#I feel like his would either be kind of unremarkable | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

muddyorbsblr · 10 months ago

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the warmest bed i've ever known

'one look and they'll know' collection masterlist See my full list of works here!

Placement: dating era; a few days after 'when the feeling sinks in'

Summary: Tom has convinced you to go back to London with him for a few weeks, and a photo of you two out and about together has opinions firing left and right.

Pairing: Tom Hiddleston x Reader

Word Count: 4k

Warnings (spoilers ahead): language; big hater behavior towards Reader; attempted breakup; angst; brief mentions of past bullying [let me know if i missed anything!]

Things to be aware of: Tomathy fully in his comforting precious bf era

Numb.

That was the only word that came to mind right now to describe what you felt, staring at your screen with all the hateful vile words that people who didn't even know you were flinging your way. And all because of the man you were dating. And how much you looked like a downgrade compared to his ex.

Then again it really shouldn't have surprised you, considering the turn your life had taken in the last few months. Hell, the last few days. There was really no other way for these nameless faceless spineless people to react when the man you'd started dating was none other than Tom Hiddleston.

And the figuratively ridiculously large shoes you had to fill considering the rising power of said ex…was Taylor Swift's.

You shouldn't have gone online. Checked Twitter. Checked anything, really. They rarely if ever had anything good to say, it was a special kind of stupid and naive for you to think that someway somehow you and your relationship were going to be the exception to the vitriolic rule.

Now here you were, screechy voices filling your mind, spitting out the words that your eyes scanned when you opened the cesspool of a sight.

Nothing special

Unremarkable

Fucking stab my eyes out with a rusty fork ugly

To be completely fair, you'd seen worse when you were still in school, every day inundated with the mocking words that sociopaths with hormones on overdrive wielded recklessly like a goddamn balisong without care that the person on the receiving end was actually a person. And if that was the shitshow you experienced from people brave enough to sign those sentiments with their name and say it to your face with chests fully puffed out, then the bravery of these people when they were all snuggled up under the protective cover of anonymity really shouldn't have shocked you.

Finding out who they were behind the screen and dealing out retribution on your own terms would have been a simple enough task. After all, you'd done it before, and even with the current advancements in technology and the tighter security protocols centered around protecting user data, you still managed to keep a few tricks in your bag that you could whip out if the need ever arose.

There was just one thing that stopped you from doing just that. A part of you agreed with the vicious comments. It was easy enough to ignore when people in school were just making hateful pages about how you sucked and how no one would ever genuinely like you. Or when they made pages pretending to be you so that they could dole out their paltry attempts at trying to ruin what little reputation you had at the time.

When you dealt with them on that comparatively smaller scale, it became easy to numb yourself to their words, drown them out until they were just white noise in the background, keeping you focused on the path you laid out for yourself rather than distracting you. It gave you a drive to work harder and better so that you could get as far away from them as possible.

On this scale, the background noise was so strong, so loud and overwhelming that every step you took to fight it seemed to take every ounce of your strength. It felt like there was no way out. You couldn't just hunker down and work hard so that you could get away from it all this time. And you couldn't exactly ignore them, either.

How could you? When they were voicing with pinpoint accuracy every insecurity that plagued you ever since you agreed to be his girlfriend a few days ago. Ever since your first night with him months ago.

So is this some sort of Make-A-Wish thing? That's it, right? She's on her last few months and she wanted to live them in delusion?

Fifty bucks says Tom's active on Raya right now. Quick someone send me an invite link I wanna shoot my shot. Tommy don't worry baby I'll save you from whatever the fuck mistake you got yourself into.

How the fuck do you go from Taylor Swift to that?

The most prevalent remarks in the last few hours had to do with a sighting of you sitting on a park bench, working on creating a wardrobe piece for an upcoming show that, if all went well, would start filming in a few years. The book author and the prospective showrunner got in contact with you after a glowing recommendation from Taika, and they talked about struggling to find the perfect scarf that would serve as one of the series' focal points.

After a few discussions and so many skeins of yarn that there was now an oversized tote bag in your hotel room overflowing with various shades of dark teal and peacock blue, you started crocheting a sample size of the pattern to show the author later on in the afternoon before you went to meet Tom for dinner. And that was how you were spotted this morning, sitting quietly on the bench, eyes on your project while your boyfriend was taking Bobby for a walk.

And for some reason the internet was up in arms over that,

Are you really fucking telling me this boring ass bitch that's giving old lady crocheting a goddamn scarf is fucking riding the God of Mischief every day? Nuh uh nope I don't believe that. Our Tommy deserves someone fun, and actually fucking pays attention to him and not a ball of yarn. Our baby deserves so much better than this.

You stared at the desk in front of you, your sample scarf to the left, and your laptop at the center, the screen now black from inactivity. You couldn't bother to move to check the time; your reminder would ring when your call would start. All you could bring yourself to do was remain exactly as you were, knees drawn to your chest with your arms around your legs, shaking and doing your damnedest not to break out into sobs over the knowledge of what you were about to do as soon as the door opened.

It was a good run, you told yourself. More than I deserved.

The sound of the front door opening jolted you back to reality, the voices finally dying down somewhat. Unfortunately, hearing Tom's voice started the voices right back up again.

"Y/N, darling, have you finished with your call? I was hoping we could go out tonight for dinner and--" His words stopped abruptly once he got to his study, seeing you in the position you'd been in for the last few hours, and immediately rushed to your side, crouching in front of you and taking your hands in his. "What's wrong, goddess?"

"I uhh…I have to go back to Los Angeles. I'm gonna see if I can make the next flight back." You didn't dare meet his eyes, still trying to hold back any tears.

He let out a breath, sounding almost relieved before he pressed a kiss to your hands. "That shouldn't be much of a problem, I can pack a bag and we can be on the next flight out--"

"No," you cut him off, wincing at your tone. "I'm going alone. There's no need for you to go with me, I'm sure you have some other things to do here. Better things."

There was a slight tremor in his hand as he cupped your face, gently turning your head to look at him. He took a shuddering breath seeing the tears swimming in your eyes. "What's happening right now, sweetheart? Please. I don't understand what could have brought this on, we had a lovely morning--"

"I thought I could do this," you choked out, finding it difficult to form coherent words without starting to blubber. "I thought I could drown the voices out, not let them get to me but…they're too loud. They're ruthless and vile and they have megaphones and they're right." You shook your head to turn away from him, burying your face between your knees, the all too familiar feeling of shame flooding your system, shrouding over you like an overly weighted blanket. "I'm not strong enough to do this with you. And you deserve someone better than me."

You took your laptop off of Standby, your screen illuminating and showing him the harsh words that had been haunting you since you stupidly decided to check the internet just minutes after he left the house. He began to visibly tense as his eyes scanned the pages seeing all the hateful things literal strangers had to say about your relationship.

"Look we gave it a shot," you tried to tell him, making a motion to get out of the chair which made him put his hands on the armrests, effectively keeping you in place. "But I think it's time to call it. I'm not good for you, and you deserve someone--"

"No." His tone was low and resolute, hands staying firmly on the chair, refusing to let you go anywhere. From a certain perspective, it was a smart enough move, considering that if he let you go right now, you'd probably sprint out the door in the name of doing what you thought would be best for him. Even if it meant ripping your own heart out in the process. "This can't be over already, we've only just begun. The time I've had with you has been extraordinary and I know that if we keep going, it'll get even better. You've made me so happy and--"

"You'll find someone that makes you happier," you dumbly shot back, the sentiment hitting you so hard that the tears finally began to fall. Even the thought of him potentially moving on so quickly after this already had you ready to sob. "Someone stronger. Someone that can handle all of this or hell someone they'll actually like--"

"Those people don't care for my happiness," he said in a rush, tears filling his eyes as well. "No matter what I do, there's always going to be someone hateful that has something to say, and they'll always think they're right. It's so clear that they don't give a damn about what actually makes me happy because if they did, they wouldn't be saying these disgusting lies about you, trying to get into your head."

There was a desperation in his tone that tore at your heart; no part of you wanted to do this. But seeing every single insecurity that you'd had ever since you said yes to being his girlfriend, yes to going to London with him for a few weeks, and generally just yes to spending the next few however months of your life with him, all laid out in print echoed by so many others? You knew he deserved better than this, better than someone that would ultimately have to be hidden away so that these people would stop coming for his throat for his 'poor choices'.

And when you knew that what would be best for the man you ached to give your heart to was to actually tuck your heart away and run, how selfish would it be for you to do the opposite?

The feel of his hands framing your face brought you back to your thoughts, the frantic pleading look on his face robbing you of your breath. "Do you want to leave, Y/N?" You wanted to scream No of course I don't, I want to stay with you. But you found yourself unable to form words. All you could do was shake your head as more tears fell from your eyes.

He pressed his lips to yours, pulling you into his arms the second you crossed your hands behind his neck and lifting you out of your seat. He didn't break the kiss until he'd carried you to his bedroom, setting you down on the edge of the bed. Then he pressed a tender kiss to your forehead before sinking to his knees in front of you, taking your hands in his.

"Then don't leave. Stay with me. We'll stay in and stay away from prying eyes so nobody gets to say anything about you, we'll--"

"You shouldn't have to make adjustments in your life for the sake of making me comfortable," you argued. "You should be with someone that can face all of this, not cower in a corner licking her wounds needing to be protected if she so much as gets seen stepping out of your house like some tiny helpless baby animal. You deserve to be with someone you can share everything with, without the worry of people shooting you down just because I'm not pretty enough or tall enough for them. You can have anything and everything you want with a snap of your fingers, I'm sure it won't be that hard to find someone that--"

Tom stopped you from letting out another word, holding you by the back of your head and pulling you to him for a desperate kiss. "I don't want anyone else, I want you. I don't give a fuck what anyone else wants to think about how I choose to spend my life and who I choose to share it with, because I know better. You're enough, you're more than enough. And if a few precautions and adjustments have to be made to make sure they can't get to you, then I'm more than happy to do all that and more.

"Our first night together I told you I just want you. As you are. That I want to make you happy." He rose from his knees, pressing a kiss to your cheek and working his way to your ear. "That I want to satisfy you. Do you remember?" You could only nod, trying and failing not to melt against him as he kissed below your ear. "I'm going to add that list of wants now. I want to make sure you feel safe, with every means I have at my disposal."

He guided you down until your back was flat on the mattress, kissing down your neck as he did so, his lips trailing a path down to just over your heart. You found it near impossible to breathe, finding yourself overwhelmed with how gentle and tender he was handling you.

"I want to love you," he said, meeting your eyes with a look that you could only describe as surrender. "I know you're not ready to hear it yet, but this can't wait anymore. You need to hear it. You need to know that the only way for me to actually have everything that I want is if I get to share everything I have with you. I need you to know that your leaving would rip my heart out." He made his way back up, stopping when your faces were mere inches apart. "I need you to know who you'd be leaving." He brushed his lips across yours in a featherlight kiss. "You would be leaving a man so completely, so desperately in love with you."

You tried to speak, but all you could manage was inaudibly mouthing his name, the sentiment you tried to stomp down just a little over a week ago fighting its way back up to the surface. Practically shouting from the back of your throat.

"I love you," he breathed out. "Please, sweetheart. Don't do this. Don't leave. Whatever you want, whatever you need so that we can make this work, we'll find our way through this together just please…I'm begging you don't tell me that what you want is to rid yourself of me--"

"That's the last thing I want," you managed to choke out, your eyes stinging with even more tears. You swallowed the lump in your throat, mustering every ounce of strength you had left to finally say the sentiment you prematurely blurted out when he first popped up at your house. "I love you, too."

You woke up the next morning the same way you'd been ever since you and Tom first got together, his arm wrapped around you, the butterflies fluttering violently in your stomach from how he held your body against his without a stitch of clothing between you two, along with the tender kisses he peppered along your shoulder. It was a routine you'd not only found yourself getting comfortable with, but you were looking forward to it whenever you felt yourself rousing from sleep.

And that part scared the living daylights out of you.

Relationships? Routines? Your mind wandering to that place that you said you never dared think about in the context of being in any kind of relationship again, because the last time you did, the rug got pulled out from under you and threw your life and the future you envisioned into a blender?

You swore to yourself that day all those years ago that you were never going to let yourself get this comfortable. That you would always have your safety measures in place so that you never had to worry about having to scramble your way back up to your feet without any sense of direction.

And you did. You had your measures. You had your walls up. You put your heart under lock and key and said you'd never give it to someone again. Yet here you were, basically opening the chest and telling Tom that it was right there for the taking.

A chest you couldn't close again even if you tried. Even if you wanted to.

The feel of his lips pressing a kiss between your neck and shoulder had you letting out a tiny whimper, making him smile and hum against your skin. "Good morning, goddess."

You were growing concerningly comfortable with that, too.

He moved you until you were lying with your back flat on the mattress, brushing his nose across yours as he gave you a contented smile. "I love you."

You couldn't help the smile that stretched across your own face hearing the words. "Hmm…careful, you keep talking like that I might get used to it."

He laid his lips on yours, giving you a tender kiss as he gently ran his hand down the side of your body before stopping at your hip, his thumb stroking your skin. "I want you to get used to it, because I'll be saying it a lot from now on." His lips traced a line down to the base of your throat. "I love you," he murmured against your skin repeatedly as he kissed along your collarbone.

"I love you, too," you whimpered as he kissed his way down to your stomach, his shaky exhale warming your skin even more. You placed your hand on his shoulder, leading him to refocus his attention to kissing his way up your arm. "I really stepped on the ledge yesterday…" you trailed off, struggling to take a deep breath as you tried to find the words, ultimately settling on the simplest ones. You weren't likely to find better words anyways. "Thank you for talking me off of it."

He took his time kissing his way back up to your lips, never breaking eye contact. "Always, my love." The new endearment, paired with the way he tenderly kissed your lips, had your head spinning. "I'm going out to get us some breakfast. I'll be back in an hour. Go back to sleep, sweetheart."

Those words had you stirring, making a motion to sit up on the bed. "What? No, you don't need to do that, you'll get papped. Gimme a few minutes to get dressed, I'll do it."

"If you go out, they'll photograph you, too," he argued. "Pictures of us are still fresh on their minds, which means these vultures are still very much on the lookout for you out and about, waiting to take pictures in hopes of selling them to the sleaziest gossip sites. Give it a week, maybe two, and they'll refocus their attention on someone else. Them and the internet."

You slumped back into the bed with a soft thud, surrendering to the fact that unfortunately, the logic made sense. You needed a good few days to let your face and those photos fade into relative irrelevancy. "You probably need your team to spin some story on why we were seen together, too," you sighed, the discomfort of having to let the wheels turn in your head before you've even had a bite of food or a sip of coffee starting to make you skittish. "I mean, the saying goes that we can't put the genie back in the bottle, but what if it isn't fully out yet? We still have a chance to…I don't know, mitigate the situation?"

Tom rested his forehead against yours, letting out a deep sigh as he laid back down on the bed as well, pulling you into his arms so that your head rested on his chest. "One day it won't be this toxic."

His words had you giggling, looking up at him and pressing a kiss to his chin. "It's adorable that you think that, but no. But one day maybe the voices of those who would genuinely just be happy for you would be louder than these snakes in the pit with their megaphones. And maybe one day I'll be strong enough to not give a fuck about any of it."

He tightened his hold on you, arms snaking around your body in an embrace that had you falling even more into that dangerous place of way too damn comfortable. "Until then I'm going to do what I can to keep you safe. It'll only be a few weeks at most. Maybe less if we're lucky and someone causes a scandal." He pressed numerous soft kisses to the tip of your nose, breaking out into a smile when his attentions caused you to let out a soft giggle. "For now, I get to keep you in the house. All to myself." His smile turned into a mischievous grin as he rolled you on to your back, rasping the next words, "Like my own beautiful brilliant little captive."

"A very willing captive," you shot back, once again going breathless when he started kissing you all over your neck and chest. "Be careful out there? Don't let them get a reaction out of you, no matter what they ask. Or what they say about me."

"I will," he mumbled, humming against your skin as he placed open-mouthed kisses along the side of your body, nipping at your waist before pulling away. He made his way to his closet, shooting a playful knowing glance at you when he saw how you propped yourself up on your elbows to enjoy the view. "Go back to sleep, sweetheart," he chuckled, throwing on his usual running gear of a black t-shirt with the Legendary logo and black shorts that were definitely a size too small with how the garment hugged and accentuated his hips and upper thighs. Not to mention how those shorts made it all too obvious that your boyfriend happily and proudly chooses neither when it came to the age-old debate of boxers or briefs.

He walked back toward the bed, sitting on the edge and leaning over you to capture your lips in a heated kiss, as if it had been weeks since he'd done it last rather than mere minutes. His hand freely roamed your side, lightly grasping at your hips while he slowly laid you back down flat on the bed. Once he had, he broke the kiss to press his lips to the tip of your nose, then to your forehead.

"I'll wake you when I'm back home. Promise me you won't check on those pages again. None of them deserve our time, or our emotions. I love you, goddess."

"I promise. I love you, too."

A/N: Welcome to the second part of the 'said it first' arc! This would probably be the angstiest moment in their entire relationship and precious bf meow meow really answered her "I'm leaving" with "No ur not I love u 🥺" and we love him for it your honor

Three more parts to this arc and hopefully I can pull myself out of playing my lil games long enough to actually get to writing any of the pieces in my rotation 😅🫡

Here's a gif for everyone who reads 'til the end of the post…this be what the blorbos were like in that last scene:

'everything' taglist: @simplyholl @loopsisloops @imalovernotahater @coldnique @loz-3 @huntress-artemiss @salempoe @vickie5446 @athalialaufeyson @lokiprompts @kats72 @kikster606 @asgards-princess-of-mischief @lokixryss @thomase1 @mischief2sarawr @lovingchoices14 @lunarnights95 @goblingirlsarah @iamlokisgloriouspurpose @creationsbyme @maple-seed @mjsthrillernp @ladyofthestayingpower @mygfloki @sititran @glitterylokislut @ozymdias @fictive-sl0th @lokidbadguy @mochie85 @silverfire475 @joyful-enchantress @elizabethmidnight2017 @holdmytesseract @smolvenger @gigglingtiggerv2 @lokidokieokie @lunarnights95 @superficialdomina @kmc1989 @november-rayne @goddessofwonderland @buttercupcookies-blog @peaky-marvel @lokiified @tom-hlover

#tom hiddleston x reader #tom hiddleston x female reader #tom hiddleston fanfic #tom hiddleston fanfiction #tom hiddleston imagine #muddyorbs writes

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roosterforme · 2 years ago

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The Kind of Girl I Could Love | Bob Floyd x Reader

Summary: Bob has a secret admirer, but he's convinced it's actually Jake and Nat messing with him.

Warnings: Pure fluff

Length: 1900 words

Pairing: Robert "Bob" Floyd x Female Reader

I wrote this for my Love Is In the Air playlist! Check my masterlist for more!

It started out with a simple note.

I like your glasses.

Bob held the note card in his hand and glanced around the deck of the aircraft carrier as discreetly as he could. There were people everywhere. Anyone could have left this for him to find on his seat inside the cockpit of the F/A-18 that he shared with Phoenix.

I like your glasses.

Bob didn't even like his own glasses. There was nothing to like about them. They made him look even more awkward than he already felt, and he couldn't wear anything else, or he wouldn't be allowed to be in the Super Hornet at all.

So he scrutinized the handwriting, but it didn't look familiar. And that's when it dawned on him. Phoenix and Hangman were just messing with him. They did this from time to time. One time they covered his car in post-it notes. Another time they hid his helmet bag from him.

He rolled his eyes and scrunched the note up in his fist. Bob was completely unremarkable. Nobody would ever leave him this kind of note. Nat and Jake should have known he wouldn't fall for it this time.

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Bob found a second note a few days later.

Your smile is nice. I wish you would smile at me.

He sighed and tilted his face up to the heavens. Great. Now he was going to have to call Nat and Jake out on their little pranks. He could feel his cheeks flushing pink this time. It was so embarrassing that his teammates thought it would be funny to do this to him. Nat knew how shy he was, and how he wished he could find a girl to date.

Bob glanced around again. There were a few women on deck at the moment. None that looked like they would be remotely interested in him. They were all either too old or too attractive. And who would have access to his cockpit seat anyway?

It wasn't a good idea to get his hopes up when he just knew who was behind this.

"What's wrong with you?" Nat asked as she climbed her ladder. "I already apologized for eating your croissant! I didn't know you were saving it for later!"

Bob shook his head. "This isn't about the croissant, Phoenix. But I wish you and Hangman would stop picking on me."

"Huh?" she asked before boosting herself into the seat in front of him.

But it was time to get to work, so Bob crumpled up this note as well and tossed it into his helmet bag. "We can talk about it later," he mumbled as he started his preflight safety routine.

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Now things were getting out of hand.

You look handsome in your flight suit. Tall and strong.

Bob took another close look at the handwriting. It looked fancy and feminine, but nothing like Nat's. He supposed Jake would be able to imitate something like this if he really tried.

"Hey, Hangman," Bob called to him.

Jake turned and shrugged at him from the top of his own ladder. "Yeah?"

"Can you just knock it off?" Bob asked, waving the note card in the air.

Jake squinted like he was trying to see what Bob was holding. "What are you talking about, Bob?"

"The notes!"

But it was too late, because now all of the conversation was being drowned out by the deck speaker system. The final mission announcements were being made as Phoenix got settled into her set.

Bob would have to talk to them both later.

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"I know I'm an easy target, and I know I don't usually get annoyed, but please. Please, just stop."

Jake and Nat both looked at him from across the table as they ate their dinners later that night.

"Stop what exactly?" Jake asked. "Is this what you were trying to tell me earlier?"

Bob's cheeks flushed. He couldn't believe they were going to make him spell it out like this.

"The notes, guys," he said, pulling the newest note card out of the pocket of his flight suit and sliding it across the table. "It's not funny."

Jake and Nat both leaned closer to read what was written there, pretending they had never seen it before.

"You have a secret admirer?" Nat asked, her eyes darting up to meet Bob's.

Jake grinned. "Someone has a crush on you."

Bob took the note and crumpled it up. "I know it's you two, so can you please stop!"

Nat and Jake looked at each other.

"Did you write it?" she asked, and Jake shook his head.

"Did you?" he asked, and she shook her head no as well.

Bob didn't think he should believe them, but he really, really wanted to. Just the idea of someone thinking about him in that way made him want to smile.

"It's not us," Nat said with a grin. "But we'll help you figure out who it is."

-----------------------------

Bob didn't want to get his hopes up. But when he thought about who might have access to his cockpit, he immediately thought about the mechanical crew. And when he thought about the mechanical crew, he thought about you.

He had seen you out on deck the other day, but you were so beautiful. Way too gorgeous to be leaving the notes. Just the prettiest smile. Sometimes you said hi to him, and he'd get so flustered, he could barely respond.

It was too unlikely though. And he wasn't even sure if it was a woman leaving the notes.

"I have an idea!" Nat said as she checked the air pressure in the tires. "Why don't you leave a note?"

Bob thought about it for a second. "I guess I could do that."

So he left a note on his seat asking who you were.

And the next time he climbed the ladder, there was another note card waiting for him.

I'm too shy to tell you who I am. But I work closely with your jet. And I have a crush on you.

Bob's heart was pounding. There was nobody on the tarmac at the moment, so he showed the note to Nat.

"The plot thickens!" she said as she read it. "I wonder if it could be her."

Bob looked in the direction that she had nodded, and there you were. You had your hair pulled back away from your face, and you were wearing your typical jumpsuit. And you were smiling, your eyes catching Bob's for a split second.

"Nat. Come on. She's so pretty.

Phoenix just laughed at him. "You're a catch, Bobby! Even if it's not her, you can still ask her out."

But he just shook his head and muttered, "No, I couldn't."

--------------------------

Bob got two more notes the following week.

Your accent sounds cute. Where are you from?

This person has heard him speak before.

Bob had only ever been complimented on his accent when Jake had as well. Everyone loved Hangman's Texan drawl, and only mentioned Bob as an afterthought. But when he wrote a note telling you he was from Montana, and asking you as politely as he could if you were a woman, Bob got another note in response.

I've never been to Montana. Yes, I am a woman. You sound smart and organized in the air.

If it wasn't for the fact that this woman had mentioned his glasses, Bob would have been convinced these notes were meant for Jake.

And now Bob was facing a different problem: the aircraft carrier would be arriving back in San Diego in a few days. His missions were finished. He didn't have much reason to climb up into his cockpit now, and he still didn't know who the notes were from.

In a final effort to try to bring his admirer out of the shadows, Bob wrote one final note and bypassed all of the mechanics to leave it on his seat.

When we dock in port, would you like to meet in person? Near the Admiral Kazansky memorial statue? I'll wait there as soon as I get off the carrier. I hope you'll be there too.

On his way back across the deck, he saw you dressed in your jumpsuit, and you smiled and waved at him. Maybe Nat was right; he could still ask you out no matter what, even if you weren't the one leaving the notes for him to find.

But he felt a connection with the note writer. She seemed to like him as he was. He never had to show off or pretend he was confident like Jake for her to notice him. So he would wait, and hopefully in two short days, there would be someone meeting him at the statue.

-----------------------

Bob was starting to sweat through his khaki uniform, and it wasn't even that hot outside.

"Are you sure I look okay?" he asked Phoenix, and she continued to make a fuss over him.

"You look so good," she promised, combing her fingers through his already tidy hair and readjusting his glasses. "Here, open up." She popped a mint into his mouth, and Bob rolled his eyes.

"I highly doubt I'll be kissing anyone, Phoenix."

"You never know, Bobby. I'm still holding out hope that the cute mechanic is your note writing secret admirer."

Bob let Phoenix lead him down the ramps when their deboarding group was called. He was so nervous now, he just wanted to go right home and pretend none of this had ever happened.

"Go find your girl! Text me later!" Nat told him, pushing him in the direction of the statue.

Bob wound his way slowly through the crowd. His heart was pounding. What if nobody was there? What if nobody came? What if it was just Jake waiting for him after all? He felt sick, with clammy palms and an upset stomach as he neared his destination.

"Bob?" a soft voice called to him, and his eyes drifted up a uniformed body, his eyes coming to settle on your face.

"It's you? The pretty mechanic?" he asked, and when a smile found its way to your lips, you nodded.

"Yeah. It's me. Are you disappointed?" you asked, twisting your fingers around each other and shifting your weight from one booted foot to the other.

"D-Disappointed?" Bob asked, setting his duffel bag down next to yours. "No. I was hoping it was you. I still can't believe you noticed me."

You giggled, a cute, surprised expression on your face. "Bob, you were the most noticeable guy onboard!"

Bob inched closer to you, but you didn't back away. You actually stepped right into his personal space and ran your palms up to his shoulders and kissed him softly. Desire bloomed through his body, and as you pulled away from him, Bob leaned down for another kiss. His glasses bumped your cheek, but you didn't seem to mind as you kissed him over and over, until he felt a little dizzy.

His glasses were askew, but he could clearly see the gentle flutter of your lashes as you opened your eyes and gazed up at him.

"Do you want to go grab lunch with me?" you asked, your expression so open and your face so pretty. "I want to hear all about Montana in your sexy voice."

"Yes, of course." Bob blushed and fixed his glasses, but he scooped up both duffel bags and followed you along the dock, listening to you gush about how strong he was.

The last thing Bob heard as he disappeared into the crowd with you was Jake wolf whistling and Nat yelling, "Go Bobby!"

-----------------------------------

Bobby!!! So noticeable!!! Thanks to @thedroneranger for helping me shape this fic together!

@theamuz

@cherrycola27

@katiedid-3

@mak-32

@bradshawsbitch

@beyondthesefourwalls

@je-suis-prest-rachel

@endofdays56

@avaleineandafryingpan

@t-nd-rfoot

@wkndwlff

@eddiemunsonreader @wintercap89

@the-fever-of-mankind

@yanna-banana

@lovingperfectionsblog

@daisydont-lie

@sappy-seresin

@birdy-bat-writes

@cutelittlefakejourneys

@cottagecori

@fandom-princess-forevermore

@sotalife

#bob floyd x you #bob floyd imagine #bob floyd x female reader #bob floyd #bob floyd x reader #bob fluff #bob top gun #top gun fanfiction #top gun maverick fanfiction #bob fic #bob floyd fluff #bob floyd fic #robert floyd x reader #love is in the air tgm

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starlitmelanin · 5 months ago

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feelings don’t lie | aurélien tchouaméni

pairing - aurélien x fem!reader

word count - 2.1k

warnings - none

summary - he wasn’t yours, and you weren’t his. you didn't know what to call it, what was happening between you, but you liked it.

you had never really believed in fairytales, the whole prince charming thing. it always felt too contrived, too far removed from reality. so when aurélien came into your life, it wasn't some grand gesture or a sweeping romance. it was small moments, little bits and pieces that somehow stitched themselves into something meaningful.

it started in the most unremarkable way. you were both at a party, one of those mind-numbing social obligations that you would rather skip. but you went, because sometimes you have to, and because your friends would drag you out of your cave if you didn't. aurélien was there too, not exactly blending in but not standing out either. just another face in the crowd, until he wasn't.

it was a simple conversation, really. you were standing by the bar, nursing a drink you didn't even like, when he came up beside you. "not a fan of the punch?" he asked, a slight smirk playing on his lips.

you glanced at him, not really in the mood for small talk, but something in his eyes held your attention. "it's terrible," you replied, and he laughed. it was a good laugh, genuine, and it made you smile despite yourself.

"i'm aurélien," he said, extending a hand.

"y/n," you replied, shaking his hand.

and that was it. no fireworks, no instant connection that made your heart race. just a simple introduction, two people making small talk at a party. but somehow, that night set off a chain of events that neither of you could have predicted.

you started seeing him more often, at parties, gatherings, even randomly at some upscale restaurant. it became a running joke between you two, how you always seemed to bump into each other.

"maybe it's fate," he'd say with a wink, and you'd roll your eyes but couldn't help the smile that tugged at your lips.

it wasn't long before you started spending time together outside of those chance encounters. coffee dates, movie nights, lazy afternoons in your apartment. it was all so easy, so natural. you didn't have to pretend or put on a facade. you could just be you, and he could just be him.

and that's where it got confusing. because you liked him, a lot. but it wasn't the all-consuming, butterflies-in-your-stomach kind of like. it was softer, gentler. it was the way he made you laugh, the way he listened when you talked, the way he made you feel seen. it was the way he made you feel like you belonged.

but you weren't his, and he wasn't yours. there were no labels, no expectations. just two people enjoying each other's company, no strings attached. it was silly and fragile and good, and you didn't want to ruin it by overthinking.

one evening, you found yourself at his apartment. it was a modest place, not ridiculously fancy but comfortable, lived-in. he was cooking dinner, and you were sitting on the counter, watching him. it was one of those domestic moments that felt oddly intimate, and you couldn't help but wonder what it all meant.

"what's going on in that pretty head of yours?" he asked, glancing at you with a knowing smile.

"nothing," you lied, but he didn't buy it.

"come on, y/n. i know you better than that."

you sighed, playing with some spice container. "i don't know what to call this," you admitted. "what's happening between us."

he paused, looking thoughtful. "does it need a label?"

"i don't know. maybe?"

he placed the lid back over the pot, coming over to stand in front of you. he took your hands in his, his touch warm and reassuring. "do you like what we have?"

"yes," you said without hesitation.

"then let's not worry about labels. let's just enjoy it."

you nodded, feeling a weight lift off your shoulders. he was right. why complicate things with labels and definitions? what you had was good, and that was enough.

and so, you continued. there were more coffee dates, more movie nights, more lazy afternoons. there were moments that felt almost like a relationship, but without the pressure. you became each other's confidants, sounding boards, safe spaces.

there were nights when he'd hold you close, your head resting on his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. there were days when you'd tease each other mercilessly, laughing until your sides ached. there were times when words weren't necessary, when just being together was enough.

but there were also moments of doubt. moments when you wondered if he felt the same way you did. moments when you questioned if you were just setting yourself up for heartbreak. because as much as you liked what you had, there was always that nagging thought in the back of your mind: what if it's not enough?

one night, after a particularly long day, you found yourself lying next to him, staring at the ceiling. you could hear his steady breathing, feel the warmth of his body next to yours. you felt safe, content. but there was also that familiar ache, the longing for something more.

"aurélien," you whispered, not wanting to wake him but needing to say it.

"hmm?" he murmured, half-asleep.

"what are we?"

he was silent for a moment, then turned to face you, his eyes soft and sleepy. "we're us," he said simply. "does that need to change?"

you shook your head, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. "no, it's just... sometimes i wonder."

he brushed a strand of hair from your face, his touch gentle. "i care about you, y/n. a lot. but i don't want to rush things or put pressure on us. can we just be? for now?"

you nodded, feeling a mixture of confusion and sadness. it wasn't the answer you'd hoped for, but it was honest. and maybe that was enough. for now.

so you stayed. you continued to share your days and nights. you continued to build something, something that apparently didn't need labels to be real.

because in the end, it wasn't about defining what you had, right? it was about the way he made you feel, the way you made him feel. it was about the moments you shared, the memories you created. it was about finding something good in the midst of the chaos.

and maybe, just maybe, that was all that mattered.

or maybe it wasn’t.

days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and the rhythm of your connection with aurélien settled into something familiar yet always slightly unpredictable. you both continued navigating your own lives, but there was an unspoken understanding that you'd always find your way back to each other.

one evening, after a particularly grueling day at work, you found yourself at aurélien's door. you hadn't planned on going over, but the need to see him, to be in his presence, was too strong to ignore. you knocked lightly, and when he opened the door, the sight of his smile was enough to make the day's stress melt away.

"hey you," he greeted, pulling you into a hug.

"hey," you sighed into his chest, the scent of his cologne instantly calming your nerves.

"rough day?" he asked, leading you inside.

"you have no idea," you replied, kicking off your shoes and collapsing onto his couch. "i just needed to see you."

he sat down beside you, his hand finding yours. "well, you're here now. tell me all about it."

you talked, and he listened. he always listened. it was one of the things you appreciated most about him. he never tried to fix things or offer unsolicited advice; he just let you vent, understanding that sometimes, that's all you needed.

"thanks," you said after a while, your head resting on his shoulder. "for always being here."

"always," he replied softly, kissing the top of your head.

but as the months passed, the lines between this casual, nameless ‘thing’ between you and something slightly more continued to blur. there were moments when you caught him looking at you with an intensity that made your heart skip a beat. moments when his touch lingered just a bit too long, his fingers brushing against your skin in a way that made you ache for more.

one night, you were both at a friend's birthday party. the atmosphere was lively, filled with laughter and music, but all you could focus on was him. he seemed to sense your gaze, his eyes meeting yours from across the room. without a word, he made his way over to you, the crowd parting like the red sea.

"want to get out of here?" he asked, his voice low and husky.

you nodded, not trusting yourself to speak.

you found yourselves at a small, quiet location, the night air cool against your skin. you walked in comfortable silence, the only sounds the rustling of leaves and the distant hum of the city.

"do you ever think about us?" you asked suddenly, the words escaping before you could stop them.

he stopped, turning to face you. "all the time," he admitted, his eyes searching yours.

"and?" you prompted, your heart pounding in your chest.

"and... i don't want to lose what we have," he said, his voice filled with sincerity. "but i also don't want to live with 'what ifs.'"

"what are you saying?" you asked quietly, barely daring to breathe.

he took a step closer, his hand cupping your cheek. "i'm saying that i want to try. i want to see where this can go. but only if you do too."

tears welled in your eyes, not from sadness, but from the overwhelming emotion of the moment. "i do," you said, your voice slightly trembling. "i really do."

his lips found yours in a kiss that felt like coming home. it was soft and hesitant at first, as if you were both testing the waters, but it quickly deepened, a year's worth of unspoken feelings pouring out.

when you finally pulled away, you were both breathless, your foreheads resting against each other's. "so what now?" you asked, a small smile playing on your lips.

"now," he said, his thumb gently stroking your cheek, "we figure it out. together."

and you did.

it wasn't always easy, and there were moments of doubt, but you faced them together. you learned to communicate, to be vulnerable, to trust in what you were building.

the transition from friends to something more wasn't always smooth. there were moments when old habits clashed with new expectations, when you had to remind yourselves that you were in this together. but those moments of tension were always followed by moments of growth, of understanding each other a little better.

you found a balance between the comfort of your friendship and the excitement of your new relationship. you continued to share your lives, but now there was an added layer of intimacy, a deeper connection that made everything feel more profound.

there were lazy sunday mornings spent tangled in each other's arms, quiet evenings cooking dinner together, spontaneous adventures that took you to new places and brought you even closer. every moment, big or small, felt significant because you were sharing it with him.

and through it all, you never lost the feeling that had been there from the beginning—the feeling of belonging. he made you feel like you were exactly where you were meant to be, and you did the same for him.

one night, as you lay in bed together, the moonlight casting a soft glow over the room, you knew that whatever the future held, you would face it together. because what you had was no longer something fragile—it was something real, something that would endure.

something that would last.

#aurelien tchouameni #aurelien tchouameni x reader #aurelien tchouameni fanfic #aurelien tchouameni one shot #aurelien tchouameni fluff

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elizakai · 9 months ago

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you guys i can’t take this anymore i need to release steam from this pot of killer and dust thoughts that’s on the stove

listen. if you don’t know by now. one of my favorite things to do is bridge narratives between fanon ideas, and canon truths hehe

Killer and Dust. The accepted dynamic is basically killer being a pestering little shit and dust being over it.

THATS GREAT ON ITS OWN it’s funny etc

but think about their ACTUAL characters for a moment. they are two sides of the same coin.

⬇️

i don’t want to hear any of that old fandom “they are literally the same” shhhhh. nuh uh dear friend, they commuted the same (general) action💥

their motives and situations are very different however! which is important when it comes to understanding a character

They both played into an opposite role in their world if you ask me.

Killer partners with chara, filling the role of the player. he’s a lot like flowey actually.

(in killers world, while he is still a pawn of this sick game, he gets manipulated after all, he has taken on the ROLE of the player. everyone else are the pawns.)

dust is against the anomaly of dusttale, which is that worlds player.

dust is a pawn. a pawn that is defying the player of the game

(in the same way that killer is still pawned, dust still uses his fellow “pawns” as a means to “win” the game, meaning he’s also playing)

(but again, i’m speaking role wise)

Killer and Dust’s dynamic doesn’t have to just be haha funny, it has some actual merit and potential to their characters.

Killer is constantly looking for new forms of entertainment. something new. he’ll get bored, and if he’s bored he’ll have to look at himself. killer is very much a character representing disassociation avoidance and to an extent, escapism (huh. like someone playing a video game?)

Of COURSE he’s gonna poke at people. it’s INTERESTING. it gets a REACTION. he gets to have that small power trip of being in control, after feeling like he lost control this is something that’s probably addictive to killer.

meanwhile dust…well. killer acts like his own anomaly in a way. he prods at him, toys with him, he’s leering and he takes pleasure in any reaction dust gives. dust probably would resent this feeling without really knowing why. he feels like some toy, and he’d probably be inclined to even interpret a genuine interaction this way.

this honestly makes dusts inclination to shut off or dull down any emotion make more sense. be as unremarkable as possible, and you’ll be left alone, right?

isn’t that…kind of what sans does? he’ll repeat same lines of dialogue and such when he reallyyy doesn’t have to. he’s being uninteresting. (and no he doesn’t need to remember everything magically for that to be possible. in game he will poke fun at past conversations and dialogue so he’s clearly aware enough)

Killer wants a response, so dust doesn’t give one.

killer wants control and feels like this is a challenge, dust feels cornered and defensive

if they had existed in the same world, it would have been killer vs dust in the end either way.

it’s a big old game of cat and mouse until someone snaps. they need to be given the opportunity to understand their similarities

even in an interpretation where they are in a healthier relationship, in whatever capacity, i think these mindsets would be conflict they may have….

to killer , on one hand he may be OFFENDED by his lack of response. he may be EXCITED, it’s a CHALLENGE. he might take dusts resignation as a sign of submission, which would give killer a HIGE power trip.

he might. genuinely just be trying to have fun?

it could be ENTIRELY lighthearted, and it’s still…rather toxic, considering where that mindset branched from

and we know dust won’t be inclined to say anything. he probably doesn’t understand his own feelings to be frank💀 he just feels gross and intimidated and cornered so he shuts off and sees killer as oppressive , and grows resentful regardless of intent, as these feelings only feed into his crippling self hatred anyways

….thats all for tonight-

#utmv #ut au #undertale #sans aus #dust sans #murder sans #killer sans #bad sanses #THOUGHTS #PLEASE SHARE IM SISBDOD #this is unorganized and i don’t care hee hoo #headcanons #interpretations ig #dusttale #something new au #kist #if we want #😏#or not

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decepti-thots · 8 months ago

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while i'm talking about Whirl, one thing i've been meaning to talk about for ages just in a 'i am aware some people may not actually know this, and it hardly gets mentioned in fandom' is that Whirl in Interiors talking about briefly trying to change his name when he was a flight instructor at the flight academy is a reference to a passage in Bullets, which is in retrospect very obviously him:

Jetstream had taught him to recognize his inherent worthlessness. In front of the other cadets he'd always been supportive, but in private he would berate him for showing off and for getting ideas above his station. “You think you're something special?” he used to say. “You think you’re better than the rest, better than me, just because you can turn a few tricks? On a good day - on your best day - I’d say you were unremarkable.” Rotorstorm’s only response to Jetstream’s verbal abuse was to make jokes. If you can make light of the situation, he'd think, it can’t be as bad as it seems. Over time, Jetstream’s verbal abuse... evolved. On one occasion, Rotorstorm was pushed against a wall. On another, he was punched to the floor. Before long, he was on the receiving end of sustained and entirely unprovoked beatings. The worst day of Rotorstorm’s life - worse than the day war was declared; worse than the day of the Simanzi Massacre - was the day the IAA installed a Cryogenic Regeneration Chamber. He couldn't remember what he’d done to deserve that night's battering, but as he lay on the floor of the aircraft hangar, his torso freshly pummeled, his spinal strut bent at a right angle and his face reduced to a shallow bowl of oil and splinters, he saw something he would never forget: Jetstream was standing over him, fists clenched and head cocked, coolly appraising his options. And the look of exhilaration on his face as he wondered where to place the next punch had been terrifying. Rotorstorm had passed out before Jetstream had finished shoveling him into the CR Chamber, and had woken up the next day without a single scratch on his body. Jetstream had left overnight; he moved to a training facility in another province and later changed his name. Since then, Rotorstorm had seen him only once: he'd been sitting in the front row when Rotorstorm had been awarded the Novic Medal for Outstanding Valor, and he’d been clapping and cheering more loudly than anyone else.

and this is a really fascinating thing to consider for me because if you just describe the whole thing briefly in the abstract, it's gonna likely sound like one of two things:

whirl tried to turn over a new leaf with a new name, and it worked for a time but ultimately he couldn't and went back to his old life

whirl tried to turn over a new leaf with a new name, but he couldn't and was just as much of an aggro wildcard as ever so gave up

but this is... kind of not either of those, including the last one? whirl IS acting like the violent, bitter, unpredictable asshole we come to meet in MTMTE and know he was during the war, to an extent, but he's also clearly succesfully keeping up something of a facade of really inhabiting that 'not Whirl, nope, i'm a Normal Flight Instructor' in public. it's only to rotorstorm he's not, seemingly. (and even then, the way rotorstorm describes him here is... really cold and deliberate in a way that feels kind of different to what we see later.)

obviously it's. i mean it's SO deeply unpleasant, very effectively communicated in terms of how awful and traumatising that kind of thing is btw a+ but also Jesus Fucking Christ, but it also suggests to me a very specific experience Whirl is having in this period of his life that isn't quite either of those obvious choices. pokes at it. god. what the fuck is going through your head you terrible helicopter you.

#idw #rotorstom #whirl #meta

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total-drama-brainrot · 10 months ago

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i dont know whether youve established this or not but for ur p!noah au, what does phobia factor look like? (if he makes it that far)

I've got a few ideas for how Noah (both in general and in this AU) would behave in the Phobia Factor episode!

My first idea, which works better for a more canon-adjacent Noah, is to have him either genuinely fall asleep at the campfire or feign falling asleep at the campfire- so he doesn't have to divulge his "greatest fear" in front of the others.

Because Noah's a very private person; both his fellow competitors and the audience at large know very little about him, and those who try to are often met with his sour, prickly exterior. Why on Earth would he ever willingly share his greatest fear on international TV with a bunch of people he doesn't even like?

(And, as we saw in the Awake-a-thon episode, pretending to pass out is something Noah would and does do to get out of uncomfortable situations.)

Of course, that scenario could be ruined by having one of the mlre confrontational characters (like Heather) shake him awake to hear his answer. But, ideally, it'd end up being more of a Courtney situation, where he never does give an answer, but Chris finds something in the shows footage that indicates Noah has a fear of [insert phobia here].

Then there's the second scenario, where Noah just straight up lies about what he's scared of (and I'm surprised no one else did this canonically). Again, why would he tell people what he's actually scared of? So he picks one of the most common phobias and runs with it- something innocuous, like a fear of the dark, or claustrophobia. Or maybe he decides to be a smartass and chooses some obscure or 'ridiculous' phobia instead, like ailurophobia/cynophpbia (fear of cats/dogs), on the off-chance that they'll have to face them as part of a challenge.

In the case of p!Noah, I think he'd do something similar to the second scenario, but claim his 'biggest fear' is hemophobia (fear of blood)- a bold claim for someone's who's decidedly Not Afraid Of Blood, in fact he's quite fond of it. Of course, no one else has any way of knowing this, so it's accepted as truth.

As a side note here, I kind of touched upon this before but p!Noah doesn't really experience fear like others do- that's why he's so amused by other's fear responses, since he lacks one of his own. It's also why he's such a thrill-seeker, he gets all of the adrenaline and none of the actual fear.

And then the Phobia Factor challenge happens. Noah's tasked with submerging himself in a pool of blood, similar to Beth's pool of worms, to earn his team a point.

Noah's fine with this. (More than fine, really. Red is a pretty colour.) But he can't let the others know that, or he'd be caught out in his lie. But he also doesn't want to lose this challenge. So he gingerly climbs into the pool, doing his best to fake fear and revulsion to... mixed results. He doesn't understand things like fear, panic and terror at a personal level, so for the most part he just looks like a soggy unamused cat. Despite how much he really wants to splash about, or get lost in the sauce.

(Maybe the more switched on of his team mates pick up on the maddened glee in his eyes as he floats in a pool of blood, or his almost carefully crafted stoicism- a far cry from everyone else's screams of terror.)

He wins a point for the team, and that's that.

Remember, Noah's strategy here is to be as unremarkable as possible; he wouldn't go out of his way to draw attention to himself. Especially not when Izzy’s still around to cause chaos for him.

...That doesn't mean he won't later make a confessional, still dripping in 'blood', where he complains to the audience that Chris used the 'fake shit' for his challenge for the budgets sake. Noah can tell! He knows the feeling of being covered in real blood.

#secret third option is having him sarcastically comment that eva gave him gynophobia #total drama #psycho!noah au #silly ideas #replies #tw blood

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blubberquark · 1 month ago

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Playtesting, Censorship, and Authenticity

I have seen some backlash against Stellar Blade for "caving to censorship". This could probably have been avoided if the developer hadn't previously made full-throated promises about his artistic vision, and if the marketing campaign hadn't released promotional images of costumes the the game. When Stellar Blade finally had to tone down some of the nudity for age ratings and console approval, some audience said they felt cheated.

I don't know how much of this outrage was real, and how much was political posturing. Probably a lot.

This happens all the time. A game is re-released, or re-mastered, the developers have to remove or tone down the edge of parts of the game that was completely fine and unremarkable when the game was released. It happened with Skullgirls, and even with certain cards in Hearthstone. In the case of Skullgirls, the backlash was kind of predictable, because Skullgirls was hardly unremarkable back then. On the one hand, because they originally crossed the line twice, the retroactive censorship wasn't unexpected. On the other hand, half the the point of the game was that it was edgy and anime and looked like it was made by Japanese people who didn't understand what you can and can't say in Europe and North America. It wasn't just gratuitous Nazis and panties, but gratuitously gratuitous Nazis and panties. It's not my cup of tea, as a player or as a developer, but I completely understand what they were going for. In the case of Hearthstone, the removal of the Succubus card/character was in all likelihood due to Chinese censorship, about age ratings on one app store or another, and then they just decided it would be easier to justify and draw less attention if they removed the card/character everywhere around the world, and it would be more profitable this way than if they made the game ages 16 and up in some parts of the world.

There have been multiple instances of politically motivated outrage against games that had hired a narrative design consultancy firm, sometimes fuelled by short, out-of-context clips of activists from these firms bragging how they managed to change the tone and direction of the game despite resistance from the developers, or explaining how they managed to influence management to hire a consultancy firm against the will of the core team.

All this taken together forms a narrative: Outside forces are deliberately pushing designers, developers, art directors, and lead writers to abandon or water down their creative vision.

I think that's misguided for two reasons: First, I think the developers of indie games are either themselves trying to make their games palatable for mass audiences, and they themselves are responsible for the political messaging or general vibes of their work. Second, game design is full of compromise. About that first point: ZA/UM were not secretly pressured manipulated to add in a bunch of politics into Disco Elysium. Concerned Ape was not browbeaten into removing realistic gore and nudity from Stardew Valley. A lot of the time, most of the time, what you see is the artistic vision of the developers, or their political stance. There is no need to conjure up conspiracies. Maybe the remaining Skullgirls developers just have gotten older and don't feel the same way about shock value like they used to.

Most indie games do not self-censor, but I would not be surprised to learn that the more popular and mainstream a game is, or the more popular a game becomes, the more likely the developers are to self-censor. This is because "true artists" that ruthlessly follow a creative vision are usually niche oddities you can download for free (itch is full of them), but also due to the dynamics of indie success. When games develop something of a following and commercial success, so that their developers keep on expanding and iterating on the game, they become more conservative. Just imagine you decide to keep working on a free game of yours that blew up, for financial reasons, instead of working on the next niche thing. If you make this decision, you are probably already motivated by growing your audience, and more likely to self-censor.

This "conservative" approach to game development is usually not about avoiding sex, violence, religion, and politics, of course. It's about making the game easier, avoiding difficult puzzles, complicated narratives, niche literary references, and all kinds of mechanics that could limit your audience. Instead of removing unpalatable elements from a game in the end, you decide to pursue mass appeal early on, and reorient your whole design around that from the ground up. I mean, if you could choose, would you rather develop the next Lunacid or the next Among Us, the next Passage, or the next Vampire Survivors?

I fear if you are following me, you will probably decide to go the starving artist route.

The second reason why you shouldn't worry that much about outside forces influencing games also has to do with game development, but less with marketing. It's fundamental to the way game design works.

Re-makes and re-releases are unusual in this regard. Most of the time, you don't see a fully formed game like Skullgirls that you can compare with a re-release, or Final Fantasy VII, or Silent Hill 2. Most of the time, you only see the final product, and perhaps, if the marketing campaign screwed up, you realise that the final product differs from the promotional material (as was the case with Watch_Dogs or No Man's Sky).

Most of the time, you don't see all the content that was developed and doesn't make it into the game. If you did, you would realise that games usually are not born out of the head of their creator fully formed and armed like Athena from the head of Zeus. Most games are developed iteratively, and although the core of the game is fixed, most mechanics, plot points, levels, and characters are subject to change. Often you only see how well something works once you implement it and try it out.

And then, you only really see how well it actually works when you let somebody playtest it. The clunkiest game mechanics and the most obtuse puzzles feel fine to you if you were the one who thought about them. The worst writing and the most convoluted plots will feel elegant because you wrote them. The only way to see what works is playtesting.

Being "true to your artistic vision" from start to finish is pretty much impossible. If you work together with people, you will struggle to communicate your ideas. This is why big productions resort to mood-boards and all kinds of adjacent junk in their production bibles, why AAA games produce so much concept art, and why games often feel like they are ripping off existing work. It's really hard to communicate to your team that you want to make a game with a certain feeling if that game does not yet exist, but it's easy to communicate that you want a game "like Doom 3" or "like Metroid Prime" or "like Proteus".

If you actually manage to communicate your artistic vision to your team down to the precise minutiae, you will hamstring your artists. You have those artists working with you so you can worry about the big picture stuff while they work on the art part. If you are rigid about your own creative vision, you leave other people no space for creativity, no space to express themselves, no leeway to make creative or design decisions.

And after all that, everything must be playtested, even the big-picture mood stuff, to see if the mood actually comes across when the players aren't already primed by the concept art and the design document and weeks of meetings. If the player doesn't know he is supposed to feel a certain mood, does the game still work?

Both the Skullgirls situation and the Stellar Blade situation are unusual, because the the tone of Skullgirls was edgy on purpose, and Skullgirls concept art had been released in 2012, and the designer of Stellar Blade had already promised not to censor all the eye candy. I think the backlash to Stellar Blade was overblown and politically motivated, and the part of the backlash to the Skullgirls re-release about sanitising their decade old concept art had a point, barely.

If you are making your own game you will quickly notice all the compromises you have to make your game, or maybe you just don't release any concept art or in-progress screenshots, maybe you don't work with other people, maybe you don't even play-test, and just upload a finished game to itch.io without ever reading the comments, like a true artist.

Once you understand that, you will understand that there is a solid core to every game design that you won't compromise on, and a surrounding malleable blob that you want to re-shape and negotiate in order to preserve the core. When you get playtesting feedback that tells you to replace the core with something else, you try to re-shape that blob in order to make the core work. When an idea of yours is not feasible, you compromise to preserve the spirit. If you are making a real-time strategy game, and somebody tells you to make it turn-based, you might ignore them, or you might entertain this feedback. It all depends on whether your core artistic vision is "real time" or "flanking the enemy and using the terrain" or "logistics and intelligence in 19th century land warfare".

The people who are the most rigid about game design are usually teenagers just learning to program. They bite off more than they can chew, and they are completely unwilling to reduce their scope. They are unable to execute on their vision in terms of development skill, unable to understand the consequences of their design choices.

If you are unable to compromise on your artistic vision, you are unlikely to realise it.

#game design #game development #skillgirls #sorry about the politics

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caspercryptid · 3 months ago

Note

Fic request- There is a severe lack of Werewolf or Vampire Ford, do with that what you will 💜

I like where your head's at. This is going to be a super weird sci-fi vibe because I actually had a Vampire Ford AU sitting in the back of my brain— if you want more/different vampire/werewolf au content just feel free to hit me with another request, one thing I find very fun is doing variations on the same theme.

Requests still open for billford.

_____

Bill had waited hundreds of millions of years.

Well, alright, so. Outside the theraprism it has probably been significantly less time than that. And even inside the theraprism Bill had lost track of time very very quickly, once he's made two key realizations.

1. No one is coming to save him

2. The pines will be long dead by the time he gets out.

He shouldn't care. He doesn't.

....Okay so, maybe he does a little bit.

As he worked through his feelings (by force, those bastards really knew how to cut a triangle down to size). He had come to realize that he .....had. feelings. Specifically one feeling. For Ford Pines. Something sticky and warm and pathetic.

And worthless, because he was never going to be able to tell him. Because Ford Pines was human.

Ford pines....WAS. human.

The problem with his relationship with Stanford had been fundamentally twofold. Every other issue started with one of the two completely insurmountable barriers between them.

Problem 1: Ford was human.

Problem 2: Bill was not.

The axolotl, in his endless knowledge and mercy, had seen fit, through reincarnation, to solve the second problem. Which would have counted for nothing, except that apparently while Bill hadn't been looking in on him, Ford had solved the first.

And that is how Bill has found himself on a space station in 3502, face to face. With Stanford Pines.

At first he thinks he's imagining things, or maybe one of the Pines descendants just— won some kind of genetic lottery. But as he stays frozen and watching, Ford pulls out a journal and flips through, taking notes with an old fashioned pen, and— there's no mistaking those hands. There's no mistaking that twenty first century pen. And he'd— assume some alternate universe Ford had gotten lost, but his clothes are from the right millennia, at least, he's wearing a space suit and metal boots. He's alone and he looks.... fine. Confident and calm.

Bill doesn't realize he's getting closer until Ford looks up and gives him a confused look.

"Can I.... help you?" He asks.

Oh, right.

Bill looks normal now. Average. Unremarkable. He clears his throat, tries to decide where to start.

"I— hope so," he says. "Do you have a ship? I— seem to have accidentally blown the last of my cash and I don't have enough to make it back to earth."

"Ah, yes. I do. I would be happy to give you a lift, I was actually heading back topside myself."

Bill realizes, faintly, that he's probably made a mistake and it's going to be a lot of lies to keep going.

Well, if there was anything in the world he was good at.

"Thank you," he says, "I figured you'd be reliable. Everybody who uses old-world tech is good in my book. You don't make it to a thousand pitching hitchhikers out of airlocks!"

Patently untrue. Bill had pitched plenty of hitchhikers out of airlocks.

Ford gives him a look like maybe he doesn't believe that either, but he twists the pen in his fingers.

"You just can't replicate the feeling of a nib on paper," he says, "do you believe i had to get my own ship because they won't let me space travel with one of these? I told them I'd adapted the ink cartridges myself to keep it from exploding, but they wouldn't believe me!"

"Those galactic authorities need to get the sticks out of their asses," Bill says.

Ford snorts, and it's- nice. It's nice to just talk to him like this. Like nothing had ever happened between them. But. There's still the question.

"...So, you a collector?" he asks, managing casual.

"Ah, no." Ford says, spinning the pen, "well, yes, in a way. I do collect old world technology, but it's because I'm more used to it."

"You look human," Bill says.

Ford grins, showing off sharp teeth.

"Do I?"

#billford #gravity falls requests #the book of bill #vampire ford #if anyone likes this enough to want more feel free to request a continuation #I know i left it off at a weird point lmao

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scuttling · 5 months ago

Text

I Can Handle Me A Dangerous Man - Ch 2

Fandom: True Blood (TV) Pairings: Eric Northman/Female Reader or Eric Northman/OFC Word Count: 4,441 Tags: 18+, NSFW in later chapters, it's gonna get real nasty Summary: Sookie's cousin returns to Bon Temps, and Eric wants her... to work for him. She says yes.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6

She finds herself at Fangtasia again a few days later—what else does she have to do, unemployed and ostracized as she is?—with another martini in her hand as she stares up at a surrealist painting hanging on the wall. It’s larger than life, with tigers and an elephant and a nude woman lounging in the sea, but she’s afraid she can make no emotional connection to it. Dali is weird.

“Now you’re just teasing me,” Eric greets in a low, even tone as he seems to materialize beside her, his eyes also on the painting. This time he’s wearing a black v-neck sweater, and it makes the muscles of his arms look even better, if that’s possible.

“Teasing you?” she asks, looking up at him, and he turns to her and scans her body the way he seems to every time they meet. It would irritate her, if it were anyone else, but having Eric’s attention is hugely flattering, and she can’t bring herself to dismiss the way it makes her feel.

“Coming into my bar again… looking like that.” He says it like she’s a forbidden snack dangled in front of him, and she ponders it.

She is technically fully covered in a maroon turtleneck, black miniskirt, tights and boots, which doesn’t seem all that tempting… until she considers that he’s nearly fully covered too and has quite literally never been more attractive to her. He buzzes in her ear again—his mind, his aura, whatever the hell it is—and she finally remembers that he’s said something, wets her lips to speak.

“There’s no vampire bar in Bon Temps, or I’d probably be there,” she says with a sip of her drink. Okay, maybe not, she thinks as he leans into her space, tilting his body so that it’s him she’s looking up at instead of the art. No, either way she would probably find herself drawn here, to him.

“Why? Do you like vampire blood?” he asks seriously, almost like an interrogation, and she shakes her head, frowns.

“I don’t do drugs, and no vampire has ever offered it to me.” She wants to make sure she covers all her bases, is transparent in her knowledge of not only V as a commodity, but the ritual of bloodsharing that vampires sometimes perform with their companions. “Regardless, blood isn’t the reason I came.”

“Did you come for me?” he asks, the tone of his voice the same but his expression more relaxed. She nods her head.

“Yes. I’ll do it – consult for you, work for you, whatever you want to call it.” It took her about two days to decide, then two more to get up the courage to come down to the bar and ask for what she believes she deserves—a problem she’s never had professionally before. Her answer earns her a change in posture, and Eric seems gratified by her response.

“You will? I’m pleased to hear that,” he says, and she nods her head, trying to ignore the way it warms her all over to know he’s happy with her choice.

“I have some stipulations,” she tells him directly, not intending to mince words, and he carefully takes the glass from her hand and sets it on a table behind them. The two middle aged humans who occupy it look absolutely thrilled at this sighting of a vampire in the wild, which makes Cam want to smile.

“I would expect no less. Let’s go into my office so we can be candid,” he suggests, gesturing toward the back of the bar, and he leads her through the crowd of bodies to the cluttered, unremarkable office with a hand hovering at her lower back.

“So what is it that you want from me? Explicitly,” she asks when he closes the door. “You know I’m a lawyer, so specific language is kind of my thing.” He pulls a chair out for her, then takes the seat on the other side of the desk and leans across it to speak.

“I would like to be able to call on you when I have a situation that could benefit from your gift—and I would like to be the only vampire who calls on you. That’s non-negotiable.”

She’d expected the first part—not so much the second—but it’s nothing she’s unwilling to give.

“I can agree to exclusivity, but keep in mind that occasionally I will hear or see things whether I want to or not; if I come upon a vampire matter, I’ll inform you and let you decide how to proceed. If it’s not a vampire matter, I’ll provide the information to whomever I see fit.”

“Okay, yes,” Eric agrees easily, and then he backtracks for a moment, looking curious. “Hear or see?”

“Well, thoughts aren’t always just a string of words, you know? Often they include images, memories, even vague feelings. What I do, it’s kind of a mixture of all those things.”

“That’s… good to know,” he says, and he taps his fingers against the desk. “It’s also important to me that you make yourself available when I need you; as you know, I only do business between sunset and sunrise. If I’m calling upon you, I have deemed it important, and I expect to take priority over other things you may be doing—anything short of a life and death emergency.”

“That’s fair,” she says, though she wonders if they should take a moment to formally define life and death emergency in case it comes up in the future. “And that’s it?”

“That’s it,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “See? No threats or manipulation necessary.”

It’s playful, now, his tone of voice, and she answers it with a slightly skeptical smile.

“And what are you willing to give me in exchange?”

“Anything,” he says, and it sounds earnest; he splays his arms wide like he’s gesturing not just to the room, but beyond it to the bar, the city, the world. “Anything. Money, blood, drugs, sex, protection, power—whatever you want.”

All of those things come with a hefty price tag, she thinks—and part of her has to wonder if her gift, as he called it, is actually worth it. The short list of demands she was fully prepared to fight for just an hour ago seems to pale in comparison to how important he thinks she will be.

“I would expect to be compensated in the event you come to me and I am involved in solving a problem, but I also need a retainer. Nothing outrageous, but if I’m going to be at your beck and call I won’t be able to commit to a regular job.”

“Of course,” he says easily, like the financials don’t matter to him in the slightest. She’s dealt with wealthy clients before, of course, even wealthy vampire clients, but his flippancy adds another layer of surrealism to the already surprising conversation. Should she ask for a luxury car, a yacht, season tickets to see the Saints? “What else?”

She’d considered this next point, and then abruptly un-considered it, felt she was asking too much… but given his promise of anything, she feels bold again. Like she could actually have the upper hand.

“I want protection—your protection. If I’m in real danger, and I call for you, I want you to be the one who comes for me.”

Eric raises an eyebrow, looks over her face carefully. It’s like he’s regarding some part of her for the first time, his gaze lingering.

“Do you anticipate being in danger often?”

“No, but I made enemies in Chicago, and you know how word travels in those circles. There are certain groups who aren’t fond of what I’ve done—and it’s possible there will be people who don’t approve of my employment here. I’d just like to know I’ll be safe, if I’m going to make working for you my priority.”

She exhales, feeling a bit less confident than when they started this, but Eric just makes a thoughtful sound and says, “It’s yours. Anything else?” he asks, and she considers that a win and stands up, feeling instantly intimidated when he stands too, tall and dark and strong. It’s so much easier to do business with him when they’re sitting down, when he’s on her level, or as close to her level as he will ever be.

“No, I think that’s it,” she says, and she sticks her hand out to shake, feeling oddly formal as she does. As a lawyer, she would have preferred the security of a contract, but that’s not the way most vampires operate and she knows better than to suggest it; that could be seen as an indication that she doesn’t find him trustworthy. A handshake, his word and hers, will have to do.

Looking into her eyes, he reaches out and takes her hand in his, shakes for a moment and then holds it there for just a beat too long before pulling away. She walks toward the door, and then, when the thought strikes her, she turns back to face him once more.

“Actually, there is one more thing,” she says, and as he walks closer she can’t help flashing back to his offer of sex—thank god she’s the one with the power of telepathy and not the other way around. “Could you help me find a decent apartment somewhere between here and Bon Temps? Sookie’s a great roommate, but I can’t stand that drafty old house.” And all of its memories.

“Consider it done,” he tells her, and she nods her head and leaves the bar, climbs into her car, and definitely doesn’t pump her fist in the air when she stops at the red light at the end of the block.

Two days later, a FedEx driver actually drops off an employment contract—it was silly of her to assume he wouldn’t also want their terms in writing—along with a slip of paper, upon which is written an address and a phone number, and a key.

The first night she spends in her new apartment—which is truly perfect, bright and white and airy, with tons of nearby green space and amenities—there is a knock at the door. When she opens it, Eric is on the other side, in a leather jacket and jeans, holding a bottle of wine with an expensive French label. She looks him over, and he does the same, making her feel a little self conscious in her bike shorts and oversized t-shirt, ponytail, bare feet.

“Eric—what a nice surprise,” she says, and it really is nice, and surprising. She never would have anticipated him coming to her without needing something—assuming he doesn’t need something now. The wine would be an odd touch, but as always with vampires, nothing’s out of the question.

“I just wanted to officially welcome you to the neighborhood,” he replies.

Cam had been slightly suspicious when the very first listing he sent her was a mere five miles from his bar, but when she considered his request for her exclusive availability, she figured it made enough sense not to question him any further.

“You did that when you paid my rent. For a year,” she tacks on, her tone admonishing, because that was not part of the employment contract. A faint smile lifts his lips.

“Consider it a sign-on bonus.” The air between them feels oddly charged, and then she tunes into it, realizes it’s that static that seems to follow him around. He shifts where he stands. “I brought you a bottle of wine. A housewarming gift,” he explains, handing it to her, and she wraps her fingers around the neck and pulls it close with a smile of her own.

“Thank you. Would you like to come in and have a glass with me?”

It’s clear by the look on his face he hadn’t been expecting that—probably didn’t expect to be invited into her home unless it was absolutely necessary for her protection in the future—but he nods, and when she takes a step back he crosses the threshold, closes the door behind him, and follows her to the kitchen.

“Are you sure this one is okay? The neighbors are so… close together,” he remarks of her new townhouse, and she bends to sort through a box full of kitchen gadgets, pulling out the corkscrew after a few seconds of rummaging.

“Oh, trust me, it’s great. My apartment in Chicago was little more than a shoebox with windows, and there’s a pool here, and a park nearby. I really appreciate everything you did.”

She opens the bottle, pulls two glasses down from the cabinet—the only cabinet she’d managed to fully unpack—and carries them over to the table, where Eric has already settled into a dining chair. He looks uncomfortable, tall and stiff and alert, like this is all a little too human for his taste.

“Still, it seems like you miss things there,” he says as she pours them each a serving, and she shrugs, then sinks down into the seat next to his with her leg tucked beneath her.

“Things haven’t been very good there for the last couple years, so I’m actually happy to have a fresh start.” She takes a sip of her wine, full-bodied and earthy with a peppery finish, and can’t help the sigh of pleasure she expels. “My god, that’s good.” She says it with the hint of a smile, something he casually reciprocates.

“I had a feeling you would like it,” is all he says, but when he takes a sip his eyes fall closed, and he seems to let it sit on his tongue a moment before continuing the conversation.

“So what kinds of things do you anticipate calling on me for?” she asks later, as they are finishing their second glass. Eric takes a moment to gather his thoughts, and she thinks it’s because he’s choosing his words intentionally, for her benefit.

“Mostly to confirm my suspicions if I think a human is being deceptive; I have some human employees, and I make business deals with others. Sometimes I need to know if my patrons are lying—if they’re underage, or looking for V, or conspiring against us. As sheriff, sometimes vampires come to me with human problems as well—it would be easier to deal with them if I had you available to me.”

“That sounds fair,” she says, appreciating his careful explanation. She shifts in her seat. “At my old firm they called me the human lie detector… they just didn’t know quite how close they were to the truth.”

“It must be difficult, to hear all the things you hear,” he says, and she nods her head in agreement.

“It can be, but I’ve gotten fairly used to it over time. Taught myself to control it instead of letting it bother me.” Things are quiet for a moment, and she takes the opportunity to say something that’s been on her mind since he arrived. “I feel a little uneasy about asking for your protection the other day. I think I may have asked too much of you,” she says with a frown. “I know you’re busy with the bar, and as sheriff, that a lot of people rely on you, and I’m not sure it’s fair of me to make such an extravagant request.”

It takes some effort for her to be able to look up at him instead of focusing on her glass, but when she does he seems thoughtful, his eyes serious but gentle.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I thought it would disrupt my other obligations. No harm will come to you while you’re under my employ, I promise.” She nods, placated by his reassurances, and he taps a finger against the tabletop. “You said you’ve taught yourself how to control your gift. Can you… hear vampires?”

His tone is reserved, but hopeful, and she grimaces.

“No offense, but vampire minds are kind of empty. My guess it has to do with electrical impulses, or lack thereof. Technically, I can hear you, but it’s like white noise, sometimes, or tinnitus. I don’t get any actual thoughts.” She ponders his question for a moment, wonders if that unique buzzing she picks up when he’s around is his mind, or something different. “Touching helps with humans, though. I can rewind a little bit, see memories instead of just what’s playing live, if that makes sense; maybe it would help me hear something from you?”

Eric stretches his arm across the table, his bare hand palm up, and she slides hers over it after a cautious moment. She presses their skin together and lets her eyes glance over his face, listening carefully, searching. It feels like a very, very long time passes, and a lot of static, but eventually she finds a moment, a phrase or sentence among the near silence.

“Ӓr du död?” she murmurs, and while she can’t see anything, she can feel the heat of flames nearby. It warms her hand where it turns to ice against Eric’s. His brow furrows in recognition, and she exhales, blinks. “I don’t know the language. What does it mean?”

“It’s Swedish. ‘Are you death?’ It’s the first thing I said to Godric, my Maker, before he turned me,” he admits, his voice serious and somber. Cam inhales sharply at that knowledge.

“Wow. I can’t imagine I’ve ever gone back further than a few days that way, let alone…”

“A thousand years, give or take.” He answers her unspoken question with a deeply curious expression. “That was among the last of my human memories, so I suppose it makes sense that you can see it.”

“I can feel it, too,” she says, and she wraps her fingers around his, searching for more, for a deeper connection. She closes her eyes this time, in hopes it strengthens the memory. “I can feel the heat from a fire. And I can feel that you’re dying. You’re cold inside, but your skin is warm.”

“Tell me more,” he says, his voice barely there. He tightens his grip on her hand.

“There’s a man there, a very young man, and you’re not happy with him… but you aren’t afraid of him, either. He has a strangely calming presence; you’re not sure if he’s an angel or the devil.”

“Godric.” His Maker. He looks strangely young for a vampire, vulnerable, and though he’s short, he towers over Eric in his memory, eyes deep and dark and full of possibility.

“Through your eyes, he looks larger than life,” she says softly, and his fingers flex. Even if she hadn’t known Godric was his Maker, the way this man makes him feel is as clear as any emotion she’s felt herself. He is death and life, the end and the beginning.

“He is,” Eric says—not was, she takes note of that—and when he starts to pull back she releases his hand and lets hers drop to the tabletop. She feels tapped out after that, exhausted, and Eric nods his head once in her direction. “That is a remarkable gift you have.”

“It’s something,” she says casually, as if she didn’t just travel over a thousand years in her mind and pull out his last memory of human life, as if she didn’t feel like she was inside him, a part of him, his heart, his head, his hands. She sits there, speechless for a moment, and then Eric takes a deep, exaggerated breath.

“Well, I should get back to Fangtasia—I’m happy to see you’re settling in,” he tells her, and when he stands she stands, walks him to the door. It closes behind him, and she feels both strangely invigorated by his presence, and deeply conflicted by his departure.

At Fangtasia, Pam waits for Eric at the front door.

“Where have you been?” she asks, her heels clicking on the floor as she follows him back to the office. The crowd naturally parts for them, and though Eric probably attributes it to his aura—he’s been acting strangely woo-woo lately, talking about witches and energy and vibrations and the like—it’s more likely his huge, hulking frame and the fact that his expression alone would kill, if such a thing were possible. “You know I find it distasteful to be left alone with the humans for so long.”

“I had an errand to run,” he says, but he smells like wine and the girl, there’s no mistaking it. Errands, her perky ass.

“How is she?” she asks as he slides into the chair behind the desk, stretching back so he can hook his ankles over the edge of the desk. It’s even worse than manspreading. He looks up at her like he’s not sure what she means, and she crosses her arms over her chest and blinks. “Our new employee. Camila. That’s who you were with, isn’t it?”

“You don’t care how she is,” is all he says in response, and she leans over and smacks his boots so his feet fall to the floor. Pam knows that only happened because he let it, and she bites back a fond smile.

“No, I don’t, but apparently you do. I thought you were obsessed with Sookie when she came along, but this girl has you… buying apartment buildings, and promising your protection, and you’ve barely known her for a week.”

She hopes he doesn’t take her tone for jealousy, because it’s not, not really; she’s just never seen him this infatuated, and it’s freaking her out a little, if she’s being honest. Like it or not, her life, her comfort, relies very heavily on Eric and his… happiness isn’t quite the right word, but when he is content, her nights tend to be much smoother, more enjoyable all around. She gets to drink from an endless supply of young, willing, rich-blooded partygoers instead of traipsing around the woods and ruining her favorite pumps, or trapping moronic anti-vampers and using them to set an example for their friends.

“You have no idea how important she is going to be. No idea,” he repeats, and his voice has that strangely mystical quality about it again, a faint undertone of magic that hovers around its edges. He’s been to see a witch, she thinks, or had his fortune told, something that’s led him to believe this girl and her gift are crucial to whatever he has planned. It sends a chill down her spine that she’s unable to fight. “Her gift is going to make us unconquerable.”

After a long pause, he pulls out his laptop from the top drawer, opens it, which she knows is equivalent to dismissing her, and she sighs softly and makes her way back out to the floor.

“I cannot believe you’re working for Eric,” Sookie says as she hangs a handful of pressed skirts in Cam’s bedroom closet. Her typical uniform is very different from Sookie’s, the blonde notices. Across the room, Cam carefully arranges gold jewelry in a tiered acrylic box with satin lined drawers.

“It’s as close as I can get to my old job for now, and I’m not really in a position to be picky, or I wouldn’t have come back to Louisiana at all—no offense,” she throws over her shoulder. Sookie tuts and waves her hand.

“None taken. I know where my heart is,” she assures her cousin. Like all small town girls, Sookie sometimes kicks herself for never leaving Bon Temps, but more often than not she loves her hometown, its history, her family’s legacy.

Gran’s, at least.

She grabs a pile of folded sweaters in cashmere and various knits, stacks them in the space above the closet rod. “Aren’t you at all worried he’s going to use you to hurt people?”

Behind her, Cam takes a long, careful breath and turns to face Sookie.

“One thing you have to understand—especially if you and Bill are in it for the long haul—is that vampire justice is different. I know it shouldn’t be, but until now they've been non-existent in terms of conventional law. They have their own systems in place—hierarchies, rules, punishments—and we can’t step in and tell them how to behave overnight just because we think we know better.”

Sookie shoots her a look—as pro-vamp as she is, she admits she’s not comfortable accepting their more violent tendencies, especially where humans are involved. Cam only shrugs.

“I’m going to defer to Eric’s expertise as sheriff, but I’ll call it like I see it. If he’s being unnecessarily cruel or unjust, I’m not afraid to discuss it with him. If his actions seem to be aligned with the usual nature of his business, I’ll excuse myself.” She walks toward the bed, picks up a pile of panties, mostly black, and places them into the top drawer of a light-colored dresser. When she turns back to Sookie, it’s clear that Cam can read the expression on her face, one of thinly-veiled awe. “What?” she asks, and Sookie smiles, shakes her head.

“I don't know, I guess… Just, when did you get so confident? So smart, so sure of yourself?” Cam had always been the leader, strong where Sookie was soft, sure where Tara was uncertain, and though Sookie feels like they’ve all come into their own in recent years, she is so pleasantly surprised at the absolute stunner her cousin has become—physically and intellectually. She feels as proud as Cam’s mom would if she were around, Sookie’s sure.

“It’s been a long ten years, Sookie,” is all Cam says, and though she can tell there is more to that statement, she can also sense that now isn’t the time to get into that. Later, someday.

“Yeah, it has. I just wish I was half as comfortable as you in this new world… sometimes I think I stick out like a sore thumb,” Sookie admits, lifting a stack of shoe boxes and lining them up on the floor of the closet. Cam steps over to join her, adds a couple pairs of boots, and puts her hand on Sookie’s shoulder.

“You’re like a sunflower growing among dead grass. It’s not a bad thing to stick out,” she promises with a smile that crinkles the corner of her eyes, and Sookie pats her hand in gratitude continues to help her settle in.

#true blood #true blood fanfic #eric northman #eric northman fanfic #eric northman/original female character #eric northman/female reader

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grimescum · 1 month ago

Note

it's been great seeing your walter posts in the hellsing tag 🫡 do you have any head-canons to share?

GEHEUEHEHUEEHHEE THANK YOU KIND ANON!!!!! hum... i think i already made a post about this on my older blog? but i dont really wanna find it + its probably really old so... here :o3 some new and some old just for u

- i Do Not like the depictions of walter where he's, like, a genuinely sick in the head and fucked up individual. it just seems grossly extreme to me. different strokes for different folks though

that being said, i do agree he's definitely not well. i think he has bpd,, mostly out of me projecting and what not but also because i think it just makes sense. growing up distanced from the people around you and not receiving proper emotional support does that to a mf

he's got a facade up damn near all the time. inoffensive, orderly, agreeable, prim and proper. not to manipulate the people around him for his own gain, but because he knows thats what other people want. anything less and he'd be a bad butler, and therefore, effectively useless

- not really a hc since this is just kind of a fact? but ill say it here because its what draws me to him the most: he's afraid of being rendered useless.

- he's not an emotional guy. i dont think he feels much most days. all his smiles are about as fake as the teeth he would've needed if he went on for much longer. i think he's been somewhat resigned to his fate for a while now, but that doesn't stop him from thinking what if every now and again

- he certainly is a jealous little bitch but he keeps that inside. if he ever got therapy he'd need like explosives and shit to properly get all of that pent up emotion out

- ^^ i think thats why he gets a bit sadistic when fighting others. its just a way to vent all that frustration

- i dont think he had many plans, if any at all, to turn on hellsing. he definitely had thoughts, but i think it all caught up to him one night and he just decided it was too much, and that he had nothing to lose that he wouldn't lose later on. either he lives an unremarkable existence in the shadow of alucard or tries to surpass that (he didnt) (he failed) (lol). ties into my bpd headcanon with impulsivity being a symptom

- he would've loved to have been a father at some point but has since abandoned it for many reasons. seras is about the closest he has to a daughter and the most he's opened up to someone emotionally, but he still keeps himself at an arms length.

- i like to think he grew out his hair at some point during the 80s for a mullet but liked having it long

- i also think he'd be big on rock when he was younger!! he tried it at first just because it was popular, but he found that it really spoke to him. i don't think he's much of a music guy outside of that though. maybe some jazz

- he is an incredibly lonely individual, as is expected of a butler. he can handle flirting somewhat but the idea of someone being genuinely attracted to him for who he is turns him into a sappy old-fashioned loverboy

- former christian. he still thinks there is a god (evidenced by vampires obviously) but that god has not been very kind to him to lead him down this path so why gaf

- very meticulous about keeping up his appearance. not a serious headcanon but its funny to imagine him up all night plucking each and every grey hair out of his head. if not just to look as presentable as possible, then it also helps his confidence. its nice to know that his apprarance is one of the few things he has control over

- speaking of which ??? i think hes confident.. but only in the persona he's made for himself yk. not in the real him who's body could fail him anytime. not the human part of him.

- not good at taking compliments but loves them. praise him too much and too often and you'd finally see him emotional i think. really, letting this man know that his worth is not defined by how useful he is to others would fix him

- i think his monocle is both for appearances and because he's got a bum eye, trying to hide it in a way that fits

- poor guy doesn't sleep well most nights. his morning tea, if he's able to have any, is highly caffeinated (i dont think he'd be that much of a coffee guy- not to mention the whole tea drinking thing is befitting of a british butler, so he'd roll with it)

- i'm on my period... so.... like.... i'm going to get a little freaky on main rn (feel free to skip over this, its nothing explicit) but i get So Sick of people seeing him as the daddy dom archetype. like yea older man ouuuu i have daddy issues oauauuu choke me whatever but i'm more inclined to think that he'd actually too insecure about his ability to please his partner to be that way. atleast, not without some sort of affirmation.

again, different strokes for different folks, but like. he is bordering 70. he grew up in the 1930s. i cannot be the only one who thinks this. or maybe i'm just a huge pervert idk (yes ❤️)

- in a similar vein, i'm glad that i havent seen any fanart of him muscular because i would be so mad but in the most respectful way possible – this man is, like, rail thin. i do think he does a decent amount of exercise when he can so its not like he's not a pile of bones. i'll admit that i've maybe drawn him a bit too skinny in the past though

ok my pain meds r kicking in and making me sleepy... if some things r kinda incoherent thats why. THANK U AGAIN ANON!!!

#u would think that this man absolutely disgusts me with the way that i talk about him #somehow hes very comforting in a way. like yea hes sexy but his character is also a reminder that aging isn't something to necessarily be-#-scared of #and thats something i worry alot about #flea talks #hellsing #walter c dornez #cc: walter #flea's headcanons

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helaelaemond · 1 year ago

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Osferth and #35

White Mustang - Lana Del Rey - 'caught up in my dreams / you held me a little too tight in your arms / I couldn't stop the way I was feeling the day [...] I saw your white mustang.'

Based on some of the comments in s4-5...... Osferth has turned into quite the womaniser. So have some Osferth angst.

Osferth x established relationship!reader, allusions to smut

"He's got a different girl in every town."

"Some towns he's got half a dozen girls."

"You're nothing special to him, love. Don't pin your hopes on a man who doesn't want you like you want him. You won't be the one he chooses."

The summer sun is warm overhead as you wash the sheets with your friends. You push your hair back from your face and sigh. "I know. I know."

And you do know. In your little town, there are at least two other women whose beds he warms when he passes through. He doesn't talk about it openly, but it's not a secret, either. But he's your one and only. You hope that one day, he will change his mind. That he'll choose you.

The women washing with you give you pitying looks, and it makes your cheeks burn. Their advice is sage, despite the cut of their words, and anyone sensible would heed it. Love is rarely sensible, though.

Two days later, Osferth arrives. He clatters into the town square on his white horse with a smile that lights up the sky. You watch from the tavern doorway with your feet rooted to the ground and heart racing. He does not notice you. There is a flurry of activity around him, so why would he? His words carry across the distance in drips and drabs - hints of my lord Uhtred, four days past, and forces gathering to the north. Once upon a time, you would have listened with interest, but now? Now it is only the sound of his voice that you care for. It is not deep or high, mighty or weak. Mild and unremarkable, it is. It makes your soul sing.

That evening, you return to the tavern for supper. Your master has an arrangement with the establishment to feed his washer women twice a week in exchange for their services, and you have been in their number for a few years now. This summer's eve, fish is served to you. It is a fine meal. It does not distract you from the sight of Osferth across the hall with another woman in his lap. She is prettier than you. More lovely by far.

The food is ash in your mouth.

You know that you shouldn't try to approach him this evening and spoil his fun, for he is wild at heart, despite his calm disposition, and that has never been a mystery to you - but you can't help yourself. Jealousy curls in you like a serpent, and it warps your smile into a pained grimace that does not meet your warm eyes.

You approach his table where he is kept company by laughing men and women. His gentle gaze sharpens when he notices you approach, and his pretty lips part. "Oh. Good evening." Osferth says your name, and it sounds like a prayer. Such power he wields without even knowing. It kills your sorrow for a moment. "Would you care to join us?"

The woman in his lap looks at you as if you are truly welcome - no threat at all. You were girls together. She knows you. Knows you do not compare. His hand is on her thigh.

"No, thank you. I wished only to bid you a good evening, Osferth. Your company has been missed greatly."

"As has yours, kind lady."

What's the point in hiding your red eyes? Everyone here knows of your devotion to him. They pity you, for it is not you. It will never be you. But when it comes to Osferth, you have no pride. Only love. And so when your eyes sting and tears fill them, you only smile and nod, and excuse yourself. It's a moment of weakness that makes you look over your shoulder before leaving the tavern, and a moment of joy is your reward when you see him watching you go.

On your way home, you pass the stables and peek in. His pretty, white mare is boxed away for the night. You pass her an apple that you picked earlier and she takes it from you without flattening her ears back. It makes you feel close to him. His mount likes you. Or, at least, tolerates you. Much like him. Toleration. No devotion.

The moon is shining above you when there is a knock on your door. You wipe the tears from your eyes, and open it. There's rosemary oil in your hair.

Osferth stands in the threshold. "Forgive me for the hour." He holds out a handful of wildflowers. "For you."

Anyone with pride would send him away. You have no pride. "Osferth."

It's sickening how widely he smiles when you say his name. "I've missed your voice a great deal."

"I've missed saying your name."

"Say it again. Please?"

Your eyes sting again. "Osferth."

He kisses you.

What is worse, you think later, is that the kiss does not last long. For after a tender kiss, he closes the door and sits with his legs crossed on your bed, and he talks with you. For what feels like hours, you talk together of what has happened in your lives since the winter you saw him last.

"You're unlike anyone I've ever met," he murmurs as you lie, face to face, on your straw bed. He strokes the hair away from your face.

"Is that a good thing?" you ask, butterflies in your stomach.

"I think so. You make me... you make me feel understood."

"You are understood."

He whispers your name. His lips are gentle against yours, his hand warm on your waist. It slides down over your hip and around the back of your thigh, and he hooks your leg over his. "Please," comes his request between deep kisses. "I've missed you so much."

"I've missed you, too." You drag your fingernails across his scalp and it brings a moan to his throat. "Stay with me tonight."

"There is nowhere I'd rather be."

"Did you have her?" The answer doesn't matter really, for he can have you either way now, too. But the question escapes you before you have the chance to catch it.

"No," Osferth breathes. His hips slowly move against yours while he scatters kisses over your jaw and neck. "She tried, but... all I could see when she kissed me was you."

"She is prettier than me."

"Yes." He runs his nose through your hair and whimpers your name. "But you are dearer to me by far."

You make his toes curl later. You know you make him forget everything but your name, and it turns his tender touches harder and more demanding, until his sweet lovemaking devolves into rough fucking. You take from each other over and over, giving as much in return, too. In your arms, Osferth finds bliss. In his arms, you take the love he cannot give. It's too much. It's not enough.

Morning comes, and you roll over with an ache between your legs and longing in your heart. "Osferth," you murmur sleepily.

The empty room offers no answer. There is no trace of him left, and you wonder if you imagined it all. Across the town square, Osferth tucks a vial of rosemary oil into his bag. He cannot take you with him. But the memory of you is something he will keep.

#osferth x reader #osferth x you #mine #osferth x oc #ask #arcielee

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