Come to Me, continues, part five

The Anthropologist: "Right. She's been turned into a human. She's landed in the lake outside the cock palace. She's screaming because she can feel the water. And has no wings. And her response is....

An "eep" of surprise escaped her throat, and she froze where she was, on hands and knees in the muck.
Pillywiggin: "I'd be a bit beyond a cute eep, myself."

She was in a human body; a solid, weighty, vulnerable human body. Nyx had thrown her down to Earth as a mortal! A shudder ran through her, but before she could fully indulge in self-pitying horror, the shudder turned into a shiver.

The Anthropologist: "She runs out of the lake screaming... then she freaks out. She finds a cut on leg. She doesn't understand it and thinks she's bleeding to death. She's freaking out some more."

She felt something thick and wet on her fingertips, and a rough stinging streak where there should have been smooth skin. She whimpered, not knowing what to do with the wound. How long did damage like this take to go away? An hour? A year? Was she going to bleed to death before it healed?

The Balance: "Well, she's clearly lost all her racial bonuses from being a succubus. And they obviously included additional intelligence."
Sordan: "You'd think she would understand about blood from all those whipping fantasies."

The Anthropologist: "She cries out to guardsmen. It's all a bit pathetic. They logically assume it's some sort of trap. She's also naked. She thinks she's falling apart and dying. Because she is that stupid..."

"I'll help you, my ripe, plump little plum," Petru said, swaying toward her. "Two ripe little plums," he corrected, ogling her breasts. "Make that big plums. Two big juicy plums! And a third plum that I'd be glad to split with my—"
Sordan: "Yes, your hyphen. We get it."

...his mussed light brown hair making him look like a confused terrier.
It is suggested that this could, in fact, be one of Big L's characters. The Club remarks upon the similarities and dissimilarities between Big L and a confused terrier.

The Anthropologist: "They ask her why she's there and she invents a stupid porn fantasy reason. Her grandmother threw her naked in the lake because she's angry.

Stars and moon, Samira silently swore; how long had it been since a succubus had visited the boy? He was obviously in need. She wasn't going to be the one to do the services for him, though.
(The Chronicler: "Why not? It's your duty as a Sex Angel!")

The Anthropologist: "She demands to see Nicolae, but they refuse. Lots of begging. One guard tells the other not to rape the crazy woman. Which is reasonable."

The Anthropologist: "There's something on her back. The two guards are horrified. It turns out that she has tattoos of wings on her back...

"I'm not a devil! I'm a demon."
(The Chronicler: "You still haven't told us the difference. Is it that one is evil and the other isn't? Or what?)

"A creature from Hell, come to lead us by our cocks down to the fiery pits!" Petru wailed. "Come to eat our souls and rip out our innards! Come to—"
The Balance: Come to hyphen?
The Chronicler: "It is only the NPCs who've read their briefs in this setting... Or are we supposed to bewail the ignorance of peasants?"

She gasped, and lay her hand against her breastbone. She looked at Nicolae in wonder. "I feel it. A heart. I have a heart!"
The Anthropologist: "She feels that she has a heartbeat. She asks Nicolae to feel it and he gropes her breast as well. She explains that she's here to find out why humans are snowflakes..."

"I've come to help you," Samira explained. "I promised I would help you, and here I am. Human. Ready to serve you." She smiled, hoping it didn't look as fake as it felt. She wouldn't tell him that her present form was a punishment from Nyx, or why she was being punished. She might be a former demon, but she wasn't stupid.
Sordan: "No, you are stupid. Really stupid."

Samira's jaw dropped open. "I have a heart! You felt it! I am not an it!"
(The Chronicler: "A beating heart does not signify anything. Think all those soulless animals for a start.")

The Anthropologist: "He tells her that she's completely worthless to him now as a human, so she can fuck off. It is suggested that the local peasants will gang rape her and burn her to death. He doesn't relent."

Nicolae heard her call his name yet again, in that sad, forlorn, beaten-puppy cry.
The Anthropologist: "which he is familiar with because he has beaten many, many puppies in his day..."

"Curses on you and your heartless master!" Samira screeched over her shoulder, sounding now both hurt and infuriated. "May you never satisfy a woman! May your cocks turn small and floppy as worms! May your balls shrivel to the size of peas, and be eaten by angry chickens!"
Big L: "This isn't a curse. It's Unlicensed Geomancy..."

The Anthropologist: "He has second thoughts. He lets her into the castle. More Eastern European mooks waiting. His male slut friend offers to fuck her. He tries to explain the whole demon summoning logic... Apparently he's been busy turning their skin blue and whatnot."
The Chronicler: "Exactly how is the author justifying his soul-destroying loneliness when he's surrounded by friends?"

"And what, pray tell, would she use to poison us?" Nicolae asked dryly. "Surely you don't think she carries a vial of some noxious substance on her person? Hidden in her hair, perhaps?"
(The Chronicler: "Well, there's all her various dark damp places...")

Petru shrugged, and glared at Samira. "She could use her blood. Surely demon blood is poisonous."
Big L: "He's read the monster manual and thought this through."
Sordan: "Why do all the side characters have brains?"

The Anthropologist: "They get her to wash and she has no idea, because in three thousand years no one has ever had a bath fantasy for her to use as a point of reference."

"How… do I wash?"
" What?" He half turned, to stare at her. "What do you mean, how do you wash?" [...]
He looked at her face. Her lower lip was beginning to tremble.
The Balance: "She's terribly prone to cute, little-girl mannerisms."

There was a stirring in his hose. His gaze followed her every movement, helpless to look away. He'd never seen such a display, and it captured him, seeming almost to pull him toward her. His hands went to one of the ties at the top of his hose, as if to undo them, grab her by the hips, and plunge himself straight into the heart of that soft pink target.
The Anthropologist: "And he refrains from raping her..."

"All my hair? Everywhere?"
He gurgled.
The Anthropologist: "Now she MUST be taking the piss..."
The Chronicler: "She might be doing this on purpose... The whole innocent girl gone wild strategy that worked so well in the dream."

The Anthropologist: "He's now wondering if there's any discrete way to wank off while this is happening..."

"Oops!" she cried.
Without thinking, he turned around to see what had happened. Her buttocks were in the air again, sex flashing at him as she groped around for the bar of soap.
The Chronicler: "She must be faking this."
Big L: "You underestimate the suck of the succubus."
Sordan: "This is the most ridiculous scene ever."
Pillywiggin: "He should just run screaming from the room and wank."

The Anthropologist: "The scene finally ends. They put her next to a fresco of saints being beheaded."
Inside, he passed Grigore and Stephen making up Samira's bed in a corner, underneath a faded fresco of saints meeting their varied deaths. A beheading here, a flaying there, one being burned alive—it seemed a fitting place to put a demon.

The Anthropologist: "He loses his erection because of the pain of climbing stairs. He tries to justify raping her to himself, because she's has no virtue or innocence. He fears for his soul and...
What if he couldn't stop? [...] He'd waste away to nothing, accomplish nothing, his soul would be damned forever for sleeping with a demon —no matter her human form—and then his men would be left to dump his drained body into the lake, to rot in the mud and be eaten by fish.

The Anthropologist: "He thinks he should look this up. But the book is inconclusive."
Big L: "Fail!book."

The Anthropologist: "She asks how humans cope with stairs as she literally crawls into the room. And then she bitches about the clothes she has to wear."

Samira emerged from the hatchway, and as the handrail ran out, she crawled her way up the last few steps and onto the floor, and once safely away from the hatch she collapsed onto her back on the floor.
"How do you do it? I can hardly breathe. My legs hurt. My chest hurts. I stepped on something and my foot hurts. And I'm bleeding to death from a cut on my leg—you remember that, don't you?"
Sordan: "Doesn't he have a limp? It really can't be going down well with him..."

She looked more like a pile of laundry than a sex demon...
Big L: "She's a Raggamoffyn!"

If she kept up such a litany of complaints, he'd have no desire to touch her at all.
The Chronicler: "Complaining isn't sexy."

The Anthropologist: "She tries to share his angst that she's never slept before, but he won't listen. She's naked again. He tells her to put clothes back on. Dawn is coming and she's scared.

The Anthropologist: "It's all gone a bit Anne Rice. She's marvelling at the dawn and it's essentially reverse angst."
She looked back out the window, and he watched as her face took on a look of wonder. Her whole body, her whole being was focused on the rising sun with an intensity that made her rumpled state meaningless. For a moment she was not a confused demon. She was not a woman. For a moment, she was an expression of pure awe.

Sordan: "This is the emoest book ever."

The Anthropologist: "She's marvelling at the sunrise. Angsting about how it's her first one and it's something the Night World could never know. She goes on and on about how much better everything is in the daylight and how it's more intense..."

The Anthropologist: "Now she's marvelling at how she's less powerful as a human and more vulnerable. And that this is somehow exciting and good..."
...his body was half again as big as hers, and in her small, wingless, human frame she knew that she was physically at his mercy.
The knowledge sent a weird, unexpected thrill through her. What would it be like if he were to have his way with her? She imagined him above her, she utterly under his control as he parted her thighs.
The thought of giving her body over to his control scared her, even as she felt a tingle in her loins.
Sordan: "Raypes!"

The Anthropologist: "Clearly he's been taking to Petru the munchkin because he's asking about the potential army Nyx could make by turning demons into humans."

"In the Night World? Thousands and thousands. Dream demons, sickness demons, grief, loss, sadness, lust, envy, deceit, confusion, and so on and so on."
(The Chronicler: "And what do they do? Do they cause all the above or do they feed off those emotions? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?")

His face colored. "You are not here to give me advice!"
"I think I am."
(The Chronicler: "No you're not. You're here to learn why humans are beautiful and unique snowflakes.")

"Or those who do not fight are simply absorbed into the conqueror's people, to live their lives. All empires fall, Nicolae," she scolded. "All kingdoms are overcome. All clans and ruling families die out and are forgotten as time moves onward. Surely there are better ways to spend your pitifully short life than in wars."
(The Chronicler: "The author is just giving her whatever knowledge that suits her plot, right? How the fuck has she noticed this from people's naughty dreams if she hasn't noticed that they bathe?")

The Anthropologist: "She wants to beg him to rape her. But we all know that wouldn't work since he's not into consent. He's having an angst fit. We won't have any coherent sentences from him until it passes. She has her moment of ethnic relativism. And he threatens to dump her back in the lake."

The Anthropologist: "This must be quite annoying and/or tasteless to him since he's got limp she's bitching about her scratch. She's now asking about hose and why can't she wear some too – something she didn't notice from all her dream-watching. She adds that she likes being naked so more and is probably pouting."

She held her breath and quickly touched the cover, yanking her hand away again almost before she could register the feel of the leather beneath her fingertips. When there was no bolt of energy or shock of pain, she released her breath and lay her hand flat on the book...
The Balance: "Probably a holy book."

The Anthropologist: "She can't read... no, she doesn't even understand the concept of writing. This is really becoming some sort of Awakened porn."

The Anthropologist: "Now she starts going into hysterics. She thinks hunger is a parasite inside her..."
"I think there's an animal in my belly, chewing on my insides!"

She held her hand over her belly. "I can feel it moving. It's twisting around. Oh! It's chewing on me! Nicolae, help me! Kill it! Kill it!" She pulled at the sash, untying it more by chance than design, and parted her caftan, exposing her torso beneath the breasts. "It's right here! Kill it!"
"How?"
"With your dagger! Stick it right here and you can kill it!" She pointed to the spot just beneath her breastbone.
Sordan: "She's just retarded, right?"

The Anthropologist: "He suggests that she should poison the parasite by eating something... How does he not know she hasn't got a demon parasite in her? She eats and feels better."

Food. Who knew that eating was such a pleasure? No wonder humans spent so much time thinking about it.
(The Chronicler: "Or maybe they're just hungry. Don't they teach you these things in demon community college?")
The Balance: "Clearly no one in three millennia have had food-related fetishes."

"I think you ate too much, too fast, on a too empty stomach. You're going to want the latrine." He grabbed her elbow and led her to the window. "Over there, that small shed outside the crumbled part of the wall."
"I'm supposed to go in there and then I'll feel better?"
"Er, yes."
"What will happen in there?"
He grimaced. "You'll figure it out. Go!"
The Chronicler: "Again, no one has had toilet fetishes for three millennia..."
The Balance: "They're too preoccupied with feet, cross-dressing and switches."

The Anthropologist: "She's gone missing. And he goes looking for her..."

And yet, in a way, she was. She was like Eve in the garden, not knowing she was naked, not knowing what it was to feel shame.
The Anthropologist: "I'm sure that's blasphemous somehow."

She was hunched in the tall grass at the base of an apple tree, her caftan missing, her knees drawn up to her chest, and her arms wrapped tight around them. She was rocking herself and keening, her red hair wild and fiery about her head and body.
The Anthropologist: "She's really traumatised by the fact that she's just shit. It's almost understandable if she's angsting about being human, but it's just the shitting she objects to..."

"No! Something terrible happened. That creature inside—I think it died and rotted. And then… and then…" She took a sobbing, shaking breath. "And then it came out."

The Anthropologist: "She decides that shitting is so traumatic she's going to stop eating."
The Chronicler: "You know, this would make a lot more sense if she were some sort of vanilla sex demon and actually just as physical sex with men and doesn't read their minds. Because then her experience of the world would actually be limited to sex, as opposed to a myriad of memories that after three thousand years of exposure should have hammered some sense into her."

The Anthropologist: "Now she can cry and she's marvelling at that. She's naked again."

She patted at her cheeks. "I thought it would be wonderful to be able to cry."
He raised a brow. "You don't find it so? Most women seem to make fair use of the tactic."
"It's awful, you insensitive, dunderheaded dolt!"
The Anthropologist: "He's back to knee-jerk misogyny..."

"Too bad." He turned her roughly and forced her other arm into the other sleeve, wrapped the caftan shut, and tied the sash into a firm knot.
"Ow! It's too tight!"
"And you have too much of a mouth on you. I want you to apologize for everything you were just
saying."
"I will not!"
"Now."
"No! You ought to be apologizing to me!"
"Apologize!"
She folded her arms over her chest. "You can't make me."
"What are you, five years old?"
"Less than a day old, so I'll behave as I think right."
(The Chronicler feels that this is very much representative of their interactions. She behaves very much like a five year old child with tits...)

The Anthropologist: "He's touching her ass again. And she's trying to smother him with her cunt. His brother and his mooks find them like this and they're all looking at him."

Radu had always been the most duty-bound of his brothers, with a cold heart and little imagination.
Big L: "I'm not sure he needs imagination to figure out what's going on..."

The Anthropologist: "He comes up with the worse excuse on earth of tripping..."

To Nicolae's horror, Samira took that as an invitation to pipe up. "He doesn't like his buttocks squeezed."
The Balance: "Is she thinking about something about brother on brother action?"

Constantin, Petru, and Andrei grimaced in unison, sending warning scowls to Samira. She seemed oblivious, her eyes only on Radu, who was scowling at her.
"He jumped as if I'd stuck him with a knife," Samira cheerfully explained. "His skin is very soft and smooth, though. I wouldn't have expect—"

The Anthropologist: "She's gone all Faux-Lolita. She's not actually five years old, being three millennia in age, but she just acts like a really promiscuous five years old."
The Balance: "It's because she lost all her racial bonuses from being succubus."

"Samira! Silence!"
She turned to him, blue eyes wide. "Are you soft everywhere?"
Could she not shut up? "Samira, go to your bed!" Nicolae pointed back at the monastery. "Go! Now!"
"Where is my bed?"
The Chronicler: "Why hasn't she got all of them wrapped around her little finger using her succubus hawtness?"

The Anthropologist: "Skipping on. Nicolae is angsting about his father never accepting him as a demonologist."
Sordan: "He is a really shit demonologist. He's never even made a successful pact."

The Anthropologist: "She continues on hunger strike and refuses all food. She's all petulant and pouty. Nicolae considered making her his secretary, but realises that she's completely useless. She angsts about how she's not getting any attention from him, even when she's groping her ass. She then worries that Theron might rape her in her sleep..."

And if she were asleep, he would be able to do with her as he wished. The thought snapped her eyes back open. There was no way to know if her suspicions about Theron's interest in her were true. [...] If he did want her, as she suspected, then the moment she fell asleep she would be victim to his desires.
A whimper rose in her throat, as for the first time she felt the vulnerability of a human to the demons of dreams. She didn't want Theron to know where she was! And she didn't want to be alone if she fell asleep.
Sordan: "She's a wangst demon."
The Chronicler: "So are wet dreams bad now, that wonderful gift of sexual release she keeps talking about?"

The Anthropologist: "She goes to his room and angsts about the fact that he's asleep."
This whole time, when she'd been hunkered in the dark and cold, scared half out of her wits, he'd been asleep? While she'd waited in hope of hearing him call her name, he'd forgotten about her and tended to his own selfish desire for sleep?
(The Chronicler: "But his mooks cared about her. Why isn't she swooning over the fact that they care?")

The Anthropologist: " She gets really passive aggressive. Waits for him to wake up. And then she tries to wake him because she doesn't want him to be asleep because the demons of mediocre sex might get him."
Sordan: "Argh!!

She yipped in frustration and leapt up onto the bed.
Big L: "Yipp!" (miming a puppy)

The Anthropologist: "She's realising how sucky is it to be race that gets mindraped by demons whenever you fall asleep."

Something in her words or expression must have caught his attention, because he frowned at her. "Why? What's the matter?"
The words came out in barely a whisper. "It's dark down there."
"Surely you aren't afraid of the dark. Not you."
"But I can't see anymore. Please don't leave me alone down there."

The Anthropologist: "This is really making her seem more like a three year old. And it's just making it more and more disturbing."
Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust: "This is really, really Lolita."

The Anthropologist: "And now she's behaving all cute..."
"But you're not so heartless as to make me go back down there when you know I dislike it so much." She tucked the fur half over her face, peering at him over the edge.

The Balance: "When will they learn? You should never ever involve mentally handicapped people in your evil schemes."

"He's an incubus I know. I'm afraid he might try to visit me while I'm asleep, and I wouldn't be able to stop him."
He snorted. "You're afraid of your own kind, and having done to you what you do to others. It's too precious for words."
She scowled at him. "You seem none too trusting of your fellow humans and their actions, either, so I shouldn't talk."
The corner of his mouth quirked in bitter humor. "I'm loath to admit it, but you have a point."
The Chronicler: "No, no she doesn't. She has no point. She's being a hypocritical little idiot. It should be perfectly alright for her to have wet dreams whatever the source of them since as previously proven, you still retain free will, so as long as she rejects any wet dream that doesn't star someone she finds attractive... argh!"

"We'll put it between us. Neither succubi nor incubi will be able to touch us if we're both touching it. Then we can both get some sleep."
Sordan: "That's retarded."
Big L: "But it's a good player solution. It's totally what players would do."
The Chronicler: "Or they can just masturbate. Wet dream demons can't get you when you're not frustrated, remember?"

"Thank you! Thank you, Nicolae! I'll behave, I promise. You won't even know I'm here."
Sordan: "That is extremely Lolita."
Cathed: "I can just imagine her asking Can you show me where babies come from?"

The Anthropologist: "They're having a deep and meaningful discussion about how being a human makes her feel vulnerable and that she's a slave to her own body and how being vulnerable is teaching her all sorts of things. She's deciding that having power is never good and how being vulnerable is empowering and liberating somehow..."

What power did she have left to her? She had thought she had a thousand human lifetimes' worth of knowledge, but it had all been illusion.
The Balance: "Maybe she loses her memory along with her racial bonuses."

"Nicolae? Are you awake? Nicolae?"
"For God's sake, Samira! What now?"
So he hadn't been asleep. "I can't untie this sash."
"Good."
"But I can't sleep with it this tight. Most people sleep without clothes, or in something loose. I do know that much."

The Anthropologist: "He helps her. He accidentally touches her nipple..."
Big L: "And it goes off and they both die."
Sordan: "Boob bombs!"

"It's something I've long wondered about. I don't know what sex is like from a woman's point of view; only from a man's."
His hand on her waist ceased its movement for a moment. "Perhaps you've had the best of it, then. I don't think most women enjoy it."
(The Chronicler asks the reader to note this warning as it'll be relevant later.)

The Balance: "The whole succubus thing is just so that she can know all about being good in bed but still be innocent."
The Anthropologist: "Same reason why non-virgin heroines aren't allowed to have orgasms with people who aren't the hero."
The Chronicler: "Though it is interesting that she's still not allowed to own her own desires. And that sexual aggression her part is perceived as repulsive."

The Anthropologist: "Apparently Theron talks to her about sex. It's as though their only life is their work so beside the water cooler they'd be comparing notes about having dream sex..."

"About what it's like for a human woman when a man makes love to her. I would give almost anything…"
"Anything… to what?" he asked, his voice quiet and rough.
"To know. To feel it, myself. But I'm not asking you to show me," she said quickly, remembering how he had refused her advances even in dreams.
Sordan: "Yes, we know. Consenting is a turn off."

The Anthropologist: "She is really concerned about whether or not her body is normal. She asks him to grope her to check. This is really, really Lolita."

He lifted his mouth from her breast. "What is it?"
"It hurts."
"It's only a virgin's pain. There's nothing wrong."
Big L: "Oh my God! He's a cunt."
Sordan: "This book is breaking all the rules on how to be shit... still I'm not sure it's as bad as the one where he lies about it hurting to help her 'relax.'"
The Anthropologist: "Yes... but this is really quite bad on the insensitivity scale."

The Anthropologist: "Back to the book... She's having a big I am Not a Slut moment."
The Balance: "We don't know what she is, but she's not a slut."
Cathed: "It's remarkable that the biggest I'm not a Slut novel we've read is about a succubus."
The Chronicler: "Overcompensation."

The Anthropologist: "Moving right on, she's on about how she can interpret the meaning of the pictures in his book. It's been two weeks and he's ignoring her and she wants to whine at him. She's whining at his mooks instead. She tries to explain that the pictures are all about illusion magic to him..."

"I believe you." He closed the book with a casual disregard, as if he dismissed it as being of any worth. "And it was clever of you to figure out that this might be a book of pretty illusions. But how is that going to help me to defeat Dragosh?"

Samira's hair shone like sun-struck rubies in the afternoon light...
The Balance: "Another Eragon-ism."

The Anthropologist: "He's angsting about the fact that he blew it, that he fumbled about her being a virgin."
Sordan: "But to be fair, he did warn her it wouldn't be fun."

At the time, he'd thought her a temptress and a tease. He'd thought she was deliberately manipulating him; toying with him; using her body like bait to be snatched away as soon as she'd broken down his will and shown herself the mistress.
He hadn't thought of her as a scared girl who hadn't known what to expect.
The Chronicler: "So she wasn't just playing the Lolita... she actually is a three thousand year old little girl..."

The Anthropologist: "The next chapter is full of nothing. Some angst nothing else... Now she's angsting. She doesn't care about people look at her being naked but she's embarrassed and shy."

Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust (groaning): "Lolita."
Sordan: "Is she technically an Emololi or a Gothloli?"

The Anthropologist: "Now Nicolae can do magic tricks. Rabbits out of hats and that sort of thing. He angsts about this and some random political backstory angst.... I really don't care... He accidentally turns a woman's face into a rabbit and everyone panics, he runs away... The point is that he can do illusion magic."

The Anthropologist: "She chases after him. He wants to shut out icky feelings. We're getting to the point of women are emotional messes and men are rational logical thinking machines. There's more stuff about illusion magic but I really don’t care. He angsts some more. She believes in him."

There was something gentle and true there, vulnerable and yet strong; and she realized with a shock that she was, for the first time, seeing something of his true heart that he had shielded so well from the world, even in his dreams.
Big L: "So she's gotten past his giant black ass rape repression wall."

His glance went up to the kerchief tied over her head, and with a faint frown marring his brow he reached up and pushed it off. "Don't cover your hair again."
The Anthropologist: "He has a western liberal sense of beauty and modesty."

She wanted him inside her; wanted him touching every inch of her; wanted to be thoroughly possessed by him, her body not her own.
(The Chronicler: "We're back to the objectification and possession motif are we?")

She wanted to feel him thrust his way inside her, pain or no pain, and wanted him to look deep into her eyes as he did so.
The Anthropologist: "Right so she's having martyr sex. And they're making out on his Big Table..."
Big L: "Do not have sex on table covered in demon tomes!"

The Anthropologist: "He's finally about to fuck her. But he stops. Not because he doesn't want to hurt her but he freaks out that she's not human again."
"You—you are not human. You are a temptress. I cannot do this!"

The Anthropologist: "She angsts about how he doesn't love her. I have no idea why that matters if all she wants is to know what it feels like to fuck.
Cathed: "Because you can't get it on unless it's true love."

"Does it have to do with a stone room, with torchlight, and men running by outside the window?"
Cathed: "She's subtle, isn't she?"


He glanced at Samira [...] looking up at him for all the world like a child waiting to hear a tale.
But no child ever sat with the open neck of a blouse sliding low over one shoulder, the edge in front hanging by a breath to the nippled peak of a breast.
Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust: "Lolita!"
Sordan: "This woman knows nothing of subtlety."
Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust: "Where is the alcohol?!"

He couldn't make himself so vulnerable to the whims of another. Only the shock of seeing again the dramatic wings drawn upon her back [...] had jolted him out of his determination to possess her, and given him a moment of rationality in which to stop himself from completing the deed.
The Chronicler: "I'm not sure how possessing someone else is making yourself vulnerable. Maybe if he was offering himself or exposing himself in some way..."

The Anthropologist: "He tells her about how he was battling Dragosh, he disobeyed some orders... There's more religious conflict, probably straight from Wikipedia, because I'm really not seeing how any of these characters are actually affected by it in any way. He got seduced by this random chick, though he knows he shouldn't sleep with her, but she was really hot. Soldiers streamed into the room as he came and Dragosh shows up to castrate him."

"He [Dragosh] had Mara don a blond wig and a long chemise, and called her Lucia. He had her kneel on top of a table, and then he made me… made me caress her. Touch her. Mara would rub herself against me, and sooner or later…"
"You responded."
He nodded. "With Dragosh watching. Each time he saw that I was getting aroused, he and his men would beat me. He'd scream nonsense at me, calling me a werewolf, a hound of Hell, and accusing me of being in league with the Devil. He said that the blood of Raveca had gone rancid in my family's veins, and turned us into monsters. It was as if he literally believed it."

The Anthropologist: "He then gets rescued. He gets banished by his father to the island. But he's still a prince and still has mooks, so it's really not that bad... She agrees that that's a perfectly good reason to stay celibate. But the moment she agrees not to seduce him, he finds her really attractive again."

He was living with a succubus, and he'd just persuaded her to behave like a nun? What kind of fool was he?

The Anthropologist: "Next chapter. She's angsting some more. Theron shows up. And tells her she's surrounded by hoards of Incuubi...
"You've been attracting hordes of incubi, too, each time you sleep with the book, but I've scared off most of them."

The Anthropologist: "That sounds very disturbing. It's the sex mosquitoes mental image again... He offers to shag her in her sleep."
Sordan: "He is a better demon than she is."

The Anthropologist: "Vlad is Vlad the Impaler. She's copy and pasting Wikipedia entry. I recognise the backstory. Theron wants to coerce Nicolae to cast a spell so he can possess Vlad. Samira wants him to retreat and stop making war, but Theron points out that Nicolae's army is so shit he really might as well kill them all."

As Theron spoke, Samira felt her face harden, her eyes narrowing and her jaw clenching. He was speaking ill of her Nicolae; he was insulting him, disregarding him, sneering at him as if he were a moribund worm slithering toward its final hole in the dirt. Her Nicolae!
The Anthropologist: "She's standing up for Nicolae, but not very well."

"You thought I could fall for one such as yourself, perhaps?" she asked bitterly. She hated that Theron had seen into her heart, revealing something that she herself did not yet know. Love? She was in love?
She couldn't be. The succubi did not love.
Sordan: "I've read the brief. I have immunity to wuv."

The Anthropologist: "She's ditching him for a guy who doesn't want to fuck her 'coz he has massive psychological issues. He's not unjustifiably pissed off..."

At this point there is a very technical debate as to whether or not she's a virgin since her hymen was broken by fingers.

The Anthropologist: "Theron turns into Nicolae. They start making out. She doesn't say anything...

The perfection of the dream left no space for pain.
The Anthropologist: "It's an interesting twist that the real bad guy rapist is actually doing a better job of pleasuring her than the hero... she doesn't try to stop him, she just silently wishes that Nicolae would stop him."
The Chronicler: "Though according to her first reckoning of the universe, there should be nothing wrong with having sex with a dream-Nicolae since it's akin to masturbating while thinking about him."

The Anthropologist: "Anyway, complex moral inconsistencies and spineless damsel in distress aside, Nicolae wakes up. He sees that Samira looks as though she's having a bad dream. He sees that Theron is making out with her. We're on the verge of a big misunderstanding."

The Anthropologist: "She's crying and not saying anything. She's sleeping whilst the love of her life watches her being groped or something. Waiting to be rescued and all.... Theron tries to negotiate with Nicolae."

"...There is much I could tell you—about Dragosh, and about that little demon clinging to you so prettily. We might even be able to work out a bargain, you and I."
Theron wins the admiration of the Lonfire Club for not being a fail!demon.

The Anthropologist: "Nicolae casts an illusion. Nothing seems to happen. Theron gloats. Ah, it's dawn and Theron vanishes. Turns out that it's an illusion."

He let his arms settle around her and kissed the top of her head. "Hey. It's all right. He's gone, and I won't let him touch you again."
"P-promise?" she sniffled into his shirt.
The Anthropologist: "This entire bit goes Lolita again... he's morbidly curious how far they went, so he asks."

"He had his hands everywhere. Everywhere. But you stopped him before he could take my virginity." She rubbed her face on his shirt. "It was just a dream, though. Even if he had done it, it was just a dream; it wasn't really happening."
She sounded as if she was trying to convince herself of that, more than him. But Theron had been real, and what matter if it was in the flesh or in the perception of flesh that he played his games? The memory of Theron's visit was probably sharper in Samira's mind than the aborted lovemaking he himself had engaged in a week earlier.
The Chronicler: "Oh the retarded semantics of virginity. I really don't care. By that very same logic she's raped millions and millions of men whilst being a succubus. Especially the ones who were in love that she so liked to visit."

She was soft in his arms, and she wanted him. Him, not a demon pretending to be him, with a demon's cold, heartless skills of perfection.
(The Chronicler: "Until you launch your crusade to tear apart the Night World and all it stands for you really aren't allowed to utter those words.")

The Anthropologist: "He has second thoughts about not fucking succubus. Her getting mind-raped is making him realise he want to take her virginity... It's all rather dog in the manger..."

And now that spawn of the devil Theron had almost taken from Samira what she had offered to him, Nicolae, first. Theron had tried to take her, when she was not Theron's to take. Samira was his, Nicolae's, and he wasn't going to leave the memory of Theron's touch in her mind.
The Chronicler: "Very Harry Potter."
Big L: "But Harry Potter is a cock."
Sordan: "No, HP is a hyphen."

The Anthropologist: "He makes a magical grotto for them to fuck in..."
The illusion was so real, she could smell the greenness of the forest, the flowers sending forth their fragrance as she was placed down among them.
The Balance: "It'll be the fucking meadow from the wet dream she tried to give him."
(The Chronicler: "I'm really getting very sick of this author and this character's definition of reality.")

The Anthropologist: "She doesn't want him to hide his scars. They're harping on about her virginity again. Even though she's a succubus."
Big L: "Virginity only exists on the mortal plane."

The Anthropologist: "He makes her swear monogamy before he fucks her."
"Take me as your first and only, Samira. Let me show you what is true between a man and a woman, that your Night World of dreams could never teach you."
(The Chronicler: "We're back to the objective reality definitions.")
"You are mine, Samira. No other man may lay his mark upon you."
"I would have no other."
Sordan: "Succubus!"
Cathed: "It's actually a typo. She's a sucking bus."
Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust: "Really bad career move there."

The Anthropologist: "Oh, and his cock has a heart-shaped end."

The Anthropologist: "He affirms that she's not tainted goods before he continues..."
"Did he do this to you?" Nicolae asked.
She shook her head. "No one has done this to me."
His eyes narrowed in satisfaction, and he lowered his mouth.

The Anthropologist: "This is really creepy. It's like mind rape in the actual sense. He's raping her and her willpower, her self-awareness, her finite abilities at rational thought, her sense of self and her mind all just melts away."
With each wet, gently rough stroke of his tongue, she lost a little bit more of herself, all awareness and will dropping away until she was a slave to his touch. [...] She was his to do with as he pleased, and she wanted him to do it now.

Cathed: "Is it ironic that after he was so afraid that fucking succubi would level drain him that he has this affect on her?"
Big L: "You lose 1d4 levels and take a Will Save..."

"Not yet," he said, and then after a few chanted words he changed his stroke [..] At the same time, the scene around her began to change, the sunlight deepening and then falling around her in golden drops like rain. It overwhelmed her vision, adding another layer of dizzying pleasure to her senses.
(The Chronicler: "Night World illusion and dreams aren't real. But this magic illusion in the Real World is totally real...")

"More illusions?" she asked.
"To give you some of the pleasure you have given to others, in their dreams."
The Anthropologist: "This is fantastic! She's just come but he hasn't. He goes off on a rant than it's only after learning illusion magic that he can understand her and her job as a succubus in bringing people illusory pleasure."
Cathed: "Excuse me, but bullshit."

With her hand she gently touched his sack, the skin tight and thick over his stones, holding them close.
Big L: "Stones! By the Stones!"

He met her eyes with a burning intensity, and then she flicked out her tongue, hitting with three thousand years of accuracy the spot just beneath the head, the place where he would be most sensitive.
(The Chronicler: "I disbelieve that. She's never dealt with a single physical male body in three thousand years.")

"I don't know how," she complained, even as she tilted her hips to feel the ridge of him slide against her.
The Anthropologist: "He decides they'll fuck. She's shy and clumsy despite the three thousand years of experience. She's constantly asking what to do now and all that."
Cathed: "I've only done this and/or seen this done a billion trillion times."
The Anthropologist: "She's getting really fucking naive. It's as though the more she fucks the more she loses her memory... by the time they finish because she'll be a drooling coma."

His pupils were huge and black, blotting out most of the color beneath his half-closed lids...
The Anthropologist: "He's so turned on his pupils have taken over his entire eye..."

The Anthropologist: "This is really, really creepy. Maybe less creepy than other romance novel sex scenes because she's not lying back and being passive, but on the other hand, she's growing increasingly retarded."

The Anthropologist: "And sex is a blunt pressure now."
The Balance: "Bashing damage."
Big L: "His cock has lost the piercing template..."

The Anthropologist: "It's somewhat more realistic than when she lies there and he makes her cum with his magical cock. But this does take six times as long. Which is good for them, I suppose. But not really for us."

The Anthropologist: "They finish up. They hug."

He nudged her shoulder with the hand that was loosely clasping it, cuddling her against his side. "Was it… ?" he asked.
The Balance: "Was it... ellipsis?"

The Anthropologist: "She struggles with whether or not to say I love you. She thanks him."
Cathed: "Which is an incredibly sweet thing to say after rape."

The Anthropologist: "He explains to her that now multiple people want to rape you, I find you desirable..."
"When I saw Theron, when I realized what he was doing to you—"
"Yes?"
"All I could think was that you were mine, not his."
She blinked at him.
He squeezed her shoulder, hugging her against him. "Does that make sense to you? I didn't want anyone else touching you."

The Anthropologist: "To her credit, she recognises that this is an insulting statement. She says she understands and goes all passive aggressive on him, especially as he complains about human women crying all the fucking time. She passes on the plot dump Theron gave her, so now Nicolae gets obsessed with fighting Dragosh when he shows up... No one cares."

The Anthropologist: "New chapter. It's been many days. He's ignoring her again..."
She had begun to live for each crumb of acknowledgment he dropped her way, even when those crumbs were accidentally spilled from his table, with no apparent intention to connect with her.
(The Chronicler: "You'd think he's forgotten that he's going to lose her forever after the thirty days is up.")

The Anthropologist: "She angsts about eating and then her angst quest to find out about humans being snowflakes. She theorises Nyx is going to kill her. Nicolae is apparently hellbent on leading a suicide charge against Dragosh and his army. She angsts some more. Andrei comes up to her and says he knows what she wants. She cries...

"What do you want?" he coaxed. "Tell me. What is it? Is it Nicolae's soul?"
"Yes," she whispered, sight shimmering with tears.
"Ha! I knew it!"
"I want his soul, if that means I will have his heart."
"You want that, too? Do you plan on cutting it out of his chest and serving it to your dark lord and master?"
She blinked, a tear sliding slowly down her cheek, and shook her head. "I want him to love me, nothing more."
"Because if he loves you, you can steal his soul."
"No! I just want him to love me. Just… love me," she finished softly.
Cathed: "He's a real person. He's actually paid attention to the world setting. Read his brief."

Silly swear words: Stars and moon!

The Anthropologist: "She's wallowing in self hatred. He hates her because she made Dragosh go mad. She wants to make him love her. But she feels all selfish and horrible for wanting that.

He was right. Why hadn't she thought of that? It was selfish of her to want Nicolae's heart, when she would have to give it back in such a short space of time. It was cruel of her. If Nicolae was going to open his heart to a woman, it should be to someone who was real, and who could stand by his side as a true helpmeet and partner. He didn't need a demon.
Cathed: "I'm not a real girl!"
The Anthropologist: "Andrei tries to seduce her by being less fucked up than Nicolae."
"You just wanted to feel the warmth of a man's body. It's understandable. I understand. There's nothing so very wrong in wanting to be touched. Held. Made love to." He put his face to the side of her neck, his lips softly grazing her skin, his breath warm and moist.

The Anthropologist: "She proves her love by crying as Andrei kisses her. She's not very good at this whole resisting and fighting back business."

"I don't want you!" Samira cried, and then began to sob heavily; deep, wracking, gulping, ugly sobs. [...]
The pressure on her body eased. [...]
"You really do love him, don't you?" he asked in amazement.
The Anthropologist: "Apparently the only reason someone doesn't want to be raped is if they're in love..."

"I don't want your demon whore," Andrei said from the ground, his voice preternaturally calm.
"My what?"
"You don't want her either. You just don't want someone else touching your things. You've never liked that."
Cathed: "Most astute thing anyone has said in this book."

The Anthropologist: "Nicolae storms over and confronts Andrei about him macking on his girl. He dismisses Samira, who doesn't want to go..."
"Go," Andrei said softly to her, but loud enough for Nicolae to hear. "You know you should."
"Go!" Nicolae barked at her, as if trying to override Andrei's command with his own. He clearly did not want her obeying someone else.
Cathed: "Creepy and possessive."
Big L: "It's good that she recognises that it's creepy, too."

The Anthropologist: "Andrei is being quite reasonable, well, as reasonable as you can be. Nicolae is sleep deprived and angry. He goes off on one at Andrei because it's all about him and his ego. Andrei shouldn't be making decisions for him. His girlfriend getting raped is unimportant in the light of his power being undercut... and now, he's tortured!"

"She's good for me, Andrei," Nicolae went on. "Demon from Hell or human woman. What's the difference?"
"A priest would say there was plenty of difference. Are you in love with her?"
The Anthropologist: "He's forgotten the soul-destroying castration angle."
Big L: "The inability to sleep could be the first symptom..."

The Anthropologist: "Onwards, there is plotdumping which we don't care about. Samira is freaking out about bee in the flower."
Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust: "Lolita!"

"There are always the villagers," Nicolae said. "How many in the village, Constantin?"
"My lord?"
Cathed: "He has no idea how big his village is? What sort of rubbish lord is he?"
Sordan: "And isn't it all a bit ominous in view of his suicide charge?"

"Men, women, children, mewling babies—everyone capable of standing or crawling."
Cathed: "Baby death!"

"I'm not mad," Nicolae said calmly. "Although perhaps that is a matter of opinion. Come, how many?"
Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust: "Not what you want to hear from your authority figure."
The Anthropologist: "If it was anyone else but the hero in the book, this would make him very evil. Draining her willpower, getting up a death charge... it'll be enough to brand him as a Crazy Dark Lord."

"Perhaps as many as three hundred souls."
Sordan: "Sounds like unlicensed geomancy."

The Anthropologist: "And now she's angsting about shitting again. Not about her man being really, really evil and suspiciously secretive. She wants to stay strong for him on the frontline... This is a new level of special. He's got all the animals in the village..."
Cathed: "Fear my Elite fighting force that includes farm animals. The enemy troops won't be able to resist their lustful urges and we shall slaughter them as they fuck!"

The Anthropologist: "He hasn't explained what he's doing yet. There are small children carrying sticks. He gives an inspiring speech..."
He turned his mount, moving across the front line. "You do not fight for me. You do not fight for Moldavia. You do not fight to save your homes, or your own lives. [...] You fight for your families [...]
You fight for your friends. You fight for your sister, your father, your husband, your wife. You fight for those you love."
The Anthropologist: "Including the children I've just ordered the front ranks. So they can get caught in the crossfire."

... remember that it is for them that you stand here, and clutch your weapons,
The Anthropologist: "Which aren't really weapons..."
...and clutch your courage to your hearts...
The Anthropologist: "Because I didn't give you any armour."

The Chronicler: "How was that inspiring?"
The Balance: "Because Nicolae has just mindraped them all. He's getting better at this."

She didn't know if Nicolae loved her, but had decided it didn't matter. As she had realized before she told Nicolae of her role in Dragosh's dream, love gave no promises of being returned. The joy she had of it was in the giving.
The Anthropologist: "He's draining her willpower again."
Big L: "Only Mormon women accept this as a reasonable way to behave..."
The Anthropologist: "Not even. There were those who were rejecting the idea of being taken for granted as being Christlike on the blog."
Sordan: "Well, the woman writing this book clearly thinks it's a good idea."
The Anthropologist: "Well, she's got forty pages to recant this statement. See how she does..."

The Anthropologist: "They're running on hope and enthusiasm. I recall that didn't work very well in Communist countries, but we'll see how it does here..."

Even the children—none younger than ten; he had at least drawn the line there—held themselves with the certainty and determination of warriors.
The Loinfire Club discusses exactly who is looking after all the small children.
The Balance: "Well, they could have the babies strapped on the villagers as armour."

His gaze sought out Samira. She was brandishing her dagger in the air with the same vigor as the girls around her, daring Dragosh and his army to come over the hill.
The Chronicler: "She's armed with a fucking dagger?! What sort of shitty weapon is that on the front lines?"

He loved her.
The Anthropologist: "He realises that he loves her. And it's twu wuv... which is also why could do the illusions so well now..."
Yes, he knew it now. And he knew as well that love was the source of his greatest strength. Lust for a woman could be a distraction and bring destruction, but never love.

He understood now, too, why he had been able to summon Samira into the circle, those many weeks past: He had wanted to see her again. Like the old wizard in the pictures in the margins of the illusions book, his heart had yearned for love, and the magic had accepted that foul means were sometimes necessary for a beautiful end.
The Chronicler: "That's just retarded. I mean, seriously retarded. Especially as we're implying here that all those monks were powering their Dark Arts with twu wuv."

It was Dragosh's army, nearing the crest of the hill behind him.
Sordan: "Why is the enormous army of trained soldiers on higher ground than them?"
The Anthropologist: "He has no concept of tactics. Which is why he got captured and almost killed last time."

The Anthropologist: "He transforms all peasants and the livestock such that they all look like horrible monsters. Ogres. Giants. Dragons. Cthulhu creatures. Various dire beasts. And demons."

The Anthropologist: "This is retarded. How is Dragosh going to be scared by an illusion, which they saw happen in front of them? They were coming down the hill, so they saw the villagers in villager form. And Dragosh sincerely believes that they're monsters anyway, so this might just make him want to kill them more."
The Chronicler: "Also, illusions are only visions. They can't actually fight any better than the villagers and livestock that they are. And how are they not terrified of themselves since Nicolae didn't actually explain his plan to them?"

Nicolae felt as if his heart were going to beat free of his chest. This was the bluff to top all bluffs; a game to see who would turn and run first. Should Dragosh's army muster the discipline to stand and fight, it would be over in an instant.
The Chronicler: "Point made."

The Anthropologist: "He must not have hate in his heart. And must instead LOVE in his heart or else the illusions will all fail...
How did a man approach his greatest enemy while keeping only love in his heart?
Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust: "This is really retarded."
Cathed: "Yes, but it worked in HP7... Do you really expect better in a romance novel?"
Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust: "Yes!"

The Anthropologist: "Dragosh tells him that he's killed Nicolae's brothers. He counters by summoning a naked post-coital Samira into his mid. Because that's greater than the pain of all his brothers dying."
He fought the hatred and anger back, focusing inside on Samira. He saw her lying naked beside him, a soft glow of contentment on her face. Her eyes opening, looking at him with trust.

The Anthropologist: "He tells Dragosh to turn... You can't just turn around an army like that. It needs provisions and logistical planning... Samira tells Dragosh to go away. She tells him the truth about the whole nightmare business, but he doesn't buy it. Dragosh realises that the illusions aren't real..."

"I could have killed you if I wished, it's true," Nicolae said, and as he spoke Samira stepped aside. "But then there would be no hope of mending the rift in our family."
Sordan: "But your brothers were killed by Flabby Ass himself!"

The Anthropologist: "Dragosh for no real reason agrees to this 'tarded request that he leave and that peace should happen. He rides off..."
Cathed: "Yah! I was hallucinating that we won."

...giant succubi hugging and kissing each other; ogres kissing dragons; vile, impish creatures tumbling over one another and being picked up and hugged by delighted ogres; and general all-around joyous chaos....
The Balance: "Mother and sister are giant succubi kissing... I must watch..."
The Chronicler wonders what new and interesting fetishes this experiences will cause to all the children in their formative years.
The Balance: "Sanity drain."

He took her face gently between his hands and looked into her eyes. "I couldn't have done it without you."
The Anthropologist: "It's the power of wuv. You provided naked post-coital images."

"I was afraid that you hated me, after I told you of the dream I sent to Dragosh."
He shook his head. "That wasn't you. That was a succubus who knew nothing of life. It was not the woman I hold in my arms. It was not the woman I—"
The Chronicler: "Now he's denying her past... I suppose it's just as well. It's not like they're the same character."

The Anthropologist: "They try to escape from flange wave of Night as Nyx descends. They fail.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.
"I must bow to my queen."
He hoisted her back up and firmly reseated her before him. "Your place is here. You are no longer her subject."
[...]
"Because she is your possession?" Nyx asked.
"Because she is my heart."

The Chronicler: "This isn't really getting over the whole you are my object. Let me objectify you!"
Cathed: "Be my Object... That'd be the best valentine..."
The Anthropologist: "I'm taking it as she has BDSM fantasies with both Nyx and Nicolae but the ones with Nyx are stronger."

Samira turned back to Nyx. "Yes, I would choose this short life if I could. I would rather have a year here with Nicolae than a thousand in the Night World."
The Anthropologist: "Which isn't much because she's a sex angel."

"Love," Nicolae said. The word was a deep rumble in his chest that Samira could feel vibrating through her own body.
Nyx nodded. "Yes, love. Love that would make each of you give your life for the other. No creature of the Night World would ever make such a sacrifice, or even understand it. And that is why humanity is precious, and above us.
Sordan: "Because we are Sex Angels."

"You, Nicolae, have found the strength of this truth," Nyx went on. "In it you will find all the power you need to drive Vlad Draco from Moldavia."
The Anthropologist: "All the power you need to conquer a continent. All from love.... I think this is system is broken."
Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust: "By love you mean thinking of his girlfriend's breasts."

Nicolae bent down, putting his face beside hers, his cheek pressing against her hair. "You're mine now, for as long as we both shall live."

The Anthropologist: "I will objectify you for the rest of our lives..."

"I want you to marry me," he said, when at last they broke the kiss.
"Yes," she said, although it had not been a question. "Yes!"
The Chronicler: "I'm not sure anything has been recanted."

Nicolae laughed, and turned his horse round so that they faced his men and the villagers. "Three cheers for the woman who will be my wife: Samira, the future Queen of Moldavia!"
The Chronicler: "Why are they cheering?"
Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust: "Possibly because like everyone else in this book they've just been mindraped."
And the book finally ends...
She put her hand on his thigh, still astonished that this man was hers to love for the rest of her natural days. "Then the night is ours."
"As never before, my love. The night is ours."

Sordan: "This proves love never has to say it's sorry, even when it's a cock."
Intriguing Rivers of Male Lust refuses to smell the book.
And The Loinfire Club really, really doesn't want to read the sequel extract... "Dream of Me", which is all about Dragosh being worried that his sister is being a slut, but she's having relationship with incubus not being gangraped by Maldovians, so it's sort of okay.

The Anthropologist: "I do think even if I did read the second book, I'll think Theron is better than Samira."
Sordan: "I quite sorry for Fist nose barrel man. How much worse could he get it? He's deformed. He goes mad and..."
The Balance (flipping through the extract): "Lucia's a voyeur..."
Cathed: "Nicolae really just treats her like his table. His cherished object...."
The Balance: "There's more religion in the next one..."
The Anthropologist: "Oh joy! We get to hear all about Orthodox vs. Catholicism..."
Sordan: "For fucks sake make it stop..."