There’s a point to be made here about objectification and violation of consent under patriarchy and why straight men think it’s just as good to see fake women as real ones. And also it sucks for me because the best videos are buried.

My theory is that AI, specifically of a sexual nature, is far more commonly used by straight men. The shes, theys, and gays who like the male videos don’t like AI. Sapphics get drowned out by straight men because of sheer volume.

Previously, when you searched for this kink on YouTube you would get a pretty even gender split, all real people. Now it’s 50% real men and 50% AI women, almost zero real women in the results even with gender specific search terms.

In the morning, he wakes up and makes himself tea and works on budget forms that Shang Qinghua sent over yesterday, careful not to give himself time to think.

No, things are not better and they never will be. But they continue anyway and so does he.

And now he’s going to live forever, every day as miserable as the last, always on edge, always surrounded by people who hate him. It would have been better to die in the snow and get buried in an unmarked grave and be carried in Yue Qi’s heart forever, no longer having to live each day alone.

He would have died young on the streets. His health has always been fragile and there were winter nights he didn’t expect to wake up from. But would that have been so bad? Sometimes he dreams about closing his eyes and drifting away in Yue Qi’s arms as his heart slows and stops.

“No,” Shen Jiu says. “It will never get better. But I don’t need things to be better. This is enough.”

It’s not. He knows it’s not but he doesn’t know how to fix it so it has to be enough. If he’s going to keep living, he has to accept that he will always be miserable.

He feels like a petulant child, unable to appreciate a life that the other slave children would have killed for, that he did kill for. He used to think that moving up in the sect would satisfy him, but he’s still just as empty as before.

But he doesn’t say yes. Food makes him sick and he can’t sleep in his house and he can never wear enough layers of silk to stop feeling naked. There are worse things people can do than beat him. The boy will learn that very soon.

Yes, in a material sense, it does get better. Shen Jiu no longer has to beg. He always has plenty to eat and lives in his own house and wears the finest silks. Money is basically limitless for him. Nobody beats him anymore and nobody orders him around.

The boy is dirty and tired. He has broken ribs from a fight that are still healing and an empty stomach. If he doesn’t get any money, he won’t eat today, just like yesterday. He stares up at the wealthy cultivator in front of him but he doesn’t beg. He knows who the stranger is.

Many years later, he looks back on this moment and laughs. How could he have been so stupid to believe that? It broke him too. But it’s still better this way. He didn’t deserve comfort. He didn’t deserve Yue Qi. Beneath his impervious skin, there’s nothing of him left inside.

But it would break Yue Qi. The other boy has always been so much more vulnerable. It won’t break Shen Jiu because nothing can. He’s a statue and no matter what happens outside, he’s still the same on the inside.

It’s not a better world, but it’s a world where he isn’t so terribly alone. Maybe they never escape in that world, but waiting seems like forever anyway. Shen Jiu lies awake at night and imagines how it would feel if Yue Qi was lying next to him.

But things are different sometimes. He imagines a world where Yue Qi never left and they live this hell together, where Yue Qi is there to hold his hand when it happens and help him up when he’s too sore to move and listen to him when he needs to talk.

He likes to pretend that he’s happy with his decision to lie to Yue Qi. It’s better this way, he thinks. And he’s right. It’s better that only he has to suffer instead of them both. He doesn’t regret it. He’s a statue and Yue Qi never was.

Not a sentence I want to hear describing a truck.