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melmedardaapologist · 4 months ago

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ambessa costume design analysis: war and family

*rubs hands together* Alright let’s do this

I think we forget that, before season 1 episode 8 “Oil and Water,” we didn’t have a reference for the Medarda standards that Mel supposedly failed—this is why Ambessa’s first appearance is so striking. While Mel has completely scrubbed red from her wardrobe, red is the first thing that jumps out with the cape and the accents—a bold color that is associated with passion and violence and decisiveness, all traits that Ambessa proudly boasts

The grey and black then point to functionality and metals like iron, which are used more for warfare, in contrast to gold, which is a softer metal

The immediate next observation is the functionality of the outfit—the shoulder and hip guards, the belt and abdomen armor, the pants, the boots. While in good condition, the immediate conclusion that we get is that, like Sevika and Vi, this is a character who likes a free range of movement to dish out violence, and the casual way with which she wears this outfit shows how at ease she is with this violence, how she values her physical strength

(hilariously, in the art book screenshot below, the top right draft for Ambessa’s outfit shows her in a symmetrical white waistcoat with gold and black accents like Mel’s Piltover outfit, which I’m glad that they didn’t use in the end, but I think Ambessa would’ve worn it at least once to freak Mel out)

Her hair is free and wild, almost careless, again in contrast to Mel’s carefully groomed braids (keep this in mind for later)—where Mel lets her put together appearance speak of her character, Ambessa’s not carelessness, but her confidence

The picture with Mel and Ambessa in front of the former’s painting is also interesting, because we can see how the red from the sails matches Ambessa’s red—unity with nation, as for the purposes of the story, Ambessa is Noxus, but then we see that the ambient coloring of the painting is gold—Mel’s color. The painting—Mel’s vision—is the closest we see mother and daughter aligned, with Ambessa just having invited Mel to come back, and the beautiful and almost dream-like scene behind them unites them briefly

Of course, this is Arcane so that never happens, which brings us to one of my favorite images of Ambessa:

Firstly, this is just mwah so sexy there’s the ambient red of the scene from the ashes and fire, adding to the association of red as violence, but more significantly:

It’s the first time she wears gold—and it’s in a war mask, already smeared with blood and green chems

So this outfit just—props to the design department. Just. Gorgeous. Beautiful. Outstanding. 100/10 villain outfit

So there’s a lot going down here, so I’ll start with real world inspirations: from this post by @hyperfixationcritter (it has so much more info, i would def recommend the whole thing!), we can see that the headdress could be inspired by Zulu isicholos and the red threading is similar to the Dahomey warriors, which I love, as they could’ve just gone with the Roman and/or medieval aesthetic natural to Noxus, but instead they went with African influences, so when we see the pinnacle of Medarda splendor, it’s distinct and unique

Also here’s some art book insights (my eternal thanks to @stealingpotatoes for the photo!)

So from the regal outfit drafts, we can see them cycling out different ideas of war-like aesthetic, from the more modern military aesthetic with the side cloak and clean lines which would be more like a cleaned up version of Ambessa’s first outfit, to the symmetrical wing-like gold breastplate that, interestingly, mimicks Mel’s back tattoo. I still like the version that they settled on the most, but I love how we can see what aspects they wanted to evoke through the process

The blood mask is definitely more Viking-like in aesthetic, but I feel this is something a younger Blood Sweat & Tears Ambessa would do

And going to the actual mask, it’s interesting to note that it looks more Noxian gray and iron than the final color, which brings me to my favorite point:

Firstly, I love how you can see the similarities in features in mother and daughter, but more than that, what jumps out?

Gold—Ambessa’s decadent earrings and lip ring, the breastplate, the accents on the outfit, except in contrast to Mel, Ambessa’s gold speaks of war—the earrings are triangular and pointed, the breastplate is a functional piece of armor

Narratively speaking, when Mel disappears, Ambessa is not only politically but also visually primed to take her place as the power in Piltover

Also I want to share insights from this post by the fabulous @melmedarda

And it leaves you to wonder, is it a Medarda custom to braid their hair when at war? To wear gold to war where all of Noxus wears red and black and silver?

Mel choses her battleground to be politics and subtlety and diplomacy. Ambessa choses the wolf and the blade

Furthermore, the coloring is primarily white, black and gold—Mel’s colors—showing how even if she did return, these signifiers of the identity she built for herself have been overtaken and their meaning inverted—in a way, her mother has stolen that from her, and that’s so twisted and incredibly interesting at the same time (also interesting to note that Mel seems to be primed to be Caitlyn’s support after Cassandra Kiramman’s death, but then Ambessa takes up that role, and then it returns to Mel during the final battle)

After this change, we really only see Ambessa in her workout martial arts outfit with Caitlyn, otherwise it’s variations on accessories on a basic theme, much like Mel’s season 1 outfit really only changes with the ratios of black and white, and while yes, I’ve said before that it would be cool to see some variation, story-wise giving a character a recognizable outfit works towards creating them as a recognizable and steady figure—Mel as the stable reference for wealth, Ambessa as the glory of war

I love this photo so much—firstly, the only change is the hair, which has been reworked from it’s complicated headdress into functional twin braids, and there’s a beautiful balance between the blade and the Medarda ring on her hand. This is probably the most gold we see her wearing, at the height of her military power, before the power of a butch with beautiful eyes compels Caitlyn to betray her

Here we can clearly see that the regal outfit is very easily turned into a functional outfit—even at her most decadent, it takes two seconds to lose the coat and have free range to wield weapons

Returning to the mask, in the final battle, we can see its iconic claw marks from Warwick—wear and tear from the war that we saw happen onscreen from a clash of two Wolf-coded figures (I have thoughts about the wolf metaphor in relation to social dynamics and the lone wolf idea as portrayed by Vander and Ambessa, but that’s a whole other discussion)

Design-wise, it’s also very smart to have the anti-magic runes be green—it makes them easy to spot against Ambessa’s usual design

But of course they can’t save her, and Ambessa dies, and in the final shot, she looks like this:

The lack of focus on gold or armor makes us focus on her face, and for a moment, there is such softness and tenderness there as she gazes at Mel. Because yes, she was the armor and the blade and the iron and gold, but in the end, she was just a mother who loved her daughter. She was a horrible parent and a violent warlord, but the love was there, and at the end of her life this is what we focus on, because everything else were just the expressions of the power she sought to protect them.

#btw if anyone has any additions feel free to comment/add them #arcane #arcane meta #costume analysis #ambessa medarda #mel rambles #mel medarda #long #medarda family #this post has literally been sitting in my drafts for so long i’m so glad i’ve finally released it into the wild

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soulfulazrael · 26 days ago

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Roaring Knight is NOT Carol OR Dess. It's someone else.

And that character I say is Rudy.

Art made by Soulmeshart on twitter. Super talented guy.

It probably needs some level of explanation as to why I believe it's him. More so than with other ones. And I want to delve quite deep into that. And I want to start with Delving into why I do not believe it is Dess or Carol.

For Carol it is quite simple. Timing of her coming to the Holiday household and the Church Dark World. There is just no way she would go there so quickly as we can go right to the Church after we are kicked out of the house and the Dark World was already created there. And honestly she feels like the most obvious red herring of all time.

The second one is Dess and there IS quite a few evidences pointing to her, like being left handed like the mouse in her room implies and the bat, but I feel like those may be a red herring as well. Also... we DID in fact I say heard Dess before and she is trapped. We see her talk within the game code and we hear her in Spamton Dialogue.

It is I say quite clear it is meant to be Dess. She is there in the code and we get her dialogue from one character who breaks the 4th wall more than any other. Which means if Knight was Dess then it would have to be her body being a puppet or some sort of amalgamation that has no mind of it's own and Knight itself HAS a mind, it can think, plan, input codes (which Dess herself probably would never know) and also can walk in Light World and hide there. And Susie's implication about Knight in Light World being quite powerless I feel like is very relevant as well.

And that part about Light World. I think that one is the most important because of another thing. It would genuinely make the story NOT work because Dess being gone I say is HUGE part of the game and I say it is big part of Kris's motivation as well as I feel like Kris is working with the Knight BECAUSE of Dess and we can see that with Chapter 3 world having many hidden references to her, how she is gone, her name. Kris may not show it, but Dess is always at the back of their mind much like on Noelle's and I feel like it may be guilt that drives Kris.

I will explain it later in another post. Basically I feel like Egg rooms are the key to that where they represent grief inside of Kris's mind and I think that grief is part of what happened to Dess and Kris feeling some sort of guilt and Knight being Dess would honestly make this not work at all. Because the HUGE part of this story is "Find Her". Not to mention that Kris is preventing us from even seeing who the Knight is and why would an option to ALMOST see Knight's face even be added if it's someone like Dess who we NEVER saw before. It makes no sense from writing standpoint.

Now unto the man of the hour himself. Rudy. Why I think he most likely is the Knight. First off let's start with some stuff he is made of. He is one of the few NPCs who has his own laugh and coughs which is honestly strange because no other character in those games has those unless they are VERY important to the plot much like Susie or Lancer, that already shows that there has been quite a bit of effort put into him. And one thing to note on his sprite as he laughs is that he moves his left hand during it which is weird considering that he is using his right hand to drink in Chapter 4. Could be oversight or it could be Rudy just hiding from more people his real good hand.

But those are minor things and another one I want to bring up is his confidence. He always talks about kicking somone's ass and even with Susie he seems VERY confident they can do that despite their sickness which could be Toby's little thing that we will have recontextualized later on. Also he has connection to every single code source. He regularly attends church and even in his current state is able to go there, his best friend is former chief of police and his wife is the mayor. Every single one code is pretty much in his reach. Something I think Dess Knight would NOT have and if this is Dess Knight I don't think this thing would even be capable of inputing any codes.

But those are minor things compared to my next point which is bigger which is chapter 2 and Queen. Because Queen from Chapter 2 given what we saw in chapter 4 is clearly based on Carol. Her design heavily features blue much like Carol does, she is VERY protective of Noelle and we NEVER see Queen genuinely hurt Noelle. In fact all she wants is make Noelle happy.

And I think THAT is a HUGE evidence for why Rudy could be the Knight. Because I feel like Queen is how he sees Carol. Very over protective, control freak, but also very quirky (given Carol's sword collection) and sometimes absent minded. This is not a perspective I feel like anyone who is not connected so closely with Carol could ever make Queen into. It has to be someone who knows her on a very intimate level, even more so than her children. And Rudy fits that. I think it is shown well as well with what Queen says about Noelle

To be so overprotective and yet still seeing someone as strong as well. What is more parent like than this? It fits Rudy extremely well and his personality WOULD influence Queen to see Noelle like this. Someone to be protected, but has a lot of potential as well.

Not to mention how much she HATES Berdly which is something Rudy does as well. Also he confirms in one dialogue about him that he HAS a window in his room through which he potentially could sneak out from.

And in Chapter 1 the old classroom is most likely where Rudy himself also attended alongside Alvin and Asgore so they would have emotional connection with it that would allow them to create the Dark World there as well. And in chapter 4 probably their memories of Gerson would also influence how that Dark World looked because most likely Rudy was his student and he was the person that probably made impression on everyone.

Now you may also say that "Well it couldn't be him because he is sick" and to that I say two things. First one is "Isn't that weird that THIS is the only evidence against Rudy being the knight?" and another is "Do we even know what this illness even is?"

Because both are very telling. Because without the illness Rudy becomes REALLY good candidate here. He is someone who obviously would Aura Farm (which is funnily enough how Toby called the sprite of the Knight at the top of the stairs). He is someone the gang COULD take on in Light World which is why The Knight became desperate and summoned a Titan.

And... It does give Knight a very good motive that ties them with Kris as well. Dess. A father OBVIOUSLY would do anything to get their daughter back and in this case, a father would go deep into the darkness to find her and possibly... that creates illness within them. And that would make sense. Going deep into darkness making Rudy ill. And that illness manifesting itself on their body in Dark World as well.

Because Knight is honestly REALLY withered in Dark World. They are strong, but they look like they are seriously rotting. When they roar their stomach opens and I think that could be representing Rudy's illness and with the eye in the center of their stomach some kind of tumor or something. Going so deep into Darkness, becoming ill and risking your life just for a chance of getting your Daughter back.

What is more fatherly than that? And that connects with Kris as well and what I said earlier. Dess is ALWAYS at the back of their mind. Clearly carrying some sort of trauma which gives them motivation to work with the Knight. Finding her. And I think it makes sense why Spamton showed that to Kris as something they are afraid of. Being afraid for her.

Not to mention that Rudy would also be able to hide behind closed doors in the Church. They are sound of mind to do that unlike what Dess Knight would be. And once they leave the Dark World in 3 they probably knocked out Undyne well before that and ran as fast as they could (maybe also still on some level with effect of Dark World on them) to the Shelter. After all Undyne's spears stop at some point when we chase after them.

But there is another detractor. Why the bat? And I think that is another thing. Who's to say Dess did not get her thing for bats FROM Rudy? It does make sense as he seems to be very close with their children and is interested in what they are interested in. And given he was a friend with a HUGE guy like Asgore they may have also be interested in sports too and that could have been carried from him to Dess and now they keep the bat out of sentimentality for their daughter. Not to mention also it makes FAR more sense for Kris to hide Knight's face from us if it is someone we already know and Rudy we definitely do know.

And another few things I want to add are more about potential. For instance with Prayer Kris does for RUDY. When on normal route we pray for Noelle, Kris chooses to pray for Rudy and imagine the double meaning behind it if Rudy IS the knight. That would add so much to that one piece of interaction.

And potential for chapter 5 where I say we will know about Knight's identity as I feel like chapters 3-4-5 were meant to be Knight trilogy before Nintendo made the call to Toby. The Knight being Rudy would add another layer to Chatper 5 beyond jealousy. It would add a theme of fatherhood. How far can a father go for their own family? Which could be powerful theme to tie both Rudy and Asgore, especially if the Knight ends up finally seriously hurting Kris and Asgore sees this. That would be powerful because we would then be able to witness not only Asgore in a very serious position, but also show us the Knight as a very complex character.

Who's goals are not just "I end the world LMAO" or "Am insane puppet kill me please". It is compelling narrative, a father simply doing everything in their power to find their daughter. And Rudy being the Knight would also explain how Asgore has the shard in chapter 5. Obviously he would take something that could help his case from his best friend. And most likely Carol is in on it as well and uses her resources to help Rudy as well because it is her daughter as well. And like that you get immediately more complexity for BOTH characters.

Also on final note. I just do not trust any character that is this chill and nice and likeable in a story like this. I got that right in Spiderverse and they came out rather close together.

So that is my theorizing here. The potential of Rudy being the Knight, evidence and what this could mean for the story and interesting directions this could take it in. I may be wrong, but I am quite confident in this. And even if you all do not agree I still thank you for reading all this shite.

Also may post some more things here. I tend to write fics most of all. Recently made my first one for Deltarune here

May make more in the future. Will see.

#deltarune chapter 4 #deltarune #deltarune spoilers #deltarune chapter 3 #rudy deltarune #I swear I am not a schizo #Knight Deltarune #Theory time #thanks if you read it to this point #deltarune theory

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pennyserenade · 1 month ago

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money (that's what i want) | tom (the party) x reader

summary | tom and reader are pragmatic about their situation. rating | (explicit) tags/warnings | post the party, power dynamics, power imbalance, age gap (a little bit of a sugar baby/sugar daddy ordeal), pinv, fingering, greed of slightly biblical proportions, money hungry tom (as per usual), unprotected sex, mentions of drugs and alcohol, she doesn't make him better, capitalism jump scare, no use of y/n or you. word count | 3.0k+ a/n | week two of cillian murphy's beatles birthday bash celebration. this week's song is money (that's what i want) from the beatles second 1963 album, with the beatles.

Tom liked these work mandated “cultural outings” best when the art part was blotted out by extravagance opulence, and tonight it certainly was: an arthouse gallery full of his money-hungry co-workers dressed in their most expensive apparel, looking at the pieces peppered throughout the gallery with distracted focus. He relished in the moneyed sounds of their champagne flutes being clacked against by their one million dollar bracelets and rings as they talked politely of all they intended to spend, obtain, and offer.

Money was the language he spoke best of all, and this made these places familiar territory to him. It was somewhat curious, then, that the only person in the museum actually paying attention to the art pieces as she passed by them was the one that he had come to, as of late, tentatively refer to as his partner. He knew this, but he couldn’t bring himself to really care.

Wrapping an arm around her waist, Tom pulled her gently back into him as he stood behind her. He was happy to see that the perfume he’d given her months ago was finally on her skin, luxurious and smelling of vanilla. “Hey,” he told her, kissing up her neck. Patently ignoring those who turned to look at them, he added, words muffled against her skin, “What happened to not leaving my side, eh?”

She turned in his arms to look at him, smirking already. “Your company was boring. That’s what happened.”

The dark lipstick she wore on her lips tonight made him feel insatiable. He wanted to kiss it all off right then and there, but knew better than to act on the impulse; he figured his co-workers could only take so much. While they all openly admired and envied his ability to date someone like her—younger by half, prettier by miles—Tom had long suspected that they all thought this relationship was some midlife crisis that would sort itself out in time.

And perhaps they were right. Theirs was an odd relationship and they both knew it. It was a thing borne of her necessity and his stupidity—or, his necessity and her stupidity, depending on who you asked.

Months ago he had met her at one of their mutual friend’s book readings, and they had slept together that night because she had been introduced to him as “a budding writer.” He, having been made a cuck by a creative woman a year before, had been long craving a sort of revenge and when he saw the girl, hardly out of university then, he thought about what his ex-wife would think if she found out that he had fucked the younger, flashier version of herself. When he imagined the upset it might cause, how broken up to pieces she’d be to know he could fuck other people too, Tom felt good. So he did it.

It was meant to be a one night fling, but Tom came to pity the girl because she was poor the way all budding writers her age tended to be. It began as a little thing: paying for the breakfast in the morning and the taxi home, and later, when he asked if she might like to meet up again sometime, the taxi back. Then, quietly - but obvious to anyone who knew them for more than an hour - Tom had begun to pay for a good deal of her expenses: her rent, her phone bill, the red satin dress that hugged her body beneath her leather jacket tonight. Hell, probably even the lipstick, too. If she was using him for simply money and he was using her simply for sex, it would be a considerably less complicated endeavor for them both.

Tom rolled his eyes at her, but his lips curled up into an undeniable grin. “They probably wouldn’t like you too much, either, you know?”

“Oh, I’d certainly hope not,” she teased, moving out of his arms and on to the next painting. Tom lingered close behind her. He could sense that she was happy, even if she didn’t particularly like the people at the event, and he liked seeing her happy. It made him feel good. It was funny, how little effort it took on her part to make him feel that way.

“We could skip the dinner,” he told her, just to see the faint lines around her mouth crease again. “I know you don’t want to go.”

“I was really hoping you were going to say that. It’s Becca’s turn to cook tonight and I really wanted to see what she’s making. She’s gotten quite good at it ever since she started taking classes at the university.” Catching Tom’s lip curl up in distaste, she added, “What? Have you no regard at all for the proletariat anymore?”

“It’s got nothing to do with being poor,” he said humorlessly, “I just don’t want to hang out with your flatmates.”

She had told him once—when he’d asked her about her flatmates’ often dismissive attitudes towards him—that they didn’t like what he stood for, or what he believed in. When he had pointed out the fact that what he believed in—money, any way you put it—had benefited all in some form or the other, and that they never objected to his own when he bought them dinners or drugs, she’d shrugged. The conversation had begun and ended there. Tom knew the score, though: they were all okay with him being rich when he bought them shit, but besides in those specific instances, it was an offense.

In truth, he didn’t like them either, and never had. Even at first glance, he could tell they were the self-important artistic types that had marred his life when he’d been married to his ex-wife.

“Let’s just go to mine, yeah? Order chinese.” He could hear the whine in his voice, but didn’t mind it, as it always seemed to soften her. One of his hands moved down lower on her back as he turned to look at the painting with her. Purposefully, he brushed his fingers over the top of her ass. She leaned her body into his. “I don’t understand how you can stand here and look at this shit all night. It all looks the same to me,” he told her.

“That’s how I feel about your…people. I couldn’t stand listening to them for more than five fucking minutes. It was like watching the wild-life channel,” she replied. She didn’t sound disgruntled, though. She never did. “I don’t really want chinese.”

“What do you want?” he probed.

“Oh–” She considered it for a moment, her bottom lip jutting out. Then she grinned. “Hm…everything you’ve got, and the very best of it too.”

He liked the way he wasn’t quite sure she was being serious or not. “So you’re coming over, then?”

“I’ll have to think about it. I’m no class traitor, as you know.”

He smiled a fool back at her, forgetting for a moment the type of man he thought he wanted to be.

——

Her lace underwear was on his kitchen floor and her dress was up around her waist. Sat on the edge of his kitchen table, with his body between her legs, Tom had her just where he’d been wanting her.

“Tell me you want my money,” he murmured against her cheek. It amazed her at how gruff and demanding his voice could sound when he willed it. It was like a hidden power he stored away for moments just like these.

She dug crescent shaped indents into biceps, uncaring of the way it creased the expensive fabric of his suit. There was nothing she would not tell him when he asked for it like that. “I want your money,” she drawled, rubbing her nose against his. The quiet desperation etched into her voice was specific only to him, only to this.

“I know you do, baby,” he teased. His fingers slipped beneath the band of her underwear. They both breathed in together as his fingers reached down and grazed along her clit. “My greedy, greedy money hungry girl. What would your friends think?”

“Fuck,” she gasped, arching up into him. Her ass drew nearer to the edge—nearer to his body. Against her thigh, she could feel his erection beginning to strain against the fabric of his suit. Her fingers twisted up in the lapel of his coat jacket and she watched him.

Tom’s eyebrows drew together. He looked solemn, but he wasn’t; it was how his face set, his natural way of being when he didn’t think about it. She liked it. It was far more genuine than whatever he put on around his fucking evil co-workers.

He rubbed two fingers along her cunt, eyes flickering up to catch hers as he did. The tease of his touch made her ache. “You didn’t answer me,” he said. He leaned down and kissed her shoulder as his fingers teased his fingers against her again. “Do you tell them you’re with me for money? Do you say you fuck me because I pay for your rent half the time? Do you tell them—“ He teased over her hole with his finger. His voice caught for a moment. “Do you tell them I’ve got a nice house to myself, and that I never say no? Do you tell them you need me to survive so they don’t hate you? Do you believe that, too?”

He slid a finger inside of her. The stretch of it was overwhelming, but also not enough. Tom prodded the tip of it in and out of her, watching her carefully, proud to be in control. But there was not a hint of malice in his eyes, or in his voice. He did not care what she did, what she said, who she aimed to please, because he knew the truth. He was happy to be her moral qualm, the piece of complexity she and all of her self-righteous friends chewed on and made sense of in their myriad of self-righteous ways.

He wanted to tell them money didn’t just make the world turn, money built the world. It was in their favorite pieces of art, in the theater they watched, in the universities where they learned to be so self-important and pompous.

“Yes,” she whimpered, hoping it would encourage him to go faster—or to do more with his finger. It didn’t. He stilled his single finger inside of her and let her pulse achingly around it as if to prove the depth of her want.

Aggravated, she reached between them and unlatched his belt. He let her as he kissed her, vaguely aware of the earthy sweetness on her tongue from the wine. He sighed against her. “You know, you drink 300 dollar wines carelessly when you’re with me.” He was so hard, he was surprised he could speak at all, let alone so clearly. His words became measured, slow. “You even taste like money right now, your dirty little thing.”

She pulled his underwear down only enough to take his cock out. He watched wordlessly as she began undulating her hips, fucking herself on his finger as she had him in her hand. His composure began to slip when she nibbled at his bottom lip.

At times hated himself for how much her cleverness turned him on. Once he’d gotten hard reading one of her stories, not because it was erotic, or even because he understood it — he hadn’t. It was the simple fact that she’d thought it up. The idea of her sitting there, laboring over her laptop as he’d seen her do on the rare occasion he’d stayed at hers, whispering her own words back to herself, drove him crazy. Everything had all been too much for him.

Tom withdrew his finger from her cunt. Before she could say anything in protest, he brought it up to her mouth. She wrapped her lips around it, her eyes connecting with his as her cheeks hallowed as she sucked. She swirled her tongue around him, tasting her own self, her eyes dark and proud as they fixed on him. How pathetic he must’ve looked, watching her.

She was not like his ex-wife, as much as he’d thrilled about the idea of it when he met her; Marianne had been pragmatic, posh, not the sort to fuck older men until much later in her life. She’d always had a leg up in everything, from her career as an artist, to her relationship with him, to her general position in life. People loved her: loved to hear her talk, to see her move, to see her smile. The world was Marianne’s to take. Tom felt on equal footing with this woman, only out of his depth in ways that didn’t matter very much to him.

Not that it meant she was worse than Marianne. She wasn’t. Not at all.

She guided his cock inside of her, both of them conveniently forgetting that he wasn’t wearing any protection—a fire they both liked to play with. She hummed around his finger as his cock stretched at her entrance. When he jutted forward, easing the rest of himself inside of her, the table groaned beneath them, unable to take the strain.

They felt intertwined, one of her legs wrapped around his ass, his finger sat, heavy, on her tongue, their bodies pushed so close together that he could feel her hardened nipple through the fabric of his dress shirt. She gripped onto his suit jacket and he began to thrust inside of her, his hips focused on making her emit the delightful little moans she could never seem to stop, even with a finger in her mouth.

The heat of his suit was becoming a bit much, but it paled in comparison to the pleasure he was getting from driving himself, unsheathed, into her. She was the wettest she’d ever been and she seemed nearly as reluctant to let him go as he was to let her go. Tom buried his head into her neck, and let his finger slip from her mouth in favor of clenching up the fabric of her dress around her waist. He laid his head against her chest and watched as his cock plunged in and out of her cunt. She clenched around him again.

“So good at being money hungry,” he purred against the dampening skin on her chest. She tasted like salt. The words were coming out of his mouth before they were thought now, things deep inside of him. “So fucking wet and horny just from admitting it. Because you like fuckin’--” He clenched his jaw as she began to match his pace, pushing herself down onto him. “You like winners. You like to be taken care of.”

“Fuck,” she panted. One of her hands ran through his hair, uncaring of the way sweat was beginning to bead through the dark locks. She held the back of his neck, fingers burying just beneath the collar of his shirt. Tom lifted his head to kiss her on the mouth and caught the words, “I’d be anything for you,” against his top lip.

He gripped onto her hips with bruising intensity. His mouth began to go dry as his thrust became shorter and more sporadic. “Touch yourself,” he demanded. She did as he told her, her hand wedging between their bodies.

He attempted to delay his thrusts, hoping to stop his quickly rising orgasm, but it didn’t help. Seeing her reach between them and take what was hers without any sort of shame or delay, seeing the way the pleasure etched across her face, her chest, her whole body, feeling the way it traveled through her as she tightened around him…it was one of the finest drugs he’d ever been on. Irreplaceable. Devastating. He didn’t care about anything at that moment but her, but what they were when together: A blaze of desire, two bodies and people who understood what they wanted and needed, and then took it.

“Tom,” she whimpered, “Oh, fuck. Tom, you feel so…Oh. Fuck, I’m gonna cum.”

“Fuck. Yes.” He clenched his eyes shut. All he could feel was her: the wetness, the warmth, the clench of her cunt around him as he began to pull out. His fingers wrapped around the back of her neck as his cock twitched and his cum drippled down the inside of her thighs, dangerously close to her cunt. He dipped his head, and accidentally kissed her teeth, catching her mid-moan. He didn’t care, though; every part of him was in a state of unbridled ecstasy.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. Tom laid his head against her chest, listening to her heart pound in her chest. His free hand rubbed soothingly over the hip he’d been gripping viciously at.

“And they say the best things in life are free,” he joked against her lips.

“Mm,” she laughed, running her fingers through his unruly, sweat-damped hair. “I think sometimes two things can be true at once.”

His nose nudged against hers affectionately. Kissing her on the lips again, he said, “No you don’t. But that’s okay, because I wouldn’t want you to.”

“No?” Her eyebrows furrowed. “You wouldn’t want me to want you even if you were poor?”

“No, because then you wouldn’t be very clever.”

“But I’m poor, and you like me.”

He laughed, swiping his thumb against her cheek. “I consider you an investment. In my line of work, those are just as good when the stock is promising.”

She shook her head, grinning. He kissed her again, once, twice, three times, liking the way he could feel her smile curve his lips. “You’re odd, Tom,” she said. “Which is why I like you only for your money.”

He laughed too, his finger sliding the thin strap of her gown down her shoulder. His eyes flashed down as her breast became exposed. “Mm,” he hummed, arousal forming already in his groin. “Just as I expected. Think we should fuck again in a little, just so we can both get our worth.”

She nodded in agreement, guiding his hand down to her nipple. “Yeah, and then you’ll order us an expensive dinner and snort your worth in coke, I’m sure.”

His eyes darkened, the blue of them drowned out by his pupils. “And you’ll like it, because money is what you want.”

“Because money is what I want,” she echoed.

#cillian murphy #cillian murphy x you #cillian murphy x reader #cillian murphy smut #cillian murphy x y/n #tom the party #the party 2017 #cillian murphy the party #the party #the party fanfic #tom x reader #tom x you #cillian murphy fanfic

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thefrontmanscockwarmer · 5 months ago

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Teacher’s Pet

Player 001 x reader📖

Masterlist <- comment on this post to be added to the Taglist

Note: !teacher in Ho, also note the reader is 18 and a senior in high school. Also yes, I’ve watched the actual movie he’s in, it’s just less confusing to refer to him as In Ho bc not everyone has seen that movie.

You stared at your piece of paper, nothing written but you name a few flowers in the top right corner. You saw a dark shadow appear over your desk, you looked up to see Mr. Hwang standing above you. You smile shyly.

“Hi” you say.

“(Y/n), are you serious? You haven’t written a single thing down.” He sighs exasperatedly. The class was looking at you now. You peered up at him.

“Not true. I have flowers and my name.”

“Yes, i can see that, but i asked you guys to write a reflective page on how Frankenstein’s Monster was perceived by the village versus what he was actually like.” He adjusts his glasses, “you’ve not a sentence down and it’s due by the end of class.”

“But sir,” you began.

“Not another word, (y/n), write so I don’t have to give you an F” he turns from you and sits at his desk. Going back through the stack of papers. You sat and started at your paper once again, not knowing where to begin. You wrote: ‘Frankenstein’s monster was not a monster at all. He educated himself and was perceived as worse than he was. In my eyes, he’s more educated than half the men in the world, no man could ever compare to the educatedness of Frankenstein’s Monster; whom even Frankenstein himself treated like a disease and cast him away before finding him to end the life he created.”

The bell rang, everyone began turning in their papers and leaving before Mr. In Ho could say anything. The end of the day was such a glorious time, especially when it’s just moments away from being Friday night. But, not for you, you’d be going a few days without seeing your “life source”. You stand and pack your bag as the last few people filter out of the room. You approach his desk, sliding your paper across it. You turned to leave and had just barely crossed the the threshold of the door before you heard his voice:

“Wait.” He sighed pointedly. Everyone was outside, running to their cars. “This isn’t wasn’t what I asked you to write.” He began. “I asked for a comparison between the monster and the town, not how to tell me how educated and compare him to society today”

“He wasn’t a monster” you said coldly. “He was a work of art. He was life. he was no worse or better than humanity. The town treated him like a monster because that’s what he looked like, not what he was. They hated him because he was ugly.” You said. “But, had they gotten to know him, they would’ve seen he was brilliant, and beautiful. He was educated. Better than any man I’ve ever seen.” He peered at you through soulless eyes before softening his gaze. Your (e/c) bearing themselves into his soul.

“I was going to say, that the writing was great. It may not’ve been what I wanted, but it was a perspective drawn from conclusions you made on your own. It was real worldly and granted, you’re right, he was perceived in a way that was very judged by the cover, not of the pages.” He removed his glasses. “You’re free to go, (y/n), enjoy your weekend.” He gestured towards the door. Butterflies that had erupted in your stomach had been fluttering, heat between your thighs as you realized it was just the two of you in a room together.

“Have a nice weekend, sir” you nodded. And left, letting out a deep breath that you didn’t realize you were holding.You walked slowly down the stairs, preparing yourself for the walk ahead of you as you usually did at the end of the day. You exited the building, nearly everyone was gone, save for a few stranglers.

meanwhile, Hwang was gathering his items, tucking your page away in his bag to read it again later. He hated to admit he was obsessed with your handwriting. Writing assignments were his favorite, your hand on a piece of paper for him to take home and reminisce and think about and reread over and over again. If only you could just graduate sooner, he wouldn’t mind going on a date, or even following you to whatever college. If you’d have him that is. He wished he knew how you felt.

You had made it to the crosswalk, awaiting your turn when In Ho had turned the corner. He saw you standing, rolling down his window.

“(Y/n)?” He called.

“Hello, Mr. Hwang” you waved, “Haven’t ever seen you on this road”

“Yeah, well, I have to pick up some dry cleaning” he says. “Would you like a ride?” He offers.

“Actually yes please.” You say. Turning around and walking towards the plaza, his followed your lead, stopping his car in front of you as you stood in front of the shops. He took a moment to admire you. Your hair flowing through the Spring wind, your skin being kissed gently by the sunlight. You smiled as you opened the door. “Thank you so much, it’s so hot out and I’d have to walk an hour” you sighed as you clipped your seatbelt.

“An hour?! Do you walk everyday?” He asks his eyes wide as you nodded.

“Yeah, my parents are too busy to get me” you shrugged, i pretty much live alone” you chuckle.

“Well, I’m glad I was able to give you a ride, walking that distance everyday sounds harsh on your legs.” He says, he looked at your body, the realization setting in, you were neglected and walked so much you couldn’t help it. You were thin, your clothes barely fit, and your jacket was frayed. I need to take care of her he thought to himself. “Are you hungry? I can stop anywhere you’d like before dropping you off at home.”

“Oh it’s no bother” you say, looking at your phone, letting your mother know you going home. He decided to stop anyways. Your eyes lit up when you saw the Golden Arches.

“What do you want?”

“A small fry, a small dr. Pepper, and a 10 piece chicken nugget.” You repeated. Suddenly your stomach was growling.

“Hi, can i get a #3, make it a large please. And I’d also like a 10 piece chicken nugget, large dr. Pepper, and a a large fry” he spoke to the lady, pulling through and paying at the next window. “If you’re going to eat, you’re going to eat well” he told you as he handed you the food.

“Thank you” you said. He hummed a response and drove. “My address is NW 24th ave, house number 13”

You quickly and discreetly wrote your number on a napkin, letting it fall on the floor. As he pulled his car to your driveway. He leaned over and kissed your cheek.

“Sorry” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to, i forgot that you’re my student” he chuckled nervously.

“It’s okay” you said, blushing lightly. Butterflies flying your stomach again. Your heart fluttered as you made your next move. You pulled his face to kiss his lips, gently and quickly. His face riddled with shock, his own heart fluttering at the experience. “Thank you, for dropping me off and getting me food. I owe you one some day” he gulped and nodded. You opened your door in a swift motion he reached over and closed it, pressing his lips to yours once more, kissing you fiercely.

Your tongues gliding together before he separated from you. His hand tangling itself in your locks, pulling you closer to him, both of your bodies pressed against the center console, painfully marking your ribs. But pain was subjective, anything endured in those moments where you were entangled together, nothing could possibly hurt. He reluctantly pulled away from you. You both sat breathless, staring deeply into each other’s eyes. He moved a piece of hair out of your face. You were flushed and stumbling over your thoughts.

“Uh my dry-cleaning” he chuckled. “I’m sorry, I- I- I need to go get my dry cleaning. It’s clean and probably going to close soon. I have no clue what time it is” he stuttered.

“It’s okay, i should probably go inside too” you giggle.

“Okay, yeah, okay sounds like a plan.” He said as you opened your door.

“Well, good bye Mr. Hwang” you said as you closed the door, walking up your driveway. He watched as you entered your house before driving away. His mind swirling and his erection straining against his pants. He looked down as he came upon a red light, daring himself to unzip and stroke his cock. Shaking the thought away, he turned up the radio, everything around him reminded him of you.

“Fuck me” he thought as he laid his head back on the headrest. “Fuck me, (y/n)” he groaned.

Taglist

@christinamadsen @sebbymybaby21 @player279achlys @galaxygurlll @whamzou @watasinekoru @angelofthorr @whamzou

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hivemuthur · 6 months ago

Text

What was that? - Ch. 1.

viktorxfemale!OFC mature! (for now, I will mark later chapters as explicit when the time comes

friends to lovers, co-workers, sexual tension up to the wazoo, pinning and banter that got me frustrated when I was writing it, attempt at humour, some angst and a slow burn with a happy ending and a classic Viktor for once

Ch.2. | Ch.3. | Ch.4. | Ch.5. | Ch.6. | Ch.7. | Ch.8. | Ch.9. | Ch.10. | Ch.11. | Ch.12. | Ch.13. | Ch.14. | Ch.15.

word count: 4,6K

tag: #what was that

summary: A romance that explores two insecure people growing closer together through snippets of their time at work.

author’s note: Can I post three things a day? Yes. This is the first fic I've written and I love it dearly. It connected me with @rennethen who has been beta reading it patiently and helped me create significant parts of it, and for that connection alone it was worth to write it.

Cross-posted on AO3

—

“Renly, are you being serious right now?” John stormed into the lab’s kitchen visibly flushed with anger. Renly only blinked at him, a question in her eyes.

“I guess? Didn’t you get my note?” She definitely remembered sending the note asking John to take a raincheck. She even made a song about it to not forget, like the last time. Viktor had mocked the song at first but later grew annoyed with it.

”Please stop, this song is now rotting my brain. I get it, John is a nice guy,” Viktor rotated on his chair with a groan that has clearly been building up for at least one minute.

“Sorry, it’s the only way I don’t get distracted and forget!” to Viktor’s demise, Renly sang this line as well.

“Well, didn’t you get my note?” John said, already huffing, seemingly offended. He did get her note, he did see the little heart she drew on it and a coffee stain that suggested she wrote it hastily, while doing something else with her other hand. So, he sent a passive aggressive jokey note back stating that it’s tomorrow or he doesn’t know when, because he is also oh-so-busy.

“I can’t make it otherwise,” he laid his hands apart in apologetic gesture.

“Like… this week? Or ever?” light mockery in her voice, she said with her back to John, while pouring coffee into two cups. “It’s okay, we can have breakfast here. Do you want coffee?” Renly pulled out the third cup from the sink and waved it at John expectantly.

At which point, Viktor entered their tiny lab kitchen, scrunching his wet hair with a damp towel, his cheeks flushed and clothes slightly dishevelled, clinging to his hot-after-shower body. “Do I smell coffee? Hi John,” he said, waving at the doorway.

“Nothing will hide from you. Crisis averted?” Renly asked referring to fifteen minutes ago, when Viktor banged viciously on the bathroom door, demanding shower access immediately, as he spilled suspicious fluid from Renly’s workstation all over himself.

She said it was punishment for snooping. He said she’d taken his favourite pen, and her workstation was planned ridiculously, making moving around risky. Also, she took showers that lasted forever. She said her shower was only fifteen minutes, which is perfectly within bounds of morning toilet routine. He said she should shower at home and sleep at home; otherwise, she would end up a social pariah like him and Jayce. She said it’s a bit late for that as night is a perfect time for quiet work and she is one person away from the social pariah status. She meant John. So right now, it really did look like she was close to adding it to her work signature. She had to evacuate from the bathroom before she had the chance to dry off completely, which is why her hair was wet.

“Did you shower together?” John’s tone gained additional pitch to it as he asked his ridiculous question, visibly getting more and more distressed.

“Yes, John. We also have occasional orgies that I forgot to mention,” Renly couldn’t help about the snarky comment but when she turned around to take a look at her… boyfriend? They went out about ten times and slept together twice, so she guessed he was her boyfriend already. Well, he looked hurt, and she immediately wished she didn’t say it, no matter how ridiculous it sounded.

“Please, don’t be like that. I pulled an all-nighter again, and it was too late to go home. We showered separately, obviously,” she said in a softer voice as the cups were placed on the tiny table in the middle of the kitchen, only three chairs.

“I will give the two of you some space,” Viktor swept his cup with Jayce’s face on it and gave both of them polite smile as he walked out faster, than Renly thought he was able to.

“So… are you very cross with me?” she waited for Viktor to leave the area and asked reaching out to place her palm on top of John’s forearm, but he winced away.

John had always been good at making himself seem indispensable. When they first started seeing each other, his charm felt effortless—little gestures like remembering her favourite tea or distracting her with a ridiculous joke when she was too stressed to focus. She had let her guard down with him in a way she rarely allowed herself to. It had felt safe, comforting even. But lately, the cracks in that façade were harder to ignore. He got offended easily and threw some stupid accusations at her when he was out of arguments. She did admit, she was quite oblivious to some of relationship savoir-vivre, but it was also discussed priorly! And he said he doesn’t mind, so the next part caught her off-guard.

“I… don’t think this will work out this way,” he said with a sigh and waved his hand around making her question if he meant them, or breakfast with Victor in near vicinity. “I didn’t know this is what I was signing up for frankly,” he finished and gave her a sad puppy glance. This made her… angry? Of course, he knew what he was signing up for. She told him from the very beginning how important her work was. And how bad she was at this, but he just called her cute. Surely, this was enough of a warning. Or maybe it wasn’t but John really didn’t seem like he heard anything of what she ever said in the long run.

He was a Piltie, and she was from Zaun. He liked posh places that were trying to pass as casual, she liked to hang out by the riverbank in the evenings and sneak into The Undercity to look at street art and eat street food. He always seemed to pay attention to what she was telling him about her lab work and how many lives it could potentially change but at the end of every test presentation and heated one-sided conversation (it was hot on her side only) when she looked at him expectantly, he praised her with a you are so smart or you look pretty when you get excited about science and it left her empty of all air like a sad balloon in the aftermath of a party. He probably had a politician’s career ahead of him, so in the future, he would be the person to decide whether she does or doesn’t get funding for her research and in her mind’s eye John was a person that would probably happily fund something else than the medicine for long term Grey exposure symptoms. But he was a good practice for that. And despite everything else, she did like him. He had his moments, as they say.

In a few seconds, that took very long in the pocket dimension of her brain, Renly tried to calculate how much fault in this situation was hers and if it was worth to back down and give him a peace offering in form of a dinner at her place, that she would cook, and they would be alone, and it would be romantic, and he would probably get to fuck her on the dinner table.

The plan started forming itself, when John said “I mean… you spend all your free time here, or you drag me around the lanes. Also, this Viktor guy? I got over Jayce, recently he is barely here. So…” he dragged his huge eyes across her face looking for a sign of understanding that wasn’t there “…you understand how I feel when you spend most of your time with another man.” It came out weak, but he decided to stand by it.

“Another man? It’s Viktor,” she scoffed. “Not even a day ago he stated how much I disgust him with Zaunian food in fridge. He works all the time. We sleep in separate rooms. He…” Renly inhaled, exasperated by this accusation. It’s ridiculous, how insecure John was to even suggest that.

“He is a friend. And that’s all. I assure you he is not interested in me.” She had a dead serious certainty about this. If something was fixed in this universe, it was the fact that Viktor wasn’t interested in her. And she didn’t think of him that way either. Except the one time she let her mind wander, and she did. Which was a lie, because she thought that at least twice.

Once, when they met for the first time. She already knew Jayce, who made her gasp the first time she saw him. The impression passed, but friendship remained. Jayce and Viktor, freshly acquainted, were passing her classroom when a quake shook The Uppercity. It caused one of her test tubes to fall into the vial she was working on, breaking and triggering a teeny-tiny exoenergic reaction (it exploded). The hero within Jayce’s body drove him straight in to help any casualties, of which the only one was Renly, face full of colourful goo. From the floor, she glanced at Viktor walking in shortly after his partner, and she gasped, even more than when she had met Jayce. She immediately knew it was wrong to look for so long. Her suspicion was confirmed when Viktor’s expression shifted from amusement to the realization that his brief chance to present himself as more than the guy with a cane had passed. From that point forward, he was very formal with her, though he occasionally joked about history repeating itself within the academy walls.

It was a lie though, as well. She first saw Viktor by the riverbank in Zaun, as a child. She had been maybe seven, and he could have been slightly older. Her eyes, round and curious, followed him trying to chase down his mechanical ship taken by the stream. She tried to shadow him that day, but he disappeared in the mouth of a cave she was afraid to walk into. He had a smaller cane then and she thought him a magician. So, she only lingered in disbelief that their paths crossed once more and that he was, indeed, real. And also, in awe of how beautifully he has grown up. But overall, Renly counted it as a one time.

Second time, after she decided to stay at university to continue her research and teach students, they were copying the notes together and Jayce was growing more and more bored, so he kept trying to start random topics.

"I wonder if all of them are as pretty as Mel,” he said, trying to trace down beautiful Mel Medarda’s heritage while fishing for reassurance from his friends about their imminent romance.

“But maybe it’s not a rule. I mean, looking at the both of you I would say the rule for Zaun is to be full of attractive people as well,” Jayce was waffling on, and Renly grew tired of it.

“And ugly people. And short people. And tall people. And fat people, and skinny people, Jayce. It’s all just people, like in Piltover, there is no rule to here or Zaun. Initially, it’s the same city, and we all come from different places,” she said harshly not lifting her sight from the notes she was copying.

“Oh relax, it was a compliment! And I am looking for reassurance from you guys, yes,” he traced his finger down the blackboard, wiping some of the old equations away.

“Not very progressive of you, the Man of Progress. I can give you reassurance – Mel seems fine. You will be fine. You are a big boy, Jayce. But I do not need compliments, not because I’m from The Undercity, nor because I’m a woman,” Renly’s dead stare made Jayce look for help from Viktor. She gave him a pass and went back to scribbling.

“Vik, any help?”

“I’m afraid with this one I have to place myself in Renly’s corner. Even though of the two of us, I probably am the one that needs compliments,” Viktor also didn’t glance up from above his paperwork.

“No, you don’t,” Renly didn’t notice she now got the attention of both of her friends.

“You are, yourself, quite…” her mind was absent at this moment, so it was probably the other part of her that spoke the rest “…dreamy.” A second past, in which her brain caught up with her mouth and a deep shade of red bled into her cheeks and chest. She cleared her throat, stood up quickly and threw barely audible excuse me leaving the boys to exchange their looks and make their fun of her. Jayce snorted when Renly was out of hearing range and Viktor only mouthed a what was that? That was the second time, infinitely more mortifying than the first one.

“You put a lot of effort into assuring me of this, but you never once said if you are not interested in him. From where I’m standing, you are definitely not interested in me,” John’s voice broke her out of reminiscing.

Renly’s face went into stupid mode, twisting her features with disbelief. How dare he.

“Are you really saying what I’m hearing? Are you accusing me of infidelity based on your own insecurity? Have I truly given you any reason to believe I’m involved with anyone else but you? When do you think I would have time for that? Or do you actually not listen to me when I tell you about what I’m doing here and how much of my time and energy it consumes?” John’s expression grew more and more panicked as he saw how far he has overstepped.

“This is not… I didn’t…”

“What you didn’t do is think. You are the one who is not interested in me, John. You listen to me, but you do not register, nor remember anything I tell you. What do you want from me? Should I drop everything I’m doing just to dangle from your shoulder at the parties? Should I change the way I speak? Should I cut all my friends and relatives loose because they are from The Undercity? Would that make you feel secure enough?” she spat at him, becoming more and more angry with every sentence, self-winding regret fuelling her.

“Gods, this is not what I want, and you know it,” John brought his hand to the back of his neck, his voice gentler this time. “I just don’t feel like you want me around, is all,” he whispered, his words making Renly’s shoulders drop and her chest sink.

His fingers tapped an idle rhythm on the table, his eyes darting toward the adjoining lab room. It wasn’t the first time she’d caught him stealing glances at her colleagues’ workspaces, but she had always dismissed it as idle curiosity or stupid jealousy, first over Jayce, then over Viktor. Now, though, every stolen glance felt like a clue she should have picked up on sooner.

“I do,” she hesitated. “I did. I invited you to meet my people, come to my home, my work, my bed,” at which point, in the other room, Viktor—who was doing his absolute worst not to listen—squeezed a piece of chalk a little too hard, causing half of it to disintegrate into dust with a loud, whiny, bone-chilling sound that gave him goosebumps at the back of his neck. So, they slept together, great. Just great. It didn’t bother him at all, and yet… it bothered him greatly for some reason. Probably just because she will be a nightmare to be around for the next week or so.

Ridiculous, Viktor thought, though the word didn’t carry the weight he wanted it to. What did it matter who she invited into her bed? It certainly wasn’t his concern. The tightening in his chest wasn’t jealousy—it couldn’t be. No, it was irritation, that’s all. Irritation because she was so impulsive, so reckless, letting herself be distracted by someone so undeserving of her attention.

Why did it bother him? It wasn’t the first time she’d been entangled in some personal drama, and usually, he had the patience to tune it out. Yet here he was, bristling at every raised word, every pointed jab from John. It wasn’t his place to care. He had told himself years ago that people like Renly—bright, chaotic, and distractingly beautiful—were nothing but a complication. And yet, he found himself gripping his cane tighter every time John’s voice rose.

“Just realistically, I don’t think this is what you want. So, the obvious choice would be to put a pin in it until we both decide what we want,” her voice faltered. Breaking things off with John hadn’t been part of her plans for the day, and she could never have been emotionally prepared for this—especially not before breakfast. She wasn’t really breaking things off with him, either. Maybe a short, temporary break would do them good, cool things off. She fidgeted with her fingers under the table, becoming increasingly self-conscious about how much of the conversation Viktor had overheard.

“Really? So now it’s about me not respecting your Zaunian heritage, instead of you blowing me off at every opportunity?” at this point John knew that guilting her into giving it one more shot was probably his only chance. His father really wanted those hextech blueprints, and he would be very disappointed if John didn’t manage to get them. “Look, I don’t mind if we hang out here at all. But truth be told, you don’t really invite me here very often,” John said, his voice softer now, but there was an edge beneath it, like a scalpel disguised as a pen.

He had a way of twisting her words, making her feel like the selfish one for not prioritizing him more. It was a skill he wielded well, and for a moment, it almost worked. But the memory of all those little disappointments—the times he had brushed off her work as "just another experiment" or barely listened when she explained her progress—bubbled up like a pressure valve ready to burst. He did actually like her. She was his type – pretty, quirky, talented and driven. She could be a bit more elegant, but that would be polished with time. “We could make a schedule, meet here when nobody is around? Maybe you could even show me some hextech, hm?” with this, he knew he probably pushed a little bit too far, as her expression grew weary.

There it was again, that same calculated curiosity masked as casual conversation. At first, she had chalked it up to natural interest—what Piltover scholar wouldn’t want to know more about hextech? But now, with his eyes lingering too long on the blueprints and his questions steering the conversation in predictable directions, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was about more than idle fascination.

“I… you know I don’t work with hextech,” she shook her head while her brain was glueing the pieces together. “Why would you…,” and it hit her gently, prompted by the guilt painting her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend’s face. Unbelievable. When she thought about it longer, he did usually snoop around innocently while waiting for her to wrap up work. He would wander between the lab rooms, seemingly just killing time, but she saw him linger on the blueprints more than once. When she told him about her experiments, he always drove the discussion towards Viktor and Jayce’s work. How are they doing? So does this hextech actually work? And what do they want to use it for again? And he tried to pin it on her sleeping with Viktor. The audacity.

Renly wanted to believe the relationship had been real, that it hadn’t just been about her work or her connections. But as she stared at him now—his charming smile just a little too polished, his words just a little too well-placed—she realized how many times she had ignored her instincts. How often she had pushed aside the nagging thought that he didn’t see her, not really. Just the parts of her that were useful.

“So… you come here and make a scene about the note that you seemingly wrote for me and that I didn’t get. You accuse me of cheating on you with my colleague,” at which point Viktor scoffed to himself in the other room. The idea of Renly and him being a thing was laughable. She was too stubborn, too unpredictable, too... distracting. And yet, John’s misplaced jealousy had struck an uncomfortable chord. Absurd, Viktor reassured himself. If anything, she deserves better than someone like me. She deserves better than both of us.

“You propose a solution – let’s hang out here,” Renly exhaled, and her eyes rested on her hands with the realization of being used all this time hitting her hard. She didn’t think she cared that much. Frankly, having a normal secure relationship also with someone normal and secure was a hope she didn’t dare to entertain very often. It was mostly work and friends for her. So, when John came along, she just let it happen, as maybe, she thought, it was a good thing happening to her. Realizing there was no love in it, left her feeling numb.

In the other room, Viktor stopped pretending to work and simply sat on a stool, his hands and chin resting on his cane. That was new territory, a kind of danger they hadn’t anticipated. Also, he did feel angry for Renly – annoying as she was, she really didn’t deserve this. He wondered if he should intervene and kick John out, but the act would have to be based on his authority, which as a fellow Zaunian in John’s eyes he had none. Any show of force would need to be purely verbal—calculated and precise enough to leave the boy speechless and make him back down without a fight. While he was negotiating the terms of this heroic act with himself, he heard Renly’s voice echoing across the corridors: “I think it’s best you go.”

“Can we talk this through?” one last desperate attempt on John’s side as he covered Renly’s palm with his. She slid her hand from underneath his, threw a quick no over her shoulder and stepped through a heavy metal door that separated living area form the laboratory. She locked it behind her with a loud crank and immediately sank to hug her knees. Well, shit. This wasn’t part of her plan for today. And she didn’t want to cry in front of Viktor. If Jayce was here, he’d make it better, but he was with the beautiful Mel Medarda having breakfast in her quarters, which was a secret. Viktor would make fun of her—or worse, he’d get cross for endangering their life’s work. On one side of the door, her mean ex-boyfriend, on the other her mean niggling friend. She could just stay here.

“Do you need help getting up?” Viktor’s voice made her gasp and release the tears that were gathering under her eyelids, now streaming down her cheeks. And just to be clear, they were angry tears, not sad pathetic tears.

“Maybe,” Renly said, wiping her face with a sleeve, unable to bring herself to look him in the eye. She accepted his offered hand, which was about to pull her up. Unfortunately, the sudden movement sent a cramp shooting down Viktor’s calf, leaving Renly standing while he folded in half.

“Oh shit, Viktor I’m sorry, let me grab a stool!”

“Ah, no need. It’s fine. Just a cramp, it’ll stretch,” he panted, sliding down the corridor wall. She crouched down by him, question in her eyes about what to do.

“Well, where is it? I can… rub it out?” she heard herself saying and a darker shade of pink flushed her already enflamed cheeks. Viktor noticed. Her hands were faster than her brain this time and she already had his calf in her grasp, looking for the knot.

The warmth of her hands startled him, a flicker of something unwanted creeping into his thoughts. He shut it down immediately. She’s just helping. Don’t make it into something it isn’t. But the gentleness of her touch lingered longer than it should have, and when she looked up at him, her face flushed with concentration, he had to look away. Focus, Viktor. This means nothing.

“How did you get this so bad, Viktor?” she gasped at the state of her friend’s muscle, contracted like a rusty hinge. Her eyes full of concern, and some guilt. She made him uncomfortable in his own lab, because of some stupid drama. Stupid, yet it tore a hole in her heart.

Viktor remembered this look. He remembered the way she had looked at him back when they first met—not the awestruck gaze she reserved for Jayce, but something deeper, sharper. It had unnerved him. People always noticed the cane first; it was a fact he had come to accept. But she had looked past it—no, she had lingered on it, and he wasn’t sure whether it was curiosity, pity, or something else entirely. It didn’t matter now. He had decided long ago to keep her at a polite distance.

“Too much sitting down, ah!” he gasped when more pressure was applied “I tried to work through your… quarrel,” Viktor’s voice grew breathier, his eyebrows pinching together. Absent-mindedly, he placed his right hand on Renly’s shoulder and closed his eyes, letting his body relax into her touch. She was very careful, almost… affectionate.

“I guess this would fuel John’s theory,” he chuckled slightly, forgetting himself. Did he just admit that something was possible? Renly was too focused on getting rid of the knot to notice the awkward grunt following this sentence, and without much thought to it she said, “don’t be ridiculous.”

Something sunk in Victor’s chest hearing that. Of course, it was ridiculous. He was ridiculous. All of it. He was about to figure out how to run away, take his leg with him and tell her this is good enough, when she continued.

“I mean, we are not responsible for someone’s insecurities. I refuse to be. Also, as I presume you heard all of it, you will know that it was all a play,” she put so much attention into rubbing Viktor’s calf that the words just went out of her mouth. “Just to get his hands on hextech. So, I’m guessing this accusation was also fabricated to guilt me. Or he was obsessed with you. Which I understand… gotcha!” she exclaimed as the muscle relaxed under her fingers, and Viktor gave an involuntary moan, making both of them flush slightly.

The tension in his calf eased, but his chest felt impossibly tight. He was about to thank her—briefly, formally—when the look on her face stopped him. She was glowing, not with the self-satisfaction he often associated with Jayce, but with genuine care. It was infuriating. No, not infuriating—irrelevant. Why do you even notice these things? he scolded himself, rising awkwardly to his feet and turning away before the warmth in her eyes could undo him further.

“Forgive me, I… thank you,” was all he was able to say.

“That’s… it’s nothing, no worries.”

“I believe you know this, but in case you don’t—he’s a donkey, and you’re brilliant, yes?” Viktor tossed over his shoulder. “Ah, I’m not… thank you,” she said, standing in the corridor, confused, her face burning. What was that?

#viktor arcane #viktor x reader #viktor fanfic #viktor x reader smut #viktor x f!reader #arcane #viktor smut #arcane fanfic #my writing #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #viktor x oc #viktor nation #what was that

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zvahlne · 3 months ago

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a long post about today's aphmau video ("REBORN as the THE GODDESS of Minecraft" <- it. has a typo while i'm writing this) and all of the Minecraft Diaries references/weird things i caught in it!!!

if you want to know what diaries-things happened in this video but you don't want to watch a video that is pretty heavy cocomau (fair) this post is for you...

and if you watched the video please feel free to add anything i missed!!!!

my knowledge is from watching minecraft diaries almost a decade ago and i didn't watch When Angels Fall, so i could TOTALLY have missed something. but this should be pretty comprehensive!

okay!! let's get into it!

note in advance: the music that plays for most of the video really adds to the weird vibe. i think subconsciously that adds a lot to why this video felt so off.

the video opens with aphmau, pierce, and KC rushing over to garroth's house because of a storm over his house. when they get inside, kim and garroth are performing some kind of ritual with a book. an animation starts and they all get pulled up into the storm.

aphmau gets hit by lightning, and we cut to

the irene dimension!??

aphmau then wakes up back home in this outfit (!!) and the first thing she mentions is "What was that mirror?"

i find the mirror EXTREMELY fascinating, if anyone has thoughts on it please share with me because i'm having a hard time putting it into words but there's such a vibe happening there

when she leaves her house, there are a bunch of floating islands with irene's symbol under them. i don't know what that means, but i thought it was REALLY interesting. they were inescapable once she went outside; all these fragmented reminders of irene. it made ME feel some type of way for sure !!! it was very "haunting the narrative"... i don't think they were ever once properly acknowledged (even when characters were interacting with them), which somehow made it even weirder.

this guy also shows up and attacks aphmau. nothing came to mind other than the way irene's hood shaded her face, but i'm adding him to the post in case there's something i'm forgetting!

i acknowledge this next one to be a total reach but i could not, for the life of me, get it out of my head, so,

IT'S JUST. THEY WERE STANDING IN THE SAME SPOT RELATIVELY IN FRONT OF A GIANT BURNING CRATER. AND THE TREES... AND WITH EVERYTHING ELSE GOING ON... it was hard not to think of it.

throughout the video, aphmau gets new powers by... eating these little guys?

i mostly mention that for something else we'll get to in a minute

nothing of mcd/weird vibes note happens for a while so we're just going to skip ahead...

an interesting sidenote though is that garroth is just like, evil in this video. first he's doing the ritual thing with kim at the start, and later in the video he continues conspiring with her and even drops a boulder on aphmau's head. i haven't watched all the smp videos, but usually garroth is only evil when he's playing a character in my experience (like in a "one girl at an all yandere school!" video)? this is just smp garroth being straight up evil. the weird feeling this gave me really crystallized in ANOTHER thing we'll have to get to in a minute

cut to aphmau and kim. kim has told aphmau she wants to stop garroth too, so aphmau is following her into this weird cave. and.

do. do you see it

"I saw that symbol once before." "Eh, probably just some kids leaving graffiti."

I ALSO SAW THAT SYMBOL BEFORE. HELLO SHAD???

they go further in and there's this too

kim has aphmau say some magic words standing on this circle, which causes her to lose her wings and also covers her in the symbol??

i don't remember enough to know if this is lore relevant but it will be included in my deepdive anyway because what

shortly after this is when garroth drops the boulder on her head. when she wakes up the symbols are gone and garroth then leads her to an underground bunker. down there, they have this exchange:

"I'm just saying this is... new for you." "Well, maybe things are CHANGING, huh?!"

WHICH combined with what i mentioned earlier about him being randomly evil in this video stood out and really added to the weird vibe. pierce also mentions that weird things are happening on the server, but that could be said in any video, i'm just mentioning it because again, this video had a particular vibe to it.

we can now also circle back to her getting new powers like i mentioned! because the last power she gets in the video is... just... the irene eyes???

there's nothing new in the hotbar, like every other power. and she seems distressed by this one, in a way she wasn't for anything else. pierce is with her, and the first thing she says is, "What happened?" and the second thing (after some classic concerned aphmau noises) she says is "Help..! This is... different..!"

her concern is cut off by more of the angels i showed earlier coming back to attack her and pierce. her powers aren't working at first but then kick in and she then quickly dispatches them (and is surprised by how fast it happened).

in the next room, the mirror is back! aphmau is drawn to it, and says (in a voice more serious than the average cocomau voice), "I've been seeing this this whole time... I think I need to go through it."

she goes through and kim is there with angel wings now and explains that she was using the book to get powers, but aphmau got in the way. she also introduces three angels (one girl and two boys) as her children, and then proceeds to turn them into babies and explode them to steal their power since she (kim) was running out??? aphmau is very distressed by this (reasonably lmao) and takes her out in ONE HIT.

after this, in a more serious/deeper voice, she says "You merely adopted the powers, I was born in them." which is totally a bane reference i think, but what was more interesting to me is that the voice stuck for a line after ("You did it, Aphmau!" "I did.") before she gets startled and her voice returns to normal.

after which, she goes and looks at the mirror again (lmao bye garroth) and has a conversation with pierce

"Uh, hey, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine... I just..." more serious music starts playing. "I just felt like something called me here..."

"Oh uh, good, hey, can it NOT call you here, and can we go home?!"

"Yeah. We can go home. But... those poor babies..."

pierce then goes into more cocomau humor, and aphmau does NOT match his energy, just agreeing with him in a subdued tone. pierce hops through the mirror. she then decides to leave her powers there, and the video finishes with her saying, "I need to get out of here, gh!" and jumping through the mirror again.

video end.

so.... is it just me or was there a vibe????? i feel like normally with these videos when she does easter eggs, it's more of a fourth wall break? this time it felt more like aphmau was actually remembering/experiencing stuff. and it wasn't like the laurance video, where she has no recollection of anything shadow knights and they're just being used as a cocomau prop; she REMEMBERS shad's symbol from somewhere, and is quickly brushed off. and it was made especially odd by the background music throughout most of the video, and the occasional dissonance between aphmau's serious delivery and the other characters' smp-style delivery.

the whole video wasn't like this, with cocomau definitely throughout that i skipped for this post, but honestly that only made it feel weirder whenever the two vibes clashed. it was pretty unsettling to me tbh

you can watch it if this post intrigues you, but i think i covered anything interesting and it is pretty cocomau heavy despite all this, and if that's not your scene (completely fair, it's not usually mine), you can probably just stick with this post.

regardless of if it all MEANS anything, i think this was a very interesting video!!!! and i'm always down for references to her old stuff!! lmk what y'all think, i'm super super curious

#WHEW!#i wrote this all in one draft so hopefully it's coherent #zvahlne yaps #like... really yaps #aphmau #aphverse #minecraft diaries #aphblr #mcd

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kozachenko · 11 months ago

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[Click for better quality]

Ok yay I'm back from my vacation yipeeeeeee. I started this drawing of Keiki before I left and I was half considering just giving up on it.... until I did a short study of facial planes and then got motivated to work on this again! I'm glad I didn't give up on it though, as I'm actually really happy with this one!

Artist's Notes;

So as I mentioned in my last post about Touhou 17, I wanted to finish this by the game's five year anniversary but with how progress was going I didn't want to rush this so I decided to take a long break from it. Mainly because of the face. For a while now I was kind of feeling like I was stagnating with my drawings, not really in the clothing but in the bodies. There was something about the way I was rendering them that I just wasn't happy with, and after talking with someone else about this issue, I realized that the reason I felt this way was because the faces were too flat and didn't match the rest of the drawing and that I needed to find a way to make the rendering of the face feel consistent with everything else. So after doing a short study of the plains of the face (I used this 3D head model from art station as a reference for my short study, please go give this person some love as they are a lifesaver) I went back into this drawing and applied what I learned here. It was only after that that I finally became motivated to finish the piece, and while it started off as just a simple character sketch like Saki and Yachie's were, the moment I added in Keiki's little fire dragon I knew I had gotten in too deep and now here we are with a full on background. OK it's not super crazy or anything, but it gets the job done and it's better than there just being an empty void behind her. It's rare moments like this when I use brushes other than the Clip Studio Default Charcoal Brush and use the Clip Studio Default Paint Brushes as well (god bless the oil paint and dry gouache clip studio brushes, they were amazing). I don't know why but painting fire has always been really fun for me, there's something oddly satisfying about it y'know? I do think that another reason for this problem was because I was drawing faces like I would in my more sketchy style that didn't mesh well with my lineless style, so I'm glad I've started remedying that.

After adding in the fire dragon I had an idea to kinda make it feel like splash art in the way the composition works... probably because I have been playing Reverse 1999 again and it has taken over my brain. I do feel like Keiki's tools get a little lost in the composition, and I didn't fully render the metal parts of them mainly because I didn't feel like they needed it, but that's just something for me to improve on later down the line.

If you guys are wondering where I went for my vacation, I went to New York and got to go to the MET and the Museum of Natural History. In both places I found Kofun period stuff and I was so happy to see it you have no idea. I remember one of the Haniwa I saw had some neat face paint under the eyes that I tried to replicate with the makeup under Keiki's eyes in my drawing, though I think I'll gave to figure out how to draw makeup on characters because this reads more like blush to me than anything. While drawing this I also looked up some references of Kofun period jewelry and really liked the stuff I found, which also meant that now she has proper Kofun earrings instead of earrings shaped like Kofun tombs. I put some of the things I referenced with a closeup of Keiki's face as well down below. I made her outfit more reminiscent of the outfit I gave her at the beginning of the year with the buttons and all, though I do want to try and draw her in some more period accurate clothing like the Haniwa I took a picture of at the Museum of Natural History. I wish I could find a way to make her handercheif look better though as I wish I made it a little bit bigger, though I think I'm saying this because I've looked at this drawing for too long lmao. Once again something to work on for when I next draw her. Also want to get better at rendering hair, as some details (like the little strands in front of her ears) kinda got unreadable due to the similarities in colour lol.

Now you may have also noticed the little cracks I added onto Keiki's face, and that's because I have fallen in love with the idea of Keiki's body being made from ceramic and that she crafted her body herself. While they aren't very visible I also tried to add some doll joints to her body, which is an idea I played around with in the past but never went to far with. I also want to get better at rendering cracks in ceramic, porcelain, etc, as I'm not sure how those read in the drawing. I also have a headcanon where the cracks in Keiki's face show up because of heightened emotions, and while Keiki is aware of this and does her best to make sure her face doesn't break off.... she will still end up with at least a few cracks during any given day, and she can often forget to repair her own body quite frequently so Mayumi has to remind her quite a lot. Mayumi even taught herself some basic sculpting techniques to help repair parts of her body that are so badly damaged to the point where Keiki can't repair them herself, i.e. if both her arms broke off, Mayumi would put them back together for her so Keiki can at least have something to repair herself with rather than nothing. I also like to imagine that if Keiki created her own body, if you took a look at Keiki from the beginning of her life she would look completely different compared to now.

BTW If you guys are wondering what a very very angry Keiki looks like....ok in order for this to make sense have any of you read volume 11 of Land of The Lustrous? Am I bringing back some memories for those of you that have? Ok good, glad we all got that mental image brewing in our minds, I'll probably draw a version of Keiki that is somewhat inspired by that one day as it's an idea I've had for a little while now. And to those who haven't gotten to that volume yet and are confused.... don't worry about it, just keep reading :)

#touhou project #art #fanart #touhou fanart #touhou 17 #keiki haniyasushin #wily beast and weakest creature #touhou #東方project #own art

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degrees-of-seracchii · 4 months ago

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this took a millennia to make cause i kept getting distracted and gathering screenshots to back my points up was incredibly time consuming

but it has been done. anon from how many days ago i hope you are happy

A little of Pure Sydney's flaws

There will be two parts to this cause on god this is long. On this part I will be exploring flaws that tend to be a bit more visible with pure Sydney

This is in no way a complete analysis, I definitely have missed many more of Sydney's flaws, and because Tumblr is a bitch and a half, I regrettably cannot jam as many screenshots from the game/its codes as much as I would like. But I hope this post could act as a good point of reference regardless for any fans of Sydney, or people looking to explore more of their character out there!

Continuing under the cut.

So.

What’s the deal with Sydney? What’s wrong with them, what are their flaws and what make the relationship between them and the PC so toxic?

Well ain’t there just so much to unpack.

In short, Sydney at their core is a spineless, directionless, malleable individual that important influences in their life can easily shape, be it their family, the Temple, or the PC.

Sydney, as they are today, was raised with beliefs upheld by the temple. Something they are deeply religious, devoted and grateful for. However, as we all know, some of those values can be extremely morally questionable.

Speaking of deeply devoted let’s start with Pure Sydney, shall we?

Victim blaming tendencies

One of the ideals Sydney was raised with is their extremely victim-blaming mindset. Which I have shown here

2. Lust and internal conflict

Something else that fascinates me greatly is that regardless of their state, Sydney is always tempted by the PC. PC’s existence and presence alone are pushing Sydney towards the pit of sinful desires no matter if they are Pure or Corrupted.

The first thing that comes to mind is when accepting their confession results in a decrease of Sydney’s Purity stat:

The notion of accepting Sydney’s affections is seen as an encouragement for them to fall towards sin.

Being in a relationship with PC means they are constantly fighting their own urges and desires. Being taught their entire life that these feelings are wrong, Sydney suffers from tremendous guilt. Even when promised and permitted by the Temple, Sydney still finds physical intimacy with the PC sinful:

These just go to show how deeply buried Sydney is in the Temple’s teachings, unable to stray from it. Which is a perfect segue into their next flaw

3. Attachment to the Temple and blind faith.

Even from the latest confessional scene added, Sydney clearly cares about PC’s wellbeing and displays great concern for them, almost breaking out of the ideals they were raised with just to defend their beloved. But they are not quite there yet. They still seek out for the Temple when they are faced with these doubts. They think that they are doing something wrong for prioritizing the PC’s best interest over the Temple’s teachings.

Sydney is INCAPABLE of detaching themselves from the Temple. The Temple is just such a big part of Sydney’s character that no matter what, they will side with the Temple before they think about the PC when forced to make that choice.

And in a way, Sydney’s blind faith is encouraged by the Player for choosing to keep them Pure. The PC is essentially acting as another shelter, shielding, “protecting” them. The PC never expressed that they wanted a change of mindset from Sydney, so Sydney never had a change in mindset.

And if you played the new confessional event, you would know that you as the player never had the option to either. This might have been intentional. But I will expand on that later.

More showings of Sydney’s blind faith can be found in littler events while praying with Sydney in the Temple, where they would turn a blind eye to fellow followers being punished:

A bit more about their attachment to the Temple I have also mentioned here.

4. Superiority/Saviour complex

Another aspect of Sydney that people talk about, but I don’t think quite enough, is how aggressive they can get, specifically towards those they deem as sinners. This is a trait shared among both states of Sydney.

For example, the beach date:

And several more.

Though, pure Sydney might be a tad worse at this. As they seem to find themselves more righteous than sinners:

If they are the one taking confessions, pure Sydney is often more judgemental compared to the more empathetic corrupt Sydney:

When PC as a member of the Temple is caught masturbating by Sydney, they take matters into their own hands:

They also display a bit of a saviour complex from their opinions about the PC at low Purity:

5. Dumb teenager

Just a small thing, but I feel like most people just brush over the fact that pure Sydney practically proposes to PC at high enough lust.

I think I don’t need to stress just how insane it is to propose to someone you haven’t known for long. Just to what? Have sex? Loser behaviour.

I can't wait to explore their flaws when corrupted :3

When kept pure, Sydney has so many interesting flaws that make them incredibly humane and a little irritating, but that's the charm of their character! They are deeply troubled and blinded by their own devotion that they are ignorant, a bit arrogant and even self destructive. It's what makes Sydney... Sydney and I wouldn't have them any other way.

#dol #dol sydney #sydney the faithful #sera rambles #technically #sera answers #cause this was asked by an anon and i just sort of didnt answer #woops #sorry anon i saw sydney suffering and forgot everything you said prior #i hope youre seeing this #when is the sequel coming? idfk when i finish drawing the little doodle for it but no promises #degrees of lewdity #tumblr should let me post more than 10 images...#i deserve yapping rights

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spider-jaysart · 2 years ago

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Hii I find your apocalypse AU pretty interesting. Was wondering if I could do some fanart? :3

@jonathankentstuff

Omggg!!! Yesss, I would totally be okay with you making some!! I would love to see that!✨

Sorry this took a bit to answer btw, but here are some reference sheets for the boys designs in this au that will probably be helpful for you to use!!

(Click for better quality)

This is also probably a good moment to finally expand more on what the au is about (which is why I added in Mar'i and Jake's there too) since I'm showing them now and also because I've been taking a long while already to make the post about it lol😅

(It's a no capes au btw, meaning everyone's just a normal human here and weren't superheroes in the past)

After tragically losing both Talia and Bruce, Damian is mainly surviving with Dick and Kory, plus the kiddos Mar'i and Jake.

After a very long while of doing just fine, they one day get completely seperated from eachother after getting attacked by a random group of greedy bandits. Damian got stuck with Mar'i and Jake on his side while Dick and Kory were only left with eachother, plus Alfred the cat who they carry around all the time in their backpack.

After seeing that there's no way to really get around and go back to eachother and also noticing that they have to continue running from the large group of bandits who are still after them, Dick quickly hands Damian a map and tells him to travel to the place that's marked on it, telling him that they'll all meet up there and reunite with eachother again. Damian promises to do just that and becomes Mar'i and Jake's new guardian while the three of them are on their own, protecting them both from any kind of danger that's thrown their way no matter what, while staying determined to return to Dick and Kory once again.

After three months later of already moving forward to get to their far destination, Damian, Mar'i, and Jake were resting at a small cabin in the woods for a night until the morning. During that night, Jon later happened to be walking around near their hide out all alone since he was lost. Damian spotted him and wasn't planning on taking any risks by just letting him wander around, in case he was actually someone who was just looking to attack and steal stuff if he found him and his little Nephew and Niece, so he sneakily knocked Jon out and tied him up in the cabin.

Once Jon woke up, Damian and Mar'i both pretended to be cannibals to scare him so that they could get their needed answers out of him to see if he was really just another bad person as expected. Because of this, Jon was terrified and just told them whatever they wanted to know, promising that he wasn't there for any trouble. With this, they saw that he was just a harmless kid just trying to survive like them, so they finally dropped the act and let him know that they were just actually faking it. Jon immediately became even more upsetted by all of this after being told that.

While Damian and Mar'i were distracted talking to eachother about what they were gonna do with him, Jon sneakily got loose from his ties and quickly surprised punched Damian in the gut in anger. Jon quickly stopped though once Mar'i immediately got in the middle of the fight and shoved him away from Damian, yelling "No!" In fear, making him feel a little bad for getting rough in front of the 8 year old girl. Then he soon started to hear Jake crying loudly too and began to feel even more bad for not realizing that there was a baby in the room as well.

That was when Jon got (an angry) explanation from Damian about why they did what they did to him, which was only for their safety. He began to start understanding the reasons behind it after that, but still felt pretty upset about the way it was done.

After some calming down, and for Jake too after being rudely awakened, Jon explains to Damian and Mar'i that he had gotten separated from his group earlier after getting chased down by some herd filled with the undead and is just trying to find his way back to his camp now, but is completely lost.

Damian, remembering he has a map on him and thinking back on how Mar'i and him haven't had much food to eat for days, decides to make a deal with Jon. He tells him that if they help him out, he has to give them some food to take back with them in the end in return. Jon, desperate to get back home and feeling delighted at being offered some help, promises them plenty to eat, so they make a deal. This was the start of their adventure together. (Damian didn't let Jon know about the map though and instead lied to him that he's an expert on traveling in the area, so that he wouldn't reject the deal and also so that he wouldn't think of taking the map from them and just run off with it either)

Along the way, the boys begin to later become good friends (with growing crushes on eachother and later become boyfriends too) and a found family type of thing also starts to grow between Mar'i and Jake with Jon over time too (he becomes like a new Uncle to them).

And after finally getting Jon back home in the end like promised, Jon wants to return the favor by helping Damian out in his own big goal too, just like how he helped him out so much during their little journey together. So the four of them venture out later to look for Dick and Kory like a team.

Phew! Glad that's finally done lol. I really can't wait to see what kind of stuff you decide to draw for the au and am very excited to see them whenever they're ready!!!✨:D (I also have way more stuff about the au, like what happens much later on and also how things started too, but that would just make the post too long lmao)

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queer-ragnelle · 1 year ago

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Hi! I really want to read the vulgate cycle but I have a hard time staying focused when reading it. Are there any sections of the vulgate that are not as important to the understanding or able to skip? Thank you so much for making all these stories accessible and thanks for your reply :))

Hello my friend! This is a great question and one I get a lot. The Vulgate Cycle is long and daunting, but I can help you navigate it!

Firstly, here is the full Vulgate Cycle PDF collection for everyone to read. Secondly, I'll summarize what you can do, and elaborate below a cut.

TL;DR

If reading a PDF, use CTRL+F to find your favorite character's name/stories.

If reading a physical copy, utilize the index (located at the very end of the Post Vulgate) to find them.

Discover chapters of interest from the summary page (also located at the very end of the Post Vulgate).

Skip The History of the Holy Grail and begin with The Story of Merlin or Lancelot I.

Now, let's break down the ways you can navigate the Vulgate Cycle step by step.

CTRL+F

This option will certainly be less effective if your favorite character is a prominent one such as Lancelot or Gawain as they appear a million times. However, if you want to learn more about someone else, say, the Lady of the Lake, you can search her up and find every instance of her appearance. Like so.

Index

In the very back of the final book of the Post Vulgate, there's an Index listing every named character [Ex: Gawain], location [Ex: Orkney Isles], entity [Ex: Holy Spirit], animal [Ex: Gringalet the horse], and language [Ex: Hebrew] mentioned in the entirety of the Vulgate Cycle. There you'll find a list of which book/chapter/page they appear in. Here are all the mentions of Gawain's horse in The Book of Merlin.

Chapter Summaries

Each book of the Vulgate Cycle has a Table of Contents with the chapter numbers and long, descriptive titles. That alone may give you an indication of what you want to read. However, at the back of the Post Vulgate, right before the Index, there's a list of every chapter in the Vulgate Cycle with a summary of events. That will give you more detail and may help you decide if you want to read in full.

Skip

If it sucks, hit da bricks. The beauty of the Vulgate Cycle is that you don't need The History of the Grail or The Book of Merlin to understand what comes later. I enjoy them because History gives a ton of background to the religious themes the Grail Quest will eventually explore and sets up all the motifs way in advance and Merlin has the Orkney Bros as well as Yvain and Sagramore as kids which is fun. But the fact is you can begin with Lancelot I and you won't be lost. Lancelot I was written first, Merlin is a prequel, so it's optional, and the motifs of the Grail Quest are going to be heavy handed when you get there anyway without the added stuff from History. That's hundreds of pages you can skip if you want to! Norris J. Lacy, the head editor, and his translation team did a phenomenal job with footnotes throughout, so if a character off-handedly refers back to something, you can rely on them to leave a little note at the bottom for you to refresh your memory with. It'll even give you a chapter/page number if you want to refer back yourself. Here's a footnote referring to Agravaine's unnamed amie [his ladylove] who helped wing woman her sister to romance Gawain. That was 4 chapters prior to this moment.

So there are plenty of ways to navigate the Vulgate Cycle and make it more digestible. That being said, it's translated so beautifully by Lacy and his team, that it reads like a modern novel. I have no doubt that once you get started, you'll become invested, and find it much easier to work through than you first thought. It's long-winded and character dense but it's fun. I do hope you're able to read it and understand why I love it so much! Thanks for this ask and I hope this helps. Have a great day!

#arthurian legend #arthurian legends #arthuriana #arthurian mythology #arthurian literature #the vulgate cycle #the vulgate #vulgate #post vulgate #quotes #resource #reading recommendations #my post #ask

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aringofsalt · 7 months ago

Text

diy ao3 wrapped: how to get your data!

so i figured out how to do this last year, and spotify wrapped season got me thinking about it again. a couple people in discord asked how to do it so i figured i'd write up a little guide! i'm not quite done with mine for this year yet because i wanted to do some graphics, but this is the post i made last year, for reference!

this got long! i tried to go into as much detail as possible to make it as easy as possible, but i am a web developer, so if there's anything i didn't explain enough (or if you have any other questions) don't hesitate to send me an ask!!

references

i used two reddit posts as references for this:

basic instructions (explains the browser extension; code gets title, word count, and author)

expanded instructions (code gets title, word count, and author, as well as category, date posted, last visited, warnings, rating, fandom, relationship, summary, and completion status, and includes instructions for how to include tags and switch fandoms/relationships to multiple—i will include notes on that later)

both use the extension webscraper.io which is available for both firefox and chrome (and maybe others, but i only use firefox/chrome personally so i didn't check any others, sorry. firefox is better anyway)

scraping your basic/expanded data

first, install the webscraper plugin/extension.

once it's installed, press ctrl+shift+i on pc or cmd+option+i on mac to open your browser's dev tools and navigate to the Web Scraper tab

from there, click "Create New Site Map" > "Import Sitemap"

it will open a screen with a field to input json code and a field for name—you don't need to manually input the name, it will fill in automatically based on the json you paste in. if you want to change it after, changing one will change the other.

i've put the codes i used on pastebin here: basic // expanded

once you've pasted in your code, you will want to update the USERNAME (highlighted in yellow) to your ao3 username, and the LASTPAGE (highlighted in pink) to the last page you want to scrape. to find this, go to your history page on ao3, and click back until you find your first fic of 2024! make sure you go by the "last visited" date instead of the post date.

if you do want to change the id, you can update the value (highlighted in blue) and it will automatically update the sitemap name field, or vice versa. everything else can be left as is.

once you're done, click import, and it'll show you the sitemap. on the top bar, click the middle tab, "Sitemap [id of sitemap]" and choose Scrape. you'll see a couple of options—the defaults worked fine for me, but you can mess with them if you need to. as far as i understand it, it just sets how much time it takes to scrape each page so ao3 doesn't think it's getting attacked by a bot. now click "start scraping"!

once you've done that, it will pop up with a new window which will load your history. let it do its thing. it will start on the last page and work its way back to the first, so depending on how many pages you have, it could take a while. i have 134 pages and it took about 10-12 minutes to get through them all.

once the scrape is done, the new window will close and you should be back at your dev tools window. you can click on the "Sitemap [id of sitemap]" tab again and choose Export data.

i downloaded the data as .xlsx and uploaded to my google drive. and now you can close your dev tools window!

from here on out my instructions are for google sheets; i'm sure most of the queries and calculations will be similar in other programs, but i don't really know excel or numbers, sorry!

setting up your spreadsheet

once it's opened, the first thing i do is sort the "viewed" column A -> Z and get rid of the rows for any deleted works. they don't have any data so no need to keep them. next, i select the columns for "web-scraper-order" and "web-scraper-start-url" (highlighted in pink) and delete them; they're just default data added by the scraper and we don't need them, so it tidies it up a little.

this should leave you with category, posted, viewed, warning, rating, fandom, relationship, title, author, wordcount, and completion status if you used the expanded code. if there are any of these you don't want, you can go ahead and delete those columns also!

next, i add blank columns to the right of the data i want to focus on. this just makes it easier to do my counts later. in my case these will be rating, fandom, relationship, author, and completion status.

one additional thing you should do, is checking the "viewed" column. you'll notice that it looks like this:

you can't really sort by this since it's text, not formatted as a date, so it'll go alphabetically by month rather than sorting by date. but, you'll want to be able to get rid of any entries that were viewed in 2023 (there could be none, but likely there are some because the scraper got everything on your last page even if it was viewed in 2023). what i did here was use the "find" dialog to search the "viewed" column for 2023, and deleted those rows manually.

ctrl/cmd+f, click the 3 dots for "more options". you want to choose "Specific range", then "C2:C#". replace C with the letter of your viewed column (remember i deleted a bunch, so yours may be different) and replace # with the number of the last row of your spreadsheet. then find 2023, select the rows containing it, right click > delete rows.

it isn't super necessary to do this, it will only add at most 19 fics to your count, but the option is there!

alright, with all that done, your sheet should look something like this:

exposing myself for having read stardew valley fic i guess

now for the fun part!!!

the math

yes, the math is the fun part.

scroll all the way down to the bottom of your sheet. i usually add 100 blank rows at the bottom just so i have some space to play with.

most of these will basically be the same query, just updating for the relevant column. i've put it in a pastebin here, but here's a screenshot so i can walk you through it:

you'll want to use lines 3-10, select the cell you want to put your data into, and paste the query into the formula bar (highlighted in green)

so, we're starting with rating, which is column E for me. if yours is a different letter you'll need to replace all the E's with the relevant letter.

what this does is it goes through the entire column, starting with row 2 (highlighted in yellow) and ending with your final row (highlighted in blue, you'll want to change this number to reflect how many rows you have). note that row 2 is your first actual data row, because of the header row.

it checks each row that has a value (line 5), groups by unique value (row 6), and arranges in descending order (row 7) by how many there are of each value (row 8). finally, row 10 determines how many rows of results you'll have; for rating, i put 5 because that's how many ratings there are, but you can increase the number of results (highlighted in pink) for other columns depending on how many you want. this is why i added the 100 extra rows!

next to make the actual number visible, go to the cell one column over. this is why we added the empty columns! next to your first result, add the second query from the pastebin:

your first and second cell numbers (highlighted in yellow and blue) should match the numbers from your query above, and the third number (highlighted in pink) should be the number of the cell with your first value. what this does is go through your column and count how many times the value occurs.

repeat this for the rest of the rows and you should end up with something like this! don't judge me and my reading habits please

now you can go ahead and repeat for the rest of your columns! as i mentioned above, you can increase the amount of result rows you get; i set it to 25 for fandom, relationship, and author, just because i was curious, and only two for completion status because it's either complete or not complete.

you should end up with something like this!

you may end up with some multiples (not sure why this happens, tagging issues maybe?) and up to you if you want to manually fix them! i just ended up doing a find and replace for the two that i didn't want and replaced with the correct tag.

now for the total wordcount! this one is pretty simple, it just adds together your entire column. first i selected the column (N for me) and went to Format > Number > 0 so it stripped commas etc. then at the bottom of the column, add the third query from the pastebin. as usual, your first number is the first data row, and the second is the last data row.

and just because i was curious, i wanted the average wordcount also, so in another cell i did this (fourth query from the pastebin), where the first number is the cell where your total is, and the second number is the total number of fics (total # of data rows minus 1 for the header row).

which gives me this:

tadaaaa!

getting multiple values

so, as i mentioned above, by default the scraper will only get the first value for relationships and fandoms. "but sarah," you may say, "what if i want an accurate breakdown of ALL the fandoms and relationships if there's multiples?"

here's the problem with that: if you want to be able to query and count them properly, each fandom or relationship needs to be its own row, which would skew all the other data. for me personally, it didn't bother me too much; i don't read a lot of crossovers, and typically if i'm reading a fic it's for the primary pairing, so i think the counts (for me) are pretty accurate. if you want to get multiples, i would suggest doing a secondary scrape to get those values separately.

if you want to edit the scrape to get multiples, navigate to one of your history pages (preferably one that has at least one work with multiple fandoms and/or relationships so you can preview) then hit ctrl+shift+i/cmd+option+i, open web scraper, and open your sitemap. expand the row and you should see all your values. find the one you want to edit and hit the "edit" button (highlighted in pink)

on the next screen, you should be good to just check the "Multiple" checkbox (highlighted in pink):

you can then hit "data preview" (highlighted in blue) to get a preview which should show you all the relationships on the page (which is why i said to find a page that has the multiples you are looking for, so you can confirm).

voila! now you can go back to the sitemap and scrape as before.

getting tag data

now, on the vein of multiples, i also wanted to get my most-read tags.

as i mentioned above, if you want to get ALL the tags, it'll skew the regular count data, so i did the tags in a completely separate query, which only grabs the viewed date and the tags. that code is here. you just want to repeat the scraping steps using that as a sitemap. save and open that spreadsheet.

the first thing you'll notice is that this one is a LOT bigger. for context i had 2649 fics in the first spreadsheet; the tags spreadsheet had 31,874 rows.

you can go ahead and repeat a couple of the same steps from before: remove the extra scraper data columns, and then we included the "viewed" column for the same reason as before, to remove any entries from 2023.

then you're just using the same basic query again!

replace the E with whatever your column letter is, and then change your limit to however many tags you want to see. i changed the limit to 50, again just for curiosity.

if you made it this far, congratulations! now that you have all that info, you can do whatever you want with it!

and again, if you have any questions please reach out!

#ao3 wrapped #tutorials #ao3

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andronomenom · 2 months ago

Text

Bruisers

18+ MDNI

Content warnings: addiction, relapse, alcohol, so much angst, SA, violence, blood, panic attacks, eventually comfort

Word Count ~ 3k

Author’s Note: I have not written a one shot in forever, let alone finished one. This came out wayyyy darker than initially intended. Not edited, hopefully coherent. Heed the content warnings.

Bucky Barnes x Reader, not even remotely canon so don’t come at me, reader and Bucky have been posted at a military base together but have no established friendship, no use of Y/N, reader is referred to as nickname “Scout”, no assigned gender. Reader relapses, gets violent, Bucky intervenes.

In the rare event that this is worth stealing, I wrote this myself. You do not have permission to copy or repost this without crediting me.

~~~

It had been a terrible day. God awful in fact and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do to fix it. You couldn’t yell at the people who pissed you off and they had too much control to make filing a complaint even a remote possibility. Maybe if ‘upper management’ had their shit together you wouldn’t have had five team members, including yourself taking psychic damage on what was supposed to be a research outing, but they weren’t the ones to pick a fight with.

It somehow added to the anger that you had tried so hard to be optimistic. All sunshine and rainbows despite having slept for less than three hours and waking up mid panic attack. You had to be positive for your team, tell them they were all doing their best and were going to do amazing. You don’t know if you really believed it, but you had to at least try.

And yet, at the end of the day, you were the one breaking down. You kept it together on the ride back to the base. Told everyone “it is what it is” and there wasn’t any point worrying about it now, told yourself now wasn’t the time to think about it, process it, accept that it had happened.

So now, with everyone else gone and hopefully coping, you were going to find your own way to cope. You had been good so good leading up to the mission and it still fell apart. So, what was the hurt in a little indulgence?

You made your way to the nearest city, booked a hotel for the night and settled in. It started with a glass of wine, just one to take the edge off. Then another, then the bottle was dry and you wanted to go out. Maybe dance a bit, play some pool, and make temporary friends with strangers.

And you did, you did go out. You found a bar, one that was just clean enough not to be called a dive bar and set your sights on a mindless night of enjoyment.

The night was going smoothly, you were buying drinks for strangers and they were doing the same for you in return. You lost every game of pool you played and that was okay because you expected that. You could almost say you were having fun, as long as you didn’t think about it too hard.

~~~

Bucky’s day had been decent. A rare day off with no plans and no upcoming missions to plan for. He felt good, good enough to socialize. Well maybe not socialize but at least be in the company of others. He took advantage of the sun in the sky and walked the perimeter of the base breathing in the fresh air. He took notice of your team returning to the base hours later than planned, looking a little worse for wear but smiling and joking. He watched you confidently reassuring them, embracing each member and telling them to take care of themselves. He wasn’t exactly eavesdropping, his hearing was just impeccable and he happened to be walking by when you all returned. Maybe he did slow his gait, but he had no need to rush. He could at least, admit to himself, that you had always been intriguing to him.

Bucky was planning on finishing his lap and retreating to his room to rest in the comforting silence, but as he watched you, he saw your smile falter. He didn’t exactly know you well, he didn’t even know your real name. “Scout” was what everyone called you and he didn’t speak to you enough to worry beyond that. He knew you lead the research team that frequently scouted routes for future missions. He overheard your constant words of encouragement to your team and he knew although you were in charge, you treated everyone as equals. In briefings you would talk about your findings while crediting every member. You could be considered “soft” or “sensitive” but you weren’t afraid to call bullshit if you thought your team was being put at risk.

That morning had been one of those times. The commander of your regiment called you and Bucky in for an urgent meeting just after midnight. An island about a thousand kilometres from the base you were stationed at needed to be scouted, and it needed to be done now.

“I have no problem getting my team ready and on a plane, but we at least need to know what we’re looking for.” You said. You knew just as well as Bucky did that there was no point asking why you were both being pulled in for this meeting.

Bucky had to turn his gaze to the floor to hide the smirk that tugged at his lips. It would never cease to entertain him, watching someone speak so bluntly to their commander, especially someone from what was considered a “lesser” unit.

“You know it isn’t your place to ask questions. I tell you to scout, you do so, and bring back your findings.” The commander shot back, a displeased scowl settled on his face.

“I’m not trying to pry information from you. I know what our job is, I just need to know how to prepare. You know our unit doesn’t specialize in combat and you’re sending us on an urgent scouting mission which implies there is something dangerous coming or already there.” You replied firmly, seemingly unphased by his frustration.

“Just be on your toes then. Do your job and do it quickly. Take a look around, get a map of the terrain and make notes on anything interesting that you find.” The commander was obviously getting riled up as he spoke to you and he wasn’t leaving any room for argument. “Is that a problem lieutenant?”

“Not at all, but I’m telling you, I don’t like it. And, if anyone on my team gets hurt then we definitely will have a problem.” You spun around, not waiting for a reply and strode out of the building, not waiting to be dismissed.

Bucky finally met the commander’s gaze, fighting the urge to laugh. You never seemed to have respect for authority, but you got the job done and did so well. So well that there were certain things you could get away with.

“Sergeant Barnes.” The commander nodded at him. “While their unit handles this, you just sit back and relax. If they bring back anything useful, you’ll know where to go and who to ask if any intel needs clarification. It could be nothing, but Scout will be your partner if we need to take a look ourselves. Got it?”

Bucky gave a quick nod, waiting to hear “dismissed” before heading back to his own lodgings.

With that exchange replaying in his mind he felt and twinge of worry while watching you dismiss your team. He knew that look, he’d seen it in the eyes of many commanding officers. That look that flickered across their face when shit hit the fan but they didn’t have the luxury of crashing out.

Before Bucky could decide if it was the time to pull you aside and ask if everything was alright, you were moving. You were on the way to the commander’s office and he knew better than to follow.

He saw you leave the base later that night. You had what looked to be an overnight bag flung over your shoulder. The commander had informed Bucky that he would be briefed by you and the commander the following day. The commander had given him a vague warning not to broach the subject with you until that time.

Bucky may not have known you well, but your return to the base plagued his mind. Something about the way you loaded yourself into your car had him worried. He let the feeling ruminate until he couldn’t help himself anymore and decided to make his way to the nearest town.

It wasn’t hard to find you, but it was hard for Bucky to convince himself that he wasn’t trying to find you. The town was small, kitschy almost with all the boutiques that lined the main drag. At this time, there was only one thing left open which was, of course, the local pub. He parked his motorcycle in the lot behind the bar, hesitating for a second before he dismounted. What was he doing here? Who was he to think of you were here that you would want his company? His concern for you outweighed his pride and he made his way to the building.

~~~

Your night started to feel like it was tinged with something bitter. Maybe it was the liquor or the guilt you were trying to drown with it. Or maybe, it was the loud asshole who had decided to make the bar his hunting grounds for the night. Every move he made was predatory - from the way he leaned in just a little too close when giving the bartender his order to the way his gaze lingered a little too long on every ass that caught his attention.

No, other factors may have been at play, but right now, this asshole was definitely the one ruining your buzz. And when he had the courage to stand behind you, arms reaching around to “help” you angle the pool stick, and you could feel his dick pressing against your ass, you finally had someone you could get mad at. Someone you could fight back against with few consequences. You were in your civilian garb, you had given anyone who asked some bullshit name to call you by, and no one who mattered was here to tell you no. To top it all off, you were too drunk to give a shit.

Bucky entered just as you had decided to let yourself go. He saw the man leaning over you, the way your entire body had tensed and then what almost looked like a smile come to your lips. Bucky didn’t like that look, he knew it only meant trouble.

You slowly stood upright, taking in a deep breath as the man continued to lean into you, any precedent of helping you with your game had long been forgotten. He had left you just enough room to turn around and you did so, a sweet smile on your face. And then, you shoved him. You took the pool cue and held the tip against his chest, eyebrow cocked in bitter amusement.

“I’m sorry, what were you trying there?” You asked, voice somehow soft despite the rage burning inside your chest.

“You bitch!” He spat and that was all it took to make you lose all control.

You were barely aware of what you were doing, something primal controlling your body as you kneed him in the groin. When he bent over in pain, you met his chin with an uppercut. All you could hear was your own heartbeat thudding in your ears, your only goal to make this man pay for what he was trying to do to you, what he had probably already done to countless others who weren’t able to defend themselves.

You were straddling his chest now, you couldn’t remember how you got to the floor. Your fists were beating against his face and you couldn’t tell if the blood was from your own knuckles, his bruised face or the shards of glass from a fallen beer glass that you were effectively kneeling in. And then, there were hands. Big hands on your shoulders pulling you up and away from the man lying on the floor. As you struggled to move forward, back towards the man who dared to touch you, arms came around you. Their grasp was too strong to escape and as you spotted the glint of metal between a gloved hand and leather jacket you knew whose hands these were. Suddenly, you were too aware of where you were and what you were doing. You stopped fighting back, tried to find anywhere to look other than the faces of the bar patrons, most importantly other than the man you had let loose on.

You didn’t know what Bucky said to the workers and patrons, why police cruisers weren’t racing to the bar. You were vaguely aware that you were on the back of Bucky’s bike and headed back to the base. Somehow, the guards didn’t question the state you were returning in and you were back “home.”

“Scout. Scout, I need you to look at me.”

You weren’t breathing right, you could feel your body shaking, and you couldn’t get your eyes to focus.

“Hey, if you can’t look at me I need you to at least tell me where you are.”

You gasped, the stupor of rage and alcohol beginning to lift. That voice, that was Bucky’s voice. And you were… somewhere on base? His room?

“I’m here.” You tried to laugh but it came out shaky as you slowly began to remember what had unfolded that night.

“Do you know where ‘here’ is?” Bucky asked. His voice was steady and with each passing moment you were becoming more and more aware of where you were. Aware of the fact Bucky was crouched down beside you with a look that you could only describe as concern etched on his face.

“I’m… I’m sitting on the ground. I… I think this is your room?” You could barely get the words out as your breath came in ragged gasps.

“Okay, good. Do you remember how you got here?”

“I… I uh…” Your breathing was fast, so fast, and it didn’t feel like you could get any air in your lungs.

“Okay, okay, don’t worry about that right now. I need to get you cleaned up. Can I do that for you?”

“Um… yeah?” You didn’t know what else to say, how to tell him you didn’t quite grasp why you needed to be cleaned up.

It didn’t seem to matter whether or not you understood right now. Bucky was gone, and then he was back, cleaning and bandaging your bloody knuckles, pulling shards of broken glass from your arms and dousing the cuts with antiseptic.

By the time he was done, you were all too conscious. Your buzz had faded and you could feel the guilt stirring in your chest. You finally started to take in your surroundings. This may have been Bucky’s room, but it certainly wasn’t on the base.

“Uh… Bucky?” You whispered, reaching out for his hand as he resumed his position crouching beside you on the floor. “I know I’m in this room… cottage maybe? But it isn’t familiar. Why did you bring me here? Why did you come looking for me in the first place? Why are you still here?”

Bucky let out a deep sigh, like he’d been waiting for you to connect with reality.

“We’re in a safehouse… well sorta. It’s a cottage I found years ago and cleaned up. It’s where I come to get away when everything gets to be too much.” He explained, eyes surveying your face before he continued. “I saw something in you when you got back from your scouting assignment. It scared me.”

Before you could ask if you scared him, he kept talking.

“For a minute there, you looked like you were about to fall apart. Then you put a smile on your face and went about your evening. When you left, well, I thought you were either looking for trouble or it had already found you. Also, it’s my cottage, that’s why I’m here. And I want you here so you can work through whatever the hell happened today.”

“Fuck…” You were hyperventilating now, every shitty thing that had happened swirling around your head and it was so overwhelming.

“Hey, Scout, look at me.”

You finally met his eyes, and then it came. The thing you had been trying to avoid by drowning it in booze or getting angry at things you could put a name to. You started sobbing and when you reached out for his other hand, he instead put his arms around you. You accepted his embrace and cried into his shoulder until you didn’t have anymore tears left.

You pulled your face away from his shoulder, feeling a little emptier now, but not in a bad way. Empty like you had let out everything you could and now all you felt was tired.

“How are you feeling now?” He asked, with a baffling amount of warmth and kindness.

“Better, I think?”

“Better is enough for now. I brought you here so you can stay for awhile if you’d like, clear your mind, get away from everything. You don’t have to worry about anything on the base, I’ve made a couple calls and as far as the commander knows, you’ve had a family emergency. What would you like to do?” Bucky hasn’t moved an inch, waiting for you to decide.

“I think I want to stay… but…” You took a deep breath and your next words came out more like a plea. “Can you stay with me?”

“If that’s what you want, I will.”

“Thank you.”

“Anytime, doll.”

He finally pulled away from you, standing to rummage through a dresser door and returning with some comfortable clothes and a towel.

“If you want, you can have a shower and get changed. There’s hot water and everything.” He laughed.

“Yes, thank you.”

You didn’t know how long you were in the shower but you did know that you were safe the whole time. When you returned to the main room of the cottage, the bed was made up for you and Bucky sat in an old armchair, staring into the flames of the fireplace.

You crawled into bed, wrapping yourself in the sheets and taking in the smell of cedar that seemed to permeate everything in the cottage now that you were attached to reality again.

“Sleep doll, I’ll be right here if you need me.”

“Thank you Bucky, good night.”

With that, you drifted off into a dreamless sleep, comforted knowing Bucky was watching over you.

~~~

If you got this far OMG thanks for reading. I did not read this over so hopefully it is semi decent? Something sparked the creative urge in me and maybeee I’ll make this a series? Who knows.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes comfort #bucky barnes angst #bucky one shot #comfort fic #sebastian stan #bucky fanfic

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