It spurred you on, adding spice to every thrust as you adjusted to being stretched in two places.

A warmth at your back warned that Sevika was leaning in again. “Let’s take him apart.”

Your movements stuttered when her finger started to move inside of you, but she didn’t start to fuck you with it. Instead, she curled the digit, timing each curl perfectly to catch Silco’s tip at every thrust.

Silco’s brows furrowed, a harsh curse leaving him. He picked up speed when yours faltered, holding the rhythm even when you were completely distracted by the feeling of Sevika pressing against the thin wall that separated her from Silco.

At last - and long after your brain had melted entirely - Silco seemed to have had enough. With his chipped teeth bared, he hissed, “Sevika. Take her.”

The abrupt feeling of Sevika’s finger sliding from you made you gasp. She and Silco both chuckled, though Silco’s voice sounded a little strained.

“Ready?” Sevika asked, ducking forward so you could see her without straining your neck. Her eyes seemed even darker, excitement sharpening her features. You could only nod in silent agreement.

Her hands pressed you forward against Silco’s chest once more. You felt them travel down slowly, teasing where you and the chem baron were joined. Her touch dipped briefly lower and Silco cursed again. “Focus, Sevika.”

As if enticing her to do exactly that, Silco grabbed as much of your ass as he could possibly hold, spreading your cheeks wide as your face went hot. Sevika’s hastily stifled groan eased your embarrassment, but your breathing had picked up and you were fighting not to push back toward her.

A metal hand against the base of your spine drew your attention from your own eagerness for a moment. “Keep relaxed for me,” Sevika urged.

It was an impossible thing to ask, but you did your best as she placed the tip of her toy against your ass. You felt your eyes widen as she started to push into you.

You had seen the toy. It was small, almost laughably so. But now, it felt immense against your rear entrance. As it started to spear into you, it seemed to stretch you impossibly wide. The intrusion burned slightly, even with the generous amounts of lube that coated both you and the toy, and you would have shifted away from it if Silco weren’t holding you so tightly.

Your mouth opened, ready to call things off and walk away, but there was a slight popping sensation that made you jolt. “Head’s in.”

Sevika’s explanation answered your unasked question, but you couldn’t acknowledge her verbally. The steady slide of the toy into you was smooth and inevitable, your body letting it in with minimal struggle.

The firm press of her boxer-clad hips against your ass made you jump again, but Sevika’s hands smoothed down your sides. “Doin’ good for me, pretty girl. We’re gonna stay like this for a minute.”

You nodded, agreeing to yet another thing that hadn’t truly been a question. Slowly, Silco urged you to sit upright on him. You winced at the feeling of being stretched in two places, but it wasn’t painful. Silco wasn’t a small man and it was always odd to move this way with someone inside of you. Sevika’s toy was small, but it was odd and different enough to make you double-check every sensation to see whether it was good or bad.

Sevika started things, gently massaging your breasts from behind. Her touch was gentle but insistent, bringing your body back to eagerness. Silco joined in soon afterward, focusing his attention between your legs. His nimble fingers teased your folds around where he was speared and further back, but most of his attention was fixed on your clit.

Your lips parted as your breathing picked up. Silco and Sevika’s motions synced up, and Sevika’s fingers rolled your nipple just as Silco gave your clit a firm rub. You moaned aloud, head tipping forward in time to see a smirk spread over Silco’s face.

“It sounds as if our pet is ready to be fucked,” he remarked conversationally to Sevika. “Shall we?”

“Hmm…” Sevika hedged, rolling her hips against your ass as she thought. The motion knocked you off-balance, pushing you forward along Silco’s cock and spearing you back onto both of them when you corrected your position. You let out a plaintive sound. “How can I resist when she sounds like that?”

“Are you ready?” Silco asked, grabbing your chin once more.

That grip kept you from nodding. With your three functional brain cells, you managed, “Yes. Please.”

“Please,” Sevika repeated, amused. “You don’t have to beg. Yet.”

And then they started to move. The first few thrusts were disjoined, leaving you tossed back and forth between them like a toy boat in a storm. But they found a devastating rhythm soon enough. Silco pumped in and out of you, using his length to best advantage. Sevika had less of a shaft to work with, but she focused her energy on giving a little swivel of her hips with every stroke. The combination was lethal.

It seemed that you had just started when your body tightened. Tension was screaming through every muscle, warning that you were only moments away from utterly imploding.

“I- I’m–” you stammered, someone taking the words from your lips before you could get any further than a single word into your warning.

“We know,” Silco said, smugness written across his face.

“Surprised you made it this long,” Sevika agreed.

You decided that the best revenge would be to come. Your body wasn’t waiting for permission from your brain, but the timing was great - no sooner had you made your decision than every muscle in your body locked down.

Colors burst behind your eyes as the most intense orgasm you’d ever had roared through you. You had always imagined going through a hex-gate would be like that: an all-encompassing experience that robbed you of every sense until you were through. Of course, if the hex-gates felt anywhere near as amazing as it did to come on Silco and Sevika’s cocks, you would understand the exorbitant prices for passage.

If not for Silco’s hands on your hips and Sevika’s arms around your torso, you would have stopped moving entirely, other than to collapse forward. Somehow, they kept you upright, even when they edged you toward overstimulation.

Silco let out a low, wordless growl as he fucked up into you hard for a thrust, then two. When he was buried as far into you as he could possibly get, he came. The condom he wore kept you from feeling its heat, but his staccato pounding pushed you into a strong aftershock.

He was almost pretty like that, you reflected, watching Silco writhe beneath you. Fierce, of course, and always imposing, but somehow pretty. Maybe it was the way his eyes flashed, or how his face narrowed even more with the intensity of his pleasure. Or maybe it was the way his jaw dropped, a helpless sound of pleasure leaving him even as his brow crinkled with irritation at his own vulnerability.

Eventually, Silco lay slack on the bed, watching you and Sevika as his cock slowly softened inside of you. You were still pushed forward and back on him, moving slightly with Sevika’s thrusts. It felt inappropriate somehow, having your ass fucked while you were watched by the man you had started the night with. But Silco seemed unbothered, tracing lazy circles against your hips as he held you still to receive Sevika’s thrusts.

You could come again this way, you decided idly. Anal was a slower build to orgasm than you were used to, but it was certainly more powerful when it got there.

“Close yet?” Silco asked eventually. It could have sounded impatient or jealous, but his tone was nothing more than curious.

“Close,” Sevika confirmed. “It’s a smaller hilt than I would have wanted.”

“Did you choose the one that vibrates?”

You couldn’t see Sevika’s expression, but there was something close to glee in her voice as she said, “Forgot about that, but yeah.”

“Allow me,” Silco offered valiantly. He reached to grab something from a nearby table, and then you were too busy writhing to worry about what he was holding.

Sevika’s toy buzzed violently in your ass, and you were choking on air at the unexpected sensation. You could only squirm with the surprise of it, but when you had regained some control of your muscles, your instincts hijacked your brain. The only thing you could do was lean forward onto hands you had planted against Silco’s chest, pulling away and thrusting yourself back onto Sevika’s toy as quickly as you could manage.

Between your sudden eagerness and Sevika’s continued thrusting, the toy pulled free of and punched back in far more often than it had up to that point. A small, almost silent part of you recognized that the ache would be fierce the next day, but that concern was overwhelmed by the vast majority of you that insisted this was necessary. You needed to come again. If you didn’t, you would die.

At last, Sevika gave a sharp, staccato cry and buried her face in your neck. The flexing of her hips buried the toy as far inside of you as it could get. The buzzing brought you to a small but powerful second orgasm. You reveled in every second of it, even as Silco turned off the toy’s vibrations and soreness immediately set in.

Sevika pulled out of you, and the resulting motion of your hips allowed Silco to slide free as well. You collapsed on the surface of the bed, your fall cushioned by blankets and the arms of the two strangers you’d had sex with.

They started a low conversation above you as you throbbed and basked in the afterglow. Either they were speaking too quietly for you to hear or your brain wasn’t quite capable of processing speech yet. Either way, you were largely left to your own thoughts.

You hadn’t watched Sevika come. That was the only part of the experience you regretted. Silco was beautiful when he came, and you were willing to bet that Sevika had been the same. Unfortunately, she had been behind you and there were no mirrors that you could see. You felt cheated, almost, robbed of the chance to see a strong, stunning woman brought to her knees with pleasure from your body.

But you couldn’t truly complain. The rest of the night had been incredible. Silco truly deserved to have so many people talking about his talents in the bedroom. If he had orchestrated the whole scenario - and you strongly suspected that he had - he was both a master manipulator and someone with a keen need for pleasure.

Yes, if you were only going to get one chance at this, you were satisfied in how things had played out. And you had been with both Silco and Sevika! Two of the most dangerous people in the Undercity had let you share their bed, and they had cared enough about your pleasure to be sure that you came twice.

Now, you had your own story to share… but you didn’t think you would. This felt like something to keep quiet and close, to treasure for the rest of your life. And, of course, to get off to when you were feeling particularly lonely or needy.

“Is she wrecked enough for your tastes?”

Silco’s quiet question was the first thing you had understood in quite some time, and you realized with a start that he was talking about you.

“Mmhmm,” Sevika hummed, sounding wickedly satisfied. “Look at her.”

Since they were sitting at the right angle to be staring at your sensitive core, you didn’t bother to keep your eyes open. You were tempted to be shy, but sleep was calling louder and louder. They had made a mess of you, after all. They could look at that mess if they liked.

“I would like to try her mouth next time,” Silco added, almost absently.

Sevika let out a short laugh. “Works for me. I wanna bury my tongue in that pussy until she’s sobbing.”

“We’ll have to do this again soon,” Silco agreed.

You could hardly believe your ears, but even your excitement couldn’t keep you awake. You faded into soft and filthy dreams, the words ‘next time’ echoing in your ears as you went.

---

Author's Note - The reader character does and says a lot less than I'm used to writing, so my apologies for that. Honestly, this was fueled by scraps of a weird dream after I had too much wine one night. My excuse is that it was a very overwhelming dream for an ace-spectrum writer, so I just got it all down on paper as soon as I could!

Thanks for reading!

262 notes · View notes

copperbadge · 4 months

Note

Hey Sam, this came across my feed on twit and I wondered if you’d heard about it at all? :(

https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/18sx06i/big_layoff_at_duolingo/

Direct link for the curious. Short version, a post on Reddit reported that Duolingo laid off a "large percentage" of its staff, replacing them with AI. I hadn't heard about it, but I knew there were reports about Duolingo trimming its offerings and losing a lot of goodwill after revamping itself a year ago; they've been public about their use of GPT-4 AI starting last March, and it was a tentpole of this year's annual convention, so I was aware of that as well.

The Reddit post is by a former Duolingo contractor, who also shares their severance letter, which is terse to say the least. They state that of their four-person team, two people were let go, with the others left to "babysit the AI". They say that they're a translator and that the people who remained were recast as "curators" for AI translation.

But the post is also not otherwise sourced. So here is everyone's periodic reminder that if the only source is Reddit and Reddit isn't citing other sources, you need to dig a little.

All journalistic sources I've seen (that aren't paywalled, like the Bloomberg article most of them cite) are visibly using the Reddit post as their entre, but also state that the percentage of contractors who were let go is about 10%. That's 10% of contract workers, not 10% of all staff, although admittedly I don't know how many people Duolingo employs, contract or otherwise. 10% is a meaningful chunk, but Duolingo has said that the contractors were let go because their projects had wrapped. While company reps state that this all could be related to the use of AI, they've also said that it's not a 1:1 replacement.

Mind you, the company isn't offering much in the way of backing that up, either.

So there are a couple of issues. Some workers probably were let go simply because their work was finished; the Reddit user doesn't seem to be one of those. We are still seeing that at least some of these jobs were replaced by AI, which is undoubtedly a harbinger of things to come. We don't know what impact this will have on the app. We don't know what kind of work the majority of those people were doing. There's a thread in the Reddit post about whether the voices are now "AI voices" but there's no citation to back up the idea either. They definitely aren't doing AI voice generation for the Latin, where one of the voice actors has a nice voice and also a very loud pet bird.

There is a bigger issue of contract work in the digital and translation industries in the first place; a lot of these people should have been full employees and would have had more protection from this if they had been. Translators have also been brutally devastated by machine/AI translation, which is its own issue. But these are separate and much larger problems that are in no way unique to Duolingo.

I don't like taking this stance because I feel like I'm defending both Duolingo and AI, which isn't my goal. My goal is to remind people that if you see a single source offering a vague statement, you should fact-check. 10% is likely a lot of people but it's not "a huge percentage". We have no real numbers on who was fired, just this person on Reddit saying they're a translator and they were let go. Do I believe them? Absolutely, I have no reason not to and the basic gist is backed up by statements from Duolingo. Do I trust this person's intel? Not especially, after the loud axe-grinding noises they made while posting. Do I trust Duolingo, whose goal is to make money and not look bad while doing it? Not especially either, simply from the standpoint of "the bigger the company the more they're likely to screw you".

But the point is we don't have good data, and this is a complicated and nuanced issue involving a lot of different factors. So either you have to let it go on past, or you have to be prepared to dig a little deeper than a person posting to Reddit about getting laid off.

In any case, Duolingo is one of the few activities that brings me joy right now (I know, I'm working on the issue) and is the only language learning structure that has ever actually worked for me, so despite the new intel and despite the fact that I know a lot of people think of Duolingo's revamp the way I think of Tumblr's new dash, I'm going to keep on with it.

(Plus I paid up for a year, so I might as well at least use it until the year runs out and then reassess.)

#your daily news digest #sam learns italian #duolingo

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etoiile · 5 months

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MYSTERY MAN

starring itoshi rin!

synopsis: you decide to go watch rin's football practice for the first time, much to his delight. his teammates struggle to figure out who you are and what you've done to their usually very grumpy rin.

requested by @checkoutmyflow! i hope i did your rq justice ^^

notes: first time completing a request! sorry for the wait >.< ALSO this is gn!reader :)

admittedly, you weren't much of a football fan, even though your boyfriend was a professional college player. you didn't really understand the sport, as you hadn't played it since second grade gym class, but for some reason, you had decided that today, on this sunny tuesday afternoon, you were going to drop by rin's practice alongside a football-for-dummies book to watch and hopefully learn a little about the sport he was so enamored with.

it would appear that they were in the middle of a practice match, as his teammates and him were wearing different colored pennies, and there was someone keeping score on a whiteboard.

you sat down on the bleachers quietly, not wanting to distract anyone from the game. your eyes scanned the field quickly, almost instantly finding rin's unique dark green hair. you tried your best to keep up with what was happening, quickly flipping through your book whenever someone did something cool to try and find it, but it proved to be quite difficult, and you found yourself very confused at the sport's intricacies.

despite your lack of understanding, the one thing you could observe and comprehend was how alive rin looked whilst playing. he was sweating, shit-talking, and scrambling around the field non-stop, clearly very tired, but his eyes had a certain glimmer to them that you didn't get to see often, and he moved around the field with immaculate grace and precision. you watched as he skillfully maneuvered around the field and how he seemed to be able to calculate exactly where his opponent would go. you didn't have to understand the sport to know that this field was a place where itoshi rin shined like no other.

rin took hold of the ball and began dashing across the field with it, his shiny hair blowing behind him. his eyes began darting around the field, his brain taking in and calculating every factor necessary to victory.

his brain certainly didn't expect to see you, his lovely s/o who knows nothing about football, sitting on the bleachers.

your eyes made contact for a brief moment before rin tripped over his own feet and flew forward, making literally everybody on the field stop what they were doing.

a brief moment of silence washed over the field before laughter soon took its place, his teammates jogging over to him asking if he was ok, and what the hell just happened as they howled in mirth.

he grumbled some excuse with red cheeks as he looked away, clearly very mortified. his coach decided to call a break, seeing as everyone had already stopped playing, and he grabbed his water before practically sprinting over to you.

"y/n," he breathed as he came to a stop in front of you, puffing a little from fatigue. "you're here."

you giggled. "hi, rin. i thought i should come watch one of your practices. i want to get to know all the aspects of your life, after all."

he leaned in closer to you to brush his hand against yours as you two chatted a bit. anyone could see the way his eyes softened as you spoke and how his shoulders relaxed at your every move. anyone even being his pretty-damn-stupid team.

in the distance, bachira, isagi, chigiri, nagi, and reo murmured amongst themselves, wondering about who you were - the mystery person mr. im-better-than-you-and-grumpy-all-the-time rin looked so happy to see.

"his sibling, maybe?"

"nah, i'm pretty sure sae is his only sibling."

"oh! what about his parent, then?"

"dude, do you have eyes? way too hot to be a parent."

"his lover, maybe?"

there were a solid 5 seconds of silence before they burst out into laughter once more.

"get out. itoshi rin, an s/o? no way in hell, dude."

"i doubt he could even keep anyone for more than a month. they'd get tired of his attitude real quick and leave just as fast."

"rin-chan probably isn't capable of loving anyone, after all."

despite their adamant denial of your relationship with rin, they could all notice rin's demeanor. he looked happier, more at ease, gentler, kinder, and overall, he looked like a normal person. who were you, and what had you done to their rin?

coach blew his whistle, and they watched as you gestured for him to get back with his team. they then watched with their jaws on the floor as he, itoshi rin, POUTED and SWEETLY PLANTED A KISS on your forehead before jogging off.

they all exchanged looks of pure shock as rin jogged back to them.

they all gave him a shocked look as he raised a brow.

"...what?"

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autolenaphilia · 9 months

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Farrell's Fallacy

One of the most common forms of antifeminist arguments is something I'm now going to call Farrell's Fallacy. I've discussed it before in this essay, but now I have a snappy name for it and what I said bears repeating. Farrell's fallacy goes like this.

"Feminists say we live in a patriarchy and men have male privilege. But look at this group of men undeniably experiencing marginalization and oppression. Where is their male privilege? Checkmate, feminists!"

It's named after Warren Farrell, "father of the men's rights movement." This is admittedly partly for alliterative reasons, but also because he used an early version of it in his 1993 book The Myth of Male Power, where he used the fact that working class men are exploited by capitalism and are drafted to die in wars to argue that, well, male power is a myth and in fact "men are the disposable sex."

Yet you can substitute any group of marginalized men in the argument, and the argument is pretty much the same. The "group of men undeniably experiencing marginalization and oppression" can be non-white men, disabled men, gay men, trans men, and so on, sometimes all of them at once. It's therefore very popular here on tumblr as a way to sell antifeminism to social justice people who have a poor grasp of feminist theory, because it appeals to their understandable desire to support marginalized groups.

And it is a fallacy, because it relies on a strawman. It presumes feminists are doing the most simplistic analysis possible of patriarchy and male privilege, where only gender is taken into account and complicating factors like class and race are ignored. In reality intersectionality has been an important part of feminist analysis for over 30 years.

And while Farrell's Fallacy uses real oppression as part of its argument, it dishonestly contextualizes that oppression. It ignores that the oppression is not on the basis of these men's gender, but on other factors. These men are oppressed, yes, but it's because of systemic injustices based on class, race, disability and queerness and so on.

This often means their male privilege is severely curtailed, but it doesn't remove it. Women also suffer from these forms of oppression and they are often worse for women because they often intersect with the misogyny of patriarchal society, which is why we have terms like misogynynoir, lesbophobia and transmisogyny. It is in comparison with similarly marginalized women that we can see the male privilege of marginalized men.

This is one of the most common antifeminist arguments, especially here on tumblr. And i hope this post helps you recognize it for the nonsese it is.

#my writings #farrell's fallacy #feminism #misogyny

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the-music-maniac · 15 days

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I just saw a take on zosan that was awful enough I had to block the person. They labelled their post "hot takes" and it annoyed me enough that I felt like hating on it from afar in a vague way would be less destructive than writing an entire essay in this person's comments section.

If you like treating Sanji like a babygirl - just say so. Nothing wrong with that. Don't act like uke-ifying him is accurate to his canon characterization though. If you don't like Zoro as a character, just SAY THAT. Don't act like your shitty understanding of him as a character should be common sense. Their premise was that zosan would work best as a non sexual relationship - sure I'm fine with that. Sounds like an interesting premise. Why tho?

The reasons were stupid.

1. Apparently bc Zoro is too much of a neanderthal and BC he doesn't shower frequently Sanji would never touch him blah blah (Sanji smokes ten million cigarettes a day, I assure you he doesn't smell good) y'all should stop treating him like a babygirl bc bleh Zoro stinky and likes drinking and where did that whole he's Nami's gay best friend thing come from, he isn't that, he doesn't deserve it. Okay??? First of all - last I checked babygirl didn't require certain qualifications - so fuck off? I've concluded that Zoro is the only babygirl and you can foam at the mouth all you want, I'm not changing my mind. Second of all, did you forget that NAMI can drink people under the table too?? Zoro does canonically have a very friendship/sibling-like dynamic with Nami. They argue and fight, but they care about each other. If there is anyone who would make sense as a headcanon of one of Nami's close friends? Zoro would be a candidate. Usopp I would argue would be a better option, but Zoro also makes sense. Third of all, Sanji spends all day cooking (often cooking SEAFOOD) in a three piece suit and then smoking like a chimney. He may shower more frequently than Zoro but I assure you he doesn't smell like a rose garden either. You also can't be a cook if you shy away from a little elbow grease and sweat. Getting dirty for your craft is something he understands. He also has atrocious fashion sense when it comes to clothes that are not suits and he's a lil crazy in the same way all the strawhats are but he hides it well. Sanji is a ridiculous man and I like him that way. Stop it.

2. Sanji isn't some fainting flower, and it annoys me that this person was trying to paint him that way as if it's a forgone conclusion. Their argument was that he screams at bugs, and they were using it as an argument on why Sanji is apparently a babygirl who could never top anyone (why in the world does sex position even play a factor here??). They also pinpointed that Sanji wears suits and swoons at women as a reason why he's likely not gonna top anyone and is gonna remain a virgin. Admittedly I stopped reading at that point bc I made the executive decision to block the person for my own peace of mind, so I perhaps misunderstood (I barely understood the argument in the first place) but I still don't see how any of these factors have anything to do with sex position, or a sexual relationship not working with zosan. I'm all for asexual zosan. But y'all need to stop treating Sanji like some frail twink. That man is badass. He has a strong enough kick to kill a man, his leg catches on fire, he can fucking fly, he gives as good as he gets when it comes to his interactions with Zoro, he survived years and years of abuse from his family and came out a kindhearted person with principles. He is strong af. Again. STOP. IT.

3. None of those reasons for why they wouldn't have sex make sense to me because they operate under an assumption that Sanji would find Zoro gross so obvi they wouldn't have sex. The person fundamentally misunderstood that most people who like zosan aren't there bc they want smut, they're there because Zoro and Sanji are equal and opposites and they understand each other in a very fundamental way from the moment they met. Yes, their relationship is antagonistic, but in the way that Brogy and Dorry are set up in that one episode. If you understand that, then you get that when it comes to rivals, when it comes to their competition and their interactions with each other, Sanji wouldn't give a shit about avoiding getting his hands dirty. That is not the type of person he is. Zoro is his one exception in that sense. He has etiquette and acts like a refined gentleman, and then Zoro issues a challenge and Sanji is there, IMMEDIATELY ready and willing to throw down. He swoons over women, Zoro says anything and IMMEDIATELY Sanji's attention is all on Zoro. I have to wonder if this person even fucking watched the show before deciding to pass a bunch of unfounded judgements.

Alright, rant done.

#zosan #sanzo #one piece #one piece nami #one piece usopp #roronoa zoro #blackleg sanji #cat burglar nami #god usopp #zoro x sanji #sanji x zoro

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jeff-from-marketing · 2 months

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Hey it's been a hot minute, I'm gonna go off about Helldivers 2 for a bit, because the whole thing fascinates me.

Funnily enough it's not even the actual game itself that truly fascinates me, as great as it is. I do genuinely think that, while not perfect, it's a very solid game that knows what kind of experience it wants to deliver, and does a fantastic job delivering on it. The Starship Troopers-esque satire is hilarious, and I love how much the gameplay reinforces that satire through things like reinforcements canonically being a whole new Helldiver sent into the meat grinder, and that the mission still counts as a celebrated victory even if you never make it back alive. I could even talk about how the objectively clunky system for calling in orbital support is actually a positive for the game, but only this game and the type of experience it's selling.

But none of that is what fascinates me about this game so much. Because y'see, I played the first Helldivers game, and it was also a great bit of fun! It's actually why I was interested in the second one to begin with. But I also know that the first Helldivers was not a very wide reaching game, none of Arrowhead's games have been. They've not done poorly by any means, they're still in business and have been for over a decade now. But they've always been fairly niche affairs. Until now. To really sell the picture, I wanna rattle off player counts for their previous games:

Magicka in 2011, Arrowhead's first big game and published by Paradox, had an all-time max player count of 11,727 players according to SteamDB. I don't believe it was on any other storefronts, but I could be mistaken. A quick wikipedia visit tells me that the game sold roughly a million units over a year which, again, not bad! Especially for a game that is admittedly fairly unusual, but is a lot of fun!

The Showdown Effect in 2013, which I only just found out about right now after double checking my numbers, had a all time high of just 3,284 according to SteamDB, and is now delisted from Steam. Though apparently there's a remake from another company happening? There's a lot less info on this one in general.

Gauntlet in 2014, this one I do know a bit more about since I also played this one. A remake of the original 1985 game, and was a good bit of fun as well! This one is trickier to get an accurate player count reading, because it did have a PS4 release and those are harder to find numbers for. Regardless, it was also on Steam, so therefore I can use those numbers at least, which gives me a max consecutive player count of 12,730. I don't know how much PS4 factored into this.

And now we get to the real interesting one: Helldivers 1. Again, this is tricky because not only was it on console, but it was actually on console before it was ever on PC, which heavily skews numbers. SteamDB has the peak at just 6,744, but this doesn't sit right with me. I've seen estimates of 50k people around the place, some say 35k, but never a solid source. It's also very difficult to search atm because of how much Helldivers 2 is blowing up. Speaking of...

So Helldivers 1 is their most popular game, and I'll be generous and say that the 50k count is the accurate one. So surely Helldivers 2 can't be that much more- oh I'm not even going to pretend, you already know what's going on here. The game has reached ~450k concurrent players just on Steam alone! And the game also exists on PS5, and if I recall correctly: there's official statements saying that the player counts are roughly equal with each other. That means a peak of ~900,000 individual players. To illustrate how bonkers batshit insane that is, motherfucking Fortnite has a current consecutive player count of roughly one million.

Let me reiterate: a game that came out of basically nowhere with little marketing, from a small studio with only about 100 employees, is rivaling the juggernaut that is fucking Fortnite. That is insane.

As someone who has played all of Arrowhead's previous games besides The Showdown Effect, this is bonkers. There's a reason the sentiment was "there's no way to have predicted this" when the servers were at their worst, because look at the previous data! How is anyone supposed to predict a sequel to a niche game (from a company very few people have heard about) to get a ~1800% increase in max player count? Their initial server capacity was 250k, which would've been very optimistic if you were just going by Helldivers 1 numbers. But then that wasn't enough. And then 360k wasn't enough. And then 450k wasn't enough. We're now at 700k server capacity and just finally getting things under control. This game just exploded in a way no one could have reasonably predicted. And I have no idea why this is the case either.

I'm not saying it's not deserved; it absolutely is! Like I said, game is great, and there's not even any shitty business practices I can bitch at this time! It's just so sudden and out of nowhere that it baffles me. Such a small percentage of these players would've even heard of the first game, let alone played it. It didn't have a massive marketing campaign, this is pretty much all spread through word of mouth, which is insane in its own right. It's not even like the game is entering an untapped market, it shares its existence with games like Deep Rock Galactic, Vermintide, Darktide, the actual Starship Troopers game, probably some others I'm forgetting. And yet, despite all of this, it breached containment something fierce. I don't have a big conclusion to make from all this, I'd love to be able to say "oh people are just getting tired of Triple A- oh I'm sorry, Quadruple A gaming and this is a breath of fresh air" and it is that, as was Baldur's Gate 3, but I'm not naive enough to think that's the main reason. Not when so many other great games continue to go undiscovered, and so many people still end up buying whatever the next big Triple A thing is. It's a great game to play with friends, and there's a lot going for it and a lot of charm, but such is also the case for the other games I already listed in this paragraph and they don't see the same popularity.

Whether it's just dumb fucking luck, or a really oddly specific set of circumstances at play that I can't see, I'm just dumbfounded and flabbergasted. But I'm not exactly gonna complain. It's fun getting sent into the meat grinder to spread Managed Democracy, and I'm glad the game is doing as well as it is, though I do hope that the devs get to have a bit of rest once the dust finally settles a little bit.

#helldivers #helldivers 2 #seriously if they ever need to update the example sentence for the word “unprecedented” this would be a solid candidate #this has genuinely kept me up at night before just thinking about how wild it is compared to all of Arrowhead's other games #let alone compared to just Helldivers 1

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