The personal tumblr of M.M. Kin - Reader, writer, dreamer, nerd for history, mythology, and sci fi. Author of the Seeds trilogy (a retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth) Worthy of Love, and Khthonios. Upcoming works include Moonshadows, Tapestry, and other works in science fiction, horror, and fairytale/mythology-inspired tales. Huge nerd of many fandoms including Star Trek, Marvel and DC Comics (various media) and various books, graphic novels, anime, and TV shows. Gamer girl. Cat lady. Did I already mention nerd? LOL.
Hi, I am StrawberryCatBeans, and I write a variety of things/themes both original and fandom. Some light, some dark, some genfic, some naughty fic, etc etc.
If you enjoy my works, please leave a review, it is an author's lifeblood and lets me know what my readers like so I can produce more of that content for us all to enjoy.
I am a fan of various things, and enjoy discussing fandoms with other fans so you'll see me dabbling in various things, feel free to drop me a line, I don't bite (unless you're into that kind of thing, teehee)
Current fandoms include but are not limited to... Rise of the TMNT, One Piece (both anime and live action), Darkwing Duck (both versions)/Duck Tales (2017), Jackie Chan Adventures, Megaman, Marvel and DC (various) Dune (books and movies), a handful of K- and historical dramas, along with others. I also love to read and my tastes in books are as varied as my tastes in other media. There's a reason why I call myself an eclectic, haha :)
I add trigger/content warnings to what I make when necessary so please don't come bitching at me if you choose to ignore any warnings. Most of my smexy stuff is fairly vanilla but I do venture into some darker territory (variety is the spice of life, after all)
No racism, LGBT+pbobia, ableism, sexism, etc, allowed on this blog (or my other online spaces) I prefer to use the Internet for fun and writing and making friends, not spreading hate and ignorance.
I am friendly to teenagers because regardless of someone's age, they deserve to be treated with respect (and we are/were all teenagers once, right?) but be aware that some of what I produce is 18+/NSFW, any materials are labeled as such, minors please DNI. Please respect that.
I no longer write reviews on Goodreads as that site has become infested with AI slop and bad actors since Amazon (its owner) profits off it.
My reviews have been migrated to LibraryThing, and not only that, I'm able to review movies and TV shows, something I couldn't do on GR. So woohoo!
My reviews on LibraryThing
I now also have a Storygraph for my book reviews!
Feel free to send me an ask here or email me at cultofstrawberry at gmail dot com.
I am also a published author under the name M.M. Kin and my books can be found on Amazon and Smashwords (also available at Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, and other book sites)
I also enjoy drawing, you can see various doodles I do here on my Tumblr. I am proud to report that no AI was involved in the creation of any of that art (or my writing, for that matter!)
It feels a little weird for me to be using this disclaimer but it's now March 2024 and I'm seeing some wild stuff in regards to AI and people trying to pass of that shit as their own and all that and I really feel like I need to make myself clear on that.
Since my Anne of Cleves drawing is such a hit, I think I'll pin it here too. :)
Chapter 3 of my totally kawaii desu story about a magical catgirl is now up! Link goes to A03.
Summary - A man who has struggled against the world's expectations for too long finds out that his pet cat is really a magical catgirl! And that catgirl needs a hero to keep her safe!
This particular chapter has smexings in it, so is 18+. There's also some discussion of past traumas and etc. Overall this story is not a work of erotica, but it does have some consensual sex scenes in it, and there's discussion of mental illness, past trauma, toxic relationships.
III
o0o0o0o
Sharing his home with her while she was in human form was a heady experience. There was no denying his attraction to her – or the way his body acknowledged it – but Minato still held himself back. The last thing he wanted to do was make her feel unsafe, especially since she’d revealed her secret just a day ago. He took a deep breath, steadying himself as he felt her hand, and he focused on her face.
“If you keep your hand there, then…”
“Then what?” she challenged. He swallowed thickly, blushing.
“I’m trying not to-” He trailed off, looking down shyly. Her hand slid down several centimeters, and he bit back a whine as he felt the pressure move dangerously close to where he ached for her, however much he might try to restrain himself. “I just want you to feel safe and I don’t want to scare you away…”
“If I didn’t feel safe, I wouldn’t be doing this.” Her hand finally settled over his groin, where his cock gave a definite twitch under the yukata and his boxers. “I do find you attractive, after all. But then, it’s hard not to be attracted to such a sweet and caring man.”
His cock gave a firm twitch at that, and he let out a low groan, feeling the heat rise up his neck. “If… if you really want to…” he managed to breathe out.
“I’ve seen you when you’re just out of the shower. I’ve imagined what it would feel like to have your arms wrapped around me… your chest against mine. Your presence between my legs. And I saw you masturbate one night…”
He made a small, strangled noise. “I always made sure I was alone…”
“Yes, you did, but one night, it was dark, and I was on the windowsill.”
He thought back to a couple of weeks ago. It was the new moon, so there was very little light from outside, considering his bedroom window faced the backyard. How easily a black cat could hide in that darkness. He’d wondered if he was being watched while he had his manhood in his hand, but he had chalked it up to anxiety acting up.
Despite his shock and embarrassment, the blood continued to flow downward, encouraged along by Hoshi’s hand, applying careful but insistent pressure.
“You have a very nice organ. While I watched you, I imagined what it might feel like inside of me. Of course, as a cat, I could not act upon that.”
“But now, you can,” Minato whispered, his hand clenching against the small of her back as she pressed down more firmly. He shifted, pressing back against her. The pulse seemed to roar in his brain as he processed the implications of what was happening. The possibilities. “Hoshi…” he breathed. His underwear felt too tight. There was so much he wanted to do. Where did he even start? Her scent seemed to fill his senses, warm, musky, and sweet.
“What do you want?” she asked, her breath warm against his ear as she nuzzled him, maintaining that gentle but insistent pressure.
“You,” he breathed out huskily. “Just you.” He lifted a hand to cup her cheek, feeling her lean her head into it. “Whatever you want to give me, I’ll be grateful for it.”
“You really are such a gentleman! Such chivalry! And honor!” She sat back, placing her hands over her heart in a dramatic gesture. Her expression softened. “I know you think some of the codes of our people are too rigid, that honor demands too much. But this speaks of your own honor, not what society expects of you. I truly am lucky you brought me into your home.”
She slid off the couch, taking his hand. Almost before he realized it, he was on his bed, with her tugging open his yukata. He abandoned all efforts to restrain his arousal. She tugged down his boxers and took him in hand, pumping him slowly. Oh, it felt so good! His eyelids fluttered as he looked up at her, squirming as she squeezed.
“Wait, what about… uh…” Minato let out a groan as she applied firm pressure to the base of his cock. “contra- cont-” He tried to form the rest of the word, but she rubbed the tip of his manhood with her thumb. He didn’t have condoms sitting around, and he tried to remember if the convenience store in town was open this late.
“The curse prevents that sort of thing from happening,” she said, continuing to pump him for a bit, like she wanted to explore him before she let him penetrate her. Her fingers slid down to his balls, and he groaned her name, blushing, lying there with his yukata open. He wasn’t a virgin, but he might as well be one, for how anxious intimacy made him despite his desire. But she wasn’t judging him. She was offering freely, and he didn’t doubt her sincerity. She’d seen all of him and still wanted him.
The bedside lamp was on, its gray-blue shade gently muting the bulb’s harsh light. Minato’s gaze moved between her hand and her face. She massaged him with a skillful hand, her fingers trailing around his groin, scraping along his inner thighs with just enough pressure to make him shiver pleasurably. She tugged his pubic hair carefully, and he was surprised at how nice that felt, the gentle tugging just around the root of his aching need.
He placed one hand behind his head, settling against a pillow, his other hand resting on her knee as if she were his anchor to this world.
Minato let out a small, instinctive whine when she pulled back.
o0o0o0o
Hoshi smiled down at him, admiring the sight before her, his yukara open to provide a view that was enticing. She shifted at his side, tutting at him reassuringly when he whined at her. He was adorable, blushing even as he ached for her, cock seeping a drop of precum.
She had practical experience in such matters, but she’d also gained much from observation, because few people noticed, much less objected to a cat sitting in a shadowed corner, or up on the rafters, or in the space behind a bed or chair.
Minato’s manhood stood at full attention; she’d ensured that he’d filled every centimeter he had available of his flesh. His fingers dug against her knee as she reached to cup his balls, squeezing them. His cock twitched, and he whispered her name.
She reached with both hands to undo her sash, tugging it aside before letting her yukata fall open. She heard his breath hitch in his throat as she rose on her knees, offering him a generous view of her front. Soft, perky tits tipped a dusky rose. A smooth stomach with a faint swell above her sex, which was topped by neatly-trimmed dark hair. She let him stare at her for several moments before she moved forward, straddling him. His hands fluttered to her hips, and she nodded approvingly before she positioned herself and slid down on him, savoring the sensation as she controlled her descent.
She’d done this before for survival and safety, her mind going elsewhere, but with Minato, she was focused on him. His expressions shifted – tightening in pleasure, slackening for the same reason, the occasional utterance of her name. She increased her rhythm, reaching out at one point to touch his face, rubbing his cheek with her thumb. He grabbed her hand and pressed hungry kisses along her wrist and the inside of her arm, and she smiled at that as she continued to grind against him.
“Hoshi… hoshi! I-” He wrapped his arm around her middle, hugging her close as he ground against her, riding out his orgasm. She purred out his name as he buried his face against her chest, and she rested her hand against the back of his head, letting him hold onto her as if his life depended on it.
She rolled her hips several times as she clenched, feeling him shudder as his embrace tightened. He hugged her close for several long moments before his grip loosened.
He looked so cute, his expression bordering on dazed as he basked in the afterglow. She remained where she was, wiggling a few more times before she slid off him and settled at his side. He wrapped his arm around her, burying his face against her hair.
His skin was warm against her own, her chest pressed against his side. She nestled her head against his shoulder, feeling her breathing and pulse slow as she savored Minato’s presence and warmth. After a few minutes, he shifted, rolling onto his side to face her as he looked down at her. “How did I get so lucky?” he asked tenderly before he pressed his lips to her forehead.
So many men felt entitled to a woman’s body, but Minato expressed sincerity and gratitude for what she chose to offer him. She let out an approving hum at his words. He reached and took her hand, laying it on top of his chest, his hand warm as it sat on top of her own, and she felt his heartbeat.
She closed her eyes as he peppered kisses along her forehead and temple before moving down to her cheek and jaw, nuzzling her as he held onto her hand. She sighed and relaxed, cuddling him as he continued his journey downward. He pressed his nose and lips to one breast then the other, nuzzling them before he kissed a line down her stomach.
With his free hand, he lifted her knee, his gaze drifting to her most intimate areas. She shifted, settling onto her back to give him a better view, and he smiled at that.
“You’re so good at spreading yourself, regardless of whatever form you’re in… although this time, you’re getting a lot more than a tummy rub!” he teased her. She giggled at that before he leaned down to place kisses and nuzzle along her inner thighs. She gave out a sigh of contentment, purring softly under his tender attentions as he started rubbing her hips and outer thighs with his hands.
“Oh, Minato…” She didn’t normally let people rub her belly in cat form; that was a privilege others had to earn, as a practical matter of safety. His lips pressed just below her navel.
“Hoshi… I’m aroused again,” she heard him say. Her eyelids fluttered open to see him propped up between her legs, using a hand to steady himself on the comforter as he looked down at her. In the shadows cast by his torso, she could see the tip of his erection jutting out under the lamplight.
She wiggled at him enticingly, settling against the comforter and spreading her thighs in an unmistakable invitation.
He started off slow, nuzzling her, running a hand along her face and hair as he ground against her, whispering endearments. She clenched around him, returning his affectionate nuzzles and running her hands along his chest, arms, and back, feeling his sharp breathing as he increased his pace.
He choked out her name as he drove into her frantically, letting out a sharp squeal as he tumbled over the edge before burying his face against the side of her neck, shivering as his thrusts slowed. She ran her fingers through his hair and rubbed his back. He stayed where he was for a bit, keeping himself propped up on his elbows so she was comfortable.
Finally, he slid out of her and flopped down at her side, draping an arm across her middle.
“Thank you for everything,” he said, burying his face against her shoulder. She let out a soft purr as she closed her eyes, dozing off as she basked in Minato’s warmth.
After he fell asleep, Hoshi wrapped the yukata around herself and carefully tucked Minato in before going to the living room, turning on the tablet Minato gave to her to use. It was a bit old, but still worked well. She checked her e-mail and several of her favorite sites. Technology might have made some things harder, but she’d figured out how to use some of it to her advantage, especially wi-fi. With some of her former companions, she would figure out how to use their devices if she watched them input their passcodes, using their devices when they were at work or sleeping. In human form, she often made use of libraries.
Her fingers danced across the screen as she checked her accounts before downloading a couple of documents and relaxing on the couch as she typed. For so long, she’d dreamed of other worlds, like in the tales that her ancestors had passed down, of kami and spirits and monsters. As a cat, she listened to much, for who guarded their tongue around a cat? Bit by bit, she learned how to read and write, and whenever she had the opportunity, she would peruse the classics of Japanese literature.
When Japan was forced to open its doors to the world in the middle of the 19th century, she put herself to work at learning as much language as she could she from the foreigners who came to trade and enjoy the splendors of a country that had become so stratified through the centuries that upward mobility was all but impossible.
The foreigners saw none of this, however. They were dazzled by the beauty of the Orient, not simply by its art, textiles, furniture, or otherwise. It’d been easy to form casual liaisons with foreigners, using them to gain sustenance and shelter, and some gold or silver along the way. Gold and silver eventually became replaced by dollars and other currencies. Because of the unique life she’d led, she was able to adapt to the presence of foreigners better than many other Japanese did.
Out of necessity, she was an opportunist. That said, those who treated her with kindness gained a valuable companion in return, even if many of them never knew her secret. She smiled to herself, tapping the screen as she worked on her project. It’d been decades in the making. Perhaps even a century. But in her cat form, she had plenty of time to think and ruminate, and foster a desire to make herself heard.
She nodded to herself as she tapped out the last few sentences of a chapter of Samurai Kitty before saving and backing up the document. That done, she opened another one, working on more material for her project. Write what you know, was a piece of writing advice she’d heard once.
That had proven itself when she created the character of an anthropomorphic cat woman, the titular Samurai Kitty. Hoshi had never been a samurai, but she’d lived in the households of several. She’d watched a man commit seppuku. She’d pretended to be a vengeful ghost to help a companion who’d been assaulted and dishonored. She’d heard the tearful prayers, the reciting of sutras, the oration of classics, and haiku. She’d sat on the rafters and watched boys and men drill and practice combat skills, and done likewise for banquets and ceremonies.
The world she’d created was a fictionalized version of Japan, where magic was more apparent and society, while still bearing many traditional Japanese mores, wasn’t quite as stratified.
She’d posted the first chapter online a few years ago, and although she hadn’t gained fame, her success was modest. She’d received several positive comments and reviews on it, and since then had posted several more chapters of Samurai Kitty’s adventures. She might be using a pen name, but it made her feel seen and heard, almost as if affirming that she was indeed real, even if the tale she published was one of fantasy.
Well, mostly fantasy, because she was living proof that magic was real. She continued working for a couple more hours and doing a bit of research.
“Mmm. Couldn’t sleep?” she heard him ask. She’d been so absorbed in writing that she flinched in surprise before smiling and blushing.
“I find it difficult to sleep for a full night like a person,” she admitted. “Some nights I get a bit of the zoomies.”
He laughed at that and sat next to her. His hair was rumpled. “What are you doing?” he asked lightly.
“Just looking up some things. You mentioned wanting to go down to the city tomorrow afternoon, right?” she asked as she quickly tapped the screen, saving her work.
“If that’s all right with you. You still want these candles?” he asked with an affectionate smile. She nodded before setting the tablet down and leading him back to bed. Several hours of reading and writing made the darkness of the bedroom and Minato’s warmth against her an especially welcome sensation.
In the morning, she made breakfast, yogurt with granola and some strawberry preserves. As they were eating, the package arrived, and Minato beamed as he received it, setting it down on the kitchen island. Part of her wanted to open the package now, and her gaze drifted over to it as she finished her food.
He’d gotten her everything she selected, but the corners of his eyes crinkled in excitement as he pulled out a few more items. All she’d gotten for herself was a pair of sandals and a pair of comfortable canvas shoes, but Minato had gotten her a pair of light but sturdy boots as well. He also got her a bag and a winter jacket, dark gray on the outside with deep pink lining.
“You didn’t have to,” she said gently as he held up the coat, beaming down at her. It was the same pink as the shirt she’d selected for herself. She giggled softly at that, how thoughtful! Thankfully, the boots were a sedate black and dark gray; most of the items she tended to choose for herself were more muted in color as blending in was part of her survival tactics. Even so, she couldn’t help but be drawn to deep and bright colors, especially fuchsia and electric blue.
He’d gotten a few pieces of clothing for himself as well, along with a few teas and treats to share. Opportunist she might be… but she was very capable of gratitude. She moved around the island and placed a kiss on his cheek.
o0o0o0o
Later that morning, they’d taken the train down to Sapporo. It wasn’t Tokyo, but it was lively enough for Minato, and from the looks of it, Hoshi was enjoying herself as well. He had not been to Sapporo in a couple of months, but he didn’t feel so overwhelmed now that he had Hoshi at his side. They’d bought some onigiri before walking to one of the parks, taking their time. She’d even allowed him to take a couple of pictures of her, and a selfie of the two of them in front of a waterfall. As it got dark, they went downtown to shop at some of the high-tech stores. He bought her a phone and a new tablet, telling her he’d set it all up and connect it to his own devices so she could communicate with him regardless of her form.
“You really are too generous, Minato! Your old tablet works fine!”
He smiled at that. At least she wasn’t greedy and demanding like some of the beautiful but deceptive women he’d heard about in fairy tales. “I want you happy and comfortable,” he reassured her as he looked down at her, studying her face.
“You really mean that?” she asked in a soft, almost shy voice.
“Of course I do, little shadow. If it’s money you’re worried about, it’s fine! Let me take care of you; that makes me happy.”
“In that case… would you please get a tablet stand? It’ll make it easier to use once I…” She trailed off with a meaningful nod.
“Of course!” His gaze swept the display cases as he perused the various accessories.
“And a keyboard? I prefer that for when I…” She flexed her fingers. They ended up with a new tablet, a tablet stand, a keyboard, and a phone among a few other accessories. He would have balked at spending all that on most other people, but Hoshi was worth every yen he spent. What the hell, he told himself as he bought a spare charging cord as well as a new bag for his laptop.
With the purchases divided up between his backpack and her bag, they made a leisurely stroll along several downtown streets, doing window-shopping. They stopped at a yakitori restaurant, where he watched Hoshi lick her fingers and the skewer after she ate the meat off it. He regarded her with a faint smile, and she blushed self-consciously.
“The sauce is just really good.”
“You’re right, it is good! Don’t let a drop go to waste!” he admonished lightly, wagging his finger at her, a grin tugging at the corner of his lips. Music played in the restaurant, and the sounds of traffic and chatter filtered in from outside, but right now he felt at peace, enjoying his treat and the fair cat-maiden that was sharing it with him.
Less than a day remained before she had to go back to cat form. He’d already marked the calendar in his phone for the next full moon and the days around it. He tried not to think about that and simply enjoy the time he did have with her. Human or cat, she was still Hoshi, the sweetest soul he’d ever known. When she asked for more yakitori, he did not think twice before ordering more. In the corner of the restaurant, a television was playing a football match, but he wasn’t paying attention to it. Why should he, when he had Hoshi at his side?
Full from yakitori and buzzed from the beer, they took the train back home, Hoshi leaning against him as they relaxed against the seat, her arm hooked around his. After the din of Sapporo’s downtown and its nightlife, the silence in town was almost deafening but welcome. Leaves rustled quietly, an occasional engine punctuating the autumn peace as they walked the final leg of their journey to his house. Already, he was thinking of what they could do next month. He could take her out for taiyaki. They could go to the seaside. Hiking up in the mountains.
It was quite late at night and the house was quiet. Hoshi moved around in the dark, sliding off her shoes and hanging up her jacket without stumbling into anything while Minato was closing the door.
“How the hell are you doing that?” Minato asked with a soft laugh as he turned on the light and made sure the front door was locked.
“Cats have excellent night vision.”
“Oh! Of course,” Minato replied with a sheepish chuckle. She took his backpack and her bag, setting them aside.
“I can make us some tea, if you like. I’m not ready to go to bed even though it’s late.”
They had tea while watching a couple of episodes of Star Trek while Hoshi cuddled up to him. He wrapped his arm around her, nuzzling her contentedly and smelling a faint trace of yakitori sauce. Hoshi had made sure to choose the caffeine-free tea, and in due time, Minato felt himself relaxing, his head lolling to the side. The stirring of desire was there, but it wasn’t urgent.
When the episode wound down to an end, Hoshi nuzzled him. “Should we go to bed?” she asked.
He stared at her for a moment before nodding quickly, feeling his desire rise. He had just enough presence of mind amidst the influx of erotic thoughts to remember the candles he’d bought for her. “Get ready, then,” he said warmly. “I just need to use the bathroom first.”
Minato freshened himself in front of the mirror, splashing water on his face before he studied his features. He didn’t consider himself handsome, but Hoshi thought otherwise, and that warmed his heart. He regarded his reflection with a quick smile before brushing his teeth. He went to his backpack, pulling out one of the shopping bags from his outing with Hoshi. In it were three scented candles and a lighter. Hoshi had selected two of the scents, one was cinnamon and apple, the other jasmine and freesia. The third candle was his choosing, sandalwood and citrus.
He selected the freesia and jasmine, carrying it and the lighter to his bedroom. His breath hitched in his throat as he saw Hoshi sitting there in his yukata, her hair down.
He set the candle on the nightstand and lit it before turning off the lamp, plunging the room into a mixture of shadow with candle- and moonlight, deep golds contrasting with cool silver. His bedroom had relatively few modern-day accessories visible; if he removed them, one could almost believe they’d stepped back in time, especially with the wooden furniture and the few watercolors he had on the walls. His bedding was a mixture of navy blue and dark gray, lent a warmer hue by the candle.
“You’re stunning,” he breathed, standing there for several moments as he stared at her, studying and memorizing the image before him. It seemed like something out of a romance novel, or the happy ending for the hero after his adventure. Or a scene in a hentai game or the opening to a porno... the baser part of his mind whispered, recalling media he’d watched or played with in his younger days. He pushed these thoughts aside; this was reality, and Hoshi deserved all the love and respect he could offer.
“I know,” Hoshi replied with a soft purr, instead of demurring as societal norms dictated. He smirked at that. She held out her hand to him, and he let her pull him onto the bed.
“Do you want to…” He looked down at her, seeing the candlelight dance across her features.
“Do I want to what?” she replied in a light tone, cuddling up against him and giving a strategic wiggle, her hip against his groin.
“That,” he groaned, his eyelids fluttering before he said the word. In response, she ground against him again, and he wrapped an arm around her, hugging her close, burying his face against the side of her neck. “Hoshi, please…”
She took his free hand and guided it to the sash that held her yukata closed.
o0o0o0o
This time, it was Minato who rose before her, leaving her nestled comfortably on his bed, the blankets tucked under her chin, before he retreated from the bedroom. It wasn’t until she smelled ramen that she roused herself from bed, pulling on the yukata and doing her morning ablutions. She had just a few hours left as a human until next month.
Minato was at the counter, finishing his cooking. She slid up behind him and wrapped her arms around his middle, hearing him give out a happy sigh. He reached down with one hand to squeeze her own before she pulled back.
Minato was a fair cook, and she ate breakfast with gratitude. She’d been willing to make it for him, but she would not object to having her care reciprocated. This one is a keeper.
“Is there anything you would like to do, before…” he trailed off.
“I think a walk would be nice. The sun’s out!”
He smiled in assent. The autumn morning was brisk, but the sun took the chill away. Minato lived just inside the borders of town; much of the land beyond it was farmland and orchards, along with some forest.
“This is how I want to spend all of my mornings,” he said contentedly as they strolled by the side of the road, looking out at the fields and trees. Red and gold liberally peppered the trees, and he saw clusters of kabocha pumpkins, their dark green rinds gleaming dully in the morning light. Under other plots of ground were sweet potatoes or taro. A few plots held persimmon trees, and dew sparkled on the fruit and leaves. “This is so much better than going to work!” he laughed.
Suddenly, she felt a tingle at the back of her brain. The countdown had started. She’d timed it several times in the past, it was always between 45 minutes to an hour between the tingle and her cat form. Generally, she didn’t get that tingle until about two or three hours after sunrise. She asked him for the time. He checked his phone’s display, the background was a picture of Hoshi stretched out on the sofa in her cat form. He’d taken it several weeks ago.
“9:34,” Minato said. She took a deep breath, pushing back the sensation, focusing on the pleasure of her walk.
Walks were something she often did as a cat, and it did have its benefits – a heightened sense of hearing and smell, good night vision, the fluid grace of a feline. But a walk as a human was a different experience. To be seen and acknowledged, to be spoken to, asked questions or given small talk, and entertained with anecdotes or jokes.
To the farmers that greeted Minato on his walk, she presented herself as a friend of his from university. It was an identity she’d taken several times as needed. She was Hoshi Sato, a student of Japanese history and the English language. Considering her life and experience, she was capable of holding a deep discussion on either subject – and several others – despite having no formal education.
She read books whenever she could, though that was much easier as a human than as a cat. At least with Minato, he’d assured her he’d maintain access for her when she was in cat form – the tablet stand was to hold up the tablet to make it easier for her to use in feline form, and he said he was looking into getting some spiral-bound books so she could easily flip the pages with her paws and not have to hold pages down.
She smiled to herself as she entered the house. 9:51 read the clock in the bedroom as Hoshi changed out of her clothes, setting them in the laundry basket.
“Do you want some tea?” Minato asked. She smiled and shook her head.
“I find it best not to eat or drink anything for a couple of hours before.”
He glanced at her thoughtfully before his eyes widened in comprehension. “It’s not good to be too full when your body gets smaller, huh?”
“Less comfortable, yes,” she affirmed.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked. She shook her head.
“It did hurt the first few times when I transformed back and forth. But now, my body is used to it. Come sit with me on the couch. We can talk until then.”
He sat on the couch with her head on his lap as he stroked her hair. She could feel how tense he was. He was being sweet and thoughtful, but that didn’t change the fact that he was trying to rein in his anxiety. He was about to see something very few people ever got to see. His free leg jiggled as he ran his fingers through her hair, and she purred to soothe him.
“I’ll still be here, regardless of my form,” she reminded him gently.
“I… I know that. I mean, yes, the logical part of my brain understands that. I remember what you’ve told me, I’m able to comprehend it, but at the same time… it’s just…” he let out a short, bewildered scoff.
“Just relax. Keep petting me, and take a deep breath,” she coaxed. Some of his tension slipped away, and she smiled.
She lifted her head and sat up, and she heard Minato’s breath hitch. The tingle came across her, this time from outside her body, like it was trying to press her down and mold her like clay. She arched her back, fingers digging against the seat before they turned into claws. Suddenly, her yukata was too large for her, the dark fabric covering her like a blanket. Her head, covered in black fur and topped by pointy ears, slid out from under the collar.
Minato let out a breathless laugh, staring at her for several moments. He extended his arms toward her, and she slid into his lap, feeling him wrap them around her carefully as he nuzzled the top of her head.
“Sweetheart.” He rubbed her behind her ear, and she purred, swishing her tail happily.
o0o0o0o
Minato didn’t want to go to work the next day, but he’d missed three days and had already gotten a text from his father. The message was polite, but couched in it was the unmistakable steel of his father’s authority. The older Yashida was less concerned about his son’s personal welfare and more concerned about him having another breakdown and possibly impacting the company’s reputation.
At least this time, he knew Hoshi would be there, waiting for him at the end of the day. He could vent to her as he did before, only this time he was secure in the knowledge that his cat actually understood him, that he was cared for beyond the affection an animal felt for its owner.
He stepped out of his shoes and set his bag down, putting away his jacket as he let the scent of home wrap around him, the faint scent of lemon polish on the floors mingling with the scent of years of cooking when he moved toward the kitchen. He actually liked the smell; it made the place feel more rustic and homey instead of the cold, steel-clad kitchen in his parents’ house. The distant, savory scent that hovered around the kitchen walls like a comfortable ghost reminded him of his exile, but also his freedom.
He heard a meow and saw Hoshi approach him, coming down the hallway from his bedroom. No, their bedroom, he corrected himself.
“Your tom has come home!” Minato said in a light voice. “And I picked up some salmon, how does grilled salmon for dinner sound?”
In response to that, she purred loudly and wound around his legs before he scooped her up in his arms, nuzzling her cheek and pressing a kiss against the soft fur.
Later, when he cooked the fish and added the maple syrup and soy glaze before plating it up, he sliced Hoshi’s serving into several pieces, laying them out on the plate and garnishing it with a side of rice and several pieces of grilled asparagus. He’d researched meal options they could share, considering the differences between a cat’s digestive system and that of a human.
A water bowl sat next to Hoshi’s plate. “Come on up,” he coaxed, patting the island counter where their meals sat. “You’re my girlfriend, I’m not letting you eat on the floor while I eat at the table!”
He sat at one side of the island, eating his own dinner while watching Hoshi chomp on the salmon and asparagus with a contented expression, licking her lips. He was worried he’d overcooked the salmon, so he was gratified to see a better cook than he enjoy his humble offering.
o0o0o0o
In Japan, last names typically come first, with the personal name coming second. So Minato would be Yashida Minato and Hoshi would be Sato Hoshi, but given that this is being written in the English language, I’m using the naming convention more familiar in the English language.
It was hard for me to decide on a last name for Hoshi. The name Hoshi is relatively common and means star. I thought it’d be nice to give Hoshi a name like that, but when I was looking up last names, I was trying various Japanese surnames, and usually the name Hoshi (Lastname) was already in use either by real people or characters in anime/manga. So I finally decided on Hoshi Sato, whose real-life counterpart is an actress in Star Trek Enterprise, which I actually didn’t know until I was researching last names for Hoshi the cat-girl and had already established her and Minato to like Star Trek. I’m going to take that as a happy coincidence, haha. I’m a Trekker as well, but I will admit that Enterprise is the one I’ve never watched, except for one or two episodes. I know I should at some point after having seen the other series, but there are so many things to watch, and I guess I forgot about Enterprise until I was working out Hoshi’s full name.
Reviews and feedback are always very, very welcome and appreciated. Have a fantastic day!
She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.
She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.
81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.
The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.
Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.
Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.
The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.
She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.
Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.
When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.
The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.
When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.
The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.
You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.
Text of tweet under the cut because it is loooong.
But... Stochastic Parrots.
Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.
Her name is Timnit Gebru.
She co-led the Ethical AI team at Google. She co-wrote a paper called "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" with Emily Bender at the University of Washington and two other researchers. The paper was 14 pages long. It was submitted to a top AI ethics conference. And it was the reason Google decided that one of the most senior Black women in AI research could no longer work there.
The story Google told publicly was that she resigned. The story she told, confirmed by 2,695 of her colleagues in an open letter, was that she was fired by email while on vacation because she refused to either retract the paper or remove her name from it.
The paper had not even been published yet.
Here is what she actually wrote, and why every prediction inside it has now come true.
The first warning was about scale itself. Bender and Gebru argued that training ever-larger models on ever-larger scrapes of the internet would produce systems that appeared fluent but had no actual understanding of language. They called these systems stochastic parrots because they would repeat patterns from training data with statistical confidence and zero comprehension. The paper predicted that this apparent intelligence would fool both users and developers into trusting outputs that were structurally incapable of being reliable.
This was 2020. GPT-3 had just come out. The paper predicted the hallucination problem before anyone had a word for it.
The second warning was about bias amplification. The paper documented in detail that internet-scale training data contains systematic overrepresentation of dominant viewpoints and underrepresentation of marginalized ones. The models would not just absorb this bias. They would amplify it, because the optimization process rewards confident outputs, and confidence in language patterns tracks frequency in the training set.
The prediction was that hiring tools built on these models would discriminate against women. That healthcare triage tools would underperform on Black patients. That loan approval systems would entrench inequality while presenting their decisions as neutral algorithmic judgment.
Every one of those things has now been documented in deployment.
Amazon's hiring algorithm penalized resumes that contained the word "women" in any context. Healthcare risk scoring algorithms used by major US hospitals were found to systematically underestimate the medical needs of Black patients. Apple Card's credit algorithm gave wives credit lines 10x lower than their husbands for the same financial profile.
The third warning was about environmental cost. The paper calculated that training a single large language model produced emissions equivalent to the lifetime output of 5 cars. The prediction was that the race to scale would create an environmental footprint that would eventually rival entire industries.
In 2024, Google's emissions were up 48% from 2019, and the company explicitly blamed AI infrastructure. Microsoft's were up 29%, same reason. Both companies have now quietly abandoned the climate commitments they were publicly celebrating the year Gebru was fired.
The fourth warning was about documentation. The paper argued that the training datasets being assembled were too large for anyone to actually audit. Nobody at Google, OpenAI, Meta, or any other lab could tell you with confidence what was in the data their models were trained on. This was not a temporary problem to be solved later. It was a permanent feature of the approach.
In 2023, researchers discovered that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train Stable Diffusion and other major image models, contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. The companies that had trained on the dataset had no way of knowing. The paper predicted that category of failure 3 years before it was found.
The fifth warning was the one Google cared about most.
Bender and Gebru argued that the deployment of these systems would centralize linguistic and cultural power in the hands of the small number of companies that could afford to train them. The internet would become a place where the dominant voice was a statistical average of dominant voices, presented as a neutral assistant. Languages underrepresented in the training data would degrade over time as more web content was generated by these systems and fed back into the next training run.
This is now happening in real time. A 2024 study found that 57% of new web content in English is AI-generated or AI-assisted. Researchers studying low-resource languages have documented active degradation in translation quality, because the synthetic content fed back into training is itself worse in those languages.
The paper Google fired her for predicted the model collapse problem before model collapse had a name.
The mechanism behind why this all happened is the part of her work that nobody quotes.
Gebru's argument was not that AI is dangerous in some abstract sci-fi sense. Her argument was that AI is dangerous in a very specific structural sense. The technology was being built by a small group of researchers who shared similar backgrounds, worked at similar companies, and were rewarded for shipping products faster than competitors. The incentive structure made it impossible for safety, ethics, and bias concerns to slow anything down. Anyone inside the system who raised those concerns was either ignored, sidelined, or removed.
She was making that argument from inside Google.
Then Google proved her right by removing her.
The team Google had built to make sure their AI was safe was dismantled in 90 days because they did the job they had been hired to do. Margaret Mitchell, the other co-lead of the Ethical AI team, was fired two months after Gebru for searching through her own emails for evidence of how Gebru had been treated.
Gebru did not stop. She founded DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, in 2021. The mission is to do AI research outside the control of the companies that have a financial interest in not hearing the answers.
Every prediction in the Stochastic Parrots paper has now been validated by deployment. Hallucinations are an industry-wide problem the largest labs cannot solve. Bias amplification has been documented in hiring, healthcare, lending, and criminal justice. Environmental costs are larger than entire small countries. Training data audits remain impossible. Model collapse is an active research crisis at every major lab.
The question worth sitting with is the one almost no one in the industry will say out loud.
Every researcher with the technical credibility to call out these problems watched what happened to her in December 2020 and made a calculation about their own career. The number of people willing to speak publicly about safety and ethics issues inside the major AI labs collapsed after that firing and has not recovered.
The researcher Google fired for warning about exactly what is now happening was right.
The company that fired her is now the second-largest deployer of the technology she warned about.
And the people inside that company who agree with her are not allowed to say so.
New chapter has been posted! On AO3, also mirrored at my FFN and my FP under the same handle.
Story summary - A passionate retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, this is a twisted fairytale where the Big Bad Wolf gets his happy ending. For those who love monsterfucker and bad guy gets the girl stories, as well as people who enjoy badass grandmothers.
Content warning - mental illness/PTSD, but overall teen-safe (so far)
II
Mutti and Vati are the German words for mom and dad, respectively (Mutter and Vater for the formal mother and father) If you are enjoying this story, please leave a review/feedback, it means a lot to this hardworking author :)
o0o0o0o
Albert Heinrich swept his gaze around the shopping plaza as Carmine and their companions did some shopping. Like with so many villages across the world, many of the teenagers and young adults of Gesewald felt the lure of the world, flocking to cities and the shopping centers they held. It was his little sister’s birthday, and Greta and her two friends wanted to come here. Since Greta was twelve, her parents didn’t want her spending hours with her friends in a shopping center without a chaperone.
However, Mrs. Heinrich wasn’t feeling well, and her husband decided to remain home so he could keep an eye on her. Fortunately, Albert and Carmine agreed to take the girls in exchange for enough euros to pay for gas and lunch.
Dad had tossed in some extra for shopping. Albert found a few books and was now at a table, eating curry sausage with potato dumplings while Greta and her friends emerged from a clothing shop.
“We want to go on the carousel, will you be a dear brother and watch our stuff for us?” Greta asked, batting her eyes. Albert made a show of rolling his eyes, but shrugged and gestured to the table. The girls deposited their bags and went over to the carousel that sat off the food court, a bright, red and gold twinkling contraption that added ambiance to a place already teeming with sound and colors.
They got in line, and he scanned the plaza for Carmine. She would be easy to spot in her deep red hoodie. After several minutes, he saw her turn the corner of the food court before she saw him and turned toward his table. “Find anything?” he asked casually.
“A few pretty things, but…” She shrugged. “Looks like you had better luck than me,” she said as she glanced at the bags.
“Greta and her friends are on the carousel and left their stuff with me. But I did find books. Including German to Chinese. I mean, if I can learn English, then why not try for another language?”
“Oh, nice! Yeah, go for it.”
Albert had chosen trade school, but he still enjoyed books. Some people liked to study them or teach classes about them, but he simply liked to read them. It was one thing Vati surprisingly showed approval for. ‘A real man should know how to work with his hands, but there’s useful knowledge in a book; you just have to choose the right ones.’ Practical advice from a practical father.
Sometimes they disagreed on what made a good book, but that hadn’t stopped Albert from educating himself, and he enjoyed self-study more than the regimented courses in school.
“That dish looks good, I think I’ll get one for myself,” he heard her say as he glanced toward the carousel, seeing Greta safely perched on a gilt pink horse, laughing with her friends. He handed Carmine the money and she left the table. Pop music piped through the speakers, mingling with the chatter of patrons and the tunes of a calypso beat from the carousel. Lights twinkled from overhead, and from various signs and displays advertising fast food and electronics, among other things. Various scents wafted through the space from several different types of sausage, dumplings, sauerkraut, pretzels, and strudel, along with a few international food chains.
His gaze drifted between the carousel and Carmine as she waited at the counter for her food. She sat down and started eating, making a small sound of enjoyment. He smiled at that, now down to the last few bites of his own sausage. Mom was a decent cook, but sometimes it was nice to be able to grab some fast food. Carmine checked her phone before sliding it back into her purse, fiddling with the strings of her hood as she ate.
Greta wanted to ride the carousel a few times, but Albert wasn’t bothered by it. He let Carmine look over his books.
“Oh, I remember reading this in high school for my American Lit class,” she said as she held up one of the books. “The Scarlet Letter. A classic. I did wish it had ended differently, though.”
“We can talk about that after I’ve read the book,” Albert offered. She smiled at that before she finished the last bites of her food and sat back, hands in her pockets as she stared at the carousel. It really was an attractive thing, as long as you weren’t overwhelmed by the sheer gaudiness of it. The horses had large fake jewels on their reins, and the ceiling and insides had multiple mirrors and lights. With all the parts in motion, it made for a display that was strangely hypnotic, at least to those in the right mindset.
“What about you, how are your courses going?” Albert asked. She replied with an agreeable nod. Rosamund was known locally for her remedies; many people swore that her home-brewed medicines worked better than anything a pharmaceutical conglomerate could come up with. Albert had seen enough of her work to be a believer. Not that Rosamund could cure anything, but that her remedies did work for the more minor aches and ills she tended to. Cream for arthritis, tea for stomachaches or headaches, cool salves for overworked muscles. Much of it she grew in her garden, and now Carmine was learning about it too.
People knew that Rosamund had a granddaughter, long lost to her because a local wise woman was nothing against a wealthy man with considerable legal backing. But that granddaughter had become of age a while ago, and even if this world was not always kind to women, Carmine had enough access to resources that enabled her to escape.
He glanced around and then paused, seeing a tall man with dark hair in the shadows just off the food court where an alcove was formed by a pillar. He was wearing a light brown jacket, with clean but almost nondescript clothing under it. The stranger was glancing in their direction, and Albert tensed. He maintained outward calm as his fingers twitched, ready to take out his knife if needed, but he would only do so if he was certain the situation warranted it.
Greta and her friends returned to the table, rosy-cheeked and smiling. They saw Carmine and chattered with her about the things they’d bought. Greta showed her the new phone case she’d bought, and Carmine complimented her on it, as well as the other things the three girls got.
“Looks like you had a good birthday,” Albert said dryly. Greta flashed him a winning grin, one tooth missing.
“You have my gratitude, dear brother. Thanks for being so… cool.” The other girls giggled, and even Carmine smiled. Frankly, Albert had no desire to be one of these overprotective big brothers; as long as Greta didn’t cause mischief, Albert was happy to let her police herself. So far, Greta hadn’t violated that trust.
“You make this job easy for me, I go easy on you as I’ve always done,” Albert reminded her with a smile.
“Oh, hey, do you think your parents might like a treat? Some cookies or fresh strudel?” Carmine asked.
“I think they would. I’ll get some apple strudel,” Greta volunteered. Albert nodded approvingly before his gaze drifted back to the other side of the food court. The dark-haired man was still there. Albert wondered if he should alert Carmine or handle this on his own. Quickly, he looked over to where Greta was ordering food at the Apfelstrudel counter.
When he looked back, the alcove was empty. He blinked and glanced around, but the other man was nowhere to be seen.
o0o0o0o
Rosamund checked the messages on her phone after Carmine came home. She heard Francine Heinrich was not feeling well and wondered if she should call or if that would disturb a much-needed nap. She settled for sending Albert a text. Many people were resistant to upgrades in technology, but Rosamund had to admit she enjoyed the convenience of being able to text her granddaughter or other people.
‘Mutti's resting, says she’s just under the weather. I did see a man at the shopping center. Dark hair and dark jacket,’ came Albert’s text several minutes later. ‘Said and did nothing, Could have been waiting for someone, but saw him looking at us.’
Rosamund let out a slow exhale as she read the text. It’d been over a year now since her granddaughter came to live with her. It was inevitable someone would come looking for her. Karl was not the sort of man who would let others disrupt his carefully laid out plans. To him, setbacks were overcome, not tolerated. The laws of this world could protect Carmine only so much.
She slid her phone into the pocket of her sweater before stepping out onto the porch. She’d been practicing the wise ways for as long as she could remember, and the protective magic woven around her cottage and Gesewald was proof of that. Still, she was only one old woman between her granddaughter and a monster who wanted to consume her.
o0o0o0o
The morning sun hung over the skyline, outlining the skyscrapers that thrust upward across the river. Karl Hofmann sat at the mahogany dining table, reading a newspaper. Most people subscribed to online delivery nowadays, but Karl preferred the feel of paper in his hands when he had his breakfast. The New York Times was spread before him as he enjoyed his eggs Benedict.
His smartphone sat near his elbow. The screen indicated new messages, but none of them were priority, so he ignored it as he listened to the chatter of his wife and younger children getting ready for the day.
“Are you coming with us?” Geoff asked as he strode into the dining room, trailing his jacket behind him. Karl looked at the young blonde boy before shaking his head. He pretended not to see the disappointment in his son’s face. Alice said the children needed fresh air, so she took them to the park that was several blocks away. He didn’t stop her because he didn’t disagree, even if he didn’t like parks. It got them out of the house so he could read his newspaper at a leisurely pace.
After he finished breakfast, he put his dishes in the sink as he pondered his itinerary for the day. He intended to make good use of this Saturday, including a session at the gym. Alice said he needed to spend more time with his children. Fine. They’d have a movie night, then. The children could pick a movie, and he could have a pleasing night with his wife.
His thoughts returned to his oldest child, Blanche. Despite losing his first wife at a relatively young age, he’d done his best to take care of his oldest daughter, and fortunately, as a man of means, he was easily able to do that. After a year, he found a new wife and emphasized that although they could have more children together, Blanche would always be part of the family.
… Even when Blanche had her difficulties. He’d maintained a firm hand. Ensured that she got the help that she needed. Some parents would simply allow their children to run wild, but not him. It’d worked for a few years, but then over a year ago, she’d disappeared. She used money she had saved up, and when she should have completed her first semester at university, there was no longer a trace of her. Naturally, he’d sent investigators after her. She notified the police so they would not treat her absence like a kidnapping.
Karl Hofmann treated it like one, nonetheless. He’d used his considerable resources to destroy Ludolf, yet that damnable creature remained a specter in his daughter’s life, a memory he’d done his best to wipe from his daughter’s psyche.
After he got home from the gym, he took a shower and checked his messages. He raised an eyebrow when he checked his critical messages.
She has been located. I found her in Blauburg.
He contained himself as his pulse quickened when he perused the words. She was practically on the other side of the world. He waited several moments before replying to the message.
Very good. Keep me updated.
“Why don’t we have a movie night?” Karl asked his children later. This led to an inevitable argument over which movie to get, but he was in a good mood. “We’ll start with the movie Klaus wants… and then watch the big kids movie after he falls asleep?” Karl asked. “We’ll even order dinner, how’s that?” he offered like a king granting a blessing upon his subjects.
As they chattered about the places they could order from, he glanced at his wife. “I’ll bring up one of the bottles of wine. Your choice.”
“I guess the gym put you in a good mood,” she replied lightly. He smiled at that.
“It’s nice what an adrenaline rush can do for you.”
o0o0o0o
Carmine patted her pockets, making sure she had everything before going on her walk. Pepper spray. Knife. Fully-charged phone. No one had given her trouble since she came here, but better safe than sorry. Her grandmother knew where she was going. The trails that led people through the forest had markers that were maintained, and Gesewald did not make itself accessible to drifters.
It was an overcast day, and she pulled the hood of her red sweatshirt up, boots making a soft crunching sound as she trod across fallen leaves. She’d walked this path many times, at first with her grandmother, but now she was able to manage on her own. She focused on her senses, hearing the rustle of leaves and the distant trickle of a stream, the scent of dead vegetation,
She’d become familiar with the forest in its different phases. Winter, with its thick layer of snow, though there were times of frost and thaw where things might be revealed for a while before being reclaimed. Spring, where green bloomed through the layer left over from autumn and winter, and other colors would rear their heads when their time came. Summer with lush foliage and harvests of fruit for Grandmother’s jellies and pies. Autumn offered more things to collect, along with elegant flame-colored foliage and cool days. Soon it would be Thanksgiving, at least it would be if she were still with her father in the United States.
For all the difficulties she had with her father, Thanksgiving was one of the more pleasant memories she had of her family. It wasn’t the same without her mother or grandmother, but she didn’t hold that against her stepmother and let the holiday distract her from her worries for a bit. Afterward, when everyone was full, Alice would put on movies, and she would relax and watch with her younger siblings, even if she found some of the more child-friendly movies boring.
Sometimes she wondered how her younger siblings were doing, but she’d been extra careful after running away from home. She let out a small sigh before she focused on the path. Here and then, a narrower path would branch off between the trees, leading to patches where bushes of wild currants, raspberries, elderberries, blackberries, or rose-hips burst with a sweet harvest at their appointed times of the year. This previous summer, she’d learned how to make jellies and preserves. It’d been quite the experience, but she would be more confident next year.
Would she be here next summer? Why not? She didn’t really miss university, not after so many years of classes and tests. Officially, she was unemployed, but she helped her grandmother around the house and did various errands, and had used her own savings to buy her grandmother that new television. If she were frugal with her savings, she could stay here indefinitely.
...And then what? Get married? Have kids? Or become a spinster? Her grandmother told her she still had plenty of time to figure out what she wanted to do.
The crack of a twig made her flinch. She turned her head in the direction of the sound, hands sliding down to grasp her knife and spray. A tall, powerful-looking man stood under the shade of a pine tree. She stared for several moments, waiting for him to make a move.
He was ruggedly handsome with a sharp jawline covered by a five o’clock shadow. Even though the left side of his body was obscured by the tree, she could see that he was broad-shouldered, with black hair that ended just below his shoulders. He shifted his weight so she could see more of him, and her breath stilled. She knew him… but that didn’t make sense. She’d never seen this man before in her life. She wouldn’t forget such a face.
What? How was it she knew this man, when she had never seen him? Sure, she’d seen some men through the years who looked much the same – tall, strong, dark hair, and the like. But… She knew him. No, you don’t, came a sharp inner voice.
He took a step forward, and she saw a glint of dark gold in his eyes. He was clad in a worn leather jacket and boots that looked almost like they’d come from another century. Slowly, she turned to face him, listening to see if this intruder had a partner who was lurking around, waiting to ambush her. She was so intent on that that she did not feel the faint buzz in the back of her head.
She took a step back. Bad. Stay away, she heard her father’s voice. The grip on the can of spray and the hilt of the knife tightened.
“Oh, my dear Red Hood. There’s no need for that. I would never hurt you, you know that,” the man said, his voice bordering on gravelly. The eyes were predatory, but he had an expression of concern on his face. He had a long, straight nose and a wide but handsome mouth.
“I’m not your dear,” she snapped with irritation edged with fear. Had her father found where she was and sent this man after her? No. Her father would not hire such a man… she was certain of it. And… no! She scolded herself when she became conscious of the fact that she found him attractive. His shirt stretched across the muscles of his chest and stomach...
No, no, no! You’re not supposed to be sexy! The buzz in the back of her head increased, and her vision swam for a moment. “I’m… I’m not-”
Be a good girl. Take your medicine, and there will be no more wolves. She swallowed thickly as she took a step back.
“Oh shit. That bastard really did a number on you, didn’t he?” she heard him say, seeing him come closer. She took another step back, bringing out the spray. Before she could use it, his hand shot out, grasping her wrist in a grip that seemed almost literal iron.
A jolt passed through her. Wolves are predators. They’re not to be trusted. Remember all the stories, she heard her father’s voice say. They will tear you apart and consume you until nothing is left before they move to their next meal.
“Your father will pay for what he has done,” she heard the man growl. Then he shifted – she wasn’t sure if she was hallucinating or not – and there was a large, dark wolf. A roar filled her ears, and the buzzing intensified. She fell to her knees.
“Fight it,” she heard the man – or wolf – growl. “Your father gained access to dark, forbidden magic. He took away what mattered most to you, because what you wanted did not run parallel with what he wanted for you.”
The buzzing increased, and she moaned as she lifted her hands to her ears, but that did nothing to help. Wolves. She had dreams of them ever since she was little. Of running through the forest with a wolf at her side, or riding one. They were always so vivid compared to normal dreams, and haunted her in the waking world. She dreamed of ancient forests and sunny glens when her father kept her in towers of glass and steel.
No, Father. I made my choice, she said in what seemed like another lifetime. But Father did not respect it. Would not have his daughter become consort to a monster, something wild, something beyond man’s control.
Then… then what? Something was rent, torn asunder. An unholy bargain made, and lives upended. The end goal was the destruction of the monster.
“What the fuck,” she managed to burst out as she lifted her head, looking up. The wolf was still there, staring down at her. An ordinary wolf could tear out a person’s throat. This one could easily bite her head off. His fur was the same color as the man’s hair had been, black with subtle shifts to deep brown or gray when the light hit him.
The wolf stared at her with dark gold eyes. She swallowed thickly before taking a deep breath, trying to convince herself she was seeing things. Her father had medicated her for years, yes. She suffered from anxiety, among other things.
But anxiety didn’t spawn especially vivid dreams that she now realized felt more like memories, did it?
“You! Tell me what’s going on!” she demanded, her eyes snapping open. The wolf took a step closer, tilting his head. She sat back on her heels before reaching out with a hand. She heard her father’s voice telling her to get away, but she steeled herself.
He took several more steps before lowering his snout so that her hand rested on his cheek, just above the corner of his mouth, almost like he was a friendly pet dog.
Carmine became uncomfortably aware of how easily he could kill her, being so close like this. But he touched his nose to her shoulder, letting out a short whine. Her hand slid down to the thick ruff of fur around his throat, surprised at how soft it felt.
I've been a Dune fangirl since I was a teenager, but it's not something I talk much about, although I've done a bit of fanfiction on it. I got into Dune in the early aughts when I watched the Syfy Dune miniseries and started reading the books after. I watched the 1984 movie, and when Children of Dune was aired, I watched that as well. I've since then seen the 2020s Dune movies. I've read all of Frank Herbert's 6 Dune books and own the Dune Encyclopedia. Can't say I think much of what Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson have done to "add" to the world of Dune, but that's not relevant here aside from one point I will bring up later. Spoiler warnings ahead for the books and films.
This post/entry is about one of my favorite characters, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. No, I don't condone the shitty things he's done, but I do find him an interesting character nonetheless. I really disliked the 1984 version of him, but liked the 2000s and 2020s versions of him for all their differences.
Much is made of what the Spice does for mental abilities. The Bene Gesserit, the Mentats, the Spacing Guild, the Fremen, as well as various individuals, consume Spice to enhance their mental abilities. It allowed humans to use their brains beyond what they had been used to, so that humans didn't have to be dependent on AI (feels so prophetic now, lol), but for all his ruthlessness and evilness and his gasp, homosexuality (which was presented in a really gross way in the 1984 film) not a lot of attention is paid to other aspects of the Baron other than OMG HE'S A FATASS. He’s so god damn fucking fat he can’t walk anymore and has to move around with ant-gravity technology. So much hubris. Fuck, instead of using the Spice for his own mind, the Baron has a twisted Mentat to help him with his planning.
But when you look more into it, it seems that the Baron is really able to enjoy his life despite his morbid obesity. His lifespan is given to be 83 years (10,110-10,193 AG). In real life, the Baron would be dead because the human body can only handle so much obesity, especially as one ages, so most morbidly obese people die in their 40s to 60s. (Physics and gravity are the ultimate shitlords) When you look at very old people, very few are overweight. Not to mention the health problems that come on in middle age, gets very much exacerbated by obesity. But here the Baron is, in his 80s, enjoying the high life. It is said that the Spice extends life and expands consciousness. We put more attention on the latter than the former (understandably so) while there's a very obvious testament to the physical benefits of the Spice right in front of us. Without the Spice, I imagine the Baron's cholesterol levels would be through the roof, and that other vitals such as blood pressure would also be pretty fucked. Type 2 diabetes, wear and tear to joints, circulation issues, and an age-related list of health issues go on, not to mention sexual functions.
Aside from the weirdness of the 1984 Dune, the Baron in that and the 2000s series looks like he's enjoying his life; he’s able to sink into various indulgences, including pretty young men brought to him. The 2020s version is more somber, but this one has anti-gravity tech embedded into his body, which I thought was a pretty neat idea. They do show that he still indulges in slaves by showing a couple of worn-out/used-up slaves in the corner of his room. Between the Spice and anti-gravity technology, the Baron would be suffering little or no consequences for his choices. He's all like, fuck it, I can indulge myself because I have the technology and the magic drugs, so I will. He's a ruthless man who also likes having a good time, and after all, even evil overlords need breaks, and the Baron really likes them and sees no reason to deny himself. I can kinda respect that, even though it's not a lifestyle I'd choose for myself or encourage.
As fans of the story beyond the first Dune know, the Baron doesn’t fuck off just because he dies. However, thinking about how Other Memory works brought me to an interesting question. Just how much of the Baron’s memory did Alia have? Assuming that Other Memory isn’t transferred, the only way to have an OM of an ancestor is through their genetic memory, which presumably ends at birth, once the child is separated from the mother (if not conception?) In a male ancestor’s case, the genetic memory that is available would end at conception. Therefore, the Baron’s descendants would only have his genetic memory up to Jessica’s conception.
I presume that a lot of Other Memory is limited that way, i.e., the ancestors that existed before the Bene Gesserit was founded, and OM could be passed on would be limited that way. Considering how many women had children in their teens and twenties, the value of the memories would vary based on the education and experiences they’d had up to that point. After the BG was founded, a mother would need to update her daughter’s memory if she gained valuable information after the daughter was born, or pass on OM to other BG members.
So it makes me curious that a Baron who is about 43 years old (at Jessica’s conception) was able to take control of Alia. What would it have been like if Alia had been possessed by the oldest/long-lived version of the Baron? Would she be more cruel?
The Baron does not manifest himself until after Chani dies and Paul goes into the desert, leaving Alia to handle the welfare of the twins AND the running of the Empire, at the tender age of 17 or 18. It’s not hard to see how a preborn, already susceptible to OM, could find herself influenced by a man (or memory) who was a strong personality with experience in ruling, as well as offering her the relief of keeping other voices at bay.
Sadly, years ago, I read the hack job that Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson wrote – Hunters and Sandworms of Dune (more like Grunters and Sadworms, amirite) because I just wanted to know what happened in Dune 7, but it was clear that these two just ignored whatever was in Frank Herbert’s notes, considering the retcons and shit they did. Having Alia be part of Baron Harkonnen’s ghola’s Other Memory made no fucking sense. It’s impossible because there’s literally and technically no way for OM to work in reverse, and this bulllshit added NOTHING to the plot, not that Hunters/Sadworms had a good plot to begin with.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my TED talk, it was fun to sperg about Dune and a couple of its characters for a bit. Have a lovely day!
Below are various screenshots (one for each movie Baron) and a few of my favorite Baron artworks.
I'm bursting in here with fresh art and... be careful... I have a fixation on JCA!! 💥💥💥
Overall, I really liked the soulful opinion of @auntielurry about a red-haired character from there, and I just can't say anything more. RED-HAIRED INSPIRATIONS, LET'S GO!!!
I even made a post on such a day. Happy holiday 💐🌸🌷🌺
Even with federal grants largely restored, scientists say the Trump administration is still preventing those funds from reaching them. The c
Standing in his laboratory, Harvard professor Sean Eddy gazes at a row of vacant work stations. More than a year ago, this lab was filled with over a dozen researchers. On a given day they might be working independently on analyzing genomic sequencing or gathered around the group table, drinking coffee and helping each other troubleshoot questions about genomic data from different species.
Now, after his funding was terminated under the Trump administration, the computer screens are gone and the room is silent. He's one of the last people left.
" Seeing these labs empty — this is not the way it's supposed to be," he says. "This was a very vibrant lab."
Musings of an eclectic @mmkin - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
