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hibrydvisions · 11 months ago

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Some context (ENG)

Thought I’d be a good idea to give some context about the main character of this blog, so…

¿Who is this?

Sonidy is the most boring, tasteless Oc in the world, a freaking recolored Sonic whom doesn’t even have a cool or pretty name.

Nonetheless, I love her dearly and wouldn’t change her for anything. So let me ramble tell you about the process I’ve been through to create her.

She was meant to be used as an avatar for Youtube (which she actually is). Born from the simple train of thought that “Hey, I like Sonic, but I don’t wanna use the existing characters, maybe I can create one myself?”

So after a very short time searching, I found this game, “Furry dollmaker”, which did exactly what I was looking for. As the character design was obviously the same as Sonic character’s style.

It was from Deviantart, and I think after Flash stopped working on browser it’s not possible use it on the site. But you can try it yourself thanks to the wayback machine if you want.

That’s her first design (I just took myself for reference. Hair and eyes color, and the outfit I wore that day, gloves included). It wasn’t the best, but probably many people would think it’s better than lame-ass edits and art theft, right?

Well as you surely noticed, that didn’t remotely crossed my mind.

As I said, the main goal was to make an avatar that I could use on multiple websites. I did a video using this image, but let’s say it wasn’t good, not at all. Even for the standards back then for the specific community I wanted to get in (and if you’re wondering, that video doesn’t exist anymore ‘cause I never uploaded it. I didn’t even render it because I didn’t like how it came out. I still remember how it was, and trust me, it was boring). And the most important fact that made me change my mind about using it was that it seemed so rigid and inexpressive to me. To this day I cannot remember why I cared about that, but yeah that was what it bothered me the most.

So, thinking on a solution, I remembered something.

You see, inside the community I wanted to be part of, there was an even more niche group of creators whom all used Sonic avatars, with different colors and styles.

I should mention that all of this happened when I was like 12-13 years old, so I didn’t knew a lot on how edition tools worked. And after investigating for a bit, I found myself following a tutorial from a user called “Fedesonic” (the user doesn’t exist anymore) that showed how to make you own Sonic character. (Actually, if you know that Sonic paradox’s short, basically that’s what happened), and I learned how to paint over Sonic X’s images.

This was the first recolor I did; I had to simplify the design though. ‘Cause if you haven’t noticed by now, I hadn’t the slightest notion on how to draw. So I wasn’t capable on putting on that many details (plus I would have to do it all with a mouse and I barely understood how to use the program, so at that moment it seemed an impossible task).

With that, I was able to create some silly videos for a while (I think it was like 2 or 3 years) I kept recoloring frames from Sonic X’s show as I mentioned as they provided a variety of poses and expressions. But I have to admit that I sometimes used fanart too, mainly because I was unaware it was a bad thing (I never proclaimed that it was my own art though, I hope that helps a bit).

And so, I spent a couple of years unable to do anything besides daydream about what I wanted. Thinking about it now, maybe it was a good thing. Because without having to rush I could mediate about the story I wanted, to repeat it over and over in my head, fixing plotholes and replacing scenes for others more imaginative and interesting.

Time went on, I planned to make a series (like a story mode) with the characters to try and make them more interesting, I started it and divided it in two parts, and then my pc exploded because I’m life’s favorite joke.

So even if I managed to rescue my archives, I had not a place to work with them and advance my project.

All of it was getting more complex and, do I really need to depend on whatever pose or expression made by someone else miraculously fits on with the scenes? Maybe I will need to heavily edit the image, and what if no one has done something that’s exactly what I have in mind? What the hell I’m supposed to do then?

To my dismay, the answer was obvious. If I wanted my vision to come out exactly as I imagined: I had to learn how to draw.

Now, probably whoever is reading this is thinking “Duh” but it was a crushing revelation for me back then, mind you >:[ I had never been good at drawing nor I had any interest in doing so. Realizing I had to start from the beginning at something I had zero skill for, when many kids that age are already talented or with tons of practice made me feel insecure and jealous to be honest.

But, I knew I was on my own and didn’t really had an option. If I wanted my stupid daydreams come true I would need to do it myself. So I basically forced myself into it.

I couldn’t find the notebook where I had my first attempts to draw, but they were terrible (as one would expect). I remember thinking “Oh it cannot be that different from just drawing Sonic, adding a few extra details and change the color” WRONG, it was torture, and I had to learn much more than that. (Anyway I have an old deviantart account where there’s pretty old drawings if you wanna see).

Long story short, I spent some years learning on paper, I improved the story, got a new pc, and by that moment I already got a liking for drawing so I got the stupid idea to get into animation too, along with more complex designs for the character because “well, I guess I’m allowed to do that now”.

However, Sonidy never changed too much. I tried to give her a new image, I really did, but no matter how many accessories added, how different made the shape, I never liked the results.

So I just let her be, with very subtle modifications. After all, who cares, it’s not a recolor if I drew it all myself, right? >:]

And that’s the dumb origin story, don’t cheer at the same time everyone thank you. This text wall is just to clarify why I have a soft spot for this bunch of ugly pixels.

BUT, even if she was meant to be used as an avatar, eventually got separated from me, developing her own personality and traits, and though she still has similarity with me as a person, she’s her own thing now.

So, I’ll tell you some things about her.

Sonidy

A wolf/hedgehog hybrid (how original) with brown fur and green eyes. Naive, usually joyful (make her angry is very easy though) and a very emotional person in general.

She likes to discover/learn new things, spent time with her friends, going on adventures, and though she’s not exactly evil, she’s a bit mischievous and likes to cause trouble. She doesn’t like the part where she has to take responsibility for it.

In-Lore she actually has a reason to look like Sonic and have a similar name. As she’s one of many fangirls of the blue hedgehog (he’s basically some sort of celebrity, like in the original Sonic universe). She has him as a source of inspiration so she mimics his style.

She is between 12-26 years old. It’s a big gap but it’s not because of indecision or something. More like her story begins when she’s 12 years old and at the most recent point I have planned she’s 26. And as a side note: Her appearance and personality changes depending on which point of the plot she is, but let’s take all of the above as a general description.

In the meantime, she lives in an island along with her cousins. Where all kind of things happen.

And as a last useless fact: Sonidy has two stories/timelines. The canon one (the one I’ve worked the most with original characters and stuff). And the alternative (which actually was the initial concept I had planned for her. Where I rather inserted the characters on Sonic’s world. Basically your typical fanfic). I bring this up because after thinking about it for a while, I decided to try and rescue those concepts of the alternative timeline. And this blog is the only place I feel safer to post it.

And that’s all, thank you if you got to the end of this ramble. Hopefully I post something more interesting later.

#draw #sonic oc #Sonidy #long post #sorry

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rinion-b · 2 years ago

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since we're about to hit the end of the year soon, and since i've been too busy with dev work to draw much recently, i've been putting some of my thoughts together on my relationship with art, social media, and all that.

like a lot of kids, i did some drawing and painting during my middle and highschool years. unlike a lot of kids, i was homeschooled. not having a social circle to pick up interests from meant two things: i rarely had to deal with people on a day-to-day basis unless they were my family (yay), and my life felt very boring (not yay). the art subjects, and being forced into a dichotomy of acrylic and watercolor as my main options, did not help.

it took me until the middle of college to start drawing for real. that year was the start of a lot of things for me, and tbh a big part of it was simply having other people that i didn't mind being around, even if i never truly connected with them. anyway, i made some assets for a tabletop game, and at that point i was following enough artists to know at least vaguely the kinds of things that i wanted to draw.

if i look at my files, i've been drawing for a bit over 2 years now. and there's undoubtedly a lot of improvement from when i started (i can only stand to look at like 2-3 drawings from back then, aside from the studies).

i do still want to go back to painting things like this eventually, but for the life of me i cannot figure out how to render a character or a full scene like this.

anyway, that's year 1. i started posting some stuff to twitter, and did mostly fanart or studies where i could find the time. i definitely noticed that i had a bit of an unhealthy relationship forming already with social media (i may not be diagnosed with ADHD, but the way notification indicators make me behave is a big reason i suspect i have it). i also started to fall off of drawing fanart of large, popular vtubers because, well... i'm not sure actually. the artificial interaction inflation from a vtuber fanart is definitely one part of it, but i also started to make friends within an indie vtuber's fanbase/friend circle which made me realize i was being a bit parasocial about one or two larger vtubers and hit the brakes there.

also, this was from an event from an art server where we did blind/telephone style chara design iteration off a picture of jewelry, and that opened my eyes to how much fun having an OC can be compared to being constrained by an existing design. (i do still have issues with fanart because i don't entirely understand how to adapt an existing design to my style the first few times i draw it.)

now, to take a slight detour, all this was happening on twitter or discord. i had used tumblr back in the day, but i barely posted anything and never really kept up with the popular stuff happening. until recently it was also still sort of weird memories because i never the friend group i had from back then... not going into detail, but there are some interesting types out there, and we all kind of grew apart until the group fractured and just sort of fell apart.

coming back here to start posting, even if all i have at the moment is reposting older art, is super comfortable and a bit nostalgic. that return also fell at a time where i had time and a proper idea for updating my personal site, and i do think that i'll be implementing a bit of a blog there as well. i don't mind getting personal on social media, but it's impossible to do easily on twitter and even here i'd prefer to never get notified that people i don't know interact with my more personal posts.

so that sort of brings the story to the current year. having a job makes it pretty hard to keep up with the friends i've made the way i want to, but i don't see myself ever going fully freelance because of how easily i burn out from outside pressure to create. i have a few OCs that i want to continue to flesh out, and i think my main goal for the near future is to evolve my art more with their designs until i can really say i like my ability to render a character and a scene at the same time (i have some ideas, but i need the time to tackle them, and to do a lot of studies).

next year, i want to focus on streaming at least a couple times a month after i get some graphics finished (or even before, and just work on those on stream). i want to just get a lot better at art. illustration is a lot of fun once i can get out of the sketch phase, and i also have dabbled a bit in animation, but 3D is also on the table for game dev purposes and also just character modeling (it's really cool i want models of my OCs and i'm a very DIY kind of person). oh and VR too.

basically, i guess next year is my year to push for being a little more "self-sufficient" and also self-indulgent, i suppose. also been picking up the guitar again recently, and might be buying a bass soon. the more time i spend having fun/working on things and the less time i spend looking at socmed notifications, the better it is for me.

#personal #very long post #sort of a thoughts dump/ramble

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furiousgoldfish · 4 years ago

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Personal post about trauma under the cut, extremely upsetting content, do not read if you had narcissistic parents and don't wanna get triggered, I am very sad and mad and it's hard to talk about this. TW child labor, child torture, brainwashing, death threats, narcissistic abuse.

I was a hardworking child, I was happy and excited to work, I wanted to be a part of everything that's being done. I noticed work warranted for people to get respect, food, praise, acceptance, and I wanted to work hard so I too would be a part of that. My family lived in a rural area, they kept animals, grew fields of crops, were always in some sort of construction work, so me always being eager to work was pretty much ideal for them, or you'd think that it was. You'd think that.

I was working eagerly and I realized, that unlike for adults, I don't get respect, praise, acceptance, or sometimes even food. It was for some reason denied to me only. And I was still happy to work because I chased that feeling of personal accomplishment, even if there was no rewards. And again, you'd think this is perfectly convenient and ideal to parents who wanted free labour and to give no recognition or praise in return. You'd think that.

But it wasn't enough for them. Father got this idea to take me out to work with him alone, away from home. I remember the place we went to, only as a place I need burned down to the ground before I could breathe again. It was a demolition-construction of a house, and I don't remember how many time I've been there. All I know is, after first few times, I no longer wanted to go. I begged not to go.

I am guessing my father could not bear the looks of me working happily, or even working silently. Me doing everything I was told was not fun enough for him– so he would give me false instructions. As an easy setup for punishment. I did exactly what I was told, and would get screamed at and beaten up. Then forced to keep working in tears, shaking, terrified, injured, while being further berated. And that was only the start.

Even as a child, I was diligent and responsible about doing work, and I know I was getting things done just fine, because, I was doing the sibling's share of chores too. If siblings were called to work, they would simply mess up on purpose so I would be told to repeat it after them, correctly. Sometimes siblings would have me do it and take the credit, which I didn't mind because working made me feel better about myself. It made me feel useful. My mind was already dissociated from my body to the point where I no longer felt exhaustion, pain, strain, or any physical effect work was having on me. I would get berated and shamed if I showed signs of being tired or strained. So my body disregarded it all.

And yeah, that wasn't enough either. I was still sometimes feeling okay. If I was allowed to work alone, and let my mind wonder, if nobody commented on it I knew it was okay.

So this is where they decided to take a step further and disallow me to feel okay at any point. I was humiliated while working to the point of tears. I'd be ridiculed in front of guests. I could no longer enjoy my own thoughts, but constant criticism, insults, accusations and humiliation was raining down on me at every step. And when I was done, with tremendous effort it took to endure this, I would be told 'It would have been better if you had done nothing.' So my insane effort to endure abuse to get things done, was rendered worthless in a second.

Father kept taking me away to work alone with him, and forced me to listen to his monologues, which I hated, because he was boring, wrong and self-obsessed, but I wasn't allowed to say that, or argue. My silent compliance was never enough. He had to hit me. He had to find something to berate me over. He kept inventing reasons. I would clean his entire garage and he'd move a steel closet I couldn't possibly move and berate me for not cleaning under it.

I had a log thrown into my head, causing a head injury, and I had to keep working. I fell and fractured my shoulder so badly I could barely walk; I was brought to a forest to drag logs around, too heavy for me to lift. I was sometimes orchestrated to get injured; father would start a trailer I was standing on the edge of, and forced me to fall by quickly moving forward just enough. I was still expected to work after that. He hit me with a blunt edge of an axe and berated me for standing there. I was told to 'not expect a lift to the hospital'. I was brought to work while starved, grieving, suicidal. I was lied to about where I was going and what would I be doing, and for how long. I was never allowed to stop working.

And the game of giving me wrong instructions and punishing me for doing it 'wrong' never stopped. I caught on and begged for correct instructions. I would ask to explain, how to do it, to show me, anything. 'HOW OLD are you not to know this? I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO TELL YOU! YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS BY NOW!' And by his rage, I could tell that if I don't do it any way I knew how, I'd be punished instantly. I had no choice but to try – and of course fail, and feel horribly ashamed for 'deserving to get beat up'. Eventually my brain started shortcircuiting at the simplest tasks, I would mess up because I was in terror. I couldn't think.

At this point, I no longer wished to work for people who would inflict violence on me. And that is when I was quckly informed that if I didn't work, I would be killed. Not in those words. It was 'You have to work if you want to live!' followed by 'We can kick you out and you will starve on the street. Nobody will take you in. There is no place for you. Nobody wants someone like you. You don't deserve to eat if you don't work.' My choices were taken away. If I still refused, the result would be to beat me and force me to work injured, shaking and crying.

All this, for what? I would have been HAPPY to work. I would have been chasing my little daydreams and singing the pokemon tune, and if I was ever praised, I'd be the happiest kid on the block. I was a kid who liked to work. I wanted minimal fairness, minimal acknowledgment. To be a part of the family. Only that.

It just wouldn't do for the narcssistic father. Watching a child be broken, terrified and shaking, crying, ashamed, guilty, working past exhaustion, in injuries, was just too tempting for him to pass up. Even free labor wasn't worth to him as much as the pleasure of child torture. He needed that like it was a drug. What kind of a sick high did he experience, breaking a defenseless kid? What kind of pleasure did it entail, getting someone rid of their natural happiness to work? Was it fun, tearing me into pieces, over and over again? Does he remember it as a delicious, satisfying pleasure? Does he daydream about it? He knew it was wrong; he forced me to stop crying and hide the tears before we went home. 'Don't say anything to your mother.' I was told before being stuffed back in his car.

And now... I can't work. I can't even move sometimes. It was torn away from me. My ability to work was ripped away from my child body when I had no way to defend it or to grab it back and protect what is mine. I can't work anymore. It's terrifying. It terrifies me to not work. Because I was made aware working is the only thing keeping me alive, and capitalism confirms this, so I remain to forever fight with myself about how even if everyone says otherwise, I still deserve to live. Heartbroken, abandoned, with my basic human abilities stripped from me. It doesn't make me deserving to die.

I am so angry and sad. If I had my natural ability to work back, I'd be fine. I would be able to live safely. I wouldn't spiral into feeling like an unworthy member of society. I learned to survive very insecurely like this, but I hate every second of it. To know that instead of this insane uncertainty, anxiety, guilt for being bedridden, guilt for existing and not moving, I could have just found a job, have normal income? I can't bear it. I can't bear knowing this was wrenched away from me, because it was pleasurable to do so, because tearing me into pieces was a fun hobby for people who didn't care if what they were doing to me killed me. And I couldn't have done anything to stop it. And I'm like this now. Unable to take any more torture, unable to endure any more of being triggered, wondering if I would die from lack of resources, or would my body fail permanently in attempts to process all the exhaustion and pain I was dissociated from for my entire childhood.

How was this worth it. How it could have been worth it to anyone, destroying someone's ability to work, only because it's pleasurable. I felt the plan was to work me until I no longer could do it, then kill me. It's what they did to animals. And I was told I was more worthless than an animal. I was called lazy and a monstrous name I can't even translate, that implied I was burdening everyone with my existence.

It was even a bigger punch to my face to realize, after I escaped, that he was profiting from everything I did. That it would have taken money – way more than was ever spent on my survival, to get all that labor done. He was profitting while telling me I was worthless and don't deserve to eat or sleep in his house. He is now renting the place I was broken to help build. I was torn apart and he is still benefiting from it. And I have nothing. Not even a functional body to work with anymore.

I know I'm not the only person who was constantly left alone with narcissists as a child and had this, or worse, done to them. They don't care which pieces of children are left over by the time they're done getting their high. We're only a thing to consume, not living beings, not people, not someone whose life matters. Our pain is food to them. My father readily became a predator who snached his own kid away for torture sessions, and felt proud and fulfilled to turn his own child into a creature who cannot work anymore to survive.

Don't leave children alone with narcissists. I am trying so hard to get better, but facing reality, is this a thing a person gets better from? It's not a bodily harm of once or twice, this was happening for the most majority of my lifetime. It makes sense I cannot move. It makes sense I'm terrified to be triggered into this. It makes sense I can barely bear the reality of it. A person tortured hundreds of times wont just get up and walk away. I can't either. I have to lie here and hope that one day it will get better.

If you read thru all this, and you relate to the parts of this story, know that I am so sorry for what you were put thru. It's devastating and horrenous. If this is how you grew up, it would have been better not to have a family. We all should have been protected from this.

#trauma #personal #i never told anyone about this #don't have the courage #i can only type it online #tw child abuse #tw physical violence #abusive parents #narcissistic abuse #child labor

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soyeahitsmiddleearth · 4 years ago

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Killer Good Looks pt. 2

The Company/Reader

Goblin tunnels, scapegoats, and life-threatening adventures... Oh, and you're still supposed to kill these guys, hm.

Angst, Humor, Action

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The fall from your little cozy cave down into the deep dark depths of the Goblin Tunnels was not a pleasant one, and you're almost certain that a concussion is in the makings with how many times you and your companions have smashed your heads against walls, each other, and rocks alike.

You got lucky for the most part, and they've got pretty thick skulls so they'll be fine too.

Once the twisting tunnels and dead-drops are done, you all lay at the bottom of some sort of cage, groaning and recovering from the shock of it all (you're fairly certain there's a period there where you're all unconscious).

Damn it, you should've known better.

You've known for ages about the goblins that reside in the Misty Mountains, but you, for some reason, thought you'd be safe enough with the horrible weather to make it in and out of the mountain range before they even knew you were there.

The goblin king won't see you, will he? He won't recognize you, right?

Yeah, so, there was a time there where you worked freelance, having no assignments from The Brotherhood or anything to do, and you caught wind that the goblins of the Misty Mountains came across something desirable.

Something... shiny... and... possibly magical.

Your kleptomania went positively wild at the mere thought of finding something so pretty and sparkly in such a dreary and dismal place, so you set out for the Mountains, staked out around the entrances for a few days, and then snuck in and stole that 'thing'.

The 'thing' ended up being a radiant, beautiful ring stolen from some poor traveler more than likely. Whether they wiped out the kingdom or stole it in silence is unknown to you, but you didn't really care.

You snuck in at night while countless goblins went out to hunt and enjoy the evening, and then you swiped the ring from the goblin kings finger while he slept when day came about, hid in the tunnels until night once more while he flipped out in search of it, and made your escape the following night.

Only after you stole it did you find out that it was magical.

It morphed to fit your finger as soon as you fit it on, and granted you some enhanced senses.

The enhancements weren't vast or grand, but it was a very slight adjustment that helped to polish your already honed skills.

You could hear a little better, see a bit further, and increased your 6th sense for detecting others.

They probably went through numerous hardships to acquire such a useful item, and, now, it was all yours for free.

That day you spent hiding away in the tunnels, waiting for night so you could escape after stealing it in the day, was boring, but also a little frightening. The way the goblin king screamed and screeched about a thief and needing to find his prize made you briefly fear for your safety, but it didn't take long for you to realize they're too dumb to spot you.

You may not be the strongest in terms of physical strength and brute force, but your willpower and cunning got you through it almost effortlessly. And, if you did get into a physical altercation, your agility and reflexes would help you go down while taking them out with you.

Anyways, your point it that, he may not recognize your face since he never saw you, but if he sees the ring then it's over for you.

So, once you regain your rational thought after your daze, you slip it off your finger and shove it into one of the hidden pockets in your shirt. Who knows if he'll recognize the ring or not.

In no time you are being hauled up to your feet and dragged away with the rest of your companions, though you are a fair bit taller than all of them so it's harder for these nasty bastards to keep you under control.

No matter how vast or grand your skills are, you'd never be able to take on all of these guys; you're a stealth master for a reason after all.

The lot of you are taken down a series of paths to an audience with the horrendous Goblin King, and along the way you manage to kick quite a few of those grabby little monsters down into the dark depths below.

A minute or so passes that ends with all of you, ultimately, in front of the Goblin Kind and helpless.

"Who would be so bold as to come armed into my kingdom?" His voice booms in front of all of you, echoing throughout the caves, "Spies? Thieves? Assassins?”

Something like that.

You are, technically, all three, but none of you are there for him.

One of the small, ugly creatures steps forward and informs him of who you all are, "Dwarfs and a human, your Malevolence."

His face morphs into one of disgust and he practically spits out, "Dwarfs?"

"We found them on the front porch." The lacky confirms.

“Well, don’t just stand there; search them! Every crack, every crevice.” He cries, slamming his fist down which makes the wood tremble beneath all of you.

A bunch of words are traded and the Great Goblin exposes his knowledge about Thorin and the fact that his greatest enemy, Azog the Defiler, is still alive and kicking.

“Send word to the Pale Orc; tell him I have found his prize.” A twisted smile takes over his huge face and causes that skin beard to shift, a disgustingly entrancing movement, and he looks down at the searching goblins expectantly.

You've had a 3 of your knives tossed aside and your short sword has been stolen, but you're happy to report that some of your hidden weapons and the stolen goods are still hidden.

Suddenly, one of the goblins loses it's head and throws something in front of the group, screeching and screaming with horror.

The Great Goblin recoils and he hisses out fearfully, "I know that sword! It is the Goblin-Cleaver, the Biter, the blade that sliced a thousand necks."

Whips and nails, teeth and palms, the dwarfs are abused with every limb, weapon, and thing possible, and before you can even think on it, your voice demands the attention of them all.

"Wait!"

Silence, stillness, attention.

God, you hate it.

You slip the ring from your pocket and onto your finger and take a step forward unobstructed from the enraged goblins, slightly nervous but blank in expression.

"I cannot hide it anymore. Every second that passes weighs on my soul, for the desire to be recognized for my deeds is too strong."

"Speak your piece, human, what do you want?"

You raise your ringed hand and brandish the smooth metal off to him, "Do you recognize this? The ring I so cleverly stole from you all those months ago?"

"M-My ring!" He bellows, taking a step forward, "How- You thief! You were the one who stole from me? You?!"

You say nothing at first and betray no emotion in your face, lowering your hand back to your side. When you do speak, you push arrogance into your voice, "I took it while you indulged yourself in sleep, and then I hid right under your nose for an entire day, holding my prize and listening to your whining and petulant screams." The insults are all well aimed and meant to enrage him, for you're hoping to take his attention off of the dwarfs before he can have them all killed. "If I had known you were so pathetic and slow-witted, I would have taken it during the night and saved myself the time."

Someone calls your name, Thorin, and he hisses with confusion, "What are you doing?"

You ignore him.

If he weren't so pale and colorless he would've been red with anger at your taunting words. The Great Goblin is seething and spitting, his huge, clawed hands clenched into fists as he tries to form a coherent thought.

"You dare speak down to me? You will be punished!" He cries, pointing a long nailed finger at you, "Cut the ring from those thieving hands, and then take those hands as well!"

Your expression shifts when you're shoved forward and onto the ground on your hands and knees, taking on a more defiant look despite the hint of fear in your eyes.

It's not like you want them to cut off your hands, you kind of need those, but you're fairly confident that this groups luck will strike once again and save you from a life of picking things up with your feet and wrists (if they don't kill you, that is).

"No!" Someone yells from the group of dwarfs and goblins, followed by shouts and calls from others as well.

Unfortunately, the roaring in your ears is too loud for you to make out individual voices, but it's nice that they aren't apathetic towards your fate.

Before you know it you're being shoved face-first into the ground and your arms are being wrenched out from beneath you, stretched out and poised for being cut off. Your finger with the ring on it is pulled from your fist, and when you glance up, you see a sword poised above the head of a goblin, ready to relieve you of your hand.

There's lots of screaming and yelling, and at some point you squeeze your eyes shut since you're no longer confident in your assessment that you'll be saved in the nick of time.

Finally, right when your fate is about to finally be sealed, a bright light blinds you all and renders the goblins immobilized momentarily.

Gandalf the Gray stands there with his powerful staff in hand and an aura of white surrounding him, meanwhile you all just stare in awe.

“Take up arms. Fight. Fight!” He demands, slamming his staff on the ground which shakes your very souls.

You, and everyone else, require no more prompting.

In one swift movement you roll back onto your feet and steal the discarded sword aimed to take your hands, and then you jump right into the action.

You and the entirety of the group make a swift and action packed escape where you spend the majority of your time protecting the Durin's, sticking close to them and keeping the goblins away.

Everything passes by in a blur of limbs, blood, and violence, and it isn't until you've killed the Great Goblin and escaped back out into the light of the soon setting sun that you have a moment to breathe and think about all the things that just took place.

It's at this time that everyone finishes running and takes a moment to catch their breath that you all realize Bilbo is missing, and you immediately curse yourself for not keeping a closer eye on him.

A couple of the dwarfs begin to blame each other and there's some mumbling amongst themselves, but Thorin has another idea entirely about what really happened.

"I’ll tell you what happened. Master Baggins saw his chance and he took it! He’s thought of nothing but his soft bed and his warm hearth since first he stepped out of his door! We will not be seeing our Hobbit again. He is long gone."

You purse your lips but say nothing despite your disagreement with his words; arguing with the people 'paying you' isn't the brightest idea, so it's better to just keep your mouth shut.

And then, quite the peculiar thing, said hobbit steps out from behind a tree and states matter-of-factly, "No, he isn't."

There is varying amounts of surprise and shock that wash throughout all of your expressions. Hell, your eyes even widen slightly when he appears so suddenly. How did you not notice him even with your ring on?

"Bilbo Baggins! I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life!” The gray wizard exclaims with a grand smile on his wrinkling face.

Kili speaks next, informing the little hobbit that there was little hope surrounding him. "Bilbo, we'd given you up!"

"How on earth did you get past the goblins?!" Fili wonders.

"How indeed..." Dwalin sounds suspicious almost when he repeats Fili's question, but you're entirely worried about something else.

"Are you alright, Bilbo?" You chime in before he can explain himself, stepping closer to give him a quick once over.

You were hired to protect the Durin's, but you need all of them to get access to that mountain with ease.

Or, at least, that's what you tell yourself.

The hobbit looks up at you and offers a slightly nervous smile, "I am fine. Just a few bumps and bruises."

"I want to know...," Thorin's voice breaks through your conversation as he asks, "Why did you come back?"

A quick moment of silence passes as you look down at your feet and listen carefully, actually a bit curious yourself.

It isn't like you couldn't do his part of the job for him, though your assignment is something else entirely, and he expressed his desire to leave right before you were all kidnapped by the goblins... so why would he come back?

"Look, I know you doubt me, I know you always have," Bilbo begins with a slightly grim face, "And you’re right, I often think of Bag End. I miss my books. And my armchair. And my garden..." He trails off as a faraway look momentarily blurs his vision, probably imagining what he could be doing at home right now, and you all watch and listen carefully. "See, that’s where I belong. That’s home. And that’s why I came back, cause you don’t have one - a home. It was taken from you. But I will help you take it back if I can.”

Your eyebrows furrow together when he finishes speaking his piece, because his words are... greatly troubling.

He was ready to leave it all behind before, mere seconds away from leaving back towards The Shire and Bag End, but here he is now. He came back because he genuinely wants to help; he wants them to reclaim their home and find their wandering origins.

Everyone is silent as they think over the words Bilbo speaks, and while it awes most of them, you only feel more bothered.

Such a kind hobbit who you may likely need to kill.

"That's foolish." You find yourself saying that before you can even think about it, something that's been happening too often for your liking.

You get several shocked looks, hell, you're shocked yourself, but you don't take back your statement.

Where did this disdain come from all of a sudden? This disdain not towards the kind hearted hobbit, but towards yourself?

"You are not the person to be calling the actions of our Master Burglar, foolish." Gandalf scolds, eyeing you with a pointed look. "I know your taunting and teasing towards the Goblin King was no accident or arrogance driven necessity. And I also know that you could have easily broken yourself free before harm befell upon you. I brought you along to do a job, and do this job you have - much too well. I thank you for the distraction, but your methods may have proved to be a mistake had I not arrived on time."

You look back at the gray wizard with an unwavering stare, eyes slightly narrowed as you attempt to glare him into submission; only, he doesn't relent and stares right back at you.

"You came in time." A weak defense.

"And if I hadn't?" He asks, voice raising slightly. Gandalf doesn't much like backtalk. "How far would you have taken it? Were you going to allow them to take your hands? To cut that trinket from your finger?"

This time you hesitate in replying, something akin to a pout tugging at your lips. "Of course not. I had faith that you would come, and you did...," you trail off, then add begrudgingly, "And if you hadn't, then I could have escaped quite easily."

Another silence filled by the two big egos facing off against each other.

Gandalf's ego wins, unfortunately.

You relent and look away, catching the troubled gazes of Fili and Kili.

Did your actions really bother them that much?

"Well what do you suppose I should do? Let them harm you all?" You wouldn't let that happen.

That thought that lingers behind your words makes your eyebrows knit together in confusion once again, and your gaze wanders away once more.

Now that you think about it, why did you do it? I mean, why did you really do it?

You knew they weren't actually going to die just like that, he's too scared of the pale orc to do that, but you did it anyways. The possibility of harm befalling upon these dwarfs actually... affected you.

Gandalf pauses and observes you carefully, then realization sparkles in those infuriatingly wise eyes of his.

"Well, no matter. I did not mean to scold you, for you are a very capable person, so I thank you for doing your job well and diligently." He lets those words hang in the air for a time, then he moves on, "Now, we must discuss where we are and where we must go."

"I say-" Thorin begins, only to be cut off by howls and the sound of a gravely voice speaking in another language. "Out of the frying pan..." He sighs with a weary face.

"And into the fire! Run! Run!!" The gray wizard snaps.

You all begin your hasty retreat down the mountain, and at some point the sun begins to set.

The sky turns all sorts of vibrant shades of orange, blue, and red, and the light delicately kisses the peaks of each tree, mountain top, and surface. The air smells fresh, as it usually does following a hard rain, and the grass and leaves glisten healthy because of the drink offered to them by the sky. It's a magnificent sight to behold, but none of you are able to appreciate it, for the beauty of nature is being darkened and tainted by the evil intent and fear.

Those nasty wargs chase you all down like prey, maybe that's exactly what you are, meanwhile your feet take you as far away and as quickly as they can.

You jog behind the two youngest Durin's, being as Thorin takes the lead as per usual, and keep a slow enough pace to avoid taking over them (they're not the fastest group of dwarfs, after all). You can't have them becoming warg food when you still need them to get you into that mountain...

"Pick up your feet more when you run!" You command, glancing behind you briefly to gauge just how close those bastards are.

They heed your advice and end up running just a bit faster, something that relieves you somewhat.

The land begins to thin out and the ground you run on narrows, thus forcing all of you onto a cliff filled with trees and a precipice topped with a leaning tree.

“Up into the trees, all of you! Come on, climb! Bilbo, climb!” Gandalf demands, jumping up to grab one of the low hanging branches and pulling himself up.

You stay planted firmly in place and wait for everyone to find a spot in a tree and climb to safety, and while everyone else, even Bombur, finds somewhere to avoid the bloodthirsty wargs, Bilbo is still running for the tree line.

A frustrated curse passes through your gritted teeth, but you waste no time in rushing forward and yanking Bilbo away from the jaws of an awaiting warg. You foot shoots up and crashes into the side of its face, successfully knocking it off course since you nailed it in the eye which gives you two enough time to sort things out.

"Quickly!" You hiss, leaning crouching down with your hands clasped in front of you, "I can boost you up, but you mustn't waste anymore time!"

The little hobbit nods his head and steps his big right foot into your awaiting hands, and, once he's secured, you launch him up and into the awaiting low hanging branches.

"Y/N!" Fili screams from above you, panic lining his voice.

Your gaze snaps forward just in time to see sharp teeth and brown fur, but right before those razor teeth can sink into the soft flesh of your neck, a rock comes sailing through the sky and nails the nasty beast right in the nose.

It whimpers and jerks its head off to the side, but you don't waste anymore time in watching it freak out and instead roll around to the other side of the tree and jump up to grab a branch and pull yourself further up so they can't get your feet.

You reach up to grasp another branch, but someone catches your hand instead and easily hauls you into another layer of the tree.

"I've got you." It's Dwalin, and he doesn't let go of your hand right away until you're secure.

"Thank you." You dip your head after voicing your thanks then do a quick once-over to make sure everyone is safe in the trees, only, you don't get the chance to finish that before those wild dogs begin to rip at the roots holding the strong pines into place.

One by one do each of the trees begin to lean and fall, creating a domino affect that forces all of you to hang vicariously over the edge of the cliffside.

A quick glance down shows you the imminent death that awaits you below, and, for the first time since this chase began, you fear for your and everyone else's lives.

"Catch!" Kili yells to you, tossing a flaming pinecone your way.

Where did they get flaming pinecones?

Gandalf of course, you should've known even before you looked up.

You turn your attention ahead once more and pull your arm back, poised to throw the pinecone with all your might, only to stop mid-swing when something, or rather, someone, gets in your way.

Thorin Oakenshield stands on the trunk of the sinking tree with his weight distributed to maintain balance, and just ahead is Azog the Defiler, staring him down with an arrogant, sick smile.

Oh Jesus... this dwarf sure doesn't make your job easy.

You throw the pinecone since the flames began to lick at your gloved fingers and move to stand up, but the branch you sit upon cracks and creaks, groaning under the sudden movement.

Shit.

If he dies the dwarfs may give up on the entire journey altogether and decide to leave the mountain alone, and then where will that leave you?

You don't even want to think about it.

Another attempt is made to pull yourself up onto the thick trunk, but this time the entire branch cracks and breaks, falling out from beneath you as it hangs by the sparsely attached strings of ripped apart wood.

You just barely manage to throw yourself into the trunk and hang off the side, feet dangling in open air with nothing to leverage yourself with.

Panic blooms in your chest as you completely loose control over the situation, unable to even swing your legs up because of the way your arms can't completely wrap around the trunk.

"No!" Dwalin screams just above you, catching your attention briefly despite your panic.

You look over to the side and see that Thorin has lost his fight against the pale orc. He lays on the ground, unmoving and defeated as another one of Azog's companions raise its' weapon above its' head to kill the dwarf king.

"Damn it!" You hiss helplessly, pawing uselessly around the rough bark in search of any sort of leg up. "Thorin!"

This is it. They're going to kill him and all of you are going to fall to your deaths, soaring through the sky for a brief time before you become nothing more than bloody splatters on the ground below.

The sound of metal hitting metal and the clashing of weapons draws your ear as you begin to slip further down the circumference of the trunk, but you can't even turn to look because there's nothing left for you to do.

The rest of your body drags your arms from around the tree and, in a last ditch effort to avoid the drop, you grasp the broken, hanging branch.

It snaps of as soon as your weight yanks it down, and then... you're free falling.

Someone screams your name (is that Bofur?) but you don't do anything.

You don't writhe or scream; you don't flail your arms or cry; you just stare up at the horror stricken faces and your partners in falling (Dori and Ori) as numbness overtakes your whole body.

Yes, your stomach drops as the feeling of falling sickens you, but in your heart, in your soul, you feel nothing.

It's not like you've led a particularly good life or anything, but still, you don't want to die. Even if there is nothing for you, no one that cares, you still don't want to go; because once you're dead, the only thing anyone will remember you as is a ruthless monster, a puppet of The Brotherhood.

You don't want to die.

Maybe you should've rejected the job in the first place; maybe you should've made better designs in general; maybe you should've allowed yourself to let those foolish dwarfs and sweet hobbit close if to just feel a moment of belonging.

Little do you know, all of these thoughts will prove to complicate your mission further, because this is, in fact, not the end.

One moment you're falling to your death while having an existential crisis, and the next you're being snatched out of the sky by one of the Great Eagles.

#the company x reader #the hobbit fanfiction #the hobbit #reader insert #thorin oakenshield #fili #kili #killer good looks pt. 2 #assassin reader #angst #bilbo baggins #kili x reader #fili x reader #thorin x reader #bilbo x reader #bofur x reader #dwalin x reader

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kbsd · 4 years ago

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not sure if you’ve answered this before, but what’s your process look like when you make an amv? i’m just curious and in constant awe of ppl who can make videos like you do :)

hello all!!! i have answered this before and i have a vid help tag with other asks i’ve gotten about stuff like this! but i’ve gotten several more messages along these lines so i’m just going to answer a bunch of them together (under a cut since i love to ramble about editing lol). i do just wanna say i’m definitely not the authority on video editing and obv everyone has their own techniques!

edit: i just finished typing all this up and it’s SO long so sorry in advance LMAO god bless anyone who reads this entire thing

so i work in news tv and we have a very specific workflow for writing scripts, sourcing video, producing, and editing. i’ve just applied that to making amvs! for every video i make, i copy the song lyrics into a google doc and adjust them to match the song i’ve cut (i often will trim songs for time and/or content purposes). then i start planning! i’ll mark down what clip i want to use for each lyric next to that line, and any sound bites i want to use (with episode numbers!). i’ll color code between video and sound bites and lyrics, so my scripts end up looking something like this (for my honeybee amv):

doing the planning ahead of time makes everything much easier when it’s a video that spans the whole show or involves a lot of sourcing, like honeybee or sports analogies. that way when i get to the actual editing process, i already know what i’m going to do and have a game plan. for videos like happy ending or believe it or not, where i’m mainly just pulling from a few episodes, i can just plan it in my head as opposed to writing it all down, and produce as i edit. obviously i do make in-the-moment decisions while editing—sometimes a shot doesn’t work the way i thought it would, or i go where the video takes me—but planning ahead definitely helps. i know some people use spreadsheets as well, with columns for lyrics, video clips, and sound bites if applicable. once you find a system that works, it actually goes pretty quickly.

as for sourcing clips themselves/finding clips within episodes, i talked about that here and kind of here. the short version is that transcripts are a must, and the supernatural wiki is hugely helpful by cataloguing all the hugs, prayers, phone calls, etc. in the show. gifmakers that tag episode numbers on their posts are your friends. it gets easier the more video you make—that’s another huge reason i make the google docs for each video (even the ones i plan in my head, i end up going back and making a loose script with episode notes just for reference). if i can’t remember where something is but i know i used it in another video, i can easily reference past scripts!

i also cut all my videos in the same project in premiere pro, so i can flip between them easily. instead of checking a past script, i can just go to the video sequence itself and copy the clip i’m looking for! this was especially helpful when i match cut together the 5x18 and 4x22 wall slam shots for my bestie video, and then stole it from myself for honeybee hahaha. at any given time i have at least 8 sequences open:

because of the sheer volume of videos i make, it’s worth it for me to download the entire show—i have all 327 episodes in HD, plus deleted scenes. if you think you’re only going to make a few videos, i’d start with scene packs. you can usually just google “destiel [or whatever ship/character you’re looking for] scene packs” and there will be any number of ones you can download. if you need other specific scenes, you can always download/torrent individual episodes or screen record netflix (that’s what i did before i got HD download links). i’m happy to share my links if you DM, but be warned it’s a lot of disk space (about 500GB on my hard drive). someone also compiled every destiel scene, downloadable here.

having every episode already loaded in premiere for all my projects also makes it a lot easier to source clips. once i use a clip in a video, i’ll put a marker on the episode file, so that after a while i have most of the important scenes/lines marked to easily find them. to give you an idea, this is my episode file in premiere for 12x10 lily sunder has some regrets (markers at destiel scenes, the car fight, hot girl cas, etc.). markers are the green tabs along the bottom:

premiere also lets you color code and name markers, so ONE DAY i will go back and color code them all. the ones above are all the same color, but in a perfect world, i’d have a myraid—for destiel shots like hugs, touches, looks; for important pieces of dialogue; for action shots; etc. but for now this works ok for me, so that’s a project for another time!

between detailed scripts, one giant premiere project, markers, the wiki, and my own memory, i have so many points of reference that i can usually find any clip i need in about 2 minutes max. sound bites are often harder to start out, or tiny specific shots i haven’t used before, and that’s when i turn to tumblr gifsets or beloved mutuals to crowdsource. but if you’re as obsessive about marking/keeping neat scripts as i am, it gets easier and easier with every video you make. that’s part of why i’m able to cut videos together so quickly. (also i want to stress i do this for a living and have to produce/edit a new piece for my show every day so i’m used to it. and compared to constantly updating content/sources and news that changes every day, 327 highly documented episodes that never change are much easier to handle hahaha)

this is all great for me since i make so many videos and plan to continue doing so, but if you’re only making a few, this level of work isn’t worth it imo. really it’s all about developing a system that works for you. whatever you do with episodes/sourcing, though, i cannot recommend planning things out in a script ahead of time enough.

everything i just mentioned is producing, though. for the editing process, i usually do it in this order:

music first. any parts i want to cut, i make sure it all sounds smooth

then soundbites. i usually try to weave them into the lyrics—i have characters talk in breaks between lines or instrumental sections as much as possible. i’ll sometimes go so far as looped/extending an intsrumental part to make room for the soundbite i want there lol. if i do have dialogue over a line, i do the sound mixing/levels at this point as well to make sure everything is audible/one doesn’t overpower the other. (also i always include the video that goes with these bites when i drop them in, and decide later if i want to show the character speaking or have other clips cover the dialogue)

once i have all the audio locked in, then i bring in all my other video clips. sometimes i edit completely chronologically, sometimes jumping from section to section—it depends on the song or how i’m feeling

double check sound mixing. i usually listen to my videos through a few times, with headphones and without to make sure it’ll sound good no matter how people watch it

once i have picture and audio lock, i go through and color correct my clips. i’m basic and just use lumetri color in premiere, and usually just play with brightness, saturation, temperature, and tint until i like it

render and export! :)

i always have several audio tracks, but i try to keep my video tracks condensed. i’ll drop clips on a V2 level, and edit a section there, and drop the whole chunk down to V1 so i know it’s finished. that way when i leave and come back i can know where i left off/what’s done/etc. to give you an idea, this is the timeline for my what the hell video:

i always render as H.264 with high bitrate, and make sure to check “render at maximum depth” and “use maximum render quality” for the best quality. i’m sorry, but i don’t know what the equivalent options are in final cut, imovie, kdenlive, etc. i post on youtube mostly so i don’t have to sacrifice quality, but usually just using a lower bitrate will get you under the tumblr file size limit and it’ll still look good.

as for the anon who asked about “polishing”: first of all, thank you!! second of all, it’s in the details. all of this is a matter of taste and my own insanity, but here are some little things i always try to do:

after i color correct, i blur out any credits from the starts of episodes. i use gaussian blur for this, but really any blur tool works

as much as possible, i avoid clips where we see a character’s mouth move but don’t hear the words. in tv/film we call it “lip flap” and i just think it looks messy. also i’m trained to avoid it at all costs at work hahaha. it’s more for serious videos that this matters a lot to me (e.g. i think i did a really good job eliminating lip flap in my happy ending amv)—for comedy videos i don’t sweat it as much

i put audio fades on the start and end of every single audio clip i use, even if i don’t think i need it, to make sure everything sounds smooth

i use markers for timing, especially in action-y videos like what the hell. i’ll put a marker on the clip i’m using at the exact moment a punch lands, and in the song on the beat. if i have the magnet/snap in timeline tool on i can just easily snap them together instead of having to spend time finagling it

this is such a small thing but i dip/cut to black for a tiny bit at the start and end of every video. this way if i post with tumblr video player, there’s black between the loops, and it gives you a beat before the video restarts. i do this even on videos i post on youtube, just because i think it looks nicer/more professional

this is 1,500 words so i’m going to stop myself before i pull something. if you have follow-up questions feel free to ask and i’ll continue to add them to the vid help tag, but any more questions about sourcing clips or my process in general i’ll just link this post going forward. anyone who made it this far, i am sending to a telepathic kiss. thank you for reading and happy editing!

#i typed this all up at 4am so i'm just scheduling it to post sometime today #ask #vid help

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thedumpsterqueen · 4 years ago

Text

Standards of Performance, Chapter 4: Misjudgments and Saviors

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3

AO3 Link

Sorry it's later than normal! I procrastinated the fuck out of the last half of this chapter and just got it finished. This chapter was originally going to include way more than just the interrogation, but the word count got away from me. Not a ton of Hotch in this chapter, but fear not, you will be fed next week ;) Also dark!Hotch hits different, you cannot change my mind. I hope you enjoy, thank you to everyone who takes the time to follow me, share my fic, and send me such kind messages. It means the world! <3

Summary: You’re the BAU’s newest intern, desperate to prove yourself amongst an established team of much more experienced profilers. Agent Hotchner, the seemingly infallible team leader, sets strict expectations for your performance. He commands your respect without even trying, but is there something more to your relationship than a simple desire to impress your stony-faced boss?

Chapter: 4, Misjudgments and Saviors

Chapter Summary: The team interrogates Ellory Matthews and discovers that just because a killer is easy to catch, doesn't mean he's easy to predict.

Words: 2929

Rating: Explicit, 18+ (REMINDER: I don’t use chapter warnings to avoid spoilers. Assume violence, smut, etc. are possible in all chapters. Check AO3 for more exact tags <3)

Pairings: Hotch x Reader, Hotch x You

You threw on your work clothes and clambered into the back of the SUV in the dark, silent hotel parking lot. Morgan and Hotch were sitting up front, Morgan looking as exhausted as you felt and clutching a steaming cup of coffee like it was his lifeline, Hotch looking as startlingly unfazed as ever.

You caught a glance of the car’s clock up front between them and shook your head. Two in the morning - not an optimal time to interrogate anyone, much less try to force a confession out of a man desperate to avoid the consequences of a triple murder. If you were lucky, he’d fold quickly and the bulk of the paperwork could be pushed off until tomorrow when you’d all had more than a few hours of sleep.

After a blessedly brief drive (Hotch had a habit of ignoring speed limits, even in non-emergencies) and arriving at the police precinct, the three of you stood in the windowed room looking into where Matthews was being held. A police officer - you forgot his name, but he was one of the same ones who briefed you when you’d first arrived - gave you the rundown of his arrest.

“He was back on campus,” the cop said. “We stopped checking everyone in who entered through the gates after 10, so he must have waited until after then. Campus police were on a patrol when they heard screaming. He tried to grab a girl walking home from the library and got his ass pepper sprayed.”

You suppressed a snort at that. For someone who’d gone to such over-the-top measures to subvert the authorities after murdering three women at once, he was continuing to prove your initial theory, unprofessional though it was - he was an idiot.

Hotch thanked and dismissed the officer, who left after shooting one more glance of barely-suppressed disgust through the one-way window. Just the three of you now, you stepped forward, looking at your subject.

The first thing you noticed was his youth - he was young, around your age, which shocked you despite already knowing that information. He was big, too; not overly fit, but he certainly looked strong enough to have had the upper hand on nearly any female victim he chose. His face, inflamed and dripping with tears from the effects of the pepper spray, was his defining feature in that it wasn’t particularly defining at all. The structure was mildly unattractive - too-big nose, downturned eyes - and the symmetry just off enough that the absence of a stellar personality to compensate would render him nearly invisible to the opposite sex. That, you supposed, combined with a predisposition towards instability and a repeated lack of success with women, had created the perfect storm of obsessiveness and delusion that produced the three (almost four)-time rapist and murderer that sat on the other side of the glass.

“We need a confession,” Hotch said, breaking you out of your internal analysis, “but we also need to know if he’s done this before. Garcia put together a list of missing women that fit the victimology here as well as in Arizona and Nevada. Considering he dumped bodies there, we can assume he has some degree of comfort with those areas.”

Morgan grabbed the aforementioned list from Hotch and shook his head. “There’s dozens of names on this list.”

Hotch nodded in acknowledgement. “I know. That’s why I’d like to get closure for as many of the families as possible. But first, let’s focus on the three we know about.” He turned to you. “Morgan and I will go in first. We may have some success with intimidation from male authority figures, but I don’t see us piquing enough interest to get a confession. Normally, I’d send Prentiss or JJ in a situation like this, but I have full faith you can handle it.”

He paused, inspecting your face, no doubt gauging your reaction. “How do you feel about interacting with him?”

You felt sick, to tell the truth, knowing you were an exact match for his preferences. More than that, you felt woefully unprepared to conduct your second-ever interrogation under the scrutiny of two of the BAU’s experienced agents, including your boss. Especially your boss, whose gravelly voice and piercing eyes seemed to be occupying much more of your mental real estate than you were comfortable with.

You reassured him that you’d be fine, though, because looking like you were scared of interviewing a serial killer cast doubt on your ability to actually, you know, do your job . And if you watched Morgan and Hotch enter the interrogation room while really hoping that Hotch was underestimating their ability to crack him, well, no one needed to know.

Morgan swung the folding chair around, sitting with his arms propped on the backrest, directly across from Matthews. Matthews’ gaze, however, was glued to Hotch, who was standing with his arms crossed diagonally behind Morgan. You couldn’t see Hotch’s face, as his back was to you, but you knew what it looked like - jaw taut, lips pressed tight, frown even more pronounced than usual. Intimidating to anyone he came across, probably even more so if you were someone he was about to interrogate on suspicion of murder.

They made their introductions and began.

“Listen, Ellory, I’m gonna be straight with you here,” Morgan said, leaning forward. “This is not looking good for you, my man. We got you on attempted kidnapping at the same school three murdered girls attended. We have friends of these victims say they talked about a creepy teaching assistant in their classes. You’ve got piles of criminal psychology textbooks hidden in your house with notes that match what happened to these girls exactly. Put this in front of a jury, you’re getting convicted no question. At this point, it’s a matter of whether or not you wanna work with us and make this a little easier on you. You feel me?”

Matthews mumbled something indistinct, looking at his feet.

“Speak up,” Hotch commanded. You’d seen this before, what Morgan jokingly called the “good cop, bad drill sergeant” routine, but it always amazed you how easily they slipped into the roles.

Matthews looked up then, defiant. “They’re not mine.”

Morgan scoffed. “What aren’t? The books? C’mon man, they were under your mattress. In your house. No one’s buying that.”

“Well, it’s true,” Matthews mumbled, looking back down at his hands. “Don’t know how they got there.”

“And the girl?” Morgan asked, obviously unconvinced. “How you wanna explain you trying to kidnap a girl who fits the exact profile of three other girls who got kidnapped and killed in the same week?”

He whipped his head up at that, furious. “I wasn’t kidnapping her. She needed a ride. It was late.”

Hotch spoke up, his tone cutting. “Then why did she taze you?”

“She didn- look, she was confused, okay? I don’t know.”

“Sounds to me like she was pretty fuckin’ ungrateful,” Morgan offered. You cringed. You knew what he was playing at, but it was hard to hear nonetheless.

He continued, “Pretty girl like her, it wasn’t safe walking around that late, right? And you try to be a gentleman, try to help, and she freaks out and attacks you. That’d piss me off too, man.”

“Yeah. I guess,” Matthew responded, eyes flicking between Morgan and Hotch, seemingly unsure.

“Don’t worry about him,” Morgan said. “He’s just here cuz he has to be. Listen. We’re on the same page here. I’m you, I’m nice to these girls, I offer them rides, I treat ‘em like a gentleman. They turn around and act stuck-up, like they’re too good for me, right? That makes me mad.”

He paused, waiting for Matthews’ reaction. Matthews nodded, hesitant.

“So, what? Maybe I see them after they graduate or leave the college and confront them or something; tell them off for being such assholes to me when I was their TA. Maybe it gets heated, I gotta defend myself, someone gets hurt. Now, that’s not my fault, right?”

Matthews nodded again, more enthusiastic this time.

“Is that what happened to those girls, Ellory?” Hotch asked.

The room fell silent, waiting on his response. You leaned forward, nose almost pressed against the glass, praying it would really be this easy.

Matthews opened and closed his mouth, unsure. Morgan had worked him up, you could tell - his face was red, his hands balled up into fists on the table. He took a deep breath…

…and shook his head.

You cursed, stepping away from the glass. You heard Hotch and Morgan exit the interrogation room and come in behind you. You turned to face them.

“I thought you had him for sure,” you groaned to Morgan.

“Me too,” he replied, “but we got close. She going in next?” he asked Hotch.

Hotch looked at you. “He’s close to cracking. Act like he’d be doing you a huge favor by confessing, like you’d be in his debt. He wants to feel powerful, important. Convince him he can be.”

Catering to a man’s ego was a skill you’d fine-tuned after years of studying under, working with, and existing alongside them. Most men you’d had to flatter didn’t inspire quite so much disgust, however.

Just pretend he’s another idiot at a bar.

You straightened your cardigan and nodded. “I’m ready.”

“Remember,” Hotch said, “we’re right here. If you get too uncomfortable, just leave. This is a lot to ask of you so early in your position; I won’t blame you if it doesn’t go to plan.”

You nodded again and tried your best to smile. “Gotta learn sometime though, right?”

Morgan held out his fist to bump, and you obliged. “That’s my girl,” he said. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

Hotch looked much less enthusiastic, but opened and held the door for you anyways. You took a deep breath and entered, plastering what you hoped was a convincing smile on your face. Matthews looked up, surprised, and returned your smile. He looked so normal in that moment, it was hard for you to reconcile that this was the same man who stalked, raped, and murdered three women and led authorities on a purposeless goose chase to divert suspicion.

Taking a seat directly across the table from him, you introduced yourself. “I’m the new intern at the BAU. I asked my boss if I could come talk to you. I just don’t feel like they really understood you, ya know?” You grinned, hoping the flattery would stick.

It appeared to, as Matthews leaned forward and spoke in a hushed voice, as if he was confiding in you. “I know how guys like that are. They think they’re the shit. Women always fall for that, though.” He looked at you intensely, and you started to realize very quickly why his victims had found him unsettling. “You don’t fall for that, right? That alpha male stuff?”

You forced out a laugh. “No, I prefer more sensitive guys. Ones that you can have a conversation with.”

“Are we having a conversation?”

“Wh-what? I’m sorry?”

“Are we having a conversation?” he repeated, still holding intense eye contact.

“Well, yes, I would say so,” you replied. “On that note, um, I wanted to be honest with you. It would really mean a lot to me if the families of -” you paused, choosing your words carefully, “- the three girls we’ve been talking to you about could get closure.”

“How do you mean?” asked Matthews, leaning back and crossing his arms.

“I just mean, they don’t know what happened to them, you know? And if we could tell them that whatever happened to them, it was a misunderstanding, and the person who did it feels bad, I think that would help a lot.”

Matthews’ beady, swollen eye twitched at that. “Feels bad?”

Oh, fuck.

“Sorry, I don’t know if bad is the right word, just that they didn’t want that to happen. For them to die.”

He paused. Seemed to make a decision.

"Who said I didn't want them to die?"

You had misjudged him - in that moment, you knew that. You had assumed the fatal ends to the encounters with his victims were born out of shame. That he felt remorse. That he didn’t want to mutilate and discard their bodies, and that the purposeful distractions from his true psychological profile had been a desperate attempt of an unintelligent man to throw the police off his trail. He was a creep, he was a stalker, he was obsessive and dangerous, and he was unintelligent. But he was also a sadist.

Realizing how pathetically unprepared you were to deal with this new diagnosis, you pushed back from the table and moved to stand - slowly, like you were trying to avoid startling a wild animal. Trying. But it all happened so fast.

Matthews shot up from his seat the instant you did - uncuffed, because he wasn’t supposed to be a threat, not like this - and grabbed you by the neck, dragging you across the table, scraping your legs against the hard metal edges. You screamed for help (really just screamed Hotch’s name over and over) until he had you too tight and you couldn’t anymore. Your hair was in your face, obscuring your vision, but you heard the door crash open seconds after he moved. He wrenched you closer to him, trapping you in the crook of one elbow, cutting off your breathing. More than cutting off your breathing, he was squeezing, much harder than he needed to simply choke you, and amidst the haze of your hair in your face and the blood rushing in your ears and the muffled sounds of Hotch and Morgan yelling, you had the wild thought that he might actually detach your head from your shoulders.

They can’t shoot, you thought, your last clear notion before your mind started to go fuzzy. He had you too close; the space was too small. A loud crash, presumably the table being launched against a wall, cut through the pounding in your head. You felt a sharp jerk - Matthews trying to move away - a sickening, dull crack, and the vice holding your throat was released. You dropped forward onto your hands and knees, hacking desperately, tears streaming onto the ground.

Morgan grabbed you by the shoulders and sat you up. “You ok? Hey, look at me, you ok? Can you breathe? Breathe for me, ok, come on.”

Coughing out a raspy, “Yes,” you pushed your hair out of your eyes and wiped your sleeve through the snot and mascara streaking your face. You looked to your left, trying to see what happened to Matthews, and nearly stopped breathing again.

He was dead, collapsed into a pile on the floor like sodden laundry. There was no blood, no apparent evidence of what happened, until you looked to his head and saw how grossly contorted his neck was. You looked up at Hotch in shock, who was standing over the body, hair askew, breathing heavily.

He broke his fucking neck.

Morgan could’ve done it, of course, but by the way Hotch looked up and met your eyes, you knew that wasn’t the case.

They gathered you up and wrapped you in a jacket. You saw paramedics almost immediately who cleared you medically (“No permanent tracheal damage, just expect bruising and soreness.”), met with internal investigators who questioned you about the incident, spoke to the rest of the team on a video call, spent 20 minutes on the phone with Garcia trying to reassure her between coughing fits that you were all alright, and finally, you were cleared to leave. The whole time, though, you were paying less and less attention to what was going on around you and more time thinking about the way Hotch looked when you looked him in the face.

You knew he had to have killed before; working this job for as long as he did made that a certainty. What you didn’t expect to see on his face was a complete lack of remorse. Disgust, even. He looked down at Matthews like he was scum, his lip curled and his jaw set. It was only when you made eye contact that you saw the slightest bit of emotion, of panic, before they whisked you away.

Morgan interrupted your cyclical musing. “You need someone to stay with you?”

Right, he was dropping you off at your hotel room.

“No, thank you Morgan,” you whispered, throat feeling more raw by the minute. “I’ll be okay.”

Morgan looked unconvinced but refrained from debating you. “Alright, but you know to call if you need anything, right?”

You nodded and managed a small smile. “Thank you.”

____________

Later that day, you took a commercial flight back, alone. Morgan and Hotch were staying for a few more days to finish closing the case, but they insisted you go home and rest. You were too drained to argue.

When you closed your eyes to sleep that night, in your own apartment, you expected to see Matthews, jeering at you from across the table. You expected to feel his arms wrap around your throat, to smell his stench, to wake up in a cold sweat thinking he was standing over you, ready to attack you again.

None of those things happened. In fact, when you closed your eyes, Matthews wasn’t the man you saw at all.

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jjkpls · 4 years ago

Text

crayons ‘set’ (PG)

> genre : fluffy fluff, light angst, comedy

> pairing : kim namjoon x reader

> words : 3.8k

> warnings : none (except a rusty quill)

>Y/N, a primary school teacher, is way too soft for the quiet, timid new child in her class. Little did she know, the adult version, who engendered this cutie, is even more charming.

> prior

> next

The principle of balance.

It’s a curious concept. Like most of the things that turn people into different versions of themselves, just from an unconscious force brought to light by the sheer inner sense of competition that inhabits every single person. It’s quieter in some people. Feel non-existent sometimes. But it’s here, dormant, just waiting on the right trigger to awaken.

You didn't think you would see it in Jimmy. The little boy lacks completely self-confidence and affirmation. But a voice and a stance, easily remarkable, end up fitting him.

It turns out that you witness it quite quickly after the Progress has started. And it manifests in the most adorable and comical of ways.

It’s been a few weeks since you've met his dad. There wasn’t much to talk about with him yet. Every day, longer lingerings of the gaze, less tucking away in the far back of the rest of the group, more definite wordless participations during class -nodding and clapping along. The progress you've been wholly satisfied with but nothing so drastically different that you thought necessary to call his father in for.

Nothing absolutely astonishing. Therefore you didn’t call and what a surprise this one Thursday afternoon turns out to be when he appears at your class’s doorway.

He’s wearing very casual clothes, a simple light linen shirt and some distended jeans to pair, sneakers and his hair -you've only seen neatly tucked to the side- is floating about his forehead, freshly washed and devoid of any wax. It’s a pleasant surprise, especially with the evident appearance of calm and quiet tranquillity he’s carrying.

This man looks rather handsome when he’s on vacation, stressless and well-rested and seemingly content, you note.

“Mr Kim?”

He looks up from his son he is holding the hand of, eyes wide and bewildered as he stares a little. You chuckle, confused but amused. He’s the one paying you a surprise visit but he’s shocked when you do talk to him?

“Is it bad timing? I can come back another day...” From the look he’s giving you, or more accurately, barely sparing you, body already aiming for the corridor, you wonder if you should return the question. It'd be cruel though, to tease, therefore you choose to simply shake your head and insist on him walking in. And then it happens, the man can’t take a step inside, for some reason. He’s just paralysed, looking like a million contradicting thoughts are fighting inside his brain and he simply cannot make out the best option, if he would or not step in; and it’s Jimmy who takes the decision for him. Puffing his cheeks out in annoyance, he pushes against his father's leg, small hands pulling the bigger one towards him. It’s like watching a tiny mouse trying to drag along a giraffe. It has little to no physical effect until there’s an aggravated tiny whine of “appa”. He moves, at last, letting himself stood in front of me before Jimmy lets go of his hand.

He gives you a look you're not sure you interpret well. Dark eyes all serious, attention loud, he seems to be intrusting his father to you. A gentle smile, hiding your teeth biting back a hilarious grin, sends him away towards the very back of the room. Taking a seat next to the bookshelf, it takes Jimmy a few minutes only after you've diverted your attention from him to grab an image book and start going through it patiently.

He's so comfortable. Almost too comfortable. He looks strange, like that. Strange because different from usual but still, oddly, it fits him well. It's like a projection, a little vision of a future little boy, easygoing, at peace with himself and his environment, that won't take too long to be born again.

And it's now the dad who's acting weird. He's standing on his two never-ending legs, the tip of his fingers toying nervously with the button of his vest, his mouth keeps teasing, opening slightly, as if about to spill a word, only to shut itself right up, a lightly aggravated sigh following soon after. It happens quite a couple of times until you get tired of waiting. Tired of the eyes avoiding you, the tension heavy for no particular reason that you could decipher, you ring him awake with an abrupt overexaggerated clearing of your throat.

"Mr Kim?" He's confounded again, caught off guard somehow. "Did you mean to discuss something with me?" It's hard to make an adult talk, you realise. Sometimes children can be difficult. Put aside Jimmy's case, sometimes children are like that. Making them want to share, especially when they are at that age where they can't express themselves and their ideas as well as they wish they could, frustration, laziness at times can get the better of them and having a fairly constructed conversation with them is like pulling teeth out of a very adamant, unwilling person. But you manage. Adults, on the other hand, have never been too much of your cup of tea. There's a reason why you chose to spend the better part of your weeks with children instead of adults. You're not that terrible at getting along with them, you do it pretty well, honestly. But the reason is probably the fact that you're not difficult. You're convenient as a person, always willing to help, always trying to be positive, you do not get in people's way and most of the times, it's enough to make it through.

You don't deal with adults the way you deal with children. With great pleasure and passion, you insert yourself into your pupils' existence, try to leave a mark and help them have the better, feel the better, be the better. Adults, you don't get too involved. They sound complicated, complexed, too many compromises, too many facets. You know because you are one too.

And Mr Kim, looking all nervous and troubled seem the very embodiment of this bias you have. He looks some sort of troubles. Probably nothing that terrible. He appears too childish for it to be that grave. But he's serious about it, about the anxiety, the struggle, the uneasiness he's feeling, you can tell, just from the way he hasn't been able to look at you in the eyes since he appeared in your class. Still, whatever it is, will cost some of your time, and with that, might clog up some very much needed space you require in this busy head of yours.

It's happened before. A new neighbour trying to get closer to you, maybe because they've just moved in the city, didn't know anyone, and you looked friendly enough and they needed someone to listen to the exhaustive list of all the things that made them leave their hometown -even though, you don't necessarily care for any of it. Or a colleague, trying to get you involved in their office dramas, simply because people need the attention, the feeling of importance and support.

Quite frankly, you've never been interested in any of them. Adults sound like too much work, especially given the fact that, as filled with flaws as they are, they are a pain, and often impossible, to fix. And they say things they don't mean. And they want things that they don't need. Their words and their acts hardly ever match. They're for the most part unrecoverable and unfixable, and you don't want any of it.

But Mr Kim and his dimples -invisible to the eye at the moment, but that you realise marked your brain so strongly you can picture them exactly where they should be winking- are piquing your interest. You're ninety-nine per cent sure it is not about Jimmy but you'd like to know. Never mind that curiosity killed the cat.

“Yes, uh-“ Clearing of the throat, scratching of the neck and more clearing of the throat. “about last time...”

You're lost. For a second, your body freezes to give your brain its full capacity to wreck through the whole place and retrieve a memory that seems to have been lost somehow, somewhere. You have no idea what time he is referring to.

He seems so invested, so intensely experiencing his emotions you're left shocked and deeply embarrassed to not remember something that had that effect on him yet didn’t leave a single trace on you.

He insists then, having to face your transparent confusion. The more you stand in pure oblivion, the more awkward he gets. Stuttering more, an accent, very deep, adding rough edges to his voice, colouring his words with new shades that you've never heard before.

“Mr Kim-“

“Namjoon.”

“I’m sorry?”

“No, it’s me, I am, I’m-“ You will, later, feel terrible for it. It’s undeniable. But right now, facing this grown-ass man, usually so collected now decomposing in the most adorable red-cheeked boyish thing, you can only start laughing. It renders him speechless which in a way is almost an improvement and when you finally can restrain the giggles from bubbling straight from your belly, you start again,

“Maybe take a deep breath, take your time.” You bite your lip down to the blood, poorly concealing your grin when he actually does it. “What did you mean by ‘last time’?” You're mortified to ask, honestly, persuaded that you should know but at this point, it’s pretty mean but you don’t think you can embarrass yourself that much in front of him, not when he’s been such a mess himself.

“When we met. When I came to talk about my son.” Calmly, diligently he answers. Like a good boy answering his teacher’s question, a shadow of worry covering his usually sharp gaze.

“Oh, what about it?” Curiosity melts with confusion as you refrain yourself from pressing him further into elaborating faster, eager as you are to understand. You were sure he was not going to talk about him.

“I’d been a bit much and I wanted to apologise personally to you.”

Been a bit much?

“In what sense? I’m not sure I understand.”

“It’s just- I poured myself and our luggage on you when you’re- I know you care about my son but I shouldn’t have, I don’t know, I shouldn’t have-“

You hate cutting people off. It’s a terrible habit you are constantly trying to teach your students to drop. But here he is, struggling to express an idea that irks you strongly. Is he able to put the words he needs? Does he even know them in his own mother tongue or do they even exist? Maybe what he's trying to express are pure emotions. Unease coming from a heart shameful for having shown itself vulnerable to a stranger. You'd know about this feeling. You've experienced it plenty of times, throughout all your life. Even if it wasn’t in the form of you stripping your heart off to someone, like he did, simply showing that you cared gave you the same sense of vulnerability, of terrifying exposure you've always had a hard time dealing with.

You hate the idea that he regrets it, especially with you. At that time, you could tell he had words to pour out. You were glad, you were even enchanted to be the one helping out no matter how small you just assumed your impact to have been. And now, he's trying to say that he regrets it?

“You said you were thankful to have someone to talk to.”

“I did say that.” He mumbles, pressing the pad of his fingers against his closed eyes.

“Then don’t regret it. I don’t want you to be embarrassed about this, seriously. I had parents do way more, actually embarrassing, things in my career. Don’t even worry about it.” He’s thinking it over. You can tell your words have little to no impact on his bruised ego. “I’m not sure how appropriate it is for me to say that but if you need it, whenever in the future, don’t hesitate. I’m not a psychologist, but I’m just- I’m willing to listen if it can help. I mean me or anyone else, really, you should in general just share. It’s important. You don’t want Jimmy to mimic such bad habits like so, holding in and all.” You may be talking too much. The man just looks so eager to hear those words and it spurs you on. “You really shouldn’t feel embarrassed. I can understand the feeling, where it comes from, but it’s pointless with me.”

“You’re really kind.” You give a smile, only. It’s not much but you're pretty sure it’s the genuineness tinting it that renders it enough. Again, he seems surprised. As bewildered as last time but undoubtedly convinced. “I’m glad he has you as his teacher.”

Your cheeks burn intensely. You don’t know how conscious he is of his words. If he realises that he perfected the art of flattery and of slipping people in his pocket. He really did. Especially when he’s leaning slightly towards you, gaze intense and on you now that the embarrassment has vanished for the most part and he can bear looking at you, seemingly hanging out for any other words you may have in stock.

There’s nothing left for you to say though. It takes you quite a few attempts to skim over your brain, trying to formulate a sentence, any word, but you come out completely empty. You can’t even stutter a thank you from how utterly flustered you're feeling.

Therefore you choose the easy way out. Waltzing on your heels to give him your back, your hands reaching to the barely messy top of your desk to pretend they’re busy. You believe yourself to have been sleek enough but apparently not so -maybe it’s the fact that you're just picking up stuff to put them exactly where they belong, at the exact same place.

“Was I inappropriate? I’m really sorry, Mrs ___. Sometimes I just talk too much and I don’t realise that maybe I shouldn’t.”

“Please stop apologising. It’s fine, you’re fine. You’re just- You saying nice things that you mean,” You stumble upon the last words as if maybe you're getting over your own head to just assume and claim so loud that he must mean the sweet things he said to you but that bashful yet adorable expression he's wearing, with the eyes a bit wide and the bottom lip munched, fill you with a regain of confidence, “can’t be an issue. It’s just unexpected and- I mean you’re fine you can say whatever you want. I mean I’m not asking for more compliments, I’m just saying-“

It’s terribly unnerving. You don’t know what impression you're giving off as a teacher. Lacking so much elocution, scrambling to form sentences and turning into a messy, overwhelmed emotional mess.

“I don’t mind giving you more compliments, Mrs ___.” Here comes that curious principle of balance again. You're half-dying of mortification and he seems to be having fun, smiling kindly, with a hint of something else -amusement, maybe even smudginess.

Is he flirting with me? There’s no way he’s flirting. I think I’m losing my mind.

“It’s Miss, actually.” You swear to yourself, silently, that you're not flirting back -assuming he is, in fact, doing just that- and you just mean to be called by an accurate name.

“Oh.” He almost gasps. Looking shocked and you don’t understand what’s going on anymore. Was he really not flirting? Why does he look so shaken as if you misinterpreted his intentions and now he’s misinterpreting yours and think you're getting over your head -because you're not, you were not flirting!

“I’m not flirting with you, I’m just clarifying!”

You hate this whole conversation. You hate yourself, your life and anything and everything that may or may not have led you to this tragic instant.

You're positive you screamed a little. You get confirmation of just that from the tiny mop of hair bouncing up in your peripheral vision, as Jimmy gives you two a slightly concerned, curious look.

The tension is blatant. It's a mixture of irritation, of anxiety, of embarrassment. You couldn't have messed up any worse than you did and you positively want to simply die, right about now.

The mere thought that you'll have to live with this humiliation not only for the whole day ahead, blatantly hanging out at the back of your head, sometimes probably too close to your consciousness for any sense of comfort to ever inhabit you again, but for your entire life makes you want to throw yourself out the window. You decide not to indulge in the pressing pulsion only because you're on the ground floor, therefore, it would be pointless if not even more humiliating.

Mr Kim, somehow, helps a little. By not wearing a mask of pure revolt, revulsion or aggravation. He stares soundly, expression not giving off much to work with. Just enough to understand he is not mad, simply lost in his own thoughts he doesn't seem too keen on sharing.

A spark of sensibility blooms suddenly in your brain. You're so thankful for it, you jump right on it, grab it with your two hands and start again, as if nothing happened, as if you haven't just humiliated yourself in front of this man (and his son), "Jimmy has made a lot of progress, I've noted."

Mr Kim blinks a few times, unnaturally so. "Yeah? I mean, yes, I've noticed too, actually." He keeps staring with the same obnoxiously loud thoughts running in his mind. His brain is on full activity mode. It's obvious. And he doesn't care too much about talking about his son right this second (even though he doesn't seem to care much about sharing what's going through that private head of his either).

How disappointing. You sincerely thought the one subject that matters the most to him would successfully tear the attention away from you but you're a fool. Apparently, even the cute little bean of a son he has can't divert the attention from the humiliation you've just submitted yourself to.

"Anyway, I won't hold any more of your time, you must have work to attend to."

"Actually I'm not working today. I have the day off." Your lip now too sensitive, you attack the inner part of your cheek with your teeth -thankfully you've turned your back to him again, feigning observing with great attention something through the windows- to stop yourself from screeching. It takes him so long, so fucking long for him to decide, finally, that maybe he should leave. The longest dozens of seconds of your life. Staring outside, picturing him behind you, probably watching you wondering to himself how you can be so lame and how he could have thought you a good fit to be his precious son's teacher. "Ah, I should leave anyway. Your class is about to start?"

"Ah, yes. Well, thanks for passing by. I hope you rest well." It's the least genuine you've been with this man, and anyone for the matter, in so long. Your heart and mind are in such a shamble you don't actually remember the reason for his coming and if, really, anything positive came out of this conversation.

It's ridiculous how you feel, all bothered and nervous, aggravated with him for making you feel so flustered. You give him the most convincing fake smile you own, not taking the time to check if he buys it as you don't dare lingering your attention on him for any longer than the blink of the eye takes.

When he leaves, only after having scattered a bunch of smooches on Jimmy's face, you find yourself breathing again. It's like you've been holding in for so long, you're getting dizzy at the taste of oxygen again, heart beating furiously in your chest, sweating all over.

Fuck, that was painful.

You're such an idiot sometimes. Why do you have to be such a fucking idiot? It's not like you're asking much in this life, honestly. You're not aiming at any groundbreaking, universe shaking novelties. You're staying in your line, trying to be good and do good in your own little world. Not asking much, not taking without beforehand being offered. Is it really that much to ask to not be absolutely humiliated in front of one of your kids' parent, who happens to be a stupidly handsome man? (Yes, he is. You can admit that -to yourself. It's probably the reason why your brain stopped working properly, by the way.) You're cursed. I'm cursed, I'm cursed, I'm cur-

"Mish?" The quietest little call comes from the quietest little boy. Standing a secure meter away from you, his peculiar big black eyes staring with a silent demand in them, Jimmy waits patiently for your attention to be given to him. You offer it to him with great enthusiasm. Because between self-pitying your dumb ass and celebrating the first-ever-self-willingly-uttered word to you by this boy, the choice is not even to be pondered over.

"Yes, Jimmy?" He's holding in one hand your crayons he slowly tends your way, careful not to spill them all from his tiny fist. In the other one, there's a paper he's drawn on. Your eyes instinctively are driven to it, curious to see what he decided to draw when he felt comfortable enough to do it. He catches the line of your attention, evidently, and it takes him a second but then, finally, he decides you're allowed to see it. It's a too accurate copy of the ugly cat you made for him the other day. The colours are different, the traits a bit shakier yet, completely unbiasedly, you have to admit that he somehow made it look better. "That's a very pretty cat, Jimmy."

He looks at it, ruminates your words, trying to make sense of them, verify their accuracy. Suddenly he seems to decide that you're right and giving you another candid look, he returns to his table where he proceeds to carefully slip the drawing in his bag.

You realise your eyes are filled up with prickling tears while you sniff. You're not sure how much is due to this, how much the terrible, terrible encounter with his dad worked your emotions so intensely you're so sensitive now. In any case, it turns out for the better. It's this cute little cat that ends up making you and your day ahead feel better. You're so thankful for it.

Again, you know you're too involved but how are you supposed to do any different with them? Maybe it wasn't a punishment earlier. Maybe it was the storm before the ray of sunshine. It's probably the case. You're less aggravated, suddenly. Less vexed and probably more lenient on talking to this man again given, not the ray of sunshine, but actually rainbow that he may have helped cause to colour your day.

A/N: thanks for reading 💜

#btswriterscollective #networkbangtan #thekimlinenet #bts fluff #bts angst #bts scenario #bts fanfic #namjoon fluff #namjoon angst #namjoon scenario #namjoon fanfic #my writing

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alaraxia · 4 years ago

Text

Process Breakdown: Starfall

Since I got some positive responses to my question on process stuff I’m gonna do a behind the scenes breakdown for my most recent piece to help people see the process I use and how I problem solve. I didn’t plan to do this initially so I won’t have a ton of process shots but I did save a handful. There’s a few scattered hyperlinks to other pieces I reference too. Just a warning this is mostly train of thought so it’s super verbose.

So base sketches were mostly focused around me defining the shape of the girl since she was the focal point and building the environment around her. Going in the things I knew I wanted were a girl precariously balanced on top of a massive capybara catching a falling star, while surrounded by smaller sleeping capybaras on rocks. I layered out a general forest scene surrounding it but didn’t really commit to much in the sketches. Messed with the angles of the large capybara a few times to make it feel less flat and more 3D in the space, used a lot of reference photos of capybaras and sorta simplified them to what I thought was cute/ what stood out to me as their defining features.

Skipping ahead a solid amount is midway through the initial lineart, with some areas just colored in to define them as separate. Initially this piece was supposed to be in a similar style as my “Stratosphere Dreaming” art, with a single uniform line thickness, bright colors, and no gradient shading at all, but I realized pretty soon after I finished the lineart and started coloring that I had done what I tend to do a lot and made it too complex to pull off successfully in that style so I had to pivot to using gradient shading and other non-cell style techniques (though you can see a lot of those methods still in the coloring of the girl). This caused an even bigger challenge as I was drawing on a large canvas with high DPI in Procreate which resulted in me having a cumulative 50 layers to work with at any given time (hell).

Now once I made that rendering style pivot is when the really hard part began, and why on top of my persistent arm injuries this took me about two months to finally finish.

1.) I had an extremely difficult time trying to figure out the color pallet for the piece. I had an idea of the values and general colors I wanted (you can see some pallets and random base color tests in the image above) but I just couldn’t get them to look right and I became extremely more aggravated as I kept trying new and different things. My biggest mental block was feeling like I was stuck trying to make the initial pallet idea work, but eventually I was able to bump it to a slightly adjacent pallet and it worked far better. Essentially a lot of angry experimenting and testing.

2.) I made the piece too complex for its own good when it came to the foliage and scene. After finding success with a very specific way to render foliage in one of my favorite pieces I started to use it as my standard, but that standard started to show cracks when I had foliage heavy scenes like in my Hollow Knight piece from last year. The rendering style became insanely too time consuming, and incredibly distracting when used in abundance, taking away from the focal point. I knew this but I still attempted to use the same style to render the foreground foliage MULTIPLE times in increasing states of frustration until I stepped back, evaluated it wasn’t working, and tested out a very similar style with the same effect but that I could throw together twice as fast without the aggressive distraction and minuscule details that were irrelevant in the scheme of the art. This frustration in the rendering not working was only exacerbated by the color pallet indecision making a lot of the attempts just look bad both color and style wise.

Due to the limited layers I had to finish rendering out the girl very early and merge her together to free up layer space, and couldn’t keep my lineart layers as separate as I would have liked to allow for quick line color swaps. She ended up being a key point in defining the rest of the color pallet of the piece. The dress shape was indeed inspired by the Lirika Matoshi strawberry dress, but with my own twist.

Once I got a more solid color pallet down the rest started to come a lot easier and I was able to begin filling stuff in and doing general color adjustments to make the backgrounds darker and give it more depth. I don’t have any more process shots beyond the initial color pallet exploration unfortunately, but the last hurdle I hit was at the very end once I was doing final touch ups. I found that with the only light source/ lighter color being the falling star that it washed out a lot of the rest of the pieces and made the details I spend so much time on feel unnoticed. I found though that adding the bright orange stardust specks into the trees, the girls hair, and falling from the star itself gave the last bit of color I think it needed without completely destroying the atmosphere. Originally (you may see it in some of the process shots) there were going to be jars with stars already in them illuminating the bottom of the piece, but after multiple trial and error iterations it just didn’t work out and ended up taking the focal point away from the girl and the star too much so I scrapped it.

Finally once I got everything done I made a copy of the entire art file to save as a backup, then with one of the copies merged all the layers together. Once all merged I made a copy of the fully merged layer, and went and adjusted the entire layer copy using a Gaussian Blur, reduced the opacity of the blurred layer to a super low percent, and put it on top of the original merged layer. This gave it that ethereal sort of feel that is difficult to notice unless you zoom in but really helps soften the piece and make it more dreamlike overall. Then I merged that blur layer down, and turned on about a 3% noise layer on it all to give it a bit of texture.

But that’s enough rambling from me, hope this helps give a bit of background to my process and decision making and it wasn’t just a wall of random musings.

My last piece of advice is if you’re looking to do art professionally, do commissions, or make a lot of pieces in a short period of time I would highly advise against directly copying techniques I use. Because while I’m always working to improve I do only do this as a hobby rn so I have the luxury of being able to invest a lot of time, energy, and details into higher complexity pieces that would take way too long in a professional environment. I can put a lot of time into making a single piece exactly as I want it since I’m not reliant on art as my sole income. As I improve I can make things faster, but it’s still an overall slow process and I just end up moving my quality standards up with any level of improvement anyway. Use stuff I do as inspiration but I cannot stress enough to learn as many shortcuts as possible (I’m still struggling with this myself).

If y’all have any questions about bits feel free to dm, if I do something like this again I’ll try to get better screenshots during the process n try to be less verbose.

#tutorial #behind the scenes #alaraxia process #process breakdown #starfall

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icasttourniquet · 4 years ago

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The Reckoners as a Metaphor for OCD

Spoilers for all three books in Sanderson’s Reckoners series, which, if you haven’t read, is excellent, and you should read.

The Reckoners trilogy takes place in a world where certain people, called Epics, have superpowers that corrupt those who wield them, making them more prone to mass murder than the average person. Power sets always come with a weakness, which the protagonist discovers is a fear, something the Epic was scared of before they gained their abilities. Most Epics avoid this fear. But, by confronting it, Epics can learn to use their powers without turning evil.

Where’s the metaphor for OCD? Well, if you know anything about OCD treatment via ERP therapy (and who doesn’t?), then the analogy is hopefully clear. If you don’t, allow me to spell it out.

What’s OCD?

Contrary to popular belief, OCD has nothing to do with cleanliness or perfection. OCD is a disorder categorized by:

Intrusive thoughts (obsession)

Strong, negative reactions to that thought

Compulsions to reduce the negative reaction (compulsion)

Oh hey, you see where the name OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) comes from now?

Source

In the classic OCD stereotype, that might look like this:

My intrusive thought tells me the surface I touched is not clean.

I become absolutely terrified of the possibility that I am infected with salmonella and will die.

I wash my hands to convince my brain that I don’t have salmonella and won’t die.

At first, this might seem clever. Hey, you were scared, but then you took a concrete action and it made you not scared anymore! That’s great! And if the compulsion remained just a simple hand-washing, maybe it would be. Unfortunately, over time, OCD convinces you that one hand wash isn’t enough. Now it takes two to kill salmonella. Or three.

OCD obsessions and compulsions can be about absolutely anything, Here are some examples:

I saw a bat; therefore I have rabies.

I am anxious because I’m going to die of rabies.

I spent 8 hours online researching whether the bat outside gave me rabies before I am convinced that I won’t die.

What if I accidentally cheated on my boyfriend last night?

I am terrified I might’ve cheated on my boyfriend.

I ask my boyfriend every morning whether or not I cheated on him and he reassures me that I did not.

If I pick up a knife, I’ll accidentally kill my wife.

I an scared because I don’t want to kill my wife.

I refuse to touch knives, even butter knives.

That last example is called an avoidance compulsion, which is sometimes hard to spot because it’s the lack of a compulsion, though it is still detrimental. The Epics in the Reckoners series all follow the avoidance compulsion, refusing to ever interact with their fears.

OCD Treatment

I think there are two easy ways to misconceive of OCD and get the whole treatment wrong. The first is to assume intrusive thoughts are the problem and to try to get rid of them. This is what a lot of folks (myself included) assumed OCD treatment would look like. However, everyone, neurotypical folks included, has intrusive thoughts all the time. They just don’t react to them.

Another common response is to mitigate the compulsions. If you wash your hands too much, let’s get you some soap that’s softer on your hands. If it’s important for things to be clean, let’s help you clean the house twice daily. If you are worried you didn’t lock the door, take a picture so you can check later (as an aside, please don’t recommend this to people with OCD; this is called enabling a compulsion and reinforces the idea that if the door is unlocked, that’s a problem worth having a panic attack over, which it is not).

Both solutions will fail because neither addresses the actual problem, which occurs in step two. The problem is the anxiety response, not the intrusive thought and not the compulsion. It is possible to think any thought at all and not react to it.

Addressing Anxiety

Whether or not the intrusive thought is valid, the response is detrimental (if it wasn’t detrimental, you wouldn’t fit the diagnostic criteria for OCD). Treatment focuses on reducing the anxiety response by proving to your brain that the thought itself cannot hurt you. This is done through exposure response prevention therapy (ERP).

Basically, the brain is a complicated machine-learning algorithm. Every time it sees a compulsion relieve anxiety, it reinforces the idea that the compulsion is the only way to relieve anxiety. During ERP, you expose yourself to something you fear and refuse to engage in compulsions. Because the adrenaline response cannot last indefinitely, you eventually start feeling less afraid. Suddenly, your brain sees that there’s another way to get rid of the anxiety (I.e., by sitting with it). Over time, you can convince your brain that thoughts in and of themselves don’t require a reaction at all.

Source

I thought this was a post about the Reckoners

Only vaguely. I mostly wanted to talk about OCD (shh, don’t tell anyone). But, hopefully you can see some similarities now.

I see water.

I am terrified of water because it makes my powers go away and renders me weak.

I avoid water.

The Epics are all caught in a classic avoidance-based OCD obsession-compulsion loop.

But wait, I hear you cry. The Epics actually lose their powers when exposed to their weakness. Their reaction is justified.

Justified, maybe. Helpful? No. Most intrusive thoughts have a bit of truth in them. Bats can give you rabies. Rabies has as close to a 100% mortality rate as makes no odds. If you genuinely think you have rabies, you need to get a shot. Panicking about seeing a bat, however, does not help you survive rabies or make a rational decision about whether to get a rabies shot. The panic is useless.

Some OCD thoughts are completely true: in my case, I obsessed about my impending mortality. Unless I become the first immortal human (still working on that), my intrusive thought is accurate and I will die. Worrying about that now, though, is completely useless.

Similarly, the emotional reaction is interfering with the Epic’s life in a serious way. They could avoid their weakness just as well if they weren’t terrified of it. Again, the intrusive thought and compulsion aren’t what’s maladaptive here. It’s the emotional reaction.

And, when Epics face their fears head on, just as someone with OCD does during ERP therapy, the fear fades. In their case, it’s because they claim their powers and their weaknesses don’t work anymore. In the case of the OCD sufferer, it’s because the brain learns the reaction is overblown. So not only are they stuck in an obsessive-compulsive loop, it’s treated in the same way OCD is!!

So what?

As someone with OCD, I was delighted by the way facing the fear resolved the negative effects of being an Epic. I like that it portrayed the extreme fear of the weakness as a negative, even if the weakness existed. And I liked that characters didn’t ‘fight’ or argue with their weaknesses, as many people with OCD do with their intrusive thoughts. All told, rereading these books gave me new ways to think about my own OCD. I don’t think Sanderson was trying to make an OCD metaphor at all, but he made a pretty good one!

#ict #chat #ocd #reckoners

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willow-salix · 4 years ago

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Fluffember prompt: Jacket (hoodie)

Day 21 of Isolation on Tracy Island 2.0

"What the hell kind of noise was that?"

"I sneezed."

"That was NOT a sneeze," Alan argued, looking at me warily, like he expected me to explode again any second and take them all out with me. I glared at him, because how dare? I was the sick one and he was treating me like I was doing it to spite him.

"Be nice to her," John sighed, but his tone said he was barely listening and was pretty much done with all of us now.

I was camped out on the couch, where I'd been for much of the day. I'd gone past the point of having a head that felt like a steel band was rehearsing in there and had downgraded it to little demons with pitchforks that jabbed me whenever I coughed, sneezed or moved my head quickly. It was more bearable and wasn't as affected by sound levels made worse by noisy brothers.

I looked like crap, I knew that, my hair was scraped up on top of my head in a loose bun, I was wearing the shirt that John hates (but it was hidden by a blanket so his eyes were safe), soft leggings and the fluffiest socks imaginable. I wouldn't be winning any beauty pageants any time soon but at least I was comfortable. And I was still cold.

I know, I know, I could just go and put a jumper on or something, but that wouldn't work. Because I was in that awkward stage where I was too hot with a thick jumper on, but too cold without it. The blanket helped but it still wasn't right. And I was getting rather fed up.

Gordon, sweet boy that he is, handed me a mug of his famous tea (which is a lot more useful than his equally as famous squid sense right now) and immediately went into lecture mode.

"Have you let Virgil check your temperature lately?"

"Yes," I sighed and he lifted an eyebrow, clearly not believing me.

"She has," John confirmed. "And she's taken those vitamins. She's behaving."

"Makes a change from last time."

"Hey! No picking on me," I croaked, pausing to have a coughing fit. "Last time I was a strong, independent woman and now…" I paused, not sure how to finish that sentence without making myself sound bad or proving his point. I rephrased. "Look, last time I was used to doing everything for myself and not relying on anyone, now I've learnt to accept a little help now and then."

"You mean you were awkward, argumentative, you bit me and we had to resort to underhanded tactics?" Virgil joined in, earning himself a glare.

"Anything sounds bad when you say it like that," I grumped, lifting John's arm to snuggle under. "I said I was sorry for biting you but you were trying to do medical things to me and you know I don't work that way."

"Let me see your throat," Gordon asked, ignoring the ranting going on. I dutifully tipped my head back and opened my mouth.

"Not as bad as it was," Gordon admitted, after shining a light inside. "Close."

I closed my mouth and straightened my head so he could feel the glands in my neck.

"See, in being an adult and allowing myself to be looked at," I said, turning my head slightly to stick my tongue out at Virgil.

"Oh yes, you're a very mature adult," Virgil drawled. John sniggered but hid it with a cough that I knew was faked but I couldn't be bothered to argue about.

"Glands have gone down, she's definitely on the mend," Gordon told John, completely ignoring me. "Did she sleep OK?"

"I am here you know, I can answer questions." Again I was ignored. "You don't have to fuss over me, I can look after myself."

"EOS said she was very restless and woke up a number of times."

"I could have told you that," I said. "Since I was the one not sleeping."

"Did she drink much during the night?"

"They aren't listening to me, are they?" I asked Alan.

"They never do. Try being the youngest with four big brothers and a grandma. I've found it's best to just let them do their thing and just ignore them," he shrugged and offered me his spare controller. "Wanna play?"

I shook my head. "Thanks for the offer, baby bean, but I'm crap at it most days and this is not most days, plus I think the screen would make my headache worse."

Alan nodded his agreement, seeing the wiseness in my answer and went back to his game.

"I've been doing some research," a voice piped up from the portable comm on Jeff's desk.

"You have, EOS? What about?" John asked, pulled from his conversation with Gordon about my apparently fragile physical health.

"Cold remedies," she answered proudly.

"Cold remedies?" I asked dubiously. "Thank you, but I don't think I need-"

"Some of them seem to have no basis in scientific fact and so I cannot vouch for their effectiveness, but I do believe that some may help," she continued, completely ignoring the fact that I had been talking.

"Per my research I have disregarded some ideas and made plans to implement others."

"John?" I whispered, looking up at him.

"Hm?"

"Are we sure she's not still evil and trying to kill me off?"

"Well, nothing in life is a hundred percent certain," he mused. I sat up a little and tried to shift away but his arm tightened around my waist and dragged me back. "I'll make sure she doesn't try to kill you, OK?"

"Promise? Death by AI might be cheaper than a divorce."

"Tempting as that sounds, I promise."

I narrowed my eyes at him but stayed put, he was comfy and smelt nice but the second Scott got back I'd be swapping, Scott would never treat me this way.

"One of the remedies involves a drink called Gogol Mogol," EOS announced.

"That doesn't sound good," I muttered under my breath.

"What's that? It sounds vaguely Russian," John asked, already interested. Damn him and his desire to allow her to continue to grow and think for herself. He encourages her far too much.

"It is, it originates from both Russia and the Ukraine, you whisk together warm milk, honey, sugar-"

"That doesn't sound too bad so far," Gordon said, sounding surprised.

"Butter and egg yolk," EOS continued.

"Nope! I'm out, I don't do egg in drinks, it's just weird. And butter should be on bread, not in a drink."

"So you don't like eggnog?" Virgil asked.

"Eww, no, I'm English, we don't do that sort of thing." Yes, I admit, I said 'that sort of thing' like it was something disgusting and inappropriate, which to me it was.

"You never know, if this lockdown continues we might actually get a peaceful Christmas at home this year, then Dad can make his famous eggnog, the one that we all have to drink Christmas eve…" Virgil grinned evilly.

"Why are you picking on me today, Chonky? You're supposed to be the nice one."

Virgil batted his eyelashes innocently in my direction, but I wasn't fooled, I knew the truth.

"If you do not like that remedy there is also the one with the dirty socks."

"Erm, the what now?" Virgil was let off with a warning as I became instantly distracted. "I refuse to have dirty socks anywhere near me, let alone crushed up or stuffed in my mouth or whatever form this remedy takes.”

“You simply massage a substance called lard into your neck and then use dirty socks as a scarf…”

“Pass,” I declared.

"I've heard of that one!" Gordon said.

"I've looked into what lard is and my research says it is the rendered fat of the fatty tissue of a pig."

"We could try bacon grease," Alan suggested.

"No, we can't. That remedy is definitely not true," John insisted, seeing the look of horror on my face.

"It is, I read about it on Wikipedia," EOS argued.

"Oh, then it has to be real," John rolled his eyes.

"I have more if bacon fat is not to your liking," EOS interrupted.

"What are they?" I asked suspiciously.

“Pickled plums,” EOS suggested. “In Japan they eat umeboshi, also known as a pickled plum, to prevent and fight colds and flu.”

“That doesn't sound too bad,” Alan commented, obviously listening in.

“Although it’s not actually a plum, it's a variety of apricot-”

I gasped loudly, lifting my head in horror. “I TOLD you she was murderous!”

“I am not!”

“EOS, she’s allergic to apricots,” John explained. “And feeling dramatic.”

“I am not dramatic, I’m just not well,” I pouted.

“Garlic in a glass of milk,” EOS tried again.

I shook my head.

“Next?” John said.

“Onions are said to be very good, you can put them in her socks or she can wear them as a necklace.”

“Is she determined to make me smell?”

“Two pairs of socks,” EOS continued to reel off.

“I’m already wearing the thickest I can find,” I assured her.

“No, for this you soak your feet in hot water, then take a pair of socks, soak them in cold water, wring them out and wear them with dry socks over the top and sleep in them.”

I didn’t even dignify that with an answer. Wearing wet socks was never going to happen.

“That’s not healthy, EOS, wet socks will make her feel worse. Plus she already puts her cold feet on me, I don't want to suffer them cold and wet.”

“What about lizard soup?” EOS offered next.

“What, with real lizards?” Gordon asked with a laugh.

“Yes, the recipe calls for dried lizards simmered with yams and chinese dates to make a broth.”

“John, please,” I whined, burying my face in his neck in an attempt to escape all my problems. I love EOS, I do, she is our weird AI child but my gods does she try my patience sometimes.

“EOS, if you do not have any sensible suggestions then let’s not have any at all.”

“I do have sensible suggestions, I told you that I had disregarded some as they had no scientific basis or the ingredients would not be available on the island,” she argued.

“And you think that dried lizards are something we just have hanging around in the pantry?” I asked, completely bemused, my voice muffled against his shoulder.

“No, but we have lizards in Scott’s office. As far as I can see they serve no purpose…”

“I’m out!” I coughed, sitting up and throwing the blankets off. “I won’t sit here and have her suggest I eat our babies because I have a cold.”

I don’t know if John said anything to her because I’d left the room, but I hope so, she needed telling. There were some things that should never be thought about let alone suggested. Honestly, next she'd be telling me to skin Armstrong and use his fluff as a vest or something.

I had only moved from the lounge to the kitchen but I was already feeling a bit shaky and very chilly, wishing I'd brought the blanket with me.

I reached for the tea kettle, checking there was water in it before putting it on the stove to boil. I’m old fashioned in many ways and any good witch will tell you that when it comes to tea leaf or coffee grounds readings you have to have fresh boiled water over flame, it’s the law and so I have to have a proper old style kettle in the kitchen at all times. And yes they tease me about it. I flicked on the flames and that was when I heard it in the distance, the familiar whining drone of powerful engines.

“Oh, thank the gods,” I groaned, my salvation was incoming.

I had made my fruity herbal tea and was sipping it by the time Scott came to find me.

“I heard that you stormed out of the lounge,” he told me by way of greeting.

“EOS told me to eat our children," I informed him.

He blinked. “Well, I can’t say that I ever expected to hear that, but unfortunately I’m not that shocked either.”

“Mood,” I muttered, sipping from my cup and shivering pathetically.

“I might regret asking,” he started, helping himself to one of my blackberry and apple tea bags and pouring in hot water, “but how did the subject of eating Buddy and Ellie come up?”

“EOS was trying to help by offering cold cures, apparently lizard soup is a thing,” I shrugged, adding more honey to my tea. I like things sweet dammit.

"Well, you learn something new every day, I guess. Did any of these remedies sound like they might actually work?"

"Nope," I sighed. "And I'm not going back to hear more, I'm just going to sit here and freeze for a bit and then maybe got to bed."

"That's not exactly what I'd call a sensible plan, the freezing part I mean, the bed would be good."

"But I'm bored of bed," I whined, yes, I'm admitting it, I was in whining territory today, I'm not proud of it but it is what it is. "I've been waiting for you to get back to save me from them all, I'm counting on you, don't let me down."

"So the fact that I just had to save a family of hikers from a broken down Gondola cable car half way up Ben Nevis means nothing when I should have been here to save you?"

"Was anyone hurt?"

"Nope."

"Were the kids excited to ride in Thunderbird One?"

"Yep," he grinned, proud of his baby.

"Then no, it means nothing, I'm more important," I decided, sipping my tea, daring him to argue. "You need to go and sort your idiot brothers and EOS out."

"Fine, you win," he chuckled, getting up from his chair. "I'll go and whip them into shape."

"Thank you," I said. He dropped a kiss on top of my head and left me alone to my misery.

It was actually quite nice to sit quietly for a while, the only person who wandered in was Jeff, but he didn't disturb me to the point of being annoying. He just helped himself to some coffee from the pot that was on its warmer and after checking on me briefly, left again.

Scott returned after twenty minutes, finding me half asleep with my head on my folded arms which rested on the dining table.

A warmth encircled my shoulders and I sighed gratefully, sliding my arms into the sleeves.

"I knew you had it," I muttered.

"Well, it is my hoodie."

"No, it's our hoodie," I corrected him, sitting up. "But I appreciate the loan of it at this, my time of need."

"Come on."

"No, I've not finished my drink."

Scott picked up my half finished tea, felt the temperature, luke warm would be kind, and abandoned it, knowing it was a lost cause, I was just using it as an excuse. "Back to the lounge, you can't stay here all day."

"I think you'll find I can," I argued, but I didn't put up much of a fight when he dragged me to my feet and propelled me up the stairs to the lounge.

Scott deposited me on the couch beside John and took the other side, sandwiching me between them so I couldn't run away.

"EOS, don't you have something to say?" John prompted in a semi-stern voice that I would have been a lot more interested in if I wasn't feeling so close to death. I made a mental note to explore it at a later date, preferably when I had rejoined the land of the living.

"I am sorry that I suggested using the bearded dragons to make soup," she parted obediently.

"And?" John pushed.

"And I have presented my findings in a more helpful way to Gordon and Virgil and they have agreed to help me implement them," EOS continued.

"Do I even want to know?" I asked Scott, who was my saviour, champion and provider of the hoodie and there I trust him.

"It's safe, we promise," John assured me. "I checked her research and picked the things I knew you could actually stomach."

"OK," I sighed. "What am I getting?"

"EOS was right, onions and garlic do help, so, since I can actually follow a recipe and Virgil isn't too bad either, we're going to make you your favourite bolognese with lots of onions and garlic."

"And lemon, honey and ginger are all recommended ,"Gordon added, "so I'm going to make you a big pot of lemon, ginger and honey tea from scratch."

"That doesn't sound too awful," I admitted.

"We can't do anything for the reduction of stress," Scott added, "we can't do miracles, but we'll try to behave for a few days until you feel better."

"I'd appreciate that."

"While we're doing that you're going to go and enjoy a hot bath, as hot as you can stand, because sweating out a cold is recommended," John continued. "Then you're going to get dressed in your warmest sleepwear-"

"My bat onesie!"

"Oh! I'm gonna wear my onesie too," Alan decided.

"And me," Gordon grinned, glancing at Virgil.

"Sure, let's have a onesie night."

"I refuse to wear that thing," John argued.

"Me either," Scott said, joining in. "They don't fit us."

"I'll allow that," I agreed generously.

"And then we can watch that ridiculous puppet thing that you like because you always say it makes you happy," John finished.

"Seriously, you're volunteering to watch the Muppets with me?" I was so shocked you could have smacked me around the head and called me Melvin.

"Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for the good of the family," he answered seriously. "Now scoot, we have cooking to do and you have a bath to stew in."

There wasn't much I could say to that, so I did as I was told, heading to the biggest bathroom where I kept the good bath oils, the one with the jacuzzi tub. I could feel the bubbles calling my name.

"You know you're not getting that hoodie back any time soon, don't you?" I heard John telling Scott as I went up the stairs. I didn't need to hear the answer to know he was right, I was keeping this for at least a week.

#Isolation Island #Thunderbirds in isolation #thunderbirds #thunderbirdsarego #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds fanfiction #thunderbirds 2015 #fluffember2020

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donnerpartyofone · 4 years ago

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reasons my i am probably too sensitive to have anything to do with other people

including other people’s drama that has absolutely nothing to do with me

i started reading this person’s new webcomic on instagram a month or two ago, and what started out as a fun little time killer that i looked forward to every day has started making me so uncomfortable that i wish i’d never heard of it. it takes place right now, in an especially embattled US city, and it’s about the dysfunctional lives of a bunch of shallow millennials, set against the backdrop of an increasingly dangerous country in an unpredictable state of revolt. it’s solidly engaging, convincingly characterized, and rendered in a unique funny animal style; i wasn’t surprised to discover that it’s going to be published soon by the most reputable publisher of this sort of thing. at first, i was impressed by it because i thought the behavior and dialog of its insecure young people was so well observed. it felt like one of the only things of its kind that i’ve read, more or less about real people living right now, that was neither a broad ugly satire, nor a pretentious drama exaggerating the specialness of its characters. the other thing i liked about it was that while it was largely about their sex lives, it didn’t seem at all sexy to me. the artist has a kind of distorted, rough-hewn visual style that i thought put some emotional distance between the overheated state of the characters, and the real consequences of their decisions. then it all got weird.

the artist stuck a really long, graphic sex scene in the middle of story that made me think...oh, maybe i AM supposed to be getting off to this? that’s weird, this all seems really bad to me, like every character is just mindlessly, selfishly bent on destruction and not doing much to make me like them, and i’d been reading along thinking “god i’m SO GLAD i’m not in my 20s anymore and i don’t have to deal with people like this--or with the pressure to act like this, as if using sex to create drama and being ‘crazy’ is the ultimate thing a person can do with their life”--and then suddenly it felt like maybe the comic was actually some kind of celebration of this lifestyle, or at the very least it’s an intensely sentimental portrait of a time of life, and of types of people, that i cannot imagine feeling sentimental about. then something else happened that made the comic even MORE uncomfortable to read, somehow: it had been gaining traction at an amazing pace, with tons of people leaving comments to the tune of “noooo don’t do it!”, the way you would yell at someone in a horror movie not to go back for the cat, as each character made the worst possible personal choice in every daily installment. the “don’t go in there!” response seemed pretty natural to me, but then the artist stepped in and made this announcement threatening to stop doing the comic altogether if the readers wouldn’t stop criticizing the characters. pretty much everyone in the comments was like “???”. many apologized if their comments were offensive, although they had no idea what they could have said that was wrong; other people, who seemed more sure that they were the ones being accused, said that they thought you were SUPPOSED to feel critical of the characters’ obviously bad decisions. that was how i felt, and at that point i was just enormously glad that i never comment on shit online or get involved in any type of community shit, especially when the artist started explaining laboriously that all of the characters represent some facet of the artist themselves and so therefore none of them are meant to be seen in a bad light at all and they’re all meant to be loved unconditionally and if you find yourself thinking mean things about the characters then you are effectively shitting all over the artist as a person. a lot of readers fell all over themselves to be supportive, and i just thought...this isn’t something you should support, though. it sucks that the artist is feeling so sensitive, but they’re about to have a book out in the world where they won’t have any ability to threaten readers who are “reading it wrong” or having incorrect thoughts about it. i mean...life is full of uncomfortable experiences and people you can’t relate to, i really don’t think we should be promoting this hopeless sanitization of all experiences in which trigger warnings used to be something that protected traumatized people from being randomly confronted with traumatic material, and now they’re used to just make sure nobody ever has to hear anything they don’t like, ever. anyone who cares about this artist should be helping them understand that they cannot control how people read their book or how they feel about each character and story in it. or failing that, they should be encouraged to just turn off instagram comments. but because of all this drama, i found myself reading all the comments obsessively--something i did when the blowup first happened, because i couldn’t find anything in there that i thought was mean or offensive, which added to my uncomfortable fascination with the whole thing--and that’s when i spotted a comment where somebody asked the artist is this was a furry comic. i wish this didn’t blow my mind, but it kind of did. i mean, it’s a book where almost all the characters are animals, and they occasionally have a bunch of raunchy sex. i think that if you’re a furry, meaning you’re interested in that sort of thing, this book is completely available for you to enjoy however you want. but this person needed the artist to FORMALLY CATEGORIZE IT as a furry comic. what the fuck is the meaning of that? it struck me as something that people in fandoms do, where they need every single thing to be labeled to death in an intensive and intractable way like it was science, the Final Word on everything in the universe, and they like *argue with each other* about whether they’re *allowed* to ship certain characters together or imagine them doing specific things, which is something you would only worry about if you thought the topic represented a literal material reality that could be adversely affected by people’s improper thoughts. i mean imagine if you felt that way about your jerkoff fantasies about fictional characters? that your horny thoughts are up for debate by hundreds of people you don’t even know? imagine feeling like that about OTHER PEOPLE’S jerkoff fantasies, like it’s worth fighting over and trying to CONTROL? like holy fucking shit you guys, STOP IT. it would even be one thing to ask the artist if THEY were a furry, which may or may not be anybody’s business, but to ask whether interpreting the comic through a furry lens is ALLOWED is like...well, actually, maybe it’s exactly in line with the artist’s recently expressed attitude, that you’re forced to think of the book in exactly the way that they personally think about it, or else you should have your reading privileges revoked. so now i’m still reading the comic, sort of compulsively, because i’m a little addicted to the soap opera of it and i’m ALSO a little addicted to the soap opera of the artist battling the readers over finding the correct orthodoxy for reading the comic--there’s a particular guy i’ve become aware of in the comics community because he is always harassing people with this mix of really caustic sarcasm and really bitter political self-righteousness, and he was surely the main person who was being “mean” to the characters, and HE’S STILL DOING IT IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, because i guess the artist would rather have problems with people than simply block them and eliminate them from the equation? but the whole entire thing is making me so uncomfortable i can hardly stand it. reading about like, dumb hot chicks with no self-control, and smug young shitheads who use the veil of progressiveness to hide or justify their predatory sexual behavior, and grownass adults who start drama with 20 year olds in order to feel relevant, AND being forced to know that the artist intends for me to embrace and adore all of this bad shit--like, people and things i left behind in real life, because it was all bad!--with ultimate love and compassion, or else they reserve the right to claim that they’re being personally attacked, has just become too much to take. it’s starting to make me feel sick. i really need to take the reigns on this thing. as much as the artist needs to forget about this control fantasy and stop being so precious about what they’re doing, i need to stop subjecting myself to something i find painful, embarrassing, and frankly creepy, if i ever wanna get back to a state where i have less to complain about.

tl;dr: stupid hipster is too sensitive to read a webcomic by a stupid hipster who is too sensitive for anyone to read their webcomic.

#NOT simon hanselmann #somebody else!#i will tell you if you chat me i just don't wanna get involved

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animefan-overran · 5 years ago

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Staying at Home (Originalshipping)

***PART TWO**** (SMUT RATING: MODERATE) "Wakey, wakey," Red whispered as he shook Green gently. "You've been asleep for a while, Green you really overworked yourself yesterday."

"Hmmm, hmm, what? where? huh?" Green woke up in a quiet frenzy at the sound of Red's voice.

"Hi, sleepy head! Feeling hungry? Charizard and I whipped you up some oran berry pancakes and moomoo milk to properly thank you for taking care of me yesterday. That soup you made was absolutely delicious, and it definitely warmed up my cold." Red offered Green an award winning smile.

Green slowly rubbed his eyes, and spotted Charizard coming around the corner with a short-stack in hand. "Char" Charizard beamed as he set the still hot pancakes in front of Green.

"Thanks, Charizard, you're a real one," Green picked up his fork, and started shoving the sweet flapjacks down his mouth. The warm burst of oran berry mixed with the fluffiness of the pancake made Green smile. Red had a natural talent for cooking, he didn't even need a recipe to make anything, unlike Green, who had to follow recipes to a tee because his sense of taste was poor.

"So, I see you broke your fever then," Green asked, obviously knowing the answer.

Red nodded "Yeah, so that means if you want, we can go training later today." Red offered.

"Yeah... sure" Green hesitated picking up his glass of milk "It's just..."

"Just what?" Red faltered, his expression puzzled at the sudden shift in Green's tone. "It's just that..." Green downed a huge gulp of milk "ahhh... yesterday when I dropped off the soup in your room, you were talking in your sleep,"

"I was?" Red asked "What did I say? I can't even remember what I was dreaming about, I was so sick." Red laughed.

"Yeah..." Green continued "Well, you sounded pretty distressed. You were saying that you had to tell me something. Apparently, I was trying to leave, but you were telling me not to," Green paused to let Red register what he was saying. "Anyway, the last thing you said was that you were sorry, although I have no idea what you would be sorry for…” Green shrugged in defeat “We're best bros, you can tell me anything. You know that right? I mean, I know it could've been a fever dream, but if you need to talk about anything, I got you."

Green studied Red’s body language, hoping to find any anomaly that could help him decipher his rival. Red stared out into the window "Hm, now that you mention that, I can remember a little bit of what I was dreaming. You were mad at me for over training, and not looking out for myself. You decided that I wasn't worth your time anymore, and I just wanted to tell you that I was sorry you had to spend your whole day taking care of me... not very profound, but I did feel really bad yesterday."

Green reached over for Red's chin and guided Red's head so they were face to face. "Red, you realize that I didn't have to stay yesterday, but I did it because I care about you, and when you care about someone, you would do anything for them," Green scooted closer to Red, and used his hands to cup Red's face "You see, Red, you are the closest friend that I have ever had in my life. I cannot imagine my life without you, so why would I ever leave you, or get sick of you?"

As if by instinct, Red and Green were moving closer and closer to each other until their lips were barely touching."Green," Red whispered "I'm kind of scared... I've never,"

"never...?" Green was caught on Red's every word.

"Never... felt this way before" Red trembled at the sheer proximity between him and Green. Never in his life had he been this close to anyone, let alone his best friend and greatest opponent.

Green brushed some of Red's hair out of his eyes "Oh yeah, how do you..." before Green could even finish his sentence, Red had already crashed his lips onto his. The kiss started out sweet and passionate, however, within seconds, the kiss grew more fierce and powerful. Back and forth, their tongues fought for dominance until the two boys finally pulled out, fighting for air. "I gah, I didn't know you felt that way about me," Green smiled at Red as he gasped for air. "I was personally feeling the same way for a while about you, but I was too scared to initiate anything." Green timidly stated.

"Really?" Red questioned "It just came over me in the moment, and it felt right, so I went for it. However, I always took you for the go getter type of guy Green. I guess maybe not when it comes to love..." Red deduced bluntly as he scratched the back of his neck, still quite nervous from his current circumstance.

"Well, I guess that's the difference between the two of us." Green concluded. "So, are you still up for training today?" Green stared at Red’s form, and waited for his rival’s answer.

Red’s expression was mildly stoic at first, but gradually developed into a lecherous leer, within seconds of hearing Green’s suggestion. "I know I said I was up for training but… we could just stay here," Red lowered his voice with each word, scooting in closer to Green who was now leaning back further onto the couch. Green gulped in astonishment at Red’s sudden yet firm actions, not sure if this was the best thing for them to be doing. Yes, he definitely had feelings for Red, but a small part of Green had their friendship in its best interest. What would become of this friendship if they were to wander further down the current course of events? Being anything more than friends was risky business for any friendship, and Green was doubtful of such uncertainty.

Red sensed Green’s concern for the situation reading the auburn haired boy like a book. Slowly, Red turned Green’s head so that he could whisper in his ear “Green, death comes to us all too quick. Sometimes, you need to risk something good, in order to achieve something better, even if you could end up with nothing. It’s scary, but that’s life. Don’t let me take this risk alone,” Red muttered lightly, as he brought his face in front of Green’s once again. Green’s gaze bore deeper into Red’s eyes, searching for any hints of hesitation, but came up empty handed. He released the breath that he had been holding in for the past thirty seconds. At that point, any reluctance Green felt had been stripped away from his mind.

Green nodded as his shoulders instinctively dropped to a more relaxed state.“You know I can’t leave you alone,” Green shook his head laughing.

Red smiled, as his eyes grew dark with passion for the boy in front of him. “Well, Green does mean go right?” he said darkly while unbuttoning the redhead’s shirt. As he spoke, he slowly started to top Green, his ending position coming to a straddle. Red made quick work of his lover’s shirt, and soon enough, his lips found their way to the chiseled yet boyish chest that was once hidden underneath it. Red started to leave love bites in every place he could.

"Hmmmm, Red please. Stop teasing," Green whined.

"Patience is a virtue, Green," Red tsked, as he marked Green all the way down to the buckle of his jeans. This action continued for only a couple of minutes, a spell that seemed to last for a lifetime to Green’s perception.

"What will it take to make you go faster?" Green asked eagerly, trying his best to hold back his ever growing craving for the brunette on top of him.

"There's nothing you can do Green, so I suggest you just enjoy yourself. I want to thank you for being such a good friend to me, and now even more than a friend." Red said in a playful yet serious tone.

Green nodded and decided to heed Red's command. Afterall, he would be lying if he said he did not kind of like the side of Red that took his time. Even on their adventures, Red was always one step behind; so as with sex his mind thought in the same relaxed manner. Nevertheless, Green wondered just how long he could last under Red’s graceful yet unwavering foreplay. Right now, the ever growing problem in his boxers needed Red in the worst way possible, and patience was a limited resource in Green’s restless mind. Red paused for only a moment before he started to lick the outline of Green’s abs, which elicited a variety of pleasurable sounds from him. Red smiled as he watched Green squirm underneath him. He took a sense of pride in the fact that he could pull Green’s strings, and render him powerless in the heat of the moment.

"You're such a beautiful person, Green. I just want you to know that by the time we're done here." Red unzipped and pulled down Green's pants and boxers, only to reveal Green's very excited member. Red traced carefully along a vein that was popping out on the side of the shaft. Green started to twitch a little, but didn't say a word. Red just smiled as his hand took grip, and started pumping up and down.

"Mmmmmm, Red. This is better than in my dreams... um not that I've dreamed about this before..." Green blushed at this sudden burst of information.

"I better be better than your dreams," Red growled. "I'm usually not the jealous type, but I want to be the very best here, you know?" Red's grip got harder, and his pace quickened.

"Ohhhhhhh, trust me... AHHHHHHHHH.... you ARE RED!!! YOU ARREEE!" Green panted, nearing his climax. Just when Green was about to give in, Red replaced his hands for his mouth, and shoved Green as far back into him as he could.

"Ahh Red, I..." Green went silent as his eyes rolled back into his head. And with that, Green was out and coming down. Red put Green's pants back on, buckled his belt, and laid on top of him, as the couch was too small for them to lay side by side.

"Red," Green was finally able to say something "That was amazing, I'm sure you are the best in all of Kanto" Green mused while running his fingers through Red's hair. "However, someday, I'm gonna be better than you," Green taunted.

"Hmm, maybe in those naughty dreams of yours," Red winked.

****END OF PART TWO****

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youremeimyou · 5 years ago

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The Lesser Gods of Bangtanis(pt.3)

Introduction - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

pairings: Kim Taehyung x reader, Jeon Jungkook x reader, OT7(this fic is about all of the boys’ characters, not just ‘Y/Nxsomeone’ focused) genre: angst, fluff, comedy, adventure.. -fantasy au, medieval au, magic au, royal au word count: 3.9k warnings: psychic episode?(trance-like state)

Description: Princess Y/N, who holds the fate of her people on her shoulders arrives at the kingdom of Bangtanis, that is the home of our mighty heroes. What will the destiny of our heroes be, when she brings along a threat called dark magic and a little bit of love with her?

A/N: Back with pt3 after a long time.. I don’t wanna quit on this fic cuz I really like the story so I’ll try really hard to get motivated for the next parts as well(feedback really helps) Anyways, this part is actually just Y/N and Tae going on a fancy royal date. But of course with a little twist at the end. Enjoy!

Prince Taehyung arrived at the cottage and saw that there were two horses outside the door. He pet the horses and went in. As soon as he was inside, Y/N and Jungkook -who had obviously been discussing something, sitting closely on the sofa- immediately stopped talking and whipped their heads towards the door.

"You're back!" the princess mused. She didn't know why his return made her feel giddy inside.

"Seems like I'm interrupting." Taehyung replied coldly as he stared at Jungkook, who had already gotten up in order to leave.

"Of course not, my lord. In fact I was just leaving." The younger boy respectfully stated before walking to the door. "Have a good night, my lord. Sleep well, Y/N." And with that he went out, rendering the prince dumbfounded with the way he adressed the princess. That shy village boy just bid her goodnight in a very sincere way.

"So what are the news from the castle?" Y/N went closer to Taehyung and sat on a chair. But he was busy noticing the bread crumbs on the table. "Did you eat with Jungkook?" he asked without looking at her.

"Oh, Guk said his sister prepared something for him. He shared it with me."

"Guk, is it?" The prince was even more bothered than before. Since when were those two such good friends?

"Hm?" Y/N acted like she didn't catch the annoyed tone in his voice.

"Well I hope you enjoyed your little picnic. I'll have this lovely meal by myself, then." He took the food he brought from the castle out of his bag and placed them on plates. Y/N's eyes grew big, it looked delicious. "It's been a long while since we ate, though." she said while staring at the food Taehyung was enjoying. After a while, he pushed some of the plates in front of her, silently offering her to join. She smiled excitedly in return.

"So did you talk to the king? What did he say?" Y/N asked, her voice muffled because of the food.

"Yes. He said he'll announce his final decision tomorrow at the feast."

Y/N gulped down her last bite in shock. "Feast?!" She got up from her seat before continuing. "What feast?" Taehyung knew she'd protest to such an idea.

"The traditional welcoming feast. They're really strict about these things. It's in order to help the people feel as though things are okay, I guess." Taehyung also stood up and started cleaning the table from food crumbs. He was very calm, in contrast to Y/N.

"But things aren't okay! I want to know if-"

"Namjoon hyung is most likely to announce good news, like that he'll send reinforcements." Taehyung added as he organized the chairs around the table back in place.

Y/N's protests stopped immediately and her eyes started sparkling. "Really?"

"Yeah. After our last talk, he seemed to have finally made his mind that he'll help."

Hearing this made Y/N so happy that in a moment of excitement she leaped towards Taehyung, capturing him in a tight hug. He was surprised at first but then he wrapped his arms around her, too. After staying like that for some time, Y/N realized what she was doing and quickly retreated back.

"Sorry, I-" the princess cursed on the inside for blushing over something so simple. "I'm just really glad to hear that." And Taehyung understood her excitement. He too was glad. Almost like it was his own kingdom that would be saved. He gave her a warm smile.

"You have to appear at the feast tomorrow, though. Hyung wants to talk to you."

Even though the idea of a feast at a time like this felt absurd, Y/N knew kingdoms had to maintain traditions at rough times for their people's sake. So she nodded without any more complaints.

"But you can't make an appearance wearing these boy trousers of yours." Taehyung teased. She was wearing the same shirt and pants she wore the day she arrived in the city. Instead of the daily robes the prince had borrowed for her from Duchess Minji.

"Hey, I washed these yesterday. They're clean and presentable." Y/N never really was comfortable wearing dresses in daily life because she'd always be running around, sparring or horse riding.

"But they don't exactly match the dress code for a fancy event, do they?"

The princess rolled her eyes. "I don't have my luggage here-" she was interrupted by Taehyung clearing his throat and pointing at the side of the door where he put her luggage after carrying it here on his way back.

"You brought it.." Everytime he'd act thoughtful like this, it caught Y/N off guard.

"Still, you probably don't have anything fancy in there. So I also brought this." He handed her the fancy gown he bought from the royal tailor. A dark red night dress with delicate embroidery stitched around the neck cleavage. Even Y/N who didn't really like dresses thought it was beautiful. "I think this will fit you perfectly." Taehyung's mouth curved up to form his signiture smirk.

"Whatever, Prince Smug."

The next day Y/N woke up to find Taehyung already gone. He had left a note on the table that read,

"Be ready before sundown and don't go running off to Jungkook or anything. I'll come pick you up and take you to the castle."

She was planning to spar with Jungkook again, today. But after all the effort the prince seemed to be making for her and her cause, she decided to do as he said.

Sundown came by fast. Y/N had done her best to look her most presentable self but there was no sign of the prince. The princess couldn't wait to talk with King Namjoon, to thank him and discuss details. Her impatience growing every minute, she decided to wait outside. So that when he arrives, she could scold the prince immediately for being late. But.. Then he showed up, running down the forest path on his beautiful, radiant white horse.

He stopped in front of Y/N, wearing a confused look. "Why are you outside?" It took a moment for Y/N to register his words. Nobody could deny the prince's natural attractiveness. But in this graceful formal attire, he was a sight for sore eyes to say the least.

"I- you were-"

"Late, I know. I'm sorry. I was trying to look more presentable." He had to take a quick breath once he took in the way Y/N looked. "But- I would've tried harder if I knew you'd be looking like this."

The princess nervously blinked. Where were her words? Why couldn't she mutter them out? She hoped the darkness of the evening was hiding the slight red of her cheeks.

"I was definetely spot on again with your body measurements." Prince Smug was back with his endless teasing, which brought Y/N out of the daze she was in. "Well, you almost look like an actual prince like this." Taehyung lifted an eyebrow but Y/N added quickly. "I'm pretty sure it's the horse, though."

He rolled his eyes and held out his hand to help her get on the horse. Being always eager to prove her skills, she wouldn't have normally taken his hand. But since tonight was a special occasion, she decided to play the lady role a little better.

The royal ballroom was bigger than the one at the princess' castle. Decorations for the feast were wonderful and if it wasn't for the chaos that was going on back at her home, she could really enjoy attending this event.

Taehyung stopped her suddenly and pulled her to a corner outside of the hall. "I forgot- if anyone asks, you are a duchess that came with the princess. We should come up with a name, too." He kept listing female names he knew. It was quite a long list.

"I won't remember any of those. My double's name is Yuna. I can use that."

"Okay, Yuna it is. Just stay close to me, no one would be suspicious of someone I brought with me." He said and took Y/N's hand to place it softly on his arm. Then they entered the hall once again but this time the prince seemed even more graceful as they strolled inside.

Everyone expected him to sit beside the king and his advisors as he usually does. But instead, he pulled a seat away from where all the high ranking people were, helped the princess sit down and took the seat next to her for himself. All the attention in the room was focused on the two. Until Jung Hoseok started speaking.

"Thank you all for coming. Despite the unfortunate events that are occuring, we are grateful to have Princess Y/N and her company here with us. Let us all come together and support each other through these hard times."

A round of applause came from the crowd and then the king started talking. "Times are indeed hard for the curse of dark magic has returned." People gasped in terror. "But, it cannot be as strong as it used to be. And we as a kingdom that won't stand for cruelty, shall help our friends in overcoming this threat." Some people were surprised, some were afraid and some seemed to support the idea. But the princess was the happiest of all. Taehyung could see it all over her face.

Meals and drinks were served and there was music in the background. But after a while the music stopped. Only a drum roll could be heard. Y/N saw everyone turning their heads to the door in excitement. Then, the jester made an entrance. A man was throwing knives at him from the other side and he dodged every single one while elegantly dancing and twirling around. The princess was shocked. Was he crazy? One wrong move and he could easily be killed.

When he was done, the crowd gave him a standing ovation. But the jester kept the show going with more amazing moves, magic tricks and dance numbers. Y/N had never seen such an entertainment from a jester before, or from anyone.

The show finished and the jester took a seat next to Taehyung and Y/N after reciving another round of applause. Y/N turned to him. "That was.. How did you do all of those? Your performance was incredable!" Jimin smiled and blushed shyly, as if he didn't just make everyone in the room fall in love with him.

"We thank our jester who never ceases to impress us with new and unbelievable shows." Kim Seokjin said as he gathered the people's attention. "It is time however, for another type of entertainment. Princess Y/N, would you mind joining us for a rather fun tradition of ours?"

Taehyung had to hold Y/N's arm to stop her from getting up after the mention of her name. "Having a double is new for you, isn't it?" He was right. It was kind of hard getting used to it for Y/N. Her double on the other hand got up at once and walked towards the center of the hall. "Of course, it would be an honour." Thank god Yuna was a good actress.

"We usually have representitives of both kingdoms participate in something as an icebreaker and even cultural bonding. I thought you might represent yours and for us it could be.." Seokjin trailed off, searching around the room for a candidate. "Well, a prince would suit best for a princess so it shall be Prince Kim Taehyung."

Taehyung had been selected to put on a quick show like this many times, in many feasts with many princesses. Unsurprised, he went next to Yuna, Y/N’s double. But on the inside he wished he could be doing this with the actual princess, somehow.

“Excellent! As our guest of honour, you should choose what you’ll show the good people here, princess. Would you like to sing? Or dance?” Kim Seokjin asked excitedly while Yuna looked around, unsurely. “You can even throw some knives at him like earlier with the jester if you’d like.” Seokjin joked in a teasing tone and everyone laughed at his suggestion.

“I heard you were an actor, Prince Taehyung. I also love theatre, so.. perhaps a quick scene?”

Taehyung was surprised. Normally most would choose to have a dance with the tall, handsome prince. But it made sense as he thought more about it, since Yuna was already acting, even in that very moment. So he politely nodded and went next to Kim Seokjin who was still standing near his seat.

“Who is that lady standing over there by her lonesome?” he asked Seokjin, clearly in character. And Seokjin -another theatre artist- caught up quickly. “I know not, sir.”

Taehyung started walking slowly towards Yuna again. “Oh, she teaches torches how to burn bright. She stands out against the night. Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear. Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear. Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I never saw true beauty till this night.”

While he said his lines, every women was shooting jealous stares at who they thought was the princess. But Taehyung’s attention was focused on the actual one, who was sitting behind her double. Which had left Y/N baffled. She quickly blamed the little vine she had, convincing herself the eye contact with the prince was an illusion of her mind.

Even Yuna, who happened to be a great actress was left speechless at Taehyung's performance and couldn't come up with a response. So the show ended quickly with the crowd applauding. Yuna and Taehyung went back to their seats after bowing to each other and the feast went on.

"I told you I was an actor, princess. How did you like my performance?" Taehyung asked Y/N in a low voice.

She responded as quietly. "You're lucky you were up there with Yuna. I would've chosen to throw knives." Taehyung faked a dramatic gasp and they both giggled. "Tell me Prince Romantic, which one of these lovely duchesses have you borrowed this dress from? I thought I'd be able to tell from the way she'd look at me but more than just one are sending me death stares." Y/N asked as she searched the hall with her eyes.

"I didn't borrow it. I had seen this dress in the royal tailor's chambers, once. He never sold it to any of the duchesses, claiming that it was a speacial piece of art."

"How did you get your hands on it, then?"

"I convinced him that this piece of art would be worn by someone no less than art, herself."

Y/N wasn't expecting such a compliment and therefore she was once more baffled and very much embarresed at her blushing cheeks. She wanted to not be speechless at his words but her mind couldn't come up with anything. Thankfully, King Namjoon interrupted.

“I don’t think I’ve met this fair lady you’re accompanying tonight, Taehyung?”

“Oh, my lord I’m sorry. This is Duchess Yuna who came with Princess Y/N.” the two played along, making sure people nearby would hear and not get suspicious. Then the king took a seat next to Y/N and began talking in a low voice. “My lady, I’m sorry for the inconvinience. You hide yourself while this whole feast was organized primarely for you.” The king seemed somehow intimidating to Y/N at first but now she could see the kind side of him.

“It’s alright, really. I’m just glad to have the chance to talk to you, my lord.”

“As I’ve said earlier, we are willing to help you. But I need to prepare my men before sending them out to fight the creatures of the night. They might be the best warriors in the realm but even they don’t know the terrors of dark magic.”

“Of course, I agree. And I have to add that I’m very thankful for your support.”

The king sincerely smiled and continued. “I’m still not sure if my reinforcements will be enough. What about your army?”

“They’re all locked in the dungeons. At least.. they were when I left.” The princess could feel sorrow bulding up inside her again at the thought of leaving. But there was no other choice. “If we can free them, they’ll be ready to fight.” And of course, if they’re not dead.

“I don’t think creatures of the night would kill them. Instead they’d want to use them to enhance their army. So, they’d be trying to break them.” The king said as if he read Y/N’s mind. But Y/N knew her people were strong minded. She could feel that there was still hope. “I know they’ll hold on until their last breath.” She said confidently.

“Then, we shall free them once we’re there.”

After discussing all of the details the king went back to his throne and a short while later, the feast came to an end. People one by one started to leave.

“I think we should also be heading back.” Taehyung whispered in Y/N’s ear. She nodded but before they could leave, Min Yoongi showed up, requesting to talk to the princess. Taehyung could tell he wanted to speak only with her so he went to find Jimin, leaving them alone.

“I hope the cottage is alright for you, princess. I know it’s not much but-”

“No! It’s more then enough Lord Yoongi. Thank you for allowing me to stay there.” Y/N really didn’t care for comfort in her situation. She was in fact glad to be out of sight.

“Listen, princess. I know the king has decided to send our men to help your kingdom. I want you to know I was against it.”

This came as a shock to Y/N.

“Not because I’m unsympathetic, but because I have exprience when it comes to dark magic.” His face became gloomy and his voice almost trembled as he spoke. “But the king would never go back on his word. We’ll face nightmares beyond your worst imaginations in order to save your land. So, I need to know if you're strong enough to make hard choices.”

What did he mean by that? Y/N couldn’t understand. But she knew one thing. “I don’t know what I’ll face but I assure you, there is nothing I wouldn’t do to save the people I love and care about. I hope that's a good enough answer for you.”

Min Yoongi nodded after staring her in the eyes for a while and left. Just as he was going, Taehyung came back with Jimin beside him. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah..”

Taehyung noticed the confusion on her face but decided to ask her about it when they get to the cottage, where they could speak freely. It was silent as him, Y/N and Jimin walked out of ballroom and into the hallway. Unable to bare the tension, Jimin decided to crack a couple of stupid jokes and comments about the night. Which eventually had Taehyung cackling and even the confused princess smiling. But then something happened.

Jimin suddenly collapsed to the ground. He was shaking and unconscious. There was no response as Taehyung and Y/N called out his name time after time, panic taking over them. His eyeballs had gone completely white and his pupils were gone. While Taehyung helplessly called for the guards, Jimin finally came out of it. Eyes going back to normal and his consciousness returning.

“Jimin! Are you alright? What happened? What-”

Y/N stopped Taehyung from yelling loudly. “Let’s just get him to the physician.”

With the guards’ help they carried him to the physician’s chambers quickly. After examining him carefully he shook his head from side to side in confusion. “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. Not physically, at least.”

“Are you absolutely sure, physician?” Taehyung’s tone was deadly serious. Not that it wasn’t obvious before but the extreme concern on his features showed Y/N clearly how much he really cared for his best friend.

“Yes, my lord. As always, he’s very healthy.”

Jimin tried to stand up but Taehyung stopped him from moving. “Not so fast, jester.”

“Taehyung you heard the phys-”

“I saw you back there and you were not alright, Jimin.”

Jimin gave up with a sigh. “Okay, I’ll tell you what’s going on. But we have to get out of here first.”

They got out of the room and went to Jimin’s chambers, all the while the prince cautiously watched the jester. They sat Jimin down and he started explaining.

“This isn’t the first time. I thought they were just nightmares but now-” he stopped himself. But Taehyung was impatient. “What? What do you see?” he asked.

Jimin hesitantly answered. “It’s always the same thing. You on your knees. And a blade run through your chest.” Neither Taehyung nor Y/N was expecting that.

“And there’s a man in front of you, looking down at you. It feels like I know him in the dream. But I can’t make him out when I wake up.”

Both Y/N and Taehyung were looking at him in complete shock and utter confusion. Jimin faked a smile. “It’s just a recurring dream, guys-”

“A dream you suddenly start to have going in a trance when a moment ago you were wide awake?” Y/N cut him off. “Jimin, you’re having visions.”

He laughed in disbelief. “I’m not an oracle, princess.”

“But you do have magic. I could tell from the moment I met you. You’re always subtle but I’ve spent time with many wizards, it didn’t escape my attention.”

“Wha-”

“Oh, come on. Do you deny always being able to tell when people lie? And you can tell exactly what people are thinking just by looking at them, can’t you? You’re a reader. It’s rare even amongst wizards but it’s obvious that’s what you are!”

It was silent for a moment. Y/N guessed Taehyung was trying to process all that new information.

“I always follow your hunches and you never turn out to be wrong. Thinking back to all of those moments, there literally isn’t a single time you weren’t right!” It looked like Taehyung was having a moment of clarity. But then he frowned. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I never thought it was magic, I swear! I always thought I had strong senses. That’s probably all there is to it anyway-”

“That morning you brought me and Y/N breakfast, you just came storming in. But I know for a fact that I locked the door the night before.”

And Jimin’s moment of clarity hit him right then. “I know. It was locked. I just wished it wouldn’t be and.. it wasn’t anymore.” he admitted. Both to them and to himself.

“And these visions are proof that your skill are improving-” Y/N tried to explain more but Jimin snapped at her. “No! They can’t be visions of the future that would mean that Taehyung-” he lowered his volume before continuing. “that he’s going to get fatally wounded.”

As if they didn’t have enough troubles at hand everything had gotten ten times more complicated. Taehyung made them promise not to speak of this anywhere for the time being, in order to protect Jimin’s identity as an unregistered wizard. And they all swore to trying to figure all of this out together as a team.

...

A/N: Soo yeah.. things are probably about to go downhill from now on. Though idk when it'll come out, pt4 is in my plans if anyone follows the series. The theatre piece is from Romeo and Juliet(with a few adjustments of mine to make it fit the story) because no way could I write an actual improv, way out of my league. Thank you if you read my thing and hope you enjoyed it :) pls stay at home, wash your hands and take good care of yourself.

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