#mia’s writing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

90smaximoff · 1 year

Text

Three reasons.

g¡p!stepsister!wanda x fem!reader

summary: once you got a new stepsister who couldn’t keep her eyes out of you, you knew your life wouldn’t be the same.

words: 2k

warnings: smut (+18), g¡p wanda, stepcest, mentions of pervy behavior, masturbation, blowjob, dirty talk, degradation, cum eating, wanda being an asshole, yk, (also bad writing i wrote this in less than an hour) if you feel uncomfortable don’t read.

Since your dad married Wanda’s mother, a lot of things changed in your life. First, you had to move to your new stepmother’s house, your dad said that was bigger and that would be comfortable for all the family. Second, you got a new step sister, first, you were interested in her, living with another teenager made you anxious but you find out that most of the time was like Wanda wasn’t even there, she’s always in her own room, and months passed with just basic words being shared between you guys.

But, soon, you started to think that your step sister was wanting to fuck you. Nothing that you’re disgusted by, after all, Wanda was hella hot and you two didn’t have the relationship of sisters.

First, you noticed the way she stares at you. Her beautiful green eyes seemed to be wanting to devour you every time she was near you, always looking away when you catch her staring, in the living room, kitchen, or even some expensive restaurant that your dad takes the family, she always have an eye on you, not that you would do something about it.

Second, happened on a normal thursday, when your shower had broken for some plumbing issues and your step mother suggested to you take your shower in Wanda’s bathroom instead for a couple days, which none of you seen any problem.

Everything would be very normal, if wasn’t for the fact that when you were leaving the bathroom, with nothing but your towel around your body and your wet hair, Wanda was waiting, really close to the door. You almost bumped into her, but noticed her taller body before, stopping and standing just a few inches away from her face. Wanda didn’t make a single movement to move away from you, actually, she didn’t seem bothered at your lack of distance.

“I know what you’re doing.” You whispered under your breath, in a tone that only she could hear.

“Yeah? And you like it?” She gives you a smile that makes your knees buckle and for a second all you wanted was kiss her lips and take that cocky smile off her face.

You didn’t respond after that, taking every strength in your body to get away from her and go to your room, not even looking back to see if she was looking at you.

The third, and last reason you was sure Wanda wanted to fuck you, was when your friend was throwing a party. You dressed real nice, a little black dress that hugged your body beautifully and your make up made with perfection, you looked at the mirror and had sure you was looking good.

When you enter the dinning room, just to tell your dad that you was leaving, he almost chocked with his food. The whole family was having dinner, including Wanda who had a similar reaction to the way you dressed.

“You’re not going dressed like this!” He shouted and you roll your eyes. “At least put a jacket. And Wanda’s taking you.” Wanda’s eyes widened a bit, but she agreed promptly.

You tried to argue, even knowing that was useless, your dad was protective over you and you knew it, so the best you could do was put a jacket and message your friend saying that your step sister was taking you and her ride was no longer needed, And that’s what you did.

Wanda opened the door of the car for you, but nothing between you both had been said until half of the way.

“You can leave the jacket in the car, if you want, i’m not telling your dad.” You looked at her and she seemed to be focused on the road, so you murmured a “thanks” and unbuttoned your jacket, putting it in the backseat. The rest of the road was a comfortable silence, even through both of you had a lot to say to each other.

Wanda parked one street before your friend’s house, saying something about how probably there’s a lot of cars in front of the house already. The street was desert and dark and honestly you was kind afraid of leaving the car, but it would be only 2 minutes walking.

“You know, you look pretty hot in that dress.” She commented, out of nowhere before you leave.

You looked at her, chocked by what she just said.

“What’s wrong with you?” You asked in a harsh tone. Since what happened in the bathroom, you’ve been thinking a lot about her, how she almost don’t talk to you and still make sure to check you out every time she sees you.

“What?”

“You don’t even talk to me, Wanda! We’ve been living together for almost six months and i don’t even know you but you still act like you want to fuck me, checking me out all the time, waiting for me to leave the shower and now telling me that i look hot! What’s wrong with you?” This time, your tone was just honest, you keep your eyes on her all the time and she seemed to be surprised at your vent. Seconds passed and she didn’t say anything. “C’mon, just be honest, this don’t have to get weird.”

“You want me to be honest?” She finally speaks, giving you a cocky smile and making a nose crunch like she wanted to say something she couldn’t.

“Yes, please!”

“Okay, i’m gonna be honest! I want to fuck you, God, i want to fuck you so bad since the day i met you, but you’re my stepsister, this is wrong. Jerk off thinking about you, it’s wrong, stopping by your room door hoping to get a glimpse of you naked, it’s wrong, thinking about bending you over in ever surface of that damn kitchen every time i see you cooking, it’s wrong. Fuck it, it’s all wrong.” She says, letting out a loud sigh like she just takes a big weight off the shoulders.

It was your turn to be surprised, that was the first time you heard Wanda says more than two phrases for you and you surely wasn’t expecting that, all the thoughts of everything she just said running through your head. You would be lying if you said that you didn’t think about this or nothing of that turned you on.

“Yeah… this is wrong.” You looked into each other’s eyes and in the next second, you were kissing.

You wasn’t even thinking straight, all you feel was Wanda’s soft lips guiding your in a desperate kiss, like she was waiting a long time for that, you put your hands on her face and she didn’t think twice on putting hers on your uncovered thighs. Even with that weird position in the car, that was one of the best kisses on your life.

The kiss became heated, Wanda slide her tongue in your mouth and gripped your thighs, making you almost let out a moan as you bring your hands to her bulge, feeling it get bigger at your touch and hearing Wanda let out a moan on your mouth, smiling, knowing what you was about to do.

When you feel that she was already completely hard, you opened her belt, breaking the kiss for a moment for her to lift up her hips and bring her pants down, with her underwear. Her cock was big, nothing scary, but pretty hard with a pink tip leaking precum, you almost lick your lip at the sight and quickly put your hand around the base.

Wanda groaned at the contact of your small warm hand and sit back to her seat, putting one hand at your hair and caressing slightly.

“I’m so hard for you.” She whispers, watching how you jerk her off, slowly bringing your hand up and down her cock, caressing the tip with your thumb before going down to her base again.

“Yeah, your cock is so fucking big, can’t wait to have it inside me.” You says, jerking her off a little faster at each word, seeing her close her eyes and moan just at you talking dirty to her.

You watched her carefully, her expression of pleasure would be on your mind all the time by now.

Without thinking much, you lowered your body and put your mouth around her cock, feeling it heavy against your tongue, you couldn’t see Wanda from that position but for her moans and her hand at the back of your head holding your hair in a ponytail she definitely likes it as much as you.

You hollowed your cheeks and swallowed her length, holding the base with your hand and stroking the rest that didn’t fit in your mouth, feeling her cock hit the back of your throat and reminding yourself to breathe through your nose, you bobbed your head up and down, in the same pace your hand was moments before.

Wanda watched you mesmerized, your hot mouth on her cock was driving her insane and all the kinky nature of fuck her stepsister just makes it all hotter for her, she wanted to fuck your throat and cum all over your face but she didn’t know your limits, and honestly after fantasizing about you for so long wouldn’t take to much for her to reach her climax.

“Fuck, that’s it, you like sucking your stepsister’s cock, don’t you? Fucking slut.” Her words made you feel the familiar discomfort between your legs, wanting to have some relief for yourself, but right now suck Wanda’s off was the only thing you wanted to do. Her cock feels heavy and hot on your mouth, her moans and groans was making you shiver and she was right; you liked suck your stepsister’s cock.

You nodded the best you could with your mouth full and the discomfortable position on the seat.

Wanda didn’t take long to get closer, your tongue against her shaft and your hand stroking her cock was too intense for her, she starts to thrust into your mouth unconsciously, lifting her hips making her cock hit deeper in your throat.

“I’m gonna fucking cum and you will swallow all of it, don’t you, hm? Bet you want all of my cum, it’s that what you want? You want to be my cumslut?” Just a nod of your head and she explodes inside your mouth, painting your throat and mouth with white streaks, which you gladly swallow, savoring her taste and licking your lips at the end.

You sit back at your seat again, giving Wanda a few kisses on her neck while she catches her breath and you slowly stopped your movements with your hand.

“You taste so good.” You whispers against her neck, making her smile and caress your hair.

When she stopped pant and you take your hand out of her cock, you waited for her to say something, anything, maybe just kiss you. But she did nothing.

You were kinda disappointed by that, but didn’t say anything about, just got back to your position and pulled the mirror of the seat, checking yourself to make sure you wouldn’t got off of the car looking like you just sucked someone’s cock.

The whole time, Wanda said nothing, all she did was look at you.

When you’ve done and had sure you looked pretty even with your make up and hair a little messy, you looked at her again.

“Don’t need to pick me up, Hailey’s giving me ride to home.” She nods her head and you got out of the car.

Oh, how you wished she had said something, or even just kissed you.

#marvel smut #mcu smut #marvel #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda smut #mcu x reader #wanda maximoff #wanda x reader #wanda x y/n #wanda maximoff smut #wanda fanfic #wanda x you #wanda imagine #wanda mcu #wanda marvel #mia’s writing

2K notes · View notes

miakate-writes · 2 months

Note

Hey! Can you please do some enemies to lovers first kiss? ty <3 !!

Enemies to lovers prompts (first kiss edition!) 🗡️♥️

it was an accident i SWEAR

it was a FIGHT, why would anyone kiss during a FIGHT

but they did

one kissed the other just to shut them up

that moment after they first kissed where both of their minds are moving at 100000 miles per hour trying to figure everything out:

did i like that?

why did i like that?

do i want to do it again?

why do i want to do it again?

why is it suddenly really hot how much they hate me?

“why did you do that?” “why did you kiss back?” “i didn’t” “yes… you did”

“you hate me that much, huh?”

421 notes · View notes

miachangedblogs · 5 months

Text

WARNING!!! This thought contains: NSFW, Noncon/dubcon, fem reader and Yandere!!

Poor innocent darling, so sweet and so naive! Summoned to a scary school full of men who haven’t touched pussy in YEARS, you ought to be more careful no? You should but you don’t cause they all seem so nice to you!… right?

Riddle hated you at first. How can someone be so oblivious to these blatant advances?? He just wants to slap you silly sometimes. It all vanishes the moment he talks to you tho. You just seem so, so naive. So pure. He can’t help but feel bad, just a little. He tries to do the right thing to protect you, collaring anyone who he catches touching you, even if it’s just a high five. Don’t get it twisted! He’s doing this because he knows how horrible some students are in NRC! He just hopes you don’t find out about him being one of them, getting off to the handker chief you left behind from the unbirthday party…

You’re always welcome to Savanaclaw! The beastmen are the sweetest to you! Always offering to carry your groceries, books and giving you hugs! They seem to be more touchy when you’re on your period, but it’s probably a coincidence. Don’t mind their hands roaming beyond your waist and up your skirt, it’s a beastmen thing! Don’t go asking around tho. Especially Leona. You don’t get it tho, Leona is the best! In fact, you and him are gonna go to monstro lounge for steak! Isn’t he so nice? All he asks from you is to drink some pink liquid during some season. He doesn’t specify what it is but you trust Leona!… Don’t you?

What’s that? Azul wants pictures of you nude for his study on human anatomy? Well, if it’s for research purposes then you guess you just have to.. After all, you don’t wanna disappoint your new friends don’t you? Imagine his surprise when you try to read the contract! You may be naive but you’re not dumb! Thankfully the two gloved hands caressing your thighs distract you enough from reading the less ideal parts of it. Pleasure doing business prefect!

That’s all for today!! Tune in for more sweethearts!

Bitter dreams<33

#Mia’s Writings <3 #yandere twst #twisted wonderland x reader #yandere twisted wonderland x reader #yandere twisted wonderland #twst #twst x reader #naive sweetheart

865 notes · View notes

kakujis · 1 year

Text

NOT YOUR GIRLFRIEND!;

synopsis: in which you catch wind they've started calling you their girlfriend.

warnings: fem!reader, situationships, swearing, rejections, telling oliver 2 die 👍🏽, calling them mentally ill 👍🏽

a/n: HEY WHY ARE SMAUS ACTUALLY HARD IDK HOW 2 RP AS THEM well, here's my first smau! i wasn't sure if i wanted these to be written out or not, but i don't have the brain power for that rn so smau it is.

#blue lock #bllk #blue lock x reader #blue lock smau #bachira x reader #oliver aiku x reader #reo mikage x reader #nagi seishiro x reader #nagi seishiro #reo mikage #bachira meguru #oliver aiku #pibby writing #ok back to being mia

2K notes · View notes

miabrown007 · 1 year

Text

so. world building, am I right

#writing #writers problems #writing meme #miaraculous writing #heist au #because obviously what else would it be with plot #programmer core experience #🎶 6 chapters missing 🎶 you finish 1 chapter 🎶 8 chapters missing 🎶#miaing

3K notes · View notes

vaporwavebeach-writes · 6 months

Text

Kinktober Day 16 (Gags)

Soldier Boy (Ben) x Reader (NSFW)

(549 Words)

Summary: Ben thinks you’re being too loud

Warnings/Tags: 18+, gender neutral reader, penetrative sex, rough sex, underwear as a gag

Notes: god I love soldier boy, enjoy the fic!!!

He’s rough. Good god, he’s fucking rough. His cock stretches you open deliciously, slamming into the deepest parts of you. The slick sounds of your dripping arousal fill the room with every violent thrust. You were sure the sheets were soon to tear as you kept such a firm grip on them, feeling the fabric twisting in between your fingers. With Ben continuing to fuck you, It’s almost impossible to keep yourself quiet at a time like this.

“J-Jesus,” you gasp, “holy fuck, Ben, y-you, fuck, you feel so fucking hot.” Your voice wavers in pitch and volume. Ben maintains a brutal pace, which you could swear he does on purpose. He lets out a gruff chuckle.

“Look at you,” he chides playfully. “Fucking you so good, you can’t even speak.”

You let out a loud yelp when you feel Ben’s hand give your ass a hard slap. You jerk forward, shuddering on his cock. You can feel his towering frame lean over you, pulling you up by the shoulders, gathering you to his chest. He puts his fingers in your mouth, silencing your cries of lust. You suck on his fingers, moans bubbling in your throat as Ben pistons his hips, fucking up into you. It’s almost embarrassing how much you like the feeling of Ben using you like this.

“B-Ben please,” you whine. You feel your knees begin to shake as you feel yourself beginning to unravel. “Ben, I, fuck, you’re so-“

“Babe,” Ben slows down. “As much as I love hearing what I do to you…” he gently maneuvers you, flipping you to look into your eyes. His hand tucks a piece of hair the fell onto your face behind your ear. Even with the dim lighting in the room, you can still the mischievous flecks of green in his eyes. His hand cups your cheek, the sweetness of his actions causes your mind to run wild with what kind of degenerate, devious plans he has in store for you. He reaches over beside the bed and grabs your discarded underwear. “…You talk way too much.”

“Open your mouth babe,” he grins lasciviously. You comply, opening your jaw as Ben shoves the underwear in your mouth. “Careful not to choke, there are better things to choke on,” he chuckles.

Lowering you on your back, Ben soon eases himself back inside you. His cock slides into you deliciously. Your hand drops to your dripping sex, stroking it in arousal while Ben slams himself into you.

As Ben fucks you, several moans erupt from your throat, but are all muffled by the makeshift underwear gag. You feel yourself exceedingly reaching your peak. Struggling to express your arousal, Ben lets out a wolfish chuckle.

“Aw sweet-cheeks,” he croons “you gonna come? Don’t be shy, you can be as loud as you want now.”

He doesn’t have to tell you twice. The gag does a great job at silencing your wanton moans. You ride out your orgasm, feeling yourself clench around Ben’s cock.

As you come down from your high, you spit the gag out of your mouth, glaring at Ben in equal mixtures annoyed and playful.

“Don’t look at me like that, you were being loud, and hey, sometimes, you just gotta improvise,” he winks with a deep chuckle.

#kinktober #kinktober 2023 #soldier boy x you #soldier boy x reader #soldier boy imagine #soldier boy smut #the boys smut #the boys x reader #the boys imagine #the boys x you #mia writes batman!!!

646 notes · View notes

genericpoetryblog · 1 year

Text

Whalefall (Final Edit)

To sink a behemoth, Displacing gallons of incomprehensible measurement, Feeding villages to civilizations on blubber and marrow.

To bequeath a legacy, Of decade filled descendants and ecosystem genesis, Growing generations uncountable of hagfish and plankton.

To birth a lineage, Evolutionary fractals of kinetic biodiversification, Footprinting beyond fossil record where blue bleeds abyssal.

To submerge an ascension, Where rising demiurge grasps reflection in fraying corpse-fat, Haloed by bacterial mats and winged in polychaeta.

To devour an apotheosis, Renamed microscopic and leviathan in one airless gasp, Gorged bountiful of divinity dispersed from bone and flesh.

To conclude a promise, Life renewed in matching exchange of a single lived, Archimedean overflow flushing Lethe’s tidal shallows in rebirth

#OKAY THIS IS IT IM DONE ITS 5AM I WANNA SHOWER AN SLEEB #poetry #mia writes poetry #thalassaphobia #decay #hhghhghghghghghhhh

2K notes · View notes

pinkhoodi · 7 months

Text

sweet love, sweet mornings

✎ᝰ — mornings with dick grayson <3

♡⃕ — dick grayson x reader

♡⃕ — genre + warnings: fluff + no warnings !

♡⃕ — a/n: literally whipped this up after thinking about how handsome dick would look in the morning and ooooooo he’s so 😮‍💨

Ꮺ mornings with dick, when he is present, are very much dreamlike. his heavy snores fill up the room as he catches up on sleep but also the way his back muscles tighten with each snore in and relaxes with each snore out

Ꮺ dick is usually a light sleeper, many things can wake him up and have him on high alert. but oddly enough, when you brush your fingers against his body, his rigid figure softens and his snores become lighter. it’s like his body is trained to differentiate your soft, angelic touch from the touch of family or the touch of villains

Ꮺ but also, the beautiful, quiet moment of witnessing dick sleep makes your stomach twist and your lips give a cheeky smile, seemingly similar to a high school crush. his posture of laying on his stomach but also his back slightly turned to you made you infatuated and flustered by his physique. it also doesn’t help that his body is barely covered in clothing, only boxers, but who is to complain ?

Ꮺ secretly, dick goes to bed in barely any clothing cause of two reasons. one, he adores the tenderness of your skin brushing against his as you both sleep soundly, and two, he notices how flustered you become from waking up to your boyfriend’s rugged body on display

Ꮺ usually when dick wakes up, he gives you a good morning kiss on your forehead and a “i love you kiss” on the corner of your lip. sometimes he’ll try to be slick and get a full-on kiss on the lips but you swerve your head just to mess with him. he either pouts or rolls his eyes at your playful antics

Ꮺ majority of the time, he’ll have his arm wrapped around your torso and pull you closer to him. he’ll tell you good morning followed by many complaints, starting at how beautiful you look to how grateful he is to have you. he’ll drag his hand across the bed until it meets yours and intertwine his sturdy fingers with yours. he brings the laced hands up to kiss your knuckle and give a light squeeze

Ꮺ it does take a while for the two of you to get out of bed. you’re too in love with dick’s warm look from the morning sun and he’s too obsessed with your beauty to even notice the time passing by. not to mention, you both go on tangent about the busy workload you have, catching up on the bat family, and even dick telling his stories from last night’s patrol

Ꮺ the usual routine for the both of you, after getting out of bed, is the both of you going into the bathroom together to brush your teeth and wash your face. one of you offers to cook breakfast while the other is in the shower. usually, dick offers to cook since he loves loves loves cooking breakfast for the two of you

Ꮺ I truly believe dick is a master chef at making the best soufflé, fluffy pancakes that are thick, bacon perfectly crisp. he loves cooking them all

Ꮺ dick would have that corny apron that says “kiss the chef” while cooking breakfast. he would also have fifties music playing in the background or some lighthearted jazz playing. sometimes he’ll be too into the music and have a concert instead of paying attention to the stove

Ꮺ after dick is done cooking, he would usually swap places with you and head into the shower while you’re drying yourself. as he passes by you, he would press his fingers into your hips and give a light squeeze. he would look into the mirror and softly smile at how you two complement each other so effortlessly. he loves how beautiful y’all look as a couple, he loves it so much that he has you guys framed almost everywhere in the house

Ꮺ once both of you done with bathroom, he would set the plates up while you poured juice for the both of you and set the dining table for y’all favorite show to watch together <3

Ꮺ for the rest of the morning, the living room is filled with commentary from the both of you about the show, small chews of the food. dick constantly asks if you like the food just so he can be cocky with it, a stupid grin while you roll your eyes and pretend to gag just to playfully hurt his pride a bit

♡⃕ okay but like mornings with dick ???? I don’t think I would want the morning to end 😩

𝐕𝐎𝐓𝐏 💗: psalm 9:10

#( 🧸 ) — mia is writing !#dick grayson x black reader #dceu x black reader #dick grayson x black!reader #nightwing x black reader #nightwing x black!reader #dick grayson headcanons #dick grayson fluff #dick grayson x reader #dick grayson x y/n #dick grayson x you #nightwing x reader #nightwing headcanon #nightwing x you #nightwing x y/n

545 notes · View notes

threewaywithdelusion · 9 months

Text

You Me Her

Since AO3 is down and I'm sure people are losing their minds looking for fics (I am people), I'm posting some of my fics over here. If you look in the tag "Mia writes fanfic" you can see all the fic I've posted on tumblr. If you prefer to read on AO3 now that it’s back up, you can find this fic here

Robin was the first person to notice something was wrong with Steve Harrington.

By the end of the day, everyone had noticed. People were whispering up and down the halls, wondering what had happened to Steve since yesterday to make him act so drastically different. He hadn’t flirted with a single girl all day. He’d told Tommy Hagan to “knock it off” when Tommy had started tormenting a freshman. He’d treated his friends weirdly – avoiding Jason Carver, a sophomore on the basketball team who he’d been training, losing patience with Carol Perkins’s snappish remarks, freezing up when some cheerleaders talked to him.

Robin heard all of this second-hand. King Steve was so notorious that even the band kids were gossiping about his personality transplant. Multiple people came up to Robin to share some tidbit of gossip that they insisted proved that Steve had been body-snatched.

But Robin didn’t need rumors to know that Steve Harrington was different. She’d known since first period, when he’d walked into Ms. Click’s class on time and without a bagel. Steve had barely glanced at Tammy, even as she’d looked at him from under her lashes, beautiful and enticing. Instead, Steve had, for the first time in his entire life, looked at Robin.

And he’d smiled at her. Not a polite acknowledgement of her existence – which still would have been more than Robin had ever gotten from him – but a huge, friendly smile. The kind that would have had most girls falling at his feet.

Robin glanced behind her to see if Steve was smiling at someone else, but unless Steve was smiling like that at Fred Benson – even more unlikely – he was definitely directing that expression at her.

Robin spun back to Steve, unsure what her face was communicating. Confusion, maybe, or wide-eyed shock.

Steve didn’t look offended or surprised by her reaction, just gave her a dorky little wave and sat down.

Robin stared at the back of his head, still trying to process what had just happened. Tammy turned to Robin, scanning her up and down. Robin knew she was just trying to figure out what about Robin had caught King Steve’s interest, but her scrutiny made Robin feel all hot anyway. It was Tammy, looking at Robin intently. With purpose. Taking in Robin’s stupid perm and her smudgy makeup and her layers of jewelry.

Robin blushed.

Tammy turned back around.

Ms. Click began talking, but Robin didn’t hear a single word for the rest of class, lost in thought. She alternated between loud mental screaming about the fact that Tammy had looked at her and staring at Steve Harrington’s famous hair and wondering what the hell had inspired him to notice her existence.

Robin was packing in a daze at the end of class when Steve gave her another smile before leaving. Robin accidentally met Tammy’s eyes, which were just as confused as Robin felt.

Tammy bit her lip, which was pink and soft-looking. “Robin? Did you talk to Steve over the weekend?”

Oh my god. Tammy was talking to her. It wasn’t like Tammy never talked to her, but every single time it made Robin lose her mind and babble like a freak.

Robin just shook her head instead of risking opening her mouth.

“Oh,” Tammy said, looking disappointed. “But you like him?”

“No,” Robin said honestly. “I don’t even know him.”

“But you like him,” Tammy said, and this time it wasn’t a question. “I saw you blushing after he smiled at you.”

“I guess so,” Robin said. What else was she supposed to say? She couldn’t tell Tammy that she didn’t give a damn if Steve Harrington looked at her and that the blush had been all for Tammy. That would send Tammy running the other way.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” Tammy said. “A lot of girls like Steve.”

She didn’t mention that she was one of those girls, but she didn’t need to. Robin knew.

Maybe it would be okay to pretend to like Steve. It would give her and Tammy something in common and it would help her hide in plain sight. Steve was the perfect fake crush for a lesbian, pretty and athletic enough to be an acceptable crush, but unattainable enough that she would never have to act on it. Robin had never faked a crush on him before because of the principle of the thing, but now that she’d accidentally already done it, she might as well keep up the pretense.

“Today must have been a fluke,” Robin told Tammy, trying to sound both reassuring and lovelorn. She didn’t want Tammy to see her as a threat. She wanted her to see her as a friend. “I don’t think Steve even knows my name.”

***

But Steve kept smiling at her for the rest of the week and on Thursday, Tammy asked Robin if she wanted to hang out after school.

“Really?” Robin asked. Then, “I mean, yeah, sure. Sounds fun.”

So Robin went to Tammy’s house with the rest of Tammy’s friends. Apparently they did this every Thursday — Friday and Saturday were date nights, which made Thursday the perfect girls’ night.

They went up to Tammy’s room, which was like peeking into her mind. The other girls paid no attention to the room, probably having seen it a million times. They settled on the floor, spreading bowls of chips and chocolates around and pulling out magazines and nail polish. But Robin couldn’t help but try to take in every detail of the room. The walls were pink and the curtains and bedspread a gauzy white, giving everything a bit of a princess feel. But there were posters on the wall, and not the kind Robin had expected. There weren’t handsome movie stars — these were girls with guitars.

“Who’s that?” Robin asked, pointing at a poster of a girl with long straight hair, standing over a microphone and holding a guitar.

Tammy twisted to see who Robin was pointing to. “That’s Emmylou Harris. She’s incredible. She was one of the first women to really make it big in country music.”

“So you want to be like her?” Robin asked.

Tammy blushed a little, playing with the end of her long blonde curls. “I mean, I don’t know if I’m as good as Emmylou Harris. But that’s the dream.”

“You’re really good,” Robin said sincerely. “I heard you singing Kiss On My List before class the other day and it was-“ captivating. life-changing. beautiful. “Really good,” Robin finished lamely.

“Thank you,” Tammy said, looking touched.

One of Tammy’s friends — Olivia? — rolled her eyes. “Tam, we didn’t invite Robin here to talk about your singing. We want to hear about Steve Harrington!”

The two other girls — Karen and Melissa — giggled and nodded their agreement.

“What did you do to get his attention?” Olivia asked Robin.

Robin tried not to obviously deflate. She wanted to talk to Tammy about her passions, see the way Tammy lit up when she smiled. She didn’t want to gossip about stupid boys, especially not Steve Harrington.

But that was why they’d invited her over. Her fake crush on Steve was her in with these girls, with Tammy, and she had to make them believe her if she wanted to be invited to spend more time with him.

“I don’t know,” Robin said honestly. “I’ve sat behind him all year and I didn’t think he knew I existed. And then all of a sudden on Monday — bam! — he’s acting like he knows me.”

Melissa hummed, passing around bottles of nail polish. “Maybe it’s your hair? Did you perm it recently? Cause Heather Holloway says Steve has a thing for girls with curly hair.”

Tammy frowned at her own hair and shook her head. “Robin’s hair has been like that all year.”

Tammy had watched Robin closely enough to notice what she did with her hair? Robin bit down on a smile, grabbing blue nail polish from Melissa.

“Did you go to the party last weekend?” Karen asked.

Robin shook her head. She’s actually spend last weekend reading a book, listening to her language tapes, and playing board games with her parents. Nothing that could be remotely considered cool.

“Did you look particularly pretty on Monday?” Olivia asked.

Robin shrugged. “I think I just looked how I always do.”

Tammy put on a Kris Kristofferson record then sat down beside Robin again. “I guess we’ll just have to watch what he does in class. Collect more information.”

“I guess so,” Robin said, hoping Steve forgot her existence soon for her own sake. She didn’t know what she would do if he actually asked her out.

But maybe if he kept giving her attention she could keep this new friendship with Tammy, at least for a little while.

Robin sighed, loud and long.

“Don’t worry,” Tammy said, “We’ll figure it out.”

“And you don’t… mind?” Robin asked. “I know you like him too. I don’t want to break girl code or something.”

Robin had never worried about breaking girl code before, for obvious reasons, but she’d seen girls fall out over liking the same guy.

Olivia snorted. “Please. Girl code doesn’t count when it comes to Steve Harrington. He’s slept with half the school.”

“Yeah, everyone knows he’s just a good time,” Karen added. “He doesn’t actually date girls for real.”

“I went out with him for two weeks in middle school,” Melissa said. “We made it to second base and then he dumped me for Erica Tanner.”

“You’re in good company here,” Olivia promised.

Tammy still hadn’t spoken. Tammy was focused on painting her nails bright pink, a color Robin would never choose for herself but that perfectly matched with Tammy’s pink cheeks and pink lips, which she was biting.

Because Tammy cared, Robin realized. Steve might be the school slut, and he might never date a girl seriously, but Tammy liked him for real.

Melissa, Olivia, and Karen were now arguing over whether Melissa’s two-week fling with Steve Harrington counted as a relationship. They seemed sufficiently distracted, so Robin dropped her voice low and leaned into Tammy’s space.

“Do you mind?” she asked Tammy. “Because I can back off.”

“No,” Tammy said, smile pretty and entirely a lie. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

Robin didn’t know what to do with that. Was Tammy trying to save face by not admitting she had a real crush on Steve Harrington? Was this her way of testing if Robin was worthy friend-material? How was Steve fucking Harrington Robin’s key to getting to know Tammy and also the one who was mostly likely to ruin this new friendship?

“Okay,” Robin said, staring at her nails so she wouldn’t have to figure out what facial expression was appropriate. She cleared her throat. “So you were telling me about Emmylou Harris?”

***

Steve Harrington came up to Robin at her locker on Friday, when she was getting the books she needed to take home for the weekend.

“Hey,” he said, like it wasn’t supremely weird that he was approaching Robin Buckley, band geek and wallflower and no one who ever should have caught his eye.

“Hi?” Robin answered.

Steve ran his fingers through his hair. “Do you want to go to the diner with me? We could get milkshakes.”

Robin stared at him. Was this a joke? A prank? Had one of his friends dared him to ask out the weird band kid?

“What?” Robin asked.

Steve rubbed the back of his neck. He looked nervous, which was crazy. He was Steve Harrington and she was just Robin Buckley.

“I can drive us,” Steve said. “And I’ll pay.”

“I’m not going on a date with you,” Robin said. It was a gut reaction, but a second later Robin couldn’t help but wonder if she should have said yes. What was she going to tell Tammy about why she’d turned down her supposed crush?

But why was Steve Harrington even asking her out in the first place?

Steve didn’t look offended at her rejection, but he did hurry to say, “I know. I didn’t mean as a date.”

Robin looked down the hall. A group of cheerleaders at one end was watching them, giggling and tittering. Had the cheerleaders put him up to this? Girls could be vicious, but trying to embarrass a girl by having a boy ask her out seemed like a more guy type of prank somehow.

“You want to hang out with me just as friends,” Robin said skeptically.

“Yeah,” Steve said.

Robin rolled her eyes. “Right. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“I mean it,” Steve said. “I want to be friends.”

He was lying. Robin didn’t know why, but he was lying. Maybe he thought that if she hung out with him as “friends” she would eventually change her mind and agree to date him.

“Why?” Robin demanded. “Why would you want to be friends with me?”

Steve opened his mouth, then paused. He thought for a few seconds before he said, “You seem cool.”

Robin snorted. “I’m the furthest thing from cool.”

“No, I know,” Steve said. “I mean you seem… interesting. Nice. Fun.”

“You don’t even know me,” Robin said. “We’ve never spoken, and now all of a sudden you’re interested in me? I don’t buy it.”

“It’s true,” Steve said. He jumped as a hand landed on his arm and then Carol Perkins was there, staring Robin down with disdain in her eyes.

“What are you doing?” Carol asked.

“I was asking Robin to milkshakes,” Steve said.

Carol gave Robin an up-and-down and it didn’t feel good like when Tammy had done it. Carol wasn’t admiring her. She was looking at Robin like gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

“Are you that bored of going out with pretty girls?” Carol asked, voice all fake-interested like it was a real question.

Steve scowled, shaking Carol’s hand off his arm. “Robin’s pretty.”

Carol rolled her eyes. “She’s not terrible, I guess, under that bad perm, but she dresses like a dyke. If you want to rebel and date a freak or a charity case, you can do better.”

Robin flinched violently when Carol said the word dyke. She fought to keep her expression straight even as her heart raced and her lungs constricted.

Did Carol Perkins know? Or had she blindly thrown out an insult, hoping it would hurt?

“Don’t call her that,” Steve snapped, his face dark and furious. He looked frightening enough that Robin skittered back half a step.

Carol didn’t look scared of Steve, but her mouth did drop open in shock.

That was fair. Robin was shocked too.

Was Steve defending her?

Maybe this was what it meant to be a girl Steve Harrington liked. Maybe he didn’t like Carol calling Robin a dyke because that was an offense to his own masculinity. That was the only thing that made sense. Robin had heard Steve throw around gay slurs just last week, so it couldn’t be the word itself that he had a problem with.

“Seriously, Steve?” Carol asked, haughty and judgmental. “You can’t actually like her.”

“Robin is great,” Steve insisted.

Carol rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’ll remind you of this when you come to your senses.”

With that, Carol spun on her heels – red hair smacking Steve in the face – and walked away.

Steve’s posture loosened, like he had also perceived Carol as a threat.

“I’m sorry,” he told Robin, looking sincere and apologetic.

Robin hated him.

“Stay the fuck away from me” Robin told Steve.

She slammed her locker and walked away, clutching her books to her chest to hide her shaking hands. She kept her head up as she walked by the cheerleaders, who laughed loudly as she passed.

***

Steve kept smiling at her whenever he walked into Click’s class, but he didn’t try to ask her out again.

He looked a bit like a kicked puppy every time she glared back at him, but Robin didn’t care.

“What are you doing?” Tammy asked one day after class. “He’s going to give up on you if you keep glaring at him like that.”

“He asked me out as a joke,” Robin told Tammy.

Tammy frowned. “Are you sure it was a joke? I don’t think he would do that.”

“I’m sure,” Robin said darkly, thinking of Carol hovering and the cheerleaders watching. Did Steve believe what Carol had said? Was that the joke: to put Robin in a position where she had to either go on a date with a man she didn’t like or else turn him down and confirm she was a lesbian? What kind of girl said no to a date with Steve Harrington?

Tammy bit her lip. She had on bright pink lipstick today. It would have looked tacky on anyone else, but it made Tammy look like a pop star. Robin wondered if the lipstick was flavored. She wished she could kiss Tammy and find out.

“You don’t mind if I flirt with him, right?” Tammy asked, echoing Robin’s words at her house last week. So far, Robin hadn’t been invited to girls’ night again.

Yes, Robin thought. Yes, I mind. I mind so much, but not for the reason that you think.

“Not at all,” Robin said. “It’s like you said, girl code doesn’t apply to Steve Harrington. Go for it.”

So Tammy kept trying to get Steve’s attention. He was nice to her. He never outright ignored her when she talked to him, but he never talked to her for longer than politeness required. He would always turn away, missing the way Tammy’s face fell.

And he kept fucking smiling at Robin. Picking up her books when she dropped them. Apologizing to her when he got bagel crumbs on the floor, even though she’d never mentioned how much it annoyed her. Turning to catch her eye when someone said something funny, like he thought she was someone he could share inside jokes with.

Slowly, Tammy stopped smiling at Robin. She started flicking annoyed glances in Robin’s direction whenever Steve gave Robin attention. Started snapping at Robin whenever Robin tried to sympathize with her about how much of a douchebag Steve Harrington was. Started avoiding Robin unless Robin directly started conversation with her.

Steve Harrington was ruining everything.

***

“What are you doing?” Robin demanded. She’d chased Steve after Ms. Click’s class, following him to the little alley out by the gym. She was going to be late for math, but she didn’t care. She needed to talk to him before he ruined everything.

Steve frowned as he lit up a cigarette. “What do you mean?”

“In Click’s class,” Robin said. “Tammy is practically throwing herself at you but you never even look her way. And I don’t talk to you at all, but you keep trying to talk to me.”

A flash of something crossed Steve’s face, but Robin didn’t know him well enough to read his expressions and it was gone in a heartbeat anyway.

“You don’t want me to talk to you?” Steve asked.

“Yes!” Robin said. “No. I don’t know. Why won’t you flirt with Tammy?”

Steve’s face scrunched up. It was a face Robin had seen before when they were taking tests in class – it meant Steve had no idea what was going on. “You’re upset because I’m not flirting with Tammy Thompson?”

“I don’t get it!” Robin said. “She’s really nice and she’s a good singer and she’s really pretty. Objectively. I mean, she seems like the Steve Harrington type.”

“Right,” Steve said, his lips twitching like she had said something funny.

“So I don’t get it,” Robin said. “She’s right there, and I don’t even try, but you keep looking. What’s so special about me?”

“Oh,” Steve said, like he had just realized something. “She’s jealous of you.”

Robin shuffled but didn’t say anything. Of course Tammy was jealous. Steve sat next to her every day, did he really not see it?

“And you don’t like that,” Steve continued, like he was figuring something out. Unfortunately, he was figuring out entirely the wrong thing. Robin wasn’t here to talk to Steve about her friendship with Tammy, she was here to find out why Steve didn’t like Tammy and why he seemed to like her.

“It’s not about me,” Robin said.

“Right,” Steve said, inhaling his stupid carcinogens. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Robin asked. She was pretty sure she was smarter than Steve Harrington, so she didn’t know why she was the one feeling lost in this conversation.

Steve stubbed out his cigarette against the wall. “I’ll fix it.”

The late bell rang. Robin wanted to ask Steve what he’d understood from this conversation, but she really did need to go to math class. Arriving late wasn’t a good way to fly under the radar.

“Okay,” she told Steve, not quite sure what she was agreeing to.

He gave her another one of those big smiles as she left the alleyway. It made something churn in her gut.

She wanted to be the kind of girl who got excited when Steve Harrington smiled at her like that. She wanted Tammy Thompson to smile at her like that. She wanted to fall in love with someone who loved her back, and she wanted to not get chased out of town by an angry mob with pitchforks for it.

***

The next time Robin walked into Ms. Click’s class, Steve was flirting with Tammy.

Robin had to stop in the middle of the aisle, feeling like she’d just been punched in the gut.

Tammy was leaning into Steve’s space, twirling her blonde curls around one finger. Steve was smiling at her, arm stretched over the back of her chair, listening attentively as she spoke.

Robin forced herself to walk mechanically to her desk. She took her notebook and pencil case out of her backpack and very carefully arranged everything on her desk, doing anything she could to prolong looking up. She didn’t want to watch this.

After what felt like the longest few minutes of Robin’s life, Ms. Click began talking. Robin risked looking up and saw that Steve had pulled his arm back and Tammy was sitting in her own seat again.

She couldn't stop seeing them wrapped up in each other.

At the end of class, Steve walked out quickly, the way he always did. Robin wondered if he always went to smoke behind the gym and that was why he ran away so fast.

Tammy whirled to Robin, squealing, her face lit up in a beautiful smile.

“Robin! Did you see that!”

Tammy hadn’t started a conversation with Robin in two weeks. Robin managed a real smile in the face of Tammy’s happiness.

“I did,” she said.

“I think he likes me,” Tammy said, almost shy, playing with the bracelets on her wrist.

“Yeah,” Robin said, ignoring the sinking feeling in her gut. “I think so too.”

***

The rumors at band practice told Robin that Steve was still flirting with other girls. He seemed particularly interested in Nancy Wheeler, who was a priss and a nerd but who was pretty and definitely his type. He seemed to be slowly wearing her down.

It made Robin furious. So Steve Harrington had a crush on Nancy Wheeler, fine, that made sense. But if he really liked her, and the rumors said he was absolutely head-over-heels, then what was he doing playing with Tammy and Robin? What the fuck was he up to?

***

A week later, Steve didn’t run out of Click’s class at the first sound of the bell. Instead he turned to Tammy and Robin and said, “I’m having a party at my house tonight. You’re both invited.”

“I’ll think about it,” Tammy said, smiling like this was a game. It was. They all knew Tammy would be going to see Steve and she was just trying to play it cool.

“Cool,” Steve said. He met Tammy’s eyes, then Robin's. “I’ll see you there.”

Tammy waited until he walked away, then did a little shimmy of excitement. It was kind of lame, but also hopelessly endearing. Robin liked when Tammy didn’t try to act cool around her.

“You’re going?” Robin asked dully.

“Of course I’m going!” Tammy said. “This is going to be so much fun! You’re coming, right?”

“Yeah,” Robin said, her mouth running before her brain could catch up with it. Tammy wanted her there. What else could she do? “I’ll be there.”

***

Robin got her dad to drop her off at the party. She was willing to bet she was the only teenager being dropped off by their dad, but her parents weren’t the type to be upset about her going out and they trusted her to drink responsibly. Plus, Robin couldn’t drive, so she didn’t know how else she was supposed to get there.

By the time she arrived, the party was already in full swing. Music came from inside the house and a few people spilled out into the yard.

Robin headed inside, dodging around a few couples making out against the hallway walls. Tammy was probably here already, right? Robin passed through the kitchen, filling a red solo cup with a tiny amount of vodka and a lot of coke. Jason Carver was there, flirting with Chrissy Cunningham, who was blushing at the attention.

Robin slipped into the living room and that was where she found Tammy. She was standing against a wall, surrounded by Olivia, Melissa, and Karen. Tammy was holding a red solo cup and staring out at the other end of the living room.

Robin followed her gave to Steve, who was talking to… Eddie Munson? Robin watched with her jaw slack until Steve came away with a grin and a joint between his fingers.

That made sense, actually. Of course the only reason Steve Harrington would ever speak to Eddie Munson would be to buy drugs.

Robin went up to Tammy, hovering at the edge of the group as she said “hi.”

“Hey,” Tammy said, giving her a distracted smile.

“I like your dress,” Robin said. She wanted to say that Tammy looked good, but that wasn’t a safe compliment.

“Thanks,” Tammy said. “I got it in Indy.”

“It’s cute,” Robin said. It was — pink and ruffled at the edges and unlike anything anyone else was wearing. Something that screamed Tammy Thompson.

The music went quiet for a moment, and Robin spun around, trying to figure out why. Carol Perkins was standing by the speakers.

“Let’s play a game!” she said, blowing a bubble with her gum like the picture of teenage insouciance. “Truth or dare.”

She sat on the ground, Tommy Hagan and Steve Harrington sitting beside her. A few more jocks joined — Jason and Andy from the basketball team, Chrissy and Fiona from the cheerleading squad. Heather Holloway and Patrick and Brenda.

“We have to join!” Tammy said. She grabbed Robin’s hand and dragged her over to the circle.

Robin complied in a daze. Tammy was holding her hand. Tammy’s hand was soft and warm and not sweaty at all and Robin could die happy, Tammy’s hand in hers.

Tammy released her as soon as they got to the circle and Robin felt suddenly bereft, taking a seat mechanically beside her. Melissa, Karen, and Olivia sat on Tammy’s other side.

Steve Harrington was looking in her direction, eyebrows up, and Robin scowled at him. Steve smiled, hands up like he was saying don’t shoot, and Carol noticed and shot Robin a glare.

“Tommy,” Steve said. “Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” Tommy said.

Steve grinned. “I dare you to let Carol take a body shot off you.”

Tommy scrunched up his face. “Don’t you mean I should take a shot off her?”

Steve blinked, absolutely nothing behind his eyes. “What do you mean?”

So Tommy lay down and balanced a shot glass on his stomach, so low it was practically on his hips, and Carol grabbed it with her mouth, tipping her head back to drink. Robin didn’t like Carol at all, but she had to admit there was something attractive about it, about the long line of Carol’s throat as she drank the shot and the dainty, self-satisfied way she wiped her mouth afterward.

From there, they kept going around the circle.

Heather Holloway gave Andy a lap dance. Fiona admitted to having done mushrooms. Jason Carver was dared to kiss the prettiest girl in the circle, which made him turn to Chrissy Cunningham and say “A good girl like you deserves better than some drunken kiss during truth or dare. What do you say I take you out to dinner tomorrow and then give you a kiss on your front porch at the end of the night?”

Chrissy’s smile was disarmingly wide. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “That sounds nice.”

“It’s a date,” Jason said. A few of the boys hollered and whooped, patting Jason on the back and shaking him a little. Jason looked bashful, hiding a smile behind a sip of his drink.

“Finally!” Carol Perkins said. She turned to Chrissy. “He’s been pining over you since last year and it took him this long to work up the guts to ask you out.”

Jason screeched at Carol, who ignored him and winked at a pleased-looking Chrissy. Robin was hit with the sudden realization that Carol Perkins could be nice, when she wanted to be.

Melissa got dared to swap clothes with Patrick, Karen revealed she’d shoplifted a pair of earrings once, and Olivia admitted to having made out with a boy in the school janitor’s closet.

Then it was Tammy’s turn.

“Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” Tammy said, something brave in her eyes.

A few of the girls conferred together — Carol and Heather and Fiona — before turning to Tammy with smiles on their faces. “We dare you to shotgun with Steve.”

Tammy’s eyes went wide. Robin didn’t think Tammy was the type to smoke weed, but Tammy pressed a confident smile onto her face. Maybe she didn’t want to back down from a dare. Maybe she just wanted a chance to press her mouth against Steve Harrington’s.

Steve looked at her from all the way across the circle — if he, Tommy, and Carol were the North Pole, Tammy and Robin were the South, the antipodal point — and raised the joint questioningly.

“Okay,” Tammy said.

Steve took a drag off the joint and crawled across the circle. Tammy met him in the middle and he was gentle as he used one hand to tip her chin up, pressing his lips against hers and exhaling. Robin could only really see the back of Tammy’s head, but she was hit by a burning jealousy at the way Steve so casually touched her.

It felt like it had been years since Tammy had held her hand.

Tammy sat back beside Robin, a pleased little smile on her face.

“Band kid,” Carol said, smiling meanly. “Truth or dare.”

Robin shuffled uncomfortably. So far all the dares had involved some kind of sexual display with the opposite sex and Robin did not want to kiss a boy or give him a lap dance. But she also had a lot of secrets she didn’t really feel like sharing.

She should pick truth, right? Worst come to worst, she could just lie. It’s not like any of these people would ever know — none of them really knew her.

“Truth,” Robin said.

Chrissy started to say something, but Carol spoke over her. “Who was your first kiss?”

Robin’s cheeks flamed. Carol was doing this on purpose.

“I haven’t had my first kiss yet,” Robin said, trying to sound casual. It wasn’t that unusual, at least in the circles she ran with.

But Carol reacted with extreme shock, her eyes going wide, her mouth dropping open. “Ever? That’s so sad!”

“Not really,” Robin said. Everyone was staring at her. She’d spent months trying to fly under the radar, and now they were all watching her and it was just as terrible as she’d thought it would be.

Carol kept going. “But why haven’t you kissed anyone? Aren’t there any boys you like?”

It would have been fine if Carol hadn’t paused a little, put more emphasis on the word boys. But Carol knew what she was doing, insinuating exactly what she had when she’d stood with Steve by Robin’s locker.

Everyone in the circle was staring at Robin. Jason Carver looked disgusted. Tammy pulled back a bit from Robin’s side.

Robin felt like she was going to throw up.

Then Steve Harrington scoffed. All eyes moved to him, to see what the King was going to say. Steve was relaxed, weight back on one hand, legs kicked out in front of him. “Not everyone is a slut, Carol.”

The like you went unspoken, but Robin saw it land. Carol’s face scrunched up with real hurt for a second, like she wasn’t sure why Steve was attacking her.

Tommy, sitting between them, gave Steve a what the fuck look as he pulled Carol into his side.

Steve either didn’t see any of this or pretended not to. He turned to Patrick, sitting next to Robin on the opposite side as Tammy, and said “truth or dare?”

Robin relaxed. It was over, right? They weren’t looking at her anymore?

She glanced around the circle and it seemed like everyone had moved on. A sneaky glance at Tammy showed that she wasn’t sitting as close to Robin as before, but she also wasn’t looking particularly repulsed. Maybe she had just forgotten to move back again.

Robin didn’t really believe it.

She tried to calm her racing heart as the next few people went. But when it was Steve Harrington’s turn, she couldn’t help but tune in.

“Steve,” Tommy Hagan said. “Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” Steve said, like every teenage jock ever.

Carol leaned over and whispered in Tommy’s ear and Tommy grinned. “I dare you to kiss Robin Buckley.”

Robin’s blood turned to ice. Once again, all heads in the circle swiveled to her.

Robin didn’t want to kiss Steve Harrington. She had been saving her first kiss because she wanted it to be special. She could have pretended to like a boy, to kiss a boy, to date a boy. But she had wanted to save all her firsts for a girl — to have them be real and meaningful instead of a stupid farce.

She didn’t have a choice though. Not after what Carol had implied earlier. If Robin didn’t kiss Steve, she would practically be confirming that she was a lesbian.

Robin looked to Carol, who was smirking at her.

“Yeah,” Robin said shakily. “Okay.”

Steve was watching her intently, something indecipherable in his eyes. He got to his feet and crossed the circle, kneeling down in front of her.

Robin didn’t think she’d ever been this close to a boy. He smelled like hairspray and beer, and his eyes were brown and serious as she watched her.

He gave her the same friendly smile he’d been giving her all semester, then leaned in to whisper in her ear. His breath was uncomfortably hot on her skin as he said, “trust me.”

Then he pulled back and squared his shoulders, cocky and unapologetic about it. He smirked around the circle, a boy proud to be showing off that he was kissing a pretty girl.

Robin was going to throw up. Her heart was pounding and she was going to have to kiss a boy and Steve had been playing games with her all semester.

Robin closed her eyes, preparing for the kiss and also trying to hide the hot tears she could feel building up.

She jumped a bit when Steve’s hands landed on her face. He wasn’t holding her jaw delicately like he’d done to Tammy. Both of Steve’s giant palms where splayed across her cheeks, one of them half caught in her hair, dragging it in front of her face. Great. Her first kiss was going to taste like hair and that wasn’t even going to be the worst part of it.

Robin kept her eyes screwed shut as Steve’s skin pressed against her lips and his nose bumped hers and — those weren’t Steve’s lips.

Steve was close, yes, so close they were sharing the same air. So close that it probably looked like they were kissing.

But this was a stage kiss. Steve’s thumb was over Robin’s mouth, his lips pressed to one side and hers to the other.

Robin opened her eyes in shock. She couldn’t really see Steve — he was too close not to be blurry — but his eyes were pressed closed, brown eyelashes fanned over his cheeks. As if this were a real kiss.

Where had basketball-playing, prom king Steve Harrington even learned what a stage kiss was? This couldn’t be standard practice for the popular kids — they played these games as an excuse to kiss each other, not to fake it.

And more importantly, why was he doing this? Was he that opposed to kissing her? Or had he somehow noticed her reluctance and decided to protect her while allowing both of them to save face?

Steve used his hands to tilt Robin’s head and she followed without resistance. He pressed closer, moving her back, and they still weren’t kissing but it probably looked like they were making out. Like he was into this. Like she was.

Robin closed her eyes. She could figure out the mystery that was Steve Harrington later. Right now, she had to help Steve sell this.

She raised her hands to Steve’s shoulders, pulling him closer, hoping he wouldn’t misinterpret her sudden ardor as a request for a real kiss.

He let out a little moan, his nose brushing hers as he tipped his head, and she smiled against his thumb. Holy shit. They were totally faking it and everyone was going to think she was a good enough kisser to make Steve Harrington moan.

After a long moment, Steve pulled back, simultaneously slipping his thumb to the side so it wouldn’t be over her mouth.

He stayed in her space a second longer, eyes locked with Robin’s. He seemed pleased with himself, or maybe with her shocked expression.

He licked his lips and Robin copied him automatically. Her lips tasted like beer and smoke but it was from Steve’s hand, not his lips, and that made all the difference.

Someone wolf-whistled.

Steve backed away, returning to his seat next to Tommy Hagan. Robin was speechless as the room returned to focus.

Carol looked pissed. Tommy was elbowing Steve, leaning in to tease him.

“Damn, Harrington,” said some basketball jock Robin didn’t know. “I didn’t know you were into band nerds.”

“That was a hell of a first kiss,” another one said.

Steve smiled, cocky and pleased and bashful all at once. He was a better actor than Robin had ever given him credit for.

Tammy nudged Robin, and that’s when Robin realized she was still staring at Steve, dumb with awe.

As everyone turned to Tommy Hagan, Tammy leaned in and whispered, “it looks like you really enjoyed that kiss.”

She was trying to smile, trying to gently tease like a friend would, but Robin could see the heartbreak in her expression. Robin wished she could tell Tammy that it had all been for show and that she hadn’t actually kissed Steve, but Tammy had pulled away at the accusation that Robin was a lesbian and only been okay touching her again after that performance of a kiss.

This wasn’t a world where Robin got to have both Steve and Tammy.

“Yeah,” Robin said, surprised to find she was telling the truth. She was glad she’d been dared to kiss Steve and not any other boy here. There were apparently layers to Steve Harrington, who she’d thought was nothing more than a pretty, empty-headed, girl-obsessed jock.

She kind of wanted to know more about him.

She glanced across the circle. Steve was watching Tommy try to do a handstand, until Tommy overbalanced and fell into Steve’s lap, making him yelp. Steve laughed as he leaned over Tommy, asking if he was okay, and Tommy’s eyes lit up in a way Robin recognized. The way she had probably lit up when Tammy had taken her hand.

In that moment, Robin felt like she understood something about all of them.

Carol’s frozen smile as she watched her boyfriend beam at Steve. The way Tommy pretended to fumble a bit climbing off Steve’s lap, if only to stay there a second longer. And Steve’s sharp eyes, catching Tommy’s adoration and Carol’s pain.

“You’re too high, man,” Steve said, waving his joint in a big circle. Giving Tommy cover in case anyone else had noticed what Robin had.

“Way too high,” Carol agreed, snatching the joint from Steve’s fingers. She took a long drag, then blew the smoke out, passed the joint back to Steve, and curled into Tommy’s side.

Tommy and Carol looked like the picture of a happy couple and Robin realized it was another type of performance. Had Carol known before she started dating Tommy? Or had she fallen in love with him first, only realizing he liked Steve when it was too late to stop her heart from being broken?

Robin didn’t want to feel sympathy for Carol Perkins, who had tried so hard to ruin Robin’s night. But she pitied her a little, watching her playact at being happy and realizing that they were all doing it. All these stupid popular kids were just pretending to be shiny, happy people and the rest of the school was buying it, standing too far away to see the imperfections that would have been obvious up close.

Steve met Robin’s eyes across the circle, bringing the joint to his lips. His eyes were perfectly clear, pupils small, not like someone who had been smoking at all. Another slight of hand, like the stage kiss.

“I think he likes you back,” Tammy said.

Robin looked at Tammy, who was faking a smile just like the rest of the popular kids. Why hadn’t Robin seen it before? Tammy was brave and Tammy was kind, but she hid those parts of herself, trying to seem just as cookie-cutter perfect as the rest of the people in this circle.

Robin didn’t want cookie-cutter perfect. She wanted real.

She still didn’t want to break Tammy’s heart, so she said something she didn’t really believe about Steve. Not anymore.

“Maybe,” Robin said. “But like you said, he’s just a good time. He’ll be over me in two weeks.”

***

On Monday, Robin found Steve at his locker after school.

His eyes went wide as she came up to him and he smiled at her. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Robin said. She kicked the toes of her converse together. She’d spent all of yesterday doodling on them while watching tv. Maybe it was stupid, given how close Carol had come to outing her, but Robin was feeling a little bulletproof. She’d written I may not go down in history, but I’ll go down on your sister in pen on the whites of her shoes.

Steve looked down at her feet and smiled. “Nice artwork.”

Robin froze, even though there was no way Steve could read her shoes while standing up. “Thanks,” she said stiffly. “I thought they could use some, uh, personality?”

“I like them better this way,” Steve said.

Robin cleared her throat. “Do you, uh, wanna get milkshakes? You’re paying, of course.”

Steve’s eyes lit up. “Yeah,” he said quickly. “I’ll buy you however many milkshakes you want.”

Robin rolled her eyes. “Do girls really fall for this desperate act?”

“I’m much cooler around girls I’m interested in,” Steve said. Robin believed him this time. He’d put his thumb over her mouth and then swaggered like he’d kissed her and she trusted him in a way she hadn’t before.

She was dying to know why he’d done it.

“So it’s just your friends that you bribe into liking you,” Robin teased.

“Yeah,” Steve said, shameless. “Usually more with free rides and arcade money, but I’ve used ice cream before.”

“You’re so weird,” Robin blurted out. Then she froze. It was practically social suicide to call Steve Harrington weird.

But Steve didn’t get mad. He just laughed and said “you have no idea.”

“Yo, Harrington,” called a basketball player walking down the hall. “Hurry up, you’ll be late for practice.”

“I’m not going today!” Steve called back. “I’m sick.” He gave a very unconvincing cough.

The basketball player rolled his eyes. “Lovesick, maybe.”

Steve scowled playfully. “Fuck off, man.”

“I’ll tell Coach you’re too pussy-whipped to play,” the basketball player said.

“Don’t you dare!” Steve called. Robin expected him to sound more offended at being called pussy-whipped. No teenage boy wanted to be told he would do anything a girl told him to do, even in exchange for sex. And Steve was definitely not getting sex. But the insult rolled off Steve like water off a duck’s back. “Tell him I have the flu.”

“Sure, sure, whatever.” The boy rolled his eyes as he disappeared around the corner.

Steve closed his locker. “Ready to go?”

“You’re not going to basketball?”

“No,” Steve said. “We’re getting milkshakes. I’m not giving up a chance to make Robin Buckley my best friend.”

“Aren’t you, like, first chair?” Robin said. She watched a lot of basketball games by virtue of being in band, she knew it was called starting line. But she enjoyed seeing Steve’s face scrunch up at her words.

Steve groaned. “God, that is annoying. Remind me to stop calling Dustin’s campaigns his nerd practices.”

“Who’s Dustin and what are campaigns?”

“A kid I babysit, and a Dungeons and Dragons game.”

Robin blinked. “Dungeons and Dragons? That Hellfire game?”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “He’s not in high school yet, so he doesn’t play with Eddie as his DM, but I’m sure he’ll join in a few years.”

DM? Was that some Hellfire term?

Apparently the new Steve Harrington knew the terms to nerd games. He stage-kissed lesbians at parties and thought it was worth skipping basketball practice for a chance to be Robin’s friend.

“Who are you?” Robin asked. “And what have you done with Steve?”

“I’m a time traveller from the future,” Steve said.

Robin laughed. What a nerd. “No, really.”

Steve started walking backwards down the hallway, keys swinging around his fingers. “I’ll tell you over milkshakes.”

He held a hand out to her, beckoning, a hopeful smile on his face, and it didn’t feel like a joke anymore. Robin had no clue why, but Steve Harrington really wanted to be her friend.

Robin peeled herself off the lockers and took Steve’s hand, their fingers twining together, letting him pull her outside.

#stranger things #stranger things fanfiction #ao3 #because ao3 is down #robin buckley #Steve harrington #carol perkins #stobin #platonic stobin #time travel fanfiction #mia writes fanfic

1K notes · View notes

perfectquote · 4 months

Quote

Sometimes an understanding silence was better than a bunch of meaningless words.

Mia Sheridan, Archer’s Voice

243 notes · View notes

90smaximoff · 1 year

Text

missing you.

gip!natasha x fem!reader

summary: the one that natasha decides to have a baby with you.

words: 2.2k

warnings: smut (+18), natasha is gip in there so… yeah, angst (just a little bit), mentions of getting shot, make out, some dirty talk, a lot of breeding kink, teasing i guess, mentions of getting pregnant, mentions of death, TERRIBLE title but i couldn’t think about anything else.

author’s note: sorry for mistakes lmk if you see one, hope you guys like it and pls leave messages on my inbox cuz i’m always bored on these days.

You could see the shining lights of her car from the windows of the living room, knowing she was pulling the car inside. Excitation runned through your body as you wait for her to come inside, feeling the anxiety of seeing her again after a long time, thirteen days, to be precise. It was harsh, but that comes with the price of be married to a avenger, a spy, the black widow and the love of your life.

You bite your lip in anxiety, but let out a scream as you see her open the door and come inside, running to hug her.

“Tasha!” You jump in her, being received by her strong arms hugging your slim waist, shoving your face into the crook of her neck, for one second you were the happiest girl in the world, nothing in this world could hurt you since you had your girl right there.

“I missed you so much.” You whispered, almost crying from the emotion.

“It’s okay baby, i’m home now, i’m not going nowhere.” God, you missed everything in her, her calm tone, her lovely voice, her delicious smell.

After minutes hugging each other like nothing else matters, you finally manage to get out of her hug, giving her a kiss that you know damn well you needed. A passionate and desperate kiss, wanting nothing more than feel your lover’s lips again.

When you separated it, you tried to bring her closer to the couch, guiding her gently by the hand, with a smile in your face that fade way the moment you notice she was limping, and making a face of pain at every step that she tried unsuccessfully hide from you.

“Nat, what happened? Are you hurt?” You asked, already worried about her.

“It was just a shot, nothing to worry about, baby.”

She sits down on the couch, letting a sigh of relief for finally being home with you, even knowing that you would be yelling at her for being shot and not telling you.

“Just a shot!? Why you didn’t tell me?” Your voice started to get a little louder and you feel like you were about to cry. You always cares a lot about Natasha, she leaves almost everyday to kick villains asses and save the world, you can’t help but misses her and worry about how she is all the time.

“Because i knew you were gonna to be worried and hysteric.” She says with regretful look on her face. You can’t refute it, of course you would be, so you just let out a frustrate sigh and rolled your eyes. “Baby, c’mon, it’s not too much of a big deal, i’m fine…” She waits for an answer but nothings comes out. “Are you mad at me?”

“Of course i am, Natasha!” You feel your eyes water, filled with tears of frustration. “Almost everyday you leaves and i don’t know if you ever coming back to me. I know you are a hero and i’m so proud of everything you do but… God, i am your wife! I do not deserve priority in your life?” At this point you were already screaming, your voice shaking as your let the tears rolled on your face.

“Of course you do! Baby, of course you have priority, i’m always coming back to you.” Seeing you crying after spending so much time away from you was really breaking her heart, but she decided to not let it show.

“Yeah, with a shot on your leg! Who knows where’s gonna be next time? On your head? On your chest?” You knew damn well that you was being overdramatic, but you honestly didn’t care at this point, you just wanted her to know how you feel, what passes though your head every time she leaves.

When you avoid her eyes and started to dry your face with the palm of your hand, Natasha decided that was enough, opening arms for you. “Okay, i’m sorry, baby, i’m sorry, come here.” You didn’t hesitate to go, even wanting to be mad at her you missed her so much to deny a hug.

You straddle her lap and hug her shoulders, pushing your head on the crook of her neck as she embraced your body, whispering that she should’ve told you about the fucking shot.

“I’m sorry baby, but all i wanted was come back and be with my girl, can we forget that for a moment, please?” She said after some minutes.

You take a deep breath and take your face off her neck to look at her instead, your eyes were already dry, almost seemed like you didn’t even cried if wasn’t for your swollen lips and your face a little blushed. “Okay, sorry for yelling too.” Natasha agrees with her head giving you a sweet smile before pushing you in to a kiss.

It was gentle at first, showing how much you both missed each other kindly, slowly moving her lips on yours, caressing your back as you stroked her red hair. Everything feels gentle and soft, you were happy to have her in your arms again, safe and sound on your house, it was really hard spend so much time away from her. You missed everything, her hair, her hands, her touch, her voice, even missed it when she makes you stressed.

“I missed you so much, you know?” And like she just read your mind, these words was spoken in a lower voice against your lips. “I missed my baby so much.”

“I missed you too, Tasha.”

“Yeah? What did you missed about me?” she catches her breath and starting to kiss on your neck, making you shiver and squirm a little on her lap, closing your eyes trying to focus on the sensations she gives you and still reply to her.

“I m-missed everything about you.” You stutter a bit, almost moaning just for having her lips on your neck. Natasha hummed, instructing you to continue talking. “I missed your kisses…” You mumbled as she bite slightly on your neck, bringing her hands at your uncovered thighs, caressing it with the top of her fingers, making shivers run though your body. “And… i missed y-your touch.”

At every second got a little harder for you to talk, having your wife provoking so many sensations at your body leaven you a whimpering mess trying not to moan.

“You missed me touching your thighs like this?” She whispers against your neck, the hot breath on your sensitive skin.

You shake your head a yes and closed your eyes, feeling her hands getting closer to the bottom of your shorts and you know what was to come.

“I missed you inside of me, Tasha.” You whine, needy. That was enough to let Natasha crazy, she moan on your neck at that and in seconds was asking you to get up and take off your shorts, along with your panties.

When you did, sitting on her lap next, she takes off your shirt in one quickly movement, kissing you after that, you both were so eager and needy for each other that you couldn’t wait any more to have her inside of you.

You unbuttoned her pants, bringing them down and springing her cock free. She was already hard since the moment you’ve start kissing on her lap, after almost two weeks without fuck you Natasha could go crazy, getting hard and needy for any physical affection, sometimes you liked to tease her saying she looks like a horny teenager that gets hard by everything.

But the true is that Natasha is obsessed over you since the day you met, everything you do makes her loves you more or gets her hard, sometimes both.

You started to jerk her off as she brings both hands to your ass, her cock feels heavy on your small hands, getting bigger by your touch, you smiled hearing her moan, knowing how much she misses having your hand in her, you misses that just as much.

“Put me inside you, baby.” She pant and you happily comply, lifting your hips, bringing her to your dripping opening and lowering yourself in her.

You both let out a little moan at that and Natasha pulled a hand at your neck, gently bringing you to a kiss while you get used to her big size. The feeling of your walls stretching to take her cock was the best thing that she ever felt, having you all naked on top of her whose was completely dressed made her feel dominant over you even though knowing that she was so desperate for you as you were for her.

When you feel your pussy accommodate her cock completely, you lift your hips again, your mouth disconnected with her for one second as you sink into her, moaning louder, you started to move your hips, bouncing on her cock.

Natasha watched you mesmerized, panting hard feeling the tightness around her shaft. “You feel so fucking good, baby… You like it? You like my cock deep inside you?” She says breathless.

She can’t help but stare at your tits as they bounce in front of her, seeing it you arched your back, putting your chest closer to her mouth, inviting her to suck on your nipples, which she happily accepts, involving her warm tongue on your breast, sucking it like a hungry baby.

“Yes! I love it, don’t stop, please.” You moans feeling the overcome sensation of being stimulated on your sensitive parts, not even knowing what you’re begging for, just riding her harder and faster at every second, feeling yourself get a little closer to your orgasm.

So was Natasha, who didn’t know how much time she could last inside your tight pussy, it’s been so long since you guys had sex and she didn’t touch herself in ages. Feeling closer to her own high, she hugs your waist and start to thrust herself inside you, lifting her hips upwards, making your whole body tremble since she was hella stronger than you.

You rolled your eyes at her fucking your pussy so fast and good that she couldn’t keep her lips at your boobies, letting them go and looking up at your flustered face.You had your eyes shut, your mouth open in a silent moan and a delicious expression of pure pleasure. Took everything in her to not cum at the sight.

Wanting you to cum with her, she lets her dirty mouth run, knowing how much you like that.

“I’m gonna cum, you want my cum inside you, baby? You want me to breed that pussy? ” Her breathless voice had you opening your eyes jut to look at her.

“Yes, cum inside, i want your cum so much.” You gripped her hair, feeling her getting even deeper inside you, the head of her pretty cock kissing your cervix at every stroke.

“Yeah? I’m gonna put my baby inside you.” Natasha herself didn’t catch what she said, just feels like the right thing at the time, but even knowing that was just a kinky talk, she couldn’t help but get attached to the idea of you getting pregnant with her child. Before she gets to worried about what you’d said, you welcome the idea happily, smiling naughty at her and moaning louder, letting her know that you liked that though.

“I’m gonna breed you, fill you over and over again baby, you gonna look so fucking hot pregnant with my child, f-fuck.” She keeps going, feeling your walls tightening on her at every word, enjoying your facial expressions and your pussy around her thick cock, coming even earlier than she planned to, painting your walls and filling you up completely.

“Fuck, yes, breed me!” You almost yelled as you come around her cock at the feeling of her cum inside you and at the thought of getting pregnant with her baby.

Tasha slowed down her thrusts after you cum, panting and feeling sensitive, her cock softening still inside your warmth, she unfolded her hug onto your waist and rests her back on the couch, her legs trembling a little under you.

You catch your breath on top of her, licking your lips and closing your eyes for a sec.

“Y/n?” She called you and you looked at her. “When i go to NY, next week, i’m gonna tell the team that is over.” She looked right into your eyes. “I rather be your wife than a avenger and… if you were being serious about the baby…”

“I was. I was being serious about the baby.” You interrupted her with a little smile on your face.

“Then i have one more reason to do it.” When you feel a little bad with Natasha having to leave something that she fight so much for, your smiled faltered a bit. “I know what you’re thinking but i want to do that, for you, for me and now… for our baby, okay?”

“You don’t even know if i’m already pregnant.” You chuckle and in seconds you feel her cock hardening again and her cum dripping out of you onto her thighs.

“So let’s make sure of it.”

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff #natasha x y/n #natasha x fem!reader #natasha x reader #natasha smut #natasha romanoff x you #natasha romanoff x female #marvel smut #mcu smut #mcu x reader #marvel #mcu natasha romanoff #mia’s writing

1K notes · View notes

elbiotipo · 1 month

Text

Worldbuilding: Galactic Empires

My only complaint about the Prequels is that they needed MORE politics

If you've watched Dune recently, you must have noticed the whole Emperor and space noble families thing. And yes, it's likely you heard that in WH40k too… and I HOPE you know that's where the God Emperor came from, since WH40k took "inspiration" from everywhere from Dune to Star Wars. Which also has a Galactic Empire. Like so many other science fiction franchises.

In fact, if you're a science fiction fan, it's very likely that you're familiar with space or galactic empires, they seem to be common as dragons in fantasy. Despite the fact that an empire doesn't sound very futuristic, does it?

Where did all these Galactic Empires come from? Are they just a narrative tool or are they an actual possibility? How would states and societies work in space? Let's find out, and maybe I can give you some ideas on how to write fun galactic "empires" from both a narrative and plausibility perspective.

This is going be a long post. Perhaps my longest yet. But I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Click down to continue.

First of all, where did these space emperors come from? In another post, I've talked about the influence of the idea of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire in English-language fiction. However, in science fiction, I would say the influence is more direct. The Foundation trilogy of Isaac Asimov, one of the foundational (lol) works of science fiction, was intended by the author, very explicitly, as a retelling of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon in a science fiction setting. He probably wasn't the first to think about a space empire, I'm very sure the term is older, but he certainly popularized it as a staple of science fiction. Now, if your contact with science fiction comes from movies, when you hear Galactic Empire you're of course thinking about Star Wars. But yes, Star Wars is also the same retelling, because Lucas was inspired in both Asimov AND Gibbon, even though I think we should appreciate Lucas' ability to bring it to life in the screen. Certainly, Isaac Asimov wasn't the first or the last to take inspiration in history to tell stories about the future.

The most influential science fiction work of all time.

At this point you're probably telling me (or not, I don't know you) about all other sorts of science fiction works that DON'T have galactic empires, or better yet, those that don't just transpose historical societies into the far future and imagine something entirely new (my personal recommendations on this area are Banks and LeGuin). And you'd be right. But the concept of a space empire seems popular and long-lived, much like feudalism in the fantasy genre, everyone has a picture of a sorts when a videogame or a book talks about a "galactic empire" or "galactic republic" or a "federation", an "empire" much like a shorthand name for "a country In Space", regardless of the presence of an actual Emperor or not. And so, it's worth exploring how this trope could, or not, work, so we can see the possible alternatives or more fun ways to approach it.

Besides, that's the title of the post. Galactic Empires.

So, let's approach this from the perspectives of Space, Time (or to keep with the theme, Spacetime) and Technology, and lastly, the most fun part, we'll explore some fun variations on this idea of galactic empires and societies.

Space:

Space is big, and I won't quote the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy here, it would be groanworthy at this point. Let's do a quick exercise instead. Let's image a "modest" space empire, not even galactic, 2000 light-years across. Sounds quite big, it encompasses most of the visible stars we can see from Earth… however, if you project it into a galactic map, it's actually a very small piece of sky, actually 2% of the entire galaxy which is about 100.000 ly across. Now, according to the Atlas of the Universe, there are 600 million stars in a 5000 ly radius from the Sun. Jesus Christ. This is actually hard to estimate accurately as the true number of red dwarfs and brown dwarfs, the dimmest stars, are hard to count, but we already know those have planetary systems as complex as our own Solar System, even planets that could bear life. Let's scale back to our 2000 ly across space empire, again, just a small cozy corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, something that would look like a small, even tiny, nation in any setting of a galactic scale. This gives us 240 million stars (from the estimated 200 billion stars of the galaxy) in this space, which is still completely insane but let's work with that.

From Atlas of the Universe, so you can compare and contrast, the stars 2000 ly from the sun (ONLY the brightest ones), and the entire Milky Way. Notice how small 2000 light years truly are at that scale.

Even if I just told you that all of those systems might be as complex and rich as the Solar System, let's rather arbitrarily say only 5% of those 240 million are worth of note. Not necessarily having life (no way I'm getting into that yet), just worth visiting or living in for the resources or the views or the cantinas… whatever. That's 12 million star systems. Okay, let's refine this further. Let's say of those 12 million, most of them are the equivalent of gas stations or farmsteads, a couple thousand people at most. The REAL places where the action happens are the systems or worlds where millions of people live, and those are few and far between (this makes both common and narrative sense, as people tend to cluster in population centers where trade, resources, etc. are). Let's say, and let's refine this further so I don't get outrageous numbers, the average population of those systems is 100 million (about the size of Mexico, Vietnam or Japan. Many sci-fi works throw worlds of billions like Earth like nothing). And those systems are… uh, like 2% of THOSE 5% 'systems of note' (a flimsly concept already but play along). That's 2% of 12 million. We got 240.000 systems or worlds the population size of entire countries, with all that implies (economy, culture, politics). Of course, 240.000 multiplied 100 million gives this speculative fictional empire a total population of… (Jesus Christ, not the scientific notations), 2.4e+13, or TWENTY FOUR TRILLION PEOPLE.

Let's wind back and remember I tried my best to make a "small" empire for a galactic-sized setting, 2000 light-years across, that's just from here to Orion's Nebula for Gagarin's sake! A trillion people is just outside the realm of my imagination, or pretty much anyone's. Can you imagine any kind of goverment system that would be enough to provide any kind of meaningful governance to 24 trillion people? In the case of a space empire, can you imagine a single space emperor, a single person, deciding over them? Keep in mind that emperors don't rule on their own (we'll talk about that), they need bureacrats to make their will done, and vassals to govern their territories in their stead. This would apply even in democratic systems, you need representatives and civil servants and more.

Let's scale back a bit before I go insane. Instead of assuming territory, let's go with population. Assume a spherical cow space empire of… 40 billion people, that's reasonable right? You can picture that in your head? Five times the population of current Earth, no biggie, we can work with that, it's all cool. Now, how big would a goverment for such a population would have to be? We actually have reasonable answers. China has about 10 million civil servants for a population of 1.4 billion people, but that's only the administrators, not including all the teachers, healthcare workers, security forces, laborers, etc. employed by the state. India has 6.4 million for about the same population. Okay, so easy math, let's say that this space empire has 6 million bureacrats for 1 billion people, for our empire of 40 billion people, that gives us a total of 240 million… just bureacrats, nothing else. Yes, you could reduce that with technology by say, half. It still means an entire Mexico-sized country of bureacrats. Imagine.

Entire worlds of this.

NOW I WILL STOP THROWING NUMBERS AT YOU, and let's just think about what this means. If we assume a space empire like the ones common in science fiction, or just any kind of… goverment at all, we're talking about, at the lowest estimates, entire countries worth of state employees, if not whole EARTHS of bureacrats. You can guess how things can get really weird fast. Current goverments as we know them just won't work at all it even if technology gets more powerful. Leaving aside, for now, things like god-like AI adminstration (yeah, have you seen what they are like now?)… to exhert ANY kind of control, FTL or not (more on that below) you would need a very, very autonomous empire, to the point it might as well not exist at all. Why take orders from A Guy who is not only far away but also has no hope at all of actually enforcing them in any meaningful sense? Why call yourself part of his "empire" that not only cannot enforce anything upon you, but also cannot benefit you in any way? Big question, of course, the benefit of a galactic or even smaller empire, but we'll discuss that later.

What could work, however, is that instead of a centralized state like we concieve it today, or even a loose confederation, even loose alliances, even pretty much anything… 'empires' (as in 'countries') In Space could be "united" by common ideas and culture instead of any institution. Perhaps not even a written delcration or constitution, but shared ideas: a culture, a religion, an ideology. Lots of different strong mini-states (that might mean billions of people…) that all claim to be part of the same "civilization", but share no goverment at all at all, just the same 'idea', in a looser way that even the most decentralized goverments you can think of. You can say "well all countries are made up" but these would barely qualify as even that. Not even the Holy Roman Empire was this fake.

Perhaps even a single person as a symbolic focus point of unity? Which would be actually a score for the proponents of galactic empires in the most literal sense. But at the same time, such an Emperor would be completely powerless to interact with the entire galaxy. His plans for, I don't fucking know, education reform or tax breaks, would have to be filtered by literal millions of bureaucrats and vassals that at that point might do whatever the hell on his name. Military-wise, his armies would count as nations of their own. However, the overall guidance of a single person (or constitution…) as a symbol might make otherwise disparate worlds to collaborate on the same causes, being part of the same greater whole no matter the distance. So maybe, instead of a Galactic Emperor, a Space Pope?

OH MY GOD-EMPEROR WAS THE IMPERIUM REALISTIC ALL ALONG? Probably not, but also yes, let's keep talking.

By the way, I'm sure you're tired of big numbers now, but I did one possible calculation for the whole galaxy, a true Galactic Empire. Asuming just 0.2% (400 million) of the 200 billion stars are populated, with an average population of one million, the size of the smallest countries that aren't micronations. The total galactic population would be 40 trillion, or 40,000,000,000,000. Five thousand Earth populations.

Time:

Or rather, space-time. We'll talk about both, because what concern us is the speed of information and trade, and that also limits the size of our empires.

I'm sure you know by now faster-than-light travel is impossible. Most of space based science fiction has it, of course, for narrative purposes. We don't want Our Heroes to spend two thousand years to get to the lair of the Evil Space Tyrant, I don't either, and I'll discuss FTL soon. But let's start with no-FTL here, just like in real life, and a smaller "empire", much, much smaller than my previous examples. A mere 250 light years across. Let's not even calculate population now.

This, quite logically, means that the fastest your communications would flow is at light speed. So if your emperor issues orders to a nearby world, say, 5 ly away, you will get an answer 5 years later. For a more reasonable distance of 60 ly, you would know the results 60 years from the descendants of those who recieved the order (now, assume however they keep in constant conversation, just with a 60 year delay), and by then, things there would have changed 60 years from the capital. You get the idea, Einstein sucks, don't need to elaborate more. At first glance, this might be another point for old-style feudal star empires, though. What better way to guarantee your empire is working well over centuries than by having an hereditary class of nobles loyal to you, no matter how much time passes (results may vary). Of course, how would you even enforce that? Rebels might overthrow them and you'll learn about it a century later, and you'll have to send ships to quash the rebellion… or would you?

Is there a point to send ships to conquer other worlds in such a situation? What kind of resources (ah, the lifeblood of empires) could you control with such an empire where transport takes decades and industry is so developed you could, theoretically, make manufactured goods yourself? I'm assuming you can, because you can build spaceships to get there in the first place (not unreasonable), but what would justify creating an interstellar goverment controlling people, trade, resources, over light-decades? Normally, it's at this point where sci-fi authors make up Something (what Atomic Rockets calls "McGuffinite") to justify interstellar trade. In Dune, for example, it's Spice, which is kind of like, to steal a joke, petroleum mixed with cocaine. But otherwise, in a no-FTL setting (so, real life as far as we know) there isn't really the incentive to conquer or even form a goverment of any but the looser kind with other worlds. Trade, maybe, but those are long-term investments, it's difficult to think what kind of good or service would be so in demand would justify it. Especially when you consider that light-speed is your upper limit, and ships might be actually way slower than that. And I'm not even gonna begin to touch relativistic effects.

I was going to make a joke about blowing a quarter of your GDP in Star Destroyers, but have you heard of the South American Dreadnought Race? One of our dumbest moments down here, surely.

Add FTL, and things change, of course. Even very slow ships, that would take months to transverse a dozen light years, would be able to justify trade in luxury goods and passengers, for instance. This is not too far from real-life either, after all, European colonial empires had travel times in the months, and they had to install local administrations such as viceroys because of this, yet rhose places they were considered part of the same empire (most European empires could be rather considered a collection of "countries" and colonies, look at all the divisions of the Spanish Empire for instance). Faster and cheaper ships would of course, mean even more trade (here, I'm using 'trade' as 'communication between worlds', not necessarily implying capitalism, it could be mercantilism or even a command economy) between worlds, even perhaps the classic trope of agrarian and mining worlds feeding the rich core worlds. The Open Veins of Latin America In Space. Fun.

The speed of your ships and communications not only determines trade, but the power projection of your state (we can discuss 'stateless' societies too, there's plenty of fun to be had). If, again, your Galactic Emperor makes a Galactic Proclamation from the Galactic Palace near the Galactic Core (let's roll with that) and he has no FTL communications of any kind, it means that his commanding voice would reach the outer edges of the galaxy 100.000 years after, that is, almost ten times the history of agriculture on Earth. If he, however, has access to ships that can cross the galaxy in say, months, yes, perhaps he can have a series of vassals all over the stars (perhaps, we'll see…), and the faster things are, the closer they resemble our current fast-paced society, but not quite, given the available resources and space in… SPACE and the possible population, as we discussed above. As you can see, the speed of your FTL or lack of it determines everything.

There is another, more *realistic* option. Instead of individual FTL ships, you could have wormhole portals connecting worlds. This is more realistic in the sense that it's theoretically possible (though we have no idea on how to make one), but it also has some interesting implications. First of all, there is an implication that such a wormhole network would be expensive to build and maintain, requiring highly complex technology, material (I'm not sure what the hell exotic matter really is) and production methods, well, more high than what you'd expect from the usual. Second, it would be something preferably fixed, with hubs, planned routes and regular transit (and for writers, it easily allows you to map your universe). Such networks would be vital pieces of infrastructure, built and maintained by central authorities, drawing routes and transport hubs in space. Yes, indeed, almost like… space railroads.

OH MY ASTRAL EXPRESS WAS HONKAI STAR RAIL REALISTIC ALL ALONG? (last joke I promise)

There is also a very strange effect about wormhole networks. Time is relative, as you know, and this is not a metaphor, it literally "flows" differently on how fast you're moving. The "universal" "speed" of "time" "seems" to be the speed at which matter moves in an expanding universe (red-shift and blue shift) as I understand it, but as you approach light-speed, time flows differently in your frame of reference. Wormholes are strange in the sense that they connect space AND time, the observable time in both sides of a wormhole would be the same, and as such, places connected by a wormhole network will "be" at the same "time". This has been talked about by some authors who have considered about wormholes in the context of space civilizations, and it's called (STOP!) Empire Time. So a space empire might not only imply a state ruling over a population and a territory, but also over a time. I have no idea how this works and it frankly makes my head hurt, but here is an analysis of transversable wormholes if you want to indulge or hit your head against a wall.

Technology:

As an extension from the previous section: Of course there is no working FTL method known in real life, as far as we know, light-speed is the upper limit for everything. Instead of constraining you as a writer, this can be one of your biggest assets.

Because if you're doing a space setting, the existence of faster-than-light travel and its speed is the most important decision you can take about it.

Got that? Did I emphasize that enough? You don't need to actually explain HOW your FTL system works, you can do some research and invent something, but you need to be clear, in your head, what it can DO: How far and how fast it can take you. A FTL system that takes months to go from star to star will be very different to one that takes hours to span the Galaxy like the hyperdrive of the Millenium Falcon. A FTL system that is cheap and can be installed in any tiny ship like in the Elite videogame would be different from the ones in Dune where interstellar travel requires enormous motherships and lots of drugs, or a wormhole network that needs massive infrastructure maintainment and probably a railway starway worker's union, or the case of no FTL at all. This is, again, the most important decision you could make for your setting, bar none. Got that? Let's continue.

FTL is perhaps the only place in science fiction where I don't care about how it works, only about how fast it goes

Now, technology. Space empires, are of course, not possible without space travel being cheap enough (not talking about FTL, just regular space travel): shipping stuff to space should be about the same as shipping stuff by airliner or, well, ships. This is not unreasonable. Efforts are being made right now to lower the cost to access space, and while space agencies like NASA might look expensive, they are not NEARLY as expensive as the money wasted in say, stealth jet fighters or fucking advertising (people who say 'why spend so much money in space when we could fix our problems on Earth' seem to forget about that all the time. But I digress.). A technologically advanced, wealthy (as in production, not literal dollars) society could easily afford as much space exploration as they wish with no real effect at all in their quality of life, indeed, it would improve it. Space isn't as expensive as it seems. At its very, very core, a spaceship is just steel and propellant.

And steel and propellant are very, very easy (once you got the technical research to do it) to get in space. Asteroids are MADE of iron and metals, a single asteroid is richer than all of Earth's mines combined. Hydrogen is literally the most abundant element in the universe, and water is on plentiful supply (no need to steal planets for water) on comets and icy asteroids and moons. Carbon is apparently widely available in carbonaceous asteroids, and in our own Solar System, Titan, the moon of Saturn, is basically covered in hydrocarbons (yes, OIL IN SPACE). All those resources could be very much in demand for manufacturing on a planet like for example, a future Earth that has taken its industry up to space. What's more, it's only bringing stuff up from Earth/an Earth-like or more massive planet (fun sci-fi term for you: "down the gravity well") that's really expensive. Once you get there, you can get anywhere with enough acceleration and propellant. Once there is space infrastructure and industry (and I get a feeling that it might get up fast, given that space technology would need to be very autonomous and reliable), it can sustain itself without a mother planet. In fact, if there's something I imagine would be considered a luxury in spacer life, it would be truly organic things; plants, wood, meat, wool, and so much more.

i am average astronaut man i work 15 hours in the asteroid mines to buy one burger

Which brings us to the big question; what kind of life would be out there? After all, I gave you numbers of millions and millions of worlds, it's hard to imagine at least a few of those don't have alien life. This is the biggest outstanding question in astrobiology currently and so I won't pretend to even try to answer it (my personal opinion, if you must, is that complex Earth life is extremely rare, but by sheer number of planets, it might exist by hundreds of thousands in our galaxy alone). Instead, let's try to see how science fiction looks at it.

Heinlein, another of the foundational writers of science fiction as a genre, saw alien worlds as just another frontier to be settled. Rich alien fruit, fertile arable lands, and huntable or tameable creatures just waiting to be exploited, and alien species to trade exotic goods with (or conquer). While Heinlein was not the only and probably not the first to write this subgenre, he certainly got it popular, and lots of works on his same vein follow this "frontier spirit" kind of writing, where space is seen as the last frontier to be tamed by hardy colonists in a very yeehaw cowboy western setting, and you can actually see this replicated in many modern science fiction like Firefly and the more cowboy-ish parts of Star Wars. And yes, this is balantly an expression of the 'manifest destiny' Usamerican imperialist worldview.

lots of Politics all over this Science Fiction Adventure

And yes, this idea of 'habitable' planets ready to be colonized like in a 4X videogame is also not very realistic either. We haven't found any alien ecosystems yet, but as a biologist I can tell you they would be very different from us in ways you probably won't expect. We can discuss how convergent evolution could be, a world with oceans would probably have equivalents of 'fish', 'algae' and 'worms' (I can GUARANTEE there will be A LOT of worms), we could even find very, very similar life to our own down to the body plan. However, we most probably could not eat them at all (which might sound silly at first glance but is needed to have you know. agriculture.), or perhaps even live in the same planet as them. We live in a society planet where most of the plants and animals which evolved with us can't be eaten, and many of them are toxic. It's possible, entirely likely, that the alien equivalents of carbohydrates (ever heard of L- and D-Glucose?), proteins and other substances would be indigestible to us, allergenics, or outright toxic, probably in ways we can't even think off. It's likely we won't catch alien diseases, but that's because our cells (if they even have cells) are completely incompatible with their diseases, just look at how different animal, plant and fungi cells are, now imagine whatever the fuck might evolve in a completely different biochemistry from us. There would be no farmsteads and cowboys like Heinlein wrote, living in Mars would probably be more pleasant that living in a world where everything might be toxic, not because life evolved to be toxic, just because it didn't evolve with you. If anything, these' habitable' worlds would be treated like giant nature preserves instead, you can look but don't touch.

(In one of my own settings, I sidestep this by proposing panspermia, that is, the idea that life spreads across the universe by means such as comets (or aliens) and thus shares similaritites and can eat the same stuff. A bit of a cop-out, but it does allow one to get with similar kinds of life.)

NOOO ANAKIN DON'T EAT THAT PEAR IT EVOLVED HIGHLY TOXIC ALKALOIDS IN A DIFFERENT EVOLUTIONARY CONTEXT NOOOO

But humans, if the biophilia hypothesis is right, will need nature in their lives. This is where orbital habitats come in. You know, like the ones in Gundam? Orbitals such as O'Neill Cylinders, Standford Torii (yeah, that's the plural for Torus) as well as bigger and more complex thingmajings I will write their own post about someday, have been proposed since the 1970s with technology available then, and there is no reason why a civilization with an advanced space infrastructure wouldn't try building them and even be better at it. What's very nifty about orbitals is that you can really make them your own personal custom miniworlds. Designs like the O'Neill cylinder are big, able to house hundreds of thousands, even millions of people if build to the top, but why do that? Mess with the lightining, the rotation, or the interior to make them a winter wonderland or a tropical paradise. I expect that they would be built to feed space communities at first with food that isn't imported from Earth or grown in hydroponics, and later as places to live and customize however you wish; perhaps a community would pool resources together and say, hey, we want to make an habitat that looks like a Colombian cloud forest, or the Okinawan Islands. Once they get cheap enough, and given how abundant resources are in space they might be not even as expensive as most engineering projects here on Earth, I expect actually many, many people would want to live in them, and it could be probably be very affordable, and just natural for the people who are born and raised and live and die in them. Another thing about habitats is that they are mobile. Like I said, as long as you got enough propellant and propulsion, you can move anything anywhere in space. Even whole habitats could move and cluster together depending on the local politics. Perhaps, much like city-states were the basic building block for countries in antiquity, in the future, the basic organization bloc would be the Orbital. You could have alliances of orbitals forming complex political intrigue inside a single solar system (yes, like in Gundam).

OH MY PLASTIC MODELS WAS GUNDAM REALISTIC ALL ALONG? (I lied)

This all might make space empires pretty much an unnecessary anachronism. Habitats can grow their own food and resources are plentiful once you have the right technology. They can also be mobile, so they could act like migrating cities at will, choosing to stay with like-minded "constellations" or strike out on their own without the dictates of a central state. It almost looks like an ideal anarchist society.

Or does it?

There is something very important to keep in mind about life in space. The technology, that is, habitats needed for life in space will require lots of maintainance and resource management, which implies there must be strong coordinating bodies with very, very strict rules so that shit doesn't blow up and you lose all your air into space, or the resources of an habitat are mismanaged and you end up with a food or water or even oxygen crisis. There is a reason why space exploration is done by state agencies or corporations with huge state backing. Another of Heinleins's favorite tropes, Libertarians in Space, would be impossible in such a situation. Actually, in ANY space situation, and this is why this section is in technology. Living in space requires you to be able to maintain complex technology and manage resources. None of this can be done ad-hoc or be left to individualism, you have to have Rules and follow them to the letter. And also, the effect of living in your 'own little world' would probably mean people have a strong indentity sense towards their home habitat. This will mean a more communitarian attitude. But before you think I'm waxing poetic about utopian habitat cultures, keep in mind that this also can mean an authoritarian mindset. After all, cults and authoritarian regimes do have "strong communities" too. An habitat could be everything from a well-managed place with responsible citizens who look for the welfare of all, to a closed society where everybody does as they're told as long as the tech works. On the other hand, I doubt habitats in a single star system would stay isolated. They'll probably trade and communicate with other habitats, forming constellations and power groups, that would prevent this 'closed system'. However, I doubt they would be too amenable to interstellar authority. Who the hell do those people from another freaking star think they are to tell us what to do in our habitat?

To be serious for a moment, habitats can be really cool places in science fiction. Especially if you imagine they could host all sorts of enviroments, from the tropical to the polar.

As an addenum… what if you really want to live in a planet? In places such as Mars or the Moon, things would be… pretty similar to orbitals actually. Habitats separated by vast expanses of barren nothingness, only now a planet instead of space (better for maps, at least). But that isn't what you're thinking, right? What if you wanted to feel the open wind and sky instead of a canned world? Well, this is where terraforming comes in. Transforming whole planets is something theoretically possible, but that would require massive investments of resources, more massive than anything we can imagine, and time, centuries at the very, very least. So stupid ideas like "terraform Mars to escape Earth", which as far as I know is only held by dumbasses like Musk, just don't make sense. It doesn't mean that terraforming itself is a worthless idea, it is a very appealing one. No matter how cool you can make your habitat, it won't ever be Earth. It won't ever be a self-sustaining biosphere with its own ecosystem that could last millions of years. For that reason, terraforming is attractive, it's something way more than an artificial "can" orbital, it's a new living world. There is a certain mystique into bringing lifeless worlds to life, but I expect that instead of the dumb Musk "ESCAPE EARTH" idea, the motivation for terraforming would be to recreate Earth, perhaps for conservation reasons (you could have whole planets as natural reserves), perhaps for tourist reasons, perhaps for spiritual reasons or even artistic reasons. On the other hand, the methods you can use to terraform a lifeless planet can also be used to 'terraform' living planets, as we've long seen in our own world… this could be done with hostile purposes. I would expect us to be better than that, but we simply don't know.

To close this section and give this post an conclusion, I think that, since there are no real borders in space, then empires, countries, polities, whatever you wish to call them, will be formed by stacking building blocs in loose alliances or confederations. The most basic would be habitats, then constellations of habitats, then inhabited planets (though I doubt any but the most populated ones would qualify), and then star systems, but little above that, and I expect up to a certain, difficult to calculate limit of population and area (though way, way below even a fraction of a speculated galaxy), things would be just impossible to manage. The effort in bureacracy, infrastructure and state control needed to project power out of a star system and the sheer scale of space probably won't ever justify empires, much less galactic empires, but you could have very interesting variations on the theme.

Fun Stuff!

So, let's play a little with what I've told you. I'm going to write a few short scenarios that might be fun takes on the "Galactic Empire" or "Space Empires" you might be familiar with already:

The Poleis Model

When the Greeks established their colonies around the Mediterranean, they didn't do it with the expectation they would be part of the same state or empire. They founded new poleis, new city-states, based on the constitution of the mother city (hence metropolis) but fully independent. The Phoenicians were much the same, with some of the daughter cities (Carthage means literally "new city") eventually becoming new cultures far from their home cities. Similarily, why should interstellar exploration mean the spread of a united state with a capital and all? Imagine that when interstellar ships depart, they do with the idea that they are going to create a completely new home, a new poleis, not an extension of the nations or organizations that sponsored them but rather more of a 'child' culture light years away from their motherland. As they develop in mostly isolation from each other, they will become new cultures on their own, while retaining ties to the ones most similar to them. This is, in my opinion, the most realistic scenario without FTL. With FTL, however, things get more interesting, as of course, Greek and Phoenician and other poleis didn't remain isolated light-years from each other, they had permanent contact. With FTL they could organize in leagues, perhaps even alliances for the ocassional military campaigns, trade and exchange of ideas, tourism and industry, and of course the Olympics.

The Wormholes Always Run In Time Model

As I've said, wormholes are pretty much like space railroads. Railroads, like other big infrastructure projects, need a centralized authority to be built and maintained. And once you are the central authority that does so, you're already in charge of the biggest arteries of trade and communication. Which makes you basically an empire, officially or not. In fact, this is the closest I imagine a space society would resemble the states we're familiar with here on Earth. If you have control over transport and the hubs of trade and politics, and that transport and communication network allows you to implent your policies, your rule might go very far indeed, and indeed, your main hub might be a great capital, the main station of known space. Now, perhaps you might be imagining a literal space empire with nobles and all that. Why not instead something else? The Socialist Interstellar, connecting the many worlds of the galaxy through a five hundred year plan of railroad wormhole construction in the path to communism... However, this would mean that people outside of the wormhole network might develop in different ways, perhaps the equivalent of nomads to the great settled empires of antiquity. And given what I've briefly touched on Empire Time (*breakdances*), the expression "the portals always run in time" might imply even more than just an aphorism.

The Civilization Cluster Model

I'll admit this is taken from Poul Anderson, as quoted in Atomic Rockets, to which I owe an inmense debt for this post and so much more. The idea is this; space is big, as is well established. Even with FTL to shorten the distances, even if you could cross the galaxy in a few weeks, the sheer number of stars is still insanely massive. Why should any civilization 'colonize' those stars dot by dot, what value is there in invading or colonizing planets with incompatible biochemistries? And how could even begin to think how to administer a thousand different worlds, each one as complex as Earth itself, let alone an entire galaxy? In this case, civilizations, instead of spreading across the galaxy, would mostly remain in their own 'civilization clusters'; even with FTL, there are so many issues closer to home that the idea of projecting power outside is ridiculous. There would be trade, exchange of ideas, and so much more between these clusters, but never constant enough and never with the authority necessary to create a "Galactic Empire"… the worlds are too many, too diverse, too populated and too far away for that. An interstellar traveller could roam the Galaxy for years exploring these clusters spread away from each other, with their own unique idiosyncracies and civilizations inside, and then a vast expanse of mostly nothing outside them. Basically, space is too big. I like to see them as constellations among the dark sky, hence the artwork.

The No Man's Sky Model

To live in space, you need complex technology, but also resilient and durable technology ready for any kind of situation, easy to repair and replace. So eventually, I believe designs would be standarized so much that every astronaut will carry or own a collection of standarized tools (somehow this reminds me of prehistoric tool cultures). Now, even with FTL, there's perhaps little material incentive for people to leave their comfortable homeworld or habitat to live in cold space. But some will, perhaps because of the sheer thrill of it, perhaps very small bands of families or friends. With a standarized tool kit for any ocassion, these small bands would spread across space, much like ancient humans spread across the world. But instead of creating space empires, without a fixed industrial base, they would be nomads. Which doesn't mean they would roam aimlessly, they would be seeking new biospheres, new resources and new cultures, and gathering in temporary or permanent market places, festivals and pilgrimages. Perhaps they could even be the majority of humans in space, while most others stay cozy on Earth.

...

This was a very long post and it took a lot work to make, so I hope you had as much fun reading it as it was for me to write it. If you did, and if you would like to see more, I would be very, very grateful if you donated to my Ko-Fi below. Anything helps a lot especially since my country is not doing great at this time governed by a libertarian idiot (not even the fun space kind), and even a little tip encourages me to post more, I'm always working on your suggestions! You can also contact me by DM or asks if you need any help with your worldbuilding or just want to rant with me a bit! See you next time, and thanks for reading.

#worldbuilding #science fiction #sci-fi #writing #writing advice #space #history #cosas mias

248 notes · View notes