Rose of Versailles

.

does that mean that the merch that came with volumes 8 and 9 are totally lost?? No other publisher can put out that merch?? (reading your comments in the other post)

Sorry i really don't know how works this 😓

Definitely no publisher other than Carrotoon can sell volumes 8 and 9's merch, of that I can assure you. The exclusive merch is designed by Spoon for the limited volumes (as she's probably contractually obligated to), they won't sell it outside of Korea. Most, if not all, of the non-korean merch (so really just the chinese merch, since we haven't seen whatever the german limited "cards" edition is) is actually just made from edited panels/illustrations, it's nothing brand new . The JP volumes don't have any merch.

I guess there's a chance Carrotoon will sell that merch individually in the future, which... would actually be really scummy, if you ask me. But I don't think that's very likely. That's one of the reasons why I am was so pissed off about the whole thing, it sucks to see Spoon's hard work be wasted like that.

I have never seen Seven Seas sell merch, so I wouldn't expect them to start doing it for WMMAP, but I guess the chance isn't 0? But I 100% guarantee you they won't sell the exact same korean limited editions (they have only announced one printed version for 20 USD anyways, and that's definitely not limited). The exclusivity is what justifies the price tag, and "limited" (not only in manhwa, just in general) is not just a buzzword, it has legal implications. So the best outcome I see is that they release new merch for the english version, but I don't wanna give anyone false hopes.

Amazon's bestselling "bitter lemon" energy drink was bottled delivery driver piss

Today (Oct 20), I'm in Charleston, WV at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

For a brief time this year, the bestselling "bitter lemon drink" on Amazon was "Release Energy," which consisted of the harvested urine of Amazon delivery drivers, rebottled for sale by Catfish UK prankster Oobah Butler in a stunt for a new Channel 4 doc, "The Great Amazon Heist":

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-amazon-heist

Collecting driver piss is surprisingly easy. Amazon, you see, puts its drivers on a quota that makes it impossible for them to drive safely, park conscientiously, or, indeed, fulfill their basic human biological needs. Amazon has long waged war on its employees' kidneys, marking down warehouse workers for "time off task" when they visit the toilets.

As tales of drivers pissing – and shitting! – in their vans multiplied, Amazon took decisive action. The company enacted a strict zero tolerance policy for drivers returning to the depot with bottles of piss in their vans.

That's where Butler comes in: the roads leading to Amazon delivery depots are lined with bottles of piss thrown out of delivery vans by drivers who don't want to lose their jobs, which made harvesting the raw material for "Release Energy" a straightforward matter.

Butler was worried that he wouldn't be able to list his product on Amazon because he didn't have the requisite "food and drinks licensing" certificates, so he listed his drink in Amazon's refillable pump dispenser category. But Amazon's systems detected the mismatch and automatically shifted the product into the drinks section.

Butler enlisted some confederates to place orders for his drink, and it quickly rocketed to the top of Amazon's listings for the category, which led to Amazon's recommendation engine pushing the item on people who weren't in on the gag. When these orders came in, Butler pulled the plug, but not before an Amazon rep telephoned him to pitch him turning packaging, shipping and fulfillment over to Amazon:

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-let-its-drivers-urine-be-sold-as-an-energy-drink/

The Release Energy prank was just one stunt Butler pulled for his doc; he also went undercover at an Amazon warehouse, during a period when Amazon hired an extra 1,000 workers for its warehouses in Coventry, UK, in a successful bid to dilute pro-union sentiment in his workforce in advance of a key union vote:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/the-great-amazon-heist-oobah-butler-review

Butler's stint as an Amazon warehouse worker only lasted a couple of days, ending when Amazon recognized him and fired him.

The contrast between Amazon's ability to detect an undercover reporter and its inability to spot bottles of piss being marketed as bitter lemon energy drink says it all, really. Corporations like Amazon hire vast armies of "threat intelligence" creeps who LARP at being CIA superspies, subjecting employees and activists to intense and often illegal surveillance.

But while Amazon's defensive might is laser-focused on the threat of labor organizers and documentarians, the company can't figure out that one of its bestselling products is bottles of its tormented drivers' own urine.

In the USA, the FTC is suing Amazon for its monopolistic tactics, arguing that the company has found ways to raise prices and reduce quality by trapping manufacturers and sellers with its logistics operation, taking $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar they earn and forcing them to raise prices at all retailers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The Release Energy stunt shows where Amazon's priorities are. Not only did Release Energy get listed on Amazon without any quality checks, the company actually nudged it into a category where it was more likely to be consumed by a person. The only notice the company took of Release Energy was in its logistics and manufacturing department – the part of the business that extracts the monopoly rents at issue in the FTC case – which tracked Butler down in order to sell him these services.

The drivers whose piss Butler collected don't work directly for Amazon, they work for a Delivery Service Partner. These DSPs are victims of a pyramid scheme that Amazon set up. DSP operators lease vans and pay to have them skinned in Amazon livery and studded with Amazon sensors. They take out long-term leases on depots, and hire drivers who dress in Amazon uniforms. Their drivers are minutely monitored by Amazon, down to the movements of their eyeballs.

But none of this is "Amazon" – it's all run by an "entrepreneur," whom Amazon can cut loose without notice, leaving them with unfairly terminated employees, outstanding workers' comp claims, a fleet of Amazon-skinned vehicles and unbreakable facilities leases:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Speaking to Wired, Amazon denied that it forces its drivers to piss in bottles, but Butler clearly catches a DSP dispatcher telling drivers "If you pee in a bottle and leave it [in the vehicle], you will get a point for that" – that is, the part you get punished for isn't the peeing, it's the leaving.

Amazon's defense against the FTC is that it spares no effort to keep its marketplace safe. As Amazon spokesperson James Drummond says, they use "industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed." But the only industry-leading tools in evidence are tools to bust unions and screw suppliers.

In her landmark Yale Law Review paper, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," FTC Chair Lina Khan makes a brilliant argument that Amazon's alleged benefits to "consumers" are temporary at best, illusory at worst:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

In Butler's documentary, Khan's hypothesis is thoroughly validated: here's a company extracting hundreds of billions from merchants who raise prices to compensate, and those monopoly rents are "invested" in union-busting and countermeasures against investigative journalists, while the tools to keep you from accidentally getting a bottle of piss in the mail are laughably primitive.

Truly, Amazon is the apex predator of the platform era:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

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/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Relentless direct action has secured another victory in the fight against Israel’s arms trade, as Elbit Systems are forced to sell their ‘Elite KL’ factory in Tamworth.

The company had previously manufactured cooling and power management systems for military vehicles, but was sold on after stating that it faced falling profits and increased security costs resulting from Palestine Action’s efforts. 

After the sale was completed last month, Elite KL’s new owners, listed as Griffin Newco Ltd, confirmed in an email to Palestine Action that they will have nothing to do with the previous owners, Elbit, and have discontinued any arms manufacturing:

“Following the recent acquisition of Elite KL Limited by a UK investment syndicate, the newly appointed board has unanimously agreed to withdraw from all future defence contracts and terminate its association with its former parent company”.

This victory is a direct result of sustained direct action which has sought, throughout Palestine Action’s existence, to make it impossible for Elbit to afford to operate in Britain. Before they sold the enterprise to a private equity syndicate, Elbit had reported that Elite KL operating profits had been slashed by over three-quarters, with Palestine Action responsible: Elbit directly cited the increased expenditure on security they’d been forced to make, and higher supply chain costs they faced.

And these actions did, indeed, cost them. The first action at the site, in November 2020, saw Elite KL’s premises smashed into, the building covered in blood-red paint. Between March and July 2021, the site was put out of action three times by roof-top occupations – drenched red in March 2021, with the factory’s camera systems dismantled, before again being occupied in in May. Another roof-top occupation in July, despite increased security, saw the site forced closed – once again painted blood-red, and with its windows and fixings smashed through.

In February 2022, activists decommissioned the site for weeks – closed off after an occupation that saw over £250,000 of damages caused, the roof tiles removed one-by-one. After this, Elbit erected a security perimeter around the site – but to no avail. One month later, six were arrested after Palestine Action returned to Tamworth – again taking the roof and smashing through, preventing the production of parts for Israel’s military machine.

Elite KL is a ‘specialist thermal management business’. Since the sale, the company focuses on cooling systems for buses and trains, but it had, under Elbit, manufactured these systems for military vehicles. Until December of last year, Elite KL’s website was advertising its military and defence products, and it was known to provide parts for Israel’s deadly Merkava tanks, with export license records demonstrating its provision of ‘ML6a’ components for military ground vehicles to Israel. The company was also known to manufacture crew cooling systems, for the military vests of tank operators.

Elbit Systems itself provides 85% of the drones and land-based military equipment for the Israeli military, along with a wide range of the munitions and armaments currently being used against Gaza’s beseiged population. Its CEO, Bazhalel Machlis, has claimed that the Israeli military has offered the company its thanks for their “crucial” services during the ongoing genocide in Gaza

A Palestine Action spokesperson has stated:

“Each activist who occupied and dismantled Tamworth’s Israeli weapons factory did so in order to bring an end to Israel’s weapons trade, and to end the profiteering from Palestinian repression. Every defeat Elbit faces is a victory for the Palestinian people.

Kicking Elbit out of Tamworth shows once again that direct action is a necessary tactic. It is one which must be utilised and amplified in the face of the Gaza genocide.”

On the one hand, it's true that the way Dungeons & Dragons defines terms like "sorcerer" and "warlock" and "wizard" is really only relevant to Dungeons & Dragons and its associated media – indeed, how these terms are used isn't even consistent between editions of D&D! – and trying to apply them in other contexts is rarely productive.

On the other hand, it's not true that these sorts of fine-grained taxonomies of types of magic are strictly a D&D-ism and never occur elsewhere. That folks make this argument is typically a symptom of being unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons' source material. D&D's main inspirations are American literary sword and sorcery fantasy spanning roughly the 1930s through the early 1980s, and fine-grained taxonomies of magic users absolutely do appear in these sources; they just aren't anything like as consistent as the folks who try to cram everything into the sorcerer/warlock/wizard model would prefer.

For example, in Lyndon Hardy's "Five Magics" series, the five types of magical practitioners are:

Alchemists: Drawing forth the hidden virtues of common materials to craft magic potions; limited by the fact that the outcomes of their formulas are partially random.

Magicians: Crafting enchanted items through complex manufacturing procedures; limited by the fact that each step in the procedure must be performed perfectly with no margin for error.

Sorcerers: Speaking verbal formulas to basically hack other people's minds, permitting illusion-craft and mind control; limited by the fact that the exercise of their art eventually kills them.

Thaumaturges: Shaping matter by manipulating miniature models; limited by the need to draw on outside sources like fires or flywheels to make up the resulting kinetic energy deficit.

Wizards: Summoning and binding demons from other dimensions; limited by the fact that the binding ritual exposes them to mental domination by the summoned demon if their will is weak.

"Warlock", meanwhile, isn't a type of practitioner, but does appear as pejorative term for a wizard who's lost a contest of wills with one of their own summoned demons.

Conversely, Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Legends of Ethshar" series includes such types of magic-users as:

Sorcerers: Channelling power through metal talismans to produce fixed effects; in the time of the novels, talisman-craft is largely a lost art, and most sorcerers use found or inherited talismans.

Theurges: Summoning gods; the setting's gods have no interest in human worship, but are bound not to interfere in the mortal world unless summoned, and are thus amenable to cutting deals.

Warlocks: Wielding X-Men style psychokinesis by virtue of their attunement to the telepathic whispers emanating from the wreckage of a crashed alien starship. (They're the edgy ones!)

Witches: Producing improvisational effects mostly related to healing, telepathy, precognition, and minor telekinesis by drawing on their own internal energy.

Wizards: Drawing down the infinite power of Chaos and shaping it with complex rituals. Basically D&D wizards, albeit with a much greater propensity for exploding.

You'll note that both taxonomies include something called a "sorcerer", something called a "warlock", and something called a "wizard", but what those terms mean in their respective contexts agrees neither with the Dungeons & Dragons definitions, nor with each other.

(Admittedly, these examples are from the 1980s, and are thus not free of D&D's influence; I picked them because they both happened to use all three of the terms in question in ways that are at odds with how D&D uses them. You can find similar taxonomies of magic use in earlier works, but I would have had to use many more examples to offer multiple competing definitions of each of "sorcerer", "warlock" and "wizard", and this post is already long enough!)

So basically what I'm saying is giving people a hard time about using these terms "wrong" – particularly if your objection is that they're not using them in a way that's congruent with however D&D's flavour of the week uses them – makes you a dick, but simply having this sort of taxonomy has a rich history within the genre. Wizard phylogeny is a time-honoured tradition!

i am in love with your sollux i think

sollux love party :]

if you’re interested heres some of my personal fondness thoughts on him.. big warning for the mega long read ahead aye

as we alr know sollux's rejection of participation somewhat mirrors dave's rejection of heroism, but even without getting cooked to completion i still find sollux's character v compelling beyond the fourth wall

as someone who doesnt get a pinch of that Protagonist Sparkle to begin with, he can openly say he wants to leave anytime…. and unlike dave, he actually Can leave the scene anytime. but he can never be truly Free from the story via permanent character death like the other trolls.

his irrelevancy is indeed relevant - he’s there so u can point him out.

while his image is intended to be a relic of past internet subculture, his role is not only about hehehaha being a Chad or a 2000s cyberforum 2²chan haxxor ragequit gamebro.

his continued existence also happens to add a Bit to the overarching themes of homestuck! a Bit that gives him longer-lasting thematic relevance compared to the trolls who could’ve had more character potential but didnt get to survive beyond the main story.

the Bit in question:

his defiance contributes to the illusion of agency (treating characters = people with autonomy). he’s “aware” of it, and that recognition is worth noting enough to forcibly keep him alive as both reward and punishment.

considering how his personality & classpect is designed its definitely a very haha thing for hussie to do LOL. he’s made to be op asf so he's resigned to doing dirty work, gradually deteriorating along the way but never truly dying. as fans have mentioned before, him openly rejecting involvement after a while of grim tolerance is like if the sim u were controlling suddenly stopped, looked up and gave u the finger while u were step six into the walkthrough for Every Possible Sim Death Animation.

but since he’s just a sim… the more he hates it, the more you keep him around. if ur sim started complaining abt your whimsical household storyline you’d definitely keep that little fuck.

but yeah i like that sollux is just idling. the significance of his presence being that one dude who's always reliably Somewhere, root core Unchanged, no individual ambitions (possibly due to fear of consequence?), and design-wise: a staple representative product of his time.

compared to dirk's character, who has aged phenomenally well into the present (themes of control + AR + artificial intelligence, clearer exploration around navigating relationships/sexuality, infinite possibilities of self-splinterhood and trait inheritance), sollux's potential is really... contained. bitter. defeatist. limiting and frustrating in the way old tech is.

the world continues moving on to shinier, brighter, more advanced automated things - minimalist and metaverse or whatever but sollux is still here 🧍‍♂️ going woohoo redblue 3d. (tho personally i imagine his vibe similar to what the kids call cassette futurism on pinterest mixed w more grimy grunge insectoid influences eheh)

conceptually-speaking,

at the foundation of it all, the rapid pace of modern development was built off the understanding of ppl like sollux in the past, who were There actively at work while the dough was still beginning to rise

thats one of the cool things abt the idea of trolls preceding humans! the idea that trolls like sollux excelled back when lots of basic shit still needed to be discovered, building structures like networks and codes from scratch, and humans will eventually inherit and reinvent that knowledge in ways that become so optimized it makes the old manual effort seem archaic, slow, and labour-intensive.

but despite information/resources/shortcuts being more accessible now, much of the new highly-anticipated stuff released on trend still end up unfinished, inefficient, or expiring quickly due to cutting corners under severe capitalistic pressures

meanwhile, some of the old stuff frm past generations of thorough, exploratory and perfectionistic development still remains working, complete, and ever so sturdy.

those things continue to exist, just outside our periphery with either:

zero purpose left for modern needs (outdated/obsolete)

or

far too important to replace or destroy, bcs of its surprisingly essential and circumstantial usefulness in one niche specific area.

which are honestly? both points that sum up sollux pree well.

dramatic ending sorry. anw are u still on the fence or are u Sick abt him like me </3

It’s fucking insane to me how normal Yankee Liberals are about Hawaii. As in like the way they just treat it as an unremarkable fact that their nation controls the island. Like the annexation of Hawaii wasn’t just any old example of Settler-Colonialism, the subjugation of a decentralised non-urbanised people that could be just dismissed as mere “tribes” or what have you. Not to say that such forms of “typical” Settler Colonialism are any less abhorrent or disgusting, just easier to justify from a Liberal point of view. Easier to claim that they weren’t *really* using the land properly or that they were an hopelessly and eternally backwards who only really benefitted from their conquest or that they were doomed and dying anyway and their fate was a mere tragic inevitability not worth dwelling on or… Point is all these arguments are all wrong and stupid and cruel but they can serve well enough to downplay or justify such atrocities in the eyes of Imperial Core Liberals.

But like with Hawaii you don’t have that. The Kingdom of Hawai’i was a sovereign state that was internationally recognised as such by the Great Powers of Europe even at the very height of Western Imperialism. Literacy rates were high and compulsory education was introduced in 1841 (pre-dating the US by 77 years), healthcare was given to all Hawai’ian subjects free of charge, Christianity was dominant (so even the most ardent Imperialist couldn’t claim that the people were in the thrall of some “barbaric superstition” that necessitated the “civilising influence” of empire) and it had a well-developed Capitalist economy dominated by Sugar production.  Like even if we take the Western model of statehood as the be all end all of what separates the civilised from the savage (to be clear hear you really fucking shouldn’t, but many people do so for a second that’s the frame of reference we’ll employ) then Hawai’i was very much unambiguously the former.  But that didn’t stop the US from shamelessly interfering it’s politics Indeed those aformentioned markers of Western-Style “civilisation” and “development” came with the price of allow US missionaries and investors to settler in the islands and become very wealthy and influential. For decades the US used the threat of force to influence the policy decisions of the kingdom, going as far as to regularly send warships in a classic display of “gunboat diplomacy”. In 1887 a US settler militia called the First Honolulu Rifles staged a coup where they forced Kalākaua to accept a new Constitution that heavily favoured the interests of USamerican settlers who had grown very wealthy through their investment in sugar production on the island.  It stripped the Monarchy of much of its power and introducing requirements for voting that heavily favoured US settlers; re-introducing wealth/property requirements that were now higher than even, allowing resident aliens to vote and just outright banning any Asian immigrants from voting (which at that point had as much to do with plain racial hatred as it did to any acting threat they might have posed). This wasn’t enough for the Yanks and 6 years later a group of 13 US settlers known as the “Committee of Safety” outright overthrew the newly crowned Queen Liliʻuokalani when she refused to co-operate. It existed briefly as an “Independent” USamerican dominated republic before the US government decided to official annex it in 1898 (similar to what you saw with Texas or California).

While incredibly controversial at the time due to both strategic concerns with the annexation of ultramarine territories and some level of outrage at the shameless take-over of a sovereign nation (hence the time gap between the coup and the actual annexation), nowadays Yanks enjoy their control over the island without the slightest care in the world. They even turned it into a tourist destination, a heavily romanticised one that not only receives many millions of visitors every year but is constantly mentioned in the popular culture the US then proceeds to export all over the world, literally revelling in their land that is by literally any definition (even the most nakedly pro-imperialist) stolen. The land itself is severely exploited to the point of significant ecological damage, the indigenous peoples too are exploited as many of them live in poverty while US investors grow wealthy from their land and labour. Even their very culture is stolen and monetised, the most marketable parts bastardised into cheap kitsch and the rest of it left to rot, only kept alive through over a century of continued resistance from the indigenous peoples. It’s a very common story of course, but I think it stands out with how utterly ghoulish it is even under the most Liberal of consistently applied worldviews. It would be like if in say 2007 someone set up Disneyland in Bagdad. And yet by the vast majority of the US (and by extension the vassals states whose view of the situation is filtered through the lens of US media and propaganda) it isn’t seen that way. Hawaii is just the 50th state, the only state outside North America and in the tropics (hahaha ain’t that a neat little fact. Geography is so fun J), an island paradise perfect to visit with the whole family and yet still as American as Apple Pie. Even many self-described “progressives” talk about it in this way, at most mentioning the plight of the indigenous Hawaiians with minimal though as to how this situation came about. Like while the story of Hawaii is far from unique; even in terms of the US doing colonialism to Westernised peoples you examples such as the ethnic cleansing of the Five Civilised Tribes from the Eastern USA, it still stands out to me with the sheer level of international recognition and Western-style development that the Kingdom of Hawai’i possessed. Like it’s just such an obvious example of the naked greed at the heart of the USamerican empire, and how utterly bullshit talk of a “civilising mission” and “spreading democracy” is. No matter what they may claim, no matter what excuses they may trot out, Imperialist rapacity has no limits.

fontanian men and empty places pt.1

☆ pairings: neuvillette x afab reader, wriothesley x afab reader, & lyney x afab reader

☆ warnings: glove kink (?), petnames, dubious consent, mentions of a relationship with a power imbalance, sex in public spaces

nsfw under the cut

neuvillette - in front of the oratrice mecanique d'analyse cardinale (pre 4.2)

usually, if he’s feeling bold, you’ll fuck in his office at palais mermonia. rarely ever HERE. but, on the rare occasions that you do…

it’s a rare quiet day at the opera epiclese. no trials and no shows held by the beloved magician twins. but, neuvillette still had to come down to oversee some maintenance done on the oratice mecanique d’analyse cardinale (omac for short plz). 

“mon coeur, i don’t know why you can’t just assign the overseeing to some garde or melusine. you and i both know there’s no issue with its ability to create indemnitium.” you stand at the center of the stage, pouting with your arms crossed. 

the silver haired man chuckles softly, “i know i could. but you and i both know this isn’t a delicate matter, it requires special attention no matter what,” neuvillette moves close to you and leans down to kiss your cheek, “somewhat like you.”

“please, you pay this hunk of metal more attention than me some days,” you scoff. you were exaggerating, you both knew it but neuvillette still raised a brow. 

“oh? has my sirène been feeling neglected?” the hydro sovereign pauses, you feign puppy dog eyes and look up at him, your eyes meeting his soft azure blue ones. 

“wouldn't hurt to show me how special i am,” you say with fake sniffles

neuvillette cups your cheeks in his hands and your lips meet in a desperate need, lust clouding over you both so quickly. eventually, you part gasping for breath as you hazily look up at him silently pleading for more. 

just as you open your mouth to ask neuvillette to take you home, the man is pushing two of his glove clad fingers past your lips and down your throat. you gag around the intrusion but don’t pull away, keeping eye contact even if your vision blurs with tears. 

“indeed, allow me.”

wriothesley - in an abandoned production zone 

you and the fortress of meropide’s administrator have a hard and clear rule, keep it under wraps, no telling anyone and definitely no pda. so imagine your surprise when the duke himself is walking towards you in the middle of your evening patrol. 

“oh- sir, i was just in the middle of my patrol. did you need assistance in something?” you ask, putting up a facade to any other gardes that may be nearby. 

wriothesley puts a hand up, signaling the coast was clear. “no need for that, princess. it’s just us here,” he grins at your body relaxing, “did you check this area out already?”

you look back, an abandoned production zone. nothing but boxes of unused gear for clockwork mekas, “yeah, all clear back there.” you peer into the man’s icy eyes, wondering what he was doing here. wriothesley was usually in his headquarters’s at this time, or really just sleeping. the confused look doesn’t go unnoticed. 

the duke guides you deeper into the empty tunnel, “what, i can’t check up on my princess?”

you flush at the pet name. despite you being a mere garde in the fortress, wriothesley insisted on calling you such pet names. “no- i mean yes you can but-“

you’re interrupted as you hit the wall behind you, now noticing how deep into the tunnel you are and how close wriothesley is to you. the man flips you around with ease and presses you against the wall, your back firm against his chest. “i got tired of filling out paperwork, i need a break,”

your eyes widen when you feel his hard cock strain against his pants and push into the small of your back. “oh,” you breathe out. 

“think you can help me unwind?” the duke doesn’t even wait for your answer and begins unbuckling his belt, the sound of the light metal making you press your thighs together searching for friction. 

you lift up the skirt of your uniform and push down your panties, spreading apart your legs so the bigger man can fit in between them. wriothesley groans in approval at your eagerness, “such a perfect princess.” 

lyney - behind the bushes at café lutece during nighttime 

do not trust this magician’s innocent face, this man is EVIL!!! i fully believe he has an intense exhibition kink and gets off on the thrill of almost getting caught (poor melusines)

so, deep into the night when the usual bustle of fontaine court is now quiet, hiding from the sight of gardes, lyneys tugged you by the hand, all giggles and shushes, towards café lutece.

“the café is closed, lyney. what’re we doing here?” you question the perky blond. 

“oh but we’re not here for the cafe, ma cherie.” lyney continues to tug you, now behind the bushes near the walls surrounding the building, “i just though this would be the perfect place to make some magic of our own,” lyney winks at your puzzled face, softly pushing you against the walls and hiking your leg up his waist.

‘l-lyney! Have you gone mad?!” you gasp, trying to push off your insane boyfriend. yet, there was little force.

“hmm c'mon now, we’ll be quick,” his hands have already hiked up your skirt and are now toying with the hem of your panties, fingers dipping in between your thighs just quick enough to leave you longing for more. 

your heart skips a beat and you bite your lip to keep from making any noise as lyney gets bolder, his fingers slipping past your now wet folds. 

lyney grins against your neck where he’s been placing sweet kisses, “see, ma belle? just enjoy the show.”

to be continued whenever more fontaine males are released :3

— PUSSY P♡WER.

They only have one goal before you leave Sumeru for another land, and that is to satiate their fantasies about your cunt.

꒰ა ❤︎ ໒꒱ . . . afab!reader. tease!reader. traveler!reader not pertaining to the twins in game. i got a biiit carried away with cyno’s part (i mean, it’s cyno my number one slut). nonetheless, please enjoy!

CYNO + lots of cum, undertones of perv!cyno, unprotected.

cyno is unfamiliar with defeat in all aspects of life. in sumeru, everyone with ears and eyes knows that whatever the general mahamatra wants, the general mahamatra gets. or in this case, you: the traveler from another land. that being said, none could gauge his discontent upon having his persuasions denied every time.

“i can give you anything: money, power, influence. just name it.” his lilt unmasked his dwindling patience. after all, as general mahamatra, it is not a walk in the park to leave his base for a journey to the rainforest. coming home defeated each time calls for desperate measures indeed.

such a wily thing you are, adroit in pushing back after cultivating make-believe for cyno to relish in. it’s always hidden in your smile, followed by an innocent “general, you wish to fuck me that badly?”

to which, he’d answer, “yes. hard and preferably in my bed. but as you are now, stubborn and unbent, say yes and i wouldn’t mind anywhere.”

he awaits the laugh that is certain to follow, a sound that peels off at his sanity, all while tempting his cock to spring out of its restraints, but none echoed. instead, he finds himself inside an inn, with your naked body and wet cunt spread out in the creaky bed. at long fucking last.

sumeru is home to breathtaking panoramas. but in cyno’s opinion, no vista could ever vie with how your arousal coats the plumped lips of your cunt, waiting to be fucked hard. or how gorgeous you look in all fours, back smoothly curving to present yourself to him.

and when he finally, finally pops his cock into your pulsing walls, his breath hitches at the sensation. proving the fantasies he has painted about you all while maintaining the surprise, your cunt is indeed warm, wet, and perfect. it’s loud, too— producing a sucking noise every time cyno picks up his pace, burying himself in you until the white ring around his girth dribbles down his heavy balls.

you clamp around him and his eyes roll back to his skull. his cocktip kisses your spot and he drools at the feeling. the cycle of pulling and pushing and endless huff of jagged breathing tips him over the edge. until he’s coming loads straight into your insides. cyno overstimulates himself until his shoulders begin to jitter, pistoling his rawed-out cock to give you every drop of his thick and hot cum. in hopes that you’ll never forget what it feels like.

AL-HAITHAM + might be ooc, spare me this man is hard to write. undertones of yandere. big balled and big brained al-haitham. you walk in on him touching himself.

as someone in possession of knowledge that remains shrouded in most people’s cognizance, al-haitham has mastered the art of deceit easier than anyone with a functioning brain in sumeru. deceit that he equips as white lies, all in order to fall in your good graces. or if he is to be candid, to get under your pants.

he particularly roisters in hearing about your curiosities merely to obscure his answers and lead you astray from what you seek. a calculated effort that will establish the day you’d come for his help again, therefore nailing your attention to him and no one else. and as expected from an outlander strange to the land of dendro, you seem oblivious to al-haitham’s advances.

which he finds remarkably endearing, for if there exists an image that could shake his carnal desires awake, it is the manner of how you look at him: doe-eyed, awaiting the answers to your inquiries to slip past his lips.

you are a tight knot in his chest, pressing down on his stomach and between his legs. the product of his salacity, you take away any crumbs of reason and logic from him each night as he pumps himself with big hands. until there are drops of cum on his floor, and his cock falls limp to his stomach once he lays back panting on his bed.

that is until one particular day when his lust has overcome all rational thoughts. al-haitham ends up behind crates in an abandoned room in port ormos, sweating bullets while fucking himself greedily. it was meant to be a quick release, propelled by his growing need to fuck you. never had he foreseen that you’d be following his trail, therefore catching him abusing his cock while panting your name.

“i… allow me to explain,” he mutters in haste, grappling for the waistband of his breaches to hide his swelling cock. “it’s not… i have not any intentions—”

“do you need my help?” you offer. he blinks at you, and you blink back innocently. “we cannot leave you in that painful state, can we?”

no, you can’t. but al-haitham, even after the first time he came inside you, has not found the satisfaction he quests after. what was supposed to be a quick fuck ended up with him fucking you in a few different positions inside the dim room. nevermind the cobwebs or the dust, al-haitham has only one thing in mind, and that is to pump you full with cum it’s the only thing you’d be thinking about once you depart from sumeru.

TIGHNARI + perv!tighnari. oral sex (reader receiving). voyeurism.

being a scholar equates to having the freedom of committing deeds that would’ve been questionable in someone else’s eyes. and in his lifetime, tighnari surely has done quite a few things that are considered eccentric from a standpoint of a bystander. he is not apologetic, not one bit. after all, nothing is prohibited for the sake of knowledge.

however, this particular curiosity rallied by the arrival of a certain outlander has the young scholar pondering about what’s considered moral and not. and yet his nature’s heightened instincts galloped faster than his ability to provide himself an answer.

it’s your scent, tighnari thinks. the overwhelming whiff of something addictive. something that he’d search for in the morning, or follow in the middle of the night. your scent provides him a certain heat, which travels from his nape down his spine. and with that scent, tighnari learns how to pleasure himself again. yet, it barely filled the desire seeping in his bones whenever you’d look his way or touch his skin accidentally.

he has been consumed by the thought before he could formalize a way to free himself from it: tighnari wants to eat your cunt and fuck you right after. all this he has kept to himself for weeks until one fateful night.

he knows that your body has been shaped to the point of perfection, he knows it. but nothing prepared him to see you with no clothes while you pistol two fingers in your cunt with so much enthusiasm. and perhaps he has moved from where he stands gelid or breathed a little too loud from where he hides, for the next thing he knows, your eyes are on his.

tighnari counts the seconds, telling himself that once it reaches five, you’d be covering yourself in mortification. imagine his surprise when you widen your legs and rub your clit while tugging at your nipple.

he wants to break here and there. take his cock out and shoot a fat load to the ground. what he ended up doing was kneeling before you in silent agreement. his lips buzz against your cunt as he enthusiastically feasts between your legs. he loves it, so much that he feels his cock leaking with every suck and lick of his tongue. when you arch your back and cried out into the night, tighnari’s balls tighten. even without touching himself, thick globules squirt from his throbbing slit. he realizes, then: your scent is unique because it comes from between your legs. and that night, tighnari drowned in it.

💭 reblogs && feedback appreciated !

sorry if this is a very idiotic question but how is the existence of private firms in China not antithetical to it being a socialist state. this is seriously in good faith I'm genuinely curious TT

This is a pretty common question, not just when it comes to China, but also to most socialist states, including the USSR at the time.

in short, the transformation of a country's mode of production takes a very long time. The development and maturation of capitalism took hundreds of years and had many stages: mercantilism, primitive accumulation, national competition, global expansion, and finally, imperialism (the highest stage of capitalism). Socialism will also take a long time to mature. Socialism is not a checklist of haves and have nots. Socialism isn't when collectives or cooperatives. Socialism isn't when no billionaires. Socialism most definitely is not when government does stuff or taxes on rich people.

The transition to socialism requires the development of productive forces. The goal of Reform and Opening Up (改革开放, GGKF) was to build up the productive forces which China lacked at the time. While China had a solid heavy industrial and agricultural base, it lacked in other areas. Additionally, thanks to the Sino-Soviet split, China was left largely isolated without much foreign trade. GGKF achieves this by opening the Chinese market to foreign capitalist investment. These foreign investors pour money into China to build factories, ports, infrastructure, assembly plants, etc., etc., in order to take advantage of cheap Chinese labor. The upside of this policy is the rapid accumulation of productive forces. The downside is intensifying internal contradictions (and if you ask my grandpa, the worst thing GGKF did was introducing liberals to China). Billionaires are a symptom of these intensifying internal contradictions.

China is in a nascent, primitive form of socialism: it has a dictatorship of the proletariat lead by a proletarian party. The party derives its power from the people (who make up the vast vast majority of the party). Between 2003 and 2011, the PRC executed 14 billionaires. The anti-corruption campaign also continues to rack up billionaire heads. Corrupt officials who get extremely wealthy from bribes, too, get executed. When Jack Ma tried to step out of line, his company was seized and broken up (ANT group). The state consistently puts its boots on the necks of the bourgeoisie. At the same time, Chinese worker safety, labor rights, wages, overtime, state intervention, etc. are increasing. This stands in contrast to the dictatorships of the bourgeoisie in the west, most notably america. In the usa, the billionaires control the state and thus can get away with anything they want, and not a single one will face tangible punishment, let alone get executed.

As geopolitics shift, material conditions improve, and internal contradictions are resolved, GGKF will be rolled back as China progresses on its construction of socialism. This is beginning to happen. Since the international bourgeoisie have finally realized that China never intended to liberalize and is still, in fact, a socialist state, The DOTBs that they run are working day and night to slander, sanction, and vilify the PRC. The international institutions, which China had to join in order to effect GGKF, will slowly turn against China, using any excuse to try and squeeze them. But it is largely too late. Using the fruits of GGKF, China has eliminated extreme poverty entirely, resolving one internal contradiction. Its productive forces are good enough that it can begin to carry itself without much western IP and capital. I expect the PRC to further crack down on the excesses of GGKF; indeed, several markets have been entirely eliminated via nationalization already.

Here's some nice trivia! mcdicks in China is 50% state owned and its workforce is entirely unionized! Cool huh? In exchange for access to China's massive market, in their never-ending pursuit for higher and higher profit, the bourgeoisie is willing to partially fund the largest currently-existing socialist state. "The capitalists will sell us the rope", as is often said.

Red Sails wrote a great article addressing this question, if you'd like to give it a read.

SN: AZ36

Today on popping the corn and feeding the children, what do you folks think of this discussion? :)

I'm always curious to hear what other Trek fans, especially queer Trek fans, think about our place in Trek history and how we fare as the queer participants within our fandom. What have your experiences been like?

Overwhelmingly I've found a great reception and a welcoming attitude, but I admit that has increased considerably since the 90s. However, there are still some Trek fans who seem to be vehemently in denial about queer history in Star Trek, or the fact that anyone who has worked on Trek has pro-LGBT attitudes. This always surprises me considering some of the blatant queer content we have already seen in Star Trek such as the Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn kiss.

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion that followed and seeing the overwhelming outpouring of support coming from Star Trek fans in response to this thread.

Here was my two cents contribution:

"No, what they said was factual.

Have you forgotten Nichelle Nichols was indeed an African American woman in the core seven bridge crew back in 1966?

Or the fact that Gene Roddenberry went out of his way to write The Motion Picture Novel, creating the term "T'hy'la: friend, brother, lover" so that fans could choose which interpretations of Kirk and Spock they saw fit? He also embraced K/S fans and hired a number of them to write the earliest Star Trek novels, including the very first official one (The New Voyages Vol. 1 & 2) which included slash fiction as well as Gene's approval/forward in the books.

In case anyone has forgotten, here's a little bit of background on Gene Roddenberry and his perspectives on queerness in Star Trek.

He admitted that in his early life he was very affected by how society and culture treated the LGBT community, and that he too found himself subjugating and judging others for that lifestyle because it was what people did at that time. As he got older and had more life experience, he began working with a number of queer artists in Hollywood -- and through TOS, a number of queer individuals began asking questions about Kirk and Spock.

Instead of vehemently shutting down this perspective, Roddenberry was intrigued, and saw potential to tap into a large audience (LGBT) that most others didn't want to go near or acknowledge publicity-wise. He saw it as an opportunity to expand the fanbase while also pushing yet another envelope.

But with the heat already on the show for what they'd already pushed, he found he was often stuck between what he'd like to do and what production would let him get away with. There are a number of Kirk and Spock scenes in scripts that got cut out for leaning a little too obviously romantic. Tiny trickles of that content still made it in were infamous moments like the backrub scene in Shore Leave. Even the 2009 movie had a K/S moment while Spock Prime and Kelvin Spock talked that was written and filmed that was cut out of the final product.

Queer subtext and coding has always been relentlessly weeded away at with an excuse ready to go for why they always try to cut us out, but we all know it's because they are scared of the homophobic backlash and ratings hits. Look how violently homophobes went after the gay romance episode of The Last of Us **just this year**. This has always been our reality, so for someone like Roddenberry to make efforts in the 70s? That was massive.

But Gene as well as the queer/slash Trek community managed to accomplish some things in the 70s which I'm surprised more folks don't talk about or give much credit.

In the same TMP novel which features "T'hy'la" and the famous footnote, Gene cleverly wrote Kirk with a bisexual/pansexual lens: Kirk describes himself as *preferring* women but being open to "physical love in **any** of its many Earthly, alien, and mixed forms." (Direct quote from Genes book). Basically, Captain Kirk was DTF with whoever if there was a connection, which was a very progressive take for a character in a novel written in 1979, but made sense for the future which would have a lot less hang ups about sex and love compared to our current rather puritan/conservative society.

I also prefer women, but I married a man. Shout out to Gene Roddenberry for giving us a seat at the table back in the 70's when folks *still* try to insist there is no place for K/S or queer concepts in Trek, because he made efforts -- however small -- to employ queer people and show queer perspectives. According to David Gerrold, LGBT+ representation was a big thing that Gene personally pushed for in TNG and wanted various depictions of love/couples in the Risa scenes, to name one example.

In the 70s, fanzines led to meetings and swapped fanmade magazines, which got so big that they needed hotel centers, then convention centers, then one day the TOS cast came to one and what we know as modern fan conventions were born -- inspiring even George Lucas who attended Trek conventions in the 70s and saw how popular Trek was in syndication; it was a great climate to launch his Space Opera. Star Wars then became so huge that we got TMP.

But none of that would have happened without the level of organization, passion, and creativity that those fans poured into Star Trek and their characters after it got cancelled and went into syndication.

Without queer folks we wouldn't have George Takei, Theodore Sturgeon who gave us Tribbles, Bill Theiss and his amazing TOS costumes, Mike Minor's art direction, Merritt Butrick, David Gerrold (writer for TOS, TAS, TNG) to name a few of many queer contributors to Trek that Roddenberry respected and tried to go to bat for wherever he could in a climate that was absolutely impossible to gain an inch in.

At a time during the 70s and 80s when so many people resented and feared the queer community and wanted us to disappear, especially in the 80s during the AIDS epidemic which many homophobes claimed was "God's punishment to the gay community" or "Gods's answer" to our "hedonism", thinking we'd gotten our just desserts and should just disappear . . .

During that time, Gene Roddenberry gave us queer folks a place to say: "You know what? Sure. Write your stories. TV says you guys shouldn't exist, they pull books with queer people off the shelves and burn them. Laws exist specifically to forbid you guys from loving each other, and call you mentally ill. You can't even hold hands in public. But I'm going to validate you guys and invite you to write novels or work for me, try to see what we can get by production, and allow you to see yourselves in my characters if you want to. There's a place for you in our fandom."

He gave us bi/pan Kirk, he gave us K/S is open to interpretation. In Phase 2 Kirk's surviving nephew Peter, son of his brother Sam from Operation: Annihilate!, was going to be written as gay and living on the Enterprise with his partner -- that also got chopped and reworked into a script that wouldn't get used until decades later. That was huge at a time that being queer was officially listed as a mental illness, and villainized due to the AIDS crisis.

So before you try to dismiss or tell K/S + queer Trek fans whether or not they deserve a seat at the table, remember that Gene Roddenberry was among the **first** to pull that seat out for us in a climate that was ruthlessly against LGBT+ folks." -- 1Shirt2ShirtRedShirtDeadShirt

P.S: Have some cute bisexual/pansexual K/S pride gifs. :) Pride month is a hop, skip and a jump away.

LLAP!🖖💚

night skincare routine

content: fluff, husband!gojo, he's a thief little mf, minor kissing, umm so i had this thought where gojo's typa boy who eat straight lip moisturizer/flavored serum lmaoaoao

if there's one thing that couples do love the most, especially when you are married to a man like gojo satoru, is that a night skincare routine is a must.

you know, after a long day, you and satoru would be situated in your shared bedroom with lots of trusted brands in your hands. satoru especially loves it when you help him with his skincare.

just you spreading some night cream on his already smooth skin. oh he just loved the way how gentle your fingers were when you slightly massage his face. and his head resting on your lap while you apply some product on his face? hell, satoru could immediately fall asleep like a baby.

your fingers always work like magic, he is obsessed with that.

anyway, it was peaceful, you know, both of you are doing your night skincare routine when…

"satoru, we ran out of chapsticks." while scrambling through the neatly organized drawer, obviously done by you, you called out for your husband who's laying on your shared bed with his favorite facemask on his face.

satoru looks up to you while his hand is occupied with his phone. you took a moment of pause to admire your loving husband. his hair is being pushed back with some cute headband that you two came across while shopping for some stuff.

"oh yeah, i forgot to buy earlier." satoru scratches his chin while smiling sheepishly. "how about the lip serum? you still have those, right?" he asked.

you let out a hesitant chuckle. "now we're talking, the thing is…i think it's missing."

"missing? sweetheart, did you perhaps bring it to your work?" your husband get up as he approached you towards the dressing table where you're currently seated.

satoru took his time and gently removed the facemask on his face since it has been sitting there for a while, also giving his face a little massage to get the extract of the mask sink into his skin before disposing the mask into the trash can.

"i did. but i swear, i put it back in my pouch before going home and now, it's gone!" meanwhile, you fumbled as you looked through your pouch again, and yup, it was indeed missing.

"now that you don't have any lip care products…" your tone drops its enthusiasm. lip products are your best friends, it is one of your favorite things that you would bring inside your casket.

your husband knew how much you love that product, so he volunteered to let you borrow his. "here, you can use my chapstick."

but as you opened the cap, the chapstick was empty. "oops…i think i already used the last portion a while ago." satoru awkwardly trailed off.

"but worry not, darling! i am always willing to share anything with you." he smiled, giving you that kind of smile you already knew so well.

he was planning something. "satoru, don't tell me you—"

satoru grabbed your waist to inch you closer to him. "yes, we're doing the traditional way of moisturizing the lips." his lips pressed against yours, already deepening it into his skilled french kiss that always makes you feel weak.

his lips keep on brushing on your own, imitating the way you apply the lip products on your lips. but seriously, his actions implies more kissing than the actual sharing of chapsticks.

the way his tongue would explore every known piece of your lips is insane. satoru memorizes your taste, inches, and sweet spots by heart. that is his weapon for you.

as his hand crawls on the back of your head, tugging it and pulling it even further to the kiss. satoru also playfully bites your lower lip, sending electric shocks to your body as you surpass a moan.

your husband continues to take the lead by nibbling on your lips. he let out a small whimper when you finally decided to also tug his hair, a thing you absolutely love whenever you do it during a make out session.

he's satoru gojo, your loving husband, and he also has an undying obsession with you.

"there, both of us have lip moisturizer now." satoru playfully licked his lips. finding the taste of strawberry chapstick even better when your lips itself was involved.

you, a blushing mess, pushed him away weakly as you are still trying to recover from the intense kiss. your lips were indeed more smooth than a while ago, it's so plumpy and a little bit bruised.

"oh shut up. you just did that to make out. with me." you halfheartedly glared at your cheeky husband.

"you're half correct about that. i indeed intend to make out with you, but i also want to share my chapstick with you." he playfully winked before wrapping his arms around your body.

"can i have one more kiss?" satoru inched his lips towards yours.

you just gave him a peck, saying it's enough for the moment since you're still not done in your routine and it made satoru pout. he decided to retreat for now since he got a steamy make out for a splendid minute.

"after work tomorrow, let's go to the mall together. we need to buy some supplies, skincare supplies." you reminded him, still your cheeks are flushed.

"and also, i am going to purchase more than we usually do on lip products." you added. actually, you're still upset yet confused about your lost lip serum.

you swore to yourself that you came home with lip serum on your pouch. but how did it disappear? were you being haunted?

the answer is…

"sure, my darling. just pick whatever you like and i'll take care of the money." your husband innocently chuckles before continuing his business he left earlier.

unbeknownst to you, you are correct that you came home with your lip serum on your pouch but you're not haunted. the culprit for this is none other than your one and only husband, gojo satoru.

he planned this whole thing out and sneakily stole your lip serum just for a dumb (i think?) reason. satoru was getting annoyed that there is something other than his lips that is being attached to your lips!

although, he wouldn't admit that to himself and hell! of course not even to you.

satoru did not regret what he did. in fact, he was smiling widely as he watched you gramble about your missing lip product not knowing it was his fault.

guess he'll be wasting money on your lip products since he doesn't plan to stop himself from stealing your future lipsies. but it was hell sure worth it if that means he could kiss you the way he wants and get rid of the thing he hates when you put it to your lips instead of him.

nevertheless, just wait 'till you found out about it, he'll be sleeping outside for some good nights.

©luvvixu2023

so back in 2005-2007 I was an anthropology major, I was told that matriarchies never existed. at the time my professor said that it was kinda sexist that anthropology thought that way. so I wonder if anything has changed since then. I'm not talking about the weird mother goddess cult that hippy 2 wave feminist wanted but like, people who say they are like the muoso (I'm sorry if I spelt that wrong), and other groups. I've heard several native Americans from varrying nation that said their culture was matriarchal, and if modern anthropologist are taught that the experts on society are the people in that society, why do/did anthropologist decided a matriarchal society was impossible. I know this could take a long time to answer so if it's too long for you maybe just some helpful links to an article if you know of one.

So the answer—as always, with anthropology—is complicated.

Saying that XYZ never happened is difficult, given that all it takes is one positive instance to disprove the statement. Yes, there certainly have been (and still are) matriarchal societies. (Please also keep in mind that matriarchal societies aren't inherently better that patriarchal societies based on that one trait alone.)

If I had to guess, what you were told was the product of several theological whiplashes in anthropological theory. And you are indeed correct: some of it has to do with Second Wave Feminism. Archaeology and anthropology have been unfortunately late to the ballgame, and feminism is one of those topics.

Basically, for a long time anthropology was dominated by rich white dudes who believed that men were the center of all anthropological innovations ever (more or less, this is the simplified version). Then in the 80s/90s, Second Wave feminists managed to break into the discipline and the stance went from everything is patriarchal to everything is matriarchal.

"Whoa," said the male anthropologists who were feeling Threatened™ "we don't like that at all." Which results in a second over-correction back to the insistence that there was nothing matriarchal. If I had to guess, this is the general series of events that found its way into your classroom in the mid 00s.

If you fancy a deep dive into a good example of early feminist anthropology, check out The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia by Marilyn Strathern (first published in 1988). Or, if you're not inclined to read the whole thing, just read the very last five pages titled Comparison. Or you can read a review of the book from shortly after it first came out.

Other anthropologists are encouraged to chime in, and especially tell me if I've said something wrong.

-Reid

Baby-trapping you say? 👀

baby trapping i say!!!

maybe i should say its specifically stealthing [picks nose]? he doesnt really care to 'trap' you because he literally just believes you're endgame

sneak peek bc god im tired of writing:

tw: weird ideals about fertile (cis) women, intent to stealth, implied/tangential somnophilia (???) and other yandere-typical behavior

18+ only, Damian Wayne is 21

He does want to be with you above anything, and if children were out of the question due to natural causes… sure, he would learn to get over it. His brothers are all adopted and are as legitimate heirs to his father as he. But as it stands, Damian needs an heir someday and he knows your body can provide that. 

A part of him, a part that’s been planted in him since his childhood, quietly admits that he simply wants his children to be blood. He was taught that he was the result of two genetically perfect individuals – Bruce Wayne the Batman and Talia al Ghul, Daughter of the Demon’s Head. 

So why shouldn’t his child be the genetic amalgamation of you and him? The thought of impregnating you sounds… good. Ideal. Natural, even. Call him a romantic.

Back from class, you decided to read on his living room recliner while he drew in his study. He indeed sketched, as he did everyday, but he also wanted to check if today was the day he thought it was. Damian opens the drawer of his wooden desk, papers neatly filed. He picks up a sleek black folder.

When opened, inside is a calendar for the year, with no notes or writing. The days are simply blank or highlighted in either red or green.

His eyes skirt down to the current day of the calendar, and Damian's pleased to see it is indeed among a week that's painted in green. You've ovulated, and the six days afterward are an ideal window. 

You've said in passing that your cycle is pleasantly regular and Damian's past investigations have proved this to be true. He doesn’t ask anymore. He snorts, remembering how last time you looked at him incredulously and asked if he was a Republican, since he was “all up in your womb.” 

However, you do keep menstrual products in your bag when he’s predicted it. You also spend quite some time at his place, so he does note when there’s pad wrappers in his bathroom trash bin.

Last year, the day he knew you were the one, his One, he brewed you a tea before bed. Its sedative contents ensured you wouldn't wake. So, Damian pulled off your pants, and collected a sample from you as you slept. Of course, he did so with sterile, sexless precision –  Damian wasn’t a pervert or deviant. He sniffs. He’s better than that. Even if his hands did linger.

Test results proved you were healthy and fertile. He remembers being proud. As expected, you were perfect in all things.

I'm just thinking back to that poll, about whether Zelda would restore the monarchy or not, where the majority voted that she wouldn't restore the kingdom. The reasoning was fascinating, so many people citing the way her father had treated her, or how running a kingdom was stifling her and what she wanted to do, or how she was seemingly better off working directly with Hyrule's communities so she didn't need to restore the monarchy. Then now with the recent post I reblogged, where thinking of the fact that you have a singular form of government that rules on divine right for thousands of years, where the ruler has the blood of the goddess running through her veins, and people respond with "Well, Zelda has to be good! Because she's Hylia! Because she has the power of a goddess!" as if this is enough to offset the horror of having one. singular. monarchy. ruling.indefinitely.

I'm endlessly fascinated on how fixated people are on Rhoam as a shitty parent. I'm sure it's because many people who had strict overbearing parents could relate to how Zelda felt being reprimanded by her father for not being enough. But, there is a bigger picture to consider here. If Zelda is indeed this divine goddess reborn that radiates goodness and is set up to be Hyrule's salvation, can you blame Rhoam for his behaviour? He is Hyrule's king, and he is being faced with what is the worst possible thing that can happen to Hyrule, the key to its defeat laying in the hands of his daughter. Can you imagine having this threat that is looming over the horizon, that can appear at any minute, and then seeing your daughter, the princess with the power to stop it, busying herself with her interests while her powers have yet to be unlocked? You can't imagine getting frustrated even a little in this scenario? This is not me defending Rhoam, or belittling Zelda. Being a teenager burdened with the fate of your country and being unable to unlock the powers she needed must have done a number on Zelda, and having her father belittle her for her interests on top of that must have just added to her sense of uselessness instead of actually helping her awaken her powers. That being said, they are both playing on an entirely different field than the rest of Hyrule, and both Rhaom's inability to help his daughter in a productive way and Zelda's inability to unlock her powers in time came at a major cost to Hyrule. Anyways, the point of all this is to say: it is so weird how people really bend themselves out of shape to justify Zelda's goodness. I feel like the basis for so many people arguing that Zelda wouldn't restore the monarchy is because monarchy is "bad", the monarchy only hurt her and didn't allow her to do what she wanted to do so she wouldn't restore it. However, in any other case, Hyrule's monopoly on power is good because Zelda is Hylia and she is good and she is ruling with goodness so they should maintain power. It's just so fascinating that people are justifying their arguments on Zelda and her self-serving interests instead of asking if the way she chooses to make decisions and run Hyrule is actually good for Hyrule. Then they will turn around and argue that Ganondorf's desire for Hyrule is only based in selfishness.