#But I think one game a month is doable | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

patscorner · 3 months ago

Text

CHAPTER ONE: BUY-IN

pairings: paige x oc

contains: pining, angst

word count: 2,575

a/n: okay, one chapter in. let me know what you guys think, my inbox is open. also let me know what you might like to see, the outline isn't set in stone. school has started so it might be a bit before the next chapter, but it's coming. enjoy!

My palms sweat as I dial the familiar number, one I’d memorized by heart. It’d been far too long since I’d called her, and I don’t really have a reason, so the bullshit ‘I’ve been busy’ excuse will just have to do.

=======================

JUNE 2023

“Hello?”

I clear my throat in an attempt to swallow the lump that magically appeared. “H-Hey, Azzi, uh-it’s CJ.”

“Who?” My heart dropped to my shoes as my brain scrambled to pick up the pieces of one word.

“I-uh..”

Azzi chuckles. “I’m just messing with you. What’d you need?” I let out a breath as I rub my head.

“Oh my god, I actually hate you, holy shit.” I laugh.

“Apparently, since it’s been, what, like three months since we’ve talked.” I could practically hear the eye roll.

It’s really not fair for me to ignore Azzi because, really, she hadn’t done anything but be my best friend.

Our best friend.

And maybe that our was the problem. Maybe that combination, the unity of the word, and everything behind it was a mistake. Maybe, letting her etch herself into the scrolls of my heart, so much so that the ink bled together. Maybe the missed cue of when mine became hers, and hers became ours, was poor oversight.

Maybe letting Azzi become collateral damage was where me and her went wrong.

I laugh it off, ignoring the pang it sends to my chest.

“Yeah, well, I have to mentally prepare myself to lose brain cells. Can’t let it fuck up my game.” I respond, earning a laugh from the brown-haired girl. There’s nothing like the nostalgia a sound can bring you. The memories and feelings, all hidden behind a single noise.

After she gathers herself, she sighs. “So what’s up?”

And suddenly, I remember why I’d called.

“Yeah, uh, there’s something I kinda wanted to talk to you about, before you hear it somewhere else..” I say, picking at my earlobe nervously.

“Ooookay… Is everything okay..?” her voice relaying softer through the phone.

I nod. “Yeah, it’s nothing bad. Or, at least, I don’t think..” I fall silent for a moment. This couldn’t be as bad as I’m making it seem, right? Right?

“Either way, I’d just rather talk about it in person.”

Azzi hums. “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. Where do you want to meet?” I consider my options. I’m only in Minnesota to visit my family for about a week, and it’d take another day to get to Virginia… I would be back in time to move into my dorm. It’s inconvenient but doable.

“I could drive up to you in like a week, I’ll just meet you at your house.” I mutter thoughtfully.

“Wait, are you in Texas or Minnesota?”

“I’m about an hour out from Minny.” I answer, slightly confused.

“Oh, I’m here with Paige and the boys. We’re actually headed to the fair soon. You could meet up with us if you wanted.”

“Shit…uh, I didn’t think about them...” I mumble.

That’s a lie. Truthfully, every time I think of home, memories of the blonde flood my mind instantly. But then I’m reminded of what she’d done. How she ripped herself out of my chest like velcro, instead of carefully detangling herself, ridding herself off all strings attached. All for someone else.

For someone who used to be mine.

“Hello..? You still there?”

I shake my head to clear my thoughts. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. Uh, th-yeah, that’s fine.” I sigh, quickly trying to recover.

Azzi sighs through the phone. “Look, I still don’t know what happened between you two, so if you don’t want to come-” she amends.

“No! No, okay, sorry. I- just gotta change my clothes…” I say, biting my lip as I lie through my teeth. “I’ll just meet you guys there?”

I could practically hear Azzi smile. “That sounds good, just call me when you get there.”

After we say our goodbyes, I hang up. I groan as I throw my head back.

I’m always up to a challenge, but the thought of going and having to function around her, after all she’s said and done; after she’s ruined us before there even was an us, that might be more difficult than I’d thought.

It’s not like I have a choice, though. I’m gonna have to learn how to be around her every day, especially when the season starts.

_________

“Drew, bro, if you spray me with that shit one more time, I swear to god, I will beat your ass.” I glared at him as he hid behind Jose, who put his hands up in surrender. I should not have bought him that water gun.

I rolled my eyes as I turned back to Azzi, who kept looking around, then back at her phone, repeating the process. I kicked her in her shin. “Ow! Paige, what the fuck?” Azzi complains, rubbing her leg. “Who are you looking for?” I say, glancing around.

She looks back down at her phone. “Nobody. Just people watching.” I scoff. “Bullshit, are we being spied on, or what?” She shakes her head, looking up around once more. “Okay, bro, what’s going on? Who’s ass do I have to beat?”

Azzi rolls her eyes at me. “You couldn’t beat Ohio, let alone anyone else.”

I sit back in shock, putting my hand on my heart as I feign offense. “Okay, their defense was so unexpected. You can’t even put that on me.” She shrugged, looking back at her phone and standing up. “Where-”

“Bathroom.” she mutters. I watch as she practically sprints away. If only she did that shit in practice. I shake my head.

I open my phone and begin mindlessly scrolling through instagram, ignoring the thousands of times I’ve been tagged in pictures that I’d taken with fans today. Suddenly, I freeze.

It’s a post by the official UConn women’s basketball team. It’s a picture of CJ in her Texas jersey, the number 43 on the front. Her hair is in her signature bun, hair slicked back carefully, as she drives towards the basket. The caption reads “Welcome CJ West!”

What the fuck?

I’m in such a state of shock that when Azzi comes back, I don’t notice the figure next to her. I glance up at her, then back at my phone. “Yo, Azzi, have you seen this?” I look up at her again, and this time, I let my eyes flick to the person next to her.

CJ.

Forgetting what I’d just seen, my jaw drops as I take her in. She’s just as beautiful, if not more, as she was the last time I’d seen her. She’s wearing a basic casual outfit; a plain white crop top, paired with blue jeans, and gold jewelry that always makes her hazel eyes seem brighter. Or maybe that’s just how they look naturally.

“Oh, shit.” I whisper, clearly in awe. She rolls her eyes.

Fuck.

“Hello to you, too, Paige.” Double fuck.

That fucking voice.

I clear my throat, trying to recover. “Hey, CJ.” I breathe. The lighthearted air is swallowed by suffocating tension as I make eye contact with a stranger.

“Oooookay…” Azzi says, clearing her throat. “This is about as awkward as I’d thought it’s be…” she mutters. CJ looks at her. “I told you.”

I look between them. “What’s going on?”

Azzi looked at CJ expectantly, gesturing to her to speak. CJ rolled her eyes and huffed. “I-uh, I have news.” CJ glanced between Azzi and I. She cleared her throat as she picked at her earlobe, a habit she’d picked up when she was younger. I’d always hold her hand to stop her, and I want to do that more than anything right now. I think I’ve lost that right, though.

“I’m transferring to UConn.”

My eyes flick to Azzi’s who’s jaw drops. “Really? How-Why?”

CJ shrugs, trying feign carelessness. “Better environment, Texas heat ain’ my thing.” To the normal eye, CJ’s behavior could be seen as normal. But to me? I see the way her eyelids flutter, the hesitation behind her pretty lips, and the way her eyebrows raise just slightly. She’s a good liar.

Just not good enough.

I don’t say anything, though, not when she gets dragged away by Drew and Jose, not when Drew practically begs her to stay and hang out with us, and certainly not when she’s sat in front of me on the ride Jon chooses. I don’t say anything when the boys get swept away, and it’s just the three of us, like it always used to be.

It’s only when Azzi goes to the bathroom, leaving us alone for the first time in years that I say anything. “Try not to kill each other, please.” She orders as she scurries to the restroom.

It’s silent for a moment, and I can almost see the relief on her face when she thinks I’ll hold my tongue.

Unfortunately, I’m nobody’s peace.

“How long are you here for?” I ask, stuffing my hands into my black cargo pants. She looks up at me. “Uh-just for the week, gotta move outta my dorm, and it’s a long drive, so.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You driving on your own?”

CJ nods. “Yeah, I’ll just sleep in my car or something.” I shake my head. “No fucking way, bro, you serious? That’s like a twenty hour drive.”

She crosses her arms. “So? That’s how I got here.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not goin’ on your own.” I say. Truthfully, I knew she’d be fine on her own, but something about her driving back to Texas, just to go back to Connecticut, doesn’t sit well with me. I’m only concerned for her safety. Or at least that’s what I decide to tell myself.

She scoffs. “What, you’re gonna come with me?”

“I could, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s the last thing I want.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“It’s not. Didn’t even wanna see you today.”

I turned to her. “Seriously, dude?” She looks at me. “Yes, seriously.”

I roll my eyes. I know I hurt her. I know I fucked up. But that was three years ago. We were kids. I was eighteen. I can legally drink now. It’s been three years. How can someone be upset for that long? “You gotta get over it one day.” I say before thinking about it.

I regret it when I see a flash of hurt on her face. “Get over it? That’s easy for you to say, Paige.” she spits out harshly.

Ouch.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, even though I know exactly what she meant. “Exactly what it sounds like. You get over shit quickly.” She shrugs. Her nonchalant tone pisses me off more than the words. I take a step towards her. “I didn’t ‘get over’ anything. There was nothing to ‘get over’. You were just jealous-”

“Jealous?” She interrupts incredulously. “Paige, you stuck your tongue down her throat!”

“And that pissed you off. Hence, jealousy.” I shrug.

“You were my best friend! It’s not fucking jealousy, it’s betrayal!” She practically yells, taking a step closer, our toes almost touching.

“I didn’t betray anybody! I was drunk! She was drunk! And I apologized afterward!” I say, trying to ignore the way her scent invades my senses.

She laughs dryly, taking a step back. “Right, you’re right. Yeah, an apology fixes it all.” I blink. “Really?”

CJ stares at me. “You’re a fucking idiot.” she says, and the only emotion I can pick up is anger. “I know.” I whisper.

Just then Azzi comes out of the bathroom, looking between us. “Everything okay?”

“Yep.” We say at the same time, and Azzi raises her eyebrows. “Aaaalrighty then… Can we find the boys, I’m ready to go.”

I nod and begin to walk behind Azzi, but I don’t miss the way CJ looks at me. I’m no expert, but if I know one thing, it’s the gaze of someone who’s been heartbroken.

I know because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it every time I’ve looked in the mirror for the past three years.

__________

“There’s no way you’re driving to Texas by yourself.” Azzi gapes from the corner seat of the booth. Jose convinced Paige to drive us to some random diner. She’s so easy.

I roll my eyes as I take a sip of my sprite. “Bro, you sound like Paige.” I grumble.

“The fact that I’m agreeing with her should tell you how fucking stupid you sound.” she said. I look at her in shock as Paige throws her head back, cackling.

Fuck.

That stupid fucking laugh paired with that stupid fucking smile makes it so fucking hard to be mad at her. Maybe I should let it go. It has been three years…

No.

Instead of entertaining the thoughts, I opt for kicking her shin instead. “What do you think that says about you, dumbass.” She immediately shuts up, and I roll my eyes as Jon almost spits out his Dr. Pepper.

“I’ll have you know I was AP player of the year.” She defends, eyebrows furrowed. I raise my eyebrows unimpressed. “Still holding onto that, huh?”

Azzi laughs, and Paige shoots her a look. “Can we get back on task, please?” That seems to direct all the attention back to me. “Driving to Texas? All on your own?” Paige says.

“Yes. Did y’all forget how I got here? I didn’t fucking speedwalk.”

“Yeah, but you’re gonna go to Texas, spend, what, two full days staying up late and packing up three years of your life, and then driving the… twenty-nine, thirty, hour trip to Connecticut?” Azzi reasons.

I blink. “Well, when you put it like that..” I mutter.

Paige rolls her eyes. “Dude, just let us come with you. We can drive you there, so your car isn’t sitting in the middle of nowhere-”

“Isn’t your car in Storrs?”

“And we can switch drivers. Stay at a hotel halfway there, and then drive the rest of the way the day after.” She finishes, ignoring my comment. Before I can answer, the waiter comes with our food.

As he sets the plates down, I look at Paige, just taking her in. She’s wearing a plain black hoodie, with some red, white, and blue shorts on. It’s not much, but she could be wearing a trashbag and still be the hottest motherfucker around. It’s almost disgusting how effortlessly gorgeous she is.

I wouldn’t mind having someone to help me get to Connecticut. It’s a long drive, and it should be an easy yes. The truth is, when she looks like that, and acts like this, and talks the way she does… I don’t know how I’m going to get through the season, let alone a road trip.

I watch her lips as she says a thank you to the waiter, quickly averting my eyes when she looks at me. When the waiter leaves, I look back up and roll my eyes at her poor attempt to hide her smirk. As much as I wanted to wipe the smirk off her face, driving alone to Texas sounded dreadful. Plus, Paige has an okay music taste. Might not be that bad.

“Fine. You guys can come with me to Texas.”

Azzi smiles, clearly satisfied. Paige grins like a madman, clapping her hands. “This is going to be fun.”

I roll my eyes for the upteenth time tonight.

What the fuck did I just get myself into?

=======================

taglist: @wintersstan @bueckerrss @lilia22hicks @fake-intelligences @girlokwhatever @pbloverr @breeloveschris-deactivated20240 @cosmopretty @hellokittyfeenie @averagelobotomyenjoyer @elliewilliamsthang @chelisbae @angelscovee @st4rrzynight @cherryswisherz

#patsworks #paige buckers #paige #paige bueckers x reader #paige bueckers #paige x reader #paige buckets #paige bueckers fanfiction #paige bueckers fic #paige bueckers fluff #paige bueckers head cannons #paige bueckers headcannons #paige bueckers x female oc #paige bueckers x oc #cj west #ace of hearts

201 notes · View notes

theemporium · 9 months ago

Text

[5k] neither of you considered the possibility of your family and friends finding out about your relationship. however, in a series of events, they discover you and quinn are together. but it's fine as long as luke doesn't find out, right?

part one // series masterlist

When the season started, you thought it would be easier to hide your relationship from everyone you knew. Never once did either you or Quinn expect to be caught.

And never once did you think the first person to learn about you and Quinn would be Trevor fucking Zegras of all people.

Before the semester had even started, it had been an unspoken agreement between you and Quinn that you would fly out during reading week. It would be difficult to avoid questions—mostly from Luke who would be offended you weren’t going to fly out to New Jersey—but it was doable. It just took a few weeks of you dropping hints and clues about flying out to Canada to your best friend for him to not really question it when you said you were going to visit your brother.

And after months away, it was a fucking dream to have this week with Quinn, to settle that uneasiness in your chest that had been lingering since you left the lakehouse that summer.

You both knew the hockey schedule was insane. You knew neither of you could really leave his apartment. But with a string of games at home for the week, it seemed worth having that week together.

You didn’t think anything could go wrong.

“What are you thinking in that pretty head of yours?”

Your fingers paused the random shapes they were tracing on his bare chest, moving to lift your head to find him already staring at you with a fond look.

“You. Us. This. Everything.” You listed off, your lips twitching upwards when he rolled his eyes. “What? You asked and I answered.”

“I think you’re holding out on me,” Quinn retorted, his hand squeezing where it rested on your hip. “Wanna share what things you were thinking about? More specifically, those thoughts about us.”

You snorted. “Get your head out of the gutter, Hughes.”

“Maybe you need to get your head down there,” he countered and, before a witty response could even pass your lips, he had flipped you both over until you were laying on your back with him looming over you. “It’s fun down here, I think you’d like it.”

You tucked your lip between your teeth. “Yeah?”

“Mhm,” he hummed as his fingers traced up and down your bare thigh, a small grin on his face when he felt your body shiver in response. “Gave me a few ideas too.”

You swallowed harshly as you noted the dark glint in his eyes, the way your stomach twisted in desire as his fingers kept moving upwards. “Like what?”

Quinn’s smirk widened a little. “Like—”

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

Your brows furrowed in confusion, feeling as though your body had been doused in cold water as you sat up a little. “Were you expecting someone?”

Quinn frowned, sitting up himself as he tried not to show his clear annoyance at the interruption. “No, I told the boys to call me if they needed me outside of practice. I don’t know who that could be—”

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

“You should probably go get that,” you murmured, trying to bite back your smile as Quinn grumbled something under his breath.

“If it’s any of the boys, I’m making them do bag skates at practice,” he huffed, crawling out of the sheets and reaching for an abandoned pair of sweatpants on the floor before he left the bedroom.

He could feel his annoyance brittle when the person knocked for a third time, this time hitting the door over and over again until Quinn reached for the handle and yanked the door open.

The last person he expected to see was Trevor Zegras on the other side, grinning at him like it was a totally normal thing for him to be on Quinn’s doorstep on a random Tuesday.

“There’s my favourite Hughes!”

Quinn blinked once. And then twice. And then a third time just to make sure he was actually standing there.

“What the fuck, Zegras?”

“I wanted to surprise you! We didn’t have anything on before the game on Thursday so I thought I’d head up a day earlier than the others and—” Trevor paused, seeming to catch on to the way the older boy was glaring at him. “Geez, this wasn’t the reaction I was expecting.”

“I—” Quinn took a deep breath. “And what reaction were you expecting?”

“At least a hug, I mean—” Trevor moved to take a step forward, his arms open like he was going to reach to hug the other boy, only to pause. It was like he was finally taking in Quinn’s attire for the first time—or the lack thereof—before his eyes focused on the blossoming bruises along his neck and collarbone.

It was scary the way the grin spread across his face.

Quinn frowned. “What? Why are you doing that with your face?”

“You got a girl in here, Huggy?” Trevor grinned, not even giving Quinn a chance to react before he was pushing his way into the flat. “Aw shit, Jack never told me you were seeing someone! Is it new? What’s her name? Is it a dude? Listen, I don’t judge! I’ve seen the edits with you and Pettersson.”

Quinn blinked. “I—what?”

He was still standing in shock, trying to process the words that just left Trevor’s lips before he realised the boy was walking deeper into his flat. His eyes widened, his brain shutting out whatever random rambling that was coming out of Trevor’s mouth as he tried to reach out to stop the boy—but it was useless.

It was like the whole world froze when Trevor shoved the bedroom door open. His words came to an abrupt stop, his jaw hanging open as he looked at you sprawled on Quinn’s bed with a sheet covering your clearly-otherwise naked body. He looked at your face, then back to Quinn before they settled on you again.

“YOU’RE BANGING LADY HUGHES?!”

Quinn winced. “Why do you have to say it like that?”

“I…oh my god…you…WHAT?” Trevor spluttered out, looking between the two of you like you were aliens to him. “How long has this been going on? Why the fuck did no one tell me? What the fuck?”

“Well, we can’t tell you something nobody else knows,” you supplied with a sheepish expression.

His eyes widened further. “Nobody else knows? Like at all?”

You shook your head.

His face instantly brightened. “So I’m the first?”

“Not by choice,” Quinn grumbled under his breath.

“You can’t tell anyone, Trev,” you said, a pleading look on your face. “Especially not Luke. We are gonna tell him…just not yet. You cannot tell a soul, not even Jack.”

“I won’t. Scout’s promise.”

Quinn glared at him. “Were you even a boy scout?”

“No, why do you ask?”

“I—” Quinn just shook his head. “Can you just…wait outside whilst we get dressed?”

“Aw, I knew you’d be happy I was here, Huggy,” Trevor beamed, patting the older boy’s cheek before he bounced out of the room, most likely helping himself to whatever was in Quinn’s fridge.

Quinn turned to you, looking exasperated but you just grinned.

“Guess that’s one less person we have to worry about hiding from?”

He just sighed deeply in response.

…

Trevor ended up keeping his word, not telling a soul. Though, he did go out of his way to bug you and Quinn—mostly Quinn—about your relationship.

You would have thought the situation with Trevor would have prompted the two of you to be more careful. You thought it would have been your lesson learnt that not even the season being fully underway would be distracting enough for you to be as laid back as you were. You thought it was the small reality check you needed.

As it would turn out, it wasn’t even two weeks later when the next slip up happened.

It was a stupid, drunken promise that led you to the Hughes’ family home in Ann Arbor, bright and early on a Saturday. When the boys had revealed to you that all three batches of the cookies they had meant to make for a charity sale the university were holding had burnt to a crisp because all of them were incapable of baking, you had offered up your amateur baking skills to make a few batches.

You were drunk and emotionally compromised and it was really hard to say no to the pleading eyes of Ethan Edwards.

However, with your kitchen barely being big enough to hold two people, Ellen had kindly offered her kitchen for you to use. Plus, she had been wanting to catch up with you since the semester had started, especially considering it was the longest time you and Luke had been apart.

It was somewhere in between the second and third batch when your phone started ringing on the counter.

“Hey Ellen, could you grab that for me?” You called out over your shoulder, your hands preoccupied in rolling small balls of cookie dough to place on the tray. “Just answer it and put it on speaker.”

There was a beat of hesitation. “Are you sure, sweetheart?”

“Yeah, just place it down on the counter beside me,” you said offhandedly, frowning at the batch of cookies as Ellen pressed the little green button and let the ringing stop.

You were elbow deep in a bowl of batter when a familiar voice echoed through the Hughes’ kitchen.

“Hey babe, quick question: did you say you were coming up for Christmas break or not?”

The whole room fell silent as you looked over your shoulder, finding Ellen already staring at you. She had an amused glint in her eyes, her lips twitching upwards in a smile that was a little mischievous—it reminded you so much of Jack. You dared a glance at the doorway where Jim stood, eyebrows raised in surprise but something quite happy in his expression.

“Uh, can I call you back? I just have to…deal with something real quick.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just…” You trailed off again, your cheeks burning as Ellen and Jim stared at you. “I’ll call back in ten minutes when I’m finished with these cookies, okay?”

“Okay, miss you.”

“Miss you too.”

The sound of the call cutting sounded through the kitchen and none of you said anything for a few seconds. And much to your surprise, it was Jim who spoke first.

“God dammit, kid, you cost me twenty bucks!”

You blinked. “Huh?”

Ellen smiled fondly, taking a few steps until she was beside you. She gave your elbow a soft squeeze, something knowing in her gaze. “I always knew you’d end up with one of my boys. Jim was just convinced it would be Jack.”

Jim huffed. “I bet your parents twenty bucks each.”

Your eyes widened. “My parents?”

“We aren’t blind, kid,” Jim retorted, something soft and fond in his voice.

Ellen snorted. “Clearly you are since you thought it would be Jack.”

“I—” You started but you weren’t even sure what to say.

Ellen turned back to you, smiling like the whole conversation was normal. “I always knew it would be Quinn. I saw the way he looked at you, even when you were young.”

Your brows furrowed. “Quinn barely liked me when we were kids.”

And Ellen just laughed like that was the funniest thing you could have said. It wasn’t exactly the way you wanted either of your parents—Quinn’s and your own—to find out about your relationship.

But, unlike Trevor, Ellen and Jim understood the unspoken rule and just how…complicated the situation was, despite Ellen’s insistence that her eldest son had been crushing on you for a lot longer than you believed.

Nobody tell Luke.

…

It was your fault for leaving the room.

When you had enrolled in Michigan, there was a small part of you that was worried college would be the thing to tear you and Luke apart. In retrospect, it was a stupid thought to have. But you were young and scared and entering this unknown era of your life, and you just wanted to cling onto what you knew, what you were used to—onto Luke.

You realised pretty early on that the thought was stupid when the hockey team had practically adopted you. You were an extension of Luke, but it never felt like that. They were your friends as much as they were Luke’s, and you found yourself fond of these boys who had wiggled their way into your heart.

Knowing you still had them despite Luke being in New Jersey made coming back alone so much easier.

However, the life of a D1 athlete was an intense one, along with the fact classes were getting harder and assignments were getting longer. But the boys had practically demanded you come over at least once a week so you didn’t ‘forget who your new best friends are’, as they so kindly liked to say over and over again. Mostly just to annoy Luke.

It was one of those nights. You had made your way to their house after your last class, faceplanting down onto the couch until the group of you had decided on ordering pizza. You had some random comedy movie running on in the background, just senseless noise to accompany whatever random debates Ethan had managed to drag up. It was nice and easy and relaxing, and made you feel a little more sane in what was turning out to be a gruelling year.

You were in the middle of showing Rutger a random video Jack had sent you of Luke decking it on the ice during practice when the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” you told them without missing a beat, leaving your phone in their hands as you collected the pizzas from the delivery man.

What you weren’t expecting was to come back and find all of them staring at you with creepy matching grins on their faces.

You froze, eyeing them suspiciously. “What? What happened?”

“You are a sneaky lil’ thing, aren’t you?” Rutger spoke up, looking far too smug over something you were still in the dark over.

You glanced between them before your eyes settled on Rutger again, your confusion clear on your face.

Rutger continued, “when were you gonna tell us you have a boyfriend?”

Your body froze. “I don’t know what—”

“And when the fuck were you gonna tell us it’s Quinn Hughes?” Mark jumped in, turning your phone around to show a picture you and Quinn had taken during your last visit.

He had taken the photo in an elevator mirror, your back to the camera as you wrapped yourself around the boy. But he was grinning, so big and unbothered and it was one of your favourite sights. It was one of your favourite photos of him.

And it certainly wasn’t the photo you left them with.

“Did you go through my phone?” You finally managed to blurt out when words found you again. But the damage was done and you knew there wasn’t much you could do considering the last time they were aware, you barely spoke to the oldest Hughes brother.

“I can’t believe you kept this from us!” Ethan huffed out, shaking his head like he was genuinely offended. He probably was. He tended to be the more dramatic one.

“I can’t believe Luke allowed this,” Mark snorted.

You flashed them a sheepish smile.

“Oh, dude,” Rutger murmured with a shake of his head.

“You can’t tell him. You can’t tell anyone.” You shifted in your spot, something a little desperate and pleading in your voice, and it was enough for the boys to sober up a bit. Become a little more serious. “We didn’t wanna tell anyone yet and I just…”

“We won’t tell a soul,” Mark reassured you, a soft smile on his face that eased some of the anxiety in your chest.

“As long as you tell us everything,” Ethan added, a knowing smirk on his face. “And I mean everything because how the fuck does any of the Hughes brothers have game?”

And you couldn’t help but snort in response.

…

Jack didn’t accidentally find out more than he put it together.

It wasn’t often that the Devils and the Canucks met during the season but when they did, it was a family affair. You had decided to join the Hughes parents on their trip up to Vancouver, each of you wearing your hybrid Canucks/Devils jerseys that Ellen had custom made for these occasions.

The game itself went by as you expected. There was a lot of media coverage on the ‘Hughes Bowl’, meaning each of the boys had been dragged into interview after interview before the game. It was a good game, a clean one too. You tried not to wince too much when the final buzzer blared through the arena and it was a Devils win.

You knew Quinn would be a little gutted, even if he wouldn’t fully show it in front of his family.

The group of you had decided to head out to one of the Canucks’ favourite bars, something that Luke had whined a little about considering Ellen and Jim insisted they join. But it was wholesome and sweet and made you crave the summer weeks a little more than the current early January weather.

You were settled at the bar, laughing at Jack’s attempt to catch the bartender’s attention to order another round of shots he had dragged you into doing when you felt the warmth of another body settle beside you. For a short moment, you smiled thinking that maybe Quinn had snuck away from whatever conversation he had been stuck in with Petey and Jim. But when you turned your head, you found a stranger standing beside you.

“Hey gorgeous,” he smiled, and something instantly unsettled deep within your chest.

“Hi,” you replied, short and blunt as you tried to shift away but there wasn’t much space by the crowded bar.

“Hey, where are you going? I just wanted to chat,” he said with an easy smile on his face, his hand resting on your elbow and you instantly jerked away from his hold.

“I’m not interested,” you answered.

He laughed and the sound grated on your nerves. “That’s a bit presumptuous that I wanted something, sweetheart. Think you’re all that, huh?”

“Just leave me alone,” you said as you took a step back. A part of you wanted to turn your head and try to catch Jack’s attention, try to ask for help. Another part of you didn’t want to look away from this man. You didn’t trust him.

He huffed out a chuckle. “Don’t be like that—”

“She said no. Fuck off now.”

A mix of relief and surprise washed over you when you felt a body settle behind you, and you didn’t need to turn your head to know it was Quinn standing behind you, but you still did just to settle the tightness in your chest.

His face was set in a blank expression, but you recognised it well enough. When he got angry—truly angry—he didn’t have a frown on his face or a crease between his brows. His face just looked…blank. Like he was so lost in his own rage that no expression could really encapsulate how he felt.

You rarely saw it. He rarely showed this side of him.

His hands were on your waist, pulling you closer to his body as his eyes never left the stranger’s. He tilted his head to the side when the man opened his mouth again, and that seemed enough to shut him up again.

“Go.”

The man decided to do the smart thing and scuttle into the crowd of people, disappearing with a blink of an eye until neither you nor Quinn could see him. But even with him gone, you couldn’t shake the uneasiness in your chest.

A second passed before Quinn moved, now standing in front of you with your face in his hands as he tore your gaze away from the crowd to look at him instead. His brows were furrowed together in concern, his lips turned downwards as he glanced over you to make sure you were okay.

“Hey, you with me?” He murmured, his voice soft and comforting and you clung onto it.

“Mhm,” you nodded, flashing him a shaky smile.

His frown deepened. “Don’t lie to me—”

“I’m not,” you told him honestly, your hands fisting the material of his shirt like you were scared he was going to step away. “I just…you make me feel better.”

His face softened and the last of his resolve went out the window as he wrapped his arms around you, hugging you close until you were pressed into his chest. You nuzzled your face against his sweater, letting the familiar smell of his cologne wash over you and calm the last of your nerves.

And when you opened your eyes, you found Jack standing a few feet away from you. Quinn hadn’t noticed he was there and Jack made no move to announce his presence. But he gave you this smile, one that was kind and knowing and felt like a stamp of approval you didn’t know you wanted or needed from the middle Hughes brother.

But Jack smiled at the sight of you and his older brother, raising his shot glass like a promise to keep your secret and knocking it back without a moment of hesitation.

…

You had no plans on telling Luke about you and Quinn the night it actually ended up happening.

There was a mutual agreement between you both that you couldn’t keep it from Luke any longer. It wasn’t fair on him to be left in the dark, it wasn’t fair on you two having to sneak around and it wasn’t fair on the people who already knew having to keep your secret.

And with the normal season coming to an end, it felt like a clock was running against you to tell your best friend you were dating his brother before you were all locked in the lakehouse for the summer together.

When you had imagined the moment in your head, it was the three of you. You would sit Luke down, explain your feelings and hope that he wouldn’t feel too betrayed. You imagined he would say something stupid like ‘yeah, I already know, losers’ and you could live your lives happily ever after.

It was probably never going to happen like that, but you certainly didn’t expect it to happen like this.

After a rough season and a streak of rough games for Luke in particular, the news of the Devils’ head coach stepping down felt inevitable and, truthfully, it was a relief when you saw the news come through. Luke had called you, far too smug and giddy for someone whose team was technically without a key member—but you guessed it was mostly second-hand from the other boys.

You swore you could hear Jack and Nico talking about popping open a bottle of champagne in the background when he called.

It felt like an unspoken agreement for you to fly out when Luke told you about a huge party they were throwing that weekend. Not for the recent retirement, obviously. If anyone asked, it was a simple bonding experience for the boys to motivate them through the last leg of the season.

And somewhere between the beer pong game Luke dragged you into and the really strong margarita Simon made you, you had snuck off into a small bathroom to call the one person your drunk self craved to see.

“Hey, pretty girl.”

You grinned at the sight of your boyfriend’s face on your screen, his hair tucked under a beanie as he walked around his apartment. “Hey, baby.”

He took in your flushed cheeks and glossy eyes, snorting a little. “Having fun?”

“So much fun,” you giggled before letting out a heavy sigh. “I wish you were here.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he promised, like he was counting the days. He probably was. You knew you were too. “Spring break, remember?”

“Hmm, I can’t wait to have you all to myself,” you mused, sinking back against the wall of the bath you were currently leaning on. “I’m sick of sharing my boyfriend with Petey.”

Quinn laughed. “I thought you loved Petey.”

You sighed deeply. “I do love that big, blond Swede.”

He shook his head in amusement. “I’ll let him know. I’m sure he loves you too.”

You perked up a little. “Really?”

“Really, baby.”

“Woah,” you breathed out, your eyes falling shut as you leaned against the cool ceramic of the bathtub. “I know I said it before…but I really wish you were here.”

Quinn’s face softened. “Me too, babe. Me too.”

You opened your mouth to say something, probably some random drunken thought that you felt the insistent need to share with your boyfriend before knocking on the bathroom door interrupted you.

You froze when you heard Luke calling your name on the other side.

Quinn frowned at the way your face paled a little. “Baby, what’s happened? Who is it?”

You heard shuffling on the other side before Luke’s muffled voice sounded through the door. “Are you talking to Quinn?”

You could have hung up. You could have told him you were talking to someone else entirely. You could have done a million and one other things that made more sense. However, for some fucking reason, your drunk brain panicked.

“I don’t know a Quinn!”

Quinn furrowed his brows in confusion.

There was a pause on the other side of the door before Luke tested the handle, finding the door unlocked. He let himself in, standing by the entrance as he stared down at you curled up beside the bathtub with a frown.

“Why are you hiding in here? I need another beer pong partner and Holtz sucks so—”

And because the universe liked to fuck with you, it seemed like there was some sort of lag on Quinn’s side because his voice was echoing through the small bathroom before you could even warn him about Luke’s presence.

“Baby, what’s happening? You’re starting to scare me.”

Your eyes widened as silence suffocated the small room. You looked at Quinn before looking at Luke, who was looking at your phone with a mixed expression.

“Did…did he just call you baby?”

“No?”

Luke narrowed his eyes. “What’s going on? Why are you on the phone to Quinn? And why are you hiding in the bathroom? And since when do you talk to Quinn?”

You flashed him a sheepish smile. “Since we’ve been dating,”

Luke blinked before he snorted. “No, I’m being serious.”

You swallowed. “So am I.”

Luke let out another laugh, but this one was a little less convincing. “I…no, you’re messing with me. Jack put you both up to this, right?”

You stayed silent.

“Right?” Luke asked again, a little more desperate.

Your eyes shifted down to Quinn—the lag thankfully gone—before you looked back up at Luke with a nervous expression. You shifted so your phone screen was now facing him, watching as his eyes dropped down to his brother’s face.

“We wanted to tell you—”

“You,” Luke sneered, his eyes narrowed. “You have been planning this.”

You blinked. “Huh?”

“He’s been planning this!” Luke said with such confidence, though that might have been the mix of rum and tequila talking. “He’s been planning this since the sour patch kids!”

Quinn shot his brother a look. “You think I’ve been planning to date your best friend since you were seven?”

“Yes.”

You didn’t have to look at the screen to know Quinn was rolling his eyes at his younger brother.

“How long has this been going on?”

“A while.”

“That’s not an answer,” Luke frowned before looking at you.

“Since last summer,” you whispered.

“Summer?!” Luke spluttered. “You two have been dating for eight months and no one knew?”

You winced.

Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Who knows?”

“Just Trevor,” you said with a shrug of your shoulders.

He deflated, blinking. “Oh, well I guess—”

“And your parents and my parents and Ethan and Rutger and Mark and Jack,” you blurted out quickly, your cheeks heating up as Luke stared at you like he didn’t know you.

“So everyone but me?”

“Luke—”

“Everyone but me knows?”

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“This is just a bad dream,” Luke murmured to himself before nodding his head, a little more confidently. “No, yes. This is a bad dream influenced by Nemo’s shitty bartending skills. A bad dream where my older brother is stealing my best friend. It isn’t real at all.”

You blinked. “Luke—”

“Just need to play out the rest of the bad dream and I’ll wake up,” he continued muttering away as he reached for the door handle, ready to leave the small, cramped bathroom. “Just a bad dream.”

“Luke—”

But he was already gone before you could say anything.

“Well, he’s gonna have a brutal reality check in the morning.”

You turned your phone to glare at your boyfriend. Though, much to your surprise, he was grinning in response.

“Quinn, this is serious.”

“Baby, I know.” His face seemed to soften a little, but the smile remained. “But now he knows. This is what we wanted. And now we don’t have to hide.”

Your annoyance melted away at his revelation, a warmth settling in your chest that only Quinn seemed to bring. “Stop being cute.”

“I’m being realistic, baby. Now you can come up any time you want.”

You snorted. “I still have classes.”

“I’ll find a way around those too. You can’t stop me, baby, gonna tell the whole world how much I love you.”

Your face softened with a smile. “I love you too.”

Quinn’s smile mirrored yours. “Now go make sure my brother doesn’t do something stupid whilst he thinks he’s in a dream. Mum will kill me if his face is plastered on a tabloid in the morning.”

“Pretty sure Jack will go out of his way to make sure that happens.”

“Please don’t let it happen.”

You gave him a mock salute. “Aye, aye, captain.”

He shook his head with a fond expression. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Okay. Bye, I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“And I love Petey.”

Quinn snorted. “Yeah, I love him too. Get in line.”

#quinn hughes #nhl #vancouver canucks #quinn hughes x reader #quinn hughes x you #quinn hughes x y/n #quinn hughes fic #quinn hughes one shot #nhl x reader #nhl x you #nhl x y/n #nhl fic #nhl one shot

727 notes · View notes

kaisers-house-of-desires · 7 months ago

Note

Can you do an Yandere Idia x male reader

with reader being Idia's fake boyfriend so Idia's parent don't have to worry or talk about his social life but then Idia got too attached to reader during their fake relationship.

reader sleeping on Idia's room and Idia's horny thoughts took over him and he ended up fucking reader and then after that guilt tripped reader to staying with him as he was starting to become more and more desperate for reader's prescence, time, and body.

(i can't think of deeper details im so sorry 😭)

No need to apologize, reader! I think this is quite doable~

Title: Attached

Characters: Idia x m!reader

Contains: Dark Themes(Yandere, manipulation), somniphillia, handjob, biting

Fandom: Twisted Wonderland

Full request below the cut

All characters are 18+

MINORS, FEM ALIGNED, AGELESS/BLANK BLOGS DNI

Reblogs > likes

For Idia, to finally have his parents stop asking about a partner was a blessing, but unfortunately for him, it would start a mess.

It had been over a month, maybe two, since this pretend relationship started. You agreed to help the socially awkward male to get his parents off his back. Did it mean having to share a kiss here, a hug there? A few Magicam images to really sell it?

Sure, and really, neither of you minded.

Except now, in the hours of the night, Idia found himself staring at the ceiling, unable to even play a game or check his phone to distract him. His thoughts ran wild, and you sleeping beside him didn't help. His yellow eyes, practically glowing in the dark as they darted to your sleeping form and back up to the ceiling. The whole reason you were here was at his request. It seemed out of the ordinary for you two, and you couldn't quite understand why he would want you over, but assuming it was to set up another farse to fool his parents, you agreed.

Now he was almost regretting it.

Sitting up, Idia's gaze started from your head to your legs. In your pajamas, you slept on top of the blankets, having commenting on how warm it was in the dorm. Idia had yet to change, but he had assured you he would.

He didn't. His mind was too busy.

The only thing he kept thinking about was you.

He never broke his stare, leaning towards you with an outstretched hand. He had plans to turn you, but luckily for him, you turned on your own, now lying on your back. He got a better view of your face, your sweet, sleeping face.

The memories of your fake dates called back to him. The way you held his hand was far too real, the way your fingers would intertwine. The looks you would give him would cause pink to rise to his pale face. He longed for this more than just for the time he needed. He longed for you, for your time, your energy, your...

Idia positioned himself over you, his head over yours, His heart hammered as sinful thoughts danced along his mind.

Blue lips carefully brushed against your slightly parted ones. You didn't stir, which Idia was thankful for. He firmly pressed his lips to yours, enjoying a sweet, yet needy kiss. It was quick, as he didn't want to wake you from your slumber, not yet.

A kiss wouldn't be enough, however, and now that he had a taste, he wouldn't hold back.

Not moving from your side, Idia sat up, eyes darting to your pajama bottoms. With shaky yet eager hands, Idia undid the button that kept the fabric together at your crotch. Instead of digging into your boxers like he wanted to, he attempted to still, and instead gently rested his hand over the mound of fabric. A shuddering sigh left his mouth, eyes nearly fluttering at the touch.

Ever so carefully, he began to massage you, a soft hum leaving you through your nose. He had never done such a thing to another, only himself as he had many a night to think about all the things he wanted to do with you, to do to you. He felt you begin to harden under his hand, your brows furrowing as a breathy moan slipped by your lips. Your arm moved, causing Idia to stop. To his luck, all you did was rest your arm over your eyes, body stilling once you were finished. Idia waited a couple seconds before continuing, this time finally slipping his hand into your boxers to present your semierect shaft to the warm air.

Idia practically drooled at the sight, his face hot from merely holding it in his hand. There was no turning back, and ever so gently, he began to pump his hand along your cock. A groan startled him, but he pressed on. You felt hot in his hand, almost unbearingly so, and the last sane part of his brain screamed at him to stop, but all it took was a name to make him come to a screeching halt as his head slowly turned toward the source.

You weren't awake, you were still asleep, but you had uttered a name that made Idia's heart swell.

"I...dia...~"

A dream, he thought. He has to be dreaming.

And if you were dreaming, then that means you wanted this too, right?

Throwing caution to the wind, Idia attempted to carefully readjust, putting himself by your legs as he finally, yet reluctantly let go of your cock, which now was harder than what he started with. Excitedly, Idia worked to carefully remove your bottoms, boxers and pants now crumbled beside the bed. Idia messed with the buckle of his belt, shaky and sweaty hands fumbling with the leather and metal as he finally worked on his zipper. Eventually, his cock sprang free from the confines of his black boxers. Not wasting any time, fearing you would wake up soon, he positioned himself, lifting your legs up to gain access to your hole. He knew there was no prep, but time was of the essence for him. He pressed his cock to your entrance and--

"I-Idi--AH!"

At the same moment you attempted to speak his name, Idia pushed himself in, your walls not ready for such a protrusion, but the male didn't care, not at the moment. Right now, he stared you down, glazed yellow eyes meeting your pained ones. You had gripped the blankets below you, swearing out with a sob as you made a fist to hit the mattress in frustration.

"I-I'm sorry, y/n, but I...I couldn't help myself anymore." Idia's voice trembled, but not because of fear. It trembled because he was desperate. He needed to move, he could always explain what's happening in the meantime, right? With that in mind, he began to gyrate his hips into yours, both of you filling the hot air with sinful sounds of lust.

Unable to speak, all you could do was grip at Idia's sleeves, panting heavily with each blissful impact of his cock inside as you met his frenzied gaze. Not like Idia would answer anyway, as the man was babbling a mile a minute about how good you felt, about how incredible you were.

Idia fell over you, his head close to yours as his feral thrusting never ceased. He stared down at you, a twisted smile revealing his sharp teeth.

"I-I want you I want you I want you I want you...!"

Before you could give a rebuttal, or rather attempt one, you found Idia's mouth on your neck, those very teeth digging into the top layer of your flesh. All the while Idia's movements never stopped, not even while you let out a scream, the pain oddly sending a jolt to your stomach, heat to your cock.

And he didn't let go. Idia's jaw locked onto your neck, growls and panting sounding beside your ear. With his teeth sinking in, and his thrusts neverending, you found yourself in a taboo position. You were still waking up, and all of this was happening to you. You weren't sure how to react, what to say. Your body was assaulted with pleasure, and all you could do was let it happen.

But to your luck, or misfortune depending, Idia was quick to cum, likely due to his frenzied state, his desperate need to have you.

He filled your hole decently, a slip of cum escaping from the bottom of your stuffed ass. Part of you was grateful it was over, but another part didn't want it to end. Idia finally released his jaw from your neck, indents of teethmarks branding you, some having specks of blood from the pierced skin. As far as Idia was concerned, you belonged to him.

"Hah...~ Look at you...~ You're a mess...~" Though he was one to talk. Despite the sweat sheening on your forehead, the tired eyes that once again met the flame haired man, it didn't compare to the crazed look Idia wore, the toothy grin that just cursed you with a bite. "Don't worry, though. I-I like messes~ You're my favorite mess~"

"I-Idia..." Your voice sounded like a whine, a plea. Idia never pulled out, but instead remained inside, as if leaving would kill him.

"Shhh it's okay." He leaned back down, and you flinched, thinking he would bite you again, but instead he left a kiss on your forehead. "No need t-to say anything, okay? Couples do this. It's normal."

Couples...wait. Did Idia forget it was all for pretend?

"B-But we..."

"Hm? We...what?"

You blinked back the fatigue that crept up on you. "I-Idia...we're not really dating."

Surprisingly, his face went unchanged. "Of course we are. It's been two months. You agreed to go out with me..."

"Idia that's not--"

"So you lied to me...you were just pretending to date me?"

That...that was the whole point! This was all for pretend to get his parents off his back! You blinked back confused tears.

"We agreed--"

"I don't u-understand...why would you do this? Why would you spend...a-all that time with me...?" You felt the air change, his hair looking more active than normal.

"I-It was for your parents, remember?"

"My parents? My parents are thrilled I have someone! If you leave me they'll never let me hear the end of it!" Orange speckled the blue, he was close to popping off, but instead, you thought back on your actions. Perhaps...you had simply misheard him initially. Maybe you thought it was for the parents, but maybe that was a lie Idia came up with to ask you out, fighting his anxieties.

"I-I...I-I'm sorry. I must have m-misremembered..."

The orange settled, and a smile, not as deranged, grew back to Idia's face. "I don't blame you, love. It's late after all."

Finally pulling out from you, which caused you to whine out lightly, Idia got settled with you in the bed, pulling the blankets up to cover your half nude form with him by your side.

"Sleep. You need it, okay?"

Without another word, and afraid to turn your back on him, you curled up, closing your eyes...

...unable to see the traitorous grin that Idia wore.

#kaisers house of desires #x reader #x male reader #x male y/n #twisted wonderland idia #twst idia #idia shroud #idia x reader #disney twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland #idia x male reader

161 notes · View notes

jo-harrington · 4 months ago

Text

Corroded Coffin Fest - Day 27 - You'll Be In My Heart

Summary: Eddie and the boys fight their homesickness when they're on the road for the summer.

Word Count: 964

Rating: T

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Store Manager!Reader

Warnings/Themes: Friendship, fluff, allusion to sex, discussion of marriage

Note: Alright final Saturday of this event, I'm both sad and excited, it's been a really great one. For this day, I'm going back to my fondest series, my baby, The Store Manager Verse. It's specifically set before the proposal in Longevity and it very much explores how Eddie got the idea to propose to Store Manager at all.

And I might've fucked up the timeline and my own fic canon so just...if you notice something, shhh no you didn't.

Check Out the Main Post for @corrodedcoffinfest here! Even if you didn’t start on Day 1, you can still join!

Tagging: @the-unforgivenn at her request.

You can find my masterlist here.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Enjoy!

August 1990

The summer of '90 was a special one.

It was Corroded Coffin's first real life tour. Well, not really.

"Actually," you told them when they broke the news to you, "you're forgetting about the Independence Day Tour of '87."

"We didn't make t-shirts for that one, sweetheart," Eddie teased and dropped a kiss on the top of your head before diving into the details.

It wasn't a true tour in the sense that they'd pack up the van and hit the road and never look back until the tour was over--that would require them quitting their jobs for a time, something their wallets desperately couldn't handle. But a few days off here to go to this festival? A few days off there to enter into this Battle of the Bands? That was doable.

It was as close to a tour as they were gonna get for a little while, and it was gonna help them get further in their music career.

It also prepared them.

Being away from home for a few days at a time prepared them for an inevitable week or month or year that they could potentially face if their star grew brighter.

Eddie quickly realized, though, how much he would miss you when that time came, because he missed you terribly now.

He started seeing you everywhere he looked. Foods he thought you might like to try, love songs that reminded him of you. Someone at one county fair even did a cover of Beth, which he would argue was your song. And at one fest, there was a booth with hand drawn postcards featuring cute fuzzy animals with nefarious settings in the background.

It started with one of those.

A postcard of a kitten with a big purple bow sitting in a haunted forest. Purple for Claires, he explained when he presented it to you on their return home. You gushed over it, said that you loved it, and it went up on the fridge.

Until the next time the guys were out of town.

Next it was special chocolate caramel candies with thick sea salt on top from a booth that sat next to the main stage. They had probably eaten more chocolate than any other food during that trip; you had to try it.

Then a big over stuffed teddy bear--

"It's an Eddie Bear, actually." He pointed to the denim vest it wore. "See?"

--that he won playing a game of ring toss.

A huge tin of assorted fudge from Mackinac Island and a promise to take you with next time they went.

A necklace made of special stone beads that supposedly helped with everlasting love or something; he'd gotten to choose a tarot card when he bought it. He got the two of cups, whatever that meant.

Each and every gift that Eddie brought you when he was away was special. Some big, some small. Some made you ooh and aww, some made you cry because of how much you missed your idiot boyfriend, one even earned him...well...lets just say his bandmates, who you shared a duplex with, made themselves scarce for the evening.

But it was the last stop on the tour that brought maybe the best gift, the most meaningful. It made Eddie really stop and think because...well, this was the stop that they were debuting a new song about his parents and his childhood and how the future wasn't set in stone and you couldn't change things that were bad for you, even with the best intentions.

Marriage is a Death Sentence.

So it was ironic that the first thing to catch his eye would be a ring.

Not a typical engagement ring, not a diamond or really anything big and shiny at all. It was strange and artsy and interesting but when he saw it there at that little crafters booth...he just thought of you.

It was a weird thought. Jarring.

And it scared him.

He turned tail and walked right out of the booth, stopped at a stand where they sold little critters made of recycled wire and bought you a tiny porcupine. There, done, gift bought, no need to think of it anymore.

But he couldn't stop thinking about the ring for the rest of their time there. Not when they performed, not when they ate lunch, not when they packed the van at the end of the night to go home.

He hadn't given marriage much thought when he was younger. He liked dating, liked dating you. You never brought it up, neither did he. But then you took him as your date for Jen's wedding a few years back, and the two of you talked about it and of course you were on the same page. Couldn't see yourselves doing the whole commotion, no suits or dresses, no desire to have your families and friends stare at you for hours.

Not to mention some of those vows were just heinous.

No wonder Al and Elizabeth Munson were destined for heartbreak if they vowed to honor and obey...blegh.

So marriage? No, not at all. Immediately no.

But you? Forever with you? You were his best friend. Wouldn't say his soulmate, that was Jeff obviously and you had no problem with that. But you were...you were you.

So the answer was a resounding yes. Always.

Eddie ran, faster than he'd run in a long time if ever, through the booths as everyone packed up for the night, to the little crafters stall from earlier.

"I was just about to pack up," the vendor laughed as Eddie caught his breath. "You made it just in time."

It was fate.

He pointed where the ring still sat, as it if was waiting for him, and said,

"I'll take it."

#corrodedcoffinfest #eddie munson #corroded coffin #jeff stranger things #gareth stranger things #stranger things fic #eddie munson fic #eddie munson x reader #store manager verse #and then they never actually got married #maybe they did i don't know #go read longevity #i'll leave it up to you

73 notes · View notes

topaz-mutiny · 1 year ago

Text

I think the fans are underestimating how differently people can process things.

I am consistently seeing posts say "Ashton/Tal were repeatedly warned the shard was not for them/will 100% kill them", when this was absolutely not the case, and, more importantly, it is very likely for groups of people to completely misinterpret the warnings. Even if they've known each other and loved each other for a decade.

I certainly thought the warnings were not clear or frequent enough so I was shocked like lightning in the latest episode that they were meant to be absolute death flags.

Please note that I'll mostly refer to the fictional characters, I don't want to bring the people behind the characters too much into this.

First, I would like to point out, the show takes place over weeks and months with plenty of breaks and interruptions. That is plenty of time and opportunity for memories to get faded, muddled, crossed-over with other memories, etc.

The "warnings" happened two weeks to a month ago. And even when they were fresh on the cast's mind, here are the warnings verbatim (bold is my emphasis):

But be warned, holding the strength of the two in one vessel might sunder it. You bear the dormant strength of the empress. Find and bestow the might of the emperor.

- Evontra'vir, episode 74, aired October 5th. The conversations move on to unrelated things with no followup.

Ashton: He also said it might be dangerous for these two shards to intermingle. Or he didn't say dangerous, he said that-- it could destroy me. Orym: --A chance the vessel could break. Laudna: --The vessel <air quotes> could break. Fearne: Wasn't there something if you put them together with the right thing that it'll be okay? Ashton: It might come together and be okay, yeah. -- Dancer: Maybe if it were to meet one of its own ilk, it could awaken. Allura: What you said as a point of warning likely is true. To have both within a singular vessel, it's possible one could survive, but it's also highly possible that it would rend you into a thousand pieces. -- Allura: We're in a strange area of experimentation and unknown knowledge. -- (after finding out Ashton has a fascimile of a Luxon beacon in their brain) FCG: So he's got two things in him or them? Allura: It would seem, which is why I'm a bit--Well, you're either the greatest weapon we could hope for in this time, or will be our end. I couldn't tell you. Orym: Boy, maybe we don't add a third thing. Ashton: I was put together by bits and pieces. This was not an intentional thing and it, I honestly shouldn't have survived it. It was, literally, I was put together with junk. Allura: In an odd way, your fragmented nature might be what keeps all of this in check. ... Perhaps we don't put another powerful entity within your form.

- Various, episode 76, aired October 19th.

To me, these warnings were not clear in the slightest.

To me, these warnings were interspersed with so many words like "possible", "might", and "chance" that I completely misinterpreted the situation as "For Ashton it is dangerous but doable" instead of "The Game Master is telling you Ashton's character sheet will be ripped up."

This is the problem with using in-character voices and using descriptors that imply chance or flexibility. They can drastically weaken the meaning of a phrase such that people like me will mistake it for something else.

Because that's how my brain works. "May", "chance", "perhaps" suggest to me a reasonable set of odds for an action and does not come across as the grave warning a game master would want.

And as a reminder, these muddled warnings were weeks apart and weeks away, which can make remembering the meaning even worse if you've already misinterpreted them. That's why I was 100% on board with Ashton taking the shard. It seemed reasonable but dangerous, so when Matt said "I warned you." in that grave tone and with that grave look I was thrown for a loop. I went "oh no! those were serious warnings!?" and the panic started setting in.

Also a contributing factor was the pressure and lack of communication from Bells Hells.

Fearne did not want the shard, and finally stated that thought aloud to Ashton. For Fearne and Ashton, that meant the only choice left was Ashton, because, for one reason or another, the 5 other people in Bells Hells repeatedly assumed and pushed the shard onto Fearne and wrote themselves out of the equasion. FIVE characters absolved themselves of being active participants. Once the idea of Fearne came to mind and this Emperor Fearne/Empress Ashton/Callowmoore shipping dicotomy, Bells Hells just stopped talking about it and never once considered if any of them should take the shard should Fearne refuse.

So... yeah that's how my brain works.

#critical role #cr spoilers #critical role spoilers #c3e77 #ashton greymoore #fearne calloway #bells hells #evontra'vir #taliesin jaffe #matthew mercer #communication breakdown #tl;dr Bells Hells needs to talk to each other more instead of just assuming how things will be #do you want explosions and dead PCs? that's how you get explosions and dead PCs.#people will think differently and can misinterpret what you say #even this loving group of 8 people can misinterpret each other despite being together for like a decade #tbh I thought the shard going to Orym would've been ideal #I might repost this for the Monday crew idk

182 notes · View notes

heyheydidjaknow · 1 year ago

Text

Think this is the shortest properly written thing I’ve posted and it’s not even what I usually write. This is in response to the whole “Whitney’s one of the better fathers” thing that went around a second ago. No idea if the people who follow me are DOL people but whatever man it’s Tumblr.

Prospects

His reaction was less violent than you had anticipated.

When you first wrapped your head around the whole thing, the first thing that came to your mind were the issues of how you were going to tell him and how you were going to put yourself between him and the baby. You had assumed he would tell you to get rid of it. You had assumed he was going to deny being the father. You had assumed you would be on your own. You were hardly happy with those prospects, but you had come to terms with them long before you had asked him over.

He did not look angry. He did not even look upset. He stared down at the test in your hand, registering the lines the same as you had. He took a deep breath, held it for a second, exhaled. He dug into his pocket for a moment, paused, took a second. Another breath.

The silence hung in the air like a guillotine over your neck.

You offered a smile. “So? How do you–”

“Stop talking.” His eyes raised towards your cracked ceiling. “I’m thinking.”

You sat down on the bed, the test still held between your fingers.

After a few more seconds, his gaze fell sharply back on you. “How much do you make?”

You blinked. “I–”

“Rent here isn’t cheap, right?” His voice shook ever so slightly. “You make money, right? That I don’t know about? How much?”

You considered it, lazily running your gaze along the floorboards. “I don’t know. Depends on the gig and how long I spend–”

“Assume you aren’t going to school.”

You sighed. “Nonstop? I can maybe squeeze out between four and ten thousand a week.”

He nodded slowly. “And how far in are you? Like how long have you been pregnant?”

“Three weeks or so?’

“And pregnancy lasts forty? So you’re due in a little more than half a year?”

“Mhm.”

He ran his tongue along his teeth, nodded. “Doable,” he decided. “Difficult, but doable.”

“What are you on about?”

He cast his eye towards the door, voice lowering. “I have five thousand in my account right now. If I drop out and you can save a thousand a week we can be out a couple months before you’re due.”

You looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

He grabbed your bag off the floor, digging into it for a piece of paper and a pen. “Babies are expensive,” he continued, sitting down on the ground and beginning to write. “If we assume we need–”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re keeping it, aren’t you?” He gestured at you with the pen. “You wouldn’t tell me if you weren’t, would you?”

You sat up. “I– well, no, but–”

“Then we’re going to be responsible for a baby in a few months.” You could not tell if he was nearly as out of sorts as you were; from where you were sitting, he seemed shockingly calm. “And in those few months, we need to be settled so we aren’t scrambling when it gets here. We need to figure out a game plan.”

“Settled?” You stumbled to your feet. “What, you want me to move in with you?”

He laughed, a whisper of manicism poking through. “Fuck no; you wouldn’t be let in the door. No, we’re skipping town.”

You blinked. “What do you mean?”

The pen stopped moving. “What do you mean what do I mean?”

“I’m not leaving.”

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but is prepartum psychosis a thing?”

“Hey—“

He raised his voice over yours. “If you think that I’m letting any kid— any kid of ours especially— get raised in this shithole I don’t know if I want to see what our kid is going to look like, what with the type of shit you have to be high on.”

You felt yourself shrink. His voice was still fairly even— unusually even for him— but somehow that registered as more concerning than if he were throwing shit at you. “My entire life is here.” You looked away, trying not to notice the incredulous grin that spread across his face. “Everyone I know lives in this town.”

He looked at you as though you had grown a third head.

Your face flushed. “I have family here!” Your fists clenched at your side. “And I have a stable job and friends—“

“That rape you.”

You shot him a glare despite yourself.

He clarified. “You have a family consisting of a leech you almost die every week for, a ‘steady’ job diving and whoring yourself out to make two people’s worth of unreasonable rent and friends that are also rapists.”

“Oh like you’re one to talk,” you snipped. “Like you aren’t half—“

“In what universe does the fact that my treating you like a piece of meat isn’t a turn-off does not register as a red flag to you?”

“Are you fucking complaining about my being into you right now?”

He took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled slowly. You flinched as he took your hands in his. “Look,” he tried, voice softer, “I know you have reservations— it’s a lot to ask someone to pack up and leave with you, and I have my own life here— but from where I’m sitting this is a matter of life and death. If we stay here, it’s not going to have a good life; fuck, I don’t even know if it’ll really have a life.” You could hear something like desperation in his voice. “I know that you don’t want to, but we both know it’s what’s best.”

His fingers twitched around you. You kept your eyes on them. “What if I say no?” you asked. “What if I don’t want to leave?”

He squeezed your palms together gently. “Then I’ll get that cuck that follows you around all the time to hold you in his basement,” he promised. “Or I’ll take the baby while you sleep.” He reached up, tilting your head so he could look you in the eye. They seemed bottomless, and you felt fear slither around your throat and squeeze. “I’ll drag you and our brat out of this town kicking and screaming if that’s what it takes, and if that doesn’t work,” he said, voice now barely a whisper, “I’ll kill you and take it away so that it can live a good, happy life and not end up like us. Do you understand me?”

Your leadened tongue laid useless in your mouth.

“Good.” He patted you twice on the cheek, letting you crumple to the floor drenched in cold sweat while he went back to his calculations. Through your fear-induced haze, it occurred to you that in all the time you had known him you had never seen him look so basically happy. You would have gone so far as to say that he almost looked like a normal person; terrified and resolved, but quietly overjoyed. You never would have thought that would be the thing that scared you most after everything he had done to you. “Do you need boxes or bags to pack your stuff in?”

#degrees of lewdity whitney #whitney the bully #dol whitney #whitney x reader #tw rape mention #tw pregnancy #degrees of lewdity #dol x reader #I mean it’s degrees of lewdity #tw threats

285 notes · View notes

yuurei20 · 10 months ago

Note

Hello! I was wondering if clubs are mandatory for students and when club enrollment begins. Thank you for the wonderful content! :)

Hello hello! Thank you so much, you are too kind! ^^

For when club enrollment begins, it seems to be very early!

There seems to be a "Student Club Fair," during which the new students observe the various clubs and submit an application to join.

Ruggie has a line about the new students checking out the clubs "now that orientation's over," and Silver comments, "No sooner does orientation end than we must solicit our clubs. There isn't a moment's rest."

Riddle explains, "Club activities and electives have a tremendous impact on one's daily schedule; thus, it is most prudent to decide on them as soon as possible."

Silver and Riddle are both wearing their ceremonial robes for the Student Club Fair, but according to their dialogue it seems they actually changed into their robes specifically for the event, and it is not that that they went straight from orientation to clubs.

NRC's orientation takes place at night, so it seems that the student Club Fair might take place the following day, after classes? This is based on how we see Jack and Epel during the club fair as well, and they already know each other.

They are in the same home room, so it is possible that the timeline is something like "Orientation (night) -> first day of school -> Student Club Fair"?

While Sebek submits his application immediately after seeing Riddle ride Vorpal, there is another scene of Ace in a classroom and having trouble with choosing his club.

Deuce says, "The application deadline is tomorrow!", insinuating that they might have a little bit of time between the fair and when they need to decide what club they will join, though how long, exactly, might not be specified anywhere.

A tangentially related point: quitting clubs seems not unusual!

Both Lilia and Ruggie mention students quitting their respective clubs, so it seems that you are not forced to remain in your selected club forever once you have decided.

A Pomefiore student also talks about trying to get Epel and Rook kicked out of the Film Club (neither one of them are actually a member, though Vil calls them in for help), and about quitting himself.

While Ortho is something of a special case we do see him join the Film Club after the events of Book 6, which take place after February in-game and long after the Student Club Fair, so transferring into other clubs may be doable anytime during the year (Vargas also threatens to force the culture club students into sports clubs at an unspecified time of the year that is generally assumed to be early spring).

It is not impossible that Rook is another student who may have transferred clubs midway: during a monologue of his pining for Leona, Vil recommends that he join the Spelldrive Club.

Rook refuses, saying that he joined the Science Club in order to support Vil, but Vil and Rook were not yet acquainted at the beginning of their first year at NRC.

Vil says "Rook and I first spoke with one another a few months after we started school." It seems that Rook would have already chosen a club by then, and maybe transferred out of it later into the Science Club when he decided to devote himself to Vil?

An argument against this theory would be: this is Rook. It is entirely possible that he enrolled in the Science Club from day one with the intention of being of use to Vil in the future, and simply bided his time until making his move (a theory supported by a line he has to Trey about being "someone who's been in the Science Club with you since enrolling").

On the subject of whether or not clubs are obligatory, I received a similar ask a little while ago and came to the conclusion of "clubs might be mandatory, maybe, but maybe not?," which I fear might not be very helpful :<

But as of this post I have not been able to find a line similar to "it is required that every student at NRC join a club," so I don't think we can be sure either way at the moment, though this may change in the future!

#twstask #twisted wonderland

70 notes · View notes

theblackestvalkyrie · 1 year ago

Text

#2 - Hulk - Oneshot (Pipe Game Series)

Pairing: Hulk (Bruce Banner) x Giantess!Reader

Summary: Hulk comes back from fighting in the arena and you couldn’t help but get turned on by his performance. Unfortunately, he takes “Hulk Smash” a little too literally.

Warning: Kind of awkward smut, dubcon, rough sex, hulk’s fat girthy cock, sex positive reader, unrealistic cervix fucking, pissing/piss kink, painful sex, accidental/surprise orgasm, slight somnophilia, size difference, NO BETA WE DIE LIKE MEN

A/N: Keep in mind that there is no Bruce in this fic. It’s strictly Hulk in this one. Comic fans, y’all know they are NOT the same person like the movies try to make it so really, they should be in different tags but whatever. Unfortunately, the rating was 5/10 but I personally think he’d be a 9/10 just on size alone 🤤. Reader is sex positive Is that coded for whore? Maybe lmao. Don’t be offended as I am a proud whore myself and is also a giantess (when compared to other species). Kind of like Bilquis from ‘American Gods’. If you know you know 😏. I took this one too far and a bit off track but I am pent tf up sexually so please be easy on me lol.

PG Chapters: Tony //

Based on this post.

https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchbaby300/pseuds/theblackestvalkyrie

The crowd was electric. Their enthusiastic cries and cheers echoed throughout the arena rising and falling with the wins and losses of warriors as they fought for their lives in the arena. On any other night, you’d be on the prowl looking for someone to bed or drink with but tonight was different. The new champion was fighting tonight.

You licked your lips at the thought as you watched his enormous green figure leap around and smash through the opponents put in front of him. He had hardly debuted and fought just a handful of times but ‘The Incredible Hulk’, as he was introduced before fights, was someone who was quickly making a name for himself.

The Hulk wouldn’t be the first champion you had approached sexually but judging by how thick he was all around; he might just be the last. You couldn’t contain your sexually charged thoughts as you watched him from the seat of your aircraft hovering above the arena.

Tonight would be the night you would make your move. You had been planning and plotting the entire week while also remaining celibate. Going without sex for a week while not ideal, would be doable but that one week stretched into a month as your schedules never seemed to align. But tonight the stars aligned. You had no scheduled fights and Hulk only had one match scheduled. So, you suffered through the entire thing squirming with legs crossed and slightly out of breath from just watching Hulk fight. Your clit mashed desperately against the seat, pelvis tilting back and forth in wanton desire.

You gripped the steering wheel to stop yourself from shoving your fingers where you needed them the most. The fight predictably ended in Hulk’s favor with the crowd and the Grandmaster going wild. Waiting was the hardest part. It would take some time for him to make his way back to his quarters which gave you plenty of time to land, park, and make your way to his room. You arrived just a few minutes after he entered his apartment you didn’t bother knocking. There was no privacy on Sakaar.

The red and white theme of the room just screamed Hulk. Trophies, both gifted and taken from his opponents by force, littered the floor and made up what little furniture he had. His room even had a full bar of high-end quality liquors and other mind-altering beverages on a fully stocked cabinet.

The Grandmaster's favoritism was blatantly obvious.

There he sat, a warm washcloth draped over his face, arms draped across his heated bathing pool, not a care in the world. You let your eyes trace downward towards his muscular thick chest and the sparse dark chest hair growing there trailing down his abdomen and obscured by the water.

In an effort to make yourself fully known, you let your footsteps become louder making more noise. Immediately he sat up alert and uncovered his eyes watching you like a predator. You and Hulk had never interacted up close but had seen each other in passing so were familiar yet complete strangers to each other.

“You did so well tonight, Hulk. I wanted to help you relax after such a hard job. Will you let me help you? Will you let me be your tool?”

Silence sat between you both as Hulk tilted his head in deep contemplation. You could practically see the gears turning in his head as his dark eyes pierced right through you.

“Hulk owns you?”

You could have come on the spot at his response. This was better than you could imagine. He must have thought you were one of the contracted sex workers the Grandmaster employed, and why wouldn’t he when you showed up with no underwear, a sheer bodycon dress, and zero inhibitions? Having a sexual tryst for a night was good but having someone sexually own you was a new level to you entirely.

“Yes.” No hesitation on your part.

“Strip.” A forceful command that left no room for argument.

You eagerly shed the thin soft fabric of your dress letting it pool around your feet. You could feel his eyes roaming your body studying your perky hard nipples and the intricate design of your pubic hair.

“Come” He gestured waving a wet hand out of the water and splashing water around without a care in the world for the surroundings. The first steps up to the pool were nerve-racking. While he made no move up to come to you, you could see him shifting around in anticipation.

It only made you more excited at the fact that he wanted you just as much as you wanted him.

Once you were fully into the warm pool the water settled above your belly button leaving your breasts dry and fully on display. You stopped a little shorter than an arm’s length in front of Hulk wondering if this was too close. It was almost comical to be worried about personal space when you entered his room without permission on the basis of fucking his brains out.

Hulk’s hand rose out of the water and cupped your right breast in shameless desire. He looked to be studying your chest like he had never seen a pair before caressing them with a gentleness that betrayed his size. A sweet silence settled between you two as you enjoyed his soft touch but at some point, you started getting tired of the sweetness.

You wanted to get fucked through the floor.

In a move of pure seduction, you slipped a hand under the water and straight to his cock stroking smoothly thanks to the lubrication of the pool.

Your fingers brushed the fat mushroom head as you took in his size. The head was hot even under the warm water and you struggled to wrap your fingers around it. His entire length measured from the tips of your fingers to the end of your elbow and then some. So many nights of struggling because you were a giantess. Nights of accidentally killing men unlucky enough to get sucked up into you during sex and men too scared to partake after hearing the rumors. It all lead to this glorious moment.

Hulk took his cue from you and slipped his fingers between your legs as well just discovering and exploring to his heart's content.

“You a virgin big guy?” You purred squeezing his length lightly.

“Maybe.” He huffed, half in annoyance half in arousal.

You giggled wrapping your other hand around what you couldn’t reach with the other hand still pumping him but adding a little twist to your wrist.

“Will you let me take care of you?”

He nodded and that was all you needed. Apparently, this was all he needed before standing in the deep pool. The water glistened and rolled off his muscles and down his happy trail to the deep v- cut of his pelvis exposing him in all his glory.

Your mouth started watering at the sight of his curved length. It was even better than anything your imagination could conjure up.

His weeping cock head spread precum along your cheek and lips as Hulk prodded your mouth open with his member.

“You suck me.”

You were granted a few seconds to take in all his splendor up close before his swollen head was banging on the back of your throat in inexperienced thrusts. Even with your hands gripping his hips in a death drip didn’t slow him down and you doubted much would deter him from the warmth of your throat.

You could feel your vision going spotty the darkness calling you and you flailed in panic a little. Hulk pulled himself from your throat and you gasped and coughed for breath ignoring the way the mix of saliva and precum dripped down your chin and throat obscenely.

Hulk lifted you over his shoulder and lumbered out of the pool to his trophy bed smacking your ass once and then dumping you on the bed saturating the sheets from your soaking wet bodies.

Unceremoniously he split your legs wide and ground his bloated cock tip into you bumping the nose of your clit and sliding back between your slick lips to your taint and back up again. Sawing back and forth in slow calculated movements.

Back and forth.

Back.

And.

Forth.

“We fuck now.”

He wasn’t even looking at your face but between your legs at his lewd movements. It was like you weren’t even in the room.

Yes please.” You squealed gripping the sheets in anticipation.

He moved then splitting your vaginal opening bigger than your fist. The stretching burned like nothing you had ever felt and you wondered in the back of your mind if this was how giving birth felt.

“Please wait…...Too big… Please….”

He ignored you and continued to push past any tight resistance living up to his title as champion and hit the opening of your cervix. You cried out as his thick girth split you immediately regretting ever approaching Hulk. Thankfully Hulk had enough thought to stop when he hit the doors of your cervix.

His large green hands gripped your hips and overlapped around your smaller figure. You might have been bigger than everyone you came across but Hulk made you feel small this very moment.

The room filled with the wet squelching sounds of your pussy getting hammered all you could do was spread your legs and hold on. You couldn’t keep up with his pace and the fact that it was bringing equal parts pain and pleasure confused you yet brought a feral arousal like you had never known.

“Gods, slow the fuck down!”

Your flailing was starting to annoy Hulk so he pinned you down with his arms and whole body pressing you into the mattress breathing into the side of your face.

“Don’t fight it.”

Babbling in delirium as he worked you over on his shaft like a cock sleeve with reckless abandon. Again the fat tip of his cock was banging at the doors of your cervix nudging you open with every hit. You were helpless to stop him from taking what he wanted.

You could feel the beginning strings of your orgasm knotting up and building. You couldn’t even form words. Falling over the edge with a sob you could feel yourself releasing liquid all over the bed.

Holy shit you just pissed yourself.

You didn’t even have a chance to catch your breath or feel embarrassed as you continued to piss all over the Hulk yet this did nothing to deter him. In fact, it incensed his primal urges and made him go harder smacking into you at a bruising pace as he chased his climax.

Another orgasm hit you by surprise making your vision spotty. Your tightening walls were all the Hulk needed to slam past the opening of your cervix filling it with the swollen crown of his cock and continuing to pump into you sloppily as he came. Drooling into the sheets you faded into a blissed-out darkness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Coming to, the first thing you could sense was the wet squelching of your pussy still getting fucked. Unable to do anything but watch yourself get fucked in the reflection of the window. Fucking against the window so everyone can see. The Hulk growled possessively into your neck as he came into your stretched-out cervix with a groan.

“Mine…….Mine….”

#Pipe Game Series #hulk x reader #the hulk x reader #black reader #oneshot #marvel fic

178 notes · View notes

indigozeal · 1 month ago

Text

Game translation project delay

Earlier this year, a game translation project which I had been trying to get off the ground for a very long time was surprise-announced by another team member, with a release implied to be imminent. I'm not going to mention the name of the project in the body of this post for Woolie Madden reasons—I don't think we should have tempted the Fates then, and I don't think we should any further—but if you've happened across this page, you know what it is. I had myself mentioned that I had already translated 90% of this game's Super Famicom script, a number the team member making the announcement quoted, and one which I stand by. Yet here we are several months later, and I'm still deep in work.

In short: the translation's the holdup. I'm informed that technical reasons make using the original SFAM game for a patch prohibitively difficult. However: the version of the game I understand we have to use has expanded greatly on that original SFAM game, adding a number of events and much more text—plus a second protagonist choice with mostly unique events and dialogue—while revising some of the existing script. Translating & editing all this new material, in addition to editing the entire script, old and new, for length and inserting it line-by-line, is unavoidably taking a good amount of time. While I've been presented with a method that attempts to create a script for the game using a combination of Google Translate, what I translated for the SFAM version, and guesses from non-translating members of the team, I strongly felt that the results did not deliver in terms of quality, accuracy, fluency, or characterization, so I asked, and was promised, complete responsibility for the script side of the project.

That's the reason for the delay. I, as the translator, am the rate-determining step. That's due to a decision I made for the quality of the project—I want to deliver a good patch, one that reflects the game & characters accurately and of which everyone can be proud—and the consequences of that decision are my responsibility. Given my current work rate, I'm going to shoot to complete the translation side of this project six months from now; emergencies or unexpected developments may change this, but I think it's doable.

That's the nutshell version, and I apologize to anyone whose hopes were gotten up by the announcement earlier in the year. There really isn't a way to short-circuit the time investment required for the translation, for reasons explained at length below. If you'd like a more in-depth explanation, please proceed past the cut.

A bit of background

I've been a longtime fan of a romance-oriented Japanese game & media franchise aimed at women that founded an entire gaming genre but, except for one TV series, has never had any sort of official release outside Japan. There'd been some talk in the fandom of how nice it would be if the franchise's foundational, genre-defining game, for the Super Famicom, finally got an English patch—for historical purposes; to give the franchise a bit more recognition outside Japan; just so that the English-speaking fans could play. However: the game's script was notoriously huge, and no one wanted to climb that mountain. (The game's lovey-dovey, frilly subject material also doesn't typically appeal to the folks who fill up romhacking.)

I was exactly the type of unreasonable person equipped for this task, however. I've been involved in hobby game-translation projects for…well, decades now. I also translate professionally and have worked in game translation on projects for Square, Sega, Bandai Namco, Koei, and others, as chronicled in part on this blog. I also had one huge advantage for this game: the publisher had released a book containing almost its entire script. It took a great deal of time, but a few years ago, I finished and posted a translation of the script book.

Attracting someone to insert this script into a patch, though, proved a problem. One obstacle, I learned, was the immediate lack of a file pairing the English translations with the Japanese lines; I'd thought I'd attack this once a patch project started and I got proper script dump files, but not having a paired version of what had been translated immediately prepared was a turnoff, I guess. I therefore set to work producing one. In the meantime, I was indeed contacted by a few folks with some interest in producing a patch, but I didn't subsequently hear of any progress.

About a year ago, though, shortly after I started on that "paired" version of the script, I was contacted by a very interested and motivated individual who claimed they could use the script to produce a patch for the game. One thing, however: there were issues with the coding of the SFAM version that made producing a patch for it prohibitively difficult. (I know very little of the tech side of producing patches and am not equipped to provide an explanation, but this was not the first time I'd heard this about the SFAM game. I had persisted in translating the SFAM script in the hopes that the issue was resolvable, as the SFAM version is the historic, genre-founding title and the folks with reservations self-admittedly hadn't looked very deeply, but evidently, the problem is indeed a serious obstacle.) As a solution, this person asked if I'd be willing to work on a patch for a later, more-technically-manageable rerelease of the game on the DS. I readily agreed.

A while after, two more folks joined the project on the tech side, evidently with a solution to an issue that was frustrating progress on the DS version. They offered to produce a version of the patch for the PS1 version alongside the DS version; I agreed. (I eventually learned, however, that this would involve extra work, that of producing a second version of the script to accommodate the PS1 version's different per-line character limits.)

What exactly are you doing right now?

In brief: when agreeing to produce a version of the script for the rereleases, I didn't anticipate how much they expanded on the original game.

While the original version has a single, set protagonist, the expanded versions allow you to choose to play as her rival. The choice isn't limited to a simple swapping out of names in dialogue; each protagonist has her own unique versions of events, plus unique dialogue from the nine love interests. (Some dialogue is shared, but about two-thirds of it, I'd say, is tailored to the choice of protagonist.)

Dialogue from the love interests has been greatly expanded to flesh out characterization. For example, in the original game, if you asked one of the love interests his opinion on one of the others, he'd respond with a generic message of approval, disapproval, or indifference based on his current regard for the other man. In the remakes, however, each love interest has a unique set of approval/disapproval/indifference messages for each of the other eight suitors. In other words, where there were once three different messages, there are now twenty-four, each on average significantly longer than the originals.

There are numerous new events and activities: cafe and skygazing dates, letter-writing, cooking, finding lost objects, etc., all with unique dialogue for each protagonist and love interest, making for a base of eighteen variations. Many have additional variations based on other parameters.

Some of the dialogue that's still present in the remake has been revised from the original.

Again: what I had originally produced was a text translation of the script book to the Super Famicom version of the game. The script book was not complete—it focused on exhaustive enumerations of love interest dialogue and elided NPC dialogue—but I believe it has about 90% of the original game's text. With the remake, though, there's a lot more work to do.

My tasks are numerous. The script files I've been given generally sort dialogue by event. For each file, I have to identify the specific event they concern, then go line by line to ascertain the speaker of each line and the circumstances under which each is said from context (as this information isn't marked) as well as determine if the text is old or new. If it's old, I have to find the translation in the script-book file and match it to the source text; if it's new, I have to translate it—and also check it against a new script book for the new version, as certain changeable or user-definable proper nouns, such as protagonist names and various locations an event can take place, are for tech reasons not reliably represented in the script dump files. For all dialogue, I have to edit translations to match character and line limits, putting in line breaks and sometimes rewording text or, as a last resort, cutting it—and since the character limit per line is different for the PS1 and DS versions, I have to produce two versions. (In fairness, I don't have to, but the extra space in the DS version is useful on occasion, and dialogue boxes might look odd if I don't use real estate properly.)

It's a lot. However: it's not that different than what I do as a professional game translator (with extra steps), and I'm uniquely equipped to tackle this particular job thanks to having translated the SFAM script book and being very familiar with the characters from following the franchise for years.

I can do all this, but it takes time. That's what holding up the patch.

No, AI can't help

Not long after the announcement, one of the team members informed me that they intended to produce the patch using a method where Google Translate versions of the script files were combined with parts of my original translation and guesses from non-translating members of the team as to what lines meant. They shared an example—an attempt at an English-language version of the introductory segment of the DS game produced using this method. (I had translated the SFAM introduction, but, as with all matters, the DS version greatly expanded on the SFAM version.) I had not been informed previously about this plan.

I took a look, and I felt very strongly that the results did not live up to the standard I wanted for this franchise's English-language debut. There were numerous errors in translation, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. The English used wasn't fluent. Characters no longer had unique voices—they all sounded the same, and characterization was completely absent.

(I have to say: despite the importance of the other issues, the gutting of characterization was the biggest knife for me. The game was so successful in pioneering its genre due in great part to its attention to characterization, which I worked hard to reflect in my translation. Seeing all that work torn up in favor of an AI translation that was not only not up to the task linguistically but torched everything that made the game unique frankly hurt.)

The Google Translate script is not exactly usable.

This isn't Google Translate's fault. The script files are typically formatted to present, line by line, just one side of a conversation in all its numerous variations—either for one love interest in all possible permutations (variants depending on your affinity with him etc.), or for all love interests who can have this conversation. There's no overt signal in the file that the speaker or scenario is shifting; you have to realize who's speaking and in what circumstances from context and speaking style. Google Translate can't glean the context it needs to deliver an effective translation when dialogue is presented in this manner, and you can't infuse it with the franchise or script knowledge it needs to make the right calls about speaker/scenario/etc.

Other obstacles: The dialogue is presented line by line, so Google Translate is going to translate line by line, which leads to choppy dialogue. Characterization is frequently communicated in elements like verb endings and sentence-ending particles that Google Translate overlooks or doesn't convert well or that can be translated in multiple ways depending on context. Conversations also have a number of short lines that are also heavily context-dependent, where trying to translate them context-free via the line-by-line method leads to inane translations. There are more; any experienced translator could probably expound further on why using Google Translate in this scenario is a bad idea. You need an experienced translator with franchise knowledge to tackle this project.

I also don't expect the folks on the technical side of the team to attempt to translate—it's not their job, any more than romhacking is my job.

I would have been derelict in my duty as a translator if I let the patch go forward in this state. I didn't, and don't, feel that a Google Translate patch would deliver any value—there are programs out there that can Google Translate dialogue boxes in roms automatically, if that's what you want. This is a historic game, and I feel it deserves a patch that showcases the qualities that made it special for its English-language debut. If we delivered a patch that was incoherent and characterless, the franchise would be tainted in the English market, and the team would be nailed to the wall. From my job, being the one equipped to gauge quality in this department, I knew what public reception of a patch in this state would be, and I didn't want the rest of the team or me to suffer that. (To be selfish, a poor-quality patch would also have professional repercussions for me, as pros do watch the fan scene, and trying to pass off AI, much less AI that's not up to the task, as your own work is, rightfully, a huge black mark on your reputation.) Also, to be blunt: I didn't start this project years ago to spit AI all over this game.

I sent them an email explaining the issues above to the relevant team member, and I asked to have full responsibility for the script side of the project. They agreed.

There was also an attempt by a team member to use AI to help with editing that didn't bear fruit. One of the non-translating team members tried to help with my workload by taking the lines I'd edited for the 38-character DS line length and trying to re-edit them for the 33-character PS1 line length with AI assistance. I was not initially informed of this difference in line lengths or the need for two scripts. I discovered it only upon accessing the group versions of the script files on the cloud drive and discovering that a number of formatting and translation errors had been introduced into files I'd previously edited, some rather basic: the Japanese verb for "to eat" had been mistaken for the one meaning "to rest," for instance. Upon inquiring, I discovered what had happened, and as a result, it was clarified that I would be handling editing for both versions and reworking the files affected to restore the translation and remove the errors produced. I appreciate the attempt to alleviate my workload, but there's by nature a hard linguistic wall involved with editing, and the attempt just created more work.

So the other team members have experimented with using AI, but it hasn't produced anything usable—honestly, it just kind of screws up everything it touches. (If I'd been aware of the attempts to use AI on the project beforehand, I would have reached out and explained why they wouldn't have worked.) I'll state right now that my vision for this patch absolutely does not, and never did, include Google Translate or other AI or LLMs: as a professional translator, I have no need to use AI to translate; it would not expedite the translation due to the particulars detailed above; and I care too much about the quality of this project to farm any part of it out to AI. I mention it because a lot of folks, particularly tech folks, have more confidence in AI than I do, having worked with it extensively for my job and knowing well its capabilities and limitations. It can be useful in certain situations, but it's not omnipotent, and it's not suited for this project.

"Hey, would it help to get an additional translator?"

Honestly, not at this point, no, for several reasons.

One, the work to be done requires a great deal of previous familiarity with the script. Remember, the script for the roms exists in a bunch of files with the lines are generally (but not always) sorted by event, where the individual speakers and the nature of the event itself have to be inferred from context or just plain recognized from experience. The lines also aren't typically organized to present a complete conversation, usually going through all the iterations of one side of the conversation character by character. A good deal of the work is recognizing context and speakers for the lines and whether they're already-translated material or entirely new or old lines that have been changed, so that existing translations can be matched or new, context-appropriate translations can be written. You really need to know your way around the script to do that. I'm equipped to do that, since I've translated the script book for the SFAM version; that's a tall ask for someone coming in cold. We tried it previously, and it didn't work. (It also helps if you have previous familiarity with the characters and how they speak, not only to identify when they're speaking, but to translate what they're saying in a character-appropriate manner. The latter isn't impossible without that familiarity—it's how games are typically translated—but it's way easier if you come in with that knowledge.)

Two, this is a character-intensive game with a huge amount of nuanced character writing to reflect in the English translation, and that calls for a certain degree of translation and just plain writing ability. Many of the devices used to communicate that nuance are easily overlooked unless you have a lot of translation experience. (I'm speaking from my own development as a translator here: you can reach a point where declarative sentences like the narration in a world guide or Ultimania are within your grasp but the nuances of conversation are just going to elude you.) Plus: even if you identify and understand the Japanese text, you still have to be able to phrase it in English fluently, in an accurate and character-appropriate manner. This whole set of skills is another ask.

Three, this is a niche title for the West whose massive script was notorious for repelling translators. "Hey, guess what! I'm working on a version that I've discovered is even more massive and interminable!" does not make the project more enticing.

Four, it's way harder to vet translators nowadays, and it would consume resources on my end I'd rather put toward getting the dang thing done. The rise of LLMs has given rise to a number of folks eager to take over translation duties on a project who have just one or two semesters of Japanese but think Google Translate can make up for the rest. (You might say, "hold on, you just mentioned that this project repels translators; why would someone like that sign up for this?", but that's kind of the thing: it'd attract those who don't know enough to know what they're getting into.) In a conversation- and context-heavy project like this, where AI is going to fall down hard, those people are going to hit a wall very quickly, which leads to difficult conversations that I'd really rather not have—but would have to have, since I'm the translator who started this whole thing, and it's my responsibility to deliver a quality product.

Furthermore, a lot of this can be difficult to communicate to the type of people who would be most enthusiastic about AI at the present moment. I love you, tech people. I love you. But I have gotten the impression over the years that some tech folks in the rom-patching scene regard translators and translations as kind of valueless and interchangeable because, you know, words are all the same, who really cares. It's already an uphill battle to convince some folks that words, the type of words you use, matter, and I'm afraid my forces are already fully engaged on one front (the script itself).

Even if the volunteer were heaven-sent, due diligence in ascertaining their divine status would take a lot of energy, and after the stumbles we've had, I just want to get this done, and just want to rely on a method I know from experience will work instead of chasing down more blind alleys.

Real-life issues! We've got real-life issues here!

I will also note, by way of explanation, that I have had a number of personal things happen that have resulted in delays on my end, which I will recite here for entertainment's sake: I got bronchitis twice in succession (I had it for a week, got better for a week, and then got it again, worse, for another week) and became as sick as I've been in my adult life. There's been an issue with a property in my family to which I've had to tend, involving lawyers extensively. I got an opportunity this year to work professionally on one of the most storied franchises in gaming, to which I had to dedicate a suitable amount of time, as well as other professional translation projects that demanded my attention. I've had to travel extensively for personal reasons, and not fun, vacation-type travel—travel that involved a good deal of work, physical and professional. I had fallout from a client who wanted me to cheat on my taxes to cover for an accounting issue on their end and submitted falsified documents to the IRS. Also, after a lifetime of avoiding, by luck or otherwise, such situations, I have had a problem with being harassed by not one but two completely unrelated individuals, one of whom became physically violent with me. (Not very successfully, but the attempt itself was disturbing.)

To paraphrase from Jurassic Park, I'm sure, dear reader, you are sorry for my problems, but they are my problems. But I recite this to communicate it's not been all Lazy Translator Fun Time over here, and at times, though my spirit has been willing to work on this translation, my schedule has been weak. Or too strong, rather. This doesn't make the delay go down any more easily, but it has been a practical concern.

---

So that's the status report. In brief: I'm asking for six months to get this done, AI-free, and I thank you for your patience (both with the delay and in reading this).

#translations #angelique

4 notes · View notes

meg2md · 4 months ago

Text

My life, in two pictures:

Exhibit A, trying to get swole but only succeeding when the lighting is on point, and still failing at pull-ups by trying my damndest

Exhibit B, my re-ignited love of Naruto, as well as a new obsession with non-alcoholic beers

That being said, I did drink... way too much last night. I went to trivia and truly would have been okay with 1-2 beers, but then a friend came late and wanted a drink, and my other friend is going through a rough time and wanted to go back to my place and keep drinking... and truthfully at ANY POINT I would have been okay with an NA beer, and I know for next time that I shouldn't give in to peer pressure and keep drinking. I'm confident I wouldn't have kept drinking on my own (which used to be a problem in college and medical school - binge drinking!!) and that I can do better next time. So even though I was hungover today and felt a little bit ashamed, I was able to be there for my friend when she needed it, I still went to my tennis clinic, and I know next time I'll be able to intersperse more NA beers and overall drink less.

And honestly, overall the past few months I have been drinking DRASTICALLY less and it's been very good for my mental, physical, and emotional health. Go me. I'm very proud.

Despite it all I'm actually somewhat on top of things, even though I spent most of the morning sleeping in bc I stayed up until 2 AM with my friend drunkenly singing MCR and Evanescence, and then it took awhile after tennis for my hangover to go away and for me to feel awake enough after extreme physical exertion while slightly hungover to get anything done. But I mayyyyy have this abstract I've been working on ready to submit for SGS if all goes well, and I'm also hoping on to be a middle author on a project with one of my co-residents which will also get submitted to SGS! And I actually have two ORs I can go to next week to film this video idea I have - submissions for the conference I want are due 8/8 so it's pretty tight and stressful but doable. I'm just gonna be SUPER busy next week with video stuff, in the same way i was SUPER busy this week with the lit review/IRB prep for my other project.

I'm gonna go crash into oblivion. It's already been a week of my research block and me not needing to be at the hospital barely at all but I feel like it's gone by so fast since I've been relatively busy working on all the things above. I'm definitely not efficient - a more competent research-oriented resident could probably have done it in a fraction of the time. But hey, I'm at least being academically productive, AND I played tennis, AND I'm going to two concerts this month, AND I've been allotting video game time to the start of every morning I don't have to be at the hospital.

All in all I think it's actually worked out nicely that I didn't rush to get an away rotation together last minute. I have 3 projects to work on at home AND I get to do things I like around the the neighborhood like watch Naruto, play tennis, read, and go to the gym. And I saw a pic of my ex earlier and while I was a little sad and nostalgic, it didn't rip me up like it used to (yes it's been 1.5-2 years w/e I love swiftly and deeply lol), and it just further motivated me to kick ass and be super swole and hot and buff up my CV >:)

I'm gonna be p sad going back to real work when this block is over bc ngl it's p cush

#studyblr #premed #medical school #gradblr #residency #med school #medblr

5 notes · View notes

manonamora-if · 11 months ago

Text

Retrospective 2024 (4)

Last one!

As teased in the infographic, My resolution this year stays unchanged from last year's:

Get things off my desk and shelf it for good.

I want to continue completing and fixing older projects, so I can shelf it for good (like I did Goncharov Escapes! this year, and DOL-OS). But, since I added a bunch of title on my itch page, there are a few more to the pile compared to last year that needs fixing (or finishing) - at least DOL-OS is done :D The goal: Harcourt (MelS want to finish it, but it's still him dependent), The Roads not Taken (I dropped the ball on that one at the end of last year), An Eggcellent Preparation (samesies), and Exquisite Cadaver or P-Rix - Space Trucker.

I won't even try to promise I won't make new games (large or tiny), because last year made it obvious there is no stopping me. I planned last year to participate in a few comps... and ended up doing two dozens. So... At least, I won't participate in the big comps (IFComp/SpringThing) because the ideas I have for them need at least another year to make it happen... I do want to try to make it to one parser-focused comp again (either TALJ or ParserComp) and try out Moiki or DonjonFI. I'm only 7-9 games away to have 1 title/year alive...

Below the cut has more detailed expectations for some titles. Like last year, no real timeline on what will be done when - this year has shown me that life likes to throw stones at schedules... Announcements will also be whenever, because I make things on a whim :P I will try to have a better announcement schedule for updates however.

Oh! one more resolution: continue to do word crimes ~ obviously!

The trials and Tribulations of Edward Harcourt

While I've been working on the final edits of Chapter 5, MelS promised to be hard at work on Chapter 6 this following semester, which is the final chapter. From mid-January onward, he should have a clearer schedule IRL to set himself some time to write.

We hope to be done with the edits and coding of Ch6 this year.

When Ch6 is cleared, we will do one final sweep at the earlier chapters to ensure the writing style is consistent, rebalance variables and puzzles, as well as making it compatible with as many screens as possible (especially for maps). Solutions for puzzles (mazes and such) will get a special log on itch too.

La Petite Mort

The game is "technically" complete already, but I spotted a few typos here and there that could be taken out, one theme is eh... really not as pretty as I had wanted it (the "PJ theme"), and I've been wondering if I could add a few more rooms or interactions (with the animals especially).

I'm aiming for a March-April update. Though it should have been done last November already...

The Roads not Taken

I've mentioned my plan for this project the past few months (before I got distracted with other projects), which is to fix the parser mechanic (to follow a bit more the conventions and fix the frictions of the game), include the missing content from the SpringThing version (Codex and Endings), and potentially have a hypertext version (links to click) for accessibility.

I would like to be done with this before summer at the latest - by March at the earliest.

Entre-d'oeufs coquilles - An Eggscellent Preparation

A bug or two needs fixing in this game (the AEP version) - how the box is used/eggs are handled -> for the ending - as well as a bunch of typos (a small re-write may be needed).

As AEP is the most recent version, with more content, I will need to translate the updated/fixed version back to French (EdOC).

I would also like to include more pixel art for each "room". I do not know yet I would manage that, but we will see!

I think there isn't much to fix that an update before the summer could be doable.

Exquisite Cadaver

That ball-n-chain project that's been dragged around for the past year, poor game... At least, I've given up on a French version.

The same amount of rounds is missing from the playable version (21), with no real progress made last year. All rounds are at least drafted in some fashion, though not all the endings are.

A sane planning for this would be to do an update every 3-4 rounds until the game is complete. I will try to achieve this.

If I could reach the half-way mark by the summer and complete the game by the end of the year, this would be great!

P-Rix - Space Trucker

This game can't stay in this current state! I have a rough draft of the mechanic and enough bits of writing to make a coherent update with some touch-up. I know how to end the game (the "good" ending), with even an option for further "storylines" after that first delivery is complete. I even have the "stops" on planets or ships all clear in my head (RNG babyyy).

I will probably focus on this project in the second half of 2024.

Crimson Rose & White Lily

With the hiatus getting closer to a two-year one... an update is long overdue. I may break an update in multiple ones:

fixing the main story code

adding Scene 5 (needs to be written properly)

adding Scene 2 variation

fixing the Codex

including Bonus content (may be a separate "game")

I would like to have the first point done in the first half of the year, and the second... well in the second half. If the Muse is in my corner it might happen sooner, but she hasn't been here all last year, so who knows at this point...

I miss writing Razac y'all...

SugarCube Templates

Even if I've done all the "coding" templates I had wanted to do for a while, I have a handful more visual templates in my drafts (different shapes!).

Having tried all "main" Twine formats, I've been itching at making templates for Harlowe and Chapbook. Either doing a Harlowe/Chapbook version of the template already done, or just making completely new one.

Expect some to be added to itch (when I get bored/frustrated with my projects).

Other projects

If there is time/energy left in me, I would like to take a crack at:

Finishing The Dinner, with all the remaining courses and the planned final choice. Also styling it in Harlowe properly.

Finishing the OG planned story for In the Blink of an Eye, which was supposed to last "a week" in the story (instead of 2 days) and have more consequences/endings.

Finishing The Rye in the Dark City, which is missing 2 acts: the interrogation of the different peeps and the "closing" the case. A bit of re-write in the first act might be needed.

Finishing Don't Press the Button (not really IF). I want to make it work in both keyboard and mouse... If I can manage it, then it's just a matter of moving the element around the page, changing colour, and randomise whether to click or not. JavaScript/jQuery is required however ;-;

Fixing The Thick Table Tavern: first the bar (group bottles, add new ones + new recipes), then the Arcade Mode (there's a bug I've been meaning to fix for one mode + add difficulty), then the Story Mode (essentially do a re-haul + add more storylets + the main client(s) of the run).

Remastering SPS Iron Hammer - a.k.a. re-writing it, adding the whole escape mechanic, re-coding the whole thing...

I don't think I would be able to do ALL of this - with the amount of time/effort some of these projects would required, it would probably be impossible by myself. And I should probably focus on CRWL instead if I have time/effort left 😂

Other... other

I'm going to continue organising small comps and jams this year, both with @seedcomp-if (which will run all year now - 8 months of Planting, 3 months of Sprouting, 1 month of voting), and @neointeractives (8-10 jams/year).

I will probably participate in a handful of the jams I've either organised, or small program-focused jams (like with ink/bitsy), but avoid the "big" ones this year (even if the SpringThing was fun!). There are also a handful of other jams I've had my eyes on, so we will see if I can manage... Expect more short silliness on this side.

A thing I will continue doing will be playing IF games still. I have 15 games left in the IFComp (with one being an absolute beast) and want to take a crack at old comp entries (IFComp, SpringThing, and the others), especially the French ones. Reviewing takes a while, but it's a good practice to think about the positives and negative of games - and take these lessons for my own projects. Expect more at @manonamora-if-reviews (or on the IFDB).

Aaaaannnnd that's it!

That's more than enough to keep me entertained for this year. ... which may potentially be the last one in a while where I will have any free time. I am certain of one thing for next year (2025): there will be a lot of change happening IRL, which will for sure mean less time to do any fun thing (not just making IF). Probably long periods of time where I will be completely offline too. This year might be the last where I have a consistent presence online. I really want to make the most of it!

#manonamora #retrospective #2023 #year in review #games #indie dev #assets #twine #interactive fiction #interactive games #planning #schedule #will I keep up with the plan?#unlikely... but I'll try my best!

17 notes · View notes