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hotwings0203 · 4 years ago

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I feel like Dabi would be the type of dude who would bully you incessantly at the LOV and for the life of you you can’t figure out why. He’s always around you and making snarky comments or pulling your hair, trying to catch you messing up on missions. You’re sure he hates you, and you do well to stay out of his way, or sometimes when you feel bold you’ll offer a quip of your own. The bullying increases whenever you talk to other guys at the bar, especially when you make Tomura crack a smile, Dabi’s breathing down your neck the second your leader leaves, calling you terrible names and pushing past your boundaries.

Cw: language, nsfw, noncon, manga spoilers, some angst?

In a perfect world, Touya would not have been abandoned and rejected by his family. In a perfect world, Dabi would not exist, and Touya would be eating dinner with his family right now as he shows his little brother how to properly wield fire to its fullest extent.

But there was no such thing as a perfect world, and therefore Dabi did exist. And Dabi doesn’t care for anyone, or anything.

Or so he tells himself.

“Slut”

“Nothing but eye candy, and shitty eye candy at that”

It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but it doesn’t make it any easier to ignore him

“What was that all about, huh? The fuck are you and crusty snickering about?”

Fed up with his continuous antics, you decide to mouth off a little too.

“Oh nothing, just talking about how adorable you and Hawks would make as a couple. And wipe that sneer off your face, it looks like some of your staples fell out of your mouth.”

It’s nothing too snarky, but in a second he’s shoving you in some dark room, forearm pinned against your throat as his hand is lit up with blue flames merely inches away from you, snarling in your face.

“You wanna be funny, bitch? I got jokes of my own too, why dont I show you what happens to dumb little girls who don’t know their fucking place? I think that would be real funny.”

But his hand is stopped from drawing near your wide eyes when you both hear Twice and Toga calling everyone for their next meeting.

He pushes you away from him, giving you a murderous look over his shoulder as he leaves the room, not paying mind to the way you slide down the wall in the dark.

You take extra precaution to try avoiding him for the next few days, not even making eye contact with him when you two get teamed up for tasks. He never mentions the room incident, if anything he acts as if it never happens. It’s like whiplash for you, he tries to weirdly talk to you more but all you offer him is mumbles and hums of agreement.

The conversation is never long, but it starts to be less talk of degrading you and more of begrudging questioning of what you’ve been up to. You never engage, opting to pretend like you never heard him, and strangely enough he leaves it be.

You give him a side eye one day as he joins you at the bar (much to your discontent), downing your glass just to fill another.

He says nothing as he slides into the stool right next to you, and pours a glass of whiskey for himself as well.

It’s awkwardly silent, you’re not sure if you should leave or not, but you’d be damned if you try to initiate small talk with this psycho.

But then, he speaks.

“Is Shigaraki sending you on the mission to get that UA kid?”

His gravely voice rumbles and cracks from his usual lack of use, and he clears his throat after he talks.

“No.”

“Oh.”

This is excruciating, you think to yourself as he mulls over the drink in his hand for a silent minute or two.

Toga calls you over thankfully at the exact same moment, and you breathe out an inaudible sigh of relief as you slip off the stool to join her.

“Wait-“ Dabi grabs your arm and you flinch out of instinct, expecting a slap or a burn to come from him.

He sees your reaction and shakes his head dismissively, letting you go and muttering a “Nevermind”. You don’t ponder over it as you trip over your own feet to join the eccentric blond.

A week passes, and then two. With each day you maneuver your way around him, request to be partnered up with different people in private, and busy yourself in random tasks. Every time you pass him by the bar he lifts his head from whatever he’s doing and tries to maintain eye contact with you, even going so far as to open his mouth to say or ask god-knows-what.

You try to ignore the foreign hopeful glint in his glacial eyes as you walk right past him, ducking your head as you do so.

It drives Dabi crazy.

He can’t handle any more rejection, he thought his family would be the last straw for him to ever want recognition or love validation from again. He wants to talk to you, to hear your voice as it snaps back with witty comebacks of your own that he secretly enjoys so much, even if it means he has to force it out of you with hateful words. He wants to feel your hair underneath his scarred hands, even if he has to mask the soft wanting of you in forms of yanking the strands. He wants nothing more than to see your eyes fill up with no other sight than him and think only of him, even if it means he has to corner you and scare you into submission.

But your silence is something he’s not used to.

Well, to be fair, you weren’t silent completely, but the only sentences he was hearing from you nowadays was when you were speaking to Shigaraki or the other League members.

You were the only idiot who didn’t notice the smoke curling from his nostrils and ears comically when he’d finally see you stop your stoic act just to open up to other men apart from him. Spinner, Twice, and Compress backed off almost immediately from talking to you for too long when they’d see the look on his face as he watched you surrounded by them, but Tomura would merely smirk from behind your shoulders and keep a level gaze with his subordinate, knowing fully well why he was so pissed off.

You began to notice the weird energy at the base soon after the rest of the men would keep curt conversations with you in comparison to your long talks about video games, sex, and life after you would all win the war.

So you thought it would be best to ask the most semi-normal person there that wasn’t fueled with testosterone and aggression.

“I just don’t get it, why are they all being weird? I mean, we all used to talk so much and now they just...try avoiding me. Except for Tomura of course, he’s still normal I guess. But he always has this smirk on his face when I’m with him and I can’t figure out why.”

Toga stops cleaning her blood-laced needle to give you a sly look, all fangs and glinting white.

“And Dabi?”

“What about him?”

She sits back on her haunches and cocks her head at you. “You really don’t know what’s happening here, do ya?”

“No,” you roll your eyes in exasperation. “But I’ll gladly take any theories here, since apparently I’m the only one who doesn’t get it.”

“He likes you.”

You gape at her for a moment and then burst out laughing.

“What? That’s crazy, he doesn’t like me, he hates me!” He can barely stand being in a room with me, all he does is talk shit and harass me.”

The blond curiously licks at a bead of red from the top of the weapon and you cringe when her own tongue rips from the sharp point.

“You say he can’t stand being in a room with you, so then why is it that he’s always there? He might talk shit, but he talks to you out of everyone else right? Regardless of if it’s something mean.”

You’re thoroughly flabbergasted. She had a point, but it was too much to wrap your head around. She cheerfully hums and gets up to flounce around the room, cleaning her already-tidy room up to a T.

“And that little silent treatment act you’re giving him isn’t helping either. I swear, Jin told me Dabi almost burned his mouth off that one day you, him and Spinner were talking about GTA. He totally cornered the poor guy and threatened his life if he didn’t stop talking to you.”

“You’re joking.”

“Am not. He wanted to do the same to Tomura but I figure he wants to keep his job, so he won’t. Doesnt make it any better for him when you’re all chummy with the one person Dabi can’t stand the most, though.”

No wonder your leader was so smug whenever you two were in the same room, your attention solely focused on him.

You run your hands down your face, moaning about the whole situation being fucked. It’s just your luck that you couldn’t take a clue, but to be fair, how could you? Being called worthless and a waste of space wasn’t exactly what you had in mind for flirty banter.

“Soooo what’re you gonna do now? I heard he’s gonna try talking to you for realsies like, tomorrow or something.”

“Tomorrow?” You yelp, jumping up to your feet. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I can’t face him!”

“Oops,” she giggles, twirling with outstretched arms around her room and falling down onto her bed.

“Oh god, I can’t do this. I don’t even know if I like him! He’s such an ass, and even when he tries to come off as normal he’s just so..unsettling. I don’t think I’ve ever had a good conversation with him.”

Toga props her elbow up to rest her chin on her hand, frowning in thought.

“Why not just tell him how you feel?”

You snort and fold your arms. “Yeah, because the psycho arsonist is really gonna take the word no well.”

“Hmm.. I see what you mean. Oh well, whatever you choose, I’ll support you!”

And with that she skips out of the room sing songing for Twice to make a clone for her.

You were fucked.

And sure enough, the next day he approaches you, hands stuffed in his pockets and an almost bored look on his face.

“Yo newbie, I gotta talk to you for a second. Come with me”.

You look blearily up at him through eye bags and mussed hair, a direct telling of your sleepless night. Your stomach drops when you hear his words, but you nod your head and take a deep breath, mentally preparing yourself of the speech you practiced till the sun rose.

No one else is bothering you both today, Shigaraki having gone to visit All For One and the rest of the League left to their own devices. It was something you weren’t so comfortable with, but you doubted a hero would come to save you.

He leads you through the short winding hallways, each step of his growing louder and heavier as the space started growing smaller. Finally, he reaches a dimly lit room and stops outside the door, gesturing for you to go in with a casual wave of his patched wrist.

“After you.”

You raise an unsure eyebrow at his uncharacteristic show of consideration, and do as he says. You’re sweating bullets, fists balled so that your nails are digging into your palms, and vision going in and out of focus as your eyes begin to adjust to your surroundings.

A loud bang pulls you out of your stupor, and you whip around at the sound.

Dabi is already staring back at you with lidded eyes, leaning his weight against the door, his arms crossing over each other.

You shift on both feet, picking at your nails nervously.

“So, what did you wanna talk about?”

He says nothing, but just observes you, his head slightly tilted as if you were some abstract art piece.

“Dabi.”

“You got a lot of nerve, y’know that?”

He pushes himself off the wall and advances slowly towards you, hands stuffed in his trench coat pockets.

You immediately back up with raised palms, sputtering indignantly at his offensive movements coming closer and closer. However you thought his ‘confession’ would go, this was most definitely not starting out like how you planned

“Excuse me? What’re you talking about-“

“I know what you’re doing. You think whoring yourself out to ol’ crusty and the rest of the guys here is gonna make everyone forget just how useless you actually are. What the fuck do you even do here? You fuck up half the missions which I have to come bail your ass out of, you constantly put us in jeopardy by being all friendly with everyone, and you can’t even keep your mouth shut when I need to let off a little steam, as I rightfully should.”

In a perfect world, Dabi would be the light of your eyes, the hero of your world. In a perfect world, Dabi would be able to hold your hand in his smooth one and tell you that he wants you so much that it impairs his rational judgement and makes him say things he doesn’t mean. He’d tell you that your presence is like a weight lifted off his chest, your presence means he doesn’t have to think or worry about the outside world, he just wants you all to himself without anyone interfering.

But this is not a perfect world, and Dabi is not a hero, but rather one of the worst villains.

So he does exactly what one does as a villain.

Instead of a loving look that he knows he’s incapable of, Dabi looks down into your horrified gaze as he traps you against the wall between his scarred arms, spewing misplaced venom at you.

“I don’t know what your problem is, but you need to chill out. First you go ballistic on me ‘cause I talked to Tomura for no reason, then you act all weird and quiet as if you’re some decent person, and now you think you can just bring me in here and tell me how worthless I am? Go fuck yourself, seriously.”

You scoff and make your way to push him but stop when he does what he did a couple weeks ago. You hold bated breath as he casually brings an inflamed hand to scratch at his face as if he can’t feel the hellfire emitting from it, and let out a whine of distress as he lowers his head mere inches from yours, lips almost touching.

“Stop talking to the rest of the guys,” he breaths. “Stop smiling, laughing, or going near anyone who isn’t me.”

You wonder if he knows how insane he sounds. He does, but that’s nothing he doesn’t know already. If anything, it solidifies in his mind that if he is to be as bad as the world has made him out to be, then he is acting exactly fit for the role.

“Why?”

“I don’t need to give sluts like you a reason. It should come as easy, right? What’s putting out for one more person?”

Your eyes are brimming with tears now, your stoic facade showing cracks as you sniffle a little bit.

He eats it up and groans watching salty rivers cascade down your cheeks. Suddenly, he feels as though he can no longer hold back anymore, he feels as though if he thinks for one more second he’ll combust.

So, acting on instinct, he surges forward and presses his lips against yours, swallowing your cries of distress and holding your hands above your head in midst of them frantically beating on his chest.

Your lips are so, so soft compared to his and it’s making him sink deeper into this instinctual daze. He puffs against your writhing lips as he thrusts his hot tongue in your mouth.

You try to bite him but when his hands heat up against your skin you resign to your fate and wail, allowing him to pull his hips flush against yours and start humping your thighs.

He draws back and bites your lips, teeth clacking against yours as he does so. You open your terrified eyes and blanch when you see the look on his face.

Lust is clearly drawn everywhere, from his blown pupils to his heaving chest, all the way to his flushed face and wild eyes. He looks as though he’s about to eat you alive and it’s appropriate that you feel like a lamb about to be slaughtered.

“Dabi, wait, please stop-“

But he cuts your pants off again in favor of slamming his hips against yours again and grinding impossibly hard on your legs, the friction of his jeans catching on your clothed cunt and forcing a mewl out of you.

“I’m not gonna stop. I’ve had enough of you teasing. You’re mine now, and if it takes burning our dear leader alive and this whole place down for you to understand that then I’ll fucking do it.”

He thought that terrorizing you would ease the empty feeling in his heart, that continuously berating you would force him to see you as what he always said you were, just another empty headed cunt. He thought that distancing himself from you and focusing on other things would make him forget about the soft feelings he longed to share with you, feelings he thought perished in the fire he was in when he was a young boy .

Even now, there is an ache in his chest as he hears you beg for him to stop, to let you go, that you’re sorry for whatever you did.

But this is not a perfect world, and not everyone gets their way in life.

You should really learn that, because Dabi already has.

And so Dabi will act accordingly to what life has put out before him .

#dabi imagine #yandere dabi x reader #dabi smut #bnha imagines #bnha smut #mha smut #yandere dabi #tw: noncon #touya #bnha touya #touya todoroki #Dabi #dabi x reader

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aureutr · 3 years ago

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I guess this little sub-fandom is finally big enough to draw the sort of purity culture backlash that Reylos dealt with for years. (sigh)

I’m not going to post in the tag because fandom wank (I refuse to call it “discourse” like the kids do) sucks but let’s talk about upsetting things in fanfiction a bit. I also went ahead and tagged this one appropriately so if you don’t wanna hear about it you don’t have to.

TL;DR the reason why AO3 and places that model after it are so “loose” on censorship is next time you might not be the one deciding what gets censored. I don’t want to pull “back in my day” but y’all don’t remember the purges of FF.Net or LiveJournal. Y’know, the reason AO3 exists in the first place.

I like reading and writing noncon fanfiction. For me, it’s because I’m into BDSM and part of that fantasy (again, for me) is total lack of control. Consent and safe words are amazingly important…in real life. But in fiction, in fantasy, it can be fun to skip. It’s not for everyone, of course, and that’s what tags and warnings and alternate channels are for.

I’m not personally into incestuous ships. But I know a few people who are, and every one of them is meticulous about tagging, warnings, and otherwise keeping things separated.

Are you sensing a pattern yet?

Tags, warnings, alternate channels separating topics and the like are tools to use to curate your online experience. It is a kind person who marks their content with them so you can do this without having to read it first. They are doing you a favor.

I’m not going to address the racism accusation much because it’s fairly vague. All I know is that the few times I’ve seen the accusation it’s coming from a white (fairly young) person and it sounds an awful lot like “you shouldn’t write about gay people because doing so is automatically fetishization” argument from my first go-round in fandom in the aughts.

I’m not going to say that fandom can’t be racist. It can, and we can and should make things better. But things you dislike are not inherently racist, either. I think the only concrete example I can think of is that Dinluke is racist because Din is usually the “aggressor” in noncon? But that also tells me you don’t read it. Titillating noncon reads far differently than realistic depictions of rape. Most of the Dark Din out there is as or less violent than canon. If you’re not interested, of course, you don’t have to force yourself to read anything you don’t want to.

Just, you know, learn to walk away when something isn’t for you. Or how to use filter tools. Or any of another dozen options. It’s very possible to live and let live.

Because it’s fictional. And if you can’t engage with fiction with enough of a critical mind not to be affected by it, you aren’t mature enough to use the internet unsupervised.

#Fanfiction meta #I am so tired #y’all #please #seriously #Tw dark content

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sithdestined · 8 months ago

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He can tell she lacks the confidence he had as a padawan, a confidence he carries even now. His was born from finding most of the challenges that were put in his way simply too easy, and not from rising to meet them and overcoming. It seemed to him that Hera was more the latter, which wasn't a bad thing. Sometimes, finding strength was only possible with adversity. Conquering fear was only possible if one was afraid. It didn't make her less skilled or capable. It just meant she would take some extra work, like the lessons Yoda had put together for her, lessons he had taken himself in order to better train and educate her. They didn't fight in the same form or even with the same number of weapons, but he wanted to do his best to help her and if that meant adjusting his own methods to better suit her, that's what he felt a good Master should do.

Besides that, he had the same expectations of her as he did of any other padawan. He didn't go easy on her just because she stumbled or got frustrated or wanted to quit. Unlike some other masters, though, he did his best to be reassuring and compassionate and to praise her, even when she might already know she had done well. It was far better than Obi-Wan's style of withholding praise because he thought Anakin didn't need it. Everyone needed it. "Have you tried watching holos? I know you see Master Yoda do it but....maybe you need more repetition." Yoda only had so much time to teach Hera, along with the younglings and his duties to the council. When she said she was tired, Force if he didn't feel it. Deep in his bones. It wasn't just exhaustion. It was fatigue. It never went away, no matter how much he slept or rested, which probably wasn't enough. And she was a child!

She shouldn't be tired already! But war...all the fighting, it was taking a toll on all of them. He'd have to find some way to keep her engaged, to make the combat feel more...fun. How could you make a child have fun when people and droids were fighting all around her? He'd figure it out, he always did. Setting his tools down, he reached into his robe and pulled out a slightly smooshed ration bar. "Sit. Eat. Tell me how your day went. I wanna hear all about it." He would, in her report, but he wanted her to start processing it now, before she went to sleep.

❝ I can’t remember the katas like he wants me to, ❞ Hera huffs, foot making a rock roll away. ❝ But I don’t understand why we have to practice all the katas in the same order all the time when we can’t even follow this order here? ❞ She might have gone a little better with two lightsabers instead of one (meaning that she doesn’t fall face down on the ground like an idiot anymore), but it’s still a mystery that she can’t quite master.

❝ You can’t have been clumsy. ❞ That’s for sure a little lie because Anakin Skywalker and clumsy are two words that make sense together even once. Chopper rolls in the tent right behind her, the astromech has been shadowing her ever since she managed to fix him enough for him to turn on after his ship crashed on Ryloth. He makes a grumpy noise of approval at Anakin’s comment, and Hera feels her cheeks heat up a bit. Compliments are something she needs to learn to deal with, too. Most of the time, she can’t tell if people are being nice just to make her feel better or if they genuinely think what they’re saying.

❝ Thank you, ❞ she says anyway. No one died today except destroyed droids, so it must have a little truth to it.

Hera shrugs at the mention of ration bars. She’s not too picky, so the bars aren’t a problem as long as they have access to some. Their missions could be much worse if the supplies started to be low.

❝ ... I think I’m a little bit tired.❞ The adrenaline from the fight isn’t completely gone, so Hera doesn’t feel exhausted. Yet. They’ve been out in the field long enough to know she has some minutes left until her body rebels. ❝ I don’t mind the rations, they aren’t that bad. ❞ They’re filling, instead, and really that’s all they need to keep going.

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xneens · 4 years ago

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side to side

Warnings: swearing

Word count: 4.6k

Summary: In which you're performing your hit single in front of your fellow Avengers cast-mates and Chris can't seem to take his eyes off of you, catching the attention of a few cameras.

"I'm here with the biggest pop-star of this generation, and she plays the very talented daughter of Tony Stark," the interviewer announced your name, smiling brightly at you as the camera panned your way. The hundreds of thousands of fans at home screaming when your face appeared. "How do you feel with all your nominations tonight?"

You smiled at the camera, giving a small wave at the people watching at home. "Honestly, I'm just glad I was even considered for these nominations. I mean, my girls Taylor, and Billie...they're amazing and I'm so happy to be put in the same category as them."

The lady grinned at you, her eyes twinkling. Or maybe it was her sparkly dress, the fabric nearly blinding you with how it shined under the lights. "If you ask me, you've got a pretty good chance at winning. I mean, your hit single—Side to Side—surpassed, like, a billion views in just a month? That's impressive."

"Well, I couldn't have done it without my fans." you replied, winking at the camera.

It was that time of the year again, where every artist, actor, and YouTuber hit the stage for the People's Choice Awards. With your crazy schedule, and the lack of sleep, you had planned to skip the award show until your friend, and co-star, Chris Evans—Captain America himself—convinced you otherwise. Even with the categories you've been nominated for had been more than a handful, but it was the begging and constant complaining from Chris that made you get off your tired ass and put it into a tight dress.

Your hit single, Side to Side, had everyone anticipated for your performance, unsure if you would be performing until the producers had put your name into the advertisement, making fans blow up Twitter. You were sure they had advertised your own song, along with your movie nominations, more than you ever had.

With nominations of Movie of the Year (Avengers: Infinity War), Action Movie of the Year (Avengers: Infinity War), Female Movie Star of the Year (Amara Stark), Female Artist of the Year, Song of the Year (Side to Side), Music Video of the Year (Into You), Beauty Influencer of the Year, and Social Celebrity of the Year, you had your hands full, which had only made your manager glow with happiness.

"Of course!" the interviewer agreed, glancing at the teleprompter filled with tiny words. "It was rumored that you wouldn't be coming, and a lot of us were upset, including me. Was that just a rumor or..."

"Actually, it's not that far off. I'm fucking—oh, shit—oh no!" you gasped, covering your mouth before anymore foul words could come out on live television. Instead of correcting you, the lady laughed, patting your arm softly. "Can't say that on tv. My bad. I, uh, with everything going on, I've been really tired, and I haven't slept in a week. I just wanted to chill, and accept my nominations at home but someone convinced me to come. So, if I say or do anything ridiculous tonight, I'm blaming him and my lack of sleep."

She nodded, clapping slowly. "I think that's fair. Is that someone, your onscreen father, RDJ?"

"He was one of the many people who unsuccessfully changed my mind, but no, it was Chris Evans. He promised me a day with his adorable dog, Dodger, and I couldn't refuse." you said, grinning at how his face had changed from hopeless to cocky as soon as he brought up Dodger.

"If I'm remembering this correctly, Chris Evans is that very handsome man you had kissed in your music video earlier this year. Into You, right? How do you feel kissing one of your co-stars outside of the movies your working on?"

"Technically, it was still acting, and I have kissed him before, so it wasn't awkward at all." you answered, glad Chris had accepted the role. Not only had it sky-rocketed the views and streams, but it made you feel better that it was his lips you were kissing and not a random model's. Yet, it didn't feel as professional as it had before when you pulled away after a take.

In scenes where you had to kiss the Boston actor, it was as professional as kicking Anthony Mackie's ass in Civil War but the kisses you shared on the set of the music video was definitely more personal. At the time, you had brushed it off as Chris being recently single, but now that you had broken up with Henry, you started questioning it again.

The interviewer nodded, squinting once more to read the words off the teleprompter before asking you another question that would certainly make the headlines. "I've been reading up on all those juicy tabloids and I've got one question that would satisfy my curiosity. Was Into You written about Henry Cavill or Tom Ellis?"

Usually, that type of question made you change the subject or altogether avoid the matter but this time, you wanted to joke about your failed engagement. "Henry, but Side to Side was written about Tom since I wanted more Grammy's considering the last album I put out won me a few. But this time, I'm gonna do it without an engagement."

The woman faked a laugh, surprised by the blunt honesty of your answer. "Um, you certainly do have a thing for British men, eh? I don't want to keep you up, but one more thing, for the fans. They've been dying to know if there's anything going on between you and Chris Evans. Any tea you wanna spill?"

"There's none to spill. We're just friends but it's always amusing scrolling through Twitter to find these edits of us." you replied, fidgeting slightly with the hem of your dress. Like usual, you had wondered if you should've worn something less extra but you had let your stylist play dress up with you for the past few months.

"Of course. Well, good luck to you, and I can't wait to see your performance." she said, giving you a little pat on the shoulders before announcing your name once again.

You got off the little platform, immediately taking Chris' awaiting hand, holding onto it as you climbed down the steps in your dangerous stilettos. Sighing, you leaned on him, trying to avoid the blinding camera flashes. "That was more exhausting than I thought it would be. You need to get me some caffeine after this is over because there's no way I'm making it to the after show without at least a few cans of Red Bull."

"So dramatic." Chris grinned, childishly sticking his tongue out as he guided you down the red carpet, stopping when told to take a picture. He let go of your hand, only to wrap it around your waist as you posed for the pictures. "Are you going to the after party?"

Posing seriously for a few seconds, you let your smile back on your face, facing the man beside you. "I was thinking about it, take a few photos, and head back home. Aren't you?"

"Actually, I was thinking we could ditch it and just hang out. You know, I did promise you some time with Dodger and you could waste a couple hours sleeping." he replied, his hand tightening ever so slightly on your waist. Flashing you a shit-eating smirk, he nudged you a little, pulling you away from the blinding flashes. "What do you say?"

You opened your mouth to answer only to be cut off by your manager, Alexandre coming out of nowhere to rip you away from Chris' arms. The latin man sighed in annoyance, glancing at his watch while giving you the look you've seen too many times before. "You're supposed to be in wardrobe right now. Get your ass backstage, and change before you miss your own performance. As for you, Mr. Evans, Megan wants your ass in a chair."

"I'll see you after." you say, getting dragged by your manager, winking at the actor before walking towards the changing area, the cameras following you until they couldn't enter the area.

Getting ready before a huge performance always calmed you down, maybe it was the smell of makeup or the feel of designer clothing made especially for you, but something about it made you feel comfortable and cozy. It was like a routine, especially with all the music videos and movies you had to film, the makeup, the hair.

They made you sit back, giving you your phone like a child while they made you even more sparkly than before, making sure you'd stand out against the flashing lights during the performance. A performance you made sure no one would ever forget. Smiling, you let your thoughts drift back to a certain super soldier as you were pampered.

—

"Welcome to the People's Choice Awards!"

The room darkened, the blue and pinks lights focusing on the stage as cameras all turned towards your shadow. Making sure your mic was set properly, tried to see past the darkness, to see a familiar face or two but with the headache coming on from the tight half-ponytail didn't help your case. The music started, the beat vibrating, you flipped your hair, and started.

"I've been there all night

I've been there all day (Nicki Minaj)

And boy, got me walkin' side to side (Let then hoes know)"

You rode the bike, belting out in your microphone, the attached headset limiting your movements a little. Gripping the handles, you made eye contact at the camera to your left, winking at it as you pedaled.

"I'm talkin' to ya

See you standing over there with your body

Feeling like I wanna rock with your body

And we don't gotta think 'bout nothin'

I'm comin' at ya

'Cause I know you got a bad reputation

Doesn't matter, 'cause you give me temptation

And we don't gotta think 'bout nothin'"

As you had sung, your eyes had adjusted to the bright spotlight focused on you, seeing a shadow of the one person you wanted to make you walk side to side. While you had answered the reporter's question, you hadn't been completely honest. Some of the lyrics had been written for the Bostonian; or to be more exact, your sex fantasies. With the chorus coming up, you let go of the handles, trying not to fall on your ass as you clapped your hands above your head, the claps matching the beat.

"These friends keep talkin' way too much

Say I should give you up

Can't hear them, no, 'cause I..."

Trying to be bold, you stared at him, his face in particular. The spotlight had blinded you so much that you couldn't see what his reaction was—or anyone's for that matter—but maybe it was a good thing. After all, his gaze always made you blush no matter how hard you tried not to. Pedaling faster, you threw your head back, hoping the motion would draw everyone's—Chris'—eyes on your chest.

"I've been here all night

I've been here all day

And boy, got me walkin' side to side

I've been here all night

I've been here all day

And boy, got me walkin' side to side"

With the help of a shirtless dancer, you got off your bike, taking the sheer jacket from him, and putting it on as you walked towards the front of the stage, moving your hips in to the beat of the song. Resting a hand on a shirtless dancer, you positioned yourself so you were grinding your ass against his crotch, throwing back an arm around his neck.

"Been tryna hide it

Baby, what's it gonna hurt if they don't know?

Makin' everybody think that we solo

Just as long as you know you got me

And boy, I got ya

'Cause tonight I'm making deal with the devil

And I know it's gonna get me in trouble

Just as long as you know you got me"

Sashaying to the little balance beam at the front of the stage, you made sure your hips swayed more than usual.

"These friends keep talkin' way too much

Say I should give you up

Can't hear them, no, 'cause I...

"I've been here all night

I've been here all day

And boy, got me walkin' side to side

I've been here all night

I've been here all day

And boy, got me walkin' side to side"

A few seconds after your note ended, you strike a pose on the balance beam, posing for a few more seconds while the cameras turned their attention away from you and onto the queen of rap herself: Nicki Minaj. The leather, pink bodysuit was identical to yours except for the color, her attitude fitting the badass outfit. She began to walk towards the stage, never breaking eye contact with the camera in front of her while the men pretending to work out to the choreo.

"Uh, yeah

This the new style with the fresh type of flow

Wrist icicle, ride dick bicycle

Come through yo, get you this type of blow

If you want a ménage, I got a tricycle

All these bitches' flows is my mini-me

Body smoking, so they call me Young Nicki Chimney

Rappers in they feelings 'cause they feelin' me

Uh, I-I give zero fucks and I got zero chill in me

Kissing me, copped the blue box that say Tiffany

Curry with the shot, just tell 'em to call me Stephanie

Gun pop, then I make my gum pop

I'm the queen of rap"

By the time she had finished her verse, you had caught up with the multitasking of both working out and singing, able to use your full singing capabilities for your high note. Nicki joined you on stage, hyping up the crowd while you built up for the high note, almost every camera pointed at you except for the one focused on capturing the headline-worthy expression slapped on Chris' face.

"These friends keep talkin' way too much

Say I should give em up

Can't hear them, no, 'cause I...

"I've been here all night (Been here all night, baby)

I've been here all day (Been here all night, baby)

And boy, got me walkin' side to side (Side to side)

I've been here all night (Been here all night, baby)

I've been here all day (Been here all day, baby) (Ooh, baby)

And boy, got me walkin' side to side (Side to side)"

Both you and Nicki motioned for the dancers to come towards you, curling your index finger at the sexy men. Singing the refrain, you both made them drop to their knees in front of you, as if they were kneeling at your command.

Just as the last note was sung, everyone clapped, the majority standing up, and more cheered. You noticed Chris hadn't done either, still sitting in his motionless while two camera men pointed their cameras at him. Your eyebrows furrowed, thankfully after the spotlight had shifted over to the miniature stage where the two hosts were babbling about nominations.

You were ushered off the stage along with the queen of rap herself, taking a few backstage photos before quickly returning back to your dressing room to change into your tailored dress. Your mind had wandered to why Chris hadn't applauded—not that he was obliged too, but a little something would've nice, especially with all the days put into the performance.

Taking a deep breath, you entered the big room, filled with your co-stars and other A-list celebrities. Little did you know you'd find out the reason to your question in the morning.

—

The loud ringtone woke you up, the sound obnoxious and borderline abuse to your ears. Beside you, Chris groaned, rolling onto his stomach, trying to muffle the sound of the call with his arm draped over his head. Putting him out his misery, you lazily reached for your phone, pressing the green button with dread, seeing the name across the screen.

"Hello—"

"You're trending on Twitter." Alexandre announced, happy with the results of the previous awards show. While it wasn't something as big as a Grammy or Oscar, judging by the amount of awards you had taken home, you became the people's favorite. "Hold on, lemme rephrase that. You and Chris are trending. Number one, world wide."

Glancing at the man sleeping beside you, you sat up, confused by the information given to you. You blamed Chris for making you stay up so late for your confusion. "Um, why? Did I accidentally have another nip slip?"

"What the hell?" Chris mumbled, rolling onto his back, his arm grazing your bare stomach. He immediately took it back, sitting up to look over your puzzled face. "What's going on?"

You shrugged, putting your phone on speaker so Alexandre could explain. Your manager chuckled, knowing you had stayed the night with Chris. He was just waiting for the day you'd finally have the guts to speak about the growing sexual tension. "Okay, Alex, explain."

"As much as I would love to go into full detail, I have other stuff to do so, I'm going to give you the basics. Chris' reaction to your performance went viral, people are shipping the both of you, and there's been thousands of memes made." Alexandre replied, a smile evident in his voice. "Anyways, I have to go. Got some interviews to schedule. Have fun getting your way out of this, Chris."

Your phone screen went back to the home screen, a picture of your family dog, Buster, smiling widely. Looking at Chris, you saw his eyes widened, his hands coming to rest of his face in embarrassment as he fell back onto the bed with a bounce, his head nearly hitting the headboard. "Oh, fuck."

"Are you going to show me what your face looked like or do I have to scroll through Twitter until I find it? Oh! Maybe they edited it in my performance." you thought out load, tapping on the YouTube app. You hadn't trusted yourself enough to log into your official account, knowing you'd probably make a mistake so you opted for having a secondary account where you could watch cat videos without the anxiety of posting something stupid.

Chris' hand snatched your phone away, tucking it in his pocket, the sweats he had slept in was somehow wrinkled, and his shirt damp from the warmth. "You wanna get some food? I'll cook some bacon but you'll have to make the pancakes 'cause the last time—"

"I wanna see your reaction." you whined, reaching across his stomach for your phone. Chris turned his body away from you, shielding the phone from your reach. "Chris!"

He waved your attempt away, rolling off the bed, his feet hitting the floor before you could fall back on the mattress.You poured, getting on all fours, crawling towards the edge. Chris took a step back, brows furrowing. "It's not important. Let's get you some food."

"Fine." you mumbled, an idea making you light up. Rolling off the bed, you glanced at his phone on the nightstand, exposed and easy to take. With quick reflexes, you grabbed his phone, rolling back on the bed until you reached the other side, making it impossible for him to reach for his phone back.

"Hey!" the Bostonian shouted, launching himself on the bed in attempt to get his phone back. He made a noise as you rushed out of your room, locking yourself in the nearby bathroom, laughing evilly when he threw himself at the door. He yelled out your name, his fist banging on the door. "I'm serious! Don't!"

Ignoring his begging, you opened his phone with your thumbprint. How ironic how much he didn't want you to look at his phone when he was the one who insisted you have the password to it. His arguments became louder as you opened up his Twitter, immediately heading to the trending section, seeing both your names at the number one spot.

"Damn, I look hot." you joked out loud, making Chris silent for a second before pleading for you not to continue. You smirked, scrolling through the tweets, trying to find his reaction. "Jesus Christ, what the hell happened to you? Did you fall on your face or something?"

Chris groaned, banging his head on the door in defeat as he heard your almost inaudible gasp, that quickly turned into little giggles. If he wasn't so embarrassed, he would've broken the door down to hold you in his arms. "Oh, no."

Bursting out into hard laughter, you fell into the large bathtub, hitting your head on the wall but you couldn't care less. The expression on his face during your performance had been borderline comical, the wide eyes, the jaw hanging open, the open hand resting on his chin while his eyes stayed strained on you the whole time, never wavering from your body, the sexy choreography making his jeans tight.

Cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West, tears ran down your cheeks, your stomach cramping from the maniacal laughter. Lifting yourself up from the tub, you stumbled to the door, your loud laugh ringing out towards the whole house. You let Chris in the bathroom, his phone quickly taken from your hand but it was too late. The blush on his cheeks wasn't going away anytime soon. You leaned against him, your head resting on his chest, while you panted out a question. "Why did you look like you were trying to attract flies in your mouth?"

Chris groaned again, covering his eyes with a hand while the other rested on your back. "You're not going to let me live this down, are you?"

"Oh, God, no." you giggled, wiping the tears away, beginning to calm down. Glancing up at him, you noticed everything above the shoulders was gleaming red, the embarrassment too unbearable for him. "Chris, you looked exactly like the first time we were forced to share a bed together."

"Yeah, you have that affect on me."

"You gonna tell me why you looked so ... shocked? Or do I have to search through Twitter and go with whatever fan theory makes the most sense?" you asked, unable to keep the smug grin off your face. Chris closed his eyes, wishing he hadn't made you come to the awards show in the first place. You raised an eyebrow, fingers itching towards his phone. "You know I'll do it, Evans."

The man raised his hands, taking them off of you as he paced around the bathroom, deciding if this embarrassing moment was the right time to finally confess. "It's just, you know, the dance was so ... sexual and hot that I probably wasn't the only one looking at you like that. You can't exactly blame me for being shocked, watching the girl I'm in love with—"

Chris stopped as you be watched the colors drain out of your face, immediately freezing when he realized what he had said. Both of you stared at each other, eyes wide, not moving a muscle, barely blinking; the atmosphere so tense neither of you were breathing, waiting for the other to talk. But neither of you wanted to go first, terrified.

It wasn't until you started to feel dizzy that you realized you hadn't been breathing, letting out a huge breath, trying to relax while Chris did the same, his hands shaking, a nervous tick he got whenever he was anxious. You got the courage to speak first.

"What?"

It was better than nothing.

Chris was so nervous he nearly ran out of the room. There wasn't some kind of handbook or script he could read, helping him tell one of his best friends how head over heels he was for her. So, he said what his brain was stewing. "What?"

"What—what?" you replied, unsure if he even said the L word, so lightheaded by the sudden confession.

The actor stilled, eyes widening even further, while his eyebrows shot up his forehead. "What?"

"What?"

"Say what one more time, Evans, and I will make nothing but mac and cheese for the rest of your stay." you threatened softly, getting tired of not having an answer to your one-worded question.

Chris took a deep breath, hands trembling as he clasped them together, hoping to find the right words, hoping his inner thoughts would come out clear, giving you the answer you asked for. "I'm sorry. What do you want me to say?"

"What you were saying before. You know, before you looked like you saw a ghost and almost stopped breathing. I think that would be a good start." you replied, backing up to take a seat on the plush chair. Chris mirrored your actions, putting down the lid to the toilet before sitting down.

"This isn't the way I wanted you to find out." Chris whispered, his blue eyes trained on the emotions that flashed on your face. Your uncertainty of the situation didn't help his anxiety.

"Okay, um, were you going to tell me in the first place?" you asked, playing with the hem of your shirt—it had been a borrowed Patriots shirt from him. Looking back, you realized all the little things he'd done hadn't been because his platonic love for you. "Or were you just going to keep letting it be this way?"

Fidgeting with his hands, Chris peered through his eyelashes, seeing the hurt flash across your face before you quickly composed it. "Scott was hyping me up, trying to convince me to tell you before you got into another relationship. Do you know the real reason I broke up with Jenny? It hurt like hell when you announced you were engaged. Fuck, I couldn't even pretend to be happy because you were going to have the life I wanted with you, with someone who wasn't me. It was selfish and I got really mad at myself for being a dick."

"But—"

"And then the horrible, horrible relief I felt when you called off the engagement." Chris continued, his heart clenching. "Truth to be told, that was the day I found out I was in love with you, breaking things off with Jenny. Of course, I wanted to wait until you moved on, hoping to be the friend you went to but with my schedule, that was impossible. So, you seemed out comfort in Henry fucking Cavill."

"You're in love with me?" you whispered, hoping this wasn't some kind of cruel dream. If it was, you wouldn't mind staying.

The actor nodded, waiting for you to call him names and rush out. "Yes. You can leave or slap me or whatever you want to do but I love you."

You got up, running a hand through your hair. "Okay."

Chris' heart sank, wishing for any other kind of reaction, wishing you'd do something. Taking a deep breath, he got up. "Is this a goodbye?"

Frowning, you walked up to him, taking his face between with your hands, pressing your lips softly to his. You could feel his heart beat, the little organ beating so hard. You pulled away before he could recover from his shock, before he could kiss you back.

"Hello."

#chris evans #chris evans characters #chris evans x reader #chris evans smut #chris evans fanfiction #steve rogers #captain america #reader insert #marvel #chris evans x singer!reader #nicki minaj #ariana grande #fluff #side to side #song fic

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skaylanphear · 3 years ago

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Hi there! Do you have any advice on improving traction towards a fanwork/fic? I love writing—and it's not for notoriety by any means—but having validation and feedback also feels nice (I hope that's not conceited). What would you recommend to someone without a large audience/follower base? I do "advertise" on tumblr when my work is written/updated on AO3. How did your journey start? Thank you!

This is an interesting question and I doubt most people are going to like the answers, but here we go:

So, first and foremost, you need to be realistic about why you're creating in the first place. If you're doing work in a fandom that is older, where content has stopped coming out, or that is simply smaller, you're not going to get much engagement, period. There will, of course, be activity in these fandoms, but it will be far less and the people involved—while they may view your work—will be less likely to comment/spread it around simply because there's not much going on. So if you're creating in that sort of environment (which can be a really good environment if you're looking for something chill with no pressure), then you have to be prepared for low engagement, even if the people you do meet and who are willing to talk about your work are more regularly in your sphere. You can probably make better/closer friends in these sorts of fandoms, if you're willing to try.

But, on the other end of this, if you're coming into a huge fandom late, it's also going to be harder to wade through the massive following to get your stuff out there. For example, in both the Miraculous and Sk8 fandom, I started work pretty early on, when the shows were still gaining traction, and so my "name" as a creator gained traction parallel to that growth, as opposed to when I started writing in the Voltron fandom. With Voltron, I came in super late and so what few fics I had that did gain traction took a lot longer to get there because people already had their fav content creators in the fandom, etc. It's not impossible to get popular in this situation—far from it—but it does take longer.

You'll also benefit from having finished works early on in a fandom's lifespan, at least with writing. This is because there's less competition for views and so more people will be filtered to your work, initially. This means that you have a better chance of getting those comments and kudos. Having a finished work increases this engagement because people look for finished works before works in progress. Generally, the length of a fic doesn't matter much for popularity, so long as it's DONE. When I was writing in the ML fandom, quite a few of my earlier fics were shorter, and they compete in popularity with my longer fics, because people care more about having a finished story, not a long story. That's why when it came to Only Practice Makes Perfect in the Sk8 fandom, I worked hard to get that shit done, because it was the most popular story I had in the fandom and I decided—like an idiot—to make it a long fic. Which, yeah, means people probably love it/remember it more in the long run, but if I hadn't finished it in 2 to 3 months, I'd have lost considerable traction as far as making a name within the fandom.

This leads into one of the most important points, if not THE MOST IMPORTANT point in gaining an audience—consistency. If you do want to be a successful creator, you Have To Be Consistent. This is the most difficult hurdle for all creators, and it is oftentimes impossible to make happen. If you want to aim for professionalism, which a lot of fandom creators don't care about (which is fine), then consistency is how you get there. Nobody wants to read a fic or follow an artist who doesn't stick to creating what they start (RIP all my unfinished works and the people who left me as a result, LOL). Using my most recent works as an example, I very, very, very consistently updated Only Practice Makes Perfect multiple times a week. To the point where people got comfortable expecting it, which is the key variable here. When people become comfortable that you will regularly create content, they not only stick around, but will be more interactive with you and your work. Nobody likes the disappointment of getting involved with a work only for that work to rarely get updates. Most people don't have the attention span to care. I'll admit, if I read a fic that's not finished and the writer takes one week to update, then one week, then THREE weeks, I probably will, like, forget about it. That's just life.

The best thing you can do is schedule. And again, this is the HARDEST thing to do, because it holds the creator to a deadline. Most people who create in fandoms don't want that kind of pressure—and that's fine. I go back and forth on when I have scheduled releases and when I don't, depending on what I'm aiming to do. But if you to retain your audience, telling them that you will update a work regularly on such and such a day and such and such a time, it creates something for them to remember. If they're invested in your work, they will think, "oh, it's Friday, that means such and such is coming out with something new." But, with that in mind, you also have to commit to a schedule that people will remain invested in. Which basically means you can't put things out more than a week away from each other, unless you're really, really famous, lol. If I told people I was going to go on a two week update schedule, I would lose most of my audience. But a week is long enough for people to both still remember and anticipate. That's just how the scheduling of the world works. And if you're an artist that's working on a big project, then you have to share progress, or pieces of what you're doing on a regular basis. That's what generates "buzz" and keeps you relevant. And, yeah, that's a really hard schedule to commit to, because it's a lot of work. BUT this consistency is where you see people being successful. Popular youtubers may not have gained their popularity by being consistent, but most sure do retain it that way. And again, there are outlying exceptions, but they generally ARE exceptions.

Speaking of hard work, here's probably the second hardest thing to accomplish—you have to be prolific. Especially as a writer. You have to write A LOT if you want to gain an audience. And yeah, that means you have to work, a lot. I love my work, so I enjoy that "grind," and I also have developed a lot of strategies to work around writer's block and every other obstacle that tends to catch people up. I work in a very professional manner—I do outlines, and drafts, and plan. I do a lot of stuff that people who do this kind of thing for fun can't be bothered with (and that's fine), but that's because I find it to be what works best in creating an efficient environment. I'm also very, very NOT lazy, lol. I was raised in an environment where you have to work for everything that you want. My parents didn't buy me my first computer, or snowboard, or what have you. We were tight on money and if I wanted something, they couldn't help me—I had to get that shit on my own. And I also grew up on a farm, where hard work was a staple of how you did things. You did things the right way, even if it was the hard way. You can't cut corners and it's the same with this. If you want it, you have to actually do the work, that's it. Some people get lucky with popularity, most don't. Most famous actors didn't become well-known off their first efforts, they had to keep trying and keep working and then they have to continue to do that to stay relevant. So if that doesn't sound great to you, then you might want to not focus on your audience and just create because you enjoy it, lol. Sometimes that's what I do too, when I don't wanna deal with the pressure.

Moving on, here's another point that nobody is going to like. Simply put, you also have to be good at what you do. I think some people don't realize that I've been writing fic for over fifteen years. I currently have nearly 2 millions words worth of fics on AO3 and that doesn't include a majority of the stuff I've ever written. I practice A LOT. I write every day. And I'll tell ya, when I started out in middle school, my stuff was not good. But I worked hard, I ignored the hate, and I kept going. That is the only way you will ever get better at anything. There's no quick way to become a better writer, or artist. And a vast majority of people are only going to pay attention to your stuff if it's quality work. Getting to that point is a process, on top of then creating stuff that fits into popular molds. Not only am I good at what I do (and I don't care how arrogant that sounds—I've worked my ass off), but when it comes to fandoms, I rarely write "rare pairs" and "crack ships." Generally, if it's popular, that's where I am. That makes a big difference and I honestly don't have sympathy for people who write rare pairs and such and then complain about lack of engagement. You knew what you were getting into (it's mostly the Miraculous fandom that gave me this bitterness). If you're not writing what people WANT to read, then your audience is simply going to be smaller. And that audience doesn't owe you their attention, no matter how frustrating it is or how good your work is. I could be the best writer in the world, but if I'm writing RekixCherry fic, I have nobody to blame but myself when nobody reads it. BUT if that's your passion, and writing a certain unpopular thing makes you happy, then, again, you need to not be concerned with traction and your audience.

The last point I'll make is that it matters HOW you present yourself online. A good chunk of the well-known creators in any fandom are, simply put, older people. And those that aren't, and are able to connect with those older creators, have generally created a bubble around themselves of maturity and, like, of being nice, lol. A lot of creators are skittish these days, and if you're an asshole (anti) or fight a lot over stupid shit, you may get a bigger audience, but you will isolate yourself from other creators. And this is important because oftentimes it is your exposure to other creators that will get your work circulating. The reason I got popular in the ML fandom? I wrote a short angst fic and a really popular artist shared it/talked about it and the rest was history. But if I'd had a habit of being an asshole, probably wouldn't have happened. And, granted, I'm not saying don't voice your opinions, but if you're loud all the time, it does turn people off. Especially creators because they are oftentimes the ones being attacked. They don't want to pull more of that negative bullshit into their lives. I'll admit, when I was in the ML fandom, I was down for a fight, but then that's what people came to expect, and it probably did turn others off, and then when I didn't fight, or didn't think the way my audience thought I should, it, again, turned people off. It's really not worth it unless being that type of person IS your platform.

So, that's all the advice I can give, I suppose. And even if you do all this stuff, that still doesn't mean you're going to be popular. At the end of the day, the thing that I stick to is this—I do what I want, I love what I do, and I work hard. If I'm in a position to worry about all that other stuff, then sure, I do, but otherwise… There's no easy way to become popular and, quite frankly, it's better to just "live" working hard and being a decent person than it is to focus on all this bullshit. I've created a working environment where I function within these "points" quite naturally, so it's not something I think about (except for schedules, lol). Sometimes I get popular in fandoms, sometimes I don't. At the end of the day, it comes down to how much work you're willing to do, because you will always be giving more than you are getting back, so you have to at least enjoy what you're doing.

Seriously, just do it because you love it. And if the pressure of everything above is something you don't love (I like a good, high pressure situation, lol), then don't do it that way—it's not worth the grief.

#skaylanphear replies #anonymous

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unpopularly-opinionated · 3 years ago

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I don’t play WoW but I used to play Overwatch and Diablo and this touches on just the general issues that are inside of Activision Blizzard right now regarding the major decline of World of Warcraft and how they’re losing to Final Fantasy XIV, how if the latest WoW expansion or Overwatch 2 flop as they’re projected to do then Blizzard’s most definitely going to pivot almost entirely to mobile games, and how the differences in age demographics are actually dividing the company into multiple camps.

It’s important to note two things: 1) this could be fake but also 2) the link came from Grummz, a former team lead on WoW and producer on Diablo II and Starcraft. It still could be fake despite this, but if he’s sharing it then I feel like there’s at least some measure of truth in this.

Transcription below in case this gets deleted and/or you don’t wanna click the link. Warning, it’s fairly long.

“I’m dropping this here after getting chewed out for three hours over shit the chewee did at work so fuck it. Assume larp and let me vent.”

>Shadowlands is a shitshow. Critical response, Player drop off and just about every engagement metric outside of cash shop have been catastrophic. No higher up expected this because of their “we are too big to fail, if we built it they will come” mentality. They refuse to accept their focus on the world being a begrudged mechanic to funnel players to raiding is not appealing to the player base at large because it appeals to them. They have spent the last 4 months trying to course correct but there is no solid direction and the response to 9.1 has only made things worse.

>Sylvanas is planned to replace the Arbiter despite so many people in the company and god knows how many online saying this would be a total replication of Kerrigans storyline in Starcraft 2 that killed none competitive interest in the brand entirely and you can only go “no, no they WILL like it eventually” for so many real world years before its time to change course. Thus far that has not happened.

>The elephant in the room is FFXIV. To the people in charge they are acting like this came out of nowhere and don’t even seem to understand why its drawing players away in their tens of thousands. We have all tried to highlight things it is doing that are clearly appealing to an mmo audience and not, in my opinion, focussing more on mobile game style retention traps to keep MAU users and habit forming personalities logging in. Its not that they don’t care. They just seem so pig headed and digging their heels in with their fingers in their ears thinking all the problems will go away because WoW is “too big to fail”, there will never be real competition and “they will keep coming back”. But they aren’t coming back anymore. Not in the numbers they used to.

>The people making the spending choices know this. The new model for WoW is market the hell out of a expansion pack for a huge quarter then use 6 month lock ins to pad numbers for the quarters after that. Even if corona had not happened 9.1 still would have been dropping after the initial 6 month subs expired to “keep the chain holding”.

>The mood in the company is tense but also very much “its just a rough transition period”. Activision has been pushing hard for Blizzard to release more regular product and to generate more income per user. As far as i know this is going to be a transition over the next 5 years to a much larger mobile/tablet gaming focus. By all accounts not just WoW but Overwatch was intended to be the moneymaker in the interim but once again someone had the bright idea to kill a game casual players loved on the alter of e-sports hoping for another Brood War. From what i hear the “told you so’s” were loud and a lot of people walked beyond Kaplan.

>The sentiment that was shared quietly in private but being spoken more often is simply that the leadership at Blizzard are not bad people, nor incompetent people but people who had to fill seats left when the old guard jumped ship wether they were suited for it or not. Brack is a genuinely good man out of his depth, Ion is a fantastic raid designer put in charge of designing a virtual world he has no interest or real ideas for and so on. They have been taking form the roles they excel at to be put in positions where they get to do far less of that purely because there is nobody left with the experience to do so and the trickle down is a lack of concrete direction, ambition and focus.

>2021 has seen the playerbase, media and gaming at large “turn” on WoW to a degree i don’t think the leads in their “positivity dojo” bubble considered possible. Its gone from people going “This is how Blizz needs to fix WoW!” to “WoW is no longer salvageable, time for greener pastures” and i think on some level this was never considered as a possibility so there have never been any major plans beyond the usual “try and minimise player drop off by arranging releases around competitors launching updates/products”. The official forums being filled with talk of FFXIV and worse “why do we actually pay a sub?” hasn’t helped.

>There have been some testing the waters lately from certain higher ups if we can remove the line “No King Rules Forever”. Read into that what you will.

>There are still arguments going on about the Kael’thas Voice actor shitshow. I don’t know much about it but i know its heated, wouldn’t be the first time a knee jerk reaction only seemed to generate bad press. We lost a noticeable amount of pvp engagement after the Swifty thing.

>The Preach interview was treated as a disaster and there was talk of more strongly vetting interviewers for “bad actors” and only engaging with a list of questions Blizzard provides. Some pointed out that could just be used to create some form of Fireside Chat akin to the FFXIV “Live letters” but that fell on deaf ears.

>The two sentiments right now among the team are either “we really need a win” or “theres a dedicated cabal of internet trolls out to kill WoW”. Right now we are crunching hard to get 9.2 ready to wrap up the jailors storyline so we can get an expansion out early 2022. If that doesn’t happen there are talks of major shakeups coming down from Activision that have been threatened for a few years now. Its an all hands on deck feeling thats been around to some degree since the “Is this an out of season April Fools Joke” Blizzcon. A make or break deadline is coming closer and things like Diablo 4 were not planned before then. Blizzard needs a significant win not just in initial profit but consumer goodwill. Nobody likes working at what the public now seems to see as “the bad guy” of the mmo industry.

>This has also made new hires decline. Not significantly but the “you WANT Blizzard on your resume” line doesn’t seem to have the appeal it used to. This has lead to more hiring via friend of a friend, to some rumblings about nepotism, and people severely lacking in experience “because they get great twitter optics”.

>On the topic of Twitter we are not being told to “disengage” from it. Multiple employees like Nervig and Holisky publicly attacking paying customers because they got too heated and couldn’t keep quiet is bad press that could have been avoided. A email reminder has gone around more than once lately stating “if you are not customer relations you should not be representing the company to customers, especially if you cannot remain professional”.

>Lastly the biggest elephant in the room is “yo’ boy” Asmongold. The newer hires cannot stand him. They have used terms like “toxic masculinity” and “dogwhistles to dangerous males” while some of the oldest crowd still remaining have called him “based” or “telling it like it is” which has lead to friction to put it mildly. People are told not to talk about him and the recent FFXIV stuff only made it all worse. The idea that an outside element can have such an effect on the product genuinely upsets people. Like Zach is engaging in some malicious act of cyberwarfare. Many of us have point out the now famous quotes by Naoki Yoshida about understanding that players will drift and we need to make something worth coming back to because they want to but some people for lack of a better word see out customers -or “consumers” as they refer to them nowadays- as some kind of antagonistic relationship where the goal is not being an entertainer putting on a show for a crowd but some kind of game hunter trying to trap a large, profitable kill. I wish i could blame Activision but this is a sentiment from more of the younger crowd than the “tech boomers”. Which personal opinion is probably why so many folks like Metzen and Morheim left.

>Before you ask, yes the topic of “wokeness” has shown up in group talks. Its not all some grand sjw conspiracy, people really do want to feel welcome and represented. However the “we need everything veto’ed by people not working on it to see if its inoffensive and bland enough” rubs some of us the wrong way. Like anything in life you can take something too far and lose sight of the core ideals and with everything gone on since Blitzchung it feels like people are forming little factions to pull people in different directions to decide “What Blizzards identity is now” and how to appeal to new players. There has been some drop offs with “go woke go broke” as the only answer in the survey when unsubbing but honestly we are losing subs in unforseen numbers anyway and still making more money than ever through cash shop “heavy users” so it honestly doesn’t make an impact.

>All in all things are rough right now. Blizzard doesn’t have the love of the customers anymore, is no longer treated as an industry giant and while D4,D2R and Immortal aren’t going to kill Diablo even if they fail the sentiment for World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 are a lot more tense and stressful. The phrase “it might be good to brush up on your mobile development portfolio if we get another underperformer” has been doing the rounds a lot. If Shadowlands continues its stark decline and Overwatch 2 is looking to underperform like its current projections suggest i think the Blizzard of a few years from now will be imitating King a lot more than trying to learn any lessons from Square Enix’s mmo division.

#random #video games #Blizzard #Activision #WoW #World of Warcraft #Diablo #Overwatch #Starcraft #Activision Blizzard

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extremelyblackandwhite · 4 years ago

Text

handmaid - 10

PAIRING: mob!sebastian stan x ingenue!reader

WARNINGS: age gap, mentions of violence, gun mentioning

A/N: i love to write this particular dynamic because i get to put some anna karenina vibes into this. hope you enjoy this chapter xxx

NEXT CHAPTER

Y/N had one favourite movie in the whole entire world.

You know the movies that make a cloudy, upset day immediately turn sunny and warm? Those movies which are the equivalent of a warm cup of cocoa accompanied by your favourite dessert? That movie for Y/N had always been The Princess Diaries and in her teenage innocent she had memorised that immortal quote “You know, in the old movies, whenever a girl would get seriously kissed, her foot would just kind of… pop.”. Much to her disappointment, during her first kiss at a particularly bad game of spin the bottle with a guy named Joshua Davies, her foot had not moved, her body had even been particularly stiff to that emotion that she had been looking for since she was younger. With Sebastian however, it felt like a million fireworks had set off the moment her lips touched his and just like Mia had promised, there it was ... the little pop of the foot. At that point, it didn’t cross her mind that he was engaged, that she was working and had known his bride to be for ages. At that point, Y/N was Y/N and he was the guy who had gotten her the most precious thing in her life.

It was a gentle kiss full of need as if both of them had been holding out kissing each other ever since they turned of age. It was Y/N, however, who broke the kiss for the much needed oxygen. The innocence in the eyes, the flush that had spread itself and her partially parted lips looked exactly like something Sebastian had dreamed about. He put his hands on her waist, taking a step forward until her back was against the wall. This action caused her to let go a little squeak, the nerves finally starting to settle down. Before she could withdraw from the confines of her mind and maybe escape, he was already kissing her again with much more need than before. Y/N felt helpless in that situation as she came to hold his hands, Sebastian however had another plan, grabbing her hands and holding them above her head.

This time he was the one who broke up the kiss to stare at her, to make sure this wasn’t some fantasy, some hallucination caused by lack of sleep mixed with the alcohol from every meeting. It was no fantasy, she was standing right there between him and a wall, breathe unruly and faint.

- This is wrong. - she looked to her feet, hands coming to tangle themselves in her hair.

- Makes no difference. - his point finger lifted her chin so she could stare at him with those wondrous eyes.

- You’re engaged.

- Makes no difference.

- I have to go. - she needed to go but her body was betraying her, continuing between him and a wall. - Can I go?

- Do you wanna go? - her eyes briefly looked into his. They looked calm, almost realised with that beautiful light blue reflecting every single beam of light in that bedroom.

There is a moment in your life where right and wrong merge into a grey area. Things aren’t right and they’re not completely wrong either, they just stand hand in hand, dancing in some sort of never-ending waltz. Y/N had read about those areas several times, seen those circumstances have a strong hold on the type of environment she had been born in, however, she always thought she would guide herself by the moral right and not find herself in the grey area. Nevertheless, here she was, in the grey area. Gwen definitely had her fair share of affairs. God, she was possibly having one right now, yet that didn’t mean Y/N should be allowed to just go on and have an affair with her friend’s fiancé.

Before her heart would win over her head, she managed to escape from between Sebastian and the suite’s wall, walking rather fast towards the door. Her mind was speeding too fast going through all the possibilities and all the things Gwen would do to her if she figured out she was making out with her husband. Not that she would care but ever since they were children what was Gwen’s was Gwen’s and that was final.

Entering her bedroom, Y/N sank into her duvet, turning around so she was facing the ceiling. Giddily, she sat up, hands on her face as her lips stretched into a child like smile. Her mind was screaming at her for this wrong doing but her heart was just soaring. Kissing him felt like never before, like some tension which had finally broke and spread out. She felt giddy and weak at the knees in a form that she’d never experienced, even with the little childhood crushes and first kiss.

Through her giddiness, she didn’t even hear her phone ring until it rang once more. With a swift movement, she picked it up, answering the phone to a very familiar voice.

- Dan. - her face lit up. - How are you?

- Good, I’ve been trying to call you for the past hour. Is everything alright?

- Yeah. - she sighed, cuddling against her very soft duvet. - Me and Gwen are in Paris, but I’m sure she’s spoken with you already.

- Yeah, I heard. Just checking on you, haven’t heard much since you moved in with the Stan family.

- It’s not much of a family, more of an individual, but it’s been a very nice time. He’s been polite to me and Gwen, if that’s what you’re worried about. - she bite on her lip, knowing what Daniel thought of Sebastian. - You should come to visit. Bring Sophie with you, I’m sure she’d love to come to the Upper East.

- I don’t think Sebastian or Gwen would enjoy having her older brother around.

- That’s crazy, you’re family, besides, I’d love to see Sophie.

- Okay, Y/N. I’ll speak with Gwen and when you’re back from France maybe we can schedule something.

- You better not be lying, Daniel.

- Never. Goodnight, Y/N.

- Night, Dan.

She turned the phone off, sliding down to lay into her bed. Soon enough, sleep came to her and with it and with that the regrets were set free. She was peacefully sleeping when a loud banging noise woke her up. By instinct she got up, shielding herself with her sheets. Her mind was screaming at her not to investigate and was she was about to return to sleep, another loud noise came through. Her more awake self could distinguish this as a gunshot which made her jump out of bed, looking for a place to hide which ended up being under the bed, hands on top of her head.

- Y/N! - her door was broke down open, the voice coming from Sebastian. She peaked from under the bed to ensure it was him and as her eyes confirmed it was him, she shifted from under the bed. Sebastian quickly grabbed her wrist, pulling her down the hall. Her eyes went down to the shining revolver in his hand and she wondered if it had been that causing the gunshots. At that stop, she pressed the heels of her feet against the floor, slowing them down. - Do you wanna get hurt? Is that it?

- Did you shoot someone? - she could hear various steps from the floor above, making her shiver at the realisation that maybe she wasn’t as safe as she thought she was.

- No but someone will shot you and me if you don’t keep running. - Sebastian kept trying to push her but she stood immobile there.

- What about Gwen? I need to go to Gwen.

- Oh, for fucks sake ... - he shoved his gun between his trousers and grabbed Y/N by her waist, taking her by surprise, before throwing him on his shoulder. Before she could start to protest her mishandling, he got back to rushing out of the building and onto the hotel’s fire escape, locking the door behind him. She could barely see what was happening due to her position and as she recovered from the impact, he had already thrown her in the backseat of a car, locking the door and entering the front.

- Where is Gwen?! - she pushed herself from the very nice leathered seats, throwing her seat belt on as he started to speed. - I heard gunshots, where is Gwen?

- Gwen is with Elias and the other bodyguards. Bottom feeders are trying their hand at a fucking overtake. - he was driving pretty fast, fast enough to make her slide in the backseat even with the seatbelt on.

- Where are we going?

- As far away from the hotel as possible. Don’t worry, I’ll call Elias once we stop driving so you can talk to Gwen.

- Is she okay? Mr. Forrest will have my head if I ...

- They would’ve had your head if you would’ve stayed there. I told you many times that whomever shots at Gwen will normally shot at you too.

She kept to herself, hand over her necklace. They drove from what seemed like half hour or so until Sebastian parked by what looked like a park and took his phone off his pocket. Y/N remained on the inside of the car, the gunshot still widely present on his mind, along with all of today’s events. It was too much.

She opened the door of the car and leaned against it, eyes fixated on the horizon as her mind ran at the highest setting it could. Before Sebastian could hand her the phone for her to speak with Gwen, she started to cry, face buried immediately on her hands.

- I’ll talk to you later. - Sebastian tossed his phone on the car, gently wrapping his arms around her. - It’s okay, you’re safe, Gwen’s safe.

- No, it’s too much. - she pushed away, cleaning what tears hadn’t fallen in her hands. - It’s too much. You’re Gwen’s husband, you should’ve gone to Gwen not to me. She could’ve gotten hurt.

- Are you listening to yourself? Can you even say a single sentence where you’re not speaking about Gwen? Have you even been selfish in your life?

- I owe her my life.

- You don’t owe anyone shit. So what if the Forrests decided to raise you that was their choice not yours. You don’t have to give them your life just because they raised you.

- But they ...

- You are no one’s property just because they did the decent thing and you are definitely not responsible for Gwen’s safety much less her actions or her well being. Maybe you grew up being taught that but not anymore. What happens to Gwen is my responsibility and if she’s injured, I will answer to Mr. Forrest, not you.

- You don’t understand. - she was frustrated with him. Why? She wasn’t entirely sure. Maybe he was right and her brain did not want to wrap itself around the truth because at the end of the day if she’s not taking care of Gwen ... who is she even? - They sent me to the best schools, paid my university tuition, my driver’s license, my phone. Everything.

- Even if they bought you a city, you don’t owe anyone your life. Were you really ready to have stood there in the crossfire just because of Gwen?

- She wouldn’t let me die. - she huffed like an upset child, arms crossed over her chest. He had to give it to her, she was fiercely loyal but also very very innocent when it came to people’s intentions.

- She would’ve used you as a human shield, Y/N. Did she ever ask you what you wanted to do ever since you arrived?

- No.

- I will never, ever let anyone harm you. Even if it means I’ll have to go against my wife.

tag list: @lilya-petrichor @xoxohannahlee @irespostthingsiwanttoseelater @nikkipea @madisonpillstrom @cevans98 @thelostallycat @sideeffectsofyou @anxiousdreamersworld

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan/reader #sebastian stan x you #sebastian stan/you #sebastian stan x y/n #sebastian stan/y/n #reader insert #sebastian stan imagine #sebastian stan drabble #sebastian stan fanfic #sebastian stan au #mob!sebastian stan x reader #mob boss!sebastian stan #mob boss au

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beetleboo · 3 years ago

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long post. one i’ve been trying to make for a while now. hell, i wrote this like... third week of may. didn’t post it until now because i didn’t know if I wanted to.

but something i want to lay out, been wanting to lay out for months. dont want to talk to anyone about it, just want to put the info out there for it to be seen.

if you re/blog this i will block you. i may put this on the relevant sideblog at some point.

because 2020 was the worst year on record for me for a number of reasons, and it’s torn me down to the lowest point i’ve been in a long time, and this is just. everything that’s gone down. not a callout post, no one gets named, but these are all the events

partially in relation to my fandom sideblog, because that’s where i had community, and where it’s all just. gone. doesnt exist anymore.

i started up a server, ages ago now. somewhere i curated to be a positive and safe space for things, and for a while, it was that.

around the end of 2019, spilling over to the start of 2020 when it picked up, i found, both on my blog and in discord spaces, in particular the server i ran, that people no longer talked to me. no one would hold a conversation with me past a few basic responses, no one replied to anything i shared, no one engaged when i tried to start discussions. so i pulled back from the main server - S1. thought it was just a lull in activity. stayed that way for weeks, months, and I just muted the server. no one ever cared about anything i had to say. was lucky if anything i posted got even a token emoji react

was in another, smaller server - S2. people i talked to damn near every day, even in voice. played games together - that became... no fun simply because everyone else was so much better/further ahead in the game. i was completely useless, so didn’t server a function in game and never really felt like anyone actively wanted me around, but i still participated in chat.

but again, no one ever responded to anything I posted beyond maybe a token react

couple people discussing something one day. I contributed with Theory A, and quite immediately got that shut down. few minutes later, they rephrased exactly what I said and happily nattered away. so whatever I said wasn’t worth it when it came out of my mouth but if they talked about it, it was all well and valid. so again, between that specific experience and no one interacting with me, nor anything I post. server muted. treatment taught me no one cared about my presence there.

gave admin rights to S1, my server, to someone I trusted. two requests only: dont delete channels and let me know if you want to invite anyone (since I kept it private)

RYE (i’m just assigning random three letter names to people to keep this straight) posted public invites several times. never asked me. one of the two things i asked. brought it up with them that it bothered me, just got vague noncomittal responses. more public invites. eventually, after having the server muted for months, i handed over full control and left. that was almost a full year ago. none of the people have talked to me in that entire year, through discord or here or anything.

except RYE who sent me a message after a couple months like ‘wow i havent heard from you in a while hope you’re doing ok’. i wasn’t. after a bit but still the same day, i said as much. that i wasn’t doing well. they never responded. and i don’t mean like, they didn’t respond that day. i mean i literally never heard from them until months later when they sent me a meme and also didn’t respond to me commenting on that meme.

and this is one side of things. all of the above was the first half of the year. this next bit happened about. march2020? I was in another server - S3. another place that was a good space at the time. was in voice chat with two other people. started talking about one thing. MIN very suddenly said something along the lines of ‘i don’t care about this i’ll come back when you’re done’

this is one of the very few things that can trigger me - i’ve had a lot of people talk down to me if I dare look excited about anything. when they came back, i asked if they could try to just. depart conversations more softly. MIN always said ‘if i do anything hurtful to you just tell me! i dont want to do that kind of thing!’

this was clearly a lie as they exploded on me, telling me they always have to walk on eggshells around me, that I ask so many things from them. before what I asked them that day, I can only recall one other thing i asked (which was not to talk about a person who was abusive towards me, and they were like ‘yea sure np’ about that, over a year prior’)

the whole thing turned into basically me having to shut down the fact that i was hurt by what they did, had to ignore that now and i had to fawn and placate them and the only thing i got out of that was that my feelings were irrelevant, only theirs.

(incidentally, I have had two other people turn on me in similar ways, accusing me of doing shifty/bad/terrible things, and not being willing to tell me what they are when I ask, only saying that ‘i should know what i did’ so that’s also now a Fun New Bit Of Trauma.)

and that entire weeklong event lead me straight to a breakdown. literal genuine breakdown i cannot convey how devastating that entire scenario was without going into far too many details.

so between all of these things happening in less than six months, with three different community spaces folding and collapsing and fading away from me, with many of the friends i thought i had just. moving on to other things and dropping me. people i talked to every day just not bothering with me anymore. they all have gone on to other stuff and no one ever went ‘hey beets wanna see what i’m up to’ or ‘wanna do this thing with me’

a handful of instances of me saying ‘yeah i’m dealing with these fears that have been reinforced lately that people aren’t safe to deal with, even thought part of me knows they’re probably irrational it feels like i have evidence to back it up’ and people immediately take it personally like i’m saying they’re not safe. despite. me outright saying. i know logically it should be irrational. but their reactions just reinforce it so it’s just a loop and tells me, again, never to bring up any of my problems with anyone.

so this all just reinforces that there’s something wrong with me. couple years back i spoke to a friend and how i was frustrated that I seemed to end up in bad spaces and they said ‘well you’re the one thing in common so its probably your fault’ and obviously they’re not my friend anymore but that has affected me so deeply. i can’t do anything without overthinking, whenever anything goes wrong i tear apart everything i’ve done and everything i’ve said or thought and i don’t know why things keep going bad. i try so hard but i’m just. not right.

so it all teaches me that there’s no point in reaching out in trying to talk to people because if i say ‘hey this hurt me’ i get ignored at best or torn down, yelled at, scolded. no point in trying to talk to new people because everyone just walks away at some point. not even a natural drift apart, i can handle that. but just very suddenly, they’re gone, off with better people doing better things.

roundabout, ties back to ‘consumption versus community’ - this is why i’ve been struggling so hard with lack of engagement on my sideblog. lucky to get a dozen notes on anything i make, unless it’s something other people can use (like mods) and even THEN it’s rare to see much activity. and that was FINE because i had people to talk to elsewhere, who would ask questions and we could back and forth and i shared my stuff and they shared those and it didnt matter if my posts only got a dozen notes because i had friends to talk to.

now i get (example) seven notes, six of which are likes and one is a reblog with no commentary. when i have something with a ton of notes, still, minimal commentary, no one talks to me. even on a mod with five hundred notes it just feels like i went ‘hey i made something :)’ and everyone picked it up and walked away with it, no one went ‘hey this is cool i want to talk to the person who made it.’

and it just feels like 95% of the time, i’m just overlooked.

and it’s worse than it’s ever been in my entire life, and I wonder, what’s the point of any of this anymore.

why bother to make the posts to share when it all just gets passed by. what’s the point in trying to reach out to new people and make friends when i get lashed out at or left behind? the social is gone out of my social media. i had community, and now it’s gone.

so this has all been going on for months and months and months and hey! suffering. and i dont expect it to get any better, don’t expect this post to fix these issues, but i’ve been trying to say something about all of this for fucking months and i think just, laying it all out is all I can do about it. i’m sure i’ve forgotten some things to touch on but as it is, all these events, all of it happening all together. new traumas, old traumas reawoken, reinforced, i’ve been torn to pieces i don’t know how to function, i can’t remember the last time i felt like even half a real person. taught that the safe, positive spaces that meant so much to me don’t actually exist and they’ll all turn on me and be torn away. nowhere is safe anymore, and trying to make it safe is just going to ruin me again.

people aren’t safe, places aren’t safe, been proven to me time and time again so i just. stay away.

no matter how much i try to fight that, it just doesnt work.

anyway tl;dr beets needs therapy probably

#beetleposts #miserytag

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auswriteforyou · 4 years ago

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Undeserving. (Ethan Choi, Chicago Med)

It was burned into her brain. Medically speaking, she knew that was impossible. She knew memories were less medical and more mental. Maybe she should schedule an appointment with Dr. Charles. Maybe he could get the memory of her husband having sex with April in an exam room on the 4th floor while she was doing life-saving surgery down the hall out of her head.

She understood the location choice. It was rarely used, the only time they made it up there was when no other bay was available. She had left the room feeling incredible. It was a difficult situation, one that required far too much attention and far too little preparation was given but it had come out with the best possible outcome. She wanted to find Ethan immediately, tell him what she’d accomplished and about the patient she’d grown close to in this process. She didn’t expect to find him in the exam room she heard a crash come from.

She had figured it was just a patient having wondered from their room but no. It was such a nightmare that she had no reaction to it at all. The scramble of them untangling, the sound of scrubs being pulled on and apologies falling on empty ears.

She filed the divorce papers the next day. She put in her transfer request that afternoon. He refused to sign them. Imagine that. He was unfaithful for months, treated her like a stranger for months, literally had sex with her best friend and now he won’t sign the damn paperwork. And here she was, almost a year later of talking only through an attorney from her very expensive law firm in New York because she didn’t even want to hear his voice.

But she was tired of wasting money and her efforts on getting someone as stubborn as him to do anything without getting what he wanted first. She pulled on her big girl pants this morning and decided that today was a good day for a whole lot of baggage. She boarded her plane, she landed, she came straight to the hospital and she was Pissed. The week long vacation she had been planning to Bermuda had been interrupted for this.

“No way.” Will Halstead greeted her at the door, eyes bright and smile shiny. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“Do I look that bad?” She smiled, knowing damn well she looked like a four course meal. She’d used this year to become someone she was proud to recognize, to grow the pain and assert herself in ways she never dreamed she would. She was a chairwoman on more boards than she could count. Lead cardiologist in the most sought after position in the most sought after hospital in the world. She knew who she was, she was sure of it.

“Honestly, you’re smoking hot.” He knew how to make a girl feel special. “Do I wanna know why you’re here? You looked like you were about to walk through the walls.”

She held up the file folder, a grimace on her face and he didn’t need any more context clues. They’d all heard the stories, how the papers got served to him in the middle of a surgery and the refusal to sign or send them back on his part. It was annoying honestly.

“Help a girl out, where might I find him?”

“Surgery Room 1.” Oh, good. He wouldn’t be able to run away.

The gallery was almost full, apparently a good surgery in their books. Thankfully, she’d timed it just right that they were beginning to close. She greeted her old coworkers, offering quick hellos and we’ll catch ups because she was always a business first kind of lady.

Ethan stepped more into view and that flutter she remembered from the first time they met flew into her chest. Had he managed to get more attractive? Her finger pressed the intercom. She cleared her throat.

“Ethan, if you don’t sign these papers you’re going to be the one who needs to be sewn up.” His head snapped at the speed of light to her in the gallery. She could tell it took him a minute to recognize her, or to make sure she was actually there. Could have been a mixture of both.

“Darling?” She rolled her eyes, waving the papers at him.

“Meet me at my car when you’re done. Bring a pen.”

He did not, in fact, bring a pen. He barely found her because he wasn’t expecting the Lamborghini rental car. He climbed into the passenger seat, eyes never leaving her face. It was kind of creepy.

“How have you been?” She snorted.

“A year of putting me through the political ringer and that’s what you start with?” She tossed the papers in his lap, trying not to let him see the hurt she still had lingering in her eyes. “Sign these. Please.”

“Talk to me.” He was quick to rebuttal. “Please. Let’s just have one conversation. I’ve spoken to no one but your lawyer for months.”

“Exactly Ethan,” He cringed at the lack of nickname, “I didn’t think I had to spell it out how much I didn’t want to talk with you.”

“Please.” He knew he had no right to ask her for anything but she was here on a mission. She wasn’t leaving without a resolution. “How have you been?”

“I’m head of Cardiology in New York, I have a dog, I bought a new car and recently found out I am allergic to fish. How’s April?” That was a low blow. She knew it, he knew it but she traveled far too many miles to not get her little jabs in.

“She moved away, I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen her since that day.” At least he was honest. She used to pride herself on being able to tell when he was lying but after all that, she didn’t know what she knew.

“Awesome, glad to know it was all for nothing. Now that we’re all caught up, sign them.”

“No.”

“Ethan, the next option is to have it annulled by the court in which they give me half of everything you have.”

“You were the only thing I had that ever mattered.” She felt her mouth drop open, felt like he had slapped her in the face.

“You’re kidding right? That’s how you treat the most important thing in your life then? I’d hate to be the things you hate. Honestly, fuck that.”

“I fucked up, I take full responsibility. I won’t gaslight, I won’t say you did anything wrong because you didn’t. I was weak, I was the one who sought out something new because I was afraid of my own insecurities as a man, as a husband. I thought I would never be good enough for you and I set out to prove it. It’s not that you made me feel that way or made me feel like I should be more, I just convinced myself I wasn’t.”

It was silent for a long moment, the damage between them beginning to sew itself back up because, for once, he was opening up to her.

“I fought tooth and nail for us, from dating to engagement to marriage. I fought for you when your brain fought against you. I fought for you when you couldn’t fight for yourself. And at the first sign of me healing myself, of me choosing myself for once, you ran off with my best friend because you both felt insecure about things out of anyone’s control.”

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. That’s the worst part. It’s the worst part because I took all the respect, all the trust, love, compassion you gave me and stomped on it. I treated you with such disregard and disrespect that it makes me sick and darling,” She looked at him for the first time since they decided to open up, “I am truly sorry.”

She stared at him for a long moment, the anger from earlier finding a lighter lull in her chest as she searched for any sign of a lie. She’d reinvented herself, made herself stronger through becoming who she had always wanted to be. He had reinvented himself by realizing where his mistakes were and how to better himself to be who he wanted, needed to be. She wondered for a moment if he was coming to the same realization as her. They weren’t the same people they had been. They had grown, sprouted leaves and vines and built themselves up from the roots.

“I forgive you.” Out of all the things to come out of her mouth, neither of them expected that.

“What does that mean?” His voice was almost a whisper, his fingers that had saved many lives toying with the edges of the file folder.

“It means we talk,” She took the folder from him, tossing it into the backseat without care. “And we figure out what this means, we don’t lie to each other and we try. Both of us this time. I can’t float this relationship, whatever it is or is not, we have to be on the same page.”

He looked at her like she’d put the stars in the sky, sewn him up with the tidal waves and took them to the moon. She wondered if he’d keep looking at her like that. It didn’t scare her to think that he would. They didn’t kiss, they didn’t jump into each others arms and scream at the top of their lungs about love and happiness. They let their pinkies brush over the console, their hearts and minds race at the thought of whats to be built and allowed themselves to begin to grow, with each other.

it’s been a hot minute but my fingers started tapping and that was that! This was a request from an Anon that I was happy to fill. I hope you enjoy, I apologize for the wait. It’s also been a LOOOOOOng time since watching the show, I don’t have any plot lines. I don’t even know who is still on it, hopefully I was vague enough to not deviate too far off script. (also I didn’t get to proofread this, I'm sorry). Thank you for requesting and happy new year!

#chicago med #Ethan choi #ethan choi fanfiction #Ethan choi imagine #ethan choi imagines #chicago med imagine #chicago med imagines #chicago series #chicago med fanfiction #I honestly just write whenever I want to huhh #anyways #enjoy!#auswriteforyou

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hongism · 4 years ago

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mists of celeste ➻ 10.5

➻ pairing: ??? x fem reader ➻ genre: space au, pirate au, space pirate!ateez, angst, eventual smut ➻ Word Count: 3.3k ➻ Rating: M ➻ Warnings: language, violence, guns and weaponry, blood, future warnings tba ➻ summary: Sneaking aboard the ship of a renowned space pirate may not have been the best idea, but you’ll have to make do with what fate has handed to you

⇐ previous | next ⇒

mists of celeste act one ➻ part 10.5

“Watch your step,” Seonghwa says as you follow him through tall double doors. Despite his warning, you still manage to catch your foot on the edge of the threshold. You don’t fall to the ground – a miracle honestly – but the embarrassment still causes heat to rise in your cheeks. Seonghwa doesn’t make matters any better by turning to smirk at your clumsy actions out the corner of his eye. “I said watch your step.”

“And I said no,” you bite back through the embarrassment. Seonghwa laughs through his nose, waiting for you to pass him before tapping away at the keypad beside the door. It slides shut, and you glare down at the offending piece of threshold that caused you to stumble.

“Are you gonna shoot it for offending you, princess?”

“Might shoot you for the hell of it, pretty boy.” You shift your glare to the tall Lieutenant, who maintains the cheeky grin on his lips even as you bore daggers into his head with your eyes. “Where are we anyway?”

“This is our training room. Shooting range, punching bags, sparring court.” Seonghwa motions around the room, pointing to each thing as he mentions them, and you follow the line of his fingers.

“And we’re here because…?”

“You’re so impatient, princess. At least let a man finish before you interrupt.”

“Your mouth wasn’t even open,” you retort through a scoff.

“I was thinking about what to say.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“Well be quiet so I can explain.”

You purse your lips, tongue darting out to run over the front of your teeth. Seonghwa seems pleased by your silence though, and a satisfied smile covers his lips before he continues to speak.

“We’re here to spar.”

“Oh, is that your definition of a good time?”

“If we were going by my definition of a good time, we’d be in my room.”

“I-I – we-well. Right. Yea. R-Right.” His less than wholesome remark comes out of left field, and you certainly weren’t expecting it in the slightest. You can’t stop yourself from getting flustered. Seonghwa chuckles again, letting his tongue toy at the corner of his lips before he speaks again.

“Sparring, because you need to work on your strength if you wanna use that pretty little trigger arm again. Yunho said physical therapy. Have you been doing it?”

“I’ve been doing stretches and stuff…” You trail off. You avoid Seonghwa’s gaze, but it betrays the fact that you have not actually been doing much to strengthen your arm. For which you blame no one but yourself, because, in all honesty, you would have gone to Yunho sooner if not for the lingering awkwardness of your slight argument not too long ago. Which no one knows about as far as you know, but you certainly aren’t planning on making it table talk.

“Right, mhm, stretches – or lack thereof – aren’t going to cut it.” Seonghwa moves away from you and prompts you to follow him, which you do albeit with no shortage of hesitance. He guides you over to one of the walls, opening a small cabinet to pull out a small roll of white gauze. “Wrap your palms and wrists. We’ll start on the punching bags before I kick your ass.”

“Kick my ass? Those are fighting words, Lieutenant.”

“I guess you’ll just have to prove me wrong then, no?” He tosses the roll of gauze over to you, one brow raised high. You catch it with ease but keep your glare on the man as you wrap the material around your palms and wrists. “have you ever done anything like this?”

“Of course I have. You think they just teach us to shoot in the military?”

“You never know. I was looking forward to teaching you a thing or two though. Damn, maybe we can do that if we ever get to try out my definition of a good time. I’m sure I can teach you a lot of things there.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to beat the shit out of you.” You yank the material tight around your wrist, securing it in place before chucking the spool of wrap back at Seonghwa. He catches it with one hand then motions towards where the punching bags hang off to the side with the same hand.

“Quit talking big and go over there.”

You sigh but do as told, and Seonghwa follows behind you. You can hear the tear of the gauze; he must be wrapping his wrists as well, but that’s putting a lot of confidence in your arm being okay enough to spar in the first place. As dramatic as Hongjoong initially made it seem, you haven’t felt too much a difference. Your hand does tremble when holding a pistol in front of you, but close distance isn’t an issue. It’s moreso long-distance that presents an issue, and only with pistols. You aren’t completely sure whether strengthening the muscle will fix that, but it wouldn’t hurt to try anyway. Seonghwa wraps around you, tossing the roll of gauze off to the side, and places a hand on the side of the tattered brown punching bag.

“Just give it a few swings and stuff to warm up. If you’re feeling okay afterward, we can try sparring one on one. Okay?”

“Understood,” you mutter back. Seonghwa clicks his tongue against the roof then steps away from the bag. You wait for him to get out of the way, finding his own bag. He starts to lay into it with jabs and punches. For a moment you just stand there and watch him hit the bag, but he hesitates when he doesn’t hear any sound coming from your side of the room. You whip your head back to the bag in front of you, settling into a stance you remember well from your time in the military.

This was always the most simple lesson for new recruits, and it was all based around strength. You were quite honestly a runt when you first became a recruit, however, and you had little to no strength. Sure, part of that could be blamed upon how you grew up and where, but it put you at a major disadvantage compared to your fellow recruits. That did make you the target of your generals for a time, and you were forced to go through extra training to just be on par with the other members of your unit, but the second they put a sniper in your hands, the balance shifted in your favor.

You still remember your old lessons quite well; although that’s a bit surprising since it’s been so many years since you first took them. The punching bag is rough under your knuckles as you knock against it. There isn’t much strain on your right arm, but the longer you use it, the more it burns. Not necessarily in a painful type of way, but rather just a tired ache in your muscles – a surefire sign that your muscles did indeed take a bigger hit than you initially thought they did.

Several minutes pass just like that; you and Seonghwa on opposite sides of the room, each hitting your own punching bag with force and dexterity. He’s the first one to pull back, sweat beading his hairline and causing the dark strands of hair to stick against his forehead. His chest heaves as he walks over to your side, hands pressed against his hips, and you notice that he’s pushed his sleeves up over his shoulders and revealed toned muscles that could definitely beat your ass handily.

You stop your movements as he gets closer and steady the bag with your left hand to look him in the eye.

“Yes?” You inquire when he doesn’t say anything right away.

“How’s your arm feeling?”

“No pain,” you answer with a small shrug of your shoulders. “Muscles are just a bit underused and tired.”

“You should be fine for some sparring then?”

It takes a second for you to process the statement as a question, and when it finally does, you nod with haste.

“Let’s do it, pretty boy.”

Seonghwa throws his head back as a laugh tears through his chest. He brings a hand to his hair, combing through the damp locks, and you follow him onto a thick mat. You backtrack immediately though to slip your shoes off and leave them at the edge of the mat, whereas Seonghwa just kicks his off on the mat and moves them with his hands. The two of you face each other in silence.

The gleam in Seonghwa’s eyes remains playful even as he secures the sleeves of his shirt further on his shoulders. You mimic the action and fold the sleeves of your basic white tee up like his.

“Two of three. Whoever gets knocked on their ass twice loses. Has to stay down for five seconds for it to count. How does that sound?”

“Easy enough,” you answer, smile stretching but you hide your teeth behind the line of your lips.

“I’ll go easy on you since you’re at a disadvantage, princess.” Seonghwa slides his feet apart slightly and falls into an offensive stance. You mirror his movements but step into a more defensive one. The second lesson they taught you in the military was to watch your enemy for patterns or nuances that would indicate weaknesses. Seonghwa is leaning all his weight on his front foot – the left one – which means he’s going to go for an attack first, then pull that weight back onto his right one. You push back on your right foot, shifting the weight back to be opposite his stance.

“I can handle you, pretty boy,” you taunt, tongue darting out to drag over your top lip.

Seonghwa’s left foot slides in, and you flit your gaze up to his face as he moves. The attack is easy to dodge, his movements readable and basic. You make a jab for the inside of his ribcage, he snaps his hand down against yours and catches your wrist with the same amount of ease. You twist your hand in his grip, slipping loose before he can toss you to the ground. Your gaze pulls off his feet to watch the shifts of his arms instead. As he moves left, you move right, and thus the two of you engage in a small dance.

He attacks next, staying on the offensive side of things. Feet skid across the mat as he lunges forward, but he turns at the last second and secures a hand at your hip. He fights to grab your leg, but you greet him with a sharp elbow to the shoulder. He stumbles back and lets your hip loose. You shuffle back a few steps. Eventually, you’ll have to shift over to the offensive side but Seonghwa won’t let up. He hits you with two consecutive attacks – one jab for your right shoulder, and as you are leaning away from him, he brings his right leg up to hook around your left knee. You don’t even have time to blink before he sends you down to the mat, hitting with enough force to take all the air out of your lungs. Seonghwa comes down with you, knee pressed against the inside of your hip to keep you to the ground. What follows is the longest five seconds of your life, and even as you try to tug out of his grasp, his weight proves too much for you to fight against.

“Five seconds, princess,” Seonghwa taunts as he pulls himself back to his feet once the time elapses. “One point to me then.”

He extends a hand to you, and you take it begrudgingly. He tugs you to your feet. The two of you fall back into your stances without missing a beat. Seonghwa’s eyes dance with playful exuberance as his stance falls to a defensive one. It seems that he wants you to be on the offensive side first this time, but you don’t take the allowance as a compliment. You’re certain that he could flip things back to the offensive side without much effort, so you opt not to go into an attacking stance quite yet. You keep your weight shifting from foot to foot.

You and Seonghwa resume your aggressive dance, exchanging blow after blow but not managing to send each other down quite yet. Whilst you manage to deliver several hits and they land nicely, it’s not enough to cast Seonghwa off his balance. However, now that you know a few of his tricks from the first round and watching his steps, you manage to dart around his attacks with haste. You are lighter on your feet than he is, although he’s still quite nimble and that surprises you for a man of his height.

An opening arises when he leans forward with his left foot. His right comes off the ground for a split second but it’s an opening nonetheless and you slip your foot under his before he brings it back to the ground. The surprise of hitting your foot rather than the mat causes Seonghwa to jerk upwards again. As his leg lifts you use all your force to ram your left shoulder into his chest. He stumbles back, balance quickly diminishing, and you sweep your leg in a circle to catch his and fully bring him to the ground.

His eyes go wide as he falls to the ground, and he almost seems to move in slow motion. You smirk as he hits the mat, an ‘oof’ escaping him, and you press one knee to the middle of his chest.

“Checkmate.” You know he’s more than strong enough to overpower you and flip the position with ease, but Seonghwa just lies back and smiles up at you with fire in his eyes.

“Good move, princess. That’s five seconds.”

“You practically gave that one to me,” you huff as you stand back up straight. You extend an arm to Seonghwa the way he did to you, and he lets you pull him up.

“Then I’ll make sure not to go easy on you this time.” Seonghwa chuckles to himself as he falls back into a fighting stance. You match him this time, knowing that you don’t have any room for error now that the score is one to one. Neither of you are directly offensive or defensive this time. Seonghwa’s posture is relaxed and confident, he doesn’t bend as low this time, and the gleam in his eyes reads arrogance. He’s certain that he will win this round as well, but you’re determined to at least give him hell before he takes you down.

You attack first this time, a swift jab to his outer hip, and Seonghwa closes your hand against his side by slamming his arm down on top of yours. He traps your wrist between his hip and forearm. You push your weight up against him, head connecting with his shoulder. This time, Seonghwa manages to keep you pinned though. He slips a leg between yours, hooking his foot around your ankle. The action nearly sends you spiraling to the ground but you spring your wrist loose at the last second and roll out of the way before he can pin you down.

You exhale a huff of laughter as you look up at Seonghwa. One of his sleeves has fallen back to its original place, but the other maintains its spot rather well. His hair remains pressed flat again his forehead, even more damp than before, and his chest heaves from the further exertion. You’re sure you look to be in a similar state of disarray but you don’t have time to think about it before Seonghwa is attacking you again. The sudden combination of attacks are rough and hard-hitting; he doesn’t even wait for you to get back up to your feet to hit you. You defend yourself as best you can, blocking around half of the attacks comfortably. One of his kicks hits your forearm awkwardly, and you release a small shout of pain at the contact.

Seonghwa ceases his attacks immediately. Freezes up actually and kneels beside you with eyes suddenly full of concern. In all honesty, it didn’t hurt that bad and you don’t even feel a dull throb coming from where he hit you. You’ve never been a fair player though, and you rub at the skin while hissing through your teeth.

“Are you okay? Did I hurt you? Which arm is it? Let me see,” Seonghwa rants, hands coming to rest atop yours. His balance shifts, and in that moment, you swing forward and flip him onto his back. You pin his wrists on either side of his head, a cocky grin overtaking your lips.

“Still going easy on me?” You taunt. Seonghwa blinks up at you, still a step behind, and when he realizes how you tricked him, his expression settles into a bitter one.

“That’s a cheap trick, princess.”

“It still worked on you, didn’t–”

You don’t have time to respond. Seonghwa somehow tugged his wrists out of your grasp while speaking. He swings a leg around your waist and pushes off the ground to alter your positions. All of a sudden, you’re the one laying flat on your back with your wrists pinned to the ground. Seonghwa keeps both of your hands on the mat with only one of his, and you’d be lying if you didn’t admit that the show of strength is mildly impressive. He lifts his other hand to glance down at his wristband. It’s his turn to wear a cocky grin.

“Five seconds, princess.”

“That was cheap.”

“You only had me down for four.” Seonghwa pokes the edge of his mouth with his tongue, eyes taunting you with their playful gleam. “I win. Two of three. Although you put up a better fight than I thought you would.”

“Oh, what a compliment.” You writhe against Seonghwa’s grip. The awkwardness of the position is beginning to settle in a little, with his legs pressed on either side of your hips and his hand pinning yours above your head. He doesn’t let up though, eyes ever-playful as he stares down at you.

“It was cute when you tried to pin me down.” Seonghwa’s eyes scan your expression. Your face is hot but moreso from embarrassment rather than the physical exertion. Seonghwa’s cheeks are a little flushed, small beads of sweat travel down his temple, and you follow the movement with your eyes. “I wonder…” He trails off without finishing the train of thought then pulls off of you a moment later.

It gives you a chance to exhale a shaky breath you didn’t know you were holding.

“How does your arm feel?”

“Like it’s gonna be sore tomorrow,” you grumble as you pull yourself into a sitting position. “But it doesn’t hurt.”

“Good. Maybe next time you can actually try to beat me.” Seonghwa stands up and tugs at the bands around his arms. He unwinds them while smirking down at you. You glare back.

“Next time?”

“You think I’m going to let you off the hook? That arm isn’t going to fix itself with some ‘stretches’. I’ll put you on your ass every day if I have to.”

“Yea, well, something tells me you’d like to do that regardless.”

Seonghwa quirks a brow at your muttered comment. You don’t miss the way his eyes trail over your body, moving head to toe, then he tilts his head side to side.

“Can’t deny that.”

“Ugh, you’re despicable.” You stand up and head for the double doors, intent on leaving the training room before he gets you even more flustered.

“Four o’clock tomorrow, Y/N!” Seonghwa calls out after you, a laugh in his tone.

“Yea, yea, whatever, pretty boy.”

✧✧✧ a/n: ohohohohoho i smell some sexual tension 👃👃👃👃 JKDFJ this idea came to mind, and some people on the survey were asking about sparring sessions or just daily lives of the crew along with y/n so i decided to break up some of our juicy tension with mORE JUICY TENSION wow at least im consistent sodifjofij i hope you all enjoy this part! it’s quite early in terms of me writing stuff but i couldn’t get this idea out of my head

this is a repost because i deleted the wrong one im sorry just ignore this and me slkdfjljiojo

taglist: @faeriewoobin @sugarrimajins @atinyinwonderland @2504-life @lil7bluedragon @sparklychangbin @jeong-uwu @jeonartemis @anothershorthuman @xxbluestrifexx @yayhei @haotheheckk @noonawriter

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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natusvincere · 3 years ago

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A Talk to Remember || Morgan and Vic

Who: @mor-beck-more-problems and @natusvincere Where: Morgan and Deirdre’s house When: Current What: Vic wants her dagger back, Morgan wants to chat first. Warnings: Mentions of suicide ideation

It was a familiar trip to Morgan’s home, but somehow, each time Vic made the journey there, the unfamiliar anxiety associated with the journey swelled a bit stronger. Today was no exception. She kept telling herself that the only reason she was even taking such a journey was to get her dagger back, but even she wasn’t so disillusioned to think that was the whole truth. The multiple spare daggers she had back at home weren’t the only thing that proved it. The things Morgan had been saying had been swimming in her brain, and she didn’t know if she wanted to hear more of it or set her friend straight for good. She’d been mulling over it for weeks now, exhausted at the back and forth her mind was constantly flip flopping between. One minute she’d be convinced Morgan was wrong and ready to write her off and the next she’d be drowning in guilt at the idea of Morgan being right. The latter seemed to be happening more frequently. After several moments of internal struggle, she found herself rolling her eyes as she buzzed the doorbell, switching her weight back and forth to quell the anxiety. Her face remained blank when the door opened, but her stomach flipped uncomfortably. There was so much she wanted to say, but “I was in the area” was all that came out of Vic’s mouth.

Morgan knew Vic had too much pride to come straight to the house as soon as they made their plans and too much pride to never show up at all. But it still came as a surprise when the doorbell rang and her friend, or once-friend, appeared on the other side. Morgan took several moments to process the woman’s presence and decode whatever Vic was hiding under, I was in the area. Maybe nerves, maybe agitation, but hell if Morgan knew what for, exactly.

“Uh. Hi.” She said at last. “Can I help you…?”

The silence between them was loud, and Vic was sure she’d squirm right out of her skin if Morgan didn’t say anything soon. And then she did, and Vic wanted to squirm away even more. She looked between Morgan and her car, contemplating if she should just turn and run back. Instead, she said, “You have my dagger. Did you forget?” There was something keeping her from holding Morgan’s eye contact, her gaze instead traveling from her chin to the doorknob to the plants she kept on her porch. “I just want it back. Then I’ll leave you alone.”

“No, I remember,” Morgan said, smirking. “Come on in, have a seat in the kitchen. I have to grab your knife from the shed anyway, so I can get stuff for a blood cocktail while I’m at it. Your kind can still taste stuff, right?” As frustrated as she was with Vic, she got some satisfaction in confounding her as often as possible. “That wasn’t a request. You’re gonna deal with my rusty southern hospitality or you’re not getting that knife back. How’ve you been, anyway?”

Vic couldn’t suppress her eye roll at the sudden change of plans. She had not expected to be invited inside, and it threw her off completely. At the invitation, though, she stepped through the door, her eyes quietly searching for evidence of the girlfriend Morgan spoke so fondly of. “That wasn’t the deal”, she said, hanging by the doorframe of the kitchen. “First it was I have to come by to get it, now we have to chit chat?” She blinked, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m not thirsty, thank you. And I’ve been great, just dandy, Morgan.” No existential questions coursing through her brain at all hours of the night. None at all. Her voice held a bite of sarcasm that she usually shielded Morgan from. “How about you?” She hadn’t planned on being cross, and yet here she was pushing away the only person who’d been patient enough to listen for years. She wanted to rip her own hair out.

“In Texas, it’s rude to turn down hospitality, Victoria,” Morgan said. “But, if you must know, I’ve been doing alright. I’ve recently become the guardian of a really great kid, I’ve just managed to hold onto my job for another semester, and my girlfriend and I are like, pre-engaged. I don’t know if that’s a word, but I don’t know what else to call deciding we want to get married but wanting to wait for a better time to do some fancy proposal stuff. Don’t know what we’ll do about the cats whenever we eventually honeymoon but--oh!” She squealed as Moira padded up and butted her head against her legs. Morgan laughed and picked up the little cat, smiling indulgently. “But we’ll figure it out. It’s a long ways away.” She held out the cat to Vic. “Do you wanna hold her while I get the stuff? She’s real friendly and with how much me and Deirdre carry and cuddle her, she’s used to cold bodies. Doesn’t bother her a bit.”

“We’re not in Texas. But I’ll be sure to remember to never relocate there. It sounds horrible,” Vic answered, though she was slowly losing the bite and bitter tone she had first entered the home with. She blinked in surprise at the new information, letting herself leave the doorframe and enter the room further. She was intrigued, admittedly, and desperate to know more. “A guardian? For a child?” She couldn’t imagine how something like that just fell into someone’s lap- even someone like Morgan with all her southern hospitality and gentle charm. The next bit of information Morgan fed her was perhaps even more intriguing. “Engaged to be married?”, she asked, wishing to clarify. The term was so different now than it was when she had been engaged. Barely anyone was betrothed anymore. Instead, young people of all classes and creeds had a choice in who they spent their lives with, and even freedom to leave when things became unbearable- and with barely any societal backlash.

She had been deep in thought when the cat was held out to her, and so she leaned back suddenly, looking at it in front of her with her eyes nearly crossing to refocus. She wasn’t sure if she trusted that the cat wouldn’t hate her- she smelled like dog and death and any cat worth her salt might be wary of such a thing. She looked up at Morgan hesitantly before she reached out to it, pulling it against her chest immediately. “What’s her name?”, she asked, scratching behind the small beast’s ears and pressing her lips against its head. “And where are your w- Deirdre and child?”

“Well, a grown child but, yeah,” Morgan said with a shrug. It still felt weird to say, and her results were definitely mixed at best so far, but playing nonchalant while Vic sputtered to catch up with what a woman’s life could be in this time gave her a shot of confidence. “And, technically not engaged because no rings, which we both want, but, I guess we have what you used to call an understanding?” She put on her best BBC voice as she said the word. “We’ve done the grownup part, but not the romantic, fluffy part. You know that’s a thing two women can do now, right? We don’t have to surrender our happiness by default, and we don’t have to hide it either.”

Her voice tapered off, softer, as she watched Vic handle the kitten. The vampire already knew where to scratch, and how to hold her, and Moira was curious and interested as ever at the prospect of making a new friend. “Her name is Moira. She’s only a year and a half old right now. Still a big baby.”

As she backed away, ready to give Vic some time to get a little less tightly wound, she couldn’t help but choke down a snort. Did she just try to call her family her women? “Uh, Bexley, the girl I take care of, is out with her girlfriend. Deirdre has a thing. Which means you’re stuck with me. When I get back in a minute, at least. I’m sure you’ll find a way to manage, right?” She winked, then backed her way out to the garden yard. She intended to take just a little bit longer than she needed to. She wanted Vic to have the chance to feel like a person and she didn’t know if there’d ever be another one after her sort-of-friend went home.

“However did something like that fall into your lap?”, Vic wondered curiously. There was no way the government could just place a teenager with a stranger to be raised unless they asked for it, right? Had Morgan been seeking out raising a child all along? Had Vic been too self-involved to even realize that it was something so important to her? Her focus was brought back to Morgan, and she had to press her lips together to suppress a smile at Morgan’s silly voice. “An understanding”, she repeated with a nod after she pulled herself together. “It seems that that’s what most young people come to these days before engagement. I know- I remember when the law allowing people to get married as passed”, she recalled nonchalantly. In truth, she had sat by her television with rapt attention that day back in 2015, unable to focus her attention on anything else until she knew what the ruling would be. “Have you ever hidden it?”

“Moira”, she whispered, pressing her forehead into the cat’s. “You’re rather funny looking”, she remarked, giving the beast another scratch behind her ears. “Winnie is 5 and still a big baby. I doubt she’ll ever grow out of it.” Vic had been wishing to see both Morgan’s new teenager and her… betrothed, for lack of a better word, but for now she’d just have to settle for groveling for her own dagger. Her shoulders seemed to drop when she was left alone with the cat, as if tension had physically escaped her body. She let Moira on the table, holding up a hair elastic she had in her pocket for her to swat at.

Moira rolled onto her back, lazily grabbing at the elastic and the tips of Vic’s fingers, eliciting a small chuckle from the woman. “How lucky you are to live without worries”, she whispered, playing tug of war with the cat.

Morgan left Vic’s questions linger in the air for when she got back. She wasn’t sure if ‘fallen’ was the right word, or how to tell what had happened without sounding a little conniving, even desperate. And then the other thing. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Vic assumed she’d always been out and confident. Vic seemed to think the best and worst of everyone, whichever way kept them as far away from her as can be.

She plucked the knife off its shelf in her shed and wrapped it up in a nice cloth and put it in the bottom of a basket, which she then piled with some bottles and then filled with blood from the murder shed. No death should go to waste, not if she could help it.

She lingered in the entryway when she returned, beaming as she watched Vic play with Moira. Animals had a funny way of revealing people, and Moira was showing a version of Vic that had been hiding for years. “Am I interrupting?” She said, beaming. “I’ve got everything right here, but that doesn’t mean there’s any rush.” She passed Vic a bottle of blood to make her point. Relax, make yourself at home.

“Also, I owe you some answers: the twenty-something kid is…complicated. We weren’t actively looking for each other, but we had similar social circles, she was my student for a semester, and she was staying with me here for a while before anything became even semi official. We just sort of…fit. Little by little. I feel kind of unfairly lucky to have her around.” Morgan shrugged it off, not wanting to get into her shortcomings. This talk wasn’t about her. “And as for the other thing: yes, I hid myself a lot and very well. The area I grew up in wasn’t kind to people like us, but thanks to ignorance, most assumed that a woman who likes flowers and dresses could never be one of them. And I say this casually now, because I’m out and I’ve slept around and dated, and now I’m this—” She gestured vaguely to the house, the frame of her life. “But that doesn’t mean those years didn’t kill little parts of me every day, parts that’ll never grow back. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t lonely and dark, or that I didn’t ever wake up hating the world almost as much as I hated myself. It just means the hurt has scarred over, and I get to be a whole person now. And I need you to know that you can be a whole person too, Victoria.”

“Yes”, Vic teased, albeit pulling the elastic back from the creature, choosing instead to scratch behind her ears again. She gazed inside the basket, her eyes searching for the dagger. When the bottle was placed in front of her, she closed her eyes and swallowed, only opening them again to gaze at Morgan. “Was this harvested ethically?”, she asked, her hand wrapping tentatively around the bottle.

She didn’t feed in front of people- she didn’t much like to feed at all, truthfully. It felt animalistic and vulgar and monstrous to do it so callously, but Morgan seemed to expect her to drink right here, as if they were simply eating lunch in the park together. Didn’t she see it was so much more horrible than that?

Her hand flexed and tightened around the bottle as she listened to Morgan explain. “A found family”, she clarified with a nod, having heard the term more than once but never really grasping what it could mean. “Is Deirdre also comfortable with this arrangement?”, she wondered. Her explanation of her youth was a lot easier to comprehend- a life hidden and masked was definitely something she relate to. “How old were you?”, she started. “How old were you when you decided to let people know?”

She looked away as Morgan concluded her speech, leaning back in her chair in shaking her head. “I’ve been hiding parts about me and letting them die since long before I realized I’m attracted to women, Morgan”, she explained, her eyes distant as if she were remembering some far away memory. “It’s not just… that. It’s not as simple as you want it to be. I can’t just undo who I’ve become. Not after 400 years.”

“It’s not human if that’s what you mean,” Morgan said with a roll of her eyes. “What kind of person do you take me for? It’s a very nice deer from yesterday, hit by a truck and left by the road. A fine vintage in the world of animal blood.” She watched Vic wrestle with this knowledge, or maybe just being treated as a person and a vampire at the same time, and sat back, making herself comfortable.

“Deirdre’s fine. She’s...we’re not doing this particular thing together, per se, we’re in different places as far as that’s concerned, but she doesn’t resent me or the girl and she does care for her well in her own way. I don’t know what more I could ask for.” She sighed, feeling the space between all she knew she could have and all she wanted and all she dared not ask for.

Vic’s next question took her out of her thoughts. She straightened and looked at the woman, her expression plain, her voice frank. “I was eighteen when I told my mother, because I thought my gayness was causing the literal curse that brought suffering to my family, that it was the reason my dad had died driving me to work. And I was twenty-four when I went to my first women’s only gay bar. And I was thirty, when I stopped being too scared to let women get close to me at all. It’s not something that happens all at once for anyone, I don’t think. So even if it is simple, or straightforward if you prefer, it’s not easy. A lot of straightforward things are really, really hard and that’s why we come up with complicated ways of getting around them. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, Victoria. You can always make new choices.”

With a lick of her lips, Vic let herself fully grip the bottle at the new information, her fingers fully wrapping around it as the need to study it dissipated. “Okay”, she said hushed and tentatively. Her eyes watched Morgan’s as she brought the bottle to her lips, but she put it down before she let herself take a sip. She didn’t like to eat in front of anyone because for one, not many of the few people she let into her personal life actually knew what she was. It was easier to keep it a secret, because the opposite would most likely mean losing them anyway. But two, there was so much wrongness associated with it. So much death and hurt and pain and… shame. It made her feel vulnerable in a way she didn’t appreciate, and vulnerability in front of anyone was a recipe for disaster.

And then there was the issue of fangs and red eyes while she was feeding.

It was too much, especially for Morgan to see her like that. Like the monster she was deep down inside. She let go of the bottle, choosing to cross her arms casually on the table instead as Morgan explained more.

“She seems incredibly understanding”, Vic remarked, sitting back a bit in her chair. She wanted to ask ‘Do you think she would like me?’, but it felt childish to ask something so frivolous. It felt childish to care.

As she listened to Morgan, her expression crumpled into one of sympathy. “It must have been an incredibly awful burden to feel that way, Morgan. Of course it wasn’t, you know that now, right? I mean… to me it seems…”, she paused, gesturing around Morgan’s kitchen, “that all of this is because of who you are, not in spite of it.” Morgan had a way of waxing poetry with her words, an artist in her own rite. But her poetry couldn’t bend reality, not always.

“New choices, like putting an end to turning vampires in to hunters?” She knew this is the conversation they’d been dancing around all along- the reason why she’d attacked Morgan in the woods and the reason she couldn’t face her after. She knew the whole truth now, besides the details, and it was clear she didn’t approve. “I decided after ten years that I’d make up for the monstrosities that come with being who I am now forced to be. And the only way I know how to do that is by doing what I’m doing, Morgan. Who am I if I just let myself be one of them?”

Morgan saw Vic’s hesitance to drink and met her eyes sympathetically. Apropos of nothing, she rose when the woman finished, saying, “I think I need a snack too, actually.” One Pyrex of brain balls later, she was back, and nibbling on them with the help of a kebab skewer. After some more silence, she found the words she was looking for, or at least the only ones she knew she was going to find.

“It was terrible, yes. And even after I found out that, no, we were cursed because my great grandmother Agnes pissed off the wrong witch, eighteen years of hating myself didn’t just disappear. Sometimes I wondered if the curse made me gay so I could suffer more, and worse. That isn’t true either, but my point is: it took time and therapy doing things differently for me to figure that out. And yes, I think not conspiring to murder every vampire you meet might help you figure things out. I think not lumping yourself in with the people who wronged you would help. What I really think will help is admitting that every sapient vampire is as different from each other as you and I are. You are smarter than reducing your world to a flat simplicity for the sake of convenience. And I think you can be braver than that too. I think you might even want to be.”

Another long, thoughtful bite of brains.

“Who is it that you think you’re being forced to be? You’re in control of your own choices, what monstrosities are there for you to ‘let’ yourself do that you don’t want?”

There were two deliberate blinks from Vic; the first one of confusion, and the second of understanding. Morgan was showing her that it was okay, in her own way. Their diets weren’t all that dissimilar, and neither was the way of acquiring them, she supposed. Was hers really all that worse simply because she was a vampire? This wasn’t a question that would have even crossed her mind a month ago.

Letting out a slow breath, she built up the courage to grip the bottle again, taking a sip before she had the mind to stop herself. Her eyes changed rather quickly, she was sure, and she could feel the fangs sprouting from her mouth; always so ready to reveal what she truly was. Her mind flashed back to the early days after she was first turned, when she would stubbornly stare into mirrors for hours at a time, as if looking long enough might change the lack of reflection that stared back at her. Later, when she’d finally succumbed to feeding, her sire taunted her with the description of how she looked during (a punishment, she was sure, for her insistence that she would see her own reflection again). She spent years smashing every mirror she found after that.

She hoped Morgan wouldn’t bring attention to it.

“But the curse… is it over now?”, she asked, concerned. Morgan was right that years of self-loathing didn’t just go away because you wanted it to, but the thought of going to therapy about such a thing felt so foreign to her. “I’m not murdering anyone. I’m a middle man”, she insisted, her body becoming rigid. “Do you think hunters are murderers?”

“Forced to be a ...vampire, I mean. I didn’t ask to become this, Morgan. I would have much rather… I was so close to d-...”. Vic swallowed, closing her eyes before taking another sip from the bottle. “This wasn’t who I was meant to become. This isn’t the Twilight, Morgan. We do not sparkle in the sun and attend high school classes. You wouldn’t believe… the thoughts that ran through my head when I was first turned. The ones that do now if I don’t feed often enough. They’re not natural...they’re not right. And what if stopping all vampires I can is the only way I can stop myself from becoming who those thoughts want me to be?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s very over. Witch magic fades after death, so after the ghost-girl who cursed us killed me a year and a half ago—” Morgan made an open gesture. “No more curse. No more magic. Just one zombie girl. Also, I would like to point out that I said conspiring to murder. Which, you have to admit fits the bill, right? And yes, I think hunters are murderers. All of them. Even the ones I like. If they intentionally kill a sapient being, they’re murderers. Some murders are…’necessary’ for lack of a better word. Because some people will refuse any solution that doesn’t end in death. But just because Vampire Serial Killer Number One won’t stop until they make someone stop them, doesn’t make what happens to that vampire anything but murder. If you’re going to extinguish a life from this world, you need to admit it and carry it. And I say that as someone who has murdered several people.” The soft humor her words had started with faded as she went on. By the time she stopped to pause, she could barely keep her eyes on Vic. This was bad, bad, dangerous shit to be admitting to. And even though she could fight, even though everyone knew where she was and who she was meeting with, Morgan’s cold blood prickled into ice under her skin with fear.

She swallowed a lump in her throat (guilt; even if she didn’t have regrets for all of her crimes, she definitely had guilt) and pressed onto everything else Vic had brought up. “What you are isn’t who you are. And I get it, I do. I didn’t ask to be what I am either, and I spent a long time wishing that I hadn’t. That I had just died. It wasn’t a bad death. It was better than whatever’s waiting for me now. And it would have hurt so much less. And I didn’t feel like Morgan Beck, witch and teacher and chronic mess. She died, and I—this person who used to be her and will become someone else—woke up. But who I am, Morgan Beck the Second, the Undead, is not defined or limited by what I eat or what happened to me.” Slowly, she reached out a hand for Vic’s. “I don’t know if you know this, but zombies are born starving. And when we starve, the world is…small and clear. There’s one feeling, something strong and powerful and good and sick, and all you have to do is try to satisfy it. The ground is just a path to feeding. The wind is just a hindrance, or something that carries the smell. We don’t even think, really, we just do. And the early cravings…sometimes, I could feel it coming. Like having a second voice in my head, another shadow, something that took people apart like they were pieces of cow at the butcher, something that remembered what parts taste best, after brains, of course. And I live in fear of that…impulse, that piece of me. But I also live knowing that it isn’t me.” Reaching out farther, in earnest now, she looked into Vic’s eyes, pleading, “Is there anything you thought when you were young and lost and hungry that’s so different from what I did? And—-who told you that exterminating someone else will change something that’s a part of you? It won’t. You can’t change yourself by killing or erasing other people. You can’t change yourself with all the hatred in the world. You’ve had four hundred years; if it was possible, that would’ve happened by now. So what if—what if the way to become someone you like and can be proud of is to accept that you’re a real person who can be kind of wonderful when she gets out of her own way?”

“Oh, it was her who-... That makes sense.” Vic blinked, processing what Morgan was saying to her. After a long pause, she responded. “I suppose, if that’s the sort of cut and dry definition we’re using, that would make me a murderer, too.” She didn’t break eye contact with Morgan until the other woman looked away, and even then she still studied her face. “In the beginning. I didn’t know there was any other way to be. And, well- ...I suppose I murdered my sire as well.” Her eyes fell back to her hands at that, as if she could witness herself doing it all over again. There was no shame associated with what she did to her sire, but her stomach did flip flops at admitting it outloud. How sweet it had felt when her thirst for revenge was finally satisfied. How sick she felt to revel in that sweetness. With a look back up at Morgan, it appeared she might have been experiencing a similar back and forth about her own murders.

It would have hurt so much less. That was a thought that Vic had never heard articulated into words before. Wishing for death felt so morbid and wrong, but had she been allowed to succumb to it, the hurt could have ended right then. And for so long, she was sure she was alone in that feeling. There were thousands of vampires and zombies walking around as if everything were perfect- like they were happy their life had turned into an afterlife. Vic couldn’t believe how affirming it was to hear someone share her sentiments. She looked down at the hand that settled into hers and listened and listened and listened as more of Morgan’s experiences seemed to mesh with her own, mixing and swirling like paint on a paper, until you could no longer differentiate between the two unless you tried your hardest.

She looked up into Morgan’s eyes, fresh tears prickling at her own. She shook her head at the question posed, though it was slight and small, and if Morgan blinked, she would have missed it. Nothing was different about their origins, not really. Not when you dug deep and looked at them transparently.

There was a long, teary pause before she finally answered again. It was a collection of composure, more than anything. “I wouldn’t even know how I would begin to stop what I do, Morgan. I’ve hurt… so many people. And interacted with so many slayers who would do the same to me if they found out the truth.”

“I know,” Morgan said, coming around close to Vic and pulling her into a hug. “I’m not saying it won’t be hard or that it won’t hurt in its own way. But I am saying that it will be better than where you are right now. And you are a person who deserves a chance of happiness and peace and love. And you can be forgiven. And you can choose different for yourself. I’m saying you’re worth trying for. Okay?”

Against her better judgement, Vic let herself melt into the hug. She let Morgan’s words cover her like a blanket, warm and reassuring and hopeful. She wanted to believe what she was saying- that if she tried hard enough, everything could be okay, somehow. It seemed much more likely that Morgan was wrong, but in that moment, she didn’t care. She was seen. Her experiences, as wild as it sounded, weren’t only her own. And as she and Morgan held each other, Vic realized that that might have been the biggest evidence of hope she could ask for.

“Okay. I’ll try.”

#suicide tw #p #p:morgan #p:attr

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solesurvivorpaigeargot · 4 years ago

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Okay but let’s talk about the opening of Fallout 4

And I’m not talking about the part where you gotta pantomime your way through a half-hour of BS at least before you’re actually allowed to step out into the world and get shite started [seriously Bethesda, if you’re gonna keep making openings like this, please include a ‘get to the point’ option and stop making modders do it for you. First time it’s interesting, second time it’s mind-numbing.] I’m talking about when you roll up on the museum and have to help out Preston and the gang-- and I’m just gonna rant for a few paragraphs here so here’s a read-more cut so I don’t clog up dashes too badly.

Fallout 4 never gives you the chance to value human life.

Fallout 3 had this issue as well, but it’s even more glaring in 4 because in 3 an order came down for your death. When you aren’t given a choice, what you’re doing can at least be penciled in as self-defense. 4 expects you to devalue raiders and treat them as unreasonable threats, to see them as a shooting gallery and nothing else... but there’s a serious problem with the framing.

You made me pantomime being a normal person for the first 30 min to hour of your experience, and now you’re telling me a normal person can just pick up a gun and start popping people with no moral issues.

This is required to even get close enough to talk to Preston. He might take out all the raiders if you’re willing to wait 20 minutes, but when you put yourself into the role play head space of a character, what kind of person ducks behind the sandbags and waits for the dude with the laser to pick everyone off? And there is no force preventing you from simply running away, this is true-- but doing so simply removes your ability to interact with what is a core mechanic of the game a-la the minutemen and establishing settlements. So if you wanna keep the game experience intact, and follow along with the mission? Murder is required, without any time taken out to consider the value of human life or if that murder is justified, or if your character is capable of that kind of violence.

To say I dislike this headspace in shooters, that whomever the denoted ‘bad’ group is are just okay to treat as squishy playthings, more so in shooters that try to integrate choice and morality, is a massive understatement. There are plenty of other things in the commonwealth that could threaten a group of settlers that aren’t people, and framing us as a normal person [PARTICULARLY IF YOU PLAY AS ‘NORA’ WHO WAS NOT A MILITARY MEMBER] who is just immediately ready for this is ASSUMPTIVE BULLSHIT. More so when you remember that if you played as ‘Nate’ this dissonance would be less-- it assumes a male audience who would choose the male protagonist, and his military service makes this opening a lot smoother. But when you don’t? It becomes batshit insane. Your average lawyer is not ready to just pick up a gun and wreck people, even when there are innocents on the line.

So, if ya like, I’m gonna propose an ‘alternate’ idea for what this mission could have been that would have kept all the same elements. The raiders, the power armor, the deathclaw-- but not forced the player character directly into murder.

Step 1: Finding Dogmeat.

When we find Dogmeat, he appears to be just... wandering the gas station? And yeah, he’s in our path, but Mama Murphy appears to think that Dogmeat went and found you, so let’s take that a step further. Let’s say Dogmeat actually ran and found you-- that he spawns into the world when you get past the footbridge, and no matter where you go from there Dogmeat will find and bark at you. That no matter how you treat him, Dogmeat will try to lead you to Concord and ruin your stealth by running in circles around you and barking if you try to go the wrong way. That this pupper is trying to find someone to help his group, he found you.

Step 2: The approach.

So say we follow Dogmeat, who leads us to where the raiders and Preston’s group are in standoff. And yeah, sure, we pass the main road where they’re all sandbagged up, but Dogmeat leads us around back to a rear entrance the raiders have not yet realized exists. Possibly a fire escape that has a ladder that could be released from above that was pulled up when Preston and co hunkered down. While, yes, the player could choose to engage the raiders at this point, deciding they’ve seen enough and take on the museum from the front? Going around, Dogmeat barking, and Mama appearing to let the ladder down because she probably knew you were coming gives you a non-violent in. Why haven’t the group left? There’s too many of them to just sneak out, Mama is old and slow, and Jun is nearly catatonic. No changes have to be made to the group to make that path out non-viable, it’s simply a way for you to get in, speak to Preston, and understand what the fuck we’re dealing with here without the one and only solution being kill everyone-- though the power armor is posited as something that might be helpful in a show of force to get the raiders to fuck the fuck off.

Step 3: The Raiders.

Banditry is not something ‘bad people’ do. It is an act of desperation. The idea that all the raiders are just the most repugnant people on the planet, and there appears to be no fuckin’ end to them is the same flavor of bullshit that’s used in all that war on drugs propaganda 50′s politicians were so high on. The idea of ‘Oh, the raiders are just bad people, so it’s okay to shoot at them’ ignores that they are people. People with lives. People with motivations. People who had their own path that led to where they are and what they’re doing. And what motivates a person to this kind of violence?

Starvation, usually. And I’ll be the first to say I don’t make great decisions when I’m hungry, either, but let’s dig a little deeper on this. Let’s step into the role of the leader of a raider group for a few seconds, get into this head space, and think about what’s going down with Preston’s group.

Imagine that I am a leader of a raider band. Let’s imagine that it started as me and a friend getting forced out of Diamond city, possibly given exile, because we couldn’t find work and decided to steal some food. The lack of work was no fault of our own; me and my friend may not have known the right people, or had the right skill sets, or been willing to take work that risked our lives as if we were worth nothing. Maybe we survived on good will for a while, but after so many hungry days got desperate, held up the Dugout for all the caps they had, or stole food from the general store, and tried to run with the take before we got caught. Whether we were caught, stripped of our gains, and then thrown out, or we got away-- we now have a place we can’t go anymore, and are at the mercy of the outside world. Are we bad? Are we bad because we were starving to death and desperate? Am I bad for coming up with a not great plan but at least trying to take action rather than just quietly dying in a gutter? I just wanted to eat. So now me and my friend are drifters, and we stick together because we’re all we got. And maybe we meet another drifter here, and another one there, and on some hungry night someone gets the idea that hey, if we all jump out from the side of the road and threaten a trader, maybe they’ll drop some of their stock without a fight?

We don’t want caps. We want food. We can’t spend the caps, and we don’t wanna get into a fight because none of us can get treatment-- we’re exiles and criminals. We don’t want blood, we want to eat.

So we threaten a trader, and that goes well-- we got supplies! But those supplies don’t erase our records. We still need to live, and this food is only gonna last so long. The traders know about us now, they talk-- even if we got money, who the hell would trust us? No one, that’s who. Even better, sounds like our little hold-up horned in on some other group’s territory that we didn’t even know about, and they ain’t happy with us. We all have guns, but none of us have ever killed anyone. None of us want to. We just wanted to eat.

So did the other group. They just wanted to eat, too, but they saw us horning in on their territory. Their take. Those supplies belonged to them. They have mouths to feed. More than us, probably. We stole from them, and all we wanted was to eat.

Whatever happens next is desperate, and it’s a baptism in blood. It’s a process of alienation. While there may be a select few who are actually out of their gourd and enjoy the violence, the majority of people who engage in banditry are desperate and hungry.

So what the hell does this have to do with the group holding up Preston’s group?

By all rights, Preston’s group does not have anything a gang of raiders wants. Even if they’re far enough along that caps have value to them again, able to do trade with their own network, injuries are expensive and often lead to permanent disability because these groups lack consistent access to medical supplies and knowledge, and fatalities means your crew is down an important and useful member. SO WHAT THE FUCK DO THEY WANT?

In the canon encounter, what they want is nothing. They want to wipe out Preston’s group because the game said so [I think there’s a terminal entry about it later, like they’re getting paid or something, but no payment is worth getting wiped out the way they did, and you don’t run a group that big on blind arrogance alone. Gristle woulda been displaced by then. All the caps in the world aren’t worth your life; you can’t feed dead crew members, and greed is useless when you’re blacklisted from all the settlements with any sense of luxury] They exist to shoot at. But when we ascribe motivation to them, what the fuck do they want?

The power armor.

It’s a tool; something that would change the balance of power in the area, make other groups think twice and lower the chance of losses when trying to gain supplies. Screw wiping these morons out, there’s only five of them left-- hold them at stand-off for a day or so until someone breaks and asks to negotiate, make them drop everything they’ve got as the toll for getting out, and then the group steps in to take the prize. There’s no need for anyone to get shot, just gotta starve ‘em out a little and then let them run with their lives.

Step 4: The Death Claw

So we have a stand-off situation that could... probably be pretty easily negotiated through without major loss of life. Your player character is a third party, after all. Opens up some non-lethal ways of doing things if you wanna convince Preston and co to give up all their stuff if it means getting out with their lives. Likewise, a high speech character could possibly go to Gristle and convince him that you’ve seen the power armor and it’s wrecked, no worth the effort he’s spending on bottling this crew up, and the men he’s probably already lost in the process. Or maybe a character with high intelligence could work with Sturges to sabotage the power armor, handing it over to the raiders knowing that in a day or two it’ll fall apart. All of these make for some interesting shades-of-gray choices...

Then the deathclaw shows up. In the middle of negotiation. Everyone gets forced up to the upper floor; no time to kill each other, there’s a giant murder machine prowling around the lobby and it is only a matter of time before it climbs up to the second floor and starts ripping out walls and doors to get at people.

This could have served to make the situation even more interesting-- if you’d gone aggro in the beginning and started killing raiders in the streets, you have less people to deal with a massive threat that could kill the fuck out of you. If you’d been in the middle of convincing the raiders to take a sabotaged set of power armor, you’d have to explain to them why the power armor isn’t gonna help you... or let Gristle take it and get murdered when it freezes up and leaves him stranded to get ripped out of the can and munched. Is that murder? How’s the player feel about that? Meanwhile, if you hadn’t killed anyone and were in the middle of negotiating a bloodless solution, you might have a chance of unifying everyone to take down the deathclaw-- possibly with a future bonus that Gristle and his crew wanna go straight and giving you the choice to set them up within your settlement system, or becoming yet another ‘civilized’ system that won’t work with them because they’re too far gone.

...................... I may have to write another fic just to explore these ideas in a modified canon.

#Fallout 4 #Preston #Raiders #Gristle #speculation #choice

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konlyfans · 4 years ago

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Fine Line

pairing: jeno, jaemin, female reader

genre: angst

summary: your long time crush and friend finds out you like him and his reaction is a bit unexpected, but luckily your other bestie has your back. this will for sure become a series.

“Do you really think this is a good idea?”

“No, and that’s why you’re going with me,” you declare as you shove your bag into the hatch of your suv. Your best friend, Jeno, leans against the car with his arms crossed and a skeptical look on his face. “What was I supposed to say?”

“You fake a reason not to go and save yourself the heartache,” he groans, dropping his head back in frustration at the pain the camping trip will most definitely bring you. You know he’s right, the moment Jaemin said he wanted to bring his new girlfriend you should have found any reason at all to bail. But this was your annual camping trip that you took with all your friends, there was no way you could miss it. Sure, you’ve been hiding an unrequited crush from Jaemin for almost three years at this point and watching him be cute with his girlfriend in the wilderness is going to hurt like hell, but oh well.

“Just stay with me,” you pout, grabbing hold of his arm and squeezing.

“At least you were smart enough to take your own car,” he praises, rolling his eyes.

“I’m not a complete idiot, a getaway might be necessary.”

But you are a complete idiot, you realize as soon as you pull up to the campsite. All the fun of singing and laughing on the drive up with Jeno is quickly drowned out by the giggles of lovebirds as they chase each other around the campsite. Apparently, you’re later told, they had arrived early to set up their tent and go for a quick hike alone. In all there are eight of you; You and Jeno, Jaemin and Rose, Mark, Yuta, Renjun, and Haechan. You and Jeno are the last to arrive, and a few of the boys visibly tense as they watch you stop next to your car and give Jeno a look as if to say make them stop.

“Y/n! It’s about time you guys showed up,” Jaemin laughs. He takes Rose by the hand as she timidly stands behind his shoulder and watches you close. Meeting the bestie officially is a huge deal. “Rose, this is Y/n, and you remember Jeno...”

“Yeah,” she nods with a warm smile as she reaches to take your hand. Fuck, she’s stunning, even dressed down in camping gear with her hair up in a ponytail she’s a heartthrob. “It’s amazing to finally meet you, I thought I’d be alone with the boys this weekend.”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” you lie, faking a grin warm enough to match hers, “you’re just as pretty as he told me you were.” You’re instantly washed in insecurities and Jeno is quick to break up the awkward scene by telling you this year he’ll supervise you putting the tent up.

And that’s pretty much how the rest of the day goes, Jeno takes on the job of keeping you happily distracted from the romance in front of you by dragging you away for short hikes, photo opts and anything else he can think of. It’s working pretty well actually, until everyone settles around the fire after dark. After quite a few drinks you notice Jaemin getting a bit bold with his hands as he and Rose kiss by the fire. You can’t ignore it or make any excuse to walk into the dark woods around you to escape, though you’d risk a walk in the dark to escape this. Jeno places a gentle hand on your knee and tries to engage you in conversation, but the liquor in your veins has a new plan.

“Let’s leave in the morning,” you whisper, “before everyone else gets up.”

“Sweetheart, it’s going to be okay,” he whispers back. You look like you want to cry, he can see it, and he quickly caves. “But if you want to go we can go, I’ll wake you up early and I’ll drive.” You nod, fighting down drunken tears when you hear Jaemin from across the fire.

“You guys are leaving? What’s wrong?” You avoid even looking across the flames at him as Jeno loops an arm around your shoulders and lets you tuck yourself away against his side.

“She’s not feeling too well,” he answers for you, “I actually think I’m gonna put her to bed...”

“Y/n, what’s wrong?” Jaemin asks you again, so sternly it makes you flinch. When your only answer is to look up at Jeno before gulping down the rest of the beer in your cup, Jaemin quickly begins untangling himself from Rose to come and talk to you directly.

“Babe-” Rose tries to stop him and pull him back to his seat, knowing full well what’s going on in your head, but he’s having none of it. Of course she knows, she may not be your friend, but she’s a woman just like you.

“No, I wanna know,” he demands, now standing and pointing an angry finger at the two of you. “You and Jeno have been passing secrets and stuff all day... I thought we were all friends. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Jaemin, don’t do this,” Jeno warns, his arm going tighter around your shoulders. Renjun mumbles a similar echo of a warning, but it doesn’t help.

“No, you two are supposed to be my closest friends and I’ve felt left out all day. Like, seriously? I get into a relationship and you guys vote me off the island?” He’s getting really upset, a product of the liquor for sure, and you feel your heart leap as you make brief eye contact with Rose. Her heart is already aching for you and what about to come, but she can’t stop it.

“Can someone spare him the drama and just say it,” Haechan offers suddenly. Upon being met with pairs of eyes just looking at him, each pair holding a different emotion ranging from fear to defeat, he decides to spill the beans himself. “You broke her heart, stupid. Anyone with half a brain knows she’s crazy about you.”

There it is, your confession, burning in the night like the fire before you. Jaemin’s anger seems to dissipate only slightly as he fumbles for a moment before going to sit back down next to Rose. He looks at her, noting the awkwardness in her gaze and choosing to protect her, not you or your friendship. She’s his girlfriend, after all.

“Well it’s a little late for that now,” he says coldly, more to Rose than any of you. You can feel your heart drop as you let out a shaky sigh and the first of many tears begins to roll down your already flushed cheeks. It’s that easy for him?

“We’ll be gone before you guys wake up,” Jeno practically growls, and you aren’t sure exactly who he’s mad at. He helps you to your tent, tucking you in and letting you cry on his chest until you finally fall asleep from sheer exhaustion. True to his word, even despite the lack of sleep, he’s up before the sun and packing all your things to get you as far away from this awful memory as he can. He’s almost done, all he has to do is get you in the car and break down the tent, when Jaemin slips from his tent to meet him.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me,” he asks Jeno, who buzzes right past him. They have no idea you’re awake, but Jeno’s less-than-graceful packing woke you a while ago, you just didn’t open your eyes.

“I think you can kind of guess why we didn’t tell you,” he grumbles.

“But now I look like an asshole-”

“No, you didn’t look like an ass until you made that little comment about it being too late,” Jeno mumbles.

“Well it is!”

“But you didn’t have to fucking say it, and you damn sure didn’t have to be so mean about how you said it,” Jeno snaps, a little too loud for the early morning. “I know you saw the look on her face and you knowingly made it worse!”

“I didn’t mean- I was just irritated that-”

“That what? That you were the last to know? Sure, maybe she didn’t hand you a formal invitation but you were really the only person that couldn’t see it. But she was also worried about messing up the friendship, so she kept it to herself. And then you had to go and be the worlds fattest dick, and right in front of your girlfriend.” Jaemin is stunned into silence as a sick feeling creeps into his gut. He’s really done more damage than he realizes. You decide to put an end to this back and forth, and slowly sneak our from your hiding spot. “I hope she never talks to you again.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Can we go,” you interrupt quietly. Both men turn to see you standing in front of the tent, shivering in your sleepwear with a blanket hugged around your body. You begin shuffling into the passengers seat, nearly missing the way Jaemin moves to go near you and Jeno pushes him back.

“Go back to your tent,” Jeno orders, “I’m sure we’ve woken your girlfriend by now. Just let me get Y/n home, she’s hurt enough.”

“We heard her sobbing all night,” Jaemin retorts, taking a step away and shaking his head. He steals one last look at you, curled up and trying to fall back asleep, then leaves. Jeno’s not at all gentle with tossing the tent in the back of the car, he doesn’t even attempt to break it down completely, then proceeds to drive you home. You doze back off shortly after the car starts rolling.

“You can still be friends with him, if you want.” Jeno jumps in the drivers seat and makes a small noise of surprise when you speak without warning.

“Fucking hell, I thought you were still asleep,” he sighs. He feels a bit of pride in his heart when he hears you giggle softly after yawning an apology. “I’m not sure I want to be his friend right now, but eventually I think things can even out. Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.” You shift slightly in your seat and fix your eyes on the land outside the windshield. “I always knew it would suck when he finally found out, because he clearly doesn’t feel the same, but fuck... I never in a million years thought he’d be so rude about it.”

“I know what you mean,” Jeno agrees. “So it’s just you and me for now.”

“Well... One of us should still be his friend right? And it’s not going to be me, so it should be you. He’s probably not happy about us being mad at him and leaving.” You can’t help but want to protect Jaemin, even now.

“I think he made it clear last night that he picks Rose. You don’t have to be the bigger person about it, he never deserved you anyway.” You zero in on how his grip on the steering wheel tightens. “We can let the whole thing cool off for a while, he doesn’t need me.”

“What do you mean he never deserved me?”

“Just... Nothing.” His grip doesn’t get any looser. You sit up, turning the music down and he groans.

“No, tell me.”

“You just... There are plenty of guys that want you, that want to treat you well. He’s not the guy you think. You need someone that can be there for you, support you... Someone that can listen to you without losing focus and knows how you react to things. Like when you haven’t had enough sleep and everything makes you get teary eyed. Or when you’ve had too much coffee and you think faster than you can talk, and I have to tell you to slow down. Or when you get so excited to get to the fourth step in a plan that you don’t think about the first, second or third. I always remind you that you need to start before you can finish.”

There’s a long pause, with no noise but the low music drifting past the speakers. Jeno sighs, and you feel a weird knot form in your belly.

“Jeno...”

“Don’t. I know you have feelings for him, and he just broke your heart. I didn’t mean to say all of that-“

“Do you like me?”

“I... Well... Yes, I do, but you don’t have to acknowledge it because you’re in a weird place right now.” You watch the muscles in his jaw tense and release, but he refuses to look at you. You, on the other hand, can’t take your eyes off him. “You’re going to stare a hole through my head.”

“We don’t have to address this now, but we will, okay? Just not right now.”

And it’s that easy. You turn the music back up, indulge in some car karaoke, and act like it never happened. But it did, and it’s on your mind long after you get home.

#nct dream #jeno #jaemin #nct 2020

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