“I can’t do this,” Whumpee sobbed, gripping the whip Whumper had given to them even tighter in their hands as they stared wide-eyed at the trembling victim in front of them. Caretaker. “Please-”
“Do as I damn well say,” Whumper ordered. In one swift movement, they grabbed Whumpee by the wrist and cracked the whip down as hard as they could across Caretaker’s back, a sinful grin curving on their lips at the shrill cry they received in response. Wrapping their free hand around Whumpee’s neck, they roughly pulled them back against their chest, talking dangerously low in their ear. “Do you want to see what happens if I have to do this for you?”
Whumpee frantically shook their head, tears welling in their eyes as they weakly tugged on Whumper’s arm in an attempt to loosen their grip on their neck.
“Then be good and do what I say, or It’ll end much worse for the both of you.”
Finally, Whumper shoved them forward again, watching as Whumpee’s frail body stumbled in an attempt to regain their balance. “Now It’s twenty hits instead of ten. Go.”
You know how back in the pre-Internet days, it was nearly impossible to watch a TV series in its entirety because the local affiliate stations would deliberately air the episodes all out of order, then do some sort of statistical sorcery to figure out which particular episodes gave the advertisers the best return for their dollar and just run those ten or twelve specific episodes in an endless semi-randomised rotation, and that was why every time you channel-surfed across a particular show it always seemed to be the same damn episode?
Twitter’s algorithm is literally the social media equivalent of that.
In middle/high school I put all the music I had on an off-brand mp3 player and would just set it to Shuffle All. I quickly realized the player’s shuffle fuction wasn’t purely random–it was weighted towards my favorite songs (aka the songs with the most plays).
Only I had never chosen those songs. They were just the random few to pop up the first time I shuffled everything, and they started playing more and more frequently as this horribly short-sighted algorithm fed itself bad data, until I was so annoyed at those few songs that I stopped listening entirely.
Anyway a few years later Facebook did the exact same thing with my friends list, siphoning me off from seeing most of my feed because OBVIOUSLY I interacted with them the most, therefore they must be my besties. But really they were just the only people showing up for me to interact with in the first place, until I was down to just a few people I never really talked to from high school, a college prof, and my racist uncle I kept calling out.
And shortly after that, YouTube followed suit, replacing “Subscriptions” with “Recommended” as the default category, and trying to find “things I liked” when it was really just whatever three channels I’d watched last, whatever unrelated viral vid it wanted to push that week, and weird perennials like Whose Line clips or lockpick reviews or YTPs that seem to hibernate for months at a time then return like locusts.
All this to say: the big mysterious algorithms that now run all the major platforms on the internet are never acting in your best interests. They’re just that junky mp3 player’s Shuffle All with a fresh coat of paint, and, to be clear, this is by design. They are VERY good at what they do, which is funneling users into nice predictable pockets of content that advertisers can exploit.
I just woke up and all I can think about is Azriel being a cuddler and wrapping his arms around Gwyn when they are sleeping and sometimes his overbearing protective Illyrian ass just cocoons her with his wings during the night and she has to basically tickle them to get out in the morning :’)
The usually stoic broody Spymaster nuzzling his nose in the pretty Redhead’s neck as he inhales and whines and grumbles 5 more minutes when she tries to get away from his grabby hands in the morning for training/ her job is my serotonin!
Him pouting when she gets up to head to the bathing chamber, and she just grins and rolls her eyes before leaning down to press a chaste kiss on his lips…and like, 9 times out of 10 he tricks her and pulls her back down
And then when they really do have to get up Gwyn gets up and just removes his shirt that she is wearing to cover herself up and sassily winks at him as she makes her way to the bathing chambers with Az groaning and then scrambling out of the bed to join her in the shower so they clean themselves up… after getting dirty again ;)
Azriel watching her in the bath, gently running the shampoo through her hair before stripping down and coming up behind her, placing wee kisses on her shoulder, hands splayed on her stomach before going lower and Gwyn’s head falling back on his shoulder whilst she enjoys her shadowsinger making her morning so much better
After the morning… delight, they make there way to the room to change and Gwyn watches her man shuffle around in the room as he looks for a shirt in just a towel and how his muscles bunch and roll in the back. Az notices her ogling and biting her lip and gives her a smug smirk.
He goes over to Gwyn and gives her a rough kiss and then pulls back when she tries to wrap her legs around his waist saying “you don’t want to be late now do you?” And squeezes her ass and escapes out of the room with a pure male grin as she shouts curses at him for turning her on before they have to be in front of everybody else
Don’t forget the lingering and heated looks exchanged across the training ring, and I fully believe without a shadow of a fucking doubt that Gwyn would jokingly slap her man’s ass when she walks past him just to see the look on his face
Also let’s not forget his shadows darting and reaching out to her, sending wee whispers of all the things Azriel wants to do to her that just riles her up more
I’ll eat you out and then fuck you till you can’t walk
