#because I couldn't really find a stock sound effect that I liked

[calamitaswrath]

I recently went through my saved clips from TGAA again, remembered this clip, and finally made an edit that I wanted to do for over two years now.

[just-some-trans-nobody]

Male Yautja trying out a period cramp simulator with his ooman mate

Reader is AFAB but only gender neutral prounons are used. In this reader is someone who currently suffers horrible cramps or has in the past.

Warnings: cursing, period pain simulated

Minors Don't Interact!

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

The both of you had gone into market to stock up on somethings your mate couldn't go out and hunt like cleaning supplies and a new pan seeing as you mate had accidentally broken the last one, though you suspected he had been playing with it and was embarrassed that he had broken it... again.

Looking around you smiled seeing a booth selling little knick knacks and trinkets. Nothing really caught your eyes until you noticed a small crowd all watching someone in a chair seemingly in pain as they all looked on in amusement. Raising your brow you watched confused on what wad going on and why they found it so entertaining to watch. Your mate seemed interested too as he started walking over wanting to know what was going on too. With quick steps you struggled to keep up with his long strides, damn him for being so tall.

Approaching the crowd it didn't take you long to find out what was going on. It was a period cramp simulator that the public could try out. People of course were using it to show off how much pain they could endure. It made you chuckle that this was being made into a test of strength because of course. The guy in the chair tapped out quickly after getting to the eighth setting. A few people layed at him and patted his shoulder, you assumed they were friends of his. The person running the simulator, a mass of squirming tentacles looked to you and trilled at the sight of a human. "Come come! Try it out show how a quoman deals which such crippling pain!" They squealed gesturing for you to come up to the chairs thst were set up. This got the crowds attention, they wanted to see how well a human could handle it.

This attention on you from the crowd caused your mate to let out a possessive growl as he put a arm in front of you. He didn't like strangers looking at his mate and he definitely didn't want someone causing his mate pain. "No no it's fine love." You said putting your hand on his outstretched arm. "Let's try it together." You suggested giving him a warm smile, if the two of you hadn't been in public that smile would have made him purr. He had mixed feelings he wanted to show off to his mate but he didn't want his mate in pain. The cheering crowd had little to no effect on him, he didn't care about them, only you. "I can handle it love and if I can't I will just tap out. It's ok." You reassured going on your tip toes to kiss his cheek. He almost slipped up and let out a purr feeling your kiss. Oh how he adored your kisses, he couldn't say no to them. Slowly he nodded his head and walked up to the chairs with you.

His chair groaned at the weight of his body when he sat down. Yours didn't make a single sound. He didn't hide his distan seeing the tentacled alien put the pads onto your stomach, he hated seeing someone touch his mate. You didn't mind but you weren't a fan of how cold they were. Next was your mates turn to get the sticky pads put on his stomach. This was terrifying for the slimy alien to do, they rushed the job wanting to make a little distace from the glaring yautja. Once everything was set up they moved away and gave the both of you a warning before turning the dial to the first setting.

Neither of you had much of a reaction from it. Your mate hardly even felt it and you shown no response to it. You only looked to your mate with a smile before looking back to the operator nodding when the asked if you were reay for the next level.

Still not much of a response from the two of you. It felt like a walk in the park to you. "Heh wish my cramps were this light." You joked laughing softly. You mate raised a brow hearing that. He was curious to know just how bad your cramps were, they couldn't be that bad right?

The third setting he finally started feeling somthing but it was well bellow his pain level. Looking to you he noted that you were still smiling happyily feeling rather giddy at this experience. The crowd were a little horrified and absolutely amazed to see you smiling durning this. Usally people weren't this happy to be in pain.

Fourth setting made your mate a little uncomfortable. Just enough for him to shift lightly in his seat. Still you were just smiling giggling softly seeing your mate shifting. "You ok love? You can tap out if you need." You teased boiling his blood. This was a challenge now, he wanted no he needed to get to a higher seating than you.

His stomach tensed at the fith setting. It was a pain he could handle but if he had to deal with it for a week every couple of weaks it would have ade him pretty grumpy he knew that for sure. Glancing to you he was surprised to see you just sitting there lazily as you smiled as of it was nothing. "I couldn't get past that setting. How do humans do it?" Someone from the crowd whispered to another. You didn't hear it but your mate sure did.

Six? Oh boy ow. Still your mate wasn't backing down nd neither was you. His manbles flared into a smirk seeing you wince for a momemt. He hoped you were about to tap out when you opened your mouth but was taken back hearing you laugh. "This feels like one of my lighter days." You said with an amused tone gaining a few shocked gasped from the crowd.

You finally shifted at seven before getting comfortable again after adjusting. "Still not as bad as it get's." You said taking it in stride. The person who had gone before you was in absolutely shock and horror that not only did a human beat him but did it like a champ. Your mate was irritated he still hadn't bested you but was honestly admiring how well you handling the pain. He was gripping the arm rest so hard it splintered in his hand.

He nearly tapped out at eight holy fuck it hurt so bad. Looking to you his eyes bulged seeing that you were only lightly resting your hand on your stomach. "You ok honey?" You asked letting out a shaky breath. Fuck, he was so attracted to you. Look at you hardly reacting to the pain he was struggling with. His little ooman was so strong and he some how was falling even more in love with you than he was before.

Once at nine he was hunched over holding his stomach tight. "D-do you want to tap out?" The operator asked him gaining a loud growl in return. His dreads surrounded his head like a current. He tried glancing to you but he didn't have the strength to pull his arms away to move them out of his sight. You were simply holding your stomach with a frown as you slowly breathed in and out. The crowd murmuring to each other watching in quiet shock and amazement.

He couldn't, he couldn't anymore he had to tap out at ten he couldn't it was too much. Letting out a pained roar he ripped the pads off his stomach and looked to you. Just sitting there focused on your breathing with knitted brows and a frown. "To much for you?" You asked clenching a arm on your stomach as you gripped the arm rest. The crowd cheered astonished that you made it to ten. Quickly the operator turned it off and took the pads off you.

"It must be broken no way a ooman could do that!" Shrieked the male who had gone before you stomped up to the front of the crowd gaining a growl from the very grumpy and possesive mate of yours. "Let me try the one the ooman used!" He demanded. Shrugging the operator put the pad on him and turned it on. "No to the ten! If the ooman can do it so can I!" He stomped his foot acting like a toddler throwing a fit. "You asked for it." The operator warned before setting it to the tenth setting. Immediately he was on the ground walling as loud as his lungs would let him. This caused the crowd to roar with laughter as the operator quickly turn it off. Stand up the male waddled away holding his stomach greatly embarrassed by the scene he had caused.

Your mate was absolutely delighted by this. His mate was so strong. Moving closer to you he wrapped his arms around your waist whispering praises to you. He bought you so many gifts before the two of you finally went home. The whole time he was praising you on your strength. Definitely looks at you in a new light. Who knew you delt with that much pain so often. He understands so much better now why you snap so much or were unable to walk some days. More worried about you now any time you have cramps, he's gone through the pain and now he knows how you feel, he feels so bad you had to keep doing dealing with it unable to just turn it off. Any time you had cramps he was cooing and pampering you as much as you let him.

[oharabunny]

imagine miguel pining for you but he finds out you are fucking someone else, but not in the way that he thinks

Word Count: 3591

Warning: 18+, mdni, switch!fem!afab!Reader (dom to sub), switch!Miguel (sub to dom), unnamed sub!malethird, jealous!Miguel, aggression, MMF threesome, cuckholdery (not on Miguel), p in v, fingering, blowjob, some spanking, porn without plot, not beta read, oneshot

Imagine Miguel was pining over you, obsessed, I mean. For awhile, basically almost ever since you joined the Spider Society. You have a smile that shines brighter than the sun. Your eyes twinkle when you look up at his tall figure. Your scent always lingered wherever you were at, in the most pleasant way. He always paid attention to every little subtle quirks and habits you have. From the sway of your hips as you move, to the way you squint and pucker your lips in deep thought. Besides the fate of the multiverse, you occupied the remaining space of his mind, which was a lot. Even sometimes to the point the thought of you would distract him from his work when he smells you coming from behind. You didn't even know the sheer effect you had on this guy.

Imagine Miguel overheard your conversation with Jess one day about your type in guys. You tell her you don't engage in those types of thoughts since you never really gave it a real, serious thought before. At first, Miguel is disappointed to hear that, but quickly recovers to the fact he had a chance due to your perceived innocence. How hardworking and dedicated to your job you must be. You were always so busy with so many things, you probably never even had your first time yet. He could already feel himself hardening in his suit at the thought of being your one and only. 

Imagine Miguel was agitated to the fact you were not answering his messages and calls over your dimensional watch one day to join an emergency meeting he ordered, despite it being your off day. It wasn't just you he called, mind you, so you were being incredibly rude for ignoring his messages and making him and the other Spiders wait. It didn't help that his feelings for you only served to agitate him even more than usual. He had enough of waiting for you as his patience was as thin as paper. He headed to your dimension to fetch you himself.

Imagine Miguel barged through your window to your living room in your apartment. His heightened senses could already hear sounds coming from your bedroom. Sounds that made his blood run cold. It was moaning. It wasn't you who was moaning, but another man's. He stalked to the bedroom door silently and leaned in to hear because he refused to believe a sweet, innocent girl like you are hooking up with some rando, but he was also too hesitant to see it for himself. 

"Oh! Y/N!! R-Right there! Aaaah~! Mmm~"

Now that didn't sound quite right. Why was the scumbag's tone like that? There was a hitch in his voice. Too high pitched imitating a girl. He had enough of listening in and swung open the bedroom door, and he couldn't believe his eyes.

Some small framed, small dicked man was tied up pathetically to your headboard with your webbing with his legs up over your shoulders as you fingered his ass with two, while wearing women's lingerie and stocking.

As for you, you weren't anything particularly special, you weren't even wearing a bra even. Just a tank and booty shorts. 

The little man's voice hitched and sobbed, "Y/N! W-Why's he here?" 

You didn't even flinch nor acknowledge Miguel's rude entrance. You slid your hand across his chest and your body against his to cradle and caress his form. You cupped his cheek, turned his face to Miguel,  and looked up at Miguel directly into his red eyes. He has never seen you give that look to anyone before.

His face was still masked but you can see his jaw grinding, seething at the sight before him. His fists were balled so tight his claws drew blood in his palm. All this time, he thought he knew you like the back of his hand, but you had a darkness that you kept away from him too well.

"What. The. Fuck. Are you doing?" Miguel's voice was low and dangerous. He wanted to rip you away from that lowly man, if you can call him one, and fuck you properly. To put you in your place.

You were his, and his alone. 

"Aw, looks like we got caught by the big man, he doesn't look too happy with us." You teased your little man with soft little pecks on his cheek as you trailed down to his neck and stroked his tiny cock up and down with just your thumb and pointer finger making a ring. You never once broke eye contact with Miguel. 

That only angered and infuriated him even more. You were teasing him, and no one makes fun of Miguel O'hara and live to tell the tale.

His heavy footsteps could be mistaken for stomps as he walked up to your bed to yank you off of your little fling and hold you up by your tank top, dangling over the floor.

"I never took you for a whore." He growled in your face.

"And I never took you for someone so presumptious and...nosy." You smirked before going straight to the point. "Why do you care about an employee's private life?"

He couldn't recognize you at all. You were always so gentle, kind, sweet, and understanding. What happened to you? It was like something posessed you. 

His grip on your tank top only tightened. 

"You were supposed to answer your calls and messages when I send them. In case you forgot, we have a meeting today." He avoided the true answer to your question. "Now let's go."

He was quite literally about to just drag you as is, without your Spider suit. He didn't care if you were underdressed. That was your fault for ignoring him when he needed you. For being such a slut. Even if you were never his to begin with.

You never once flinched at his apparent anger. Actually, something about it turned you on.

Ah, he was jealous. 

Yes, you had noticed his likened interest in you, but you never gave it much thought. He wasn't really your type. You preferred smaller men. You loved the thrill of being in control and to feel powerful. You loved watching the way they squirm and cry in pleasure when you hit the right spot inside. You loved watching small cocks grow triple in size that you normally can't see with ones that are already big to begin with. 

Miguel is a big guy, in every sense of the word. You can tell. You don't usually enjoy submitting to big men. It wasn't...your thing.

So you wonder to yourself, why were you about to do your next move?

Your gaze turned sultry and your previous smirk fall into soft smile. Your hand made its way to his crotch. You can feel the definition of his large veiny cock. Precum threatening to drip through his unstable suit. You palmed his clothed cock up and down, even gave his balls a gentle squeeze. 

"Then what are we going to do about this?" You practically whispered.

Now it was Miguel's turn for his voice to hitch. He tried to swallow his moan as he didn't expect you to come onto him all of a sudden. He didn't move to stop you, however. 

Your other hand slid along his strong muscular abs, up up up, over his chest, neck, until you reached his mask and ripped it off his face to reveal him in a panting mess. His fangs protrude as his mouth is agape. His eyes dilated and filled with want. His hair disheveled with strands dangle over his angular face. 

"You want this." You said as if you spoke his mind.

But his own denial caught up to him and pushed his unwanted thoughts away, and dropped you to the floor. His gaze was a war of emotions that you can't depict. All you knew he was only trying to suppress himself, for one reason or another. It didn't matter to you.

You stood up to press your perfect, curvacious body against his hard one. He can feel your two large mounds against him spurring his mind from what he originally intended to do. You were too close. Far too close for comfort.

He ducked and wrapped his arms around you in fevered desperation and kissed your lips hungrily. This kiss was a sloppy mess. He stopped in between breaths to kiss your jaw and neck. His hands roaming all over you trying to memorize every nook and cranny.

With your super strength, you shoved him off in annoyance. You glared at him coldly.

"I didn't give you permission to touch me." You said flatly.

He shot you a confused look until you moved closer to him and guided him into your bed. You made him lay on his back and moved his arms above him. You were about to use your own webbing to his wrists, but his eyes began to panic and his breathing quickened.

You didn't need him to tell you that he didn't want that. You softened your gaze at him in understanding. You gave a light peck on his cheek, right under his eye. 

"You will be okay. I will take care of you." You said in the gentlest voice you can make. "But you have to be a good boy for me. You have to listen to me. Can you do that for me?"

He nodded. 

And you were not satisified with just that.

"You need to use your words, you big baby. Say, yes ma'am."

"Y-Yes, ma'am." His voice was shaky. His sensitivity was peaking and he couldn't help but buck into you as you are straddling on top of him. Your clothed pussy deliberately pressed against his hard cock.  His arms move down to try and grab you again but you swatted them away. 

"Do not touch me until I say so." You commanded. 

"Yes ma'am!"

He learned fast.

"Now, deactivate your suit." You ordered but it was gentle. And he does, without a second thought. Your hips start to roll and glide along his veiny cock. You made sure you could feel his big cock from every inch of your clothed pussy. The thin fabric of your booty shorts gave nothing to separate between the two of you. He even notices that the loose thin material of your shorts bunched into your puffy, needy pussy. You weren't wearing panties. You coated his cock with your slick. The way you angled your hip allowed your clit to also glide along.

Your hands were at first on his abs to stablize yourself, but when he revealed his glorious pecs, you couldn't help yourself but to cup them with your hands and massage and squeeze them roughly. Your fingers would pinch and roll his nipples. You ducked down and captured his left nipple into your wet mouth. You sucked and flicked his nipple with your tongue. You even bite down his mounds, causing a sharp pain, before quickly consoled by your soft tongue.

His fists were balled into the sheets. He was doing everything he can to not touch you, as you ordered. His claws were escaping and were tearing your sheets. His back was arching, pressing his chest more into your mouth. 

A string of undecipherable words fell out of his mouth. All of these sensations were too much for him. He was too stimulated. Tears were welling up in his eyes. He wanted to say something but his heavy pants were getting in the way of his words.

He whimpered.

Your mouth lets go of his nipple in delight. Never had you seen the most proud and ferocious manly man trembling in a pathetic mess right under you. 

That deserved a reward.

You leaned into his face and peppered sweet kisses along his cheek and licked away his tears. You brought your hand to his jaw and captured his lips into a deep kiss. Your tongue poked at his lips for permission, which he lets you. Your tongues battled against each other with not any one particularly winning, rather it was more of a dance. 

He pulled away first.

"P-Please! Let me touch you!" He begged. Tears threatening to well up again. "I need to be inside of you!"

You didn't answer him just yet. Debating it in your thoughts. Sure you enjoyed making him a sobbing mess underneath you, but it didn't change the fact that he was BIG. You weren't too experienced with bigger cocks.

Before you could even give an answer, the forgotten little man, your lover turned third, had also whimpered in desperation for you. "Please don't forget me, Y/N!"

He seemed to be palming himself during the entire ordeal and squeezing his nipple. 

"I need you too." He sobbed.

Your gaze that was fixated at Miguel turned over to your little lover. "C'mere, sweet boy, I didn't forget you."

You pulled yourself up from Miguel to reach for him, but Miguel pulled you right back down to him.

"Don't touch him!" His eyes were red flared with anger and jealousy. "You're mine!"

As if he had enough for your taunts, he sat up and flipped you over. This had surprised you which didn't give you time to react. He pinned your arms to the side of your head. He glared down at you with a mixture of resentment and lust. You were too surprised at this switch, so he took the chance to finally devour you.

Hot kisses that were nothing like the ones you gave him. His were needy, hungry, and rough. He wasn't afraid to bite your neck and suck on it. A moan escaped from you. You never felt this way before. 

Now it was his turn to straddle you. He ripped away your tank top and shorts with ease and threw away all the shredded fabric aside. He kneeded your breasts and gave them a hard squeeze. 

"I should've never given you the day off. Shouldn't have let you go home. You fucking whore."

He slapped your breasts. 

You moved your hands to cover your mouth to stifle a moan, but his hands shoved them back to the side of your head.

"You're not covering your mouth. Be my little slut that you are. I want you to scream till the whole neighborhood hears you."

All of his senses are clouded and reason all gone. His movements were animalistic as he bucked his cock on the lips of your folds to catch more slick. The only mercy he was going to give you.

"Now take it."

He plunged right in so hard and so fast. You convulsed and screamed. You weren't used to being this full, nor this level of pain and pleasure mixed together. 

His pace was brutal. You looked down. Horror struck your face. He didn't even bottom out yet. 

"This isn't even all of me." He smirked. One hand hovered your clit and his thumb drew circles on it. Nothing gentle about it. The sheer shock of electricity caused you to scream.

The pleasure of your clit being roughly massaged convulsed your walls to tighten and loosen. He used it as an opportunity to go all the way in. His balls slapping against your ass as he pumps into your swollen pussy in full. 

You tried to put your hands on his shoulders to leverage yourself but he swatted them away and say: "Do not touch me till I say so."

He lifted your legs and folded them over your shoulder lifting up your hips in consequence which allowed him to reach even deeper into you. Even more so when he stepped onto the mattress with his foot.

You couldn't stop sobbing. Drool was flying out of your mouth, but you couldn't give a damn. This was new levels of high you had never even begin to imagine. 

You were so cock drunk that you couldn't focus on anything or anyone. However, you still tried to focus on him, his eyes, and when you do, your eyes widen in pure realization that he fully intended to breed you. Breed you till your belly was swollen. 

He was getting close. You could tell too with the way his pace picked up in speed. You were close too.

Somehow, your little lover creeped up into your mind. Perhaps a little guilt from the fact that this had been intended to be between you two. 

"W-Wa....it!" Your words sputtered out. You tried to reach him with your hands again.

He shot a cold glare down at you. "Don't. Touch."

"H-He ne-eds to cum!"

Then, he halted. He harshly grabbed your face.

"Even when I punish you, you're still thinking about other men." He looked at him. His tiny cock was still trapped in that frilly white lingerie he probably chose to wear. Fucking pervert. The two of you. 

But he couldn't help but see an allure in that little man's eyes. That remniscent look he desperately craved. He was quivering and desperate. Yes, he indeed needed a release, badly. 

He wasn't going to get him off though. No, he won't touch his little thing. He has an aversion to it. He wants it to disappear if he's going to let him cum.

"Come over here." He ordered and gestured over as he slowly moved inside of you, maintaining his high so it doesn't go away. He was going to finish inside you no matter what. 

"Sit on her face. Put your cock into her mouth." He sternly instructed. He lowered your legs, spread them outward, and pulled you down so your pussy was at the edge of the bed to give your third a room. "Y/N, suck." 

Your little lover does he was told and sat on your face with his cock in your mouth. You didn't complain either. You began to suck his half hard cock and it grew bigger instantly. Though, nowhere near as big as Miguel's. He still fit perfectly in your mouth and throat. Your tongue swirled and your cheeks hallowed on his cock, causing him to bounce up and down into your mouth. 

Miguel, on the other hand, reached back to his brutal pace in your tight pussy and watched as this perverted guy fuck your face. Knots began to form in his chest.

He slapped his ass, which rewarded him a girlish yelp. Then he slapped it again. And again. And again. His small ass turning pink to a glowing, stinging red which Miguel would contrast with a firm yet consoling grope. 

You sucking him wasn't enough, Miguel thought to himself, as he remembered when the beginning of this encounter. He let go of your legs which you weren't ready for so they fell limp at first, but you didn't want to lose your connection to his cock so you wrapped your legs around his waist to keep him inside you. 

Miguel groped your third's cheeks before spreading them apart and stuck his thick, long pointer finger inside. 

"A-AH! MIGUEL!!" He cried and arched his back. 

Miguel smirked at this and started pumping his ass. His finger curled up and played the inside of his tight walls to find his perfect spot. He then added another finger inside and continued pumping him. He lost his strength and bent over your face to grab anything to leverage on. 

How he managed to give equal focus to the both of you were beyond your comprehension, because he never once stuttered. No matter how many things he had to do separately, he did everything in a rhythm. 

You were so unbelievably full from both ends. Your climax was coming. You moaned into your little lover's cock so loud it could be confused with a scream. 

Miguel and your little lover were not too far behind either. Just a few more thrusts here, and few more there. You all came crashing down and coated your insides white. 

None of you moved from where you were as you all rode out the highs and catching your breaths. Your legs fell limp letting go of Miguel who stayed inside you for some reason. While your little lover eventually did exit your mouth and rolled over on to the bed, completely spent. 

Miguel slowly pulled out, but not without lifting your hips up first.

"W-What are you doing?" You asked shyly; your breath still shaking. 

He shoved his fingers into your puffy little pussy. "I can't have it go to waste." He simply said. That statement alone tightened your walls around his fingers. 

When he felt sure enough that his cum won't leak out, he laid you back down gently. He walked away for a second to go dig in your closet to cover. Oh, and to get your suit too.

You laid prettily on your bed with your little lover all spent just like him. Eyes hazy and you both stared at each other. Both faces inches apart. You get closer and closer.

Until Miguel abruptly lifts you off the bed, wraps you up in a towel, and takes you away from him. His suit was already back on, and he fired up the dimensional portal. 

"When we get back, I'm cleaning out your mouth with my cock, you greedy slut." You glared at him with everything that you have.

He smirked, rejoicing to the fact you enjoyed this, even if you won't admit it.

"You better be fucking ready."

The End.

A/N: Okay this one was longer than intended because I was just going to jot down random ideas and let it be chaos, but it surprisingly came together as a decent oneshot. Mind you, this is the first time I ever wrote a complete story, regardless if it's a oneshot. I'm open to any feedback. I'm not very good at dialogue usually. I'm also actually still new and fresh to this whole tumblr setup. So I apologize of how plain and unaesthetic my posts and page are. இ௰இ 

I also gotta thank my new friend @miguelswifey04 for encouraging me to write it out! Hope you enjoyed it. Now go take a shower. Lord knows I need to cuz I wrote all of this in one go.

[cybertron-after-dark]

You should write beast wars, can I have some silly predacon headcanons?

I should absolutely write beast wars. Silly Predacon headcanons coming up

-Megatron talks battle strategy with his rubber duck all the time. He considers it his most trusted advisor because it's never said anything stupid and never tried to kill him. Honestly, he's tempted to think of the little dude as his only real friend.

-Speaking of Megatron, the man is a WHORE for a good bath bomb. Lush addiction, 100%. He has a whole hidden stock of bath bombs, bath salts, scented oils, candles, decorative soaps, scented metal polish and flower petals specifically for spoiling himself when he feels like hes completely surrounded by idiots. Which is often. Has he ever tried to eat one of the decorative soaps that look like baked goods? It doesn't count if it's the t rex hand.

-the reason skorponok occasionally reverts into caveman speak for some episodes is the writers couldn't figure out what to do with him he knows talking like that pisses off tarantulas and he thinks his annoyance is funny even though literally nobody else is amused by the bit.

-skorponok actually kind of misses dinobot because he made his job a lot easier. Constantly pitching ideas, suggesting battle strategies, pointing out flaws in plans. He was useful, even if he seemed to hate skorponok. He doesn't really know how to be a good second in command anymore because a crucial part of the dynamic is missing and he just can't adapt.

-waspinator is perfectly capable of speaking in normal grammar and not in the third person but he's been doing it since he joined in with Megatron and at this point he thinks he's in too deep to knock it off. He thinks it makes him sound cuter because it's actually an evolution of internet uwu speak. Memes get weirdly translated from earth to Cybertron and back.

-waspinator is actually really good at baking but he'll get blasted to bits a thousand times over before he lets anyone other than terrorsaur know because none of his other coworkers deserve to try his cupcakes (and also because he doesn't want to get "promoted" to kitchen slave). Dinobot knew, but he didn't snitch. Wasp never found out that Dinobot would occasionally snag a brownie, he always thought he just counted wrong.

-Terrorsaur is not above attempting to seduce a maximal but all his flirting attempts go horribly awry. If they don't outright reject him they just have no idea what he's getting at bc Predacon flirting is usually a lot different than maximal flirting so everyone thinks he's just kind of being a dick like usual. Dinobot knows exactly what is happening and ranges anywhere from amused to disgusted by the cross-faction fling attempts. The flying weasel clearly has no principles.

-Every couple weeks or so wasp and terrorsaur will get together to watch terrible movies over a bottle of highgrade and it always devolves into bitching about megatron. They tried inviting tarantulas a few times but he'd always make things Weird by bringing in slashers with really good special effects and proceeding to gush about how tasty the gore looks.

-Tarantulas knows what just about every living species in the known galaxy tastes like, organic, mechanical and everything in between. If it's made contact with Cybertron, chances are he's he's tried their flesh (or lack thereof). If it's at all possible, he wants to find out enough about the Vok to figure out how to capture, kill and eat one.

-Tarantulas also thinks rampage is a total poser when it comes to cannibalism. He doesn't even look like he's having fun with it. Barely any torturing or teasing beforehand, only dramatic monologues about fear and anguish. Bah! Amateur...

-Blackarachnia has a trash tv addiction. She doesn't know WHY the Darksyde's datatrax has every season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians and like 30 TLC produced shows, but she refuses to stop watching them. Tarantulas fucking hates it. She does not care and if he complains she will turn the volume higher.

-Blackarachnia has incredibly mixed feelings on the story Cinderella. On the one hand, it gives her a degree of hope. A girl reduced to a work slave for terrible people that gets to escape and live it up with a guy that lives her? Great conceptually, but she only got to get out of it because she was a good person and nice to everyone. Blackarachnia? Not quite so disgustingly sweet. She's a bad girl through and through. And evidently bad people don't get to escape bad situations. Oh well. She can always try to fake it til she makes it.

-Inferno has always secretly hoped that when the war is over, his Queen Megatron will settle down with him and repopulate the colony together. He has wildly saccharine domestic daydreams of being with his giant beloved lizardy queen and their 3000+ kids. He has accidentally let this slip around Megatron once, who proceeded to pointedly ignore what he just said.

-Terrorsaur and Blackarachnia got Inferno to watch Drag Race but upon hearing the contestants being called queen, he took it a bit too literally and interpreted the show as the sad, underwhelming way human queens settle disputes between their colonies instead of just fighting the proper way. Lame.

-Quickstrike is so so very sad he can't play video games. He wants to play GTA and cause excessive and wanton death and destruction, but his fucked up hands cannot hold the controller. He forsakes Primus for building him the way he did. He keeps trying to get tarantulas to make him a usable controller but he gets brushed off every time.

-Quickstrike has attempted to ride inferno in his beast mode into battle. It did not end well but for about a solid 18 seconds it looked metal as hell.

-Rampage actually really likes depth charge and wants to be friends sooooo bad but he doesn't know how to handle that in a healthy way so he keeps trying to get his attention by playing up the cannibalism thing and hoping they fight again. Honestly he just kind of likes depth charge holding him, even if it's in a chokehold.

-After losing transmutate, Rampage projected a lot of his grief onto waspinator, which lead to a very strange period of time on the ship where rampage would get very cuddly and protective of wasp, who was incredibly terrified of what would happen if he shoved the crab off. Usually accompanied by Rampage being Incredibly Sad.

-every month the preds have a game night. Usually a board game or card game with Megatron's house rules. Said house rules are specifically designed to make a fight break out for his amusement. These game nights typically end with at least three people in the r-chamber and somebody missing at least one limb.

[ellesthots]

Fateful Beginnings

XXI. “belonging”

parts: previous / next

plot: somehow, you always find your way back home. Batman gets an intriguing lead on John Doe.

pairing: battinson!bruce wayne x fem!reader

cw: 18+, dead body, cancer, confrontation, depression

words: 3.2k

Tears studded your cheeks as you vented to Mar about the morning's happenings. She'd never liked Dr. Vry, and at some point the conversation had exploded into a rant about the subpar character of the woman. "Remember when she accidentally input my A as a C and told me 'fate' must have guided her grade input? Then didn't fucking change it because of fucking, written in the stars bullshit? Fucking tanked my GPA."

"I just don't get it. The email said nothing about him, she said nothing about reporting on him besides being excited he would be there." You collapsed flat on your back in a starfish pose. "It was like she expected me to be starstruck by him or something. Like that was the only course of action." Like everyone else seems to be. The world caters to flashy, superficial things.

"Fuck her! You don't need her!"

You stared at her blankly for a moment. "Except for my housing, my food, my plane tickets back home?"

"How much an hour is it? Like $15?"

"$43."

"Oh fuck, in this economy you should've said you'd suck his dick, too."

Maybe you were spending a little too much time with her. "I feel like alluding to me doing anything with that man should be a crime." You flopped back on your bed and checked the time--it was barely past noon. You hadn't even managed to be at the job until the afternoon... shame threatened to cocoon you faced with such obvious failure. At this point you remembered the check Dr. Vry had sent would arrive today, and a few minutes later you sat inputting the code you'd been mailed to your digital check.

You spent the next twenty minutes listening to Mar continue to rant while you ordered some groceries. By that point she'd gotten a text from one of her friends for their Friday night bar hangout and had dismissed herself, leaving you tethered to your house as you waited to stock your fridge. You watched out the window as she got into an Uber, and after she was gone for sure, and just as the check deposited, you called your mom. Moreso even than the likely imminent firing, the stress of her health threatened to spiral you off the deep end. She picked up on the third ring. She sounded tired.

"Hey, hun." She cleared her throat, then yawned. You heard a small buzzing sound in the background, then heard a small meow. Another night he spent purring and cuddling her. Thanks, Walter. God, you were so glad she had him. "Everything alright? The photos you sent of your apartment were really good, I showed them to Debbie and she couldn't believe it! 'In GOTHAM?' is what she told me!"

To tell or not to tell about the troubles this week held? She yawned again. Not the time. "You sound tired." Your grip tightened around the phone.

She sighed. "My doctors moved my appointment to six thirty in the morning, can you believe that?" She tsk-d.

"How'd the appointment go?"

"Oh just fine. I had to sign a bunch of paperwork and talk to practically everyone in the place." She sounded bored and vaguely annoyed, which she hadn't been before. Irritability a potential side effect?

"Did the shot hurt?" Small talk, but what else was there to discuss? Your likely firing?

"Nope." She began cooing to Walter, who became exponentially louder with his purr.

"How's your arm? Any side effects yet?" God, why did things feel so dry today? Did Gotham really create so much distance already between you and your family? Were you just anxious and overthinking? Was she annoyed?

"My my, they must have you busy with interviewing skills."

You opened your mouth to respond, but she questioned you instead. "When are you coming back hon?"

This question confused you. "Uh, whenever you need me to, but I thought starting next month? For the injections?" You twirled with a frayed end on your blanket. Can I still return this? It's been like a week and it's already tearing apart... she snapped you out of your wandering with her next sentence.

"Sure, your dad and I are going on a cruise this week."

A cruise? Right after her first dose of an experimental cancer drug? With unknown side effects? "Mom, your treatment,"

"Oh we'll only be gone a week. Won't interfere with my next appointment." Walter meowed again. Who would be taking care of him?

"I mean, okay. I just think with not knowing the side effects of your first dose,"

"The way I see it dear is this might be the best I ever get to feel."

That sentence hit like a ton of bricks atop bruised ribs. "Couldn't you wait a week, just see the side effects?"

"The cruise leaves the port tomorrow."

"Mom,"

"We still can't believe that donor. Whoever they are, they really opened our finances up. Your father's been saving for years to try and make that initial bulk payment,"

You recalled the argument they'd had when your mother's cancer was initially found. Your mom wanted to start a payment plan immediately, but your dad thought if he put it into deferment for a few years and made payments to a high yield savings account every month their money would 'go exponentially further'. You hadn't cared much at the time, mostly because money stressed you the hell out, and at the time you were trying to avoid thinking about your mother's prognosis. Before you could decide what to say next, your dad had walked into the room and starting shouting loud enough for you to hear on the phone.

"Hey sweets, how are you and that Wayne guy doing?"

"I don't know how else to tell you guys I don't like him. We don't talk." This conversation was going nowhere, and you could smell an impending argument if you stayed on even another minute. You needed to check on one last thing before hanging up. "Who's looking after Walter?"

"Oh don't worry about that,"

"I am worried. Do you need me to come back to watch him?"

"Debbie will be stopping in throughout the week to check on him."

Walter was never very fond of Debbie; whenever she came over, in fact, he ran and hid. If you knew Debbie any less you might think Walter was placing judgment on her character, but no: she was just very loud, her laugh sounding a bit like a stampede. Walter was never very skittish, but after enough startles, he'd come to hide whenever he heard her come around. His discomfort was all you needed. "Tell her not to come, I'm coming home for the week."

"Hon," your mom began to chastise you, but you refused to let her finish. "No, no, I'm coming home tomorrow and I will stay with him. Case closed." After saying goodbye and lying about having already bought a nonrefundable ticket, you hung up and bought the earliest flight for tomorrow: 11am. You did your best to avoid thoughts of how the thousand Dr. Vry had sent was already disappearing, and filled the rest of your evening (sans figuring out what to do with fresh bags of perishable groceries) packing to head back the next day.

The bat signal hadn't lit since Thursday night. Bruce had been left reeling, kicking himself for not following up with Gordon on the owl debacle. He went out every night, and every few hours would move to the usual meeting place with Gordon to find an empty sky. It was Wednesday night before the signal lit again, and by that point Bruce had nearly gaslit himself into thinking the owls hadn't been there in the first place.

Gordon looked morose, but resolved. "We have the autopsy back for our John Doe." He held up a graphic photo of the man, gray and laid out on stainless steel. His chest and abdominal cavities were peeled open and pinned to keep tension, revealing a normal—yet punctured—chest and abdomen. Gordon confirmed its complete lack of novelty. "Nothing. Couldn't even trace back a name. No one posting about a missing husband, child, brother, nephew, friend." He paused to clear his throat. "However, we did find something unusual in one of his fillings."

"Unusual? How?"

"The coroner said he almost didn't catch it, but he runs the deceased through an MRI machine after especially gruesome cases. Normally fillings don't show up on magnets, but these ones did." He held out his other hand, revealing a few small pieces of chipped silvery metal. The metal was extremely slick and had a mirror finish to its shine. "It's a metallic alloy of sorts. I'll send it to the lab for processing."

He nearly asked to take it back to his own lab, but that would pressure the boundaries. Gordon was in a tight spot being seen with Batman. He couldn't push it. "How long until it's processed?"

Gordon shrugged, his nose scrunched like he was still smelling formaldehyde's stench. Bruce thought he might've caught a whiff off his jacket. "Not more than a coupla days. I'll signal for you." If the city was in a better place, if Gordon was in a better mood, he might have winked.

The pause gave Bruce just enough time to speak. He said it casually, without much fuss, as if it were a rolling breeze. "Did you see what was on the knives' handles?"

Gordon sighed. A good one? A bad one? Bruce's eyes trained on him like a hawk. The cowl felt tight. "Chicken scratch, most of 'em."

"Most?" Say more.

"No traceable logo."

Frustration bled into his tone. "Looked like an owl."

Gordon's eyes focused on no particular point on the back wall, his eyes narrowing. What? He saw it too, right? pounded against his ribs to be heard. After what felt like hours Gordon shook his head. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" Was this an elaborate scheme? Did Gordon not see it? Was his, was his mind failing him? It glinted off the light perfectly, the etching was transparent in its shape, the beak, the feathers, the claws...

"You alright?" The Bat was lost in thought, breathing thick and heavy. Bruce nodded. To push, or not to push? Silence hung like smog between them. It was crucial to push it, imperative to reality check his mental faculties. "It didn't resemble an owl to you?"

Gordon shrugged. It gave no information to Bruce, who was close to running out of the room and laying face-down in his pillow the rest of the night while he actively avoided looking further into the death of his great-grandfather. Was his time coming sooner than his had? Was it due to his lack of sociability? Had he been concussed one too many times? His neuronal pathways seized up, the myelin sheaths disintegrated?

"Do you know anything about owls?"

Did Gordon know? Was this a trick question? Wait, he wasn't Bruce. He considered saying he'd seen them in peculiar position throughout town, but moreso than Gordon's rocky relationship with the police force, the man had no idea who Batman was; Bruce had to keep exclusively to formidable behavior due to the weakness of the knot tying them together. A kooky moment, or a Freudian slip could force Gordon to take out some scissors and sever their relationship. Bruce shook his head, and left.

Uber. TSA. Flight. Baggage. Uber. Key. Door. Lock. Walter. Eat. Sleep. Walter. Eat. Sleep. Walter. Eat. Sleep. Walter. The past few days had passed in such inconsequential monotony you resisted the conclusion you weren't alive at all. The only moments of reprieve you gathered were when Walter walked up and jumped into bed beside you, tucking his fluffy back against your stomach. He was the only reason you were able to sleep with the anxiety of your job being in limbo, and your mom having fled the town after her first shot. Your mom had left a note saying that the connection would be spotty on the cruise, but they would be back no later than 5pm the following Friday. Now it was Wednesday, and the food your parents had left was starting to dwindle. Your muscles ached to be moved further than the walk from your bed to the bathroom, your bed to the kitchen, or your bed to the living room couch. You put another ice cube into Walter's bowl, grabbed your helmet that was thankfully still in the hallway closet, and took off for a ride to the grocery store on your mom's old bike.

The air was warm, and the sun threatened to burn every centimeter of exposed skin. You'd forgotten just long enough that the stinging sensation was of hot sun piercing onto skin to where you decided against going back for SPF. You didn't have to worry about such basic, human things in Gotham; the sun barely came out, and when it did it was covered by such dense clouds and thick smog you couldn't begin to feel heat against your skin whatsoever. The buildings were hard and cold, the dense metal keeping you chilled no matter the season. Now the sun accosted you, the wheels of the bike running over fresh leaves and the occasional string of hay. You swerved past clumps of clay dirt that lay in the middle of the road, shut your eyes for a few seconds as you coasted, not having to look out for a pedestrian or car every five feet. This was living, this was where you wanted to be. Tears prickled your eyes as you coasted into the dusty parking lot of WinCo, a local grocery store chain to the PNW. You forgot a bike lock, but the city was small and trusted enough that you never heard about bikes getting stolen, anyway. The initial panic was immediately eased, as well as the tight knot in your chest. Maybe you belonged... here?

You walked into the grocery and went straight for the fruit aisle. As you placed apples and oranges and pears in your basket, you absentmindedly flipped through the past. When you were growing up here, it was too boring. You'd wanted nothing more than to leave. You wanted to see skyscrapers, and big cities, and always have something happening around you. Now that you had experienced the worst of what a city could give, this town with its penetrating sun and lofty trees felt like paradise. A paradise that was quickly interrupted, when you accidentally knocked baskets with Lara. "Oh shit,"

"Y/N?" She pulled her basket in and glanced to her left, at someone who you presumed was her exchange boyfriend. She stared at your shoes, you noticed her cheeks going pink. Tension yanked on your shoulders and your stomach flipped. "Hi. I'm watching Walter while my parents are on a cruise."

"No longer in Gotham?" Her boyfriend turned around when she mentioned The Most Feared City, and walked over. "Gotham? That shitshow? I don't know how anyone can live there."

Fucking prick. A strange defensiveness overtook you. "It's not as bad as people make it out to be." Yes it was. "I'm just visiting home, I have a journalism job back there."

"How's Bruce Wayne?" Her tone was mocking, quite unlike Lara, and you figured it had to be Rose and Gabbi's bitter influence in the time you'd been gone that brought this upon her. Mystery Man's eyes lit up, one of the buttons on his shirt threatened to pop like the bulgy vein in his forehead. "You know Bruce Wayne? The Bruce Wayne?"

"She knows him, alright." She side-eyed the guy and giggled. He laughed, which was startling, and shame bolted through your body like a sticky, sharp rod. He leaned into her ear and said, still loud enough for you to hear and likely purposely so, "Her?"

Before shame could fully envelope you, you righted the wrong; in part because the idea of someone believing Bruce had been inside you made you want to sink into the floor, in another wanting to assuage yourself of guilt. "We haven't fucked. Sorry. I was just trying to get back at losers I thought were my friends."

Lara gasped. "I can't believe you!" It rung hollow in your ear just as Dr. Vry had. If someone put their hand over your head they'd feel steam. "You didn't used to be like this, it's fucking disappointing." You spun around and ignored what she was saying behind you, shoving your feet against the ground, making your calves burn with each grief-consumed footstep. It doesn't matter what they think. It doesn't matter what she's saying. Soon enough you made it across the store to the pantry aisle, pretending to inspect some cavatappi noodles in your quivering hands. The cardboard soaked up your bulleted tears, and you tossed it in your basket after catching a glimpse of your reflection in the boxes' plastic window. You fell to your knees and covered it up pretending to inspect the marinara, not trusting your thighs or knees to keep you steady. Everything hit you all at once, panic rising in your chest and narrowing your esophagus. You grabbed a random sauce and ran to the self checkout, ringing up your two items, grabbing a bag, and taking off for home.

The ride home wasn't as quaint as the one there. The sun wasn't at your backside, now it seared into your bleary eyes as it set, making you unable to see a rock in the road, sending you flying overtop the handlebars. When you touched your knees and elbows, they stung and stained your fingertips red. The last ten minutes of the walk was utter misery, as blood dribbled slowly down your knees and down to your wrists. Walter meowed when you came back, but you couldn't pet him. You turned the water as cold as you could manage to wash away the cakey blood and dirt. Your hands hesitated before lathering the shampoo, and when they scrubbed the back of your head you began to cry again. Your face was hot and your body ice cold. You sat on the floor, pulled your knees up, and wrapped your hands around your chest as sobs shrieked out of you. The water ran pink, then pastel, then clear. Being alive hurt. The thought pounded at the back of your corneas, chafed blisters between your thighs, and spiked the ridges in your throat, that you might never, ever, feel "home". Walter meowed at the door, you turned off the shower, and toweled off to open another can of Friskies.

[gamerdog1]

Morbius Review

Yeah, I know I'm late to the party with this one, but better late than never, eh?

I think everyone knows, or has at least heard of the infamous Morbius movie. A film trying so hard to launch a universe of Spider-Man baddies without Spider-Man, that got launched into the spotlight through sheer force of meme potential. You couldn't take to steps anywhere on social media without hearing about it.

Fast forward a few years, and while picking out bean sprouts from pad thai I could've sworn I asked for without, I decided to give this living legend a go. And what I found, unfortunately, does not live up to the hype.

The film follows a doctor with rare blood disease, who spends his entire career experimenting to find a way to cure himself. When he discovers that splicing bat DNA into his own blood eases his symptoms, he thinks he's cured, but quickly realizes that he's become a bloodthirsty vampire. With the feds hot on his tail, Morbius tries to find a way to fix himself, save his girlfriend, and avoid the wrath of his rival.

Sadly, my wordy plot summary does this film more justice than it does itself. This film drags on more than a grandmother giving a stern talking-to. So much of this film is bland, stock set-up, and then when Morbius finally becomes a vampire, we quickly go back to human drama like its nothing. Its almost like the film doesn't think we should see him doing cool things for very long, so it forces the little freak to sit down, shut up, and be normal while it keeps spinning its yarn about hospital workers and rare diseases.

its quite an accomplishment, really, to make a story like Morbius' so dull. At times I found myself on my phone, distracted from all the mundane talking scenes. I now understand how my little cousins feel, when they ask me to skip to fight scenes in shows we watch.

Eventually, when the seriousness of this film bubbles over, it becomes accidentally hilarious. Jared Leto saying "stinky little pinky" nearly made me spit out my drink, and watching him and Matt Smith throw each other around like ragdolls had me kicking my feel and giggling. This film should not be funny, and clearly isn't trying to be, yet somehow it is. Maybe if all other crappy Sony movies like these did this, we'd be a better society.

However, I'm not counting out this film entirely. At various times while watching, I exclaimed "that was pretty cool" or "what a nice shot", unsarcastically of course. Within this ball of over-seriousness and accidental humor are some half decent shots, scenes, and effects, which injected some much needed life into the veins of this shambling corpse of this film. The swarms of vampire bats were a stand-out for me, mostly because I can't imagine how long it took to animate it, and I hope the animators got paid good money. The smoke effects during flight and echolocation were pretty cool to look at too, and are a fresh take on visualizing sound.

All in all, though, Morbius isn't what I expected. I came for a so-bad-its-good film about a silly vampire guy who 'morbs', and I ended up with a film that took itself way too seriously to make itself funny all the time. I'm a bit disappointed, but hopefully this doesn't dissuade Sony from making more crappy offshoot movies like these. If they can make them sillier, I'll watch them all.

4/10

[mysticarts]

Hiya! I am back, I finished my exams so sorry very much for the absent.

Question:

1. The lackadaisy sequel au your talking about it had me curious, what's going to happen to Nia after Carmen's death and the great depression came. Also is Nia going to be a detective soon? That's sounds intriguing to be honest!

Furthermore is the au going to mainly focus about Nia or are you going to include the Lackadaisy crew (ex; Rocky, Freckle, Ivy, Mitzi and etc.) and the Marigolds? (Mordecai, the savoys, etc.) To me I think they have some connection with Carmen, and I feel like they would have the biggest major effect to their business, due well, stock market crash.

(I could've add Wick and Edmund here but I think these two are just investors to both bootleg business... Edmund said in the comic about Marigold. Idk.. Ouch my memory.) Although that's only my interpretation, I am not a expert at history.

I wonder what you'll plan to do with the main cast? (If not then its okay, hopefully this doesn't pressure you.)

2. Speaking of the main cast! What does Nia thinks about the Lackadaisy? Did she meet one of them or not yet? What does she thinks of she meets Rocky?

3. Victoria or Vicky, does she know Carmen has a daughter? What kind of relationship Carmen has to her boss? Opinions and such.

4. What happens if Carmen's family meets Lucio's family? This isn't cannon btw since I said in a post Lucio turn tore his connections to his family. Amelita and Avis (I know she's dead, but I wanna hc this.) Could get along well, like Amelita rambles a bunch of things like work, family and household while Avid just listens to her smiling. Avis may like the fierceness energy Amelita has lol. (No wonder why Dakila is down bad for her WhEeZ!-)

I don't know how Alexander will interact to Ezekiel, Mayari (Amanda's new name) and Manuel, aka Lucio's sibblings. Seeing how Carmen doesn't like Alexander I can imagine Mayari despise Alexander, if he belittles her, Maya won't hesitate to bite his hands.

Manuel lowkey be intimidated on how cold Alexander is, Ezekiel doesn't like Alexander but he keeps on good manners and he isn't wanting to plan a physical fight with him. (Amelita will pull Ezekiel and Lucio ears if they did.)

That's all, have a good day/night! ^^

Ayyyy, glad ur done with exams! Exam week is starting next week for me, so I'm trying to save my relax time

Well, again, we don't really know when Lackadaisy ends in the universe time, but in this sequel Au it started two years after all of Lackadaisy's events. At this time, Nia is eighteen, a considered adult. In this situation, Nia is tempted to just go live back on the streets like she always did, and just keep herself hidden. However due to Carmen's impact, Nia probably would first thing go too Lucio after Carmen died. When the great depression came, Nia didn't really know what to do, but along that time, Nia just got into college

Im not sure when Nia will become a detective, I'd have to talk to her owner about it. But Nia partly became a detective so she could try and stop gangs killing people like how Carmen died

2. Nia has met Lackadaisy! The people she's closest too are Ivy and mainly Rocky. Mostly because they're both mentally unstable. Nia finds freckle boring, then again, she finds it hilarious when he's scared.

When it comes too the others like Mitzi and Zib, she formed that connection right off of Carmen. Considering Carmen knew Zib and Mitzi since she was around Nia's age, Nia had some small connection to Mitzi that she couldn't really explain. Nia just think Zib Is a funny guy with a saxophone. Again, in this sequel Au, it was just a concept at first, I only made one peice of art for it, it isn't a fully fleged out thing. But the sequel Au if fully developed would probably focus more on Nia's life and truama up till now, how she processes it and navigates life when another load of truama has been dumped on her.

3. Victoria does know about Nia. Victoria again, is running a huge business, she finds no reason too form good connections with her workers. Carmen always thought Victoria was cold on the outside, warm on the inside. Just having a hard shell to protect herself.

4.i do think that they would get along! Avis is very calm and compassionate, she knows how to bring people together. She'd probably be the one hosting the party meet and greet. I feel like she'd really get along with Lucio's sisters.

Elias is also very friendly, if anything. Carmen got most of her bright energy from Elias. He'd probably be laughing loudly with Lucio's dad.

Now, if we're gonna include Irene and Alexander, it'll be weird considering they're the step fam. But Irene is a talker, she'll go on and on about random stories and not stop. If anything, Alexander would try to save face, fail and then get kicked out of the party

Ty for the questions! Feel free to ask more!

[sauriansolutions]

God dammit God damnit

Tw... bad irl stuff, dead animal/dead pet tw's, severe depression/abuse/suicide tw's. Please I beg you to just scroll past this if you think you don't have the spoons to handle seeing it. Trust me I get it, if it wasn't my stuff I wouldn't want to know about it either.

Fuck I'm really not doing okay.

I just got back from my typical overnight shift, then went grocery shopping for the the 5 things I could afford, and finally came home to find

MY FROG DIED.

She was a little, underweight, green tree frog I got at one of the horrible chain pet stores because they had "boring, normal" tree frogs on sale, and this poor girl was underweight and had only one eye. (I called her Odinna.)

I had her for almost two years. I brought her with me, as one of my few possessions I wasn't forced to just abandon due to lack of space, when I moved cross-country after I couldn't afford to stay as a resident of the state I used to live in anymore.

I found her dead body while receiving a string of texts from my boss chewing me out for apparently stocking a product incorrectly. Some highlights:

"Don't ever (do task I previously claimed I entrusted to you) again!"

"All of (task) has to be redone because you fucked up!"

"If my boss would have seen this. Or his boss. Holy hell."

*also, photos of the hours of work I did last night being angrily undone, just to push the point home?*

I *put a product on the shelf wrong.* (I was never told the correct way.) Call the fucking firing squad, I guess.

It's not even these specific things, it's.

I don't have anybody I feel like I can safely talk about things like this with, otherwise I wouldn't be dumping this on the blog I tried to make for happy escapism.

I've been in so many long-term abusive relationships, I guess I don't know how to NOT be treated like shit. I've been trying though? I'm worried I might be too autistic and cptsd to even recognize what is a toxic relationship versus, I don't know, a normal snag between folks?

Pretty sure my boss and my roommate have been treating me like shit for awhile though. And I'm so dumb, I'm only just starting to recognize the patterns. Again. AGAIN. The same ones that--

Oh but, idk, maybe it's just me though? Maybe I am in fact so annoying, I deserve to have eyes rolled at me, to be cut off every time I try to talk, to be spoken to in this clipped, exasperated tone. Spoken *at*, more like.

But?? I don't think literally everything I say is stupid. I don't think literally everything I do deserves to be ignored if done well; and don't think I deserve to be excessively, humiliatingly berated if I make, (what seem to me at least? it's entirely possible I am the idiot?) really small, ultimately unimportant, and understandable mistakes??

Maybe I'm also insane to think this, but oh no I'm going to go THERE. Yeah so um... I feel like maybe I should be making a living wage? Hey, that would be cool. Maybe I should get at least like, ONE 15-20 minute food break on my "8 hour" overnight shifts? Maybe I should be getting healthcare (and maybe like what, 401k? Other kinds?) of benefits too, (what other kinds of benefits even exist? Dental? Vision?? Who the fuck has ever had their employer buy them glasses that sounds crazy!), esp considering I'm continuing to work my ass off while raw dogging it through venlafaxine withdrawals (lost my health insurance so fuck me I guess!!) and basically destroying my mental health, working anytime, all the time, full-time, with mandatory overtime--

That's only the tip of the goddamned iceberg, but enough, enough, I'm depressing myself too much to go on even just writing this.

Writing this is an exercise in acknowledging that it's all stuff that happened, not some nightmare. And had an effect on me. I had gotten so good at drugging and drinking myself to sleep, and ignoring, and ignoring,

I feel so trapped. I've been trying to like myself more, and there's a certain point that means you have to actually act on things like this, or else you... don't really like yourself that much, do you?

So, even though it is the most anxiety inducing thing ever, I have dipped my toes into "acting on it." To the extent that, recently, for the first time in my life, I've been willingly leaving jobs, friendships, and romantic relationships--if they feel like, if I told my therapist (who exists in my head, I can't afford one) about how they treat me, I can easily imagine them being like, "Wow okay so first of all, red flags all over the place!"

I've been doing this to my own detriment. I'm alone and stuck, unable to afford solo housing, or appropriate medication, or even food and other basic life necessities some of the time.

And here's the kicker.

I really, really don't want to die. In that sense, I'm not suicidal! But, I don't know how I'm supposed to keep existing like this without imploding or exploding in some way, though.

The worst part is just having no time, space, or resources to even start trying to heal. Nobody to even talk to safely... or, imo, ethically. I don't want to inflict this sadness and hopeless on some innocent bystander.

I'm sorry if you are the person reading this right now.

[withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus]

I saw a post on twitter advising "If you want a business but you're not sure where to begin, start by building an audience around your interests." and I can't even begin to tell you how much I've failed, by doing that xD. It's not a bad advice, it's just that some people can't really do that effectively.

Like, when I decided to drop video editing cause I refused to create with stock taken from where I live cause I hate the place and nth inspires me and turnt to photomanips, I tried so hard to make it work but I wasn't social enough for it. I loved to create and I enjoyed finding other artists like me, follow them, support them etc, but I didn't know what to say past "Oh that's really cool" or sth. I couldn't build anything by involving myself with this community so, not getting connected in any way with other photomanipulators or people following for what I make eventually discouraged me, to the point I am now bored to death to spend time making an image if only my 3 friends and I are going to see it.

Then as far as music fandoms are concerned, all I could do is help people find more bands. I did reach a point when bands would ask me post their stuff on fb, but it was mostly indie European or American bands who were trying to do visual kei. And it was hard when they were tooo amateur, cause I couldn't tell them excuse me but you seem like you've just started music as a whole and you need a bit more experience before being exposed to a fandom. Sometimes fans were harsh to me too, like wtf are you posting, you know? I knew most people were following me for Japanese vkei bands so if you were going to be included, you had to have some decent presence and clear sound. I was offered one good thing once though, but I wasn't able to get it so...I was invited to cover a Gazette concert in France and I didn't have the money to go so...not much of a chance, but it brought tears to my eyes cause an organizing company as known as that, considered I was doing that of a good job to be considered equal, you know.

With writing it was the same as with photomanips, only, it was easier to have conversations with people because writing involves a more extensive story and stuff like tropes, writing style etc. But it was too time consuming. At some point I noticed I was spending more time reading other people's stuff and commenting than promoting my own stuff, plus, most people (not everyone) I interacted with weren't interested back in my own story. We were just playing question and answer games and no one wanted to get tagged. The first time I did it it was more successful, I actually had readers, but after a break I took to focus on my own writing, it was just me playing games with other writers and still feeling like I wasn't getting much back, cause past the games no one wanted to be tagged.

So yeah now I no longer want a business around my interests, cause the whole procedure made me hate creating. I just want to find sth I can do, like I have a skill good enough for that job to do it right and one that isn't thaaat unbearable for me to deal with on a daily basis. I don't know what that would be. All I know is that I want to make my own money somehow and get to live alone at once.

[timpac-capstone]

Spring Update 3: Sound and Voice Acting

Most sound effects that I used, or at least the good ones, came from splice.com. They are a paid subscription but they do have a 1 week free trial you can use. Just download a video & audio recording software like OBS and you can record the sounds from the website that way. I would use YouTube for the more popular and specific sounds that everybody has heard before, so a stock wipe transition or the Tickle Belt Theme from Sponge Bob. If you try to only download sounds from YouTube it may take a while to find something that is useful or to find a variety of the same sound that all sound good, such as the punch sound effects.

Sometimes it might be worth it to do some foley work yourself. I had the most trouble finding a good cloth sound effect for the blanket and the empty bags. At first, I tried using my actual blanket but it did not give the desired sound I wanted and my bedframe itself is really loud whenever I move. So I experimented with a few other cloth-based materials and finally, I grabbed my towel from the bathroom and it was perfect. It had the right amount of subtleness that I wanted and I could control the length of time I ruffled it. Other places I used foley work was sifting through the popcorn bucket by making my own bag of popcorn and then sifting through that, the crunching sounds of the popcorn were actually me eating Doritos cause crunches from chips are louder than crunches from popcorn, the VHS tapes moving around was me fidgeting with a VHS tape since I had 71 of those laying around and I asked my mom to bring our old VHS player up to Hoboken so I can record any subtle sounds it makes, and then Dillon washing his face was me washing my face with CeraVe Foaming Facial Cleanser.

The Zoom mics can pick up a lot of background noise, so did my HyperX Solocast, and many of the sounds from YouTube. This video shows a variety of methods you can get rid of background noise in Adobe Audition, highly recommend giving it a watch if this is what is bugging you.

It's also a good idea to record some white noise for your animation, this includes indoor scenes. Usually, when there is absolute silence between pauses when characters are talking it feels awkward or when there are only footsteps and clothes moving. It's also a great way to distinguish different settings from each other. Dillon's room uses the white noise from my own room while the white noise in the brain room is from the bunker. I tried using the same white noise throughout the animation but whenever we transitioned to a different setting it felt like the same place rather than two separate settings.

The one thing I severely regret not doing is not taking advantage of some of the Music Tech equipment Stevens has. They have an entire soundproof booth for voice recording in the back left of the studio on the third floor of Kiddie 350 and a bunch of professional microphones and headphones that sound 1000x better than the stuff I was using. I have a Music Tech friend who is also a monitor at the studio and I have known about this since the fall semester. The reason why I didn't do it earlier was because I was just shy about people looking at me trying to voice act. I also didn't know what was the policy about Vis Tech students using the Music Tech stuff but I'm sure if I just emailed some professor about it we could have worked something out, especially since the Music Tech people use equipment from the Fablab all the time. They can also help you out with sound effects as well, I had a tough time trying to find a music cue for the last scene when Dillon closes his eyes. I wanted it to be something like the Smiling Friends ding music cue when they get somebody to smile but I couldn't find it by itself on Youtube. That was until I showed it to my Music Tech friend and he plugged a bunch of things into the keyboard and I got exactly what I needed. However, I only used these good mics for stuff like grunts, snores, and screams. If I used my normal mic it would either peak past the point of it being fixable or it was too quiet and the background noise would always creep in. Also, since I was still unsure of bringing in other actors at this point it's going to be much harder to coordinate a time when all 3 of us, me, my Music Tech friend, and my actor, could be in the studio together at the same time. To keep audio quality consistent I decided it would be best just to use my mic for actual dialogue and the good mic for stuff my mic physically can't perform, also just to make my life easier cause it took a while to get some of these takes. For any future Stevens students that are reading this you 100% know at least one Music Tech major since a lot of them will take the art classes as humanities so it doesn't hurt to reach out to them and ask if they can bring you to the studio, the worst they can say is no.

Instead of the booth, I used the Fablab equipment room for recording the female Vis Tech/Theater Club student voice actor. It's pretty soundproof in there except for a vent that makes a tiny rattle noise but that can easily be taken out if you watch the YouTube video I linked, just record some dead noise as a sample and you'll be fine. However, I had access to this place because I am a Fablab monitor so I can't guarantee that the faculty will let you do what I did. Also, even though I did say this place is soundproof, what I mean by that is that it doesn't echo when you talk into the mic and doesn't pick up a lot of white noise. But the walls are thin so if it's an active day you can hear people from the teacher's offices or the laser cutter room. Also, Fablab people are constantly gonna walk in to get equipment and you'll just be in their way so it's best to go in there outside of their active hours which I highly doubt they would let you do. But again it doesn't hurt to ask.

For the actual voice acting part I'd say, just have fun with it. You obviously don't have the budget to hire one professional voice actor let alone several professional voice actors so the only way to get a good performance is just by experimenting. I have never done any voice performative work or any stage acting. The only actual acting I've done is in my videos and a lot of that acting is pretty much the same character so to play like 6 different characters and trying to make them each distinctive was a big challenge. And if it wasn't obvious from this post I do get very self-conscious whenever I do show my performative pieces. But somewhere in February I just said "Fuck it, I'm never gonna see these people ever again after this is over, I don't care if this is the most cringy shit anybody has ever seen, I need these voice clips for the critique". Once I stopped caring about people judging me the voice-acting part became a lot easier, obviously the first take you get from yourself or from others is not going to be what you want because your job as the director is trying to find that voice. Sometimes that means randomly moaning into the mic from exhaustion because you can't figure out how to sound like a fourth grader and then playing as an anime character cause you thought it was funny but eventually, you'll find it. Also if you get your friends involved try to make it fun for them too cause they are in an unfamiliar situation as well and they are pretty much doing you a favor even if you're paying for their time. This girl that I hired I was under the impression that she didn't like me so even asking her to be a part of my project was a bit nerve-wracking but as I keep saying it won't kill you to just ask and surprisingly she agreed. And then on the day of the recording, I just asked her simple questions like "How has your day been so far?" and then tried to have a mini conversation about that or show some of the funny bloopers from when I was voice acting. I believe it helped loosen us up a bit to each other and the further we got into the session the less awkward I felt. Also, doing all the voices on your own first, even if it's a really shitty voice, can make it significantly easier for your actors to understand what type of performance you want them to go for.

Finally, we move on to the actual sound mixing. Once you clean up all the audio in Adobe Audition you should then port all of those into Premier Pro, including all the takes you don't want. When you splice clips together you never know what take from one actor might work the best with another take from a different actor. With the female actor, I think we did like 5 or 6 takes to get the ending part of the teacher exactly the way I thought would work, and then I ended up using the 2nd or 3rd take because it flowed better when I cut it up a bit and played it back with my performance in context with hers. Other times I would speed up/slow down/reverse or pitch correct certain sound effects I thought were bad at first but then became what I wanted them to be when I did those manipulations. Something I would not recommend doing is leaving all of this stuff last minute, most of the sound mixing I did the day before the Capstone exhibition which drove me insane. I had to constantly replay the same clips and listen to the same sounds and jokes over and over again throughout the day to see if everything was playing well together and then obviously I would have to play everything from the beginning once it was rendered to make sure the sound was consistent throughout the whole animation. You don't want to force your audience to manually turn up and down their headphones as they watch your piece otherwise they won't watch it all the way through. Definitely give yourself a week because the sound in an animated short is just as important as the visuals themselves.

[doopcafe]

Picard S3E1

Oh shit, I forgot we watched this! Here's a "review"...

Summary: Jonathan Frakes and Patrick Stewart hang out for an hour.

Comments: Well, it's finally here. And it turns out that, despite all the early reviews promising this would finally be different (read: good), it’s actually just more of the same dark, violent crap. 

Okay, so we open on Beverly Crusher aboard a ship without any lights. She’s hiding in a nebula from scary alien monsters who track her down and board her ship. Beverly wields her trusty assault rifle (set to kill) and has a way-too-long firefight with the intruders in a hallway, eventually vaporizing both of them while sustaining some serious flesh wounds. She limps over to a control console and sends a distress call to someone called Admiral Picard. 

Hey, remember that DS9 episode Duet where Kira’s painful history with the Cardassians is explored and serves as a transformative moment for her character? Y’know, the one when she’s confronted with an alleged Cardassian war criminal and becomes determined to bring him to justice, even as doubts over his true identity surface?

LOLz no! PhaSers go PEW PEW! 

Why does Beverly’s ship not have any lights? Why did Beverly look at her gun after it told her, in audible words, that its power cell was depleted? Why did Beverly’s mixtape stop playing the moment the aliens came aboard the ship and switch to a dramatic, action movie soundtrack? 

...come to think of it, why was Beverly’s son still playing his mom’s mixtape when Stewart and Frakes later came aboard?

Right, so the B-plot is Raffi on a shady, dystopian sex-and-drug planet asking her drug dealer for another fix (this is "New Trek", after all). We are supposed to believe here that Raffi is undercover and the "drug addict" bit is all a ruse to gain information but, through the fault of the first and second season, I just don’t know enough (or care enough) about this character to know any better, so this scene was mostly the two-person-one-polar-bear audience over here in Tokyo wondering aloud if Raffi is legit addicted to drugs (reasonable) and was actually kicked out of Starfleet (long overdue) or if she’s just faking it in an undercover operation (actually the case). Turns out, the writers couldn't trust we'd know one way or another either so they actually have Raffi say, "Starfleet Intelligence Officer Raffi reporting in" to spell it out for us.

Actually, I’m making the B-plot seem more involved than it actually was. Here:

Raffi looks for information on a stolen weapon before witnessing that weapon being used against some building.

That’s the B-plot. 

As an aside, we (the aforementioned audience) don’t know/care what building was destroyed and the emotional effect was zero, but I guess all the stock screaming sound effects communicated well enough that random!building was actually important!building. The B “plot” (I suppose) will be that someone has “a device that can create inter-spatial portals between two flat planes” and is using it as a weapon. See, I literally just copy/pasted the Wikipedia article on the portal gun from Portal and the description matches what’s in the show. So there’s that. 

With that out of the way, the A-plot is as follows:

Jonathan Frakes and Patrick Stewart attempt to find Beverly Crusher and then do.

Really thrilling stuff. My favorite part is when Frakes sat down. I hope we get more of that.

Y'know, if this “feels” like Star Trek, it’s because the show is playing a dirty trick on you. There are at least a few music cues lifted from the movies (The Motion Picture and First Contact at least) and during the scene when the Titan pulls out of space dock the cue from The Wrath of Khan is played (where Spock orders Savvik to do the same with the Enterprise). That’s why it feels like "Star Trek". Not because anything substantive is happening in the story or characters, but because your monkey brain subconsciously recognizes notes from something you enjoyed as a child. 

I wanted to make some more points, but reading through the episode summary to refresh my memory made me tired, bored, and a little nauseous, so I’ll leave it at that for now. There’s hope this can still improve because, unlike previous seasons, it’s not irrevocably damaged beyond repair yet. 

Oh wait, there's a bullet list option in Tumblr:

These are not the same characters as in TNG, so it’s really challenging for me to see them as anything beyond the actors that play them

Stewart lifting up the flute from The Inner Light was distracting, as it brings into stark contrast the writing of that masterpiece with the levels of skill this show cannot be expected to attain

I liked that there wasn’t a big, dumb action-movie villain and instead we got an actual antagonist (Captain Shaw) with motivations that made sense and were believable

I like that Frakes and Stewart didn’t just share UEMs with each other for an hour

# make star trek boring again 

My enjoyment: 1/5

Edit: I have a prediction! I think that—because it was so dark on her ship—Beverly couldn't see what she was doing and cloned her ex-husband. That's not her (other) son—it's a clone of Jack Crusher.

I also think Raffi's "handler" is Worf. The use of the word "warrior" kinda gives it away.

My predications are rarely correct...

[kakubun]

boo boos

about: where bonten gets patched up by you.. eh except for a minoorrr error

a/n: i hate writing bonten because it's so damn cliche and "you're the only one i love" type of bs but it's addicting🔫🔫

warnings: mentions of blood and violence, chapter 189-206 spoilers‼️‼️, kissing in kakucho's part

tag tag: @rindousarus, @lucylikesbluehairedmen

(lucy idk who you like in bonten but here you go😭😭)

sanzu

obviously sanzu is the type to be careless and he sometimes would scratch his face whenever a bastard had a chance to touch him but he easily kills them off

most of the times (would say 3 times), he would be high and it's a completely wrong time for him to be sent off to a mission but he lives the risks of being high so he'll just take whatever the hell mikey gave him

it would be a lot more messier execution and blood would stick and drip down his face while rindou and ran asked him to wash off the stains of his face (no sanzu, doesn't matter if it's the results of your hardwork after pill popping and killing idc)

he eventually does clean off the grime on his face and felt a stinging sensation on his cheek, he touched up everywhere on his face and the scar was lined on the left of his cheek

he sighs with a grin and pressed the wound again and again, feeling the burn of the scar opening and closing

he hums as he slid into your private room to find anything to patch him up or maybe you.. if you could

he peeked from the door way and you were writing down.. who knows? whatever you were writing down was long forgotten when you looked up cause you felt a precense and immediately rushed to sanzu

"cmere you idiot" it's the shocking way to find out, you the partner of sanzu being the bigger person than him. the other members of bonten just watches sanzu being nagged by you like a mother a lot of times when his wild ass doesn't do things right and perhaps one of them let a snicker escape.

you grabbed onto his face gently but quickly pushing him onto a chair and he whistles like a tease to your concerned actions and you grumbled under your breath because of your wreck of a husband. you stopped going through the medkit and paused to look at him, he knows you wanted to pop a question so he tilted his head yo let him know what is it.

"um.. are you okay with hello kitty bandaids?" it was reasonable for him to laugh very loudly because you looked so nervous when you couldn't find any normal bandaids and you didn't say anything when you wiped a clean rag over him. well until he stopped laughing.

"i don't want to make you look like a fool infront of the other members, you clown"

"what are you a kid, why do you even have hello kitty bandaids in the first place hm~?" you told him with a smile threatening to grow on your lips that it was ridiculously cute that you had to buy it. don't waste your chance before it's out of stock <33

so he agrees,

one of the many things that his sweet partner can intoduce him is wearing hello kitty bandaids that fits his hair colour

he DOES NOT give two shits if any of bonten were to make fun of him, he doesn't care if he had to be called preschooler or that you were sending him to school but all that matters is to be showy with his glamarous bandaids that he had so he could remember that sweet expression on your face when he decides to wear them

it's completely okay if you called him extra because you know this man has the audacity to ask if you had hello kitty bandages if his arms bled

extra!!:

"sanzu, do you think this is a fashion show" you deadpanned at him when you see him sneaking on bandaids on his face, to what show you? because you know damn we this fool is wasting precious stuff during the time he won't need it.

he slowly starts peeling off another one when you start scolding him, giving empty threats on how you'll wrap him up in bandages to bury him later and the time you turn around again is where he quickly pushed the sticky bandaid on you.

"there, we're matching!" he points at the mirror or better he shifts you towards the mirror by grabbing your waist and loosely hugging it when you look at the glass when both you and sanzu had the cute bandaid on both your noses.

perhaps you shouldn't rub your temples and stress about this a lot because your husband will not take this seriously.

mikey

this was a boss we're talking about so mikey had to intervine because this smart group of asses are actually breaking into bonten's bank, carefully taken care by the haitani brothers

the boss got held at gun point before the last few seconds of his breath to get him to spill but mikey got impatient and accidently killed him too soon

mikey gripped the gun in frustration that his fingers could form a bruise with how hard he's holding it, an unfortunate turn of events had happened when the windows in all the rooms got smashed in by the other members of the sleaze he killed and managed to land a kick on his head

sanzu dealt with the problem quickly, blocking mikey from the enemies slinging the katana he had lazily on his side with a crazed glint in his eyes threatening the other members from getting way too close

the kick was unnessarily strong for no reason that mikey wobbled to his knees to the sheer impact the feet of the slain man (sanzu specially killed) could effect him so much

kakucho swiftly lead mikey out of the room whilst shooting down any person running in

mikey settled in your shared bedroom as he informed sanzu and kakucho to put him in the room whenever anything serious occured because he atleast wanted to see his beloved when he wakes up

the soft plush pilliows greeted his head as his half unconscious form laid on the bed before his eyes gave up and met darkness (like his impulses‼️‼️)

the taps of a wet cloth made him jolt out of his slumber and you panicked, telling him it's just you and you were just taking care of him while he's asleep. his head hurted when he shifted to look at you and you gently told him to rest when he feels bandages wrapped around his head.

he sensed your worry when your lips trembled on the face of his skin when you pecked kisses all over him and he couldn't help pulling you over into a hug which you squeled when you stumbled out of your chair.

"sleep with me love" he kissed you back on all the places you touched him with your lips to calm down the hurting beats of your heart when you see him writhing from the danger he put himself in, you held his face which he tiredly nodded to your thoughts which were all concerned for him.

you're worried if the head injury's bad, nah don't he shakes his head if you ever think that, he just needs to bask in the comfort of his love.

hours passed as mikey fell asleep in your arms, relaxed by your side when he wakes up but eventually he had to talk to the other bonten members for them to fill him in on any news

he reluctantly gets up because he wanted to still admire your sleeping face, the serene peace you were in as your chest slowly bumps on his arm when you breathe in and out when he shifts away made him feel bad but he had no choice

this was sonething he worried about and he didn't want to happen but he felt your fingertips on his back when you reached for him to stay

"mm.. mikey, your face.."

he touches his face feeling baindaids on it and he got on his knees to stare at your lips and to hear what you wanted to say

"um.. we ran out of actual bandaids from the last time you got hurt but i found my rabbit bandaids but i don't know if you want to go out to the others like.."

you stopped rambling when he puts his head down to laugh quietly to how worried you got, he shushed you to not get so concerned and he looks in the mirror to see the bandaids plastered on his cheek. he waved at you before going and shut the door noiselessly.

there's no need to be scared of his public image or whatever, mikey nonchalantly wore it around the members, he didn't mind if they let out an amused sound of them when the feared leader of bonten walks around with cute rabbits plastered on his face.

even he couldn't keep a grin from slipping out.

kakucho

they had divisions and they were given to kakucho and sanzu, mikey's trusted men

they supervised their own divisions and trained them with the basics they need to know in bonten, also giving the excuse to watch out for any spies or 'traitors'

with that the two had the time of their lives.. minus kakucho, sanzu was going crazy on his men and if you glanced quickly, you wouldn't notice how hard sanzu was on his men

there were times that sanzu might've just played all of them and kick their teeth out instead of doing warmups with them but kakucho's a lot more responsible while sanzu was respected in fear, everyone respected kakucho because of his strength and level headed behaviour

the division each took turn with kakucho, sparring with one another eventhough it might've taken a whole day because he wanted to see how capable they are without dreading that their lives would be in danger if he took his eyes off one of his men

let's just say some of them were really aggresive

while kakucho would applaud them for this to be absolute beasts in beating the hell of out of him in the session, he still tasted spite from getting pushed back and forth but he kept cool and thought this as a process for his patience

by the end of the day, everything's dismissed and sanzu would look at him with a toothy smirk because of how much damage he endured

sanzu calls kakucho reckless as he spits at him to clamp his mouth shut before a gun goes in it as bruises and scratches were on his face, the same with sanzu who liked the pain and took a while to patch up

kakucho looks in the mirror to see how bad it is and to how bad he flinched, he gets twitchy

he thought of you, he didn't want to hurt your feelings and see you glare at him in sadness on how rough things were at the headquarters when he trained so he tried his best to get rid off any visible marks on his face

it was time for him to go back so he bowed to mikey, a sign for him to leave and trudged home to see you again

it was at dead of night, clock nearing 1am when he greets the safe home an "i'm home" and he hears the television on, he slowly walks into the living room and placed a hand on the couch to pull himself to it to see you wrapped up like a burrito and snoring a little.

he smiled to himself, his lover leaving the movie they loved playing and accidently falling asleep which made him frown a bit when he realizes that you were probably waiting for him to reach.

he patted your shoulder and whisperes that he's home and asked for you to hold on when he carried you in his arms and hugged you tighter when you were all warm but your hands cold when he felt it sting against the back of his neck. he planted you on the cold sheets of the bed which you stretched like a cat to look up at him and he hisses at you not to get up so quickly when you held his face.

you smashed your lips on him which he didn't expect and he felt himself heating up to how straightforward you are, you missed him so much although it's been a day. you cursed at him for being an idiot for hurting himself all over and rested your forehead on his and he feebly says his apologies.

"but you're my idiot, c'mere" his ears red when you got off the bed to open up a medkit and he tells to stop and you were not having it and you grabbed his chin for him to look at you while he squirms a little when you also have to observe his face to look at his state.

you dragged to the shower and though he hates how troubled you were when he's hurt, he finds it endearing when you start bossing him around. he really needed someone to pull him out of his roughed up state with a little scolding.

also a bonus that he's also a simp for you so it's two good things in one to obey.

extra!!:

after the warm shower and the scrubs you did to each other, he felt relaxed while you threw yourself on the bed in sleepiness but you had to deal with some things first.

you straddled his lap while applying the bandaids on his face and he squints and looks closely at it, they were small [animal/s] dancing around on the bandaid and he left out a soft chuckle that made your heart leap.

"these [animal/s] are like you" you lift an eyebrow while pressing it down on his jaw and he explained on how you were the bigger person than anyone and 'ferocious' you were but he knew that you cared deeply about the people you love.

you lightly smacked on his cheek which made him yelp, if that wasn't the cheesiest bullshit he spewed then you didn't know anymore, kakucho has his face recognized as the respectable bonten 3 but he still had the heart of a boy holding his gifted new puppy.

[crazy4myself]

No Harm List Pt.4

Word Count: 7.2k

Summary: You live in a city where crime runs rampant. One day, you save a young boy's life, not knowing that he is the most powerful crime lord's heir. And you have just been put on the no harm list.

Trigger warnings: DESCRIPTION OF PANIC ATTACK!! I really took my time with writing this, trying my hardest to convey these feelings without being triggering. I also tried to make it as comforting as possible, but if you are feeling a little anxious maybe save this fic for a better day. Mental health first!  

Additional warnings: mentions of violence, explicit language, mentions of death,

Genre: Romance, angst, violence, gang/mafia AU, 

Rating: 18+  (bc of mentions of violence there’s no sexual content)

<- Pt.3

"Hobi, I don't wanna be mad. I just wanna know the truth,” you pleaded, voice wavering. And that was the truth, you felt like you could care less if he was in a gang. It was Alcorn, you had to be in a gang to survive if you weren't rich.

Upon seeing your eyes water and your lip tremble, Hoseok instantly wished you would scream at him. He didn't want to hurt you. He didn't mean for it to go this far. For you two to get so close after his sister's death, or for him to lie to you for so long. He told himself he kept you out of it for your safety, but really it was just too easy for him to live two lives, for you to look at him like he wasn't a murderer and for him to pretend for a few hours that he wasn't. 

He sighed, sitting on the couch, and you plopped down next to him and waited patiently for him to gather his thoughts. 

"I guess it's best to start at the very beginning, which was when I was around 16," he started. 

"I lived in the same neighborhood as these two guys RM and Suga. They had actually served some time for getting busted with another gang, the Dime Lions, they're long gone now but basically, some shit went down during some kind of gang raid, and RM and Suga ended up taking the fall for it. Instead of the Dime Lions busting them out of jail, they left them there and basically disowned them afterward."

You nodded along to let him know you were following. 

"Anyways RM and Suga, they had a rough start when they got out of the gang, both were bastards, street rats on the Westside they never had anyone to look out for them. So they did the only thing they could do at the time to survive, which was breaking it to cars and shit and cleaning them out. I don't just mean personal belongings of these guys took engine parts, piping, tiers they took it all, and sold it to any scrap shops they could find. At the time, I was working at my uncle's scrapyard. I knew RM and Suga when they were in middle school before they joined the Dime Lions. They stayed with the foster family that lived in my neighborhood. I knew they had been kicked out of the house and were basically living with the Lion's, so when I saw they were working alone, I got curious. For a year or so, I convinced my uncle to continue buying from them even when he started getting a little suspicious about the guys stealing. The guys knew I looked out for them, and we were cool for a while. Then my mom got sick," he paused for a moment looking away from you.

You reached out and placed your hand on his leg knowing how hard it was for him to talk about his mom and Dawon. 

Collecting himself, Hoseok went on, "So I asked for an in with the guys, I needed money and I knew cars. I could remove the parts more effectively than they could. I also knew some clientele who were always coming by and buying parts because they flip cars for fun, those guys were easy targets. So I guess the three of us were a little gang of misfits for a while, I used the money to help pay for mom's treatment. They used the money to survive.

Then we started taking some younger ones under our wing. RM and Suga got their own place and opened their doors to some kids in a rough spot like they were. But as we got bigger, we started getting sloppy. We had been at it for about a year at this point. The guys started taking on some other jobs, but I stuck to what I did best. I wasn't really interested in broadening my horizons. Like I said, we had been at it for a while, and I got cocky, I guess. We had a few scuffles here and there, but we always got out of them okay. Then one night, we got busted scraping a car at some guy's house, and he shot me in the leg, and the cops got me. RM ended up bailing me out of jail, and Suga, Suga got me a gun." 

He shifted in his seat and looked at you nervously, "I wanted out at this point, mom was basically on her deathbed, and I was all Dawon had. I couldn't risk going to jail, ya know. I owed RM money for bail, but my uncle got me a job as an actual mechanic, I thought I could earn money the honest way, pay them back and then Dae and I could just go back to our lives. But then the doctors told us about some experimental treatment that could possibly cure mom. How the hell could I pass that up? I would have done anything to help her get better." his brows furrowed as he tightened his fist into balls.

 "So I stayed. At this point, BTS was growing, it was an official gang, tattoo and all. We had recruited Jin, who came from money, he used some of his trust fund to fund BTS and help us grow, and RM was starting to get a little ambitious. He wanted territory, he wanted me to take the tattoo and be his third." Hobi squeezed his eyes shut as he let out a sigh, he felt like he had to force the words out of him to confess his sins to you. 

"I told you Suga got me a gun after the arrest, and it ended up I'm a really good shot, so good I didn't even have to kill a guy for a long time. I researched where to shoot to keep someone down for a long while without it being fatal, so that's what I did. I worked a few more jobs for RM, we did a big heist. Actually, that was our big break. A team of six other guys and I broke into this old rich dude's mansion, nearly cleaned out his safe when we split the money most of the guys put a percentage into my pot. I walked out that night with almost enough to pay for mom's treatment in full. 

I told RM I wouldn't be his third, and he offered me an out, I just needed to take one more job for him, and he would pay out the rest of mom's bills, so that's what I did. I killed for the first time, and then I was free. I wouldn't have to do any of it again. Well, that's what I intended," he paused, his voice growing softer. 

You tried to keep your face neutral as he revealed the horrors to you. Not that it mattered Hoseok couldn't even bring himself to look at you.

"Mom ended up passing that night." he laughed, a bitter sound that felt foreign to the kind man you knew, "I swear whatever cruel god is out there pulling all the strings did it to punish me. To let me know, they saw what I had become and that I didn't deserve to have people I love in my life. I wasn't good enough to feel love in this world," 

"Hobi, that's not-" he cut you off with a bitter laugh as he looked upwards to hold back his tears. The motion made him seem as though he was searching for the fates he mocked. "Don't y/n, I know what I am,"

"Dae was a senior when mom passed, and it absolutely broke her. I had to fight to get her to go to school for those last few months. Hell, it was a fight to get her out of bed for her graduation. Her exit exams were a disaster, and the councilors at the college were understanding, for the most part. They still admitted her to the school, but not a drop of financial aid was offered to her. She deserved so much more," Hobi's voice was laced with bitter disdain, his eyes looking far off. 

"So I did everything I could to give it to her. I borrowed from Namjoon, enough to cover her entire admission at Alcorn University."

"Hobi, that's so much," you couldn't hold the comment in. It was near impossible for an ordinary person to buy their way into Alcorn if they didn't get scholarships, the tuition at the prestigious school was over $20,000 a semester for admission alone. 

"And I did it, I had Jin make up a fake scholarship for her, send her a cute little letter telling her about the award. She thought that she earned a full ride, and I let her believe it. I even borrowed enough so she would stay in the dorms, I figured it would be safest to keep her out of the house. I didn't know what kind of jobs RM was going to have me do."

"I took the tattoo, and killing became more of a normal thing for me. It started to get easier, I kept my distance and tried my hardest to not even see their eyes. 

There was a big turf war that year. I don't know, the city was on the brink of a recession, a lot of big players in the city were changing the rules of the game. Business owners fought to take down other businesses simply so theirs could stay open, the market was a disaster. I never cared about the politics of any of it, I just did what I was told, and because of that, I'm still not totally sure all I did that year. What lives I took. Who all I hurt. I did everything I could to forget those nights and the blood. I told myself I was doing it for a good reason, ya know. 

I didn't want to know, I thought I would save that for the day I'm standing outside of hell, and they list off every single one of my evil deeds before they sentence their judgment." Hoseok's vacant eyes started to shine with tears.

 "And that was the stupidest fucking thing I could have ever done. I had no clue who had it out for me, I had started feeling invincible. I didn't even consider that someone would want to take their revenge, I had killed Kim Martin Sr.'s son." 

Your blood chilled at the name, and he didn't look at you as he continued.

"He was some big business owner or something, I was supposed to kill him, but there was a mix-up, and I got his son, Kim Martin Jr. instead. Whoever made the call decided that killing his son was just as effective because the grief practically destroyed him. A few misguided stock investments, while he was grieving, crashed his empire. He lost everything and had to move to the Westside in the aftermath. 

Suga kept good tabs on the guy, but then he fell off the grid. We figured he left town or hell maybe he died. We didn't consider him a threat, he showed no interest in coming after BTS, so I didn't even think to keep an eye out for Dawon."

You felt hot tears roll down your face as you realized what happened. The media painted Martin as the bad guy. They accused him of losing his business after his son died due to extreme drug abuse. The city officials wrote him off as such a pathetic low life, that come the time of his death that his murder was barely investigated. It was simply declared a drug deal gone wrong. But he was a father, a father who lost everything to a hitman and wanted to return the favor. 

Hoseok believed he didn't deserve love. Whatever higher power that was calling the shots took everything away from him as punishment. 

You think of your best friend now long passed, her beautiful smile and contagious laugh. The way she could always read you and knew exactly what you needed, whether it be your favorite ice cream on your period or a trip to the botanical gardens in the middle of the night when she knew you were missing home a bit more than normal.

There was a loose glass in the greenhouse that hosted the plants native to your home. You would both scale the fence to the gardens late at night and push that glass panel in and carefully crawl into the greenhouse. The air would be filled with the floral scents you grew up with, and you would just walk the rows of plants and run your fingers over the velvet petals and waxy leaves. 

Until Dawon would play music, a playlist the two of you made of songs in your native tongue. You would dance around the humid greenhouse singing on the top of your lungs while Dawon would laugh and clap along, excitedly shouting with you when she recognized a word or two. 

You thought about the way you and Hoseok both carried a burden of guilt after she passed. Until now, you had felt like you failed her as a best friend and roommate. 

For three years, you had tortured yourself with thoughts like if you hadn't procrastinated so much on your assignments that week, you would have been home when she decided to make a late snack run. You told yourself the robber probably wouldn't have stopped her if you were together. You reasoned that two of you would have deterred her as a target. 

Or maybe he would have just shot you instead. Dawon would have recovered from the loss so much better, she had Hoseok to comfort her and family and friends to support her. You were merely an exchange student in a city with no morals, loved by no one, but taken in out of guilt by her brother. It would've been a better trade. 

You tortured yourself with these thoughts day and night consumed with feelings similar to survivor's guilt.

You never understood Hoseok's guilt, until tonight, you felt like there was nothing he could have done to make that night play out differently. But now you realize he could have anything, and it might have made a difference. 

"Y/n, I understand if you hate me," Hoseok said softly, watching the tears that dripped down your cheek as you processed everything he told you.

"I wanted to honor Dawon's wish. I didn't expect you to do so much for me, for you to become my best friend and for you to make me feel normal. I kept this from you because you were the closest thing to her I had left. There was a time where I thought I would distance myself from you when you moved out. That I would just become another hazy detail to the tragedy, and you would move on completely with your life, but y/n you were so sad, and you needed me too. 

When you moved out, I was terrified of something happening to you. I couldn't stop myself from checking up on you. I couldn't let us grow apart." Hoseok's voice broke off as you looked at him, the pain and betrayal in your eyes.

 "Y/n, you're the closest thing I have to redemption, protecting you, being your friend is the last thread of humanity I have left, I can't lose you," he pleaded. 

"You watched me blame myself," you whispered accusingly, your eyes shining with betrayal. 

"You watched me tear myself apart, and used comforting me to make you feel better about yourself?" 

He flinched at your words, "I tried everything I could to convince you there was nothing you could have done," Hobi argued feebly. 

"Everything but tell the truth," you hissed as hot tears rolled down your cheek. 

You got up as a sob escaped you, your face red and snot running from your nose. Hoseok stood with you, but you flinched away with a broken no.

 "I need time, Hoseok," you begged. 

You swallowed thickly as you did everything in your power to keep it together, "I don't want to hate you, but please, I need time to think about everything," you assured. Even knowing what he did, he was right. You needed him too. If you lost him, you truly didn't have anyone in the city who cared if you lived or died tomorrow. And maybe settling for that made you your own kind of monster. 

It was funny how he claimed such a tarnished person could be his redemption. 

You secure your bag to your shoulder, stepping out into the night air and pulling the door closed behind you. You couldn't even bring yourself to lock the door behind you, afraid that if you stopped moving for one second that you would completely break down and be unable to make it home. You only hoped Hoseok was smart enough to check the door behind you and make sure to lock it. 

You counted the stairs as you made your descent and into the parking lot, making an effort to take in your surroundings. You tried to list off the colors of the cars as you passed them, and while some distant part of you did the action, you still felt like the effort wasn't reaching whatever corner of your brain you were hiding in. 

You got a lot better with controlling your anxiety attacks as you made it further in college, even going as far as taking advantage of the university's free therapy sessions to get professional guidance in your junior year. You defaulted to your go-to grounding technique as your feet moved of their own accord to carry you home. 5,4,3,2,1 was an exercise that made you aware of your surroundings and tether yourself to this world when your mind felt a dimension away. 

The technique walked you through your five senses, making you list off 5 things you could see, 4 things you could feel, 3 things you could hear, two things you could smell, and one thing you could taste. Even in your most anxious moments, you were a slut for making a good list. You always found this exercise more soothing than any breathing technique. 

Your eyes searched without really seeing as you tried to find five things you could see around you. Straining yourself to really take in your surroundings, you settled for a yellow fire hydrant, a car parked on the side of the road, a penny on the ground, a drainage inlet tucked into the curb, and finally your own yellow shoes pacing down the concrete sidewalk. 

You were going to be okay, you reminded yourself as you took an intentional breath. 

Next, four things you can touch, you focused on your breathing as you reached an arm out to graze your fingertips along with the rough brick of the building you walked by.

You shifted a little more with each step, concentrating on how the fabric of your clothes moved across your skin and curling your toes into the padding of your shoes. You didn't count each feeling, your wandering mind struggling to really take in each sensation, but you were sure you touched four things by now.

This was a mistake you often caught yourself making when counting down like this. Sometimes you were in such a rush to reach the end and get to one as if identifying one taste would magically make all your anxieties go away that you forget to take it slow and really center yourself. 

Three things you can hear, it was at the time, as you strained to let the world in through the all-consuming pounding of your heart in your ears, that you realized you were whimpering to yourself slightly. The awareness of your own vulnerability made you stumble as your mind spiraled, and you struggled to find something to tether you back to the earth. 

You began walking faster before realizing you're not certain you were going the right way. So you came to a halt, realizing you couldn't bring yourself to focus enough to take in your surroundings. You stared at the street sign for a long time, repeating the letters to yourself as you made them form a word finally settling on Gardenia. 

Your breathing hitched as you realized you had wandered off the main streets and into a neighborhood in your daze. You were lost, but you couldn't bring yourself to care about it, and the lack of fear flashed an alarm in your mind that let you know you were too far gone to count away your anxieties.

You struggled to breathe as you tried to come up with a decision. You needed to ground yourself to calm down. You needed to list off 5 things you could see, fourth things you could feel, three things you could hear, two things you could smell, and one thing you could taste. You knew the only way to bring yourself back to the world was to become aware of your settings. 

But it felt as if the part of your brain that knew all these things didn't even touch whatever part of your mind was controlling you now. You were better off giving directions to the light pole you stood under. 

You felt your breathing get harder as you desperately gasped in all the air you could. Your arms and legs began to tingle as your body over oxidized, and your head began to spin. 

Slowly you slumped to the ground, wrapping your arms around the light pole you had stopped under as you spiraled. 

What were you even doing before this moment? How did you even get here? You forced your eyes open wide, hoping the action would make you actually see and register what you were looking at to no avail. 

What were you doing, what were you doing, what were you doing?

You struggled to reign in your thoughts of your laughing best friend and her crying brother. Or was it your crying best friend and his dead sister? 

You were supposed to find three things you could hear. Your crying doesn't count. A more logical voice seemed to get through to you. 

You strained your ears to hear past your own breathing, you could hear a frog croaking in the grass nearby, you felt the earth beneath you to confirm you had in fact settled in a patch of grass. You smiled to yourself proud of your progress as you continued to listen as you continued to listen. You heard the electricity buzzing in the light pole you had wrapped your arms around, you felt almost childlike as you opened your eyes. Actually, seeing this time as you looked up at the pole, you were around. 

You needed one more sound, you strained your ears, expecting to be met with something like a far off car driving by. Instead, you heard your name being called. You blinked as you turned away from the street lamp and towards the repeating sound of a familiar set of syllables coming from a familiar voice. 

Jungkook jogged up to as he saw you curled around a lamppost. Even from a distance, he could see the rapid way your chest was rising and falling in that familiar chaotic rhythm he only saw when he found Taehyung or Yoongi having a panic attack. You looked up at him with a tear-stained face and saw the confusion of his presence take you off guard and snap whatever control you had over yourself. 

Your face crumpled as a sob broke from your chest, and you turned away from him and curled yourself around the light pole a little tighter. 

Jungkook felt such a rush of guilt and panic at the sight of you so broken that he ignored the dull ache in his knees as he instinctively fell down in the grass next to you, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you from the cold metal pole, trying to position comfortably in his chest. 

Jungkook shifted as he uncurled his legs from beneath his body and stretched them out next to yours in front of him, trying to touch as much of his body to you in comfort. You didn't resist, but the jolting motions did seem to make you more upset for a short moment. Jungkook realized he forgot to ask for permission to touch you before he acted. 

He knew Tae preferred physical comfort to calm down, but sometimes it could act more as a trigger when unwelcomed. He loosened his grip hesitantly, and you wrapped your arms around his middle, hugging him closer to you in response. 

Physical contact is. He thought to himself as he began stroking one hand up and down your back and rocking you both side to side slightly as if he was trying to calm a baby from a tantrum. 

Which he basically was doing, you thought bitterly to yourself as you accepted the comfort.

You were too far gone to calm yourself down. You had ridden the river of upsetting thoughts that triggered your attack all the way down, and now you risked floating out to sea and losing yourself forever. Not actually forever, just until you would cry yourself unconscious and wake up to start anew. But you supposed accepting comfort was better than sleeping outside in a neighborhood you didn't know. 

Jungkook whispered to you, not the sweet nothings people typically say when they see people break down like 'it's going to be okay,' or most annoyingly 'breath.' No Jungkook simply told you, 'you're safe,' 'take your time,' 'you're stronger than you give yourself credit for' and in your case most importantly, 'exhale.' 

When people see you having a panic attack and hear the loud gasp you make as you fight to breathe, they instinctively tell you to breathe as a way to calm down. But it's your failure to let the air out that keeps your body over oxidized, making it harder for you to feel in control of yourself. 

Slowly, you regained control of your body, and your desperate gasps for air morphed into shallow panting. Your shallow breathing morphed into soft whimpers and sniffled. Jungkook held you as your continuous knit itself together, and you faced the pain your mind was so desperate to escape.

He rubbed you back as you let out soft sobs as you reopened wounds that had healed into jagged scars. You cried for Dawon and her undeserved death. For Hoseok and the guilt you knew, he carried every day. You cried for Kim Martin, who died at the hands of the killer that stole his son. You cried for yourself, over the fear of the future as you saw it grow intimately tangled with a notorious gang.

You don't know how long Jungkook waited as you reeled yourself back together. He waited long after you finished crying, knowing just because you had control of yourself physically didn't mean you were mentally ready to face the world, so he wrapped you in his warmth and hummed to himself as he rocked you both slowly. 

You loosened and tightened your grip on his shirt and curled and uncurled your toes as you tried to become more aware of your body. You were basically sprawled out on the grass with your upper body twisted and pulled into Jungkook's middle. It wasn't the most comfortable position, but you weren't willing to risk losing his warmth to move. 

You licked your lips, and the jarring taste of your salty tears pulled you from your self pitying thoughts, deciding to work your way up the list you once again started to count. 

One thing you taste, salt. 

Two things you smell: you inhaled deeply and took in the smell of laundry detergent that clung to Jungkkook's shirt. "Detergent," you mumbled into his shirt, and the sound of a coherent word leaving you made Jungkook's humming stop as he looked down at you, nuzzling your face deeper into his chest. He held in his chuckle as you stiffed the air again, and confidently said, "and grass."

You finally pulled yourself away from him only slightly to turn your face away from him, your cheek still pressed against his chest.

"I can hear frogs, cars nearby, and.. your heart," you listed as you looked up at him from under you thick lashes still clumped with tears, "it's louder than mine," you observed as you listened to the hammering in his chest. 

He was from a different kind of nerves. 

He recognized the countdown and realized you were working to ground yourself, "What can you feel?" he prompted eager to get you to move on from his pounding heart. 

"Your t-shirt, it's soft, the grass poking at me through my jeans, my bra digging into me" you wrinkled your nose as you became aware of the discomfort. 

"And?" Jungkook prompted. A smile curled your lips as you looked up at him mischievously, "You're abs," you giggled as you sat up, finally pulling away from him. Jungkook felt the heat crawl up his neck as he turned away, rubbing the back of his neck bashfully. 

"And what do you see?" he asked gently, looking everywhere but you. 

You smiled at his bashfulness as you look around, "I see the street sign, the green grass," you pause as you squint, "I think that's either a rock or some dog poop over there," Jungkook let out a startled laugh. You smiled to yourself proudly as you continued. 

"Our shadows from the street light, and,” you pause realizing how close the two of you are, "the little mole underneath your lip."

"Good," he whispered, and you watched in fascination how his lips formed the words, "Are you ready to get up now, or do you need a few minutes?" he asked. It was the way his mouth twisted into a smile at the end of the sentence that made you realize you were still staring at his lips. You blinked before looking up at his eyes, which was alight with a teasing glint. 

"I can stand," you answered, flustered as you pulled your body away from him. Maneuvering your feet beneath you to get up. Jungkook offered you a hand once he was up helping pull you to your feet, before bending down and grabbing your purse for you. Your feet still tingled in that pins and needles feeling. You wiggled your hands to wake up your fingers as well, but other than that, you felt like you recovered from the physical toll of the panic attack quite well.

"C'mon my place is at the end of this road, let me grab a car and drive you home," he offered. 

You walked with him obediently, your hands brushing past each other twice before Jungkook's hand finally snatched yours mid-swing; you looked down and watched as your fingers intertwined with his effortlessly. You looked to him to see a change in his expression, but he looked straight ahead as he walked, acting as if nothing happened. 

You smiled at yourself, thankful for the affection. You always did get a little clingy after panic attacks, relying heavily on skinship and the feeling of someone taking care of you as a way to feel calm. You were surprised how easy it was for you to let Jungkook fall into that roll despite barely knowing him. But you suppose in the handful of interactions the two of you shared, he's always prioritized your comfort and safety. 

"This is your house?" you asked as you took in the massive white art deco house behind the gate you stopped in front of. The gate buzzed and rolled open for the two of you of its own accord and rolled open for the two of you. 

Jungkook smiled sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his neck, "Yeah, kinda," he said with a shrug. 

You raised a brow, "kinda?"

"It's complicated, c'mon let's get you home," he said with a tug reminding you that the two of you were still holding hands. You flushed but followed obediently as you made your way to the garage. 

You squinted as your eyes were met with a flood of fluorescent light upon opening the door. A row of vehicles lined its way down the length of the garage, varying from sports car, to jeep, to a large black truck at the end of the row. A line of 4 motorcycles along the furthest wall. 

"J-Hope sells Namjoon a car any chance he gets," Jungkook chuckled as he took in your awed expression. 

"J-Hope?" you questions, and Jungkook's smile faltered.

"That's what we call Hoseok," he clarified. 

You nodded in understanding, "Like how Taehyung goes by V?" you asked, and he nodded. 

"Hoseok, does he sell drugs like V does?" you asked curious of what all Hoseok's gang involvement entailed.

Jungkook opened his mouth to answer but was cut off as the adjacent door slammed up from what looked to be inside the house, revealing a man in a black t-shirt with a mop of platinum blond hair. 

"There you are," he practically growled as he stormed in the room.

The man was dwarfed by Jungkook a good bit, but somehow Jungkook seemed to cower and appear smaller as the man approached, dropping your hand as if he were caught doing something he shouldn't. 

You looked at him curiously and wondered if he was. 

"Yoongi hyung," he greeted as he tried to force a smile, "I was just about to-" 

"Save it," he snapped, "I have half the army out looking for you, ya know," he turned his fury to you much to your surprise as he added "both of you." 

Your mouth fell open, shocked by the confusion apparent on your face as he continued, "Do I need to babysit both of you, because believe it or not, she's taking up a lot of my time. I really can't handle you getting flakey on me Jungkook, we need to know that you're safe," 

Jungkook looked down as he lectured, murmuring a small apology. 

"And you" Yoongi turned to you, "That goes for you too, the Black Tips are still on your tail, I can't do much for you if you go running off,"

"Hyung," Jungkook hissed. "Not now, please." 

Yoongi blinked at his younger in surprise, turning to you and making a point to really look at you, and take you in. Your red-rimmed eyes and splotchy face, the way you seemed to lean into Jungkook. He recognized that far off look in your eyes like you had to concentrate on being present in the moment, and Yoongi remembered the warning in Hoseok's earlier message when he told him you had run out.

"Yeah, okay, get her home and come straight back when you're done, we still need to talk," he said dismissively. None of your questions were answered, but you didn't resist as Jungkook put a hand on your back and guided you towards a nearby car. 

"Good night, princess," Yoongi called over his shoulder before closing the door behind him. Unlike with Jimin, you felt like you were being mocked when Yoongi called you that.

"Who was that, your brother, and why did he say he needs to babysit me?" you questioned as you both settled into the fine black vehicle the windows were so deeply tinted on the outside you wondered if it was safe to drive at night, but upon getting in the car, you noted that you could see through the windows clearly. 

Jungkook waited until after he put the key in the ignition and backed out into the driveway before he started talking."That's Yoongi hyung or Suga, he's head of surveillance for BTS. He was the one who sent out a message to go escort you home when J– Hobi Hyung told him you were upset and left his apartment so late. I was on my way in that direction when I ran across you on our street," he said, breaking at a stop sign and turning on the blinker.

You looked out the window as you took in everything he's told you, noting that you were stopped again by the light pole you had a panic attack under. Suga was one of the original members in Hoseok's story. You thought to yourself as you connected the dots. Your head still felt a little foggy as you recovered from the literal mental breakdown. The sudden change of lighting earlier had started to make your head throb. You were ready for bed.

"Hobi sent people to look for me?" was all you could manage, not entirely understanding the emotions stirring in your chest. 

"Well yeah, I mean, I was supposed to escort you home after work, and you kind changed plans, so we had to roll with them. I figured Hoseok would have taken you home after everything, so I didn't wait around. And then when Suga did send out the message I didn't notify them that I found you it was dumb on my part," he clarified. 

You leaned onto the console between the two of you, propping your cheek upon your hand in a way that squished your lips into a slight pout. Jungkook tried not to stiffen as you got more in his space. Peeking down at you through his peripherals he saw your brow furrow as you processed everything. 

"Why do you care?" you finally settled on asking as you still struggled to pinpoint why so many people would be worried about your safety.

Hoseok, you understood, to a certain extent, you even understood why he called in the favor. He knew your patterns and signs, you were probably shouting you were about to have an attack with your body language as you walked out the door. He knew he could never comfort you, not when he was the trigger. What you didn't understand was why BTS would listen.

"Because you're still not safe, and BTS took responsibility for your safety when I did," Jungkook said, simply turning to look at you as he stopped at a red light. 

If you were in the right state of mind, such a comment would have triggered an immediate fight. You had been on your own for far too many years to suddenly need a whole gaggle of men to tend to you as if you were some helpless girl. You were a grown-ass woman. But you weren't yourself as you searched for a response in the fog of your mind. 

"You're not responsible for anything about me?" you said softly as you shifted to rest your hand on your chin. 

"Y/n what all did Hoseok hyung tell you?" Jungkook asked, confused, you weren't rejecting his protection, you just seemed oblivious. He assumed the cat was out of the back as soon as you learned what BTS was, who they were concerning you. 

"Just how he joined BTS as how he ya know," you stuck your pointer finger and thumb in the air making soft 'pew pew' sounds. You couldn't bring yourself to talk seriously about the subject. Too much of this night had been severe for your liking. 

"Y/n, you saved my life last week," Jungkook said, trying to look in your eyes and convey all his gratitude. You shifted under his stare.

"I wouldn't call it that," you murmured, turning away, "The lights green," you added flatly trying to turn his attention from you. He ignored you and placed a warm hand over yours. 

"I would, and because of that, I and all of BTS owe you a life debt. We want to protect you as best as we can, especially since you're not totally safe from the guys you saved me from," he emphasized. 

You looked up at him owlishly as you thought over everything he said. But whatever you were going to say died on your lips as a car honked its horn behind you. You both jumped startled, and the intensity of the moment evaporated slightly. 

After a few moments of silence, you decided he didn't require a response. You can't imagine you would give a correct one anyways. You looked down at your hand, his larger one still resting atop your own and turned your wrist quickly and intertwining your fingers.

You rode in silence the rest of the way home, and you were fighting your eyelids as you pulled up to your complex. 

Jungkook wondered if you always fell asleep in the car even with dangerous men. He wondered if that's why he never sees you take the bus at night.

"You really should consider living somewhere safer," Jungkook muttered under his breath as he shut off the engine.

You bit your tongue holding in several comments and gave a noncommittal 'mmm' as you unbuckled and stepped out the car to see he planned to walk you to your door again. 

You grew embarrassed as you climbed the stairs and scrambled to think of parting words dwelling on everything Jungkook had done for you that night, "Thank you," you finally forced yourself to say. Jungkook looked down at you as you came to a halt in front of your door. "For earlier, with the crying and the counting," you offered awkwardly your eyes looking everywhere but his as you breached the sensitive topic. 

"Oh, it wasn't a problem, really. I'm glad I could help" he laughed nervously, and you smiled, reaching for his hand before he could bring it to the back of his head, a nervous habit you were quickly picking up on him having. 

"I'm serious Jungkook, a lot of people freak out and make the situation much worse for me, and I get it seeing someone crying like that it's never an easy thing to react to, but you did—" you hesitated as you searched for the right words, "You were good, comforting." 

You didn't give yourself time to question it as you stood on your tiptoes, deciding to convey your gratitude in a way that your stuttering mouth wouldn't botch, and grazed a small peck aiming for his cheek. Unfortunately, the height difference and your own lack of balance had you landing more on his jawline. Jungkook gasped only slightly at the feeling of your soft lips on his jaw, the heat of your body radiating off of you in your nearness. You smiled at him again as you turned towards the door to unlock it. 

"Haha yeah, happy to hear that," he responded, his voice crawling in pitch as he ordered his heart to beat, and you gave him another warm smile as you pushed open your door. 

"Good night, Jungkook."

"Good night, Ella." 

Jungkook's face split into a grin as you closed the door, a hand reaching for his jaw and pressing against where you kissed him as if it would simulate the feeling. His steps seemed to bounce as he made his way down the concrete stairs and back to his car.

A/N: Thanks so much for reading please tell me what you think! Your comments make me eager to write more :)

Pt.5 ->

[willow-salix]

The Shirt

This little thing is for @misssquidtracy and @soniabigcheese and was supposed to be a ficlet (tell that to the 2.5k that came out). It came about after a throw away comment to Sonia last night and then John ‘helpfully’ dropped the whole thing in my head fully formed. Enjoy!

Thanks to the awesome @myladykayo​ for the gorgeous shot of this dude!

"I don't need any new clothes, I told you that."

"And I didn't listen. Come on, John, you haven't bought anything new since college."

"And I'm happy with that, all of my clothes are perfectly serviceable," John continued to argue as Gordon towed him into yet another shop. 

As always they drew attention, Gordon because of his loud voice and, according to him, his swimmers body that the women loved. Gordon had always loved to be the center of attention, he'd reveled in it back in his Olympic days, proud of the knowledge that his promotional pictures had graced many a teenagers phone backgrounds and lock screens. 

John, on the other hand, had no idea what people saw in him and why they still watched him even when he was with his brothers. He knew his hair always drew looks and over the years he'd heard more than a few people whispering something about checking if he was a natural redhead, although he'd never wanted to stick around to listen too closely and had gotten out of there sharpish. He'd much rather just be left alone to fade into the background where his introverted wallflower tendencies could be appeased. 

"Well, I need new clothes and you can't leave a man to shop on his own, it's just not done," Gordon continued. 

"I'm pretty sure there's no such rule."

"I'm making it a rule, it's part of the bro code now," Gordon shot back, flicking through yet another rack of eye-wateringly bright shirts that even Hawaii would have disowned. 

"I reject your rule."

"You can't, I'm your baby brother, you have to be nice to me, that's in the bro code too."

"I demand to see written proof of this rule book that you seem to keep pulling things from whenever it suits you."

Gordon glanced at his brother, seeing his lips twitch as he fought valiantly to keep any display of amusement firmly at bay. John didn't often get the chance to hang out with his younger brother but he always enjoyed it, not that he'd ever admit that out loud, that would only encourage Gordon to up his annoyance level by at least five points. 

"Ha! You smiled, I'm off the hook!" 

"I did no such thing."

"You did, I saw it! The robot had a feeling- ow!" Gordon ducked out of the way, avoiding another cuff around the back of the head from his, far too lanky for his own good, brother who apparently had the reach of an orangutan. 

"I'm not a robot, you little jerk. Stand still so I can hit you properly." And there went the warm fuzzy feelings. Back to reminding himself just why said hang outs didn't happen more often. 

"Yeah, right! Like that's gonna happen." Gordon shimmied backwards through the rack of shirts that made the sun look dull and out the other side to freedom. "Too much time in space has made you slow, bro!" 

"What? HOW DARE YOU!" Without thinking John dived around the side of the rack, stretching out to grab at his grinning brother. "I'll show you who's slow!" 

"I am lightning, I am the wind!" Gordon dodged aside with perfect ease, avoiding the grasping fingers of his brother. 

"Full of wind, more like! Stand still!" How was the squid so fast? 

"Come on, old man, keep up!" 

John made another grab at the back of Gordon's shirt but the little shit wiggled out of his grasp like an eel. 

"Ha! Victory is mine!"

"I wouldn't be too sure about th-" WHUMP! John spluttered, screeching to a stop as he got a face full of fabric, evidently thrown by Gordon who'd decided that weapons were now in play. 

He flailed, tripping over the leg of a clothing rack as he stumbled blindly. He made a grab for the first solid feeling thing he could find, although his judgement of solid was woefully inadequate. He landed on the floor in a tangle of limbs, both his own and plastic, as the mannequin he'd inadvertently grabbed fell with him. 

"Gordon," he gasped, winded from his tumble, but the sound of his brother's hysterical laughter was all that he received by way of an answer. 

He yanked the material off his head, a shirt of some description by the looks of it, and staggered to his feet, dragging his dance partner up with him. 

He managed to get her upright and back on her stand after a great deal of huffing and many swear words muttered under his breath as Gordon continued to howl like a hyena, hanging onto a mirror to stop his own downward descent. 

Yanking her skirt back up where he'd accidentally yanked it down, John finally got the mannequin back in place and decently covered up. 

"Gordon stop laughing!" he ordered as he bent to pick up the shirt that had assaulted him before angrily turning to face his brother. 

"What a clumsy idiot," he heard someone whisper a few rows over, stopping him in his tracks. "Keep out of the way, he'll take us down with him next."

John ducked his head, his cheeks as red as his hair, wishing the ground would open up and swallow him whole. He hated being the center of attention and now, he risked a peek to confirm his suspicions, yep, now the whole store was looking at him. Great, just perfect. 

"I'm never coming shopping with you again," he hissed in Gordon's direction. 

"Too right. Did you see the shirt he's holding?" the woman's friend whispered back. "Anyone that picks out something like that should be avoided at all costs."

"He's looking, quick, pretend you haven't seen him!" Both women quickly looked away, suddenly extremely interested in a nearby coat. 

What were they talking about? John glanced down at the pile of fabric still clutched in his clenched fist. It was definitely a shirt of some description, beigey-brown in colour, but not just one shade, oh no, this monstrosity had at least four other shades of brown thrown in for good measure, all coming together in wavy lines of what-was-this-designer-thinking to form some kind of texan nightmare, complete with gaudy gold piping. It truly was hideous, quite honestly the most disgusting thing he'd ever laid eyes on and he'd trained with astronauts who didn't have control of their digestive systems yet. 

He looked around desperately to find somewhere to hide it away from his sight, ignoring Gordon who was taking deep breaths in an effort to calm down. 

There! He spotted a convenient looking pile of sweatpants on a shelf and moved over to stuff the offending article back into the depth of hell from whence it had crawled when a single, solitary thought tickled at the back of his brain. 

He paused, thinking, his brain hamster now awake and racing at top speed around its wheel. He glanced from the shirt to the women who had spoken before, then back down to the shirt. 

"I'm going to try this on," he announced to his stunned brother, marching past him to the changing rooms. 

He quickly stripped off his T-shirt, the one that declared that he was a communications engineer not a magician, and pulled on the horror shirt. Surprisingly enough it was actually made of quite a soft material, something his overly sensitive, due to time spent in low gravity, skin really appreciated. 

He pulled it closed and buttoned it up, rolling his shoulders to allow it to settle into place. It was remarkably comfortable, actually long enough in the body. He stretched out his arms, pleased to see that the cuffs didn't immediately hike up to his elbows. All good so far, but only one thing would assure its purchase…

He pushed open the changing room door and stepped outside. The effect was immediate as two men, three women and a toddler that had been independently milling around near the entrance took one look at him and, as one, turned as quickly as they could in the opposite direction. 

Grinning to himself he tugged the tag off the sleeve, grabbed his T-shirt from the changing room and headed to the counter. 

"I'll wear it out," he informed the cashier, loving the way he not so subtly averted his eyes, unable to look at him. "And I'll take as many as you have in stock in this size and the next one up too." The cashier rushed to do his bidding, desperate to save what remained of his eyesight. 

"See, I told you coming shopping with me was a good idea," Gordon grinned as they made their way back to the parking lot, their arms filled with bags. 

"I will admit that it had its advantages," John answered as they strode easily through the crowd that parted like the red sea, unwilling to risk being contaminated by their fashion flu. 

John breathed a sigh of relief, feeling like he could relax for the first time since they'd gotten there three hours before. 

"That shirt is magical," Gordon declared, watching in astounded awe as eyes all around them shifted to avoid looking in his brother's direction. "It's like a people repellent in clothing form, it's….it's…" he groped around for the right words. 

"It's perfect," John declared, lovingly stroking a sleeve like one would a beloved pet. And it truly was. It was like people had a filter, an ugly shirt firewall in their heads that made them avoid it at all costs.

He couldn't remember a time that he hadn't been stared at since the year he'd turned seventeen and hit his second growth spurt. In that year he'd shot up six inches, his lanky frame had filled out a little, his weedy arms turning into tightly packed muscles and he'd developed abs and a voice that had deepened a few octaves. Then, for some reason, his anxious aura with its go away vibes had become nothing but a challenge for most people, acting as a kind of siren call for them to latch on to him and decide that he needed to be included, chatted to and made the center of attention. 

Now it was like he was practically invisible and it felt amazing. Even with the neon orange shirt Gordon was wearing, people were mostly ignoring him. 

"I'm never taking this thing off again."

       ***

"Why am I always the one doing the laundry for you lazy arses?" Selene bitched as she dragged a massive basket of assorted Tracy clobber into the lounge where the assorted Tracys owners sat around in various states of lazy. 

"Because you love us?" Gordon answered, grinning cheekily. 

"Nope, that can't be it," Selene retorted, sitting down on the steps of the seating area to begin the mammoth task that was sorting and folding. She dragged out one of Virgil's plaids and folded it into some semblance of order and dropped it on the floor to start his pile. 

"Let me help," John offered, moving to sit beside her and take some of the pile from her lap. 

"Thanks, gorgeous."

"Whipped," Scott teased, reaching for his coffee cup. "Hey, Sel, if you're the only one doing the laundry as you claim, how comes you haven't managed to wreck John's ugly shirts?"

"Why would I?" she shrugged, balling up a pair of Scott's socks. 

"Because I know you. Any excuse to shop, right?" 

The socks made a handy projectile as she threw them at his head. 

"Thanks!" Scott grinned, effortlessly plucking them from midair. "Seriously though, look at it."

Selene looked at the shirt that was currently hiding the delightful chest of her even more delightful husband. 

"I fail to see the problem with it."

"Really?" 

"Hey, leave my shirt alone, it's perfectly serviceable, thank you."

"It's old, it has to be at least seven years since you bought them," Gordon joined in. "They probably don't even make them any more."

"They don't," John said, concentrating on folding one of Alan's T-shirts into a perfect square. "So nothing had better happen to the ones I have left."

"Now's your chance," Alan whispered to Selene. "Kill them with fire and you'll never have to see them again."

"Yeah, you know that he's got much nicer clothes in his wardrobe," Scott added. 

"I've actually grown quite fond of them," Selene answered, carefully folding one she'd plucked from the depths of the pile, smoothing it out like it was something precious. 

All three Tracys, minus one Virgil who was down in the hangars no doubt creating more washing for her to do by getting covered in grease and muck, stared at her like she'd just announced that she was going back to blonde. 

"What? How? You said that he's never looked better than when he's wearing a decent shirt, I had to give you a drool cloth at your wedding."

"All true," she shrugged, folding one of Virgil's vests to the best of her ability. 

"Yet you continue to let him walk about in, what was it you called it, his rodeo clown shirt?" Gordon asked, completely bemused. "Are we missing something here?" 

"I'm a witch," she started by way of explanation. 

"Duh," Alan snorted. 

"And I have a healthy respect for glamour magic, and that right there," she continued as if she hadn't just been rudely interrupted, pointing at the shirt that John was wearing, "is the most magical thing I've ever seen in my life." 

All three of them burst out laughing, unable to believe what they were hearing. Selene waited patiently for them to finish cackling like they had just cursed Macbeth. 

"Allowing the shirts to live is doing the world, and my arrest record, a huge favour. Now, if you'll excuse us…" she got to her feet, relieved John of the socks he was busily matching and dragged him to his feet.

"OK, OK, I'll bite," Scott continued to chuckle, wiping the tears from his eyes. "What makes you think it's so magical?"

"That should be obvious, nothing short of a miracle could hide that amount of sexiness. Why do you think I'm good with him hiding in Five when he's wearing that space suit?" She dumped the half folded pile of washing back into the hamper.

"I've decided that you lot can sort your own laundry, because I've got the sudden and overwhelming urge to see that shirt on our bedroom floor. Later, fashion rejects."

John put up zero resistance. 

"I love this shirt," he grinned, waving a cheerful goodbye to his stunned brothers as his wife yanked on his hand, towing him bodily from the lounge and on to far more pleasant things than chores. 

[yourstargazing]

could you tell me more about how NFTs are screwing over people in SEA specifically? i tried looking it up but everything i found was talking about SEA jumping on the crypto "bandwagon" and general positive press no matter what i searched. any sources you know of are fine too. you can ignore me if you don't feel like getting into it, no pressure.

Okay! Thank you for your patience! I had a lot going on and it took longer than I wanted to compile some research. Anyways. More under the cut.

I literally started looking into this the day before ep 7 dropped because I was watching the now pretty internet famous video about Crypto/NFTs that can be found here. If you don't know a ton about crypto then I recommend watching this first. Yeah it's two hours long, but it also spends a lot of time going into depth about why, how, and who. In short: rich people wanna get richer and are preying on people with disposable income. Wow. Shocker.

But that's not what you asked about. You asked about how this affects SEA. Disclaimer: I don't have firsthand experience with this. I don't live in Asia and am not from there. I am mostly just compiling data I've been collecting while researching NFTs for a writing project. And also I really love researching.

Okay. Let's look at Thailand specifically since that's what I was referencing in the post you responded to. I'm going to link two articles from the Financial Times. These are great for a quick look at the current conversation about economy and crypto and covid.

In short: The Thai economy is in dire straits. COVID killed the tourism industry and left a giant gap in the GDP. People are dying, but as we've seen globally, no one really cares except when it affects the economy. So. Naturally this is an environment ripe for taking advantage of. There's a LOT of foreign investment in crypto markets in SEA which all looks really sketch, especially because while doing research I couldn't really find any use for crypto outside of play-to-earn games which I'll talk about later. So far it just sounds like empty promises and investors taking advantage of cheap real estate and labor in habitually exploited countries.

Now, maybe you're thinking investing is good so why is this bad? That's because there's no evidence that crypto helps build infrastructure or has any impact on the lives of normal people. It currently functions more like unregulated stocks than actual currency.You can't use it to buy groceries or send your kids to school. You can’t use it to buy things for daily use. How is any of this going to actually benefit the people of Thailand?

Well. The government had an idea. The GDP has a massive hole where tourism used to be - what if we plug it up with taxes? Normal idea. The Thai government had to make a decision: do we raise VAT tax on imported goods which can range from electronics to groceries, or do we tax this cryptocrap? The answer was obvious. They announce a 15% tax on crypto transactions. Cue HUGE backlash. The tax has now been canceled. That money still needs to come from somewhere though, so I'm guessing in the coming weeks, the VAT tax will raise, effectively taxing the poor so the cryptocretins can continue to profit off their inane system while people starve.

But why did the gov't listen to these shits? because they have lots of money and keep insisting that they can jumpstart the economy. please laugh with me as this asswipe promises a 600% GDP growth if only the government will invest in crypto! There's no substantial evidence to back up any of this. it's bold claims with no value. kinda like crypto.

There is a huge push by cryptocreeps to gain an appearance of validity and to do that they seek government support and investment from banking institutions, all of whom say this is a bad idea.

Now, let’s also talk about class and colonialism and its role in this (which is somehow missing from a lot of discussions about crypto)

One of the big pros of creepto tech is play-to-earn gaming. you play the crypto game, earn in-game money that can be converted to nft or crypto, and you can then convert that into real money. that's money that can like, feed families, keep lights on, send kids to school, but also give you a better life. allow you to buy things for fun and not be worrying all the time. to quote this totally not condescending gamemaker: “This levels the playing field for people to earn a good supplemental income in developing regions, such as Southeast Asia, without leaving their region to be a migrant worker in a more developed country.”

Wow, exploiting workers to pump your crypto is philanthropy now I guess.

There's also the whole thing with 'digital landlords' which is so painful. essentially games are so prohibitively expensive to start that people are 'scholarshiped' in. a wealthy person lends them the tokens they need in exchange for a cut of the profit. cool. my favorite part of real life is now in the metaverse. can you put my student loan debt there too?

Now, it's easy for people to say things like 'can't they get other jobs' or 'millions of others don't do this so why are they?' Because the economy is shit. There's a pandemic. People are dying at alarming rates. And this is a job that may seem relatively safe in the long run. if you have a computer and internet access at home, you don't have to risk covid. if your choices are playing a game at a computer room or working a dangerous manual labor job, is it really a question there?

Except, you know, none of these game devs understand markets and it's volatile and dangerous and could combust at any moment. Game economies aren't meant to function like a real economy because it makes the game boring and inaccessible. Axie, the most common in my research, has already had serious issues with this.

NFTs also give artists in Thailand access to a higher level of market than ever before, mostly because a lot of the people investing in crypto have a lot of disposable income and not a lot of well. sense. you've seen nfts. they are ugly as shit. but if you are an artist in a developing nation, those who are usually excluded from the high prestige of art markets because, like most things, it's very classist, white, and colonial, this is honestly a chance to change the game. and despite all of the REALLY bad reasons NOT to make nfts, that one is… kinda valid. crypto is fake, but the platform it stands to give artists who cosign to it isn't. you can hate cryptoshit and nfts and also recognize that it has some ability to help people.

kind of like how tawi is helping yok's mom earn a living.

[azumasoroshi]

i am in a storytelling mood and you all will now be forced to listen to it

So back in sophomore year, I had this final project for the end of the year. We had to make a book trailer with a partner, and our book was Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay. It's about this high schooler who goes to the Philippines to investigate why his cousin died.

Our school was not an art school; it was just a regular public high school, and so we were not expected to draw the whole thing. We were expected to find some videos, or film ourselves acting stuff out, or use Ken Burns effects on stock images in iMovie. My partner certainly thought that using stock images would be a good idea, and she legitimately saw no problem with the original "final product" of our iMovie low budget shitty production.

However, my dumbass was excited, because I liked animating and the plot of the book allowed for some very interesting imagery. I had ideas, oh so many ideas.

I was a fool.

Because the one fatal thing my dumbass forgot to take into consideration was that I was, and still am, a serial procrastinator.

(the trailer is below the cut)

So, after getting pretty much nothing done, midnight arrived on the due date. And I was terrified, but in that "eh it doesn't really matter" kind of terrified way because I was an emotionless husk and couldn't feel any emotions other than “welp”.

I had maybe 10 seconds done of what was roughly supposed to be a 1 minute and 30 second long video.

My English class started at 10:05.

“Well you had 10 hours, Soro-“ NO I DIDNT

because i had to LEAVE for school at 6:30 and i had chemistry, java, and health between 7:30 and 10:00 so i couldn’t do any of my work during those periods.

So I had about 6 hours to make an entire book trailer. Whoop.

I started off well enough with the Gising Na Ph! posts. Except I didn’t start off well at all and I spent at least two of my six hours trying to figure out how hands worked before finally letting go of any honor I had left in my being and just tracing stock images.

Now, my partner had gotten a few good images on her version of the movie, which she’d graciously sent to me so that I could scrap most of it. And I wasn’t intending to use any of them in the slightest, but by this point it was about 2 am, and I figured I should hustle a little bit. I was planning to import her iMovie into my iMovie and take the photos from there. Easy enough, right?

NO

The file got corrupted somehow and I had to reverse image search every single image that I wanted to use by screenshotting them from the movie rather than having the photos themselves. And for some inexplicable reason, I wanted to try to resemble my partner’s movie as closely as possible, which meant using the same photos. Could I have just found different stock photos? Yes. Was I in my right mind at the time? No. Did I even consider trying to find different photos? Not until 5 am.

Now, along with the movie being corrupted, that also meant that my partner’s recorded voice lines were inaccessible to me. That meant I had to record my own. At 5 am.

I have several friends who are very talented voice actors. They live in Britain, so it wasn’t too early for them. They’d already expressed that they were willing to help two weeks prior, back when I thought I wasn’t going to procrastinate. Should I have asked them? Hell fucking yes. Did I? Well, I just so happened to ask the only one of them that wasn’t awake at the time. Luck and reason are on my side, clearly.

5:30 am, I realized that my friend probably wasn’t going to answer on time. And it just so happened that one of my irl friends had woken up, for some ungodly reason like sleeping on time or something. I quite literally begged him to record two voice lines for me, and lo and behold, he actually did it. He sounded deader on the inside than me, but his character just so happened to require being dead inside, so that ended up working out. He recorded the voice lines on Notability. That was pretty funny.

(around 6 am my british friend saw my message and he was like oh shit whoops ill do it now and i had to awkwardly explain to him that i found a replacement. that wasnt a fun conversation to have at 6 am)

6:30 am I was in the car. The movie was almost done; I just needed one final image of Jun and Jay together, and I wasn’t going to find that on Google Images. I drew it during health class. My teacher definitely noticed and was probably pissed.

10:00 am. I actually went into the bathroom stalls during the 5 minute transition period between classes, pulled out my headphones, and listened to the whole thing just to check it over. (I’m overly paranoid about how loud my voice is in recordings due to a certain incident that won’t be explained in this post) It sounded fine. Everything was fine. It was all good.

10:05 am, English started. A few other groups went before me. I was ready to present. I had the movie open on my iPad, and I was resigned to my fate. I tried my hardest, somehow. That was enough. My partner hadn’t gotten to check over my movie at all, so she had no idea what was about to happen. That was fine.

11:00 am. Class...ended?

waiit shit that isn’t right. i spent all night working on that movie trailer and i didnt get to present it???

WELL, as it turns out, my AirPlay wasn’t working or something and the method of sharing to Google Drive was apparently too time-consuming, so I had to present the next day. A whole nother 24 hours, just handed to me like that. I could do anything I wanted with the movie in that period of time.

What the fuck.

“So you definitely removed the stock photos and made your movie even better in that time, right, Soro?” oh FUCK no dude i got home at 3, yelled to my friends for an hour about how mad I was, and then fell asleep at 4 pm and didn’t wake up until 6:00 am.

I presented this movie the next day.

I got an A+.