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xxblairexxss · 1 year ago

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Saving your bacon

Pairing : Charles Leclerc x medicstudent!reader

Theme : Light on angst, more heavy of fluff

Word count : 3.4k

I feel like something’s missing but I’m not sure what it is and I don’t wanna keep this in my draft so I’m just gonna drop and dip. Oh, and I wanted to switch up and play around with reader’s personality instead of sticking to one so this time around, reader is more (idk how to explain) but more bright????? And I also don’t want to write her as someone struggling with her studies just because I think I have seen the same plot a few times around so let’s just say she enjoyed doing what she did. I know you asked for more angry Charles but for some reason I found him more of a people pleaser so it’s hard to write him getting angry at the crowd. 😭

Warnings, inaccurate medical term and procedure, as usual.

Requested!

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Charles was catching up to his favourite series, all sluggish and slothful on his day off when he heard your footsteps and humming got closer and closer to which he immediately took a cushion near him and laid down, pretending to sleep.

“Oh?” Your little skip stopped when you reached the living room. You were so, completely sure he was awake because you sworn you heard him laughed at one of the jokes on the television a few minutes ago. Stepping closer, you saw the way his lashes slightly fluttered as he bit the inside of his lip, holding his smile from exposing his little trick. “You are not sleeping!” You called out and chortled, quickly placing your medical files on the tea table before diving into his embrace, making him groaned from the sudden impact. “I caught you!”

“You got the wind knocked out of me, baby.” He moved a little so you could settle down by his side. “What do you need me to do today?”

“How do you know I was gonna ask for your help?” You cackled in his arm at the way he looked completely unfazed with your requests by now.

“Because this isn’t the first time. I just knew how your steps would sound like if you needed my help.”

“Yeah? How does it sound like?” You sat up and his hand snaked its way under your shirt instantly.

“Can’t explain it in words. Lay down or sit up?”

“Lay down! Wait,” You took back your medical files and scanned through your notes. “Oh, wait! No, no! Sit up and turn that way.”

“That way?”

“Yeah! And close your eyes! I’ll be right back.”

Charles had his eyes shut, sitting up straight facing the balcony of his apartment while trying to catch up with the dialogs coming from the tv series he was watching. “No way! I missed the important scene, did– ouch!” He jolted to the front when something cold was pressed on his neck, sending shiver up to her head. “Babe, what was that?!”

“Ice pack! Sit back down!” You pulled him back and placed the ice pack back on what you imagine the pain would be.

“It’s cold! Can’t we just pretend to use an ice pack instead of– cold! Babe, it’s cold! Instead of using actual ice pack?” You held him by his shirt to stop him from moving away while you repetitively went back to scan through your notes.

“Stay still! I’m trying to get these right! Oh, I need to move it in circular motion and never let it sit for more than 20 minutes on the same spot.” You leaned against his back and giggled. “I nearly gave you frostbite!”

“Are we done yet, babe?” He tilted his head to the side to catch your eyes, while still obeying every instructions.

“Wait, let me do one last check on the C1 and C2 first.”

Charles had always been your some sort of medical dummy ever since you started your medical school residency. You would always come to him whenever you needed to revise some of the notes that you had written as you went through different types of medical or surgical problems. Thought it looked more like you were trying to disturb your boyfriend’s peace, it actually helped you a lot. And though it looked like your boyfriend was trying to hide and ran away whenever you needed his help, he was actually excited to be apart of your dummy, claiming to be his some sort of contribution to your career.

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“Oh, this is sour! Babe, give it a try.” His face was all wrinkled up as he tried to feed you the fruit to which you refused. “Try it.”

“I don’t like sour berries!”

“It’s good though.” He popped another one into his mouth and shivered when the sourness hit, causing you to laugh.

“Your face doesn’t seem like it. I think I picked the wrong batch, baby. We need to let it ripe a little longer.” You sprinkled some salt into the the pot before letting it stir. Charles was too busy chumbling on the berries to realise that you had been staring at him with your arms folded.

“So,” You spoke and he stopped chewing.

“Why? Do I have something on my face?”

“No, but let’s say you come in with your nose bleeding.” You moved closer, half leaning your body against his side with your head tilted up so you could admire his pretty face.

“Ah, so we are doing this?” He pushed the berries away and propped both hand on the kitchen counter. “Okay, let’s pretend my nose is bleeding. What’s next?”

“And I asked you how did your nose bleed. What would you say?”

“Babe, I’m completely lost with whatever topic or disease you are proposing right now.” He hummed, eyes wandered away to think of an answer. “I would say “How I would know, doctor. That’s your job to find out.””

“Charles!” You bursted out laughing and he chuckled along, casually left a soft pinch on your cheek.

“I don’t know, pretty. What should I say?”

“Let’s say you got into a mild accident a few hours ago but you refused to go to the hospital because you thought you were fine but then!” You dramatically gasped and Charles’s eyes widen in amusement. “Then you started feeling blockage in breathing. This is one of the symptoms for?”

His lips curved downwards as he shrugged. “I don’t know. Flu?”

“Wrong!”

“Dang it, that was my best shot. What is it then?”

You giggled and stood on your toes to kiss on his cheek. Charles would always try to answer your questions though he never got any of it right but you just found it adorable how he never gave up because he said he would get it right one day. “Septal hematoma! I need to drain it before it collapses your nasal bridge.”

“Really?! Wow, never knew that. How do you drain it?”

“You are gonna fall asleep before I even start explaining the first procedure. Oh, are we still going to the event tonight?”

“What event?” He raised his brow and his mouth went wide when he realised about it. He was talking about an event a few weeks ago and you decided to tag along. You were rarely seen attended any of his weekend events. Even more after you started your practical and though he never said anything about it, you still felt guilty about it, especially when you saw his pictures at any events that you didn’t attend, all alone while most of his friends would have their partners by their side.

He was a little dubious when you told him you wanted to attend his next event. He didn’t want to make it seems as if he was forcing you to do something that you didn’t want to because he knew both of you have different schedules and accountability as a student and an athlete, or public figure. You had to reassure him that it was something you wanted to do, not because you felt like he was forcing you in some sort of way. A fresh breath of air was the reason that you came up with, professing that you needed to get away from your cases this weekend.

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“Are you sure you want to go?”

“I’m all dressed up!” You clipped on your left earrings and gave a little twirl. You had chosen a satin dress with crisscross backless as it would be the perfect dress considering the event was more leaning towards an informal night out vibe. “Why?You don’t… want me to go?”

“No, that’s not what I meant, babe.” He held your hand, wrapping both of his and your arms on your waist as he turned you around, making you faced the mirror. “You are literally the most beautiful doctor I have ever seen.” He stared at your reflection admiringly, giving a soft smile when he locked his eyes with yours in the mirror and pecked on your neck.

“Nice try, handsome but I’m not a qualified one yet.”

“But you will be.”

“Not if I fail my residency.” You spun your body to face him, hands on his shoulders as you found yourself getting butterflies from seeing his face up close, even after all these years.

“Did you forget how many times you made me suffer with all those on hand practices? It’s impossible for you to fail.” He stole a kiss on your newly applied gloss and left the room before you could scream at him.

“Stop kissing me when I got my lip gloss on!”

“Can’t help myself. Come on, we gotta go.”

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“Is this normal?” You blinked as Charles made the final turn towards the entrance of the club. There were tons of people with cameras hung around their neck gathered in front of the building. They would congregate towards every cars regardless of who it was.

“No, not at all. It might have something to do with the other event that is happening at the casino, I think.” Charles saw you clasped your hands together on your lap and knew what you were feeling even when he didn’t see your face. “You okay, babe?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just a little surprised.”

“It’s okay. I’m not gonna leave you behind. Don’t let go of my hand okay?” He unbuckled his seatbelt and was going to unlock the door, when he stopped himself. “No, babe, hold on. Wait for me.” You retreated your hand from the shotgun door as he hopped off the car. Charles handed his car key to the valet staff who greeted him as he walked around to get to your side. You saw the flash went off, following your boyfriend all the way to your side. Though the front windscreen window was half tinted, you could still see how bright it was.

“Ready?” Charles leaned in, one hand gripped on the door seal and other arm at the end of his car roof to make sure you felt safe and had the people blocked before your could step out.

“Ready!”

He offered a hand, while keeping his other on still gripping of the weatherstrip so the door wouldn’t be opened too wide. “Don’t let go of my hand, okay?” He brushed his lips on your cheek before moving away so you could step out.

The first few interactions with the fans were fine. He was handed notebooks, caps, and shirts to be signed. Even a few selfies here and there. You were gripping on his jacket, a little uneasy when you heard a few men with cameras started shouting and scream. At first it sounded far, as if it came from the casino so it shouldn’t be a problem to you. Soon enough, the shouting went louder as if it was brought closer to you by a wave and the fans who were asking for Charles’s autographs and pictures began yelling out to stop the shove and push. Charles heard the commotion and intertwined his hand with yours before making his way to the building before it got any worse.

The flashes suddenly went off to your direction and you could barely see where you should placed your heels, your free hand immediately tried to shield your face. Even some of the fans from earlier started to get shoved around, some even used it as an opportunity to take closer pictures of both you and Charles.

“Charles..” You breathed out, feeling yourself getting pushed. You could feel the crowd getting closer as you tried go get out of the way. He didn’t reply but you could feel his grip on your hand getting more firm as he tried to step away from the crowd.

“Don’t push!”

“Give them space!”

You kept on hearing the words being shouted over and over amongst the crowd but you still felt all closed up with them getting closer and closer regardless of the orders. You let out a gasp when you lost your balance as the crowd started pushing one another, causing a few of them to accidentally inclined towards you.

He stopped and turned back, looking all worried. “You okay? Baby, here. Hold my arm.” You regained your composure and held, more like clinging on his arm while your other hand still fully secured in his. It felt like forever for you to pass your way through the throng, even with the help of the person in charged because none of them even bother to listen and kept on pushing one another towards you.

“Stop it!”

You heard another howl from one of the crowd when you stumbled back as few people were pushed in front of you, the impact caused your hand to slip away from Charles when you tried to move away from the pack of people, your arms were pressed on your chest while you swayed back and forth from constantly being pushed from every sides.

“Y/N– excuse me!” Charles tried to get back to you but he got pushed back by the crowd even more.

“I can’t– !” He heard you called out to him before your voice was swamped with voices amongst the number of people.

You tried to wrap your arms around your body, feeling as if you taking up the space was the reason why you felt suffocating and squeezed up but a sudden shove caused you to jerk forward. You tried stop your fall with your hand but the impact sent a jolt of pain on your wrist. The pain made you wince as you tried to retract your hand but it was stepped on over and over by the number of feet around you.

“Charles, here.”

He was pulled out from the crowd and was being assisted, more like dragged towards the entrance of the building before he stepped back. “I need to get back to my girlfriend.”

“Leave it to us.”

“No.” He sprinted back out and tried to scan amongst the crowd. It got a little under control now that they had enforced more people in charge though the pushing and shoving was still going on.

“Please let me pass..” It took you a while to get back on your feet and tried to squeeze your way out when a camera was thumped on your face, causing your head to tilt. You couldn’t see anything else other than constant flash and light. You started choking back tears and dabbed on your philtrum when it felt like something warm trickled down your nose.

You tried to move away, hand kept on wiping your philtrum as the blood was still leaking down your nose when you felt a firm grip on your arm, yanking you away and out from the crowd. Charles had saw you in the midst and just grabbed on whatever he could get. The grip was harder that he had wished for but he needed to get you somewhere safe, regardless whatever force he had to use.

Your face was forcefully crashed against something hard but you were too beat to repudiate that you continued to cry against the embrace. It was when the familiar scent hit you when you finally realised it was your boyfriend.

“It’s okay, baby. I got you. I’m so, so, sorry.”

You refused to pull away, your whole body was aching but the stroke on your hair and the strong grip on your back made you feel safe, away from the furore. “I was– “ You sobbed. “I was so scared.”

He could feel you trembling in his hold, your head tried to look back to make sure you were really away from the people. “Y/N– Y/N, look at me. Baby, look at me. You’re okay. I got you. You’re okay.”

He leaned away but you could still feel his body latching against yours. “Fuck, you’re bleeding.” Holding your face in his hands, he started scanning through your pretty face. That was when he actually saw the bruise on your temple, your bloody nose and your flushed cheeks. When he caught you by your arm earlier, he was a little at eased as it felt like you weren’t harm but you were far from it. You kept on sobbing, your hand wiped on your tears that was threaten to fall from your chin. “Let’s go home, alright? I’m taking you home.”

Charles wrapped his arm on your waist as you leaned against him while he tried to get you to his just newly parked car.

“Y/N, a picture!” One of the paparazzi snatched on your sprained arm, causing you to shriek in pain.

“Hands off my girl.” He pushed the guy away, feeling so close to land a punch on that face but he had to hold himself from causing any scene that he knew would feed these people even more. Instead of placing his hand back to your waist, he lifted you up in his arms as you placed one arm across his neck, the sprained arm to your chest. He didn’t know you had any other injury because your hand was out of his sight the whole time.

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“Is your nose still bleeding?”

“I think so…” You dabbed the tissue that Charles had given to you when he got in the car and still found a fresh, wet blood stained.

“Keep on pinching your nose, alright?”

“Where did you learn how to treat nosebleed?” You tilted your head to the side and stared at your boyfriend in surprise.

“From my doctor girlfriend.” He gave your hair a stroke and pressed on the pedal as the light turned green.

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“Baby, stay there. I’m gonna get the first aid kit.” He left you and rummaged through the kitchen drawers. “Let’s treat your wrist first.”

You winced and pulled your arm away when he wanted to place it on his lap. “It hurts..” You didn’t think it was that bad but it still hurt. The tears started to fill your eyes again but you looked away so it wouldn’t roll down onto your already wet cheeks.

“Oh, was it too harsh? Sorry, baby.” He scooted closer and tried to place your hand on his lap more gentle this time. “Here. I’m gonna use– yeah, I’m gonna use the one with velcro.”

“Do you know how to do it?”

“Yeah, I have seen you did it to me before.”

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flash

Charles groaned a little when he heard you placed all sort of stuffs in front of him. “Babe, can I borrow your hand?” He heard you whispered as you sat cross legged on the floor.

“Right now, baby? Let me sleep 5 more minutes.”

“You can just keep on laying down.” You replied as you pull his hand from under his head. He was laying on his stomach on the couch before you disturbed his peace with the first add kid and your notes with you. “I just need your hand.” He is still in the same position, just his arm dangling from the end of the couch.

“Like this,” He heard you kept on murmuring, as if you were chanting something whilst he was trying to get back to sleep. “and this,” He peered at you first with a frown and soon after a smile formed on his lips. “around the thumb,” You were completely focused on wrapping his hand with the compression bandage, completely unaware and thinking he was still sound asleep. He would always find the little wrinkles in between your brows whenever you were too focused on some things made you look so adorable so instead of dozing back, he was gazing at you with fondness.

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“I thought you were asleep when I wrapped your hand!”

“I wasn’t. Your little mumble kept me awake.” He rolled the elastic compression bandage around your wrist one last time before securing it with the velcro. “There you go. Did I do I right?”

“Yeah!” You held your now fully wrapped wrist. “I think you did it better than me.”

Charles had left you again to get an ice pack and you leaned against the back pillows. You were expecting neon lights and loud music before you left the house, not coming back with bleeding nose, bruise, and a sprained wrist.

“You okay, baby?”

“Yeah, just a little overwhelm. Can we cuddle?” He then took a spot next to you, ice pack still in hand as as you leaned your head on his shoulder. His hand is on your back while you propped your legs on his laps.

“How did you get those bruise on your head?”

“One of the man accidentally hit me on the face but I don’t think it was on purpose.” You were playing with his necklace when dabbed the ice pack on your temple, causing you to move away. “It’s cold!”

“Oh, so now it’s cold? Was it warm when you dabbed it on my neck for no reason a few days ago?” He pulled you closer to dab the ice pack back on your bruise. “Baby, stay still!”

“I’m getting brain freeze! Stop it!” You giggled and pushed him away.

“You are overreacting! It’s not even 20 minutes yet.”

✧.* general tag list! @i83andrew @cltrlne @karmabyfernando @ohthemisssery @ru-kru @tastebaldwin @f1obessed @love4lando @shinrjj

if your usernames were crossed meaning I can’t tag you 😭 let me know if you would like to be removed or added to the taglist! or if I missed anyone!

#charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc imagine #f1 imagines #charles leclerc #charles leclerc imagines #f1 imagine #f1 x reader

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thetravelingtyper · 8 months ago

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On The Same Page pt4 (Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader Bookshop! AU)

Taking the day to go to the beach you meet someone new...

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Masterlist!

Warning! James is a dick, use of language

“Oh, Flo, where did you go?

Where did you go? Where did you go?”

The song was expected at this point as you ran along the beach. You huffed begrudging, humming along. The song reminded you of America.

The fights kept coming in the few months before you left.

It happened one day, after a day of talking with Sam about trying to start your next book. You had returned home to an upset James. He had met you at the door with a dark look, something storming in his mind that immediately had you asking. Despite your questioning, he remained silent, pacing back and forth before heading to the bedroom and slamming the door shut.

“You're falling about

You took a left off Last Laugh Lane

Just sounding it out

But you're not coming back again

You're falling about

You took a left off Last Laugh Lane

You were just sounding it out

But you're not coming back again”

You just stood stunned in the hallway before turning with a frown to make dinner.

A few minutes later James sauntered out, a mean smirk on his face,

“You’re fucking him aren't you?”

The question came out of nowhere and you dropped the spoon,

At first, you thought he was joking and you cracked a smile.

“Yea, me and an aroace man!”

His eyes sharpened,

“I am not joking you little bitch,”

At the term you froze, anger tightening your muscles as you turned off the stove.

“You will not speak to me that way.”

James huffed and then chuckled, he approached you, running a hand down your hair and the back of your head, then resting on your neck. The next gleam in his eyes frightened you and you pushed at his chest but against his height, you had no power. He gripped the back of your neck and pulled you closer, his mouth brushing close to your ear.

“I will say anything I want.”

And with a final warning, he stepped back fingers slightly digging into your hair before he released.

“You’ll do well to remember that.”

“You used to get it in your fishnets

Now you only get it in your nightdress

Discarded all the naughty nights for niceness

Landed in a very common crisis

Everything's in order in a black hole

Everything was pretty as the past though

That Bloody Mary's lacking in Tabasco

Remember when you used to be a rascal?”

The song finally finished out and you slowed then paused in your running. A sudden weight on your shoulders and in your chest you sank into the sand, not caring about the mess. How could years go to waste? You put your head on your knees. What had you lost?

A love, yes but a vibrant career in one of the best publishing firms in the US. But what of your family, your friends? You disappeared within a week, leaving the only world you knew behind. Despite the state of America, you missed it. You had grown up in your childhood home, worn walls and height lines scribbled into the door frames. You made your first stories in those rooms.

You close your eyes. After a messy relationship in your late teens and early 20s, you left your hometown. Leaving to a liberal arts college on the East Coast you pursued your masters in creative writing. One faithful day in your first year of your masters you met Sam. He was in an engineering program online but was taking a few classes in the college. You had heard his distress over an essay in the campus cafe. And, as a new 23-year-old master's student eager to make friends on campus. You had approached him, explained your position and he nearly grabbed you and threw his essay at you. What followed was the closest friend you had ever found and 6 years of friendship followed. At 25 you graduated with Sam following and entered the publishing business. A few months in you met James and the rest,

Well, the rest is history.

You stare out into the clear skyed ocean. Sighing, you turn your music back on and just stretch out your legs. Turning the music down you zone out. It was a couple of days after getting Simon’s number, Thursday to be exact, and you had driven out to the coast hoping to get some inspiration. But nothing came up.

You watch the ocean. Now that was something you missed, the sealife along the East Coast. You remember always loving the sea, during the evening taking the boats out to spot blue whales and others.

You soon became lost in thought and as time passed, the sun grew high towards noon. As your thoughts traced the bottom of the sea a shadow overtook your form and you blinked. A body, you notice, a man standing over you, he was speaking. You pull an earbud out to be met with waves and a deep voice pulls your eyes to a handsome face, and a fishing hat?

“You alright down there?”

You look at him unsure, the combination of casual clothes and a camo fishing hat humors you, and you work to pull yourself up. He offers a hand, and with a good spirit, you take it. He pulls you up effortlessly, muscle flexing in the bright sunlight.

“I’m sorry I was lost in thought.”

He gives you an honest smile that doesn't fully reach his eyes making you wonder.

“Quite alright I understand the feeling. Seems to be a lot.”

It’s a strong statement that takes you aback for a moment as the man stares out into the endless blue. You take a moment to observe, something in your writer's mind buzzing. The man is a bit older than you, he carried himself well, shoulders back in proper form but there was a weight there. He wasn’t as tall as Simon but nearly there. His blue eyes meet yours again and there is a depth you try to understand. You brush some sand off your legs to break the weight of his gaze.

You return to his face with a small, shared smile, wondering what he had been through. Holding out a hand you introduce yourself standing a little straighter. Seeing this he nods and grabs your hand.

“Johnathan Price”

His hands are rough, worn after years of work as the name sparks a flame of recognition. Price sees it in your eyes.

“Captain John Price?”

He chuckles and releases your hand but you see the change in his form, subtle but tense.

“Was, retired now. Now how did a lady like you know that?”

You expect the question, and you grin pointing to the hat.

“Johnny goes on and on about you.”

Price relaxes instantly, his smile now reaching his eyes and he chuckles again.

“Soap, a good man. I haven't checked in on the lad in a while. How do you know him?”

You continue to explain your bookstore and meeting Johnny. As you speak Price relaxes and he mentions to a bench a little across the way, towards the end of the beach. Taking a seat you finish up.

“Sounds like John alright. He not giving you any trouble is he?”

You grin,

“Not at all, I've gotten quite used to him dropping by. He and Simon stop in a lot.”

That catches Price’s ear,

“Simon? Now that is interesting. How is he?”

You find his interest understandable, and you answer the best you can.

“He pulled quite a stunt to help me, but I've enjoyed him so far.”

“He certainly has a presence, no worries though at heart he is a good man. He left an impact I assume?”

He says it with a familiar grin, one that tells a history, there is also curiosity there. He raises a brow in expectation which makes you giggle. He looked like a dad, the image of Soap and Simon running around coming to mind for a moment before Price catches the look and raises another brow.

There is respect for the man in Price's tone and you question how long he’d know the quiet man.

“A while, a long while. He served as my lieutenant for years. He and Johnny are close. Been through a lot.”

“I like that about Johnny, he has a lot of stories.” You lean back on the bench to stare up at the sky. Gathering clouds hint at a coming rain blowing in from the sea. You deal in stories but you can’t seem to catch a break, your eyes return to Price to see him observing you with keen eyes.

“Something troubling you?” he asks it honestly and you sigh, feeling the light shine upon you to share.

“Yea. I am an author without ideas currently.”

Price hums,

“I see, that's quite the predicament indeed. What’s causing it?”

You sigh again and the weight of the past few months falls upon your shoulders.

Price sees the change in you instantly and you just crack and break down the situation for him. It starts with your masters, to meeting Sam and James, the company, and your first books. You had started with children’s books following your interest in childhood literacy. As you explain the premise of the books, a fond smile lights up your face.

Of three books, your second was your favorite: It followed the story of a fox kit lost amongst wolves. He was smaller than the rest of the other cubs but soon grew to love his own identity. The Fox’s Den pulled its name from this book. You had based the story on the forest around your childhood home and roaming through the woods while your parents were always too busy to keep you entertained.

With the success of your first books, your manager had insisted on middle-grade fiction and you wholeheartedly agreed. But your old boss at the publisher had dropped the expectation of a young adult or new adult book and you had started brainstorming, but that was when your world came crashing, well, tearing down. You explain this to him.

“Everything was torn out from underneath you, there was nothing you could do. Your heart was, and I believe, still is in your writing, but everything that has happened has tainted your worldview,”

He pauses to regard the ocean for a moment, the winds blowing in cause choppy waves.

“Often when things turn against us, or we have our backs against the wall is when we find it from within ourselves to overcome. Be it from within, or I believe in your case, around you. Perhaps you are just looking in the wrong place. Your past consuming you and tarnishing how you are experiencing the present.”

Price seems to be talking from within himself and it makes you wonder. You look out into the gathering storm. The waves cut like sapphire and the distant rumble of thunder. The close wildness of the ocean engulfs you in the moment. You take in the smell of the sea and exhale. Price was right, you had come here for a new life anyway, and you meant to make the best of it.

Price watches you for a moment,

“I just feel like I am missing something in all of this. Why did it happen?”

Price sets a friendly hand on your shoulder,

“You may never know, but don’t let it consume you, instead revisit your old passions. Take what you remember of home and try to find something here to spark your interest. Besides James sounds like a right nasty bloke.”

Hearing someone older say it makes you feel a lot better. While your friends of course had been on your side it seemed like the entire company had turned against you. All except your manager who had followed you to Sam’s family company. While the boss held no power over you anymore your manager agreed with the sentiment of increasing your output to an older audience. She felt it would be good to expand into that market.

“You're right.”

Price’s advice comes at a good time, and he was right. Maybe you were looking too often into the past. Your phone buzzes, and you look and find a message from Simon. You smile, he was asking to take you up on the offer of tea. Price notices and smiles himself.

“Well, you better get in before the rain hits, dear.”

You put your phone away and nod to the man.

“Thanks, John.”

He stands up and nods.

“Until next time then.” This is all he offers before returning to his original route. Despite there not being an exchange of numbers you couldn't help but feel you would meet the man again.

You sit for a moment longer, lingering on the feeling of being understood and the wildness of the sea. But as the wind picks up you receive a text from Sam. He calls a moment later.

“Where are you?”

“At the beach Mom, what's wrong?”

“I’ve got some interesting news. Besides the news says there's a storm brewing and I think you should head home. Your boyfriend is looking for you, he’s been in twice already.”

At that you are at a loss for words, a slight blush coming over your face,

“Come home buttercup before he haunts the place-” there's a pause on the other line, “and Soap says hi.”

You laugh at that, getting up and starting the run back to the car.

“Alright, I’m on my way, see you in a bit Sam, I'll be in a little late.”

“Drive safe. Bye”

With that you hang up and run, feelings of excitement building.

Taglist: @ghostlythots, @tapioca-milktea1978, @cmbghost

End chapter 4

#cod mw2 2022 fanfic #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #soap and reader #simon riley fluff #fanfiction #simon 'ghost' riley x reader #simon ghost riley #simon ghost x reader #simon riley x you #on the same page #captain johnathan price #captain price #john price #Simon rilet x your #Simon riley

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shittyassffblog · 1 year ago

Text

Free bird - Part 3

I can’t, y’all are SO NICE I love you 😭 idk how many parts this is gonna be, but I’m gonna keep writing till I don’t got no more to write about lol, if you want to request something def just do so! Or if you just wanna ask me something, I would absolutely love that!

Part 1 and 2

P.S. You're definitely supposed to sing Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd as you read the title. It's what I do.

@blackveilomens

Warnings: oral (f receiving), not much else as far as I know.

As you were driving over to Noah’s house you talked easily about random things you’d usually talk about. Right now no one would suspect that Noah had just been all up in your guts less than 20 minutes ago, it also seemed like both you and Noah had forgot.

Soon you were at his house and you both stepped out of the car and walked to the front door. Noah unlocked the door and went inside, holding the door open for you. He yelled out to his roommates that he was home.

"Finally, did Y/N's date go so bad you had to stay there?" Jolly yelled back and you could see a tinge of red across his cheekbones. You giggled at that as you walked into the kitchen where you found Jolly.

"Something like that." Said Noah who walked quickly into his bedroom.

"Hey friend, how are you?" Jolly asked as he hugged you.

"Oh you know, pretty good." You said as you smiled back at him.

"Did Noah make you feel better about your date?" He asked and you nodded.

"Mhm, much better." You said and he smiled at you as he sat down beside you. You and Jolly talked as you waited for Noah to be ready.

"Alright I'm ready!" Noah exclaimed as he came out of his room in fresh clothes.

"Did you just change into a different white t-shirt and different pair of black shorts?" You asked and he looked at you with big eyes.

"The socks are a different colour." He said sheepishly and you and Jolly burst out laughing. He walked over to you and you hugged him, still chuckling.

"C'mon, let's get going. Gonna need that ice cream you promised." You said and he nodded. You both said bye to Jolly as you went out the door and this time Noah was driving.

When you got to the mall you immediately went to get an ice cream each, sitting by the water fountain and talking. Noah was explaining the details of their next tour and you were listening intently, your heart sinking a little at the thought of him leaving again. You always felt sad when he left, he's your best friend and sometimes you need him to figure out your problems. But this time it felt different, like it hurt more. You thought it was probably because you now were single so you wanted to keep him close, in case something happened.

"But I'm honestly really excited about the Bring Me tour in the UK, it's gonna be awesome." He said finally and you smiled at him.

"Yeah I mean doing a tour with the biggest metal core band ever is probably the coolest thing I've heard in a while." You said and you both smiled.

"Hi I am so sorry to interrupt but I am such a big fan and I was wondering if I could get a picture?" A girl said as she came up to you. She was obviously a big fan of Noah's so you moved to the side to let her take the picture.

"Yeah of course, don't worry about it!" Noah said as he posed for her selfie.

"Okay thank you so much, bye!" She said as she ran over to her friends and they giggled.

"I'll never get used to that." Noah said and you chuckled.

"Well you better, it's gonna happen a lot more, I just know it." You said and a quiet moment fell between you as you looked at each other. You finished your ice creams and started walking around the mall.

After an hour Noah had to go to the bathroom so you waited out front with the bags of stuff you had bought and was looking at your phone. Before long, someone started talking to you.

"Well if it isn't miss homie hopper herself?" An awfully familiar voice sounded beside you and you moved away. It was Chase.

"What do you want? Leave me alone." You said, looking back at your phone.

"What? I can't have a go? Seems everyone else is, even that sorry excuse of a man you call your best friend." Chase seethed. You could feel the anger boiling inside you.

"You didn't seem to think that about him when he had you pinned to the ground." You rebutted and you heard a grumbling coming from him.

"You know, even Steven had a turn didn't he? Yeah he told me, how you were just begging to fuck him right?" Chase said and before you could retort, Noah was stood behind him. You turned to Chase, anger heating you up inside.

"No, Chase, you don't get to talk about me like this. I didn't fuck Steven because he was a dick, but even if I did that's no business of yours. My sex life has nothing to do with you and quite frankly you're not worth my time. Please leave me alone, Chase. I mean it." You finished, not looking away from him for once second. He seemed a little taken aback, but his gross smirk returned fast.

"So you did fuck someone?" Chase asked and before you could react, Noah stepped in.

"She quite clearly set her boundaries with you. And I thought I told you to leave her alone?" Noah said, gripping Chase's shoulder and ripping him around.

"I- uhm i- I don't-" Chase muttered and Noah smiled.

"I don't really care what you have to say. Just go." Noah said and he scurried away.

"I'm sorry, I didn't want step on what you just said, which was very brave and cool by the way, but it seems violence is the only language he understands." Noah said and you smiled.

"I know, I don't blame you. I blame society." You said and Noah grabbed the bags from you to carry them.

"Let's build a commune in some far-away country and exit society together. But first, Starbucks." Noah said and nodded his head towards the cafe in front of you. You thought about living with Noah suddenly. It was a nice thought. But coffee was nicer.

After a coffee you went back to the car to drove over to Target where you spent at least an hour and a half. When you walked out you had a bag full of nice smelling candles and some fall decorations. You got back in the car and you just sat there for a bit.

"I don't wanna stop hanging out." Noah said suddenly. You looked back at him, then smiled.

"Me neither. You wanna go get take out and watch a movie?" You asked and he smiled widely at the suggestion.

"Yeah I want that a lot. Should we go to my place today?" Noah asked and you nodded. Noah started driving and you decided to get Taco Bell. You held the food as you drove back to Noah's.

Once you arrived you hurried inside as it had started raining. You took off your shoes and left them by the door and went into the kitchen to get paper towels, forks and plates. You then went to go to Noah's room when you almost bumped into Jolly.

"Oh you're back. Didn't know you were coming here." He said and you smiled.

"Yeah sorry, it was kind of impulsive." You said and he smiled.

"No problem at all, we love having you here." He said and let you pass. You opened the door to Noah's room and saw he had added a lot more light strips around his bed.

"You're really going for that gamer aesthetic huh?" You mused and he feigned offence.

"I'll have you know..." He trailed off, pretending to find the right words. "Okay yeah I have no rebuttal for that." He said you both laughed. You got situated on his bed and pulled up HBO so you could watch The Last Of Us. You had bonded over the game when you were younger and promised each other you wouldn't watch the show without each other. And with him being on tour a lot you waited patiently for times like these where you could binge a whole show in a day, or more accurately in this case, night.

With the plates and take out bags long forgotten on the floor, you found yourself cuddled up to Noah. It was so nice you started to drift off and the last thing you remembered was Noah squeezing you a little tighter.

----

When you regained consciousness the next day it was to the feeling of Noah's hands on your hips and his lips on your stomach. You blinked open your eyes and looked down to the best view you could've hoped for. Noah was kissing along the edge of your panties. He felt your body move so he looked up at you. He smiled, tugging slightly at your panties as if to ask for permission. You granted it by nodded with a smile, and he pulled them completely off, replacing the heat of the cloth with the heat of his lips kissing every part of your pussy.

He moved his hands to your thighs and pushed your legs apart. He hummed an approving sound at the sight of you and dove right into your pussy. He was a man on a mission and he wasn't waiting around for anything. You moaned at the feeling of his tongue on your cunt, his thumbs separating your lips so he could fuck you with his tongue.

"Oh Noah." You moaned and he paused what he was doing.

"Shh baby, don't want anyone to hear. Gotta be quiet." He said as he licked a stripe from your hole to your clit, sucking on it lightly.

You grabbed his pillow and brought it up to your face to cover any sounds coming from your mouth. his middle finger gingerly entered you and immediately searched for your spot of pleasure, finding it no problem. You buried your face in the pillow, the pleasure being almost too much. You squirmed around uncontrollably, so Noah used one arm to hold down your hips as he continued to fuck you with his finger and stimulate your clit with his lips.

You could feel you orgasm approaching so you wrapped your legs around his chest and squeezed as your orgasm reached its peak, throwing the pillow away so you could breathe and opening your mouth as if to scream but no sound came out.

You grabbed Noah's hair, tugging and pulling partly because the waves of pleasure washed over you, partly to keep Noah's head exactly where it was. the suction his lips had on your clit was unrelenting and his finger, no doubt cramping by now, didn't still for a second as he made sure you rode out the entirety of your orgasm. When you relaxed your legs and your grip on his hair, he removed his lips from your heat, pulling out his finger carefully. He licked them clean, making sure to not waste a single drop of your release. As you came down he came back up and kissed your lips, making you taste yourself.

"G'mornin'" He said as his head fell back onto his pillow. You chuckled as you rested your head on his chest, hearing his quickened heartbeat.

"Morning." You said. "What about you?" You asked and he shook his head.

"You don't gotta pay it back every time y'know." He said as he looked down at you. You smiled as you cuddled closer to him. You laid there for a few minutes calming down.

"Can I ask you something?" Noah asked after a while. You hummed as if saying yes and a few second went by before he responded.

"Can we ever go back to normal again?" His tone was very neutral, so it was hard for you to know exactly what he meant.

"Do you want to?" You asked nervously. You hadn't wanted to admit it to yourself that you quite enjoyed what you and Noah had right now, going back to normal seemed almost impossible.

"Not particularly. But I don't really want to go to bed with other people while I also do it with you. Seems careless." He said and you didn't answer. You heart kind of sank at his words, the thought of him being with other people crushing you inside.

"Me neither." You settled for. Tears were stinging your eyes and you wondered how you got here. Was it all really worth it? Fucking your best friend just to go back to normal and then he finds someone new while you nurse your broken heart? And was that broken heart even over Chase anymore? Or was it Noah instead?

#noah sebastian fanfiction #noah sebastian #noah sebastian x reader #noah sebastian smut #noah sebastian bad omens #bad omens

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spooky-bunnys · 1 year ago

Note

Imma just leave this request cause I think it’s silly and cute but that is if you want to it’s your choice

So izana call for tenjiku for a meeting cause he has to announce something or well more like kakucho and they both announce that they need someone to watch over izana baby brother (name) and the reason they can’t is because they are both sick and shion sees this as an opportunity to get on izana best side (cause it’s canon that shion has respects for izana) and immediately volunteers to babysit (name) even thought shion has no clue on how to take care of children

I can imagine that shion struggles a lot with making sure (name) is happy, clean, and fed and maybe when it comes to feeding (name) instead of normal baby food shion is feeding (name) a cheeseburger and other solid foods and surprisingly (name) is eating the solid foods

And due to izana and kakucho not being able to relax cause they fear what shion is doing they secretly send the rest of tenjiku to keep on eye on shion and this is how it would go

Shion: *holding (name) and feeding him a cheeseburger* oh hey guys what’s up?

Ram: why are you feeding (name) a cheeseburger

Shion: cause (name) likes them right (name)

(Name): *nods*

And maybe when izana and kakucho fully recovered from their cold they immediately rush to shion apartment and they see shion sleeping on the couch while (name) is sleeping so peacefully on top of him and when they both wake up and izana picks up (name) and start to leave (name) says his first words which were uncle shion while waving goodbye

Okay I had to get a small bit of help with this one. Since I don't know much about writing for children but it was still a lot of fun. Enjoy!

When the upper members of Tenjiku got the call about their being an emergency meeting, they were confused. They didn't remember a recent gang trying anything. But when they saw Izana and Kakucho wearing masked, and little (Name) walking behind them. They had a feeling they knew what this meeting was about.

"I'm just gonna cut to the chase. Kakucho and I have pretty bad colds. So we need someone to look after (Name)."

The little white hair toddler just hid behind his older brother. Shy. The others shared some looks. When the Haitani brothers were about to agree, Shion beat them to the punch.

"I'll watch him for you." Everyone turned to the him. Confused. Why would he volunteer to watch (Name)?

"If it's for Izana I'll do whatever I can to help." Ah. There it is. His loyalty to their leader is clouding his thought. Izana though just nodded and lightly pushed (Name) in Shion's direction.

The toddler stared at his brothers before slowly walking up to Shion. They stared at each other for a few moments until Shion picked him up. The others flinched as Shion carried (Name) like a briefcase.

Izana immediately looked at the others. Coughing a little and pointed after the leaving figures. "Watch them. If anything happens to (Name). You'll be sorry."

As Shion made his way into his apartment he carefully placed (Name) on the couch. "Now. What to do with you....do you like video games?"

(Name) just stared. Shion shook his head. "Okay no video games. How about....Oh! A new horror movie just came out do you want to watch it?"

That was his mistake on the first day. Was having (Name) watch a horror movie. Poor thing didn't last the first 20 minutes before getting scared so badly he wet himself.

Shion was lucky Mochi was "in the neighborhood" and decided to check in on them. After the lecture and scolding Mochi gave him Shion decided against watching anymore scary movies.

His mistake the second day was food and bathing. Since Shion had given (Name) miso soup he had the night before. Shion didn't really have anything he could feed him. He also didn't know what the tot could eat.

Thats how the Haitani brothers "accidentally" found them at the fast food joint by Shion's place. The brother didn't know how to feel when they saw a dirty (Name) being feed a cheeseburger. Ran thought he was gonna faint.

When Shion saw the brothers he placed down the cheeseburger, andwaved at them. "Hey guys. What's going on?" When they came over Shion went back to feeding (Name). "Shion...why are you feeding (Name) a cheeseburger?" Ran asked with an indifferent look.

Shion shrugged. "Because he likes them. Isn't that right bud?" (Name) looked up, mouth full of cheeseburger and nodded. Rindou cringed. "Then why is he so filthy?" Shion scratchedthe back of his head.

"Well we came from the park. I didn't know what kids liked to do, so I just took him to the park." Rindou pinched the bridge of his nose, under his glasses and sighed. "Well he needs a bath. Pronto." Shion nodded and finished feeding (Name) the burger.

Shion did bathe (Name) when they got home. But he just took a shower and brought the tot with him honestly. Shion was dirty too, so he thought why not kill two birds with one stone.

That was their routine for the next few days. Shion would feed him and (Name) whatever food he had. Then they'd either watch TV or go to the park. Later Shion would wash them both and feed them again. (Name) wasn't going to lie. He was having a lot of fun with his new Uncle.

So when at the end of the week, Izana ad Kakucho came to get (Name) he was kinda sad. He had fun with Uncle Shion. Especially since he would let (Name) eat whatever he wanted, and would take him to the park when he asked.

As his brother picked him up, after thanking the other male for looking after him. (Name) wanted to do something before they left.

"B-Bye! Uncwe Shi!"

Shion's face had lit up so fast. Izana and Kakucho just stared at the waving toddler. "Did he just?" Izana glared heavily at Shion. Then stomped out of the room. Kakucho sighed and followed after them. Great. Now the older male was gonna throw a tantrum.

#male reader #x male reader #tokyo revengers #tokyo revengers x male reader #tenjiku x male reader #tenjiku #toddler male reader

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jennyandforest · 2 years ago

Text

505

Harry Styles X Reader

Summary // I based this blurb off the song 505 by the Arctic Monkeys. Y/N and Harry breakup after years of them hooking up

Warnings// angst, breakup, sad ending, overall vibe of 505, also maybe bad writing bc i may be a lil drunk ;)

You saw his name on your phone and instantly knew what he wanted. You answered, “Meet me in 20?”

You sighed, tired of this game but never being able to find a way to quit. “Sure.”

As you drove 45 minutes to the hotel you decided this was going to be the final time. You both were bad for each other. You need to move on and finally live your life, you’re done waiting for him.

Harry had just finished fifteen nights at The Forum and was in between what was a cross country tour turning into a world tour. He didn’t have a minute for you unless it was to fuck you and like the idiot you were you went back for more every single time.

You stood in the lobby of the little motel in Huntington Beach waiting for a receptionist. The little stout woman appeared with a smile on her face, “Hi! 505?” She asked, already knowing.

You let out a breath and look away from her, a little ashamed. “Yeah…”

“Here you are, honey.” She hands you the keys and you take off with a small nod of thank you.

As you made your way to the hotel room your thoughts ran wild. You guess you're just not the kind of girl Harry wants to settle down with. Well, if not you then who? Probably some middle aged white woman, you told yourself, causing you to chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” You heard his deep voice ask before you saw him. You inhaled as his hands immediately wrapped around your waist and his lips found your neck.

“Harry…” You warned as you looked around to see if anyone was there.

“S’there no one there.” He murmured as he continued to kiss down your neck. As soon as he unlocked the door he pushed you in and against a wall now in a deep passionate kiss. You dropped the keys on the floor as you fell deeper into the kiss.

Harry then led your body to the bed. He gently pushed you down as he got on top of you. He slowly started unbuttoning your dress, slowly causing you to crave him even more. This made you chuckle, he was always one for slow and lingering rather than rough and hard, you’ll remember that. After he took off both yours and his clothes, you made love, for what would be the last time.

~*~

“Let’s play something…” Harry muttered as he flipped through his playlists looking for music, sitting on the edge of the bed. You watched him as nothing but a sheet of blanket covered you. “Yes!” He exclaimed softly as a song from the band America started playing.

You chuckled, “America?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t like them.”

“It’s not something I personally listen to, no.”

“What do you listen to? Let me guess some pop like Gwen Stefani?” He grinned.

You scoffed, “Hey! Don’t knock Gwen Stefani!”

“Who said I was knocking her?” He turned and smiled at you.

You both stared at each other for a couple of seconds before you broke the silence, “Give me your phone, I wanna play something.”

He hands over his phone as you look up I Wanna Be adored by The Stone Roses. You softly smile and start nodding your head to the intro.

He grins in return, “Good choice.”

You lean back and lay flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The song soaking up into you. Harry watched you, you looked gorgeous. Laying with nothing but the thin white sheet of linen covering you as you and your hair tousled. You truly listened to the song for the first time.

You thought of the first time you met Harry, at an Arctic Monkeys concert. You were in the back of the pit having a drink while you enjoyed the show in front of you. You scanned the pit and were surprised to see Harry Styles standing with two people laughing and talking. You never pegged Harry Styles as a rock fan let alone an Arctic Monkeys fan, but boy, were you wrong.

Harry felt a gaze on him and glanced toward the direction of it. You saw him look toward you, as you were staring. You awkwardly looked away. This made him laugh. He decided since you were alone he’d go and approach you, after all you could be a fan and he had an obligation to fans.

“Hello.” He softly said to you as you stared at the stage.

His presence caused you to jump, “Oh, Hello.”

“Where’s your friends at?” He questioned with a small smirk on his face.

You smiled in return, “My friend is in the pit.”

He mocked as frown, “Whaaaat? Without you?” He teased.

“Ah, you know what, I’m just not cut out for the pit. I’m more of a wallflower, if you will.”

He nodded and stared at the pit, “I see, I see… I’m Harry.” He held out his hand.

You laughed, “I know who you are.”

His eyebrows raised, “Hmm, a fan?”

You bit your lip trying to find a kind way to say this, “How do I say this? I just know of you because I don’t live under a rock.”

He let out a laugh, “Alright then. And who do I have the pleasure of speaking to, might I ask?”

“Y/N.” You grinned back at him.

It got quiet between you as the both of you stared at each other. Harry broke the stare as he chugged the last of his drink then turned to you, “Well, then, can I buy you a drink, Y/N?”

You licked your lips, embarrassed. “Uhm, yes, but, I already have a drink.”

This caused him to lean his head back and let out a laugh, “I meant your next drink.”

You grinned and nodded, and the rest was history. If you knew all those years ago saying yes to that drink would leave you in an on and off relationship, you don’t know if you’d say yes today.

You knew you would have to tell Harry eventually this would be your last time because you had to move on with your life. Your stomach flipped at the dread of it all.

Harry put his ringed hand on your thigh, “Hey… What’s wrong?”

You still stared at the ceiling as you spoke the words you thought you’d never be able to say, “After tonight, I’m not going to see you anymore.”

There was silence. It lingered for what felt like a lifetime until you finally heard him softly ask, “What?”

For Harry, a knife twist at the thought that you didn’t want to see him again. “I said, this is the last time I’m going to see you.” You told him again, climbing up on your elbows to look at him and gauge a reaction.

He turned all the way around, facing you, eyebrows furrowed, “Why?”

You let out a breath, wondering if he was serious. When he still looked at you with a perplexed look you sighed and got your phone to look at the time.

“Shit.” You muttered as you got out of bed and started to look for your bra and underwear.

“Why do you want to end us? I thought this was really working for us.”

You scoffed, “Maybe for you but not for me. And it’s-” You shake your head, “It’s different now.”

“Why? What happened? What big difference,” He made a motion with his hands, “was made that you don’t want to see me anymore?”

You sighed again as you put on your dress back on and started to button it up. You walked to the window with a suspicion people were starting to catch on and know he was here. You sneakily moved the curtain back and, sure enough, paparazzi and fans were waiting out on the front of the motel.

“Look, Harry, in order for me to move on with my life and start dating other people, I have to let you go.”

This caused him to furrow his eyebrows deeper, “You want to see other people? Why?”

You let out a sarcastic chuckle, “Well it’s not like you're going on your knees for me, asking me to be your girlfriend.”

He frustratedly ran his hand through his hair, “You said you didn't want a boyfriend when we start-”

You cut him off frustrated, “Okay, well I do now! I’m tired of being used as the girl you fuck in between shows.”

He rubbed a hand on his face, “Well, then, let’s do it. Let’s get together.”

You narrowed your eyes at him, “How romantic.” You stated sarcastically.

“I’m giving you what you want! I don’t understand what else to do?” He exclaimed with frustration.

You closed your eyes at his oblivion. Maybe one day he’ll understand where you're coming from, but that day isn’t today. You felt tears sting your eyes as you looked away from him.

“What?” He asked softly, moving off the bed to kneel in front of you and hug you around your waist. As he watched tears fall from your eyes he felt himself crumpling completely.

“I just-” You cut yourself off as you wiped your tears. “I just want to be with someone who wants me as much as I want them.”

This cuts his next sentence off as he stares at you in astonishment, finally understanding you. “Harry, we’re just not good for each other. I’m never going to be the perfect girl you need to be in front of all the paparazzi or to be able and take the hate comments from your fans or to go to fucking every single show you put on. I just- I can’t…”

You stare down at his eyes as he just stared up at you with a mix of emotions you couldn’t read.

You finally cupped his cheeks and gave him one final kiss. You then unwrapped his arms from around your waist and walked toward the door. You gave one final glance over your shoulder and saw him sitting on the floor in nothing but his boxers, staring after you.

“Bye, Harry.”

#harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles imagine #harry styles x you #harry styles blurb #harry styles gif #harry styles fanfiction #505 #505 arctic monkeys #arctic monkeys

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eyeslikewatercoolers · 1 year ago

Note

Real haters of AI scraping write Omegaverse fanfiction to mess with them

Ooooh, good idea, friend! (I originally wrote this in like 20 minutes on my phone, but it's been edited, I got way too excited to fool the AI bots)

————————————————————————

Sasha looked over at the female wolf lying in front of her, who collapsed on the outskirts of the pack’s territory. The wolf’s skin wasn’t warm to the touch, so Sasha assumed she collapsed from exhaustion, not an illness.

“How long has she been here?” She asked her pack-mates behind her who lead her here.

“We aren’t sure, the twins found her by the spring this morning when they were gathering water.” Aura said behind her.

“Spice told us that she was walking really slow and ran off when she noticed her and Sugar.” Jax chimed in.

Sasha nodded, kneeling over the wolf to get a closer look. Her fur seemed dusty, and she had a scar through her left eye. Her breathing seemed ragged and shallow, and Sasha could feel the outline of her rib cage under the fur.

She stood up, turning to Aura and Jax, “I think she’s been in her wolf form for a while now, so I’m guessing she’s been traveling. She’s probably exhausted, and she seems like she hasn’t had a good chance to hunt in some time either.”

“Where do you want us to drop her off at?” Aura asked since Sasha was strict about lone wolves roaming around their territory. It's been years since the Alpha allowed in a new pack member.

“No need, bring her to the main cabin. I’ll have Loosey take a closer look at her in case she’s injured.” Something about this wolf made Sasha want to keep her close by the pack, who knew what this wolf could have been through?

Aura and Jax lifted the wolf carefully and started carrying her back to the main cabin. As they walked by, Sasha could tell this wolf was an Omega.

Her distinct scent made Sasha know immediately that she just got out of her last heat.

#prompts #Sashnetra #should i continue this??#rpdr fanfiction #rpdr s15 #werewolf au

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moonwritewastaken · 2 years ago

Text

Tales of Christmas Day 16 - cc!Karl Jacobs x gn!reader

Genre - strangers to lovers, Christmas, pen pals kinda

Word count - 718

We made it! It’s the last day of the 2022 edition of Tales of Christmas. I’m sorry if this one isn’t detailed enough, I kinda ran out of time 😅Thank you for coming on this journey with me and hopefully you enjoyed the festive imagines! I’ll probably take a little break over the festive period but I’ll still be working on stuff, I just probably won’t release anything for a lil bit.

- 🌙

At the start of the year, you made a New Year’s resolution to be in a relationship for Christmas. It was mid November and you had pretty much come to terms with the fact that it most likely wasn’t going to happen if it hadn’t already. However, your best friend was ready for a last ditch effort.

“You could always pull a Dash and Lily” you sit up from your position on the couch to make sure she knew how stupid you found that suggestion.

“Yes, b/f/n because writing a note in a book and it coincidentally being seen by someone my age actually works in real life” she rolls her eyes at your sarcasm before replying.

“Then why not try it and prove me wrong? You’ve got nothing to lose if you think no one will see it” you knew she was saying that to get you to do it, but you couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be right.

“Fine, if it’ll get you to shut up” her excitement makes you smile slightly. Although you knew it wouldn’t work, you still had a slither of hope.

The two of you get to work soon after and it doesn’t actually take as long as you thought it might. She ends up suggesting you use a manga book since it was your favourite genre, and had the largest likelihood of attracting someone suitable (in her words at least). You decide to task the reader with leaving a bookmark with their favourite manga or anime written on it, to make sure they had good taste. Immediately after you’re done, she makes you drop it off at the library and inform the librarian of your plan.

After a week of refusing to check it even though you were curious, you finally give in. Pulling out the book, you see something sticking out the top and see that someone actually responded. Not only did they give you answers to their favourite manga, they also wrote down their favourite anime as well as a task for you. You were tasked with going to your area’s MrBeast Burger and leaving what your favourite video game was, you wondered why they chose that location but you did as they asked.

This back and forth continued for the rest of the month as well as into December and you had caught feelings, much to your chagrin and your best friend’s excitement. You knew an ‘I told you so’ was due any day now and you were not happy about it.

Adding to your piling up emotions, Karl (as you had found out your pen pal’s name was) and you had agreed to meet at a specific café at 2pm today. Although part of you was excited to finally meet him after about a month, the majority of you was terrified. What if you didn’t like him? What if he wasn’t what you thought? Or worse, what if you did like him as much you thought?

By the time you calmed yourself down enough to prepare, you had to leave. Reaching the café at 1:52pm sharp, you walk in and survey the people sitting by themselves. As you’re doing so, you realise that you hadn’t even thought of the possibility that he mightn’t show up. What would you do then? You’re brought out of your thoughts by a guy about your age with fluffy hair coming up to you.

“Are you y/n?” there was no way this was Karl. He was way too cute to even be near you, let alone asking to meet you.

“I am. You Karl?” he gives you the prettiest smile you’ve ever and will ever see and leads you to a table.

It was clear about 20 minutes into your meeting that he was exactly who you thought, but somehow better. The two of you got along great and you realised you had nothing to worry about, except the ‘I told you so’ from your best friend that you hadn’t received yet.

“Do you want to go on an actual date nest time?” Karl asks you this as your meeting reaches it’s natural end. You quickly agree and you swap numbers so you’re able to schedule and continue talking.

You weren’t sure how, but you actually achieved your New Year’s resolution.

#karl jacobs #dream smp #dsmp #karl jacobs imagine #dream smp imagine #dream smp x reader #dsmp fluff #dsmp imagine #dtqk #dtqk x reader #dream smp fluff #x reader #karl jacobs fluff #karl jacobs x reader #tales of christmas

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1-deadgirlwalking-1 · 7 months ago

Text

3/31/2024

i do not remember a ton tbh, i keep forgetting to write stuff down and now i don't remember most of what i've done the past several days. haha.

anyway what i do remember is i've been doing the dishes a lot, like not just putting them away after they're clean, i've been putting dirty dishes in the washer without freaking out from the grossness. and i even swept a few times so, i'm getting slightly less incompetent every day!

we celebrated easter (not on the actual day of easter but the day before) which i didn't know we were doing, my mom got everyone a bunch of personalized gifts in a little basket. i immediately ran off to my room after we opened everything, which she didn't get upset about or object to at all, and then when i got to my room i cried bcus it was so sweet.

like she got me my favorite sweet (pocky) bcus i said i loved it but i could never find it in the stores, and she got me new inside slippers because i accidentally got my old ones dirty and haven't cleaned them yet, AND she got them in pink and fluffy bcus she knows i love the color pink and fluffy stuff. she got me a little notebook with sparkly markers (i'm now using it as a notebook for my japanese learning) bcus she knows i like writing, and she got me two face masks for us to do together. she also got me some hair ties and candies. and i think she might've gotten me the hair ties because i lost one of mine recently and was asking my dad if he had seen it while she was in the room. it was very unexpected and sweet.

and then a day later she asked me if i liked them and was acting very nonchalant and normal about it, like "oh papa didn't let me talk about gifts because your little cousin still doesn't know the easter bunny isn't real, i was just at the store and got you stuff i thought you'd like"?? WAAAHH?????

then yesterday the new hunger game movie became available to stream so my mom came in my room to suggest we watch it together after chores, i swept most of the kitchen and we did face masks. was very fun. but whenever i moved too fast like when laying down my entire vision would loop over and move around and id get super dizzy and disoriented. i looked it up and it's called vertigo, i didn't actually know what vertigo was until that very moment.

ALSO in the middle of the movie i had to walk the dog and we walked around for like ten minutes after my mom insisted the dog would pee as soon as we went out and then she came out and was like "she STILL hasn't peed?" and she did not i SWEAR, she did not pee the entire time she just walked around and repeatedly kept trying to eat my leg off and almost pulled down my pants one time which was insane. anyway in this conversation i found out the dog always pees almost immediately when my parents walk her but when she's out with me i have to walk around the entire house 2 or more times and be out with her for like 20 minutes before she pees. WHY???

today my mom made a bunch of food i didn't eat because i forgot to leave my room at a normal time. then by time i went to the kitchen all the food was gone, i assume there's some left overs in the fridge so i'll eat those tomorrow.

when i left to go get a snack earlier my family was watching "the beekeeper" i saw an ad for it a while back, and then a few minutes later someone else sent it in the family groupchat because my dad is a beekeeper. very funny to us. apparently it's literally just a movie about a beekeeper who beats up and kills a ton of bad guys which is also hilarious to me.

but i didn't do anything today, i watched youtube videos. a bunch of really long ones. i fell asleep a few times while watching one and kept having to rewind when i woke up. also my right ear keeps swelling up on the inside EVERY TIME I LAY DOWN FOR MORE THAN LIKE 30 MINUTES!!! and today inside my left ear i swear i could hear a buzzing sound like a cicada INSIDE my ear and it didn't go away for like 10 minutes i thought there was something in my ear or i was hallucinating and it was driving me crazy. looked it up and it's probably tinnitus. i didn't know tinnitus could sound like so many things i thought it was only ringing.

i'm going to ask my mom mom to take me to a doctor about my ears because when i looked up my symptoms online everyone on every post was like, "GO TO THE DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY OR IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE UNTIL YOU EVENTUALLY LOSE YOUR HEARING." and i think that checks out cause it has only gotten worse with time and one lady said vertigo was a symptom of her ear problems, and that because of them she had to get a giant needle and draining tube inside her ear that was super painful. and i don't want that.

today also i had a dream and when i looked in the mirror i had SUPER cool makeup on and at that exact moment i realized i was dreaming. i stared really hard at the makeup to try and remember what it looked, and instinctively pulled out my phone to take a picture, then i remembered i was dreaming and was like "i wish you could take photos in dreams and they show up in the real world, i'm gonna forget it."

and that's literally all i remember from my dream last night, i forgot all of my dream for most of the day until my friend said something that reminded me of that one part, and all because of the fact i intentionally tried to remember it. but even then i don't remember exactly what the makeup looked like. i know that it was trad goth with a white base and what the eyeliner + eyebrows looked like, and that's basically it. if i tried to recreate it irl i'm sure get it pretty close.

anyway i still have 15 late assignments to do and obviously haven't studied at all. sigh.

that's my life at the moment, buh byeeee.

#blog #what tags should i even use

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jiyansthesis · 2 years ago

Text

ALL IS HELL WELL IN THE AFTON FAMILY

MICHAEL ☆ AFTON

x reader (gn but use of feminine gendered terms)

not proofread

summary: basically you and michael go on a little arcade date and everyone's alive and basically no one dies lmfao because I said so

let's pretend the arcade is kinda like dave n' busters bc I also said so and let's pretend they had decent games like today I ALSO CANNOT WRITE KISSING SCENES M SORRY

genre : fluff

you stared out the window, sighing. maybe he really wasn't coming. you turned, ready to just put your pajamas back on and leave the hope of michael even coming.

just as you were going to take your shirt off, you heard a loud rumble and then a few harsh knocks on your front door.

you nearly skipped all the steps down the stairs, swinging the door open to reveal michael, who already started apologizing.

"i got caught up in something, and I honestly didn't mean to be so late-"

"it's alright, it was only like 20 minutes," you cut him off, smiling.

"i was still late," he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck as he revealed what was behind his back. "hope these make up for it?"

you gasped as he showed you the huge bouquet of flowers. some of the petals were falling off, probably due to the wind, but they were still pretty, and they were your favorite flowers.

"you really didn't have to," you accepted them from his hands.

"it's our first date and I was late, it's the least I could do." he had a light blush dusting his face.

you gestured for him to come in the house while you put away the flowers into a vase lying around.

when you came back, you found him awkwardly leaning against a wall. he saw you approaching and immediately stood upright.

"you ready?" he asked.

you nodded, grabbing your stuff and following him out the door, locking it.

your jaw dropped once you saw that he brought his motorcycle instead of his dad's car like you expected.

"michael, I've never rode a motorcycle before," you raised your eyebrow at him.

"that's fine," he said as he got on. "just hang on tight."

you rolled your eyes at his smirk and hopped on behind him, putting on the helmet he offered you.

"what about you?" you asked when you noticed he didn't have a helmet for himself.

"you think I'm that bad of a driver?" he teased as he took you arms to wrap around his waist.

"no! it's just-" you yelped as he pulled out the driveway, laughing as you held onto him tighter.

☆

the two of you arrived at the arcade, and you flew off the bike, happy to finally be on normal ground.

"and I have to ride that back home?" you groaned.

"you'll be riding it a lot more than that," he grinned, winking at you as he took your helmet off and placed it on his motorcycle.

you were still thinking about the double meaning to that sentence.

the two of you walked into the arcade, and your eyes automatically latched onto a huge fox plushie. it had a little pirate hat and everything! you knew that was all you wanted from this arcade, and ran over to the booth.

"5,000 tickets?!" you dramatically groaned. michael put his hand on your shoulder.

"it's not even that many tickets," he laughed. "I'll get it for you. but first let's have fun."

you looked at him skeptically before he nearly dragged you to a racing game.

he absolutely dusted you in that game, and he was still laughing at you for being so bad at it.

"that was probably the easiest win I've ever had." he poked you as you sulked.

"I wasn't even that bad!" you tried defending yourself.

"yeah, that bad."

you stomped off to another game, michael still smiling.

"hey, princess, I'll be right back, okay?" he said once you started playing another game.

"okay," you responded, deadset on getting a high score.

he left, and that's when you faltered a bit. he called you princess? you blushed and shook that thought from your head.

you played 3 more times before michael came back, startling you when he said your name. you turned, game forgotten. you already quit getting on the leaderboard by that point anyways.

he held out long strips of tickets, giving you a bright smile. "ready to get that stuffed animal?"

your eyes widened and you screamed, "yes!" and grabbed onto his hand to lead him to the reward booth.

you gleefully pointed out the fox, and michael gave the worker the tickets. once you got the plush you stared at it in happiness. you didn't even realize you were still holding hands with michael. but he noticed.

he stared at your hands interconnected and flushed. glancing back at you.

"what should we name it?" you questioned, meeting his stare.

"it's up to you, babe."

you opened your mouth to respond but nothing came out, just a few broken words. michael's getting bold with these names.

michael chuckled at you reaction and you furrowed your eyebrows.

"how about what that fox animatronic is called? foxy? it looks almost the same anyways." you gained an interest in what the floor was looking like, still feeling michael's gaze.

"sounds great," his voice made you look back up at him. "ready for a racing rematch?"

"ready to lose this time?" you countered.

☆

you did, in fact, not win a single time.

"how are you so good at that game?" you pouted as the two of you left the arcade, the sun already setting.

"I've never seen anyone as bad as you at that game. how are you so bad at that game?" he asked as you got on his bike, foxy tightly in your grip.

"maybe you're just too good!"

"maybe I am." he slipped his helmet onto your head.

"ready? I have somewhere else I wanna go with you."

"m' ready." you leaned your head against his back and held him closer.

he revved his bike and you still jumped, causing him to laugh at you once again.

"how'd you even get those tickets?" you yelled.

☆

the two of you arrived at a little drive in theater, michael parking the bike in a little secluded area.

"motorcycles can go to drive in theaters?" you questioned, finally pulling off the hot helmet.

"apparently, yeah." he ran his hand through his mullet, fluffing it out. "it might get a bit uncomfortable though."

you hummed, keeping your arms around michael.

the two of you stayed like that, until around an hour later you felt a water droplet on your forehead.

"did you feel that?" you asked michael.

"feel wh- oh." the droplets started to come down faster.

michael hurriedly took off his leather jacket and put it around you. "I'll drop you off at home."

he began to drive back to your house, and you were shivering from the cold of the rain.

"michael, aren't you cold?" you asked him while he stopped at a red light.

"I'm fine. I don't want you getting sick." he looked back at you before turning his attention back to the road.

"i dont want you getting sick." you argued.

"we're almost back at your house, I doubt I'll get sick."

the two of you made it back, and you ushered michael inside.

"my parents are on vacation anyways," you told him when he asked about them.

you gave him a towel to dry off and told him you could put his shirt and jacket into the dryer.

he took his tank top off, and you turned red as you took it and scurried off to the laundry room. you already changed your clothes, and you asked him about his pants.

"really trying to undress me like that?" the corner of his mouth turned upward as he shook his head. "i'll be fine."

you gaped.

"no need to stare, princess." he was having too much fun with this.

you spun around and stomped into the kitchen.

"it's not my fault you got all wet! I should've made you stay there in wet clothes. now you're not getting your jacket back." you started searching through your pantry for snacks.

michael seems to love sneaking up on you, because he put his hands on your hips just as you found a bag of chips. you spun around quickly, the chips leaving your hand.

"you need to stop doing that. that's like the third time." you honestly didn't want him to stop.

"but I like doing it," he frowned. you could feel his breath on your face.

your eyes were trying to find somewhere else to look, but it only led you to look at his chest, then his eyes, and then his lips.

"I, uh-" you stammered.

he inched closer and thats when you locked eyes with him.

"is this alright?" he whispered.

"yeah, more than alright," you breathed out as he pulled you in for a kiss, you putting your arms around his neck, trying to get even closer to him.

he quickly broke the kiss, and you opened your eyes in questioning.

"I love you."

#fnaf michael afton #fnaf imagines #fnaf #fnaf fandom #michael afton imagine #michael afton #michael #michael afton x reader #michael afton smut #this isnt smut lmfao mb #fnaf x reader

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spookyscarydemonbabe · 2 years ago

Text

Off Season

A/N- This was a request i got from the wonderful @imagine-all-the-imagines when i had a pretty bad case of writers block 🖤 i loved getting to write this, especially because i got to include one of my favorite books 😍

Genre- Fluff

Warnings- Mentions of some pretty gross stuff (gore, cannibalism, but it’s all for the book being mentioned)

Tag List- @imagine-all-the-imagines @hellfirewh0re @paola-carter @whiplaaaaaaaaash @ladyapplejackdnd @thatlonelypieceoftoast @efvyqrs

Words- 0.8k

Eddie checked his wristwatch for the time as you two waited in line for what felt like hours.

It was something you’ve been anticipating for weeks, and once you found out the local bookstore was doing a midnight release you practically begged Eddie to come with you. You didn’t think that there would be this many people anticipating it either.

There had to be at least 100 people in line with you, waiting for Jack Ketchums newest book Off Season. Cannibals, gore, violence. As soon as you gave Eddie the premise he immediately agreed. He wasn’t really much for books, save the Lord of the Rings series and a few copies of Heavy Metal Magazine, but he could see how happy it made you and there was nothing he loved more than seeing you happy.

“Babe, how much longer?” Eddie asked from behind you, his arms wrapped around your waist to keep you warm, “It’s past midnight at this point.”

“It shouldn’t be too long, they were supposed to open the doors at midnight so maybe they’re just slowly letting people in?” You stood up to try and see the doors over the sea of people waiting in front of you. You made sure to try and get there early, but apparently that was almost everyone’s plan, setting you back about halfway through the line.

After another 10 minutes of waiting, one of the store employees finally came out the front doors, announcing that there was only 80 books they had in stock. And you knew there was about double that many people waiting. First come first serve.

Eddie could feel your shoulders fall and he looked down to see a sad look in your eyes. You knew you probably wouldn’t be able to get the book tonight and though it wasn’t anything super important, it was something you were really looking forward to. And Eddie was determined to make sure you got it.

“Hey, you have like a hair tie or a scrunchie or something?” He said, loosening his grip around you.

“Um… I don’t know, maybe?” You checked around in your pockets and managed to find one in your purse, “Why?”

He took the hair tie from you and quickly put his hair back,

“Listen, when those doors open, i just wait you to wait outside. Can you do that?”

You giggled a bit at the way he was acting,

“I mean yeah but how am i supposed to get the book?”

He cupped your cheeks in his hands and gave you a gentle kiss,

“You let me take care of it ok?”

As soon as you heard the front doors open, Eddie ran through the crowd, bumping his way through the sea of bodies as everyone was trying to be the first ones in the store to grab a copy of the book. He luckily made it in, but after then you couldn’t be sure how many people may have gotten there before him.

You took a deep breath as you waited outside for him, leaned up next to the doors. The line of people was long gone, either in the store or on their way back to their cars from not making it inside quickly enough. He had been gone for at least 20 minutes, and you watched for him as people started leaving the store, books in their hands, excitedly flipping through the pages.

“(y/n)!” His voice got your attention and you smiled as you saw him walking back over to you after exiting the store, a plastic bag in his hand,

“While i was in there i got you some other cool books, i’m not sure what any of them were about but they were in the horror section and the covers looked pretty cool.”

“Aww you’re too sweet!” You leaned up and gave him a quick kiss, “What about Off Season? Did you grab a copy?” You asked him excitedly.

He flashed you a smile and reached inside his jacket, handing you the book that was tucked away under his arm.

You snatched it from his hand and wrapped your arms around his neck, peppering his face with kisses,

“I can’t believe you got it!”

“I got one of the last copies, i had to keep it hidden, people were getting aggressive in there.”

“Really?” You giggled, Eddie wrapping his arm around your shoulder as the two of you made your way back to his van, “Over a book?”

“Oh yeah, two moms almost ripped each other’s hair out trying to get one of those.”

Eddie opened the passenger side door for you before getting into the drivers side, setting the plastic bag of books by your feet.

You admired the copy in your hand, flipping your fingers over the pages before leaning over and kissing Eddie on the cheek,

“You’re a great boyfriend.”

_______________________________________________

If you’d like to read more of my work, make sure to check out my masterlist 🥰

#stranger things 4 #eddie munson #stranger things #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x yn #eddie munson fic #request

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joekeeryswife · 2 years ago

Text

Sad hugs 2 - J.K

requested! finally imagines are getting out! other requests are being written as we speak <3

After dropping Lockie off at day care, he walked to the car and immediately got on the phone with you. "hey baby, you okay?" you said through the car speaker. you were sat at your desk at work, writing something stupid on the computer. "no not really love, i was doing Locks hair this morning and she just started sobbing her heart out. she didn't know what was wrong she was just sad.

she was somewhat okay when i dropped her off but i promised her me and you would pick her up from daycare." he said as he drove to work. he heard you sigh sadly through the speaker. "that's really sad Joe. i wonder what was wrong with her. i'll try finish work in a bit, i've almost finished what i needed to do anyway so i'll meet you at home for about 2 ish?" you said, checking the time on your phone. it was 10:36am.

Joe also checked the time and agreed. you both said your 'i love you's' and your goodbyes before hanging up the phone. that whole day, Joe was worrying about Lockie. he couldn't concentrate on his acting, he couldn't focus. he just needed to make sure his little girl was safe and happier. 2pm didn't roll around quick enough. he sped back to your house and thankfully saw your car in the driveway. he parked his car next to yours and locked it before walking to the front door and walking in.

he was tired but his mind was to focused on Lockie to even think about himself. he walked in the house, searching for you, and found you pulling a top over your head. "jesus, you made me jump" you said when you saw Joe standing at the bedroom door. "sorry, how was work?" he questioned as he watched you walk around the bed to grab your phone. "yeah it was okay, couldn't really focus though after what you told me earlier. how was your day?" you said, walking back around to where Joe was.

"yeah i couldn't focus either but at least we can spend time with her now" he said, wrapping his arms around you when you got close enough to him. you hugged him back and lent your head in his chest. "i missed you" you said, resting your chin on his chest as you looked up at him. "i missed you too" he said as he bent down to give you a kiss. you kissed back and then he pulled away quickly, realising you had to go pick up Lockie.

he grabbed hold of you hand and pulled you towards the front door and walked to his car. he walked to your side and opened the car door for you. "what a gentlemen" you said, laughing. he scoffed but nevertheless laughed back and closed the car door when you got situated in the chair. he got in and started driving to Lockie's daycare. the car ride was basically silent apart from the little hum of music coming from the radio.

you arrived at the daycare after 20 minutes of driving and you both quickly got out the car. Joe grabbed ahold of your hand and laced your fingers together and walked into the daycare. we spoke to the receptionist before she left to bring Lockie to the reception. you guys waited for a few minutes before you heard little feet running across the concrete floor.

when she saw you guys, her face lit ip with happiness so you bent down to Lockie's level and you opened your arms. she ran into your arms and put her arms around your neck. you picked her up and smothered her in kisses. Joe watched the scene unfold, happy she was in a better mood than before. she pulled away from your neck and you spoke to her. "are you okay? i've missed you" you said, pushing the hairs that had fallen onto her face away.

"i'm okay. i missed you mama" she said, falling back into your chest. you ran a hair through her hair and swayed her in the hug. "do you want to give daddy a hug?", you whispered into her ear as Joe waited patiently next to you. she moved out of your chest again and she put her arms out for Joe to take her from you. Joe had a massive smile on his face when she lent over for him.

"hi angel, are you okay?" he said, kissing her head as they hugged each other tightly. "i missed you daddy" she whispered to him. they hugged for a bit longer before you both walked out the daycare, Lockie still in Joe's arms. as you were walking to the car, Lockie was saying what happened during her time at daycare and you both listened to her speak. "and then i played with the lego with Amy but she stole my character" she said as Joe unlocked the car and he started putting her in the car seat.

"well that's not nice. did you tell the teacher?" you heard Joe say as you got into your seat. "no i didn't." she said as Joe finished strapping her in. "you should have my love, that's not okay" you said, turning to her with a comforting smile on your face. she nodded her head, understanding that she should have done that instead of keeping quiet. "so Lockie, what do you want to do?" Joe said as he plugged in his seatbelt. "please can we go get ice cream?" she said, looking at him through the rear view mirror.

Joe smiled and nodded his head frantically, making you and Lockie both laugh. the car ride was filled with Lockie singing disney songs which was one of the cutest things you'd ever heard. Joe had a content smile on his face as he listened to her sing her hear out. when you arrived at the ice cream shop, you unbuckled your seatbelt and exited the car and Joe did the same.

you got Lockie out of her car seat and put her on the ground so she could walk with you. you grabbed ahold of her hand and Joe held her other hand and all walked to the ice cream shop. you found a table and Joe went to order all of your ice creams as you and Lockie sat next to you in the booth. "mama, when can i be a big sister?" she questioned innocently. you choked on air before looking down at her next to you. he had a straight face and was staring at you with her big eyes.

"you'll have to ask daddy. i'm not sure" you said, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. she sighed dramatically and looked around for Joe. after a few minutes, Joe came back with your ice creams and sat down opposite you and Lockie. “thank you daddy” she said, a huge grin on her face as he placed the ice cream in front of her. you said your ‘thank you’ after her and took your ice cream from him.

“you’re welcome baby” Joe said, wiping a bit of chocolate ice cream off Lockie’s face which had spread from the cone. she squealed and moved away from his hand and kept on eating her ice cream. after a few minutes of her being silent, she spoke up again. “daddy, when can i be a big sister?” she said, looking at Joe with the same expression she previously looked at you with.

he choked on his ice cream and looked at you wide eyed. “uhh what’s made that question suddenly come up?” he said, looking back at Lockie. she sighed dramatically before speaking up again. “well, Amy’s mum just gave her a little sister and now i want a little sister as well. now please when can i be a big sister?” she said, in a ‘duh’ tone like you and Joe should already know this. she was only 4 and she was one of the most sassiest 4 year olds you’d ever met.

“well, me and mama can talk about it later and we’ll get back to you on that hmm?” Joe replied, sharing small glances at you during their conversation. you’d honestly never thought about having another kid until recently when you’d thought of Lockie being a big sister. the memories of Joe and Lockie’s relationship when she was first born made your heart swell and you would want another one or even another two kids to witness that sight again.

you guys all finished your ice creams and spent the rest of the day with Lockie and next thing you knew you were on your way home work Lockie falling in and out of sleep in her car seat. “can you believe she said that today” Joe said, taking his eyes off the road for a split second to look at you. you squeezed his hand which you were holding and looked back at him. “i know, can you believe she wants to be a big sister. that’s cute though” you said, a big smile on your face.

“i know it was cute but she’s got a point. maybe we should give her a sibling” he whispered, heading Lockie shift in her sleep. “soon” you said, looking back at the road, seeing you were almost home. Joe parked the car in the drive way and got out first so he could pick up Lockie to take her to bed. you went to unlock the door and started getting ready for bed whilst Joe took Lockie to her room to get her ready for bed.

“daddy” he heard her whisper as she turned her head on his shoulder. “i’m here baby, i just need to get you ready for bed” he said, kissing her cheek as she woke up a bit. he set her down on her bed and went to get her pyjamas. “do you know what was bothering you earlier?“ he said to her as he pulled her dress over her body. “no daddy. i just felt sad” she said, rubbing her eyes gently.

“are you sure there is nothing you want to talk about?” he replied to her as he finished helping her put on my pyjamas. “yes daddy. i’m okay” she said, putting her arms around his neck as she hugged him. he hugged her back and kissed her forehead. “right well, time for bed my love” he said as she pulled away from the hug and got into bed. he tucked her in and gave her a few kisses before tucking her in. “i love you daddy” she said as she closed her eyes as sleep slowly took over her. “i love you too my love” he replied, pushing the stay hairs out of her face, she didn’t know it yet but she was definitely his favourite person and he’d do anything to make sure she was okay.

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lostaurorax · 3 years ago

Text

from three to five?

pairing | stucky x pregnant!reader

summary | reader finds out she’s pregnant and tells the boys but they all get suprised in the end

warnings | pregnancy and indication of smut

a/n | hi my darlings!!!!! i love stucky with all my heart and wrote this bc i thought it would be super cute! i apologize if their are any mistakes about the pregnancy thing and the ultrasound stuff because quite frankly i know absolutely NOTHING about pregnancy except the basic stuff that everyone knows. anyway i hope you enjoyed this as much as i did writing it!! reblogs and feedback is greatly appreciated <3 feel free to send in requests!!

the minute you found out you were pregnant you couldn’t wait to tell your husbands knowing how happy they would be from countless amounts of times they told you they had wanted to have kids especially with you.

after a romantic dinner that wanda and nat had thoroughly helped you plan you had come back home to the compound eager for your boys to find out the surprise.

as you walked into the living room wanda and nat were sitting their talking

“ah your back! so how was the date!” wanda said when she noticed your presence

“it was great! we’re gonna call it a night. we’ll see you ladies in the morning.” steve said as he grabbed three water bottles from the fridge and waved to the girls

“good to hear! good night..” nat said winking at you when the boys had turned their backs to them confirming it was all set

“god my feet are killing me!” you said as you took your shoes off and continued walking down the hall to your bedroom

“yeah? change out of that dress and me and stevie will run you a bath alright doll?” bucky said placing his hand on your back as steve was twisting the handle on the door

“okay buck” you said smiling knowing that probably wasn’t going to happen

as steve flicked the light switch on his foot steps came to a halt causing bucky to bump into him

“hey wh-” bucky said before realizing why steve had stopped

their was a bunch of blue and pink balloons scattered around the room, two pregnancies tests lying on the bed with a poster board that said ‘barnes-rogers baby coming soon…’ on it

as the boys turned back to look at you to confirm if what they were seeing was a dream or not it was immediately confirmed when they saw the wide smile on your face

“suprise!!”

after neither of them said anything for a minute or two you turned to walk in front of them

“hey is something wrong?” you said as your mind was racing with scenarios in which they weren’t happy that you were pregnant

as you were about to say something else both boys wrapped their arms around you and you swore you’d never felt more safe

“nothings wrong sweetheart nothing at all. it’s just we’ve dreamed of this day for so long and we can’t believe it’s actually happening.” bucky said as you felt a warm tear hit your face from his

“we love you doll so so much, and we can’t wait to raise a baby with you.”

“yeah?” you said pulling away from the hug to look at them with red noses and tear stained eyes

“yeah” they said in sync just admiring you

it didn’t last long until you were all attacking eachother like hungry animals

the next morning you woke up with two super soldiers on top of you one with his hand on your stomach and one with his hand on your boob

you couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight

as you tried slipping from beneath them to start to get ready you were stopped when weight was pressed on too you and multiple pleas were heard

“doll where are you going? it’s too early stay in bed” steve said as he nuzzled his head into your neck

“stevie we have to get ready.” you said stroking his hair through your fingers still a knotted mess from last night

“ready for what?”he said as you felt his eyebrows knit against your neck

“i have a ultrasound appointment scheduled for today.” you said knowing that would wake the both of them up

and it did like two children on christmas morning

“i’ve got breakfast!” bucky said as he kissed you on the cheek and slipped on some joggers to exit the room

“i’ll start getting ready.” steve said as he ran to the bathroom leaving you their giddy at the idea of your boys being this excited for your tiny human that wasn’t even born yet. imagining what they’d be like when it was born.

it took about two hours for you all to be ready and out of the house with a few arguments on why you shouldn’t drive and they should you ended up winning because they had no idea where the doctors office you went to was.

after about a 20 minute drive you had arrived at the doctors office checking in you all sat in the waiting room until your name was called. as you watched bucky and steve’s face all you could see was nervousness in their eyes as they looked around at all the pregnant moms and how different they all looked. some were earlier on in their trimester some were at the very end.

“you okay?” you asked them placing a hand on each of their knees

“hm yeah yeah we’re good! doing fine doll.” bucky said steve nodding in agreement

“alright we’ll their about to call my name so i wanna make sure your alright to head in their…” you said with a grin on your face

“we’re fine just a little nervous!”steve said kissing your cheek

after 5 minutes had past of you and the boys talking about baby names and you repeatedly telling them the baby would not be named ‘buckeve’ which was a name they had made up between a combination of their names your name had finally been called

“y/n?”

in usion your heads all turned to the voice and stood up

“it’s nice to see you all! please follow me!” the nurse said

you followed her to the room and listens to the instructions she gave you

“okay so your doctor is with any other patient right now but he should be too much longer so what i’m gonna have you do is sit tight for a few minutes and he’ll come in and set you up okay?”

with a nod of your head and a smile the nurse left telling all you have to enjoy the rest of your day and that she hopes everything goes well.

a knock on the door had halted your conversation with the boys

“come in!” you said

“we’ll hello y/n! how are you doing?” the doctor with the gray hair and winkled face said as he smiled at you

“hi! i’m doing well thank you! these are my husbands james and steve!” you said motioning to the men on the right of you as they waved

“ah well it’s nice to meet you! are you excited to see your baby for the first time?” he said as he started setting up his equipment

“yes very excited! a little nervous though.” steve said placing his hand on the back of your beck a gesture he would do that made you feel protected

“oh well i promise there’s nothing to be nervous about! everything will be just fine. now y/n can you pull your shirt up so i can place this cream on your stomach?” he said

“yeah of course!” you said lifting your shirt

“alright this is gonna be a litte cold just wanna warn you!” he said as he went to place the cream on your stomach

“oh yeah that’s cold!” you said as he placed the cream all over your stomach

“sorry about that! alright let me get this all set up so we can see your baby!” he said grabbing the wand part of the ultrasound machine

as the doctor got the machine working he explained to you what he was gonna be doing so you could somewhat understand what was going on.

“alright let’s see here! welp that’s your baby their on the screen! your very early on so it’s only the size of maybe a pea now but it’ll definitely grow quickly!” he said as tears filled your eyes and the boys both stared at the screen in awe

“hang on a minute..” the doctor said immediately wiping the look of joy on your face and replacing it with worry

“is something wrong sir?” bucky asked concerned

“no no nothings wrong! i just think i might’ve made a miscalculation that’s all.” he said giving any context

“and that miscalculation would be….” you said impatient

“looks like your having twins! congrats!!” he said with a massive smile on his face showing off his perfectly straight and white teeth

“twins??” bucky said in disbelief while you still couldn’t speak in utter shock and feeling like the happiest woman in the world

“oh my god…we’re gonna have twins!!” you said looking back at bucky and steve as the realization hit you.

“i’ll get these printed out and give you guys a bit of privacy. congratulations you three! these kids are so lucky to have you all.” he said as he walked out

you all sat their in shock and pure joy for what seemed to be forever before a noise was finally heard

you turned back to see bucky trying to wipe the tears falling from his eyes

“oh buck c’mere!” you said with open arms

“i’m sorry doll i’m just so happy. i never in my life would’ve thought anything like this would happen to me. this is the happiest day of my life! you both make me so happy! i just love you so much doll so so much.” he said sobbing into your neck

“i love you more bucky. i’m so proud of you.” you said rubbing his back as you mouthed ‘i’m proud of you too stevie’ to steve and he smiled knowing without you even having to tell him

as the day went on all the boys could talk about was your babies. what their names would be,their genders,how you would dress them,what their nursery would look like, just basically anything and everything.

you just admired the pure admiration on the boys faces as they talked about your children and you couldn’t believe how lucky you were.

#stucky ♡#pregnant!reader x stucky #stucky x pregnant reader #stucky x reader #stucky x you #stucky x y/n #stucky fluff #stucky smut #stucky angst #marvel #marvel fanfiction #marvel masterlist

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lukeevangelista · 2 years ago

Note

Could you write a blurb of one of the umich boys your choice of the two of you going to the beach and you wanting to tan but the other gets bored and you pull out a shovel and bucket and they just start to dig a hole to pass the time :)

@cuttergauthierr said mackie or briss and then she said mackie but I already had briss planning the moment she said briss

————

“Can we-“

“Yes.” You nodded, already knowing what was going to come out of Brendans mouth, considering it was the only thing you two had done the entire time you had been visiting him in California.

“Go get dressed hotshot.” He grinned as he gave your ass a tap as you walked by.

“Rude.”

“You love it.” He cheekily grinned as you ran up the stairs to find your swim suit, your beach blanket, and two towels. You quickly changed into your bathing suit,

You shoved the rest of it in a bucket that you had picked up from the store. It came with a little shovel and figured it’d be good for carrying the small stuff you needed instead of lugging a tote down the beach everyday; plus you could make sand castles with it and that was the real kicker for you.

“Let’s go.” You said as your slides flipped behind you as you walked down the stairs.

“I don’t know.. maybe we should stay here.” He grinned, “i could think of plenty of things to do.”

“Nope.” You popped the ‘p’, “You mentioned it and now I want to tan.”

Brendan rolled his eyes as he grabbed the plastic bucket from you and grabbing your hand with his free one as you two started to walk down the stairs that connected to the beach from his parents house.

“I want to tan.” He continued to mock you as you two walked down the beach.

“Brendan, you’re not gonna lucky if you keep mocking me.” You nonchalantly said as you grabbed the beach blanket from the bucket causing him to immediately shut up.

“Lips are sealed.”

You threw your head back as you let out a laugh at the brunette boy.

“I-“

“No. Hush. This is quiet time now.” You said as you laid down on the sand, sliding your sun glasses up on your face as you heard Brendan mutter under his breath as he unfolded the chair he typically sat in.

It didn’t take long for the boy to get bored as he finally put his phone up and went into the ocean for a bit before coming to sit back with you.

“I’m bored.” He whined, “There’s nothing to do.”

“There’s plenty to do.” You called back, “Besides, there’s a whole ocean. Go pick seashells or something.” You grumbled.

“But-“

“There’s a shovel in the bucket. Go build a fort or something.” You said as you flipped over, “I’ll join you soon.“

Brendan sighed as he grabbed the bucket, setting the towels in the chair he was in and went and found a good spot to start digging in.

About 20 minutes had passed before you finally started to feel too warm, quickly standing up and going into the cold ocean to cool off before joining Bren.

“Nice of you to finally join me.” He looked up at you.

“Nice of you to finally leave me alone for a while.” You replied back causing him to scoff, “It was peaceful.”

He rolled his eyes as a playful grin tugged at his lips, “I built this. By myself.” He pointed to the lopsided, poorly structured sand castle.

You took your lips between your teeth, trying not to let out a laugh, “It looks good honey.”

“It does.” He agreed, looking proud.

“I’m glad you had fun. That’s all that matters.”

#brendan brisson #soft thoughts w/ari #ari’s 600 followers event

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innuendostudios · 3 years ago

Text

youtube

I was invited to give a talk on GamerGate over Zoom in early 2021. I've long been frustrated that there isn't a good timeline of GG and its origins on YouTube. When people ask "what the hell was GG anyway?" they often get referred to my or Dan Olson's videos on the subject, but both of them were made while GG was ongoing, and presumed a degree of familiarity on the part of the audience. There was just too much to say about what was already happening to spend time getting the audience up to speed, and it was safe to assume our audiences had enough context to follow along. But time moves fast on the internet, and many people who now care about such things weren't there while it was happening, and are lacking the necessary context to follow the better videos. For a long time, I've only been able to direct them to RationalWiki's timeline, which is excellent but so exhaustively comprehensive that it's likely to scare off first-timers.

I realize an hourlong lecture isn't necessarily helping matters, but the first 20-or-so minutes of this video are my attempt at streamlining the timeline such that people can be up to speed on the most important stuff fairly quickly. The rest is talking about what it all meant, how it prefigured the Alt-Right, and using it to better understand digital radicalization.

This video was made with the help of Magdalen Rose, who edited the slides to the audio while I was laid up with a back injury. Go sub to her channel! And please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

FUCKING VIDEO GAMES? FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THEY MADE DOZENS OF PEOPLE MISERABLE FOR YEARS OVER VIDEO GAMES! NOT EVEN FUCKING VIDEO GAMES, FUCKING ARTICLES ABOUT FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT??

Hi! My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, please like share and subscribe.

I’m here to talk to you about GamerGate, and I needed to get all that out of the way. I’m going to talk about what GamerGate was and how it prefigured The Alt-Right, and there are gonna be moments where you’re nodding along with me, going, “yeah, yeah I get it,” and then the sun’s gonna break through a crack in the wall and you’ll suddenly remember that all this is happening because some folks - mostly ladies - said some stuff - provably true stuff, I might add - about video games and a bunch of guys didn’t like it, and you’re gonna want to rip your hair out. By the end of this, you will have a better understanding of what happened, but it will never not be bullshit.

Also, oh my god, content warning. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, rape threats, threats of violence, domestic abuse - I’m not going to depict or describe at length any of the worst stuff, but it’s all in the mix. So if at any point you need to switch me off or mute me, you have my blessing.

Brace yourselves.

Some quick prehistory:

In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian ran a Kickstarter campaign for a YouTube series on sexist tropes in video games. And, partway through the campaign, 4chan found it and said “let’s ruin her life.” And a lot of the male general gaming public joined in. And by “ruin her life” I’m not talking 150 angry tweets including dozens of rape and death threats per week, though that was a thing. I’m talking bomb threats. I’m talking canceled speaking engagements because someone threatened to shoot up a school. I’m talking FBI investigation. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

And in 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, a free text game about living with depression. They received harassment off and on for the next year, most pointedly from an incel forum called Wizardchan that doxxed their phone number and made harassing phone calls telling them to kill themself. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

(Also, quick note: Zoe Quinn is nonbinary and has come out since the events in question. When I call Zoe’s harassment misogynist, understand I am not calling Zoe a woman, but they were attacked by people who hate women because that’s how they were perceived. Had they been out at the time things probably would’ve gone down similarly, but on top of misogyny I’d be talking about nonbinary erasure and transphobia.)

Okay. Our story begins in August 2014. The August that never ended.

Depression Quest, after a prolonged period on Greenlight, finally releases on Steam as a free download with the option to pay what you want. In the days that follow, Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, writes a nearly 10,000-word blog called The Zoe Post, in which he claims Quinn had been a shitty and unfaithful partner. (For reference, 10,000 words is long enough that the Hugos would consider it a novelette.) This is posted to forums on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, both of which immediately take it down, finding it, at best, a lot of toxic hearsay and, at worse, an invitation to harassment. So Gjoni workshops the post, adds a bunch of edgelord humor (and I am using the word “humor” very generously), and reposts it to three different subforums on 4chan.

We’re not going to litigate whether Zoe Quinn was a good partner. I don’t know or care. I don’t think anyone on this call is trying to date them so I’m not sure that’s our business. What is known is that the relationship lasted five months, and, after it ended, Gjoni began stalking Quinn. Gjoni has, in fact, laid out how he stalked Quinn in meticulous detail to interviewers and why he feels it was justified. It’s also been corroborated by a friend that Quinn briefly considered taking him back at a games conference in San Francisco, but he became violent during sex and Quinn left the apartment in the middle of the night with visible bruises.

Off of the abusive ex-boyfriend’s post, 4chan decides it’s going to make Zoe Quinn one of their next targets, and starts a private IRC channel to plan the campaign. The channel is called #BurgersAndFries, a reference to Gjoni claiming Quinn had cheated on him with five guys. A couple sentences in The Zoe Post - which Gjoni would later claim were a typo - imply that one of the five guys was games journalist Nathan Grayson and that Quinn had slept with him in exchange for a good review of Depression Quest. Given the anger that they’d seen drummed up against women in games with the previous Anita Sarkeesian hate mob, #BurgersAndFries decides to focus on this breach of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover story, many of them howling with laughter at the thought that male gamers would probably buy it. This way, destroying Quinn’s life and career and turning their community against them would appear an unfortunate byproduct of a legitimate consumer revolt; criticism of the harassment could even be framed as a distraction from the bigger issue. Gjoni himself is in the IRC channel telling them that this was the best hand to play.

The stated aim of many on #BurgersAndFries was to convince Quinn to commit suicide.

Two regulars in the IRC, YouTubers MundaneMatt and Internet Aristocrat, make videos about The Zoe Post. Incidentally, both these men had already made a lot of money off videos about Anita Sarkeesian. Matt’s is swiftly taken down with a DMCA claim, and he says that Quinn filed the claim themself. (For the record, in those days, YouTube didn’t tell you who filed DMCA claims against you.) Members of the IRC also reach out to YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who had been critical of Sarkeesian and dismissive of her harassment, and he tweets the story to his 350,000 followers, saying a game developer trading sex for a good review might not prove true, but was certainly plausible.

This is where GamerGate begins to get public traction.

Zoe Quinn is very swiftly doxxed, with their phone number, home address, nudes, and names and numbers of their family collected. Gjoni himself leaks their birth name. The Zoe Post, and the movement against Quinn - now dubbed “The Quinnspiracy” - make it to The Escapist and Reddit, which mods will have little luck removing. The Quinnspiracy declares war on any site that does take their threads down, most vehemently NeoGAF. People who defend Zoe against the harassment start getting doxxed themselves - Fez developer Phil Fish is doxxed so thoroughly, hackers get access to the root folder of his website.

In what I’m going to call This Should Have Been The End, Part 1, Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku where Nathan Grayson worked, in response to pressure not just from The Quinnspiracy but an increasing number of angry gamers buying The Quinnspiracy’s narrative, publishes a story. In it he verifies that Quinn and Grayson did date for several months, and that not only is there no review of Depression Quest anywhere on Kotaku, not by Grayson nor anyone else, but that Grayson did not write a single word about Quinn the entire time they were dating.

In response, The Quinnspiracy declares war on Kotaku. r/KotakuinAction is formed, which will become the primary site of organization outside of chanboards. The fact that their entire “movement” is based on a review that does not exist changes next to nothing.

Some people start to see The Quinnspiracy as potentially profitable. The Fine Young Capitalists get involved, a group ostensibly working to get women into video games but who have a Byzantine plan to do so wherein they crowdfund the budget and the woman who wins a competition gets to storyboard a game, but another company will make and she will get 8% of the profits, the rest going to a charity chosen by the top donor. 4chan becomes the top donor. They like TFYC because the head of the company has a vendetta against Zoe Quinn, who had previously called them out for their transphobic submission policy, and he falsely accused Quinn of having once doxxed him. 4chan feels backing an ostensibly feminist effort will be good PR, but can’t resist selecting a colon cancer charity because, they say, feminism is cancer and they want to be the cure to butthurt. They also get to design a character for the game, and so they create Vivian James, who will become the GamerGate mascot.

Manosphere YouTubers Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini launch a Patreon campaign for their antifeminist documentary The Sarkeesian Effect and come to The Quinnspiracy looking for $15,000 a month for an indefinite period to make it, which they get.

In what will prove genuinely awful timing, Anita Sarkeesian releases the second episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and, despite not being a games journalist and having nothing to do with Quinn or Grayson, she is immediately roped into the narrative about how feminists are ruining games culture and becomes the second major target of harassment. Both she and Quinn soon have to leave their houses after having receiving dozens and dozens of death threats that include their home addresses.

After being courted by members of the IRC channel, Firefly star Adam Baldwin tweets a link to one of the Quinnspiracy videos and coins the hashtag #GamerGate. This is swiftly adopted by all involved.

In response to all this, Leigh Alexander writes a piece for Gamasutra arguing that the identity that these men are flocking to the “ethics in games journalism” narrative to defend no longer matters as a marketing demographic. Gaming and games culture is so large and so varied, and the “core gamer” audience of 18-34 white bros growing smaller and septic, that there was no reason, neither morally nor financially, to treat them as the primary audience anymore. Love of gaming is eternal, but, she declared, “gamers,” as an identity, “are over.” Eight more articles contextualizing GamerGate alongside misogyny and the gatekeeping of games culture come out across several websites in the following days. GamerGate frames these as a clear sign of [deep sigh] collusion to oppress gamers, proving that ethics in games journalism is, indeed, broken, and Leigh Alexander becomes the third major target of harassment. These become known as the “gamers are dead” articles - a phrase not one of them uses - and they make “get Leigh Alexander fired from Gamasutra” one of their primary goals.

Something I need you to understand is that it has, at this point, been two weeks.

Highlights from the next little bit: Alex Macris, a higher up at The Escapist’s parent company, expresses support for GamerGate; he will go on to write the first positive coverage at a major publication and cement The Escapist as GamerGate-friendly. Mike Cernovich, aka “Based Lawyer,” gets GamerGate’s attention by mocking Anita Sarkeesian; he will go on to hire a private investigator to stalk Zoe Quinn. GamerGate launches Operation Disrespectful Nod, an email campaign pressuring companies to pull advertising from websites that have criticized them. They leverage their POC members, getting them, any time someone points out the rampant racism and antisemitism among GamerGaters, to say “I am a person of color and I am #NotYourShield”; most of these “POC members” are fake accounts left over from a previous, racist disinformation campaign. Milo Yiannapoulos gets involved, writing positive coverage of GG despite having mocked gamers for precisely this behavior in the past, and gets so much traffic it pulls Breitbart News out of obscurity and makes it a significant player in modern conservative news media.

[Hey! Ian from the future here. This talk mostly addresses how GamerGate prefigured the Alt-Right strategically and philosophically, but if you want a more explicit, material connection: Breitbart News took its newfound notoriety to become, as its Executive Chair phrased it in 2016, "a platform for the Alt-Right." That Executive Chair was Steve Bannon, who threw the website's weight behind The Future President Who Shall Not Be Named, and, upon getting his attention, would then go on to become his campaign strategist and work in his Administration. So, if you're wondering how one of the central figures of the Alt-Right ended up in the White House, the answer is literally "GamerGate." Back to you, Ian from the past!]

In what I’m calling This Should Have Been The End, Part 2, Zoe Quinn announces that they have been lurking the #BurgersAndFries IRC channel since the beginning and releases dozens of screenshots showing harassment being planned and the selection of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover. #BurgersAndFries has a meltdown, everyone turns on each other, and the channel is abandoned. And they then start another IRC and things proceed.

It goes on like this. I’m not gonna cover everything. This is just the first month. It should be clear by now that this thing is kind of unkillable. And I worry I haven’t made it obvious that this is not just a chanboard and an IRC. Thousands of regular, every day gamers were buying the story and joining in. They were angry, and no amount of evidence that their anger was unfounded was going to change that. You could not mention or even allude to GamerGate and not get flooded with dozens, even hundreds of furious replies. These replies always included the hashtag so everyone monitoring it could join in, so all attempts at real conversation devolved into a hundred forking threads where some people expected you to talk to them while others hurled insults and slurs. And always the possibility that, if any one of them didn’t like what you said, you’d be the next target.

To combat this, some progressives offered up the hashtag #GameEthics to the people getting swept up in GamerGate, saying, “look, we get that you’re angry, and if you want to talk about ethics in games journalism, we can totally do that, but using your hashtag is literally putting us in danger; they calling the police on people saying there’s a hostage situation at their home addresses so they get sent armed SWAT teams, and if you’ll just use this other hashtag we can have the conversation you say you want to have in safety.” And I will ever stop being salty about what happened.

They refused. They wouldn’t cede any ground to what they saw as their opposition. It was so important to have the conversation on their terms that not only did they refuse to use #GameEthics, they spammed it with furry porn so no one could use it.

A few major events on the timeline before we move on: Christina Hoff Sommers, the Republican Party’s resident “feminist,” comes out criticizing Anita Sarkeesian and becomes a major GG figurehead, earning the title Based Mom. Zoe Quinn gets a restraining order against Eron Gjoni, which he repeatedly violates, to no consequence; GG will later crowdfund his legal fees. There’s this listserv called GameJournoPros where game journalists would talk about their jobs, and many are discussing their concerns over GamerGate, so Milo Yiannopoulos leaks it and this is framed as further “proof of collusion.” 4chan finally starts enforcing its “no dox” rules and shuts GamerGate threads down, so they migrate to 8chan, a site famous for hosting like a lot of child porn. Indie game developer Brianna Wu makes a passing joke about GamerGate on Twitter and they decide, seemingly on a whim, to make her one of the biggest targets in the entire movement; she soon has to leave her home as well. GamerGate gets endorsements from WikiLeaks, Infowars, white nationalist sites Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, and professional rapist RooshV. And hundreds of people get doxxed; an 8chan subforum called Baphomet is created primarily to host dox of GamerGate’s critics.

But by November, GamerGate popularity was cresting, as more and more mainstream media covered it negatively. Their last, big spike in popularity came when Anita Sarkeesian went on The Colbert Report and Stephen made fun of the movement. Their numbers never recovered after that.

Which is not to say GamerGate ended. It slowed down. The period of confusion where the mainstream world couldn’t tell whether it was a legitimate movement or not passed. But, again, most harassers faced no meaningful repercussions. Gamers who bought the lie about “ethics in games journalism” stayed mad that no one had ever taken them seriously, and harassers continued to grief their targets for years. The full timeline of GamerGate is an constant cycle of lies, harassment, operations, grift, and doxxing. Dead-enders are to this day still using the hashtag. And remember how Anita had nothing to do with ethics in games journalism or Zoe Quinn, and they just roped her in because they’d enjoyed harassing her before so why not? Every one of GamerGate’s targets knows that they may get dragged into some future harassment campaign just because. It’s already happened to several of them. They’re marked.

(sigh) Let’s take a breath.

Now that we know what GamerGate was, let’s talk about why it worked.

In the thick of GamerGate, I started compiling a list of tactics I saw them using. I wanted to make a video essay that was one part discussion of antifeminist backlash, and one part list of techniques these people use so we can better recognize and anticipate their behavior. That first part became six parts and the second part went on a back burner. It would eventually become my series, The Alt-Right Playbook. GamerGate is illustrative because most of what would become The Alt-Right Playbook was in use.

Two foundational principles of The Alt-Right Playbook are Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense. Make sure people are talking about what you want them to talk about, and take an aggressive posture so you look dominant even when you’re not making sense. For instance: once Zoe leaked the IRC chatlogs, a reasonable person could tell the average gater, “the originators of GamerGate were planning harassment from the very beginning.” But the gater would say, “you’re cherry-picking; not everyone was a harasser.”

Now, this is a bad argument - that’s not how you use “cherry-picking” - and it’s being framed as an accusation - you’re not just wrong, you’re dishonest - which makes you wanna defend yourself. But, if you do - if you tell them why that argument is crap - you’ve let the conversation move from “did the IRC plan harassment?” - a question of fact - to “are the harassers representative of the movement?” - a question of ethics. Like, yes, they are, but only within a certain moral framework. An ethics question has no provable answer, especially if people are willing to make a lot of terrible arguments. It is their goal to move any question with a definitive answer to a question of philosophy, to turn an argument they can’t win into an argument nobody can win.

The trick is to treat the question you asked like it’s already been answered and bait you into addressing the next question. By arguing about whether you’re cherry-picking, you’re accepting the premise that whether you’re cherry-picking is even relevant. Any time this happens, it’s good to pause and ask, “what did we just skip over?” Because that will tell you a lot.

What you skipped over is their admission that, yes, the IRC did plan harassment, but that’s only on them if most of the movement was in on it. Which is a load of crap - the rest of the IRC saw it happening, let it happen, it’s not like anybody warned Zoe, and shit, I’m having the cherry-picking argument! They got me! You see how tempting it is? But presumably the reason you brought the harassment up is because you want them to do something about it. At the very least, leave the movement, but ideally try and stop it. They don’t, strictly speaking, need to feel personally responsible to do that. And you might be thinking, well, maybe if I can get them take responsibility then they’ll do something, but you’d be falling for a different technique I call I Hate Mondays.

This is where people will acknowledge a terrible thing is happening, maybe even agree it’s bad, but they don’t believe anything can be done about it. They also don’t believe you believe anything can be done about it. Mondays suck, but they come around every week. This is never stated outright, but it’s why you’re arguing past each other. To them, the only reason to talk about the bad thing is to assign blame. Whose turn is it to get shit on for the unsolvable problem? Their argument about cherry-picking amounts to “1-2-3 not it.” And they are furious with you for trying to make them responsible for harassment they didn’t participate in.

The unspoken argument is that harassment is part of being on the internet. Every public figure deals with it. This ignores any concept of scale - why does one person get harassed more than another? - but you can’t argue with someone who views it as a binary: harassment either happens or it doesn’t, and, if it does, it’s a fact of life, and, if it happens to everyone, it’s not gendered. And this is not a strongly-held belief they’ve come to after years of soul-searching - this is what they’ve just decided they believe. They want to participate in GamerGate despite knowing its purpose, and this is what would need to be true for that to be ok.

Or maybe they’re just fucking with you! Maybe you can’t tell. Maybe they can’t tell, either. I call this one The Card Says Moops, where people say whatever they feel will score points in an argument and are so irony-poisoned they have no idea whether they actually believe it. A very useful trick if the thing you appear to believe is unconscionable. You can’t take what people like that say at face value; you can only intuit their beliefs from their actions. They say they believe this one minute and that another, but their behavior is always in accordance with that, not this.

In the negative space, their belief is, “The harassment of these women is okay. My anger about video games is more important. I may not be harassing them myself, but they do kind of deserve it.” They will never say this out loud in a serious conversation, though many will say it in an anonymous or irreverent space where they can later deny they meant it. But, whatever they say they believe, this is the worldview they are operating under.

Obscuring this means flipping through a lot of contradictory arguments. The harassment is being faked, or it’s not being faked but it’s being exaggerated, or it’s not being exaggerated but the target is provoking it to get attention, which means GamerGate harassers simultaneously don’t exist, exist in small numbers, and exist in such large numbers someone can build a career out of relying on them! It can be kind of fun to take all these arguments made in isolation and try to string together an actual position. Like, GamerGate would argue that Nathan Grayson having previously mentioned Zoe Quinn in an article about a canceled reality show counts as positive coverage, and since Grayson reached out to Quinn for comment it’s reasonable to assume they started dating before the article was published (which is earlier than they claim), and positive coverage did lead to greater popularity for Depression Quest. But if you untangle that, it’s like… okay, you’re saying Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist in exchange for four nonconsecutive sentences that said no more than “Zoe Quinn exists and made a game,” and the price of those four sentences was to date the journalist for months, all to get rich off a game that didn’t cost any money. That’s your movement?

And some, if cornered, would say, “yes, we believe women are just that shitty, that one would fuck a guy for months if it made them the tiniest bit more famous.” But they won’t lead with that. Because they know it won’t convince the normies, even the ones who want to be convinced. So they use a process I call The Ship of Theseus to, piece by piece, turn that sentence into “slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review” and argue that each part of the sentence is technically accurate. It’s trying to lie without lying. And, provided all the pieces of this sentence are discussed separately, and only in the context of how they justify this sentence, you can trick yourself into believing this sentence is mostly true.

So, like, why? This is clearly motivated reasoning; what’s the motivation? What was this going to accomplish?

The answer is nothing. Nothing, by design. GamerGate’s “official” channels - the subreddit and the handful of forums that didn’t shut them down - were rigidly opposed to any action more organized than an email campaign. They had a tiny handful of tangible demands - they wanted gaming websites to post public ethics policies and had a list of people they wanted fired - but their larger aim was the sea change in how games journalism operated, which nothing they were asking for could possibly give them. The kind of anger that convinces you this is a true statement is not going to be addressed by a few paragraphs about ethics and Leigh Alexander getting a new job. They wanted gaming sites to stop catering to women and “SJWs” - who were a sizable and growing source of traffic - and to get out of the pockets of companies that advertised on their websites - which was their primary source of income. So all Kotaku had to do to make them happy was solve capitalism!

Meanwhile, the unofficial channels, like 8chan and Baphomet, were planning op after op to get private information, spread lies with fake accounts, get disinformation trending, make people quit jobs, cancel gigs, and flee their homes. Concrete goals with clear results. All you had to do to feel productive was go rogue. In my video,

How to Radicalize a Normie, I describe how the Alt-Right encourages lone wolf behavior by whipping people up into a rage and then refusing to give them anything to do, while surrounding them with examples of people taking matters into their own hands. The same mechanism is in play here: the public-facing channels don’t condone harassment but also refuse to fight it, the private channels commit it under cover of anonymity, and there is a free flow of traffic between them for when the official channels’ impotence becomes unbearable.

What I hope I’m illustrating is how these techniques play off of each other, how they create a closed ecosystem that rational thought cannot enter. There’s a phrase we use on the internet that got thrown around a lot at the time:

you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

Now, there are a few other big topics I think are relevant here, so I want to go through them one by one.

MEMEIFICATION

So a lot of interactions with GamerGate would involve a very insular knowledge base.

Like, you’d say something benign but progressive on Twitter.

A gater would show up in your mentions and say something aggressive and false.

You’d correct them. But then they’d come back and hit you with -

ah shit, sorry, this is a Loss meme.

If I were in front of a classroom I’d ask, show of hands, how many of you got that? I had to ask Twitter recently, does Gen Z know about Loss?!

If you don’t know what Loss is I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s this old, bad webcomic that was parodied so, so, so many times

that it was reduced to its barest essentials, to the point where any four panels with shapes in this arrangement is a Loss meme. For those of you in the know, you will recognize this anywhere, but have you ever tried to explain to someone who wasn’t in the know why this is really fuckin’ funny?

So, now… by the same process that this is a comics joke,

this is a rape joke.

I’m not gonna show the original image, but, once upon a time, someone made an animated GIF of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z graphically raping Vegeta. 4chan loved it so much that it got posted daily, became known as the “daily dose,” until mods started deleting every incident of it. So they uploaded slightly edited version of it. Then they started uploading other images that had been edited with Piccolo’s color scheme. It got so abstracted that eventually any collection of purple and green pixels would be recognized as Piccolo Dick.

Apropos of nothing, GamerGate is a movement that insists it is not sexist in nature and it does not condone threats of rape against the women they don’t like. And this is their logo. This is their mascot.

If you’re familiar with the Daily Dose, the idea that GamerGate would never support Eron Gjoni if they believed he was a sexual abuser is so blatantly insincere it’s insulting… but imagine trying to explain to someone who’s not on 4chan how this sweater is a rape joke. Imagine having to explain it to a journalist. Imagine having to explain it to the judge enforcing your abuser’s restraining order.

Reactionaries use meme culture not just because they’re terminally online but also because it makes their behavior seem either benign or just confusing to outsiders. They find it hilarious that they can be really explicit and still fly under the radar. The Alt-Right did this with Pepe the Frog, the OK sign, even the milk glass emoji for a hot minute. The more inexplicable the meme, the better. You get the point where Stephen Miller is flashing Nazi signs from the White House and the Presidential re-eletion campaign is releasing 88 ads of exactly 14 words and there’s still a debate about whether the administration is racist. Because journalists aren’t going to get their heads around that. You tell them “1488 is a Nazi number,” it’s gonna seem a lot more plausible that you’re making shit up.

MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS

Online movements like GamerGate move at a speed and mutation rate too high for the mainstream world to keep up. And not just that they don’t understand the memes - they don’t understand the infrastructure.

In an attempt to cover GamerGate evenhandedly, George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop interviewed a lawyer who specializes in journalistic ethics. He meant well; I really wish he hadn’t. You can see him trying to fit something like GamerGate into terms this silver-haired man who works in copyright law can understand. At one point he asks if it’s okay to fund the creative project of a potential journalistic source, to which the guy understandably says “no.”

What he’s alluding to here is the harassment of Jenn Frank. A few weeks into GamerGate, Jenn Frank writes a piece in The Guardian about sexism in tech that mentions Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. In another case of “here’s a strongly-held belief I just decided I have,” GamerGate says this is a breach of journalistic ethics because Frank backs Quinn on Patreon. They harass her so intensely she not only has to quit her job at The Guardian, for several months she quits journalism entirely.

Off the bat, calling a public figure central to a major event in the field a “journalistic source” is flatly wrong-headed. Quinn was not interviewed or even contacted for the article, they were in no way a “source”; they were a subject. But I want to talk about this phrase, “fund a creative project.” Patreon is functionally a subscription; it’s a way of buying things. It’s technically accurate that Frank is funding Quinn’s creative project, but only in the sense that you are funding Bob Dylan’s creative project if you listen to his music. And saying Frank therefore can’t write about Quinn is like saying a music journalist can’t cover a Bob Dylan concert if they’ve ever bought his albums.

And we could talk about the ways that Patreon, as compared with other funding models, can create a greater sense of intimacy, and we also could comment that, well, that’s how an increasing number of people consume media now, so that perspective should be present in journalism. But maybe it means we should cover that perspective differently? I don’t know. It’s an interesting subject. But none of that’s going on in this conversation because this guy doesn’t know what Patreon is. It was only a year old at this point. Patreon’s been a primary source of my income for 5 years and my parents still don’t know what it is. (I think they think I’m a freelancer?) This guy hears “funding a creative project” and he’s thinking an investor, someone who makes a profit off the source’s success.

The language of straight society hasn’t caught up with what’s happening, and that works in GamerGate’s favor.

In the years since GamerGate we have dozens of stories of people trying to explain Twitter harassment to a legal system that’s never heard of Twitter. People trying to explain death threats to cops whose only relationship to the internet is checking email, confusedly asking, “Why don’t you just not go online?” Like, yeah, release your text game about depression at GameStop for the PS3 and get it reviewed in the Boston Globe, problem solved.

You see this in the slowness of mainstream journalists to condemn the harassment - hell, even games journalists at first. Because what if it is a legitimate movement? What if the harassers are just a fringe element? What if there was misconduct? The people in a position to stop GamerGate don’t have to be convinced of their legitimacy, they just have to hesitate. They just have to be unsure. Remember how much happened in just the first two weeks, how it took only a month to become unkillable.

It’s the same hesitance that makes mainstream media, online platforms, and law enforcement underestimate The Alt-Right. They’re terrified of condemning a group as white nationalist terrorists because they’re confused, and what if they’re wrong? Or, in most cases, not even afraid they’re wrong, but afraid of the PR disaster if too much of the world thinks they’re wrong.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

A thing I’ve talked about in The Alt-Right Playbook is how these decentralized, ostensibly leaderless movements insulate themselves from responsibility. Harassment is never the movement’s fault because they never told anyone to harass and you can’t prove the harassers are legitimate members of the movement. The Alt-Right does this too - one of their catchphrases is “I disavow.” Since there are no formalized rules for membership, they can redraw boundaries on the fly; they can take credit for any successes and deny responsibility for any wrongdoing. Public membership is granted or revoked based on a person’s moment-to-moment utility.

It’s almost like… they’re cherry-picking.

The flipside of this is a lack of control. Since they never officially tell anyone to do anything but write emails, they have no means of stopping anyone from behaving counterproductively. The harassment of Jenn Frank was the first time GamerGate’s originators thought, “maybe we should ease off just to avoid bad publicity,” and they found they couldn’t. GamerGate had gotten too big, and too many people were clearly there for precisely this reason.

They also couldn’t control the infighting. When your goal is to harass women and you have all these contradictory justifications for why, you end up with a lot of competing beliefs. And, you know what? Angry white men who like harassing people don’t form healthy relationships! Several prominent members of GamerGate - including Internet Aristocrat - got driven out by factionalism; they were doxxed by their own people! Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini parted ways hating each other, with Aurini releasing chatlogs of him gaslighting Owen about accepting an endorsement from Roosh, and they released two competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect.

I say this because it’s useful to know that these are alliances of convenience. If you know where the sore spots are, you can apply pressure to them.

LEADERS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP

One way movements like GamerGate deflect responsibility is by declaring, “We are a leaderless movement! We have no means to stop harassment.”

Which… any anarchist will tell you collective action is entirely possible without leaders. But they’ll also tell you, absent a system of distributing power equitably, you’re gonna have leaders, just not ones you elected.

A few months into GamerGate, Randi Lee Harper created the ggautoblocker. Here’s what it did: it took five prominent GamerGate figures - Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Monroe, formerly known as [sigh] PressFartToContinue - and generated a block list of everyone who followed at least two of them on Twitter. Now, this became something of an arms race; once GamerGate found out about it they made secondary accounts that followed different people, and more and more prominent figures appeared and had to get added to the list. But, when it first launched, the list generated from just these five people comprised an estimated 90-95% of GamerGate.

Hate to break it to you, guys, but if 90+ percent of your movement is following at least two of the same five people, those are your leaders. The attention economy has produced them. Power pools when left on its own.

This is another case where you have to ignore what people claim and look at what they do. The Alt-Right loves to say “we disavow Richard Spencer” and “Andrew Anglin doesn’t speak for us.”

But no matter what they say, pay attention to whom they’re taking cues from.

AD CAMPAIGN

George Lakoff has observed that one way the Left fails in opposition to the Right is that most liberal politicians and campaigners have degrees in things like law and political science, where conservative campaigners more often have degrees in advertising and communications. Liberals and leftists may have a better product to sell, but conservatives know how to sell products.

GamerGate less resembles a boots-on-the-ground political movement than an ad campaign. First they decide what their messaging strategy is going to be. Then the media arm starts publicizing it. They seek out celebrity endorsements. They get their own hashtag and mascot. They donate to charity and literally call it “public relations.” You can even see the move from The Quinnspiracy to GamerGate as a rebranding effort - when one name got too closely associated with harassment, they started insisting GamerGate was an entirely separate movement from The Quinnspiracy. I learned that trick from Stringer Bell’s economics class.

Now, we could stand to learn a thing or two from this. But I also wouldn’t want us to adopt this strategy whole hog; you should view moves like these as red flags. If you’re hesitating to condemn a movement because what if it’s legitimate, take a look at whether they’re selling ideology like it’s Pepsi.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

One reason to insist you’re a consumer revolt rather than a harassment campaign is most people who want to harass need someone to give them permission, and need someone to tell them it’s normal.

Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”

People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.

This is why they have to believe games journalism is corrupt because of a handful of feminist media critics with outsized influence. Legitimate failures of journalism cannot be systemic problems rooted in how digital media is funded and consumed; there cannot be a legitimate market for social justice-y media. It has to be manipulation by the few. Because, if these things are common, then, even if you don’t like them, they’re normal. They’re part of the in-group. Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike getting normalized, because they know, if they are normalized, they will have to accept them. Because the thing they care about most is being normal.

This is why the echo chamber, this is why Fox News, this is why the Far Right insists they are the “silent majority.” This is why they artificially inflate their numbers. This is why they insist facts are “biased.” They have to maintain the image that what are, in material terms, fringe beliefs are, in fact, held by the majority. This is why getting mocked by Stephen Colbert was such a blow to GamerGate. It makes it harder to believe the world at large agrees with them.

This is why, if you’re trying to change the world for the better, it’s pointless to ask their permission. Because, if you change the world around them, they will adapt even faster than you will.

THE ARGUMENT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO END

Casey Explosion has this really great Twitter thread comparing the Alt-Right to Scary Terry from Rick and Morty. His catchphrase is “you can run but you can’t hide, bitch.” And Rick and Morty finally escape him by hiding. And Morty’s all, “but he said we can’t hide,” and Rick is like, “why are we taking his word on this? if we could hide, he certainly wouldn’t tell us.”

The reason to argue with a GamerGater is on the implied agreement that, if you can convince them they’re part of a hate mob, they will leave. But look at the incentives here: they want to be in GamerGate, and you want them not to be. But they’re already in GamerGate. They’re not waiting on the outcome of this argument to participate. They’ve already got what they want; they don’t need to convince you GamerGate isn’t a hate mob.

This is why all their logic and rationalizations are shit, because they don’t need to be good. They’re not trying to win an argument. They’re trying to keep the argument going.

This has been a precept of conservative political strategy for decades. “You haven’t convinced us climate change is real and man-made, you need to do more studies.” They’re not pausing the use of fossil fuels until the results come in. “You haven’t convinced us there are no WMDs in Iraq, you need to collect more evidence.” They’re not suspending the war until you get back to them. “You haven’t convinced us that Reaganomic tax policy causes recessions, let’s just do it for another forty years and see what happens.” And when the proof comes in, they send us out for more, and we keep going.

The biggest indicator you can’t win a debate with a reactionary is they keep telling you you can. The biggest indicator protest and deplatforming works is they keep telling you in plays into their hands. The biggest indicator that you shouldn’t compromise with Republicans is they keep saying doing otherwise is stooping to their level. They’re not going to walk into the room and say, “Hi, my one weakness is reasoned argument, let’s pick a time and place to hash this out.”

And we fall for it because we’re trying to be decent people. Because we want to believe the truth always wins. We want to bargain in good faith, and they are weaponizing our good faith against us. Always dangling the carrot that the reason they’re like this is no one’s given them the right argument not to be. It’s all just a misunderstanding, and, really, it’s on us for not trying hard enough.

But they have no motivation to agree with us. Most of the people asking for debates have staked their careers on disagreeing with us. Conceding any point to the Left could cost them their livelihood.

WHY GAMES?

Let’s close with the big question: why games? And, honestly, the short answer is:

why not games?

Games culture has always presented itself as a hobby for young, white, middle class boys. It’s always been bigger and more diverse than that, but that’s how it was marketed, and that’s who most felt they belonged. As gaming grows bigger, there is suddenly room for those marginal voices that have always been there to make themselves heard. And, as gaming becomes more mainstream, it’s having its first brushes with serious critical analysis.

This makes the people who have long felt gaming was theirs and theirs alone anxious and a little angry. They’ve invested a lot of their identity in it and they don’t want it to change.

And what the Far Right sees in a sizable collection of aggrieved young men is an untapped market. This is why sites like Stormfront and Breitbart flocked to them. These are not liberals they have to convert, these people are, up til now, not politically engaged. The Right can be their first entry to politics.

The world was changing. Nerd properties were exploding into popular culture in tandem with media representation diversifying. And we were living with the first Black President. Any time an out-group looks like it might join the in-group, there is a self-protective backlash from the existing in-group. This had been brewing for a while, and, honestly, if it hadn’t boiled over in games, it would have boiled over somewhere else.

And, in the years since GamerGate, it has. The Far Right has tapped the comics, Star Wars, and sci-fi fandoms; they tried to get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly. They’re all over YouTube and, frankly, the atheist community was already in their pocket. Basically, if you’re in community with a bunch of young white guys who think they own the place, you might wanna have some talks with them sooner than later.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this stuff, RationalWiki’s timeline on GamerGate is pretty thorough. You can also watch my or Dan Olson’s videos on the subject. I’ll be putting the audio of this talk on YouTube and will put as many resources as I can in the show notes. The channel, again, is Innuendo Studios.

Sorry this was such a bummer.

Thank you for your time.

#video essay #alt-right playbook #Youtube

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strawberrymilkgeorge · 4 years ago

Text

Part Nine. Minecraft Dating 101

warnings: swearing, mostly super freaking fluffy but some oopsies at the end (which is the barely-there angst that i mentioned before!!), pet names?? if that bothers you??? (like...... one or both of them might use baby.........) word count: 5.3k (not including pictures)

behind the screen (irl dream x f!reader) series masterlist ultimate masterlist

A/N: HEHEH SORRY ITS SO LONG SORRY hope you guys like it!!!! hope it lives up to your standards of minecraft dates lol also thank you guys all for all your suggestions!!! i loved all of them so much!!!! i would have added every idea except this was already 5k words so its much less “flirting” and more so “oh gosh im so nervous what am i supposed to do” from both of them so hehe i think thats more endearing anyway

**********

The familiar sound of a FaceTime call connecting rang in Y/n's ears and she held her phone up to her face. "Hi, Karl," she sighed.

"Y/N!!" he said with a cackle. "ARE YOU READY FOR YOUR DATE?!"

"Shut up, I'm doing this for you."

"I already gave you the tour though so really you could back out. You're choosing to stay." His voice was teasing and giddy. "Why's that, hmm?"

Heat rose instantly to Y/n's face. "Because I'm a woman of my word?"

"OkaAaAyy," he sang. "Or because you liiiiikeee himmm."

"Shhhut up, Karl. No, I don't."

"Suuuure."

"Is this why you called me?"

He giggled. "Yeah, but—"

Y/n disconnected the call and set her phone down with a small laugh and a shake of her head.

With her stream started and her chat greeted, the donation limit raised to $100 (both because she didn't want to be flooded with questions on the date and because she didn't want people to donate their hard-earned money), Y/n logged onto Dream's SMP and found the voice call Dream was in, George's name right under his.

After she clicked it to join, a small gasp emitted from her headphones before she heard Dream mutter something. "Get out, get out, leave."

George's voice was normal. "But I wanna—"

"GEORGE!" Dream yelled, making Y/n giggle.

"Fine!" George yelled back. "Have fun you two," he sang like Karl did before a sound from Discord told them that he left.

It was silent for a second before, "Hi."

"Hi." She giggled. "What was that about?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing. Just some last minute, uh, setting up."

She hummed, amused at the sound of his frantic voice.

"So, um... are you ready for our date?"

"I don't even know where you are. I'm still in my house."

"Knock, knock," he said with a laugh. Y/n turned to see green peeking through the cutouts on her oak door and she laughed.

She ran to the door and opened it for him, revealing Dream in a slightly altered version of his Minecraft skin. He looked the same, except the white blob appeared to be wearing a necktie of some sort. "You look ridiculous," she admitted with a smile. "Wait, is this a fancy date? Should I change my skin?"

"It's not fancy, I just wanted to look my best for the prettiest girl in the world."

"Ohmygosh," she muttered to herself, hoping that writing off his charming words and actions as annoying would make her face not heat up as much. So far, it hadn't worked. Two minutes in and she was already blushing like a schoolgirl whose crush asked her to play tag at recess. "So, I'm not underdressed?"

"No, you're always perfect."

She didn't comment, opting for an eye-roll instead. Truthfully, she wanted to flirt back with him, try to make his heart beat fast like hers already was, but she was worried her words wouldn't come off joking and that the true intention would be obvious, that he'd be able to breeze right past the jovial tone and hear the sincerity in her words. Wait, true intention? What was her true intention? Her true intention should obviously be to just joke around and have some fun, but deep down she knew the motivation for teasing him came from somewhere different, somewhere more meaningful.

She wanted to tease him because she wanted to be the one to make him blush, to make him trip over his words and not know what to do with his hands.

Why? Well, she was still figuring that out.

"If you're ready, follow me, ma'am."

"Where are you taking me?" she asked as she followed his character down prime path.

"Hmmm..." he mused. "A secret, obviously."

"Obviously," she scoffed. She noticed that he was several blocks ahead of her and she smiled to herself. "Hey, Dream?"

"Hm?" he asked, spinning to face her as he ran backward.

"I don't know how many dates you've been on, but usually people walk together. You know, gives them an excuse to maybe hold hands or at least enjoy each other's company?" She made sure her voice had just the right balance of teasing and seriousness, curious as to how he would respond.

"I, uh... oh."

"Unless you want me to just meet you there. I mean, you're practically running away from me."

"I'm just excited!" he excused, stopping briefly so she could catch up with him.

"But look at how many beautiful things there around us to look at while we get to where we're going!" she told him. "Well, maybe not that," she said with a laugh as she punched her fist towards Tommy's dirt house. "But other things."

Dream laughed and continued to walk next to her like she requested, pausing if he ever got too far ahead. "How can I look at all those when the most beautiful thing is walking right next to me?"

She's never rolled her eyes so hard in her life. "Shut up," she mumbled as she punched him.

"OW! BUG!"

"That was supposed to be a pat on the arm but Minecraft only has one level of hitting and it's a punch. Sorry."

Dream wheezed briefly before containing his laughter. "This way," he instructed, getting off the path and starting into the woods.

"Oh, really you're trying to kill me. That's why you didn't want me to wear anything nice. Didn't want me to ruin any of my fancy stuff."

"Foiled my plans," he joked lightly. "Okay but really, um, I was thinking—well, so you already have a house but I was thinking we could build one together. Or build something, I don't know. But you're really good at building and I know you really enjoy it so I thought maybe you could show—like, teach me and then later I'll teach you something and then we can have a little picnic dinner."

Y/n smiled at her nervousness. "Hey, that actually sounds really fun!"

"What? What do you mean actually?" He laughed. "What, did you expect me to plan something boring?"

She laughed over his dramatic pouting. "No, but I mean, I didn't know what to expect," she said shyly. "I do have to say, though, I'm not sure what you plan on teaching me. I'm pretty much a master at all possible Minecraft skills, so..."

"Oh, really?" he taunted. "Everything?"

"Mhm," she hummed, her confidence wavering at his smooth voice.

"We'll see about that..."

"Unless you mean you're gonna teach me how to code Minecraft. That's a Minecraft skill I will admit I know nothing about."

"No, no, nothing like that," he said with a laugh.

"Good, save the programming talk for later."

"For laaater, hmmm?" he sang flirtatiously.

"Oh my gosh," she said through a laugh. "You would think that's what I meant."

"Hey, you're the one that said you think it's cute when I talk about coding. Maybe you're into that."

"I was saying it's sweet hearing you talk about stuff you like, you nerd. Why did you immediately think—what, is your idea of dirty talk talking about... like... computer viruses?"

"WhAT?"

"Hey girl, lemme clean out your motherboard," she mocked in a deep voice. "You overclock my processor. Lemme program your, uh—uh...hAHA, nevermind, ew, no."

"BUG?! WHAAAT? What is wrong with you?" His gasps for breath between wheezes made her laugh with him. "Don't ever talk like that again, pleASE."

"I won't, I won't, I'm sorry. Oh my gosh."

"Is that your idea of flirting? You are bad!"

"No, no, no!" She laughed. "I was making fun of you. No, I'm actually really good."

She couldn't stop giggling to herself for a few minutes, embarrassed but also proud of the reaction she got from Dream. She loved hearing him laugh as if he would never stop, it made her heart so happy to hear, especially when she was the one who caused it.

Though she feared her horrible pickup lines, if you could even call them that, were already clipped, ready to be used against her for the rest of her life. Worth it. Probably.

They approached a cleared-out area in the woods and Dream stopped and turned to Y/n. "So, we're here. What should we build?"

"Oh, so now I have to plan? Wow, you are so underprepared," she joked.

"What, no! I originally... I wanted to build a, like, a house together because I didn't— I forgot you made your—your house already and—but since you already have one—"

"We can still build a house," she interrupted with a soft voice. Him fumbling over his words was very endearing but also very confusing. How serious was he taking this bit? Or was he... actually nervous? She was actually nervous but she had reasons to be: a huge live audience to entertain and not ignore, and the weird staticky, itchy feeling in her tummy every time Dream spoke to her. Both valid reasons to be nervous. What was his excuse?

"Really? You wanna build a home together?"

Heat rose to her cheeks at his wording and she hummed. "Mhm. You can be my secret lover I hide in my vacation home. Like a second life kinda deal."

He scoffed. "Oh, now I'm just your side piece, Bug?"

"Nah, you're my main bitch, baby. I just wanna hide you away to keep you for myself because I'm selfish."

There was silence on his end for a few moments, making Y/n's face practically catch fire as she thought about her words. Why did she say that?? How can he flirt all the time but as soon as she says something: dead silence.

"Well.... shhhhhit," he finally mumbled definitively.

"You wanted me to flirt with you, Dream. You literally asked me too!" She laughed, trying to cover up her embarrassment. It had been less than 20 minutes and she already made a fool of herself.

"I did, I did, I just—wow. Come on, that was... I didn't expect you to go from never flirting to calling me baby!"

"Too much?" she bit her lip as she waited for him to explain if it was a good or bad thing.

He paused again. "....no."

She laughed loudly, pulling her hoodie collar up to her face in an attempt to rid herself of the giddiness and heat on her face. Like anyone could see anyway.

"So, a house?"

"A house."

"What kind of house do you think we should build together, Dream?"

"Maybe...." he thought as he ran around the area. "Maybe, like, a log cabin? Since we're in a forest. It's fitting..."

"Very true, very true..." she thought. "I was thinking a castle was more suited for you, king, but a cabin works too."

"Bug!" he yelled, laughter bubbling up in his voice. "What is wrong with you?"

"What?" she said defensively, giggling.

"You're a handful today," he groaned under his breath and she smiled. Though his words said one thing, Y/n could tell he was enjoying her energy.

"So, a dinky, old cabin, or what?"

"Whatever you want to build," he sighed.

"You always this agreeable?"

"Only to you."

"Well, I honestly don't have much practice with building cabins and since I want to show off my skills, I mean, that's the whole point of this, right? For me to impress you with my skills?"

Dream laughed so she continued.

"I think we should build a treehouse."

"A treehouse?"

"Mhm. What do you think? I make a pretty bomb treehouse."

"That sounds awesome!" he agreed. "Oh, and it could go from, like, one tree to another and, like, connect with a bridge! Like, the living room on one and the bedroom on another."

"Yeah, exactly! Okay, it's settled."

"What do we need? What do you want me to do?"

"I'm thinking.... we use cobblestone?"

Dead silent. Literally no noise until a few moments later, ".......Bug. This might be a deal-breaker."

"I'm joooking! You think I'd build something out of cobblestone? Who am I, Tommy? No, what's your favorite wood?"

"Dark oak."

"GOOD. Me too. So.... we need dark oak. Or, wait! Okay, hear me out."

"I'm hearing..." Dream prompted as he pressed A and D on his keyboard back and forth, earning a giggle from Y/n. He character was bouncing left and right is excitement.

"Dark oak planks..." she started.

"Mhm."

"Stone bricks..."

"Go on."

"And green wool for accents."

"Well, now you're just pandering."

"No!" she laughed. "Not, like, lime wool. Green wool. It's close to you but not as... obnoxiously blinding."

"I trust your vision. I'll go get materials."

"Perfect, you're the best, Dweam."

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled before laughing. "You pick out a tree you think would be best for the main part."

40 minutes later, they were nowhere near being done. Y/n had shown him how to make a good house layout after he placed the floor in the shape of a square. She had yelled at him for it first, of course. They also had the frame of the walls and one bridge but nothing on the other side of said bridge. Not wanting the stream to last six hours since this was only the first part of the date, Y/n made a suggestion.

"What if...."

"What if what?" Dream asked, pausing to look at her character, who had stopped fixing his mistakes. "Did I mess something up?"

"No, I was just thinking. What if we make this the whole house and do a little garden on the other side of the bridge? Or like a little cute thing."

"A little cute thing?" Dream laughed.

"You know, like a thing," she said, knowing she hadn't clarified anything. "I forgot this is only date one, you can't read my mind yet."

"Oh, so there are gonna be future dates? I thought this was just to pay off your debt?"

She paused, playing with her hoodie strings between her left hand. "Well, I guess we'll see."

Dream laughed. "So, what little cute thing did you want to make?"

"We could put a bench facing the sunset and have some potted flowers and hang lanterns and stuff."

"Oh, like a romantic spot?"

"I guess if you wanna think of it like that."

"Sounds cute," he said. "So, we have to change the layout in here then?"

"Nah, I mean, we can just not add a kitchen, we obviously don't need one anyway."

"True. Then all we need is to put our bed down, right?"

"Beds," Y/n corrected.

"Well, when they're together it looks like one big bed."

"Who said we're putting out beds together?"

"Buuuuggg..." he whined. "Come on... lemme put my bed next to yours."

She giggled again. What was with all the giggling, sheesh. "No. There's plenty of space, put it somewhere else." She placed her white bed down in the corner and went across the bridge to bring her idea to life, or, to Minecraft.

It only took about ten minutes and she finished when Dream spoke again. "I think I'm done."

"I am too! Let's take one final look around." She went back inside and immediately noticed his bed right next to hers. She stared at his character and he laughed.

"Whaaat?" he asked shyly and she just sighed, letting it happen. They took a look around and agreed that it was basically the best treehouse in the entire universe, both in Minecraft and real life.

"Bug, you're so good at building," Dream complimented as he ran around the house. "What's your favorite part?"

"Ummm...." She looked around before deciding on the bridge. "I like how you made the bridge. And I like the little touches you added to it. It's nice."

"Thanks! I think the 'little cute thing' you did is the best part."

"Shut up, I can't stand you," she scoffed. "But thanks."

"Hey, Bug?" Dream asked, leading her back into the house. He faced the two beds placed together and she prepared herself for the worst joke of all time. "Is this where all the programming talk happens?"

"I knew it! I knew you were gonna say that! Shut up!" She punched Dream as he laughed loudly and she couldn't stop smiling. "You're such a nerd. You're so annoying."

"OH! I have an idea, wait here."

***

It had been a solid eight and a half minutes of Y/n waiting for Dream and he showed no signs of returning. He was silent too, so she resorted to saying random things to get him to crack.

"When will my husband return from war?" she joked, her voice laced with sadness and longing.

There was a small suppressed laugh from his mic, but still no words.

"Sometimes I think I can still hear him laughing at me."

He must have gotten reeeaaalll close to his mic, because his next words, the first ones he had spoken in almost ten minutes, were whispered but she felt like he was in her ear. "I'll be home soon, baby."

Once again, she was so glad her chat couldn't see her because she literally shivered and her face was so warm she felt like she was glowing.

For the first time all stream, her eyes betrayed her and she looked at her chat as she pulled her hoodie collar up to her face.

user18: BUGSY BEIN REEEAL QUIET

user4: i think i just passed out

user11: wHAT ON EARTH DREAM ADKXKH

user7: BUGSY ON GOD BE REAL WITH US WTF IS GOING ON RN

user2: hey bestie i cant do this rn

user9: they can't talk to each other like that and say they're just friends pleASE

Also for the first time all stream, someone dared to donate at her limit (which, again, was ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS).

karakatara donated $100 I had to donate bc I just HAD to tell you how cute you and dream are! honestly my favorite couple ever and I was just wondering how long you've been dating??? love you and your videos!!!!!

It was $100. She had to answer it. Meaning, she had to use words after Dream said that like that and she wasn't sure that was physically possible right now.

"Aren't you going to answer?" Dream taunted.

"Wha—what, are you—you stream watching, you weirdo?" she forced out. "Why?"

"I wanted to read your chat, they're really funny."

"I haven't been reading it."

"What, why? They've been so funny this whole time."

"I've been too scared to."

"Too scared? Of what?"

Of the jokes that she wanted to be real? Of seeing something so cute only to break her heart when she remembers it's all a joke? Of seeing someone hate her for being so close to Dream? Many things.

"Of seeing something... that boosts your ego."

"What? Oh, come on. Hey, answer the dono. Someone gave you their hard earned money for that."

"Yeah, wait, chat, I had the limit that high so you DON'T donate! Why on earth would you—"

"You're avoiding the question."

"We aren't actually dating! Not actually a couple!" she said with a laugh, though something in her heart was very much against laughing at that fact. "Obviously not."

"Well, it's only the first date, so, we'll see I guess, but..."

"I cannot stand you. Thank you so much for the dono, though, Karakatara. You're insane for... yeah. Thank you so much." She turned her attention back to Dream. "Actually though are you ever coming back?"

"Yeah, what, I'm almost there. I see the you staring out the window. ."

When he got inside, he dropped a blue cornflower for Y/n and stepped back. "Okay, now, give that to me."

She followed, not understanding. "For you, Dream." She dropped the flower.

"Aw, Bug! That's so kind! Aw! Thank you! Here's a flower for you, too!" He dropped her a red poppy and then put two item frames on the wall above their beds. He put the blue cornflower above his bed and she followed by putting the red one above hers. "Now that's my favorite part of the house."

"You didn't want to use the real ones? What, did you lose my flower or something?"

"Hell no!" he defended loudly. "No, I just don't want someone to steal that one. It's in my enderchest for safe-keeping."

He said it so casually like it was no big deal, but her heart soared. She too had his flower in her enderchest.

"This," she said dramatically with a sigh, "is now a treehome."

***

"I already told you I'm the best PVP player out there."

"Bug, honey, I've seen you play Bedwars. You're trash."

"Hey!" Hehe, honey. Shut up brain.

"But that's okay! I'm here to teach you."

Y/n's character stood across a makeshift battlefield from Dream's, an axe in hand and armor that was definitely donated by DreamXD on her body. "This is kinda sexist of you. Assuming I know how to name a cute house but not fight."

"Oh no, that's not—crap. Bug, I'm only basing this off of your streams, which I watch all the time—"

Once again, he said something so casual and yet it still made her heart skip three beats and once again, she grabbed the collar of her hoodie and pulled it up to hide her face. This thing had to be stretched by now from how often it was yanked on in this stream alone.

"—and don't get me wrong, you're great! But you're also good at a lot of stuff and—"

"Dream!" she giggled out. "I'm teasing. I admit you're much better than me."

"I wouldn't say much better but... it's the only thing I could possibly teach you anything about because you're just so good at Minecraft." His tone was sarcastic at this point but she knew he was meaning what he said.

"Whatever. Come on, Dream, show me how it's done."

He actually had a lot of very useful tips that Y/n otherwise would have never thought about. I guess when you tryhard Minecraft, she thought, you learn a thing or two about pvp. It was a complete joke, but she still kept it to herself.

"I could basically beat anyone now," she said confidently.

"Yeah, basically. Except maybe Technoblade."

"Nah, even him."

"Let's see how good you really are. To the death."

"What?" She laughed. "You're gonna try to kill me on our date?"

"Yeah, scared?" Seconds later, a creeper exploded near Dream and he screeched, jumping back. Y/n lost it. She laughed loudly, clutching her stomach.

"Dr-Dream!" She laughed. "What the hell was that?"

"It scared me!" he argued. "Here, I'll protect you," he offered, running past her and killing a skeleton that was shooting towards her.

"I don't need protecting, especially from you! Besides, if you're trying to kill me, you'd let the mobs get me."

"No," he decided. "No one's allowed to kill my Bug."

She was literally going to explode. "Wh—"

"Only I get to."

"Dream!" she scoffed, running to kill the skeleton first. She succeeded and he pouted.

"Hey—I did more damage than you, you just had the final hit."

"Really? Cause to me it looks like I'm your knight in shining armor."

"Nuh-uh," he spat.

"Dream. F5 right now, you're covered in arrows."

There was a pause. "Oh whatever." He hit her once and that's all it took for them to start fighting, throwing jokes and taunts at each other the whole time, eventually resulting in a satisfying win for her.

Dream was slain by Bugsy

"WHAT?! HOW?"

<Tubbo> i thogt you were on a date <Ranboo> well definitley not anymore <Ranboo> is that canon <JackManifoldTV> WOMEN

"What was that about you being better than me?" Y/n teased.

"Oh, come ON! I still had damage from the skeleton, and besides, I taught you everything you know!"

"That just makes you a very good teacher, Dream," she said sincerely and he paused, probably expecting her to insult him instead of compliment him.

"Yeah, suck up now that you've murdered me."

***

They were finally at their final stop, three hours into the stream. Not too bad on time, though this was probably the longest Minecraft date in the history of Minecraft dates. Also the best, but maybe Y/n was biased.

There was a huge tree, obviously built instead of naturally generated, with lanterns hanging down and lighting areas of the dark world around them. Under that was a checkered pattern of carpet, a single chest in the center with a potted plant sitting next to it.

"The carpet is supposed to look like a, uh, what's it called... picnic blanket?" Dream explained as they approached the scene, clearly not happy with how it turned out. "It looks weird. Nothing compared to the treehouse you built."

"We built," she corrected. "And this looks awesome, Dream," Y/n complimented. "It's is also my favorite colors."

"Yeah, I had some help from Karl on that one."

She leaned back in her chair in real life and pressed her hands to her face. Oh, it was so unfair how cute he was when he was shy like this. She glanced at chat, which only made her face go from the temperature of molten lava to basically the sun. She was going to explode.

She hummed, a little giggle coming out as well. "That's cute."

She sat (crouched) on the picnic blanket (piece of carpet) while Dream put a disc in the jukebox off to the side.

"Is that a Tommy disc?" she giggled and Dream laughed.

"No, no, no, don't worry. There shouldn't be any continuations of wars interrupting our date."

"Shouldn't be," she emphasized, noticing someone approaching them from the distance.

Dream was about to speak when Quackity reached them and quickly joined the voice channel.

"Oh no," Dream sighed. "We've come so far."

"AYYEEE WHAT'S GOING ON, MAN?!" Quackity yelled in his Mexican Dream voice, his voice bubbling with laughter. "IS THIS A DATE OR SOMETHING, MAN?"

"Quackity, go AWAY!" Dream ordered, punching the character who had stripped to his underwear. "YOU'RE INDECENT! THERE IS A LADY HERE!"

Y/n laughed, enjoying the scene of fancy Dream hitting naked Quackity away from their picnic dinner.

"I'm your waiter, I'm your waiter!" Quackity said in his normal voice, still laughing. "DREAM! WILL YOU STO— QUIT HITTING ME!"

This had turned chaotic very quickly.

"We don't need a waiter," Dream informed him.

"Then I'm the singing gram you ordered." He started singing a song and Dream groaned. "HEY THERE DELILAH WHAT'S IT LIKE IN NEW YORK CITY—"

"No! You're being a clout chaser, go away!"

"I'm honestly impressed we made it this far without anyone coming into the voice channel," Y/n admitted.

"I paid them," Dream joked.

"You did not!" Karl's voice suddenly came through and Y/n laughed. "We were all just being polite and staying away but we're getting bored! We've been so patient!"

"Yeah, hurry up! We wanna play!!!" Sapnap whined. "Dream, it's not fair for you to steal Bugsy from us for so long."

"Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed with a laugh as Dream laughed along.

"Just ten minutes! Ten more minutes!" Dream bargained but none of them would have it. "Just so I can say goodbye!"

"No!" George insisted. "Right now!"

"Look, wait, wait, hold on—"

"—hold ON!" Dream begged, watching as the three boys ran and joined Quackity by the picnic blanket.

Y/n could not stop laughing at all the avatars around them. The date had been so peaceful and cute but all good things must come to a chaotic end.

"Wait, come on, Karl, Karl, Karl," Dream said quickly. "Come here. Bug, just a sec, please. Stay right there."

"Okay," she agreed, curious to see his plan.

Karl followed him and of course Sapnap couldn't help but also join them.

"Okay," Dream whispered loudly, clearly wanting everyone to hear his offer. He crouched and the other two copied. "Just give me ten minutes—"

"Ten?" Sapnap asked loudly.

"Shhh!!! Yes, ten minutes, to say goodbye and, you know, end the date."

There was a long, thick pause. "What exactly are your intentions with Bugsy Games," Karl asked seriously, matching Dream's whisper.

"Well, I wanna make sure she gets home safe, you know, so I'm gonna drop her off and, I don't know, see if maybe.... maybe she'll give me a hug?"

Karl and Sapnap both gasped dramatically and Y/n giggled, sparing a glance at her chat who were all freaking out.

"What the hell?" Quackity said while laughing. He and George were still standing near Y/n so they were just watching the goons with her.

"Bugsy is not that kind of girl!" Sapnap protested. "You think she's just gonna give you a hug?"

"Sapnap! Do you not know how to whisper???"

George let a loud laugh slip before slapping his hand over his mouth, which his mic picked up.

"Okay, Dream, wait, so you're gonna try to... hug her?" Karl clarified. "She won't even let me hug her. Good luck."

"Well, I'm not going to force her into anything but, I don't know, she said something about holding my hand earlier so I just thought maybe there's a possibility—"

"WHAT?" Karl yelled before going back to the whisper. "Okay, okay, don't panic, but that's huge. Dadnap, a word?"

He and Sapnap broke off from Dream and formed their own huddle, except their whispers were incoherent mumblings that weren't even English.

"Oh my gosh," Y/n groaned loudly, an unmistakable laugh behind her words.

"Okay," Sapnap said, rejoining Dream. "We'll give you five minutes but if you take any longer, we're barging in and killing you."

"Yes, sir!" Dream said. "Thank you, sirs."

"Mhm. Okay, break!"

They all uncrouched in sync before Dream ran back to Y/n.

"How did it go?" she asked as if she didn't hear the entire conversation.

"Bad news," he started. "Your dad's want you home."

"Shame, I was quite enjoying my time."

Dream slowly turned towards the boys as if to glare at them for ending the date before turning back to her. "Then, maybe, I don't know, we could do this again sometime?"

"I.... think I'd like that," she said slowly, trying to tease him.

He giggled and told her he was going to drop her off at her house, even though when the date was over, they were all probably gonna mess around together anyway so there was no point in them leaving the group. But it was the thought that counted.

He ended up taking her back to the treehouse, which warmed her heart. She also noticed when they faced each other at front of the door, she could see the four other boys watching them.

"Goodnight, my sweet Bug," he said poshly.

"Goodnight, Dream." He turned away but she stopped him. "Wait!" She moved to his side and made a loud, MUAH, sound before stepping back in front of him. "A kiss on the cheek," she clarified, not wanting him to think she gave him a real kiss.

"Cute," he said under his breath, almost like he didn't mean to say it out loud. "Night night." He turned away and ran down to the others, screaming the whole way. "GUYS, DID YOU SEE THAT? BUG GAVE ME A KISS ON THE CHEEK!! OMG DID YOU SEE, DID YOU SEE?"

Chat was gonna have a field day with that. Actually, with a lot of things that had happened. Oh, she could see the clips and edits now.... oh boy.

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