#god i scrolled through my blog a little bit to find those links and. man. i talk a lot about them don't it. like. a lot a lot.

[lloydfrontera]

Helloo (๑'ᵕ'๑)⸝*

How are ya? I hope yer doing well :D

Btw how do you handle llyod and javier bromance? I am currently rereading tged in preparation to read tcpsm but mann i forget how extra EXTRA bromantic they are and like whenever i read their interactions my heart feels as if it's being squeezed especially knowing the ending LIKE WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY AREN'T SECRETLY MARRIED ACKKKKKKKKK ᵢ ₐₘ ₛₚᵢᵣₐₗₗᵢₙ𝓰 _(:‚‹」∠)_

omg hiii!!

oh that's an easy question! i don't :)

there's a reason i've been here since 2022, these idiots drove me insane and i'm barely recovering from it! i have so many posts where i break down exactly why i think the ending of tged is Not Great so i won't bore you with it again, but believe me i've gone off the deep end about it more times that i want to admit.

it will never not rub me the wrong way that if either of them was a girl, there would be absolutely no doubt at all that they were in love with each other. hell, even by the in-universe requirements to marry lloyd, javier is the person who best fits the bill in the entire world. the only reason they don't end up together is because they're both guys and it's so fucking obvious it's a little maddening.

that being said.

i think their relationship in canon is incredibly compelling even if we leave aside romance. they love each other so much and there's literally no way to deny it because the devotion they have for each other is the backbone of the plot. without their relationship there's simply no novel.

they are each other's most important person in the whole wide world. they wanted to spend the rest of their lives at each other's side and if they couldn't then they gladly offered their life so the other could survive.

and spoilers for cpsm but they are so enmeshed with each other that not even death could really keep them apart.

i'm at a point where i genuinely think that adding romance to their relationship would just be like... the cherry on top, y'know?? what they have is already so fucking good, making them kiss wouldn't be so much an improvement as a nice add-on. good to have but not indispensable.

if anything i'm more mad at the fact bk moon insisted on giving lloyd an underdeveloped, rushed and unnecessary romance that took him away from his home, instead of letting him enjoy the life he worked so hard to have with his family. i'm upset that he seemed to think lloyd couldn't have a happy ending unless he was married to a woman, no matter how little sense it made for his arc and how little he seems to want that.

ANYWAY i love them dearly and someone needs to take my keyboard away before i expand on it lmao

[wordsablaze]

Live And Let Livestream

Jaskier's saturday nights are reserved for livestreams but sometimes they end up including wikipedia fraud, protective boyfriends who only half-know how to use the internet, and a spontaneous sleepover instead...

A/N: this is just a bit of fun inspired by the jaskel discord - love y’all <3

-

Having a wikipedia page is pretty impressive and since Jaskier strives to be both pretty and impressive, it’s no surprise that he has one.

Well, he actually has two but nobody needs to know that. Either way, for someone as bothered about his reputation as he is, he pays very little attention to his wiki, often forgetting he’s even that level of famous until Yennefer teases him about it. Or until something inevitably goes wrong - It just so happens that he’s in the middle of a livestream when something does inevitably go wrong.

“...and yes, this is a new shirt, thank you for noticing, um- sorry, i didn’t catch your user! I’ll drop a link so we can all be scandalous together, hang on!”

He’s just about picked up his phone to check he’s got the right website in mind when it starts ringing. Cursing softly as he literally jumps, he shoots a guilty grin at his computer. “Can you guys pretend that didn’t happen so I can pretend I still have some dignity? Thanks, just give me a second…”

Ordinarily, he’d just put his phone on silent because all of his important friends know he spends Saturday evenings and often nights livestreaming. But it’s Eskel calling and he’s not about to be rude and decline someone who bakes him brownies whenever he has a meltdown now, is he?

“Is everything okay, darling?” he asks.

“Can you end your stream early? I think you’ll regret giving people a live reaction to this.”  

Jaskier frowns harder, reluctant to break his promise to the followers he only somewhat childishly considers to be his friends. “What is it? Are you all okay?”

He hears Eskel sigh. “Maybe at least mute the thing?”

Rolling his eyes, he clicks the mute button and types the link for his shirt into the chat along with a brief apology before focusing back on Eskel. “You’re worrying me, what happened?”

“So you know that wikipedia page we were talking about the other day?”

He nods, then realises Eskel can’t see him. “Uh yes, my page, what about it?”

“You might want to take a moment to take a minute to see for yourself?”

“What is it with you guys and being so cryptic? You don’t even all share the same genes so it can’t be that. Maybe it’s just the kind of people I attract, not that I’m complaining per se but still,” Jaskier mutters to himself even as he googles his own name.

He truly has no idea what Eskel was trying to get at until the page loads properly, at which point he blinks at the photo staring back at him. The photo that is most definitely not the one Essi had jokingly submitted and somehow managed to keep there because shut up about my terrible phone camera quality already, you actually look candid so who cares?

“Is this a joke, Esk? What the…” he trails off, scrolling to find lists of achievements and songs and facts that really shouldn’t be associated with his name. Not that it’s his name currently on the page.

“Oh, for the love of-" his breath hitches as he sees a parody of his own song written off as Valdo's- "actually, screw that! There is no love here, what exactly does he think he’s doing? Ugh, can’t a guy livestream in peace nowadays?”

“I’m sorry, Jas. Geralt just told me and I-”

“Geralt was on my wiki?” Jaskier finds himself asking, grinning at the very thought.

“I… wasn’t supposed to tell you that. Uh, yeah? I mean, he actually came and asked me how to email wikipedia but we kind of figured it out from there so…”

Jaskier laughs despite his frustration, his urge to punch Valdo morphing into an urge to kiss his boyfriends. “Who’s ‘we’, by the way?”

Before Eskel can answer, Jaskier’s computer starts rapidly beeping, at which point he turns back to the live and promptly curses when he sees the dozens of messages in the chat asking who Valdo Marx is or, from people who already know who he is, messages asking whether they have permission to throw hands; he'd be lying if he said those messages don't warm his heart.

“I didn’t mute the thing properly. Gods, I’m turning into Vesemir,” Jaskier groans, then slaps his free hand over his mouth and glares at his camera. “None of you tell him I said that, you hear me? I do love him so.”

“How would they even find Vesemir?” Eskel asks in his ear, clearly amused.

“Remind me to remind you how deeply the internet works later. More importantly, you haven’t mentioned Lambert or Aiden yet and I know for a fact they were heading to yours today so…?” Jaskier asks, hoping the former hasn’t punched a wall again or anything like that.

Eskel clears his throat awkwardly. “Yeah, they were heading to ours but they… well, uhm, they called to say they took a detour.”

“To mine?” Jaskier asks, frowning at the thought. He’s more than capable of fixing his own wiki page and as much as he appreciates the moral support, he doesn’t really need any of his loved ones’ presence for such a trivial matter. And anyway, he was already planning on joining the others in the morning so they could spend Sunday together, which means coming over to his makes no sense.

“No, not to yours. To Valdo’s…”

Jaskier’s eyes widen.

Throwing hands on social media is one thing but he doesn’t want any kind of misleading vagueposting from the likes of people who need to steal other people’s wikipedia pages in the direction of people who have no fault other than mildly violent forms of love, and especially not on his behalf.

“What are you still doing on the phone? Go derail their detour! I’ll be there as soon as I can too,” Jaskier says to Eskel, blowing him a kiss through the phone because he knows it’ll make the other man blush.

Once he’s hung up, he turns back to his camera with a pout. “Right, sorry guys, I’ll have to cut this one short so my darling idiots don’t ruin their evenings for the sake of a pathetic leech who just will not let me live! Okay, I promise some cute instagram selfies in exchange for this mess but for now, I’ll see you next week! Alright, bye!”

This time he does press the right buttons and closes both the live and the computer down even as he grabs his coat. Forgoing socks in favour of making sure nobody except Valdo’s weekend gets ruined - he already knows Yennefer or Renfri will be more than happy to throw shade his way to make him regret his failed publicity stunt - and pulling on a pair of boots really not designed for driving, he makes his way out of his apartment as fast as humanly possible.

There’ll be time to be angry at Valdo again later but he’s more than aware that between his family, his friends, and his followers, it’s simply not a big deal. He signed up for drama when he signed up for being famous and yes, he loves fighting against anyone or anything that tries to stop him from sharing his music, but he’s really not about to waste any more time worrying about all that at the moment.

At the end of the day, it's nice to be pretty impressive but there's nothing better than being pretty loved.

-

what are the logistics of this au? whatever you want them to be ;)

-

thanks for reading! masterlist | witcher blog: @itsjaskier

[bubbyleh]

it was arrogance to think you knew how to handle this - chapter 2

yeah, sorry. not enough time has passed between the posting of the last chapter for me to provide any new insight! again, scroll down my blog for the ao3 link if interested.

chapter 2: green to blue

Gordon immediately rushes to Josh's room, who he wakes when he scoops him out of bed. At first he's groggy and confused, but Joshua is comforted by his father's presence and quickly falls back asleep. Gordon holds his son, the most precious thing in his life, as he sits on his couch. He holds the kitchen knife tightly, away from Joshua.

He's not sure why nothing is happening. Gordon is half an hour deep into planning a move in his head when he realizes this. The Fae who was outside seems to have just done... nothing? Gordon's not entirely willing to believe they've just given up.

The sun begins to rise. The clock begins to creep closer to a time Gordon would usually wake up. He convinces himself, maybe, that the random Fae was just a one-off encounter. Gently, Gordon sets Joshua down on the couch, making sure he's still covered by the blanket from his room. He doesn't really want to leave Joshua's side, but at least he can still see him from the kitchen.

Joshua will probably be up soon, and Gordon wants to have breakfast ready by then. Having something to eat will occupy Josh for at least a little bit, which means any chaos he causes today will be delayed for at least a little bit.

As quietly as he can, Gordon starts sorting through his kitchen. He leaves the knife on the counter, within reach should the need arise. Normally he wouldn't make pancakes without a special occasion, but after the stress of last night, let alone the stress of the past month, he thinks he deserves some goddamn pancakes.

It's extremely easy to disappear into a task. Making breakfast while keeping an eye on Joshua is enough that Gordon doesn't begin asking himself questions, like why Fae would even be coming around and asking for Joshua now. He pushes thoughts like those aside, because he's a rational adult who's fully capable of compartmentalizing! He can have a panic attack later, when they've safely skipped town!

Once Josh wakes up, he's quick to his father's side, repeating "Pancakes! Pancakes! Pancakes!" Josh jumps as he speaks, grabbing onto the edge of Gordon's shirt.

Well, Gordon thinks, Fae or not, kids love pancakes. He picks Josh up, holding him with one arm as he flips a pancake. "Whoah, no good morning?" he teases.

Josh grumbles out a, "Good morning" before attempting to climb over his father towards the stack of finished pancakes.

"Slow down there, kid," he says, pushing Joshua's insistent hand away from the plate. "What makes you think you're getting any?"

The absolute look of betrayal that Josh's face turns into is absolutely hilarious, so much so that Gordon has to stop himself from completely bursting into laughter. "But I want them!" Josh insists.

"Yeah, well, maybe I made them all for myself. Didn't think of that now, did you?"

Joshua furrows his brow and attempts to wiggle out of Gordon's grasp towards the pancakes. The safety hazard that is Josh messing around near a heated iron pan is not lost on Gordon, who cries out, "Josh, hey!" The words scare Josh enough that he freezes, allowing Gordon the chance to get Josh back on the floor, away from the stove top.

"Joshua," he says, in a typical dad warning tone. "What's the rule when Daddy's cooking?"

"Be careful around fire and pans," Josh mumbles, looking towards the floor. Gordon sighs, relieved both for Josh's safety and the fact he knew the rule. Gordon kneels in front of his son.

"I know it was an accident, okay?" he assures him, placing his hands on Josh's shoulders. "I just got real scared, there. That pan's hot enough that it'll hurt me if I touch it, you could have gotten seriously hurt." Which is... definitely something Gordon doesn't want to think about the implications of. He doesn't know if iron and fire burning stacks for a Fae, but he'd rather not find out.

Josh reaches forward and hugs Gordon, and for a moment, that anxiety is gone. Gordon just hugs his son back. He takes a deep breath, internalizes it for a moment, and then gets back to dad business. He pulls back.

"Why don't you go sit at the table, and I'll get some pancakes ready for you?" Gordon suggests. Josh's eyes immediately light up, and he nods happily. Gordon smiles as Josh climbs into his usual chair at the table.

Hopefully, that filled today's Joshua Incident quota.

- - - -

For most of the morning, it rains, which Gordon is thankful for as it means he doesn't need to provide to actual reason he wants to keep Josh inside. However, it doesn't stop Gordon's eyes from straying towards the window, keeping an eye out for any movement. Even as Josh rambles as he scribbles vaguely humanoid shapes, Gordon can't find himself completely able to focus.

Because, horrifyingly, someone came to his front door with the purpose of taking his child. All Gordon can think about is potential encounters with this Fae increasing in severity. What the fuck do they even want Joshua for? It seems like a reversal from the old warnings he would hear growing up, that Fae would steal a human child and replace it with one of their own. Oh, if only Gordon could laugh at that now. Instead, he's clenching his teeth so hard that not even a single "hah" could pass through.

"Josh," Gordon says suddenly, interrupting the four-year-old mid-rant about princesses. Joshua looks up at his father, orange crayon stilled.

Despite Joshua's more chaotic tendencies, Gordon's heart swells when he looks at him. He thinks about their house, the place he's raised Josh in for the past four years. It's where he brought his son home for the first time, where Josh took his first steps, said his first words. The place their little family of two lives.

Which is why Gordon takes a deep breath before he says, "What do you think about moving?"

"Moving?" Josh parrots, his head tilting to the side slightly.

"Yeah, moving," Gordon keeps his voice steady. "Like to a new house. Somewhere else."

Josh turns back to his paper and continues drawing. "Um, all our stuff is here," he remarks.

"We'd take that with us, buddy," Gordon chuckles.

Joshua's eyes light up. "Let's take the house with us!"

Gordon hears the mail slot on the front door jostle, like someone is having trouble getting a letter through. Weird, they don't usually get mail. He decides to check on it later.

He shakes his head. "We can't take the house."

Joshua's bright smile turns to a frown. "But I like the house." He grips his crayon a little harder.

"The whole point of moving is that we get a new house," Gordon explains, but Josh still doesn't look too happy.

"But I wanna stay in this house! I wanna take it with!" Joshua begins shouting, and dear god, Gordon does not need to deal with this now. He's halfway through formulating a response when...

"Bro, just take the house with you."

Both Freemen snap their heads towards the hallway, where the strange voice came from. Gordon's heart nearly stops, as he recognizes the Fae from last night (or, more accurately, earlier in the morning). Except, he isn't exactly person-sized anymore. No, the Fae is closer to the size of Gordon's hand this time around, but that does not stop the anger that begins to rise in him.

"I don't understand the problem," the now small Fae says, absentmindedly scratching the stubble on their face. "S'not like you can't just take the house somewhere else."

Gordon shouts, "You again!?" at the same time as Joshua's, "Little guy!" He's almost too slow to stop Josh from running towards the Fae, grabbing him by the back of the shirt and holding him with one arm. It's easier, actually, to grab the Fae, who's four inches tall and doesn't make any effort to flee.

"What the fuck is your problem!?" Gordon yells into the tiny Fae's face. He ignores Joshua's scandalized gasp.

The Fae just looks annoyed and crosses their arms. "Man, I told you this, like, six hours ago. You should've remembered better." They point down at Joshua. "Just, um, give us the baby thing and we're all gonna leave you alone."

"I'm not going to give you my son!"

The Fae hums for a moment. "What if I like, marry you. Then it's also my son and I can take it."

"Wh- no!" Gordon sputters, "First of all, don't call my kid an it! Second-"

Gordon's cut off when the Fae begins to sing, small blue orbs flying into Gordon's face. Because, suddenly, a whole chunk of Gordon's anxiety and rage is gone, and he can't really remember why he was so mad in the first place. Mostly he feels... confused? He can faintly hear Josh saying, "That's pretty!"

Gordon gently lets Josh down on the ground, but he still keeps a grip on the Fae in his hand. "What did you just do to me?" he asks, his voice a little too unsure.

"Calm down," is all the Fae says. "Just give me the kid?"

Very suddenly, Gordon's anger returns tenfold, because of course that's why he was so upset, how could he forget? He's about to give this little shit a piece of his mind, but then Joshua sings. A stream of green and blue orbs exit his mouth, just like the one the Fae just used on him.

"Oh shit," the Fae, for once, looks thrown off. They squirm a bit. "You didn't tell me little dude was a mimic, man."

Gordon, once again, feels entirely unprepared for what he just witnessed. After a long pause, all he manages to get out is, "I've never seen him do that before."

The Fae laughs, but to be honest, it sounds more like cackling. "No shit. He can only do that when I'm around, because he's copying me. Stupid." They sigh. "He'll be able to do it a lot more if you just let him come with me, man. It would be way more fun."

Gordon's gaze finally returns to the itty bitty Fae in his hand. Walking them back to the front door, Gordon chucks them as far as he can into the woods.

[that-writer-who-never-posts]

Expectation x Reality

^^^That’s Tom’s face finding my blog (And it’s adorable)

Tom Hiddleston smut

Here it is... @catalinaacosta, @gingers-writing, @adamcansuckme and  @wrappedinlokisarms hope it’s what you’ve been looking for!

Prompt: Tom finds your old tumblr and things he wouldn’t imagine about you.

warnings: Mentions of spanking, lots of dirty talk, daddy kink, of course...

like 3k words

You were alone at home. Very bored. Tom would arrive soon, he promised you would be able to have dinner together, but until then, you had nothing to do.

You started to think... There were you, laying in bed, waiting for Tom Hiddleston, your fucking boyfriend, to come home... If you had a time machine, you'd tell it to your past self and she would laugh. Oh, that silly girl used to write fanfiction about a man who is now really yours. How did you get so lucky?

Suddently, you had the urge to find your old blog and read all your stories again. It would be pretty embarrassing, and Tom couldn't even dream about them... He knew you were a fan when you met, but he didn't know you would expose to the whole internet what you wanted him to do to your body.

You grabbed your laptop and googled tumblr. God, it's been a while. You logged in and looked at your account for a second. You missed that. You scrolled a bit and something caught your eye, so you decided to click the "read more" link. It was smut. Probably the heaviest one. You started to read, but went "nope" real quick. You closed the tabs and hid your face on the pillow. Who are you hidding from? You're alone here... Still, you weren't doing that again.

It was really the best moment to close those tabs, because a few minutes later you heard the front door opening.

"Y/N?"

You closed your laptop and went to meet him.

"Hi." You said wrapping your arms around his waist from behind.

"Hello." He turned around to hug you. "Miss me this much?"

"Well..." You were a bit unconfortable with his presence after what you've read, but you just needed to keep your mind busy. "I was thinking just now that I'm very lucky to have you. And you should know that."

"No, I'm lucky to have you." He smiled and gave you a quick kiss.

---

Later that night, you were already asleep, but Tom was wide awake. It was almost valentine's day and he wanted to give you something special, to make up for being away so often, and show you he really loved you. But he didn't know what to get you. So he had an idea. And he was pretty ashamed of it, but that was the only way.

He got out of bed, carefully to not wake you up, grabbed your laptop and went to the living room. He sat on the sofa and turned it on. He felt like a hacker, but you two were proud to have no secrets between you. So he went on your browsing history, to see if there was something you had been needing lately.

But he was surprised to find something else... Your most recently closed tabs all had his name on them. Why? He clicked on one and found out it was a fanfic. They all were... He covered his mouth to hide his laughter. You had been reading fanfics about him? That was adorable, he couldn't wait to tease you about it. All fanfics were on the same blog, so he clicked to open it. He read the bio and it said something like "Hey! My name is Y/N and I'm a huge marvel fan. I write mostly about Tom Hiddleston/Loki. Requests are closed!"

The writer's name was the same as yours... Well, big coincidence. He continued to scroll down and found one of those "Get to know me better" asks. There were about 30 questions. Apparently, you and that writer had the same name, eye color, height, favorite bands... His heart was racing when the last ask was for a selfie and there you were. Many years ago, but it was you.

He didn't even know how to feel. He was wrong for invading your privacy like that, but he was upset you never told him about that blog. Well, now it was too late. Since he found it, he decided to investigate it, to know what else you were hiding.

"Tom?"

He jumped and almost threw your laptop through the window. You were standing by the door with the sleepiest face.

"Sorry, darling. I just..." He was an amazing actor, but he was afraid he wouldn't be able to lie to you in the middle of a heart attack. "I forgot to send an email and... It was something important. For work. I couldn't find my laptop, I hope you don't mind that I used yours."

"Of course not." You rubbed your eyes. "Come back to bed?"

"In a second, love." He reached for his phone and took a picture of your blog's name, so he could find it later. Jonathan Pine was alive and breathing inside him.

He turned your laptop off and went back to bed with you. You snuggled in his chest and fell asleep. But now he was even more awake. He watched you peacefully dreaming and hated what he thought about you earlier... You didn't lie to him, you just didn't mention the blog because you didn't use it anymore, it wasn't important. He cursed himself for being so stupid... If you didn't use it anymore, it wouldn't be on your recent searches. Maybe you weren't writing anymore, but you were using that blog for something, and he would find out what it is.

---

On the next day, you were the one who had to go out, while he had the day off. Tom was acting really weird, you thought. About what happened last night, you believed him, after all, he would always sneak out of the bed to work. But in the morning, when you had to leave, he didn't insist for you to stay, like he usually did. But that's just you being an attention seeker, he understood you had to work, he's not a puppy. He just looked like one, sometimes.

Little did you know that when you closed the door, he had already googled your blog on his phone, and was ready to start his investigation. The first story he came across was something really sweet about the reader and him having kids and playing together on christmas day. There were many mentions of having kids with him on that blog, and it warmed his heart. You were an amazing writer, he loved the stories and it was his biggest dream to have a family with you. He was about to forget he was mad at you when he found it. Yes, it. That one not even you could read yestetday.

"Tom Hiddleston smut. What is this?" He said out loud. "Warnings... Mentions of... Spanking, chocking... daddy kink?"

He looked at nothing for a while, trying to digest all that. There it was, the secret life he imagined you would be hiding.

"...he grabbed you by the neck and said... I said... What? I'm going to punish you until you learn to never tease me again?" He had to read that out loud, cause if he didn't hear it, he would think his eyes were fooling him. "...He turned you around and... Dear god... I slapped her? And she fucking loved it!"

At first, he thought he continued to read because it was shocking, and human brains are naturally attracted to that. But on the third smut, he realized he was doing that looking for some kind of recemblance between that and your actual sex life. And all he could think of was "Oh dear. She must be the most frustrated woman in the world." He was always so gently and lovingly. Looked nothing like the Tom you dreamt of. Maybe that's why you was reading that yesterday... Maybe you got off by yourself all the time when he was away... Because he wasn't enough.

He was sad. Why didn't you bring that up before? You could have asked him and... You knew pretty well he never says no to you. But hurting you like that just... Doesn't sound right. Oh, who was he trying to fool? He had a massive erection at that moment. The way you described that girl begging to him and the thought of having you completely under his control, being his and letting the entire street know you were... The intensity of the eye contacts, the marks on her skin, the dirty talk... He needed that. Now.

Who would imagine it? Tables have turned. The things you wrote when he made you horny were now making him lose his mind and take a cold shower. And you had absolutely no idea he was now aware of the kink girl you were. You had no idea what waited for you at home.

---

The day at work was pretty boring. Not in a bad way, just nothing unusual. Less than an hour before it was your time to leave, you recieved a message from Tom.

*"You better come straight home after work."*

Your heart stopped. Someone died, you were sure.

*"What happened?"*

*"You know what you've done."*

And that was all you were getting from him. No, you had no idea what you've done. And you were terrified. You drove home as fast as you could.

"Tom?" You called, opening the door slowly, afraid of what you would find.

You locked the door behind you and heard footsteps approaching. When you turned around, you found him with a tie on one hand and a belt on the other.

"Are you getting dressed? Where are we going?" You were so confused.

"No, darling." He smiled darkly. "We are going to the bedroom right now. I want to talk to you."

You nodded and went to your bedroom, with him walking behind you really slowly. He was definitely acting very weird today.

Getting there, you found your laptop was on the bed. You sat in front of it and saw your blog open there.

"Shit." You blushed heavily. "I can explain it!"

"There's no need to explain. Do you think I'm stupid?" He sighed. "I want you to read it to me."

"Tom... I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but this is..." You thought you were going to pass out. "This is something I did several years before meeting you, I was just a stupid teenager."

"I clearly said I didn't want an explanation." He looked at the things he had in his hands.

"What is that for?" You asked, actually scared. All you could think of was that he was packing his stuff to leave you.

"This tie? Well, to tie you up, of course." He smiled. "And the belt, darling... I hope I don't have to use it. But you know pretty well what it is for! It's all over your dirty stories. Now undress and give me your hands."

You didn't say anything, just started taking your clothes off. You were confused and embarrassed, but more than anything, you were so turned on. When you were completely naked, you showed him your hands. He told you to lie down in bed and put them over your head. You did that, then watched him tying your arms to the bed. He placed the laptop on your belly and adjusted the screen, so you could see it.

"I'm going to have to ask you twice, and I'm not doing that again." He said, showing you the belt. "Read."

You were afraid your voice wouldn't come out. You laid your eyes on the fanfic and saw a highlighted paragraph.

"He told you to..."

"Change you to me." He interrupted you. "We both know who's the slut in these stories."

You almost came when he said 'slut'. You had never heard him saying that... And now he was calling you it.

"He told me to get down on all fours. Once I did... Hmmm" You were interrupted by Tom's fingers massaging your folds slowly.

"Continue." He acted like he was bored.

"...He entered me with his... Fuck." Now he slid two fingers in you at once. "His cock and I..."

"No." He removed his fingers, making you arch your back, looking for more. "Don't change the story. You didn't just say cock. I loved how you described it, read it correctly."

"His beautifully hard and huge cock." You blushed more than ever.

"Good girl." He pushed his fingers inside you again. "Continue."

"No." You felt ridiculous, you couldn't read that shit to yourself yesterday, imagine to him...

"No?" He looked at you angry and confused. "Do you want me to use this belt?"

"Yes." You almost whispered.

"Yes?"

"I want you to punish me, d-" You shut up quickly.

"Say it." He smirked.

"Daddy." You waited for him to be disgusted, but he looked absolutely amazed.

He picked the laptop up and placed it on the table beside your bed.

"Please... Tell me if I go too far?" He said, looking at the belt.

You nodded. He lifted your legs and the belt met your butt. Harder than you thought it would. You didn't scream, you moaned. Tom, at first, just wanted to put you on his lap and apologize for hours. But he saw how much you loved that, he heard you asking for more. So he did it again, on the same spot, making you moan even more loudly.

"Will you be a good girl now?" He smiled, but all that pureness of his smile was gone.

"Yes, sir." You were pretty sure that was just a dream.

He lifted your legs again, but this time to sit under them, so your hips were now on his lap. He placed two fingers inside you again and his thumb pressing your clit. And started to move them. Your breathing was so heavy and your arms kept trying to move, and he watched you with a straight face, like you weren't doing anything.

"Tom... Please..."

"I know you can do better." He kept his expression and added more pressure to your clit. "I've read it."

"Fuck those stupid fanfics..." You cried out. "You are so much better than I imagined there... Now please... I need you inside me."

You could feel his dick very hard under your butt. But there were those annoying clothes...

"Why should I do as you ask?" He shrugs. "You hide things from me. You lie. You don't beg like I know you can."

"Tom!" You feel your climax approaching, it was the way he was talking... "Please, I promise I won't hide things anymore, I will be a good girl, I will do anything you want... But I need to feel your cock... Your beautifully hard cock, that is a lot more beautiful than I thought, inside me. Right n- Oh fuck."

You came.

"You never looked this beautiful." His gaze devoured your entire body. "Begging me to fuck you in the middle of an orgasm."

"I like it when you cum inside me, daddy." You would say anything he wanted to hear at this point.

"I know you do, baby girl." He smiled, lifting your sore body so he could stand up.

If your hands were free, you would pull him back. But you realized he did that to take his clothes off. And he did that without taking his eyes off yours. When he was completely naked, he crawled on top of you, kissing your lips slow and seductively. There was absolutely no need of foreplay at that moment, so he grabbed your hips with his hands and entered you at once, making you scream against his lips.

"If I find out you've been hiding things from me again, you can say goodbye to this feeling, do you understand?" He whispered on your neck, between kisses and bites.

"I do... I'm sorry..." Your hands closed around his tie and you held to it as he started to fuck you very hard.

The sounds coming from his mouth were new to you. He was absolutely free at that moment. He was wild. He was lost on your body.

His movements were fast and messy, his dick hitting you in so many ways, one better than the other. The noises of your bodies colliding and of that bed, that seemed about to break, couldn't hide your moans. There's no way the entire world wasn't listening to that.

You orgasmed one more time, or 385 other times, you couldn't tell, before you felt him filling you with his cum. He couldn't just stop, he had to slow down until he did. You looked at each other with an expression that meant 'Did you fucking see what just happened here? Am I dreaming?'.

He freed your arms and laid down beside you.

"Are you okay?" He said watching you stretch a bit.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" You closed your eyes and laughed.          "I know. It was..." He laughed too.          "It sure was." You nodded.          "Listen... I understand that you were ashamed of those fanfics, and you have no reason to be, because they are amazing..." He said seriously. "But you should have told me you wanted something like this. It wouldn't hurt my feelings knowing that I was boring you, I'd just try and change it."          "Tom!" You looked at him in shock. "You never bored me! I loved everything we've ever done... That's why I didn't bring this up. I was happy, I was satisfied. And I didn't want to make you uncomfortable."          "Y/N, let's get one thing straight." He said. "Doesn't matter what I find in that computer, I will never, never hurt you. That belt thing was the most hardcore we're getting here. And I was still terrified to do it."          "I know." You laughed. "That's more than enough for me, love. Also, there's nothing more for you to discover on that computer."          "There's something I already did, but we didn't mention it yet." He smiles sweetly at you.          "What is it?" You sigh, knowing you're about to get in trouble.          "You want to have three kids with me." He smiles widely. "And I loved those names!"          "Oh my god..." You blushed and hid your face in your hands. "I'm deleting that blog."          "That's okay." He winks at you. "I already read what you want me to say on our wedding day."

---

Taglist:

@theoneanna @inlovewith3 @spidey-holland7 @too-cold-for-youhere @princetale @drakesfiance @kcd15 @lokilvrr

[heathenarmyimagines]

Title: A Different Time

Summary: (Y/N) and Ivar were having a moment until Sigurd interrupted.

Pairing: Ivar x Reader

Taglist: @ubbesgirl, @shewolf2000, @tis-itheapplepie, @atequila, @demoncrypt1066, @greennightspider, @badbitsh13, @fireismysaftey, @minarawr, @laketaj24, @hvitserksgirl, @blahblahcookiesdoma, @fabulous-peasent, @sforsammmmmi, @minmiin1d, @courtrae89, @letsloveimagines, @tomarisela, @titty-teetee, @beyond-the-ashes@elenawrit, @mblaqgi, @whenimaunicorn, @chuflisworld, @mystruggledlife, @moose-squirrel-asstiel, @syreni-dea, @trashqueenbitch, @alykatv, @mbaku-babygirl, @perfectus-in-morte, @beyond-the-ashes, @neeadinghugs, @readsalot73, @triumphantreturnofpies, @anarchy-is-coming, @tephi101, @alicedopey, @ivarslittlebadgirl, @jtrstp, @nejijjeoroo, @charlylama, @ivartheblessed, @captstefanbrandt, @fabulouschrissi, @ivarsrideordie, @3x5gurl, @the-writer-appreciation-blog, @lolabee9, @captainfoxy22, @young-ugly-god, @im5ftbutmythroat66, @bribyyy, @irishhiggins, @cadetomlinson, @keclleon101, @slutforragnarssons, @ltkeke, @meeeeeeeeeps, @lille-kanin, @opalscarab, @ssraven7, @ivarandersen, @concretewaywardangel, @funmadnessandbadassvikings, @sharon-is-tired, @cadetomlinson, @mystruggledlife, @chuflisworld, @justmarissa97, @lol-haha-joke, @weirdly-randomly-awesome, @inlovewithmakeupcomicsanim, @idonthavehusbandsihavelovers, @alexa040004, @buckythetinman , @burntmythroatskullingmytea,@jorunnravenslayer, @two-unbeatable-beaters, @buffy-the-vampire-blogger, @arses21434, @ltkeke, @captainfoxy22, @chinduda @letsshamelessqueen-m @my-soul-is-the-moon @we-are-transcendent, @sparklemichele

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen, Part Fifteen

Your neck hurt like hell and your head wasn’t in much better shape, it felt like you could physically feel your brain throbbing in your skull.

‘Ugh!’ you groaned in pain as you sat up and looked around.

The others had also fallen asleep on the couch, they looked like a puppy pile the way they all curled around each other.

You stood up and stretched, listening to your old lady bones snap crackle and pop like a bowl of Rice Krispies.

With a sigh you cut off the TV and went to your room to get your laptop.

You nearly jumped out of your skin when you turned on the light and saw Ivar sitting straight up in the bed.

‘How long have you been up?’ you asked.

‘I don’t know, a while.’ he answered.

‘Are you sleepy?’

‘No, I slept already, are you tired?’ Ivar asked.

‘I just woke up, I was going to try and find something that could help us find a way to get you all home.’ you said as you picked up your laptop from your desk and sat beside Ivar.

‘How?’

‘With the help of this magical thing called the internet.’ you replied as you opened the computer and opened up chrome.

‘Internet?’ Ivar repeated.

‘Yeah, it’s the biggest source of information in the world, its where I learned everything I know about you and your people.’

‘This box is a teacher?’

‘This box is almost everything in the world.’ you said, going straight to google.

Ivar moved closer to you and looked at the screen curiously and a thought crossed your mind.

'Can you read this?’ you asked.

‘No.’ he said shaking his head.

‘And when I talk to you what language do you hear?’

‘Norse.’ Ivar answered simply.

You hummed at that, you figured that whatever Norse God had snatched them up from forever ago decided to take care of the language barrier.

Brushing it off you went back to what you were doing, typing in “what is a true sacrifice”

‘How do you understand these strange things?’ Ivar asked in confusion.

‘Well we learn how to read and write when we are little, so I can’t really explain it too well.’ you answer.

‘I would like to learn.’

‘What?’ you asked in surprise.

‘These marks look like the ones on a piece of paper that was given to me and my brothers. We can’t read it and I want to make sure it says what he promised.’ Ivar explained.

‘Well I don’t see anything wrong with teaching you how to read, but for now let me see if I can find out what a true sacrifice is.’ you said as you scrolled down and looked at a few of the links.

You and Ivar fell into a comfortable silence as you searched through the sites, mostly they were motivational crap and sob stories.

So you changed the search to “Viking true sacrifice”.

At some point Ivar had laid down and placed his head in your lap and you moved the laptop a bit so you could still use it while he rested his head on your thighs.

‘(Y/N)...can I tell you something private? I mean can I trust you never to speak this to the others?’ Ivar asked suddenly.

‘Of course.’ you replied instantly, without a thought.

‘There is a part of me...that doesn’t want to go back.’ he said softly.

By some miracle you manage to hold back a gasp of shock. From what you had read you always imagined Ivar the Boneless as a very ambitious man who was eager to see and conquer everything he could.

Even now that you had actually met him and seen that he was younger and much less terrifying than you imagined but his personality, as far as you could tell, was what you had assumed.

To hear him say he didn’t want to go back and keep on taking over was shocking.

‘Can you tell me why?’

‘...you will not come with us.’ he said softly.

Now you were simply stunned into silence as you looked down at Ivar and noticed Ivar was putting in all his effort to not look up at you.

‘When we go back it will go back to what it was; wars, dirt, blood...and loneliness.’ Ivar continued.

‘Ivar.’ you sighed as you began running your fingers through his hair, practically petting him.

‘I don’t want to go back to having no one. I don’t want to go back to a world where I always have to be angry and untrusting because no one cares for me and nothing is safe. I like it here, where you are.’ he said, finally he looked up at you with honest and nervous eyes.

‘You jumped into the water and saved me, you gave me the chair and you made me realize that I was the one destroying the bond between my brothers. You look at me without pity or disgust.’

‘Those things I did were the right things to do, maybe not then but a lot of morals have changed since then. People are nicer and more caring now, no one would have let you drown or leave you to crawl around.’

‘People back home will, and when I am hurt I will have to hurt alone because I can not let my guard down. I haven’t let it down since my mother died...she was the only one in my world who loved me. Despite all my broken bones, tantrums and violence she loved me; she smothered me and tried to keep me away from things but she loved me.’ Ivar reminisced.

‘Around you I relax, I never feel like you will suddenly attack me.’

‘I won’t and I would never let someone else. Ivar I care about you...and there is a small part of me that doesn’t want you and the others to leave either.’ you confessed.

With a sigh you closed the laptop, giving up on your search for the moment.

'I have six little siblings, three I hardly see and another three I helped raise in this house with my mom. Your room was my sister's, Ubbe and Hvitserk are in brothers’ rooms and Lagertha is my mom's.’ you started.

'Then one day I looked up and everyone was gone and I lived in this big family house alone. Yes you all were unexpected and a bit hard to handle but at least you were people.’ you said.

Ivar sat up looked at you.

‘If you do not wish for us to leave then why are you trying to find a way to make us leave?’ he asked almost accusingly.

‘I’m not trying to make you go anywhere, but Bjorn is right Ivar. You all have lives back in your time and very important ones that greatly affect the way things are now. I don’t know a damn thing about time travel but I know that if you guys don’t go back and do the thing you have to then eventually that’s gonna bite us in the ass.’ you explained.

‘Please believe me Ivar, I am not sending you away, I am not trying to get rid of you. If I had my way you all would stay here and I’d never be in this stupid big empty house alone again, but it can’t be that way.’

‘I know, there are far too many reasons why we must go, but why must you stay? If you are alone here why can’t you come with us?’

‘Just because no one is here doesn’t mean they don’t need me Ivar; I have to manage our money, keep up the house, if I left my family…’ you trailed off, not even wanting to continue that thought.

He looked very disappointed but did not complain or argue with your reasoning.

‘Ivar.’ you said as a feeling suddenly gripped your heart.

When Ivar look up at you he looked surprised when you gently touched his cheek and looked into his eyes.

‘I really don’t want you to leave.’ you whispered before you placed a small chaste kiss on his lips.

You were too drunk the last time you had kissed him, so the soft plump feeling of his lips against yours felt completely new.

When you pulled back you couldn’t even look at Ivar, you were sure if you hadn’t been blessed with melanin that you’d be a tomato.

‘I’m sorry.’ you said awkwardly.

’Why are you apologizing?’

‘Because I- I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. It was completely inappropria-’ before you could finish Ivar’s lips were back on yours.

His kiss was slow but sure, not at all rough but firm.

You found yourself giving into the kiss in an instant, bringing your hand up to tangle your fingers through his hair.

Through the haze of your mind you feel him move the laptop from your lap before he pulled himself to lay on top of you.

All the while never breaking the kiss.

You wanted this kiss to last forever but your lungs were on fire and screaming for air so you pulled away, with the kiss broken you and Ivar both seemed to catch your breath.

‘If I didn’t tell you when I was drunk, I just want you to know you are a really good kisser Ivar.’ you panted.

‘Thank you.’ Ivar blushed.

‘...’

‘...’

‘Do you...want to kiss more?’ Ivar asked.

‘We uh we have a lot to do tomorrow so we should really…’ you tried to reason but it was hard to focus when all you could think about was how good of a kisser Ivar was.

This time it was you who pulled Ivar down into a deep kiss, giving yourself fully into the kiss, spreading your legs so he could settle between them.

You and Ivar had officially upgraded from innocent kissing to full on making out, exploring each other.

Once again you pulled away to breath, this time Ivar began kissing at your neck that was still covered in hickeys that he and his brothers had left that drunk night.

Apparently hickeys are hella sensitive.

‘Mmm Ivar.’ you hissed in pleasure.

‘(Y/N) did you have anything to drink?’ Ivar asked as he sat up a bit.

‘No.’

‘Are you doing this with me because you want to? Will you regret this?’

You looked up at him, really looked; you saw his his swollen lips, cute little nose and his perfect jawline. Then you saw his eyes, his blue eyes that were the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen.

There was so much emotion in his eyes; they were wide with excitement, pupils dilated in his lust, but mostly they were nervous. You have no clue how to explain it but it was a gut feeling, something was telling you that Ivar was afraid of your answer.

‘I am not drunk and this isn’t something that I will ever regret.’ you said.

Still he looked unsure so you take his face both your hands.

‘I will not ever regret kissing you Ivar the Boneless.’ you promised.

He sighed in relief before he leaned down and kissed you.

The two of you kept going at it, kissing each other like repressed teenagers, both of you excited and eager.

You felt Ivar’s hand slide down your body and his fingers hooked on the waistband of your pants and you immediately broke the kiss and grabbed his hand.

‘Wait, Ivar don’t.’ you said beggingly as you looked up at him.

He was panting trying to calm down, and he looked disappointed.

‘It-it’s not you, it is so not you Ivar, you are doing great, like seriously...but I’ve never done this before and as much as we hate it you will leave.’ you said.

The sudden realization that you had been reminding Ivar of all night hit you like a ton of bricks.

Ivar was going to leave, the guy you felt the most comfortable with in a long time was going to leave. He had to, there was nothing either of you could do to change that fact and it broke your heart.

You felt like you could finally be comfortable with someone and maybe you could finally let go of your fear and just let another person see ALL of you and trust them not to hurt you.

Ivar was that person and he was going to leave you.

‘(Y/N)? You’re crying.’ Ivar said, wiping away your tears.

‘Ivar...this is the first time in my life that I have ever said this, but I want this, but I want to keep going.’ you said as your tears kept falling.

‘Then why are your so sad?’  he asked gently.

‘Because even though I finally want to I can’t. Not when I know you can’t stay, not when I know I can’t have you the way I would need you after.’ you cried.

Ivar sighed sadly and  placed a kiss on your forehead, moving to lay down beside you so that you could cuddle into him while you sobbed.

‘(Y/N) my first love, I do understand your heartache. I do not know how I would be able to go back home if I’d had you. ‘ Ivar said softly as he held you in his arms.

‘It’s not fair is it? Finally ready for something you’ve been waiting on forever and you can’t have it.’ you said once you’d calmed down.

‘No it’s not, but the Gods I serve are not known for being fair, they are prideful and spiteful. Maybe that is why they brought us here, for me to find a woman just to lose her...simply out of spite.’ he sighed.

You hummed in though as you enjoyed the comfort Ivar was providing.

‘Tell me (Y/N)...is your Christian god fair?’

At that you had to arch your own brow.

‘Well my god is...very forgiving, I can’t really call him fair. He is honest though, he said that life would be full of hardships and I’ll be damned if that ain’t the truth. But he promised eternal life to those who confessed he was their lord and savior.’ you answered.

You almost felt Ivar rolling his eyes.

‘Sounds like one desperate God to me, do whatever you want all your life then say I’m your savior and I’ll give you everything eternal happiness.’ he scoffed.

‘Well at least with him the rules are clear, he doesn’t snatch you out of time to teach you a lesson.’ you grinned up at him.

Ivar let out an amused chuckle.

‘Maybe my Gods are too harsh and yours is too soft.’ he agreed.

‘Either way they brought us together just to tear us apart.’ you said sadly.

‘That they did, if I were an ungodly man I’d curse them.’

‘Don’t you dare. If they snatched you through a timeline to help you I’d hate to see them angry.’ you warned.

‘I guess you are right...I wish things were different. That I could make a great sacrifice to please the Gods and stay by your side, I do not care if it’s here or back in Kattegat.’

‘Sacrifice?’ you asked as you sat up and looked at Ivar with wide eyes.

‘What?’

'A sacrifice! That is what Sigurd meant! Not killing some animal he meant me!’ you shouted.

'Sigurd wants you to be sacrificed?’ Ivar asked in disgust.

'No! I mean I hope not, but I think he wants you to leave me...willingly.’

'Right you are darling.’

You nearly jump out of your skin as you turn around and see Sigurd standing at the foot of your bed.

Just as dead as he was in the kitchen.

'Sigurd.’ Ivar said, completely stunned and in disbelief.

'Hello Ivar.’ Sigurd said looking at his killer with cold hateful eyes.

'I-I am sorry...I did not mean to.’ Ivar managed to say with a shaking voice.

'I do not believe you...Boneless, and deep in your heart I know you don't believe it either.’ Sigurd said harshly.

You were about to step in when Sigurd looked over at you.

‘This is the girl Odin chose for you Ivar...your one and only love.’ he said as he looked over you more than he had in the kitchen earlier.

‘How did you speak with the All Father?’ Ivar asked.

‘He came to me and spoke of how I died and asked if I want to avenge myself when he saw my brothers would not. For all the hate I have for you killing you is not my wish, but I wanted you to hurt, to find love and lose it...the way I felt for Margrethe.’

‘Margrethe? You didn’t love her, you poured the ale for her and Ubbe’s woman, you knew that he shared her with Hvitserk.’ Ivar argued.

‘I did love her, but Ubbe married her first and if I couldn’t have her wholly to myself then I would not have her at all.’ Sigurd replied as he walked around the room.

Without meaning to you find yourself moving closer to Ivar when Sigurd got to your side of the bed.

‘When I told Odin that I didn’t want you dead, because despite my hate for you I knew it would break father’s heart...mother’s too. I just wanted to hurt you he told me physical is nothing. Real pain is the pain in your chest, the ache of loss...the hole that only a woman can leave in a man’s heart.’ Sigurd continued as he picked up a skull shaped paperweight from your bedside table.

‘When Hvitserk sacrificed to Odin he told me he would send you all to a woman that would work out your ridiculous war, and as no woman in our time would ever love a man like you Ivar I asked him to find a woman that would love you.’

‘Are you serious?’ you asked in complete shock.

‘Deadly serious I’m afraid.’ Sigurd grinned.

‘That is not funny, did you or Odin think about the woman on the other end of time? Or was I just some secondary thought?’ you asked in complete offense.

‘Do not be angry-’

‘Fuck that, don’t tell me not to be angry Casper the douchey ghost. If you wanted me to help them talk things out without violence then fine, if you wanted to hurt Ivar then that’s your own business, but you had no right involving my feelings.’ you said angrily as you sat up more confidently.

‘Trust me love, you will find another man...a better one.’ Sigurd said as he looked at Ivar.

‘She is right Sigurd, she has nothing to do with the hate you have for me. It isn’t fair to her, she doesn’t deserve it.’ Ivar agreed.

‘I know it is not, and to you miss I am sorry, but it still remains. None of them to go home until he is ready to hold the ax he killed me with and sacrifice his own happiness.’

You were so ready to hit this guy.

‘Sigurd…’

‘Make your sacrifice Boneless.’ Sigurd said before he vanished before your eyes.

You stared at the place where he was just standing in awe, you even leaned forward waved your hand in the now empty space just to be sure he was actually gone.

‘I don’t mean to insult you Ivar, but that brother of yours is kind of a dick.’ you said as you sat back down on the mattress.

‘He always was.’ Ivar agreed.

[a-damson-in-distress]

Havoc - Chapter 2

Pairing: SasuSaku

Plot:  Sasuke knew people were still afraid of the club and especially of its Sergeant at Arms – and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He had been untouchable then and still was now. Indeed, there was nothing and no one in this world that Sasuke Uchiha feared. Except Sakura fucking Haruno. Biker AU.

Note: So hi everybody, I’m also continuing my SasuSaku fanfic after it’s been pronounced dead by my year-long absence *coughs awkwardly* sorry about that. Anyway, I really hope you like the new chapter. I’ve got a few great ideas for this story and depending on your responses, I might just try and finish it. So please let me know if you liked it and if you want me to continue it. My main story is still going to be From Dusk Till Dawn (MadaSaku, check it out if you’re into that pairing too), so Havoc will remain a side project for now, unless you convince me otherwise ;) Enjoy!

PS: If you want to read the first chapter, or maybe read it again, because it’s been ages since this story has been posted and you probably forgot what’s going on, you’re going to have to scroll through my blog to get to it. Unfortunately, I can’t post a link to it here, because this way this chapter doesn’t show up under any of the tags. So I had to take out the link to even make this post visible to you guys. Really sorry about that, if anybody knows how to bypass this shit (because it happened to my FDTD chapter, too), I’d be happy if you could help me. :)

Sasuke watched her deliciously bend over the pool table, left hand steadying the cue and right arm drawn back to aim for the white ball. He had to supress a groan threatening to escape his throat at the sight of her tight black jeans stretching over her ass.

God have mercy on him, that woman was still a fine piece of machinery.

He knew he wasn’t the only bastard here ogling the President’s daughter, but at least he had the decency to be subtle about it. Letting his gaze roam around the dimly-lit and packed room of his favourite biker bar, he noticed with a growing rage the many dirty looks and even dirtier gestures thrown her way. Moose’s was not only frequented by the Havoc, but by bikers from other MCs from the region as well. Bikers, who didn’t know about the Havoc’s well-guarded secret in the form of a very enticing, very off-limits pink-haired bombshell. Bikers, who weren’t familiar with the feeling of Sasuke’s foot up their asses – something he was gleefully looking forward to doing should those fuckers not stop drooling like some teenage boys who discovered their dicks for the first time.

Taking a sip of his beer in a feeble attempt to calm his nerves, he watched Sakura throw her head back in laughter at something funny Ino said. As she was rising from her bent-over position, her tiny tank top rose as well, exposing her taut bare midriff. She had borrowed one of her friend’s Black Sabbath tops, because she didn’t want to stick out with her fancy white cashmere turtleneck sweater in a run-down biker bar where one half is clad in dark leather and the other half is basically not clad at all. He would have laughed at the image she was presenting – a delicate, graceful princess in a Black Sabbath shirt – were it not for the fact that he knew Sakura was a die-hard Rock fan.

And by God, she was every bit his dream girl now as she was at seventeen.

Right after she rained down on her dad and him to properly tear the both of them a new one a few hours ago, they convened an emergency church to deal with the clusterfuck one of their latest prospects had dug the club into. As it turned out, the little fucker thought it would be a sneaky idea to hide the small bags of drugs between book pages in Konoha’s smallest, most inconspicuous book shop, tell his customers which books to look out for, and earn some cash on the side that way that nobody would ever have found out about. Were it not for the fact that that tiny little book shop belonged to the President’s daughter, who immediately went and re-introduced the Havoc’s Sergeant at Arms to the soft feeling of her hand slapping the everloving shit out of him.

Despite the fact that the boss tried his best to calm her down and reassure her the club would take care of everything, Sakura stuck around. She made it more than clear that she didn’t trust Sasuke with this matter, especially since she was personally involved. She wanted to make sure there were consequences. So Kakashi invited her to stay for the night and catch up with some old friends before dealing with the poor bastard.

Fast forward a few hours and you had a royally pissed off Sasuke sitting at Moose’s staring daggers into the bikers ogling Sakura’s fine ass. “Bro, you grip that beer bottle any tighter and it’ll burst into a hundred pieces. Pretty sure you don’t want an injured hand for the things you’re gonna do tonight.” Sasuke noticed a shock of blonde hair enter his field of vision and his annoyance immediately went up a notch. “Please, I could beat the crap out of that lil cockroach even when I’m drunk off my ass and with my hands tied behind my back.”

“Probably. But you should still loosen that death grip. Might make some people wonder what makes you so angry,” Naruto cautioned while shooting him a pointed look.

“Drop it,” Sasuke growled threateningly.

Naruto sighed in frustration and leaned back. “Look, man, I know you’ve got history with her and everything, but you gotta stop acting like some brooding love-sick puppy who’s still hung up on his ex-girlfriend if you –“

“She was never my girlfriend.”

“Whatever, dude. My point is, if you really wanna make it up to her, then you’ve gotta stop sulking in the shadows, wondering from afar what could have been. This is your chance, man! She always stays away from the club, but now she’s here, and you have the chance to talk to her and sort that shit out between you two.”

Naruto watched his best friend drop his gaze from the woman in question to the beer bottle in his hand.  This had always been Sasuke’s reaction to all things Sakura: silence. Ever since shit had hit the fan between the two seven years ago, the raven-haired biker refused to talk about the brief time he spent with her. The few times they had seen each other in between, there was nothing but reserved silence and awkward glances.

Naruto sometimes couldn’t believe how utterly dumb his best friend was. Sasuke was incredibly fearless and one of the meanest motherfuckers he had ever met. But when it came to Sakura, his guilty conscience left him a pathetic heap of surly misery. It was sad to watch, really.

“Look, Sasuke… I have no fucking clue what exactly went down between you two, but it’s been eating at you for seven fucking years. Whenever you see her, you become this… this sad little… blob of… I don’t know man, sadness I guess and –“

“You sure have a way with words.”

“It’s just so pathetic, bro. I mean, I can clearly see your eyes tearing up, your nose is getting all red and snotty and –“

“Is that supposed to cheer me up now?”

“Ugh, it’s nasty. And when you start crying, you make all these miserable little noises and –“

“Naruto.”

“You know, snot everywhere.“

“That’s enough.”

“Just… disgusting, really.”

Naruto mentally patted himself on the shoulder when he saw the tiniest hint of a smirk on Sasuke’s otherwise sullen face. Pleased with his execution of a manly encouragement that consisted of straight-up insulting his best friend in order to cheer him up, he leaned forward again, so only Sasuke could hear him.

“Jokes aside, man, I know this shit between you two has been weighin’ on ya. And you think you’re doing the both of you a favour by staying away from her, but you’re not, because it’s obvious that she’s got as much unfinished business with you as you’ve got with her. Otherwise she wouldn’t hold a grudge. You gotta clear the air at some point, because she’s fucking family and you don’t ignore family. So you might as well do it now.”

Naruto took a hold of his beer bottle and moved out of the booth. Before turning to the bar, he slapped his right hand on his best friend’s left shoulder. “But you know, that’s just my two cents. What do I know about love and relationships? I’ve only been happily married for five years now.”

Sasuke just grunted in response and lifted his bottle to his lips to take another sip. He let his eyes find Sakura again and mulled over what Naruto said. He might have been right about a few things. He was definitely right about them finally needing to stop dancing around each other and sit down and have a proper heart-to-heart.

But there was one thing Naruto was without a doubt wrong about: there was absolutely nothing about his clusterfuck of a relationship with Sakura that had anything to do with love.

Instead, it had everything to do with the fact that he had smashed her heart to smithereens on the night of her eighteenth birthday and effectively shut the door on any romance they might have had a shot at, sealing it with a hundred padlocks and nailing it down with wooden boards for good measure.

“He’s been staring at you all night.”

Sakura couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the blonde. She moved around the pool table to determine the angle of her next shot, when she heard Ino’s voice right next to her ear.

“Come on, you know he still has the hots for you, right?”

“Bullshit he still has the hots for me!”

“Aha!” Sakura found herself at the other end of Ino’s accusing finger pointed directly at her face. “I knew that would get your attention. You like thinking Sasuke’s still into you, don’t you?” Sakura resisted the urge to swipe off Ino’s perfectly made eyebrows that were wiggling so hard they were threatening to shoot out of her face.

“Don’t be ridiculous, that has got nothing to do with it. I just find it absurd that the big, bad, cold-hearted Sasuke Uchiha would still think about something that happened seven fucking years ago.”

Ino cocked her head to the side and looked at Sakura with a knowing smile. “But you still think about it.”

Sakura’s shoulders slumped as she exhaled in annoyance. “I’m not talking about it, alright?”

“Look, forehead, I know what he did was terrible, but I also know Sasuke and I know that he’s actually a pretty good guy beneath all that brooding Batman bullshit. I genuinely think that he regrets what he did back then. I mean, he did try to confront you about it several times, but you were the one who shut him down. Why don’t you just let him say what he has to say, let him apologise, and then move on. You might pretend like you’re over that whole thing, but I know what you really want is some closure.”

Sakura sighed in frustration and blew a hair out of her face. She was just about to throw some witty remark back at Ino, when she noticed several bikers move through the crowd at Moose’s. The Havocs were leaving, which was her cue to do the same.

She felt Ino’s hands grab her shoulders and turn Sakura towards her. “Just think about it, alright? You’ll be here for the whole weekend, so this would be the perfect opportunity to finally get this shit over with, which I know is what you actually wanna do instead of ogle his rock-hard abs when you think I’m not looking. Yeah, don’t roll your eyes at me, missy, don’t think I don’t notice these things. Now you go and have fun tonight. But don’t rough him up too bad.”

With a secretive wink, Ino headed for the bar, leaving Sakura alone at the pool table. Just as she was about to turn around and head for the exit herself, she was met with the sight of a seriously pissed off Sasuke who fixed his determined gaze on her.

She watched the muscles in his upper arm flex enticingly as he raised his right hand to his lips to take the cigarette out of his mouth. The smoke was floating out of his inviting lips as they moved to form words that barely reached her sex-starved brain. All Sakura heard was his rumbling growl.

“It’s time.”

The cold air outside of Moose’s did little to clear Sasuke’s head. He was still on the fence about if and how he should approach Sakura. But he’d have to postpone wracking his brain, because the Havocs were gearing up to take care of that lil dipshit who dared to cross the President’s daughter.

“Where’s daddy?”

He whipped his head around to see Sakura trailing right behind him, zipping up that tiny little leather jacket he couldn’t believe still fit her curves.

“Waiting for us at the warehouse.”

The rumbling of his brothers’ Harleys enveloped them as Sasuke watched some of them leave Moose’s lot. He headed for his V-Rod Muscle and grabbed his jet-black helmet with the name of his bike – War Hog – spray painted on the back in silver and scarlet letters. He was just about to put it on when he felt a presence behind him and turned around, only to be met with the sight of a very annoyed Sakura looking up at him expectantly.

“You ridin’ with me?”

His eyes noted the rise of her perfectly sculpted eyebrow before she spoke, “You got a problem with that?”

There it was again, that feeling of unease that spread in his stomach whenever she pinned him with that scrutinising gaze of hers. “No, just figured you’d rather ride with Naruto. Or anybody else, for that matter.”

“Well the others are already gone, and Naruto said he needed the extra space to secure his bag of torture instruments or whatever.”

Sasuke immediately knew that was bullshit, there was no bag on the back of Naruto’s bike. The Havocs weren’t going to torture the poor bastard. It was just going to be a little slap on the wrist, really.

“Alright, you’re riding with me. Here, put this on,” he grumbled while handing her his helmet and reaching for his spare one.

Sakura looked at the round object in her hands as if it just sprouted a head and started talking to her. At the sight of her disgusted look, Sasuke let out an exasperated sigh. “What, woman?”

“You’re giving me the helmet that has the word hog spray painted on it in big fat letters? Real tactful, Sasuke.”

He couldn’t supress the smirk that was dangling on the edge of his lips. “I can recall a few even naughtier words I used to call you.” His smirk widened when he saw a faint blush taint her cheeks. Sakura scoffed and rolled her eyes in an overly dramatic fashion. “Oh yeah, now that I think about it, I remember you doing that eye rolling thing a lot, too. Only they usually rolled into the back of your head whenever I –“

“Okay, thank you, that’s enough. I’m putting on the helmet now, I can’t hear you.”

A triumphant grin graced his features at the sight of his dream girl wearing his helmet.

“Good girl.”

Sasuke ignored the look Sakura was shooting him, put on his spare helmet while straddling his bike and waited for Sakura to do the same. When he felt her soft curves press against his back and her arms circle around his waist, he let War Hog roar to life.

He turned his head slightly, so she could hear him better over the rumbling of his engine and asked, “You ready?”

She nodded in confirmation. “Hit the road, Sergeant.”

Sasuke took her left hand into his own, pulled her arm tighter around his torso, and gave her a little squeeze. “You hold on tight, sweetheart.”

He could still hear her scoff behind him. “I was practically raised on a bike, I’ll be fine. This is no big deal.”

Lowering the visor on both their helmets, Sasuke took off and left Moose’s parking lot. The cool breeze around him and the low rumbling beneath him he felt whenever he rode his bike always had a calming influence on his often raging mind. This time, it was different though. This time, he had Sakura pressed against his back again for the first time in seven years.

And even though she might have claimed riding with him was no big deal, her tight grip on his waist and the way she leaned her head against his shoulders told him a different story.

[smoliboops]

so i woke up this morning (so apologies if i sound a bit off or groggy in this haha) but i awoke to a lot of posts discussing about “drama” and speciffically first saw @turquoisemagpie​ ‘s geniuinely curious post about the community’s status.

i’ll start off by saying 1) im also genuinely curious about all this. i care about this community and ive been in the tumblr one specifically for 4 years now, and this seems to be the first anomaly ive seen in my time here that hasn’t been one off but “underlying”.

2) im human, lol. i’ll be honest, ive never gotten involved with stuff like this (the only one i think would barely count was when the community was debating over anti’s portrayal back in december 2017). this is just what i think in as objective and analytical of a way i can place it, and it’s not wrong nor right. just my own thoughts. (also note, i have two exams tomorrow, so i  probs wont be on here afterwards anyway cos i need to study else i die lol, but i just wanted to chime in like anyone else would)

ok first point- the drama is not shallow enough to solely revolved around the intro outro changing.

it is not the issue itself; rather it is the situation, or window that is giving us a bigger picture in the new, wierd mood that the community has been in for a while. 

im human, but personally, in the large amount of time ive spent everyday scrolling thru the tag i have not legitamentely seen a post saying “oh i dont like that jack isnt doing the intro anymore im unsubscribing.” it doesnt seem logical to me that someone who dedicates themselves enough to the channel that they are a active member of the tumbtlr community, to throw all that away just for an intro.

what i have seen instead are 2 things:

1) usually when i scroll thru the tag and see a current hot topic, i try to scroll back up til i find the post that probably originally started it all. this, along with the first type ive seen in the tag, are people saying that “some people are unsubscribing cos of outro...how can they do that..they have to understand change is normal...people act like children sometimes...i cant believe it those people are not part of the community they should just leave...etc

2)the people i have seen saying “ah man i miss the intro and outro....i miss them it feels a little weird without them...i hope they dont go away forever i’d miss it”..etc

number 2 does not match with the people number 1 are talking about. unless i am wrong (i am human so if you have actually seen this on tumblr send me a link to the person’s blog or post) the people missing the outros have never said they would leave the community. Simply expressing a sentiment for something that has always been the norm that is now changing, that’s all it is for most people.

BUT, the misunderstanding/missalignment i see between 1 and 2, is that people in 2 is either being generalized/misslabeled/or lumped by others as the “leaving the community” group. and this can even apply to number 1, where some who genuine simplly want to say “the outro might be gone, but it’s ok to change” are grouped into the others saying “leave the community you kids dont belong here” and this is the window into the main problem i think in the community.

jack is changing. this is the happiest ive seen him be in 4 years and you have no idea how happy i am for him that he is choosing to take care of himself more and finding/discovering what he truly wants for himself, his style of commentary, the channel, and the community. 

No one wants to get in the way of that. not 1, not 2, no one here wants to legit do that because we all so so deeply care about him. he brought us so much happiness, friendships, friggin several couples proposed in front of him over the years cause he indirectly helped them find love. we care about jack so much, that as a community we’re trying our best to give him the best atmosphere to change. but it’s a big community, so of course people have different ways of doing so.

we love him fiercely, so we either protect fiercely or we speak up fiercely. and then the whole tag is on fire. you’re on fire. you try pouring comforting pics on it oh no that was gasoline help-

people want to help jack and the channel/community through feedback; if something is felt to be wrong by a person, they’d want to let the captain know that something’s amiss and how/why it is and if they can fix it.

people want to help jack and the channel/community by protecting/managing it; if we dont want to sink the ship, we have to keep up and remember the duties as a member what we should be doing so that if we see a hurricane coming, we can deal with it the best without getting the ship damaged.

both are good, you can’t have one without the other. without proper management the ship will sink, but if there’s a solution outside of protocol it should be considered. if the new idea/solution/feedback is faulty enough that it would put us at even greater peril, the rules serve as a guide of judgement in doing what’s best for the ship.

no one side is right on its own. if there’s no way of feedback or communication to the captain, or anarchy is assumed among the members and the captain is overthrown, the ship will sink.

cooperation is key. nothing is black and white, its gray and our relationship with jack is a conversation. 

agree or disagree, we need to not dismiss one in favor of ourself, we need to listen, be open, and use other’s ideas (whether good or bad, evil or rightous, selfish or selfless, or just plain neutral) in forming our own and vice versa, creating a cycle of healthy conversation rather than attacking or defending blindly. 

and as well, the captain has had years of hard work, dedication, knowledge, and experience to get to his position. and ultimately it is Jack who is the one to decide how to run this ship. there can be members whose feedback is unjustified, or even hate-filled. there can be members who feel a one particular way is the right one over all else . but Jack is the one who chooses what to take into himself and the channel. does he think this feedback is valid? he’s open to taking it into consideration. does he disagree with it? that’s ok too, he still decides what he’ll take from it, good or bad, and move on.

experiencing things, toxic or healthy, we as individuals have the power to choose what to take in, not take in, and how we proceed with the information we take in. the actions of others have no rule over you, you rule over yourself. you choose what to take in and how. if we restrain ourselves/others, or protect ourselves/others, from this, then that right to choose is taken away before we even get a chance to choose. we just become isolated and very very, very alone.

tl;dr: TALK, FOR THE LOVE OF ANALOGIES AND GOD AND EVERYONE, JUST TALK CIVILLY AND NORMALLY WITH EACH OTHER. WE’RE ADULTS. JACK IS AN ADULT. CONVERSATE. NO ONE IS PROBLEMATIC AND NO ONE IS UNPROBLEMATIC. WE’RE ALL HUMAN, WE’RE ALL GRAY. WE ALL LOVE JACK WE ALL LOVE THIS COMMUNITY AND WE’RE ALL SO VERY GRAY AND SO SO SO COMPLEX AND HUMAN. SO PLEASE, P L E A S E

why dont you just talk to each other....

[sunken-standard]

New Drabble meme with fantastic options? How about: 41, 81 and 145? Separately is fine ( I say far too casually to be believed) or together (I shrug) ya know. Whatever works for you...

Take notes, sweetheart./ Excuse me forfalling in love with you./ What’s the biggest lie you ever told?

(This fell out of the badfic tree andhit just about every trope on the way down.  In the same ‘verse as Chapter 35 of Ficlet Cemetery)

*

Win a Mystery Date with SherlockHolmes! the splash page to John’s blog read.  The wholebackground was a high-res picture of Sherlock (John had changed theformat again, making it more like one of those trendy think-piecemagazine blogs that you had to scroll forever just to get past thedamn header), deerstalker tugged down low and coat lapels held closedover his face, leaving just his eyes visible, electric blue andintense as always.  He must have been in the sun a bit before thepicture was taken, she could just make out a few errant freckles (theexistence of which he vehemently denied) dusting his cheekbones.

Would not mind waking up to thatevery morning, she thought, then remembered that she did, infact, wake up next to that three or four mornings out of seven. Except the one she woke up to usually had his face smashed into thepillow with drool crusted in the corner of his mouth and Tim Burtonhair.

“I’m telling you, you need to doposters,” Molly said, shifting the phone against her ear so shecould type.  "How did you get him to agree to it?“

Mary laughed on the other end.  "Youreally think we told him?  Seriously though, it was his idea.  Seemslike he’s got a stalker.”

“Oh, that’s just Anderson,”Molly dismissed, typing a reply to one of the new comments on herlatest video.

“No, a real one,” Sherlocksaid from directly behind her.  She jumped, shouting as her phoneclattered onto the keyboard.

“Where did you even come from?”she accused, picking her phone up.  "Sorry,“ she apologizedto Mary.

"They have these new things calleddoors.  Rather frivolous, I doubt they’ll catch on,” Sherlocksaid, dragging ‘his’ chair over and flopping into it, nudging her outof the way of the keyboard.

“Well, I believe that’s my cue. Damien will be up from her nap soon, anyway,” Mary rung off.

Molly set her phone down and turned toSherlock, who was, as always, too close for comfort.  "So youhave a stalker,“ she said.  She wasn’t going to get her computerback anytime soon.

"Actually, you have astalker.  I started getting threats after that stupid YouTube video.”

“That was two months ago!  You’rejust telling me now?”

“I do get quite a lot of threats. Didn’t notice at first.  You’re perfectly safe.  Well, for now, atleast, but that’s why we’re nipping this in the bud.”

“So how is a fan going on a datewith you going to catch my stalker?”

Sherlock looked at her askance,obviously waiting for her to catch up.

Oh.  Of course.  "I’m going to winthe contest, aren’t I?“

Sherlock tipped his head and went backto typing.  In her comments, while logged into heraccount.  That tit. "We’re filming it and live-tweeting it, too. Mary said something about cross-promotion or advertising or…  Idon’t know, I stopped listening after 'scavenger hunt.’”

“So… this wasn’t your idea?”

“Using you as bait was.  The restwas all Mary.  She’s better at this sort of thing than I am.”

“Because she’s a woman?”  Itwas nicer than saying 'because she’d actually been on a date.’

“Because she’s an assassin. She’s got more experience with ambushes.”

*

“Oh for—would you stop lookingaround like that?  This is a date.  We are on a date. Not a stakeout,” Sherlock hissed from behind his menu.

“But it is a stakeout,”Molly said, tone measured.  

“Mary, God’s sake stop laughing,by the time you’re done editing there’ll be fifteen seconds of usablecontent.”

Mary coughed and forced her face intosomething serious.  "Just read the consolation prize card.“

Sherlock sighed and looked heavenward,pulling a card from inside his jacket.

"I swear his suits are like aTardis.  He carries all this stuff around and you can never tell. He’s got like a cricket bat, an espresso machine, and a badger inthere, it’s ridiculous,” Molly said quietly to Mary.  "Prettysure he’s got like half a pipe band and an entire double-decker busin his coat.“

"If you’re quite finished?”Sherlock said.  He plastered on a fake smile.  "And ourthird-prize winner in the 'Win a Mystery Date with Sherlock Holmes’contest is MarkOfTheBeast420—"

“…isn’t that Mrs. Hudson?”Molly whispered to Mary.

“No, she’s 221BlazeIt,” Marycorrected.

“Ah, right.”

Sherlock raised his voice a little toshow his displeasure with being interrupted (git; served him right)“—who gets dinner for two at Angelo’s in central London andyour choice of pink phone case or pocket-magnifier from theScienceOfDeduction store.”

“Where there’s always a candle onthe table,” Angelo said, leaning into the frame in front ofSherlock to place a candle conspicuously on the table while smilingnervously into the camera.

“Yes, thank you, do remember toorder off-menu, no request too exotic,” Sherlock said as Angelostepped back.  He stuck the corner of the card into the lit candle,flames quickly crawling up the edge to consume half of it before hedropped it off to the side (which happened to be onto the plate ofone of the diners at the next table over).

It was going to be a long day, Mollythought.

*

“—passes for two and a copy ofThe Man Who Made Vermeers.  I might actually like to readthis,” Molly said, flipping the book around and looking at theback cover.

“I have it at home, you can borrowit,” Sherlock said.

“Is it any good?”

Sherlock bobbed his head and did alittle wiggle that indicated 'not bad.’

Molly shrugged and set the book down,then tried to act natural as she walked to her mark.  "Oh look,our next clue,“ she said.  It was a typographic poster on aneasel; Mary didn’t really go all out.  Budget constraints.  

”'What’s the biggest lie youever told?’  Really?“  Sherlock scowled at Mary.

"Size doesn’t matter,” Mollyanswered quickly, wanting to beat him to the punch on just one of theclues.

“Wh—?”

“The question, aren’t we doing thething?  So, ah, something small like Vienna sausages?”

“No,” Sherlock said slowly,“I think you need to go a bit deeper than that.”

Molly opened her mouth, then closed itand shook her head.  She shared a look with Mary; too easy.

Sherlock closed his eyes and clenchedhis jaw.

*

“So you really think it’s a goodidea to bring my stalker to the place I work,” Molly said asthey went through the main doors of the hospital.

“We’ll spot him from the roof. And Mary says it’ll make a great texture shot.”

*

“How long do we have to be uphere?” Molly asked, fists balled in her cardigan.  It had been anice day, but the weather had turned overcast and a fine mist of rainhad begun to fall.

“Until the stalker shows.  Nextbus is in five.  Probably on it,” Sherlock said.

Mary had turned the camera off to savebattery, moving to the far end of the roof to call John to check in.

“Honestly, I don’t know why weneeded this plan in the first place.  There have to be easier ways ofcatching a stalker in the act.  And getting blog traffic.  I mean, wecould have just turned it over to the police, let them handle it.”

“Yes, because we both know howcompetent they are.”

She was cold, she was tired, and shewas feeling a bit bitchy.  "Did everything have to be soelaborate, though?  I mean, maybe he had to work today or somethingand wasn’t even following us.  Or, I dunno, maybe it’s just sometroll.  Maybe you’re overreacting to the whole thing.  You don’t haveto be so… protective of everyone all the time.“

"Excuse me for falling in lovewith you,” he muttered.

There’s no way she heard thatright.  "You wha—?“

"I said 'Excuse me for failing tofind the clue.’  If I’d been able to find the stalker through moreconventional means, I would have,” he sniffed, turning away tolook over the side of the roof again.

Yeah, that’s really notwhat he said, Molly thought, but wasn’t about to press the issue. At least, 1.) not on a rooftop, 2.) in the rain, and 3.) with Marythere.

Of course, that was when the door tothe roof banged open and eleven stone of weedy,surprisingly-otherwise-normal-if-a-bit-young stalker came lopingthrough brandishing a knife and babbling something about 'don’t knowhow to treat a goddess, Mistress Molly deserves respect, phony blahblah, tosser blah blah.’  Sherlock moved in front of her because hereally was that protective, hands up and trying to placate ratherthan provoke.

That is, until Mary jumped the stalkerfrom behind and locked an arm around his neck, digging a thumb intohis wrist so he dropped the knife.

“Take notes, sweetheart,” shegrunted.  "This is how you do a choke-hold, not those weaklittle lady-hugs that you give.“

Molly peeked out from behind Sherlockto watch the struggle, briefly glancing at Sherlock, who still lookedaffronted.

"Lady-hugs,” he grumbled. Then, glancing down at her, “Might want to get hospital securityon the phone.”

*

“—and if you click the linkbelow, you’ll find a discount coupon for 10% off any sarnie combofrom Speedy’s!  And, ah, that’s the end of my Mystery Date withSherlock Holmes.  Bye!”  Molly waved at the camera; Sherlockclamped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer.

“Aww, that was cute,” Marysaid, turning off the camera and capping the lens.  She promised toget a copy of the raw footage to Molly the next day and there werehugs and cheek kisses goodbye and then Molly was left standing aloneoutside of Speedy’s.  Well, alone with Sherlock, who was looking abit shifty.

“So would you, uh, like to come upfor coffee?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes at him.  "Wejust had coffee.  Are you trying to trick me into washing your dishesagain?“

"No,” he said.  "I’vejust heard it’s the done thing when a date goes particularly well.“

"So you think our fake date wentwell?” she asked.  She might have been flirting, just a little,little bit.

“We did catch a violentstalker.”

“And I did get to go to aplanetarium.”

“So exciting you fell asleep,”he remarked, but there was no real bite to it.

She smiled at him and he smiled at her;it was definitely a moment.

“You know, I think I will havethat cup of coffee,” she said.

[chronically-fangirls]

Tell Us about Your Special Interest (or whatever you are into/passionate about)

Introduction by the one &only @march-for-no-reason : In part inspired by the Discord - I’ve noticed that many of us (myself included), have a particular sort of negative experience dealing with people. That is, when they dismiss, shut down, or outright demean your interests which are special and important to you. So I extend a hand, it’s okay. We’d like to know about your interests, it’s okay to talk about them, and hopefully provide a better picture of how wonderful this can be, and new knowledge you could learn through it.

Introcduction by me: Okay, but this is amazing. I saw the post @auroreamethyste made &I was like oh heck I wish I could do that too !!  Then I saw I was tagged either &I was like OMGOMG YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!  Get ready for ,, a lot of ........ Okay I’ll just shut up & make it. Thank you so so much for the tag !! you’ve made my day 65424 times better 

Alright !! there we go 

1. Introduce them: Gregory Stuart most perfect ever Lake  2. When did you get into them: I remember I started really to go crazy over him in July or August last year, but I believe it was probably earlier. But I first got to know him two years earlier.  3. What drew your attention: uhm, at first it was obviously 21st Century Schizoid Man’s bass part, but when I really really really fell in love with him was when I listened to his voice on tracks like The Sage, The Only Way, Trilogy, In the Wake of Poseidon, his vocal version for Cadence &Cascade, Epitaph and many many many many more.... I mean, seriously just listen to him  4. Favourite thing about them: O___________O oh my god how to pick -- Uhm. Except or like Everything, I’ll pick his passion &love to music - he said that but also you could literally feel it in every piece he had ever performed - music was his passion, it lived in his heart and you could sense how important it is for him. I love it so much, I hope I managed to explain it properly.  5. Is there anything you dislike about them? First instinct it yelling NO and running away, but I need to think of it for a moment. I’m sure there is a thing. The fact he’s dead  Uhm I actually found nothing  6. Tell us a little-known fact. Pals, I don’t think there is a thing I know about him that all the smart peeps here don’t know ,, I’ll try to dig in for a thing.  Oh oh actually I have one. Despite efforts to find resources &actual pics, it isn’t a confirmed fact, (I’m still digging for a proof) that while being in King Crimson, there’s a mention that he played the tambourine. Maybe I’ll pick up another fact that isn’t about the parsian rag or ,, anything ,  7. Tell us how much you love them: ???????????????????? HOW well just scroll through my blog &see it urselves 8. Is there anything you associate with them? hmmmmm ... There are several things. I associate him, honestly, a bit with the 19th Century. Idk, something in his personality ? Style? not sure I can point it out, but something in the sensation I get from the 19th Century aesthetic I can associate sometimes to Greg.  9. How do they make you feel? Happy, safe, inspired ,, sometimes really sad... sometimes really calm &sometimes hysterical as fuck, er, what else.... for me he’s a sort of a safe place I can go to when my mind isn’t at its best... squeaky!!! rlly squeaky &happy!! dolphin noises heck yeah ,,  But more than everything, just thinking of him makes me smile &it’s the best feeling in the world <3  10. Free Space! Anything you want to add, anything goes! promote them, have they inspired you to do anything?, favourite ________ from them, little things that make you squee….anything. :D

omg?!?! what to add what to add *rip me* 

First thing: you should listen to him bc he’s perfect  Random songs rec:  King Crimson: -Epitaph -In the Wake of Poseidon -Cat Food  Emerson Lake &Palmer: -Take a Pebble -Lucky Man -Bitches Crystal -The Only Way -Trilogy -Living Sin -Still... You Turn Me on -Closer to Believing  -The Sage  -Change -Affairs of the heart -For You Solo -It Hurts -Retribution Drive -Long Goodbye -Somone -Paralysed -Manoeuvers -Haunted 

I tried to make a short list but if you want more I can add on a different post. 

Oh, have a thing: 

From here , the actual story of the carpet ,, if you haven’t read it already. Many have no idead what’s the actual story with that carpet &too many wierd ass rumors run around. 

I will add some gifs because I love Greg’s gifs and ,, okay 

HIS SMILE I CANT 

LOOK AT THIS BEAUTY 

Damn it I can add all of the gif in the world I just can;t pick 

Okay this is last one I pormise 

Also, 

This , this , this , this , this , this , this , this , this , this , this , this  Examples to this perfect beautiful talented man &my fangirlism 

Sorry, I think links work only on computer &not on moblie ,, oops  Plus I wanted to post just one link but scrolling throguh my Greg Lake tag

That’s all I can think of for now. 

Ah also his guitar is perfect ,, I can’t find a blog post so I will post a pic (sorry if it’s already here!!) 

Isn’t it perfect I want one like this &I also want the guitar

Damn it I thought I finished rambling but - How could I forget???? 

The secret tattoo 

Can’t remember its background story &I’m also not sure what is the shape of it, but it’s anyway an asweome tattoo &it’s placed very well for a bass\guitar player. 

(Again - pics aren’t mine)

That;s it! &I hope that now for real! :D 

An addition from Helen which I 100% agree with: This has caused, at least for me, a tendency to not talk, not talk a lot in fear of oversharing, or feel I should feel bad for allowing something to get so close to my heart. Unhealthy, addiction, it’s bad for you, okay! Okay! WE GET IT!!!…..are just some of the things I’ve experienced. The feelings they give….is so pure, so good, nothing can really compare. I’m supposed to just…wallow in despair, separated from my light? That can’t be right. I hope this can demonstrate some of that.

A small addition from me: I find it painful how ignortant &nasty can people be. I never understood those people - seeing others talk about what’s important for them is such a great &pure thing &I love seeing how happy does the thing make them!!

 Okay.... I think I’m done rambling here. I’m sorry it took me so long to answer, I just needed it to be perfect. Every time I found another thing to add and it lasted forever and it is absolutely not a passive agressive reference to someone who was supposed to release their autobiography years ago so it lasted for hours. 

Oh my god I’m so excited this is like the best thing that happened to me at the last weeks I can’t believe how happy wiritng this post made me!!! Oh my god I can’t remember being this happy for w e e k s fuckckckckkkkkk aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Bonus: a small holler by me, thanks to @moveslikekeithrichards after this 

Should I tag other peeps?   Idk if you were tagged, @my-space-and-all-within but I honestly thought of you when I looked at the questions.  Also, I can’t remember if you were tagged @clearthroughtheclouds , but I thought of you as well :3   I saw many were tagged, forgive me if i tag someone twice. Ofc you can do it only if you want to :D &also sorry if you were tagged already I probably forgot  

(P.s: I’m so fucking proud of this post I’m in tears omg)

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include A Night In The Woods' cartoon realism, a history of Loom, and much more.

Well, it's almost GDC time (latest announces here), so next week's Video Game Deep Cuts will be the final one before the show. Then the weekend after that may turn into a 'Game Developers Conference 2017 highlights' joint, because I may be a BIT too busy to find new links that week, heh. BTW, while you're waiting for the show, read up on this year's IGF finalists and with alt.ctrl.GDC exhibitors via the linked Gamasutra interview series.

- Simon, curator.]

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

Why road-building in Cities: Skylines is a pleasure (Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun) "Cities: Skylines is a sim that feels uncommonly alive and reactive to your planning... They may walk or take a bus or train, but you’ll mostly notice them driving, creating traffic which fundamentally represents the health of your city, a pulsing network that’s driven by Cities: Skylines’ beating heart."

'Metacritic' Still Matters, But For How Long? (Chris Baker / Glixel) "Marc Doyle was headed off for a weekend getaway in Santa Barbara with some of his old college buddies when he received the news that the Washington Post's critic did not enjoy the video game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End."

Coming to Video Games Near You: Depressed Towns, Dead-End Characters (Laura Hudson / New York Times) "In the coming video game Night in the Woods, a young woman named Mae decides to drop out of college and return to the former mining town where she grew up. It’s a place where there is little opportunity and most people are struggling to make ends meet."

How to Make the Best of Working on Licensed Video Games (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "Bowler is used to games with unique challenges; after shipping Game Party Champions, he was seen as someone who could shepherd others like it to the finish line. It's how he ended up as lead designer on a mobile tie-in game for Zack Snyder's Superman reboot, Man of Steel."

Why Yakuza 0 is a Masterclass in Managing Tone (Writing On Games / YouTube) "Yakuza 0 is a wildly dissonant experience, swinging violently between super-serious gangster intrigue, slapstick violence and over-the-top melodrama. It's the absolute best. In this episode of Writing on Games, I analyse why embracing this dissonance allows the game to tell more human stories."

Direction (Rob Fearon) "We are in times where games are in abundance. I wrote about this a few weeks back and I think it’s (hopefully) a useful primer for understanding why Valve are doing what they’re doing. We’ve gone from not many games being sold under our noses to lots of games."

What do developers and publishers really think of SteamSpy? (Ben Barrett / PCGamesN) "It’s constantly referenced by players, journalists, publishers and developers for a variety of reasons - but how accurate is it versus Steam’s unpublished numbers? What do developers think of it, and the ways it’s used? Importantly, do they wish they could be removed from it?"

The long and troubled history of Apocalypse Now, the video game (Adi Robertson / The Verge) "In late January, an exciting and unlikely project showed up on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter: a request for $900,000 to make a video game adaptation of Apocalypse Now, officially blessed by the film’s director Francis Ford Coppola."

Bonchan Looks Back on His Rise in eSports Unfold (Mike Stubbsy / Red Bull eSports) "Bonchan’s Street Fighter origin story is one of the most unusual we’ve heard yet. As he tells us in the latest episode of eSports Unfold, back when Street Fighter was on something of a hiatus, Bonchan met up with a legend of the scene, and quickly rose to the top when things started to pick up."

The Gamer Motivation Profile: Model and Findings (Nick Yee / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2016 GDC session, Quantic Foundry's Nick Yee presents the results of a global survey that help inform game developers about the different motivations of players, showing the different types of potential customer that exist in the video game market."

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas Explains Blizzard’s Newest Experiment, the 'WoW' Token (Heather Newman / Glixel) ""It’s kind of my baby," Ion Hazzikostas says about the WoW token. Though he's now WoW's game director, Hazzikostas has worked on the initiative since its inception. Here, he talks with Glixel about how the death of the Diablo RMAH made the WoW token possible, what people have been spending it on, and its impact on gold farming."

How Chicago's Overlooked Video Game Creators Scored an Extra Life (Sam Greszes / Thrillist) "Yes, dear Chicagoans, your humble hometown, the Second City, the City of Broad Shoulders, the Many-Nicknamed City That Is Barely Habitable Eight Months Out of the Year, deserves some recognition when it comes to gaming. It doesn’t get as much credit as the tech havens on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, it really is at the forefront of video game development -- and has been for years."

Metacritic's 7th Annual Game Publisher Rankings (Jason Dietz / Metacritic) "Which game publishers released the best games last year? For the seventh straight year, we have sifted through 12 months of data to determine the best and worst game publishers of the year, based solely on the quality of their 2016 releases. [SIMON'S NOTE: I find this a little bizarre, but it's certainly interesting to peruse!]"

Loom (or, how Brian Moriarty Proved That Less is Sometimes More) (Jimmy Maher / The Digital Antiquarian) "In April of 1988, Brian Moriarty of Infocom flew from the East Coast to the West to attend the first ever Computer Game Developers Conference. Hard-pressed from below by the slowing sales of their text adventures and from above by parent company Activision’s ever more demanding management, Infocom didn’t have the money to pay for Moriarty’s trip."

For Honor's mastermind: "My greatest fear was that I would die before I could share this with the world" (Wouter McDutch / GamesRadar) "According to Jason VandenBerghe, creative director on Ubisoft’s For Honor, there are only a handful of lucky developers who get to create the game of their dreams. It took him almost ten years to get the vision he had for For Honor greenlit and the game has since been in development for almost five."

Art Of The Title: Doom (2016) (Will Perkins / Art Of The Title) "DOOM’s end credits are the perfect coda for that kind of gameplay experience. A four-minute reprise of the player’s gib-filled journey, the title sequence is a hard rockin’, shotgun-blasting, demon-dismembering battle across Mars and into Hell itself."

The story of Warframe: how a game no publisher wanted found 26 million players (Tom Marks / PC Gamer) "In early 2013, Digital Extremes finally released the free-to-play space-ninja shooter it had wanted to make for over 13 years, but that doesn’t mean it was a happy time for the studio. Every publisher with an opportunity to back Warframe had passed, and most even said outright it would fail."

How the Yakuza helped sell Nintendo's first game (Chris Bratt / Eurogamer) "Join me in today's episode of Here's A Thing, as we take a look back at a very different kind of Nintendo and how, surprisingly, the Yakuza helped ensure its first game was such a massive success."

Other Places: Hitman (Other Places / YouTube) "Other Places is a series of short films celebrating beautiful videogame worlds. [SIMON'S NOTE: not writing, but certainly beautiful and a great idea - there's a whole YouTube channel of more if you like 'em.]"

Devs discuss the history and the future of so-called 'walking sims' (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "In many games, walking around is just something we do before jumping over that wall or shooting that menacing enemy. But an increasing number of independent games are tamping down on feature-creep and reimagining how we consider putting one step in front of the other."

The Story Behind YouTube's Strangely Compelling 'Hot Pepper Gaming' Channel (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "Nothing lasts forever, not even a YouTube channel about people eating obnoxiously hot peppers and trying to talk about video games. On February 6, Hot Pepper Gaming uploaded its its final episode, a tear-filled video about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's recent remastering."

Meet Hungrybox, the Most Resilient 'Smash Bros.' Champion (Justin Groot / Glixel) "'God, I'm crying a lot, I'm sorry,' said Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma, one of five Super Smash Bros. Melee players (the others being Adam "Armada" Lindgren, Joseph "Mango" Marquez, Kevin "PPMD" Nanney and Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman) known as "Gods" for their lopsided domination of the modern competitive scene."

Darwin's Demons - Natural Selection Applied To Space Invaders (Scott Manley / YouTube) "Darwin's Demons is a student game project which applies genetic algorithms to space invaders to make each level harder than the last. "

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

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[type2diabetestreatments-blog]

Ask D'Mine: The Shot Heard 'Round the Blogosphere & Insulin for Weightlifting

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/ask-dmine-the-shot-heard-round-the-blogosphere-insulin-for-weightlifting/

Ask D'Mine: The Shot Heard 'Round the Blogosphere & Insulin for Weightlifting

Welcome once again to our weekly advice column, where we talk all about navigating life with diabetes. In this edition of Ask D'Mine, our host Wil Dubois ( veteran type 1, author and diabetes community educator) takes on another prime time TV show that recently "tried" to address diabetes, and he also gets at the real story behind insulin being used in the weightlifting world.

Got your own questions? Email us at AskDMine@diabetesmine.com

Nancy from Missouri, type 2, writes: I've been enjoying the new TV series Touch. Sort of. But a recent episode on Hulu had Kiefer Sutherland finding an unconscious man whom it turns out was diabetic. "There are some loaded insulin syringes in the fridge..." Kiefer injects the man in the crook of his arm with what—despite the dialog—looks like glucagon, and the man recovers consciousness almost immediately. It's such a glaring piece of dangerous stupidity... we see diabetic inaccuracies in the media all the time, but this one was a killer. What can we PWDs do to fight these kinds of things?

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: Talk about the shot heard 'round the blogosphere, this little scene has generated quite a bit of conversation and commentary. As it should!

Where to even start? Oh my goodness!

Now, Mr. Sutherland, there're three main reasons a PWD (person with diabetes) might be unconscious. First: their blood sugar might be too low and they've passed out. Second: their blood sugar might be too high and they've passed out. Third: they might be stone-cold drunk and they've passed out.

How you should respond to each of the three is different.

If they're too low, giving insulin will actually make them lower, and probably kill them. So, please, Mr. Sutherland, don't give me insulin if you find me passed out from a low! Now, glucagon, which we'll talk more about in a minute, would be appropriate—but there's actually something better you can do.

If they're high, Mr. Sutherland, insulin will help. But frankly, if they're high enough to have passed out, they're going to need a lot more than insulin; and anyway, at this point, the insulin really needs to be pumped into their bodies through an IV in a controlled way. Not shot into the crook of the arm.

If they're drunk, giving them insulin can actually trigger a low. Skip step two and go directly back to step one, Mr. Sutherland. Coffee and a call to their spouse/parent is actually the most appropriate action in this case.

Of course the real problem is that you have no easy way to know if the PWD is low, high, or drunk (or do you know how to use a glucometer, Mr. Sutherland?). Because taking blind intervention, as I've just shown you, can make the situation worse, the best thing to do is do the exact same thing you'd do if you found a non-PWD passed out: call frickin' 911.

But what about that glucagon? You know what? Don't f** with glucagon if you aren't trained to use it, and if you don't know the passed-out person's blood sugar. If you know the person is low, by testing, and if you know how to use the glucagon kit (which is never "loaded" in the fridge, but involves injecting water into a vial, mixing it, drawing it up again, and injecting the appropriate amount into the PWD), then by all means please do so. Otherwise, just wait for the damn ambulance.

By the way, if you've been trained in glucagon and you use it properly, will the dead-to-the-world PWD then recover "almost immediately?" No. It can take up to 20 minutes before the lights flicker back on in the PWD's head following a glucagon shot.

Oh. And the PWD will as likely as not throw up as soon as they recover. Didn't see that on TV, did ya?

Oh, and they still have to go to the frickin' hospital, too. Glucagon dumps the liver's stores of glucose to bring us back from the dead. All the stores. Post-glucagon, we have nothing left if there is an after-shock hypo.

So you still should have called 911, anyway.

So much for the review of the facts. Touch got it all wrong. Both in dialog and visuals. Now what? What can we do? What should we do?

I am sharpening my pitchfork as we speak. (I love a good revolution.) I think a merciless barrage of emails, faxes, letters, and calls is the best approach. I think, as a community, we need to both make a lot of noise and have a zero-tolerance policy every time this kind of nonsense happens. The general public is clueless enough without the entertainment media making things worse with dramatic falsehoods.

If we took even 10% of the energy vented in our own communities over this, and turned that energy outwards, maybe we can change the world. One TV show at a time.

May I suggest attacks at the following "enemy" locations:

Touch's Facebook page is here. Friend and flame.

FOX TV email links are here. Ya gotta scroll to the bottom and click the big blue (ironic) ASKFOX. Or find your local FOX affiliate here.

You can find a snail-mail address for Touch creator Tim Kring here, and you can get the low down on the production companies here.

Last but not least, Touch's star Kiefer Sutherland has his own website (with guest book, chat, and contact links) and Facebook pages. Maybe you should (all) reach out and touch him. Let him know we're watching.

And that we don't like to be misrepresented.

John from California, type 1, writes: I've heard that insulin has a "growth factor," and some bodybuilders actually use it to help grow muscle (which sounds crazy). So. If you're weight training you can put on muscle a little bit easier than regular people. That's what my endo told me, too, but he probably just wants me to dose precisely and aggressively. Wil, please confirm or deny!

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: Oh God, this is just like when my son Rio asked me why the sky is blue. I know the answer, but how to explain it without taking all day? And I'm guessing that just saying "because" isn't going to cut it with this crowd!

So... foundation first. A "growth factor" is a substance that stimulates cellular growth, and these substances are most commonly proteins or steroids.

I think you can all see where this is going: steroids, weightlifting... Oh, and insulin is a protein, of course... But hold on one second. It's not a simple as you might think.

Because insulin itself isn't really a significant growth factor. But another pair of hormones called IGF-1 and IGF-2 are. IGF stands for Insulin-like Growth Factor. These are hormones that are kinda sorta like insulin, but aren't really insulin at all. (IGF can be measured by a lab to check for pituitary problems or growth issues, especially in children.) But, as their name suggests, they're growth factors.

Still, what you heard was more or less right. Growth factors do make cells grow. So IGF could help you build muscles, at least in theory; which has led to a not-so-cottage industry of IGF pills, sprays, and shots. Well, more correctly, pills, sprays, and shots marketed as IGF. Here in the USA, most aren't really IGF at all, but are substances alleged to stimulate the body's IGF production. But in other parts of the world, or with a prescription pad, you can get the real stuff.

So, with all of that said, do some crazy-ass weightlifters use IGF? Yes. And other crazy-ass people jump off suspension bridges with rubber bands tied to their feet. That doesn't make it a good idea. In addition to making muscle cells grow, IGF can also help cells you don't want growing to grow, too, like cancer cells. Cancer cells have a tendency to grow too damn fast to start with, so do you really want to light a fire under those puppies?

But what about insulin itself? Is anyone out there injecting insulin instead of taking IGF? No. Not in mainstream bodybuilding anyway, although there is a lot of talk about diet plans to maximize endogenous insulin in the body-building community. But out on the fringes, yes, there sure are people shooting up to try to beef up.

It risks hypos for non-dFolk, and hasn't been proven to be effective... and probably isn't, as insulin itself isn't a truly potent growth factor.

Still, that doesn't keep some people from trying. If there's anything we can count on it will be that some people will try anything, and that kids will ask why the sky is blue.

This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Destroyer Reviews Original Article

[fatbottombucky]

That’s Stark’s Boy *Peter Parker x Reader*

Chapter Fourteen

Summary: After getting kicked out of school and following the wrong crowd your mother sends you to live with your father - at least you’re away from her layabout boyfriend. But your dad happens to be Tony Stark, he enrolled you into a new school and enlisted the help of his faithful protege to help you feel welcome. Not only are you the new kid but you gotta balance the Stark Expectations AND you’re living with a bunch of heroes… also, lest you forget that a certain red-suited hero makes it difficult to keep your sexuality a secret.

Pairings: Peter Parker x Male!Reader / Tony Stark (dad) x Reader (son)

Warnings: Swearing & Reader having no clue what to do with himself

Word Count: 3222

A/N: So, normally I would link the previous part but since the update where text posts with links won’t show up in searches... I can’t do that. So, to find the Masterlist for this series, either scroll through my blog or clink the masterlist link in my bio... sorry, but it’s the only way my posts will show up in searches without links! - Rosalie

Chapter Note: Got some help from two friends, so big up to them! Their first kiss is coming, it’s in the next chapter ;)

(Jason is a real character from Homecoming, played by Jorge, who played Nick in Love, Simon. So, he’s gonna be featured because I love his friendship with Simon in the movie, plus miffed that I don’t think he’s back for Far From Home)

You could hear them from the living room, talking to one another. You wished you understood the science talk, but you didn’t and you never would, you don’t think anyway. They have been discussing new gadgets for Peter’s suit, nothing too flashy but very his brand. You almost wanted to roll your eyes at their little chuckles, probably, a science pun if anything.

“Alright, well, good work today Peter,” you glanced up from your phone to see your dad and Peter walk into the living room, big smiles on their faces. “Say hello to your aunt for me?” He called as Peter began to walk out of the living room.

You watched Peter, he gave you a small smile before leaving. Your dating is still a secret from your dad, neither of you thought it best to tell him just yet, not until you were both sure about this and each other. Also, you didn’t want him to make a big deal out of it, your dad has this uncanny ability to make things awkward, pretty quickly too.

You glance to Tony, who is already typing on his phone and turning to exit the living room, going back to his lab to work. It doesn’t surprise you, mostly hurts you a little bit. He’ll spend hours upon hours working, holding meetings or doing god knows what in the lab, never giving himself enough time to even eat or sleep. Yet, he’ll make time for Peter, a kid that isn’t his. You didn’t want to admit that Mj was right, but she was, you’re jealous of Peter but only his relationship with your dad because they have stuff in common like; being superheroes and geniuses, you and Tony are complete opposite when it comes to hobbies and interests.

A small part of you felt like you did this to yourself, you pushed Tony away from you all those years ago, and you’ve never made an effort to never be interested in science. Peter was around when you weren’t, he became the son Tony had always dreamed of and wanted. You shouldn’t be jealous and you didn’t want to care, yet you did. You cared because Tony is your dad and you didn’t want to share him or compete for his attention.

You also didn’t want this negative energy to affect your current relationship with Peter… only it already has. You started to spend less and less time with him, making up excuses about where you’re going and what you’re doing after school. In fact, you actually started to finish a lot of homework because of it, teachers are finally liking you at school now. You still made an effort to be around him, not to raise too much suspicion about your current thoughts and feelings, but the more you saw Peter be the perfect ideal son to your dad… the more you resented yourself.

“Sup,” you place your bag down beside Zander, instantly grabbing the attention of his table. 

You hadn’t really talked to Zander since the party, apart from in lessons and over text. He hung around different people to you, which is fine because he’s the friend that invites you to parties and doesn’t expect anything but you turning up.

“Hey, Y/N. Had a falling out with Peter or something?”

Shrugging casually. “Something like that,” Zander turns to you and looks concerned, “I don’t want to talk about it. Mind if I sit with you?”

Zander smiles, “sure, don’t see why not. That’s Flash, he’s my other friend and actually, dj’d at the party you attended ages ago. That’s Jason, you’ve seen him present the school news with Betty.”

You nodded at Flash, his collar sticking up and gelled black hair. He casually waved at you, you had heard about him from Peter and seen him around, pretty sure he created the name ‘penis parker’ and said it a few times when walking past Peter. Peter didn’t seem all that bothered, so you never reacted or did anything outrageous- like the time you punched a guy first week here.

You sneakily glanced at your usual table, Mj didn’t seem that interested in where you sat and was currently reading a book with earphones in. However, the two boys of your table, well they were another story. Both were staring at you, frowning and muttering to one another, probably, about why you’re over here and not there with them. You watch as Peter pulls out his phone, typing away quickly and Ned glancing over his shoulder.

Both heads look in your direction and in that second you feel your phone vibrate; Peter has texted you. You decide to ignore it, instead choosing to listen to Flash’s story about how Spider-Man stole his car back during Homecoming, you raised your eyebrows and laugh, the thought of Peter actually driving around whilst dressed as Spider-Man made you want to cry with laughter (you held back not to embarrass yourself).

“We’ve heard this story a million times,” Zander groans and throws some fries at Flash, who huffs a little at his friend.

You shrug, “I haven’t. Seems Spider-Man always shows up in the most opportune moments.”

“Yeah, he was there in Washington, saved the Decathlon team from dying. It was all over the news.” Flash shrugged nonchalantly, “I didn’t panic but everyone else did.”

You could feel your phone vibrate with every new notification you got, you decided to ignore them and listen to Flash, Jason and Zander conversation. The main topic being music, after hearing about Flash’s dj-ing, you started to talk about your band and music and that turned into Zander joining in because he was once in a band, but his brother went to Uni abroad, so he no longer plays the guitar. Jason is apparently an expert at karaoke, something you’ve gotta see or so Flash says.

“Sounds like we’ve got the set-up for a techno band,” you joked with them as the bell sounds.

“If you attend Z’s party next week I’m down for a karaoke-off?” Jason offered, nudging Flash who shrugged and nodded, Zander sighed and agreed. “I’ll bring my machine, it has over two-thousand songs on it.”  

Flash made a ‘really’ face, “As long as you have some Drake on there, I’m in.”

That started your unofficial plan of avoiding Peter and your father. Unintentional, but it worked a damn treat. You started sitting with Jason during your AP classes, getting a lift home from Flash, and even attending after-school art club with Zander. Yet, a big part of you felt bad and guilty, it wasn’t Peter’s fault for having a better bond with Tony- nor was it Mj’s or Ned’s.

You walked out of school on Thursday, a whole two weeks of only talking to Peter via text, same with Ned and Mj. You looked across the carpark, seeing Flash and Jason waiting for you in his dad’s new car. You give a little wave, but you're yanked backwards by your backpack, spinning around you’re met with the rageful face of Mj.

“You’ve got some explaining to do,” she affirms.

Instead of answering her you look at Flash, gesturing with your head that he can leave. You look back down at Mj, biting your bottom lip and nodding, she turns on her heel and walks towards the local coffee house. It’s only a short journey, yet it felt long due to the silence. Mj gets the usual orders, still ignoring you, so you grab the table by the window and wait. 

She sits opposite you, placing her bag on the seat beside her and her eyes meet yours. The lack of emotion behind them and the narrowed look makes you cringe, it’s like your under an FBI spotlight, like she’s got you in for questioning for a murder you didn’t commit. 

“So,” you begin and she only raises her eyebrows at you, “you were right.”

She nods, “that tends to happen.” You huff out a laugh, “what about this time?” tilting her head to the right in confusion, a little thing she does when confused or inquisitive.

“Me being jealous of my dad and Peter,” she makes an ‘Ohhh’ sound and nods, “Whenever I see them together I get this… feeling Mj, I can’t explain it but it makes me sad. I’m upset and guilty ‘cause I don’t have that connection with him and I’ve always blamed my dad, never once thought it was me.” You sigh and lick your lips, leaning back against the chair and looking out of the window to the streets, “I just wanted some time away from feeling like that, I guess.”

Mj nods silently, eyebrows knitting together as she thinks for a few moments. “You should talk to Tony, this is about how you don’t have a bond with him or anything in common like Peter does. Maybe, talking will help find some common ground between you. If you’re finding it difficult then he is too.”

You nod, smiling when your Iced Mochas are brought over to the table. Taking equally silent sips, allowing the buzz of the coffee house takes over, you look at Mj who has already pulled out her sketch pad, sketching a few civilians around her.

“Also, can’t believe you’re friends with Flash,” she mutters but has a smile on her face. “You and Jason seem close, is he replacing Peter?” she doesn’t look up to study your face.

You allow yourself to scowl at Mj, confused by her question also. She knows your feelings for Peter, she knows you, and she knows you’d never jump from one person to another.

“Of course not,” you hiss, Mj looks up a little taken back, “He’s just my friend, plus he likes Abby and won’t stop talking about her. I think I might have to step in and get them together.”

She nods slightly, “Just don’t go radio silent on me again, okay?” You nod, “You can have other best  friends, I don’t care, it’s whatever.” You chuckle and nod, settling back to watching her sketch people and telling her all the drama Flash seems to cause at parties.

**

You walked down to the lab, where your father was busy looking at the screens situated around the lab. Talking to Friday as he went, you frowned and leaned on the wall watching as he paced around. The screens showing different maps of the world, a few glowing dots and Bruce Banner’s face on another screen.

“Still looking for the Green Giant?” You called and pushed yourself away from the wall to walk around the lab, sitting on a workbench.

Tony nodded with a small chuckle, “Yep. He’s my friend and I want to know he’s okay, so far nothing.” You nod slowly, “you just missed Peter, by the way.”

“Figured.” You sighed.

It goes back to being silent, on your end away. Listening to Tony make plans to talking to other world leaders and military leaders, all on the hunt for one guy, well, a few more it seems; Tony is only interested in finding Banner, whereas everyone else wants to know where Cap and his merry men are.

“You should go upstairs, I’m going to be here for some time,” Tony calls over his shoulder and you nod, head hanging low and shoving your hands in your pockets.

“Mmmhmm, okay,” you mutter and turn on your heel, yet something pulls you back. “Actually, no, I’m not going to go upstairs.” Tony looks over his shoulder with raised eyebrows at your outburst, “So, Peter gets to spend time with you and I have to go upstairs?” You ask, arms outstretched as if that proves your point somehow.

Tony is silent and looks caught off guard, “I just thought you’d find this boring, you’re welcome to stay down here.” 

You nod almost robotically, sitting down on the closest surface to you, which was a workbench he wasn’t using. You glance around the room and look anywhere but at Tony, trying your best to look interested and intrigued in what was happening. 

There’s a thick tension between you both, Tony glances at you every once and a while, before continuing to his work. Neither of you makes any comments and he was right, you do find this boring. He’s just looking at possible sightings of Hulk, stuff that has happened that could be the cause of Banner Hulking out, yet nothing really stands out.

“Are you jealous of Peter?” Tony asks suddenly, you look up and see Tony has pulled a wheelie stool and is sitting opposite you, a solemn expression on his face. “You’ve not been yourself these few weeks, Peter mentioned that you’ve been hanging out with other people and that you’re not really talking to him as much, he’s confused if he's done something wrong.”

“Why are you so obsessed with him?” You ask without thinking, you instantly feel guilty for asking that because Peter needs a mentor like Tony, “I didn’t mean- just you spend so much time with him, have this great bond with him… why am I here? Why did you offer to take me in if you already have what you wanted with Peter?”

Tony sits up straight, a frown pulled his eyebrows together. “We have nothing in common. Yet, I hate seeing you have this great connection with Peter. He’s just like you, a genius and he gets those stupid science jokes you tell. He’s a superhero too, he’s everything you want in a son and I’m just here. Everyone already says I’m nothing like you, that I’ll never be, and Peter proves that.”

You look at your hands, not being able to look at Tony after your confession. He doesn’t say anything, not straight away, you feel him stand up and start pacing slightly. You glance up to see a pained expression on his face, one of disappointment, you can’t tell if it’s meant to be directed at you or himself.

“Y/N, you’ll never be me,” you frown, “And that’s something everyone will realise, it’s something you’ve got to realise too. We’re not alike, you’re your own person and you like different stuff to me, and to your mum. I don’t want you to be anything but yourself.” You nod slowly, Tony kneels in front of you and smiles, “Peter is a smart kid, not as smart as me, of course.” You both chuckle lightly, “the only family Peter has is his aunt, he’s a lost a lot of people, I guess, I can relate to that. He needed someone to steer Spider-Man in the right direction, plus Peter Parker too.

“You’re my son, you’re everything I hoped for. I don’t want some genius son or some superhero, I just want you and for you to be happy with your life and have all the opportunities you want.” Tony pauses, “Honestly, you remind me so much of my mother, I think, you’re more Carbonell than Stark.”

You raise an eyebrow, “How so?”

Tony chuckles and sits on the stool again, “Well, she’s Italian and they’re very passionate people, she has a big extended family,” Tony sighs, “I’ve always meant to go and see them, but I can’t bring myself to,” you nod a little with your eyebrows furrowed. “She loved music, always played the piano, she taught me actually. She loved art, couldn’t paint to save her life, but she admired a lot of art. I actually own a few of her favourites now, she was strong and endured a lot. Think Howard Stark’s curse skipped a generation a little of Carbonell came through in you.”

You spend the next three hours discussing Tony’s childhood and his mother, he leaves out times with Howard, you’ve already heard everything you needed to from Happy and Pepper over the years. You talk about movies, all of Tony’s being stuff you hadn’t seen, so he’s making it a priority to watch them with you. You even start to help him with Iron Man stuff, giving him ideas for suit updates.

“You know, I think, you pretend you aren’t a genius.” Tony remarks as you leave the lab, you laugh softly and shrug, “you’re in AP classes, Y/N, and you clearly know your way around engineering.”

“I like cars, more so, I like taking things apart and then putting them back together. Iron Man has components that similar to a car’s body,” Tony gives a little ‘huh’ as you walk.

Tony nudges you gently and grins, “We’re more alike than you think.”

**

You walk the streets of Queens, you know you should be at home, especially since it’s two in the morning but you had to see him before school. There was the chance he wouldn’t be home and wouldn’t be home for a long time either, but you could wait for him. You did text, but he never responded, as usual when he’s on patrol.

The street lights illuminated the way towards the Parker residents, your hands shoved in your denim jacket pockets. Probably, not the best night for ripped jeans because of the cold, but for aesthetic purposes, you looked good. Tony is right, you’re like him, Stark ego shining through.

“We could’ve talked at school, ya’know?” A voice calls and you look around before a whilst grabs your attention, you look up and see Spider-Man perched on a streetlight above you.

You roll your eyes at him, “You saying you don’t want to talk to me?” You can tell he’s rolling his eyes at you, he hops down and lands in front of you and crosses his arms, you pout. “Do not make me say it!”

He gestures for you to say it, looking at you through the mask still but you can tell he has a cocky, smug smile on his face and you’d love to kiss punch off of him.

“I’m sorry, okay?” You huff and cross your arms, “there I said it. I was jealous of you and my dad having this weird bond, so I acted out and pushed everyone away because I like being the centre of everyone’s attention, especially my dad’s.”

It’s silent and you look at Peter, who has taken off the mask and has a confusion written across his face like he didn’t expect you to say all of that. Almost as if he didn’t know that’s why you had stopped hanging around him, his eyebrows knitted together and he looked as though he was trying to solve a murder in his mind.

“Wait…” he muttered, “I thought you were coming here to tell me you didn’t want to date me anymore,” he confessed and this time you looked confused. “You were jealous of my bond with Tony? That’s ridiculous, all he does is fix my suit when I can’t or make more web fluid when I have too much school work.”

You felt a tad stupid, maybe you shouldn’t have said all of that to him, but you were certain he had pieced it together. “Well… shut up! I didn’t know that you guys spend a lot of time together and you’re both smart, so shut up.” Peter chuckled lightly, “why did you think I didn’t want to date you anymore?”

“Well, Ned told me that you were doubting us that time you bailed on study night. Then you started to sit with Zander, Flash and Jason, I don’t know, you just didn’t seem to want to be around me anymore.”

Your heart clenched slightly at his words, an overwhelming feeling to just hug came over you and you took that feeling. You pulled him to you and hugged him tightly, he laughed loudly and hugged you back, you could he wasn’t using his full strength because he could, probably, crush you if he wanted- luckily he doesn’t want to.

Pulling back a little and shaking your head, “Peter, I want to date you and I always want to be around you.” That comment made Peter blush. 

You feel the urge to kiss Peter, the way he’s smiling up at you and the light pink dusting his cheeks: he’s adorable and hard to resist. Although, you hear that beeping again, the one that alerts Peter of a possible crime. You smile softly and lean down to kiss his cheek, you know Peter will be tomato red, and you’re right when you pull away. 

Letting out a little airy chuckle you pull away from him. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” you call as you back away. 

“Shouldn’t- Maybe- shouldn’t I take you home?” Peter asked pulling on the mask to hide his blushing face as you chuckled lightly over his stumbling of words.

You shrugged, “I’ll be fine. Heard there’s this hot superhero about, sure if I run into trouble he’ll help me out.” You wink before turning around.

(Again, you can find the previous parts for this on my masterlist under That’s Stark’s Boy, I can’t add links because then this won’t show up in Tumblr searches. I hope you liked this part PLEASE tell me what you think so far, I appreciate feedback on this. - Rosalie)

If you wished to be tagged for this, let me know. I reblog with tags now, just because tagging at the end looks really messy to me x

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include A Night In The Woods' cartoon realism, a history of Loom, and much more.

Well, it's almost GDC time (latest announces here), so next week's Video Game Deep Cuts will be the final one before the show. Then the weekend after that may turn into a 'Game Developers Conference 2017 highlights' joint, because I may be a BIT too busy to find new links that week, heh. BTW, while you're waiting for the show, read up on this year's IGF finalists and with alt.ctrl.GDC exhibitors via the linked Gamasutra interview series.

- Simon, curator.]

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

Why road-building in Cities: Skylines is a pleasure (Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun) "Cities: Skylines is a sim that feels uncommonly alive and reactive to your planning... They may walk or take a bus or train, but you’ll mostly notice them driving, creating traffic which fundamentally represents the health of your city, a pulsing network that’s driven by Cities: Skylines’ beating heart."

'Metacritic' Still Matters, But For How Long? (Chris Baker / Glixel) "Marc Doyle was headed off for a weekend getaway in Santa Barbara with some of his old college buddies when he received the news that the Washington Post's critic did not enjoy the video game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End."

Coming to Video Games Near You: Depressed Towns, Dead-End Characters (Laura Hudson / New York Times) "In the coming video game Night in the Woods, a young woman named Mae decides to drop out of college and return to the former mining town where she grew up. It’s a place where there is little opportunity and most people are struggling to make ends meet."

How to Make the Best of Working on Licensed Video Games (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "Bowler is used to games with unique challenges; after shipping Game Party Champions, he was seen as someone who could shepherd others like it to the finish line. It's how he ended up as lead designer on a mobile tie-in game for Zack Snyder's Superman reboot, Man of Steel."

Why Yakuza 0 is a Masterclass in Managing Tone (Writing On Games / YouTube) "Yakuza 0 is a wildly dissonant experience, swinging violently between super-serious gangster intrigue, slapstick violence and over-the-top melodrama. It's the absolute best. In this episode of Writing on Games, I analyse why embracing this dissonance allows the game to tell more human stories."

Direction (Rob Fearon) "We are in times where games are in abundance. I wrote about this a few weeks back and I think it’s (hopefully) a useful primer for understanding why Valve are doing what they’re doing. We’ve gone from not many games being sold under our noses to lots of games."

What do developers and publishers really think of SteamSpy? (Ben Barrett / PCGamesN) "It’s constantly referenced by players, journalists, publishers and developers for a variety of reasons - but how accurate is it versus Steam’s unpublished numbers? What do developers think of it, and the ways it’s used? Importantly, do they wish they could be removed from it?"

The long and troubled history of Apocalypse Now, the video game (Adi Robertson / The Verge) "In late January, an exciting and unlikely project showed up on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter: a request for $900,000 to make a video game adaptation of Apocalypse Now, officially blessed by the film’s director Francis Ford Coppola."

Bonchan Looks Back on His Rise in eSports Unfold (Mike Stubbsy / Red Bull eSports) "Bonchan’s Street Fighter origin story is one of the most unusual we’ve heard yet. As he tells us in the latest episode of eSports Unfold, back when Street Fighter was on something of a hiatus, Bonchan met up with a legend of the scene, and quickly rose to the top when things started to pick up."

The Gamer Motivation Profile: Model and Findings (Nick Yee / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2016 GDC session, Quantic Foundry's Nick Yee presents the results of a global survey that help inform game developers about the different motivations of players, showing the different types of potential customer that exist in the video game market."

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas Explains Blizzard’s Newest Experiment, the 'WoW' Token (Heather Newman / Glixel) ""It’s kind of my baby," Ion Hazzikostas says about the WoW token. Though he's now WoW's game director, Hazzikostas has worked on the initiative since its inception. Here, he talks with Glixel about how the death of the Diablo RMAH made the WoW token possible, what people have been spending it on, and its impact on gold farming."

How Chicago's Overlooked Video Game Creators Scored an Extra Life (Sam Greszes / Thrillist) "Yes, dear Chicagoans, your humble hometown, the Second City, the City of Broad Shoulders, the Many-Nicknamed City That Is Barely Habitable Eight Months Out of the Year, deserves some recognition when it comes to gaming. It doesn’t get as much credit as the tech havens on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, it really is at the forefront of video game development -- and has been for years."

Metacritic's 7th Annual Game Publisher Rankings (Jason Dietz / Metacritic) "Which game publishers released the best games last year? For the seventh straight year, we have sifted through 12 months of data to determine the best and worst game publishers of the year, based solely on the quality of their 2016 releases. [SIMON'S NOTE: I find this a little bizarre, but it's certainly interesting to peruse!]"

Loom (or, how Brian Moriarty Proved That Less is Sometimes More) (Jimmy Maher / The Digital Antiquarian) "In April of 1988, Brian Moriarty of Infocom flew from the East Coast to the West to attend the first ever Computer Game Developers Conference. Hard-pressed from below by the slowing sales of their text adventures and from above by parent company Activision’s ever more demanding management, Infocom didn’t have the money to pay for Moriarty’s trip."

For Honor's mastermind: "My greatest fear was that I would die before I could share this with the world" (Wouter McDutch / GamesRadar) "According to Jason VandenBerghe, creative director on Ubisoft’s For Honor, there are only a handful of lucky developers who get to create the game of their dreams. It took him almost ten years to get the vision he had for For Honor greenlit and the game has since been in development for almost five."

Art Of The Title: Doom (2016) (Will Perkins / Art Of The Title) "DOOM’s end credits are the perfect coda for that kind of gameplay experience. A four-minute reprise of the player’s gib-filled journey, the title sequence is a hard rockin’, shotgun-blasting, demon-dismembering battle across Mars and into Hell itself."

The story of Warframe: how a game no publisher wanted found 26 million players (Tom Marks / PC Gamer) "In early 2013, Digital Extremes finally released the free-to-play space-ninja shooter it had wanted to make for over 13 years, but that doesn’t mean it was a happy time for the studio. Every publisher with an opportunity to back Warframe had passed, and most even said outright it would fail."

How the Yakuza helped sell Nintendo's first game (Chris Bratt / Eurogamer) "Join me in today's episode of Here's A Thing, as we take a look back at a very different kind of Nintendo and how, surprisingly, the Yakuza helped ensure its first game was such a massive success."

Other Places: Hitman (Other Places / YouTube) "Other Places is a series of short films celebrating beautiful videogame worlds. [SIMON'S NOTE: not writing, but certainly beautiful and a great idea - there's a whole YouTube channel of more if you like 'em.]"

Devs discuss the history and the future of so-called 'walking sims' (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "In many games, walking around is just something we do before jumping over that wall or shooting that menacing enemy. But an increasing number of independent games are tamping down on feature-creep and reimagining how we consider putting one step in front of the other."

The Story Behind YouTube's Strangely Compelling 'Hot Pepper Gaming' Channel (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "Nothing lasts forever, not even a YouTube channel about people eating obnoxiously hot peppers and trying to talk about video games. On February 6, Hot Pepper Gaming uploaded its its final episode, a tear-filled video about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's recent remastering."

Meet Hungrybox, the Most Resilient 'Smash Bros.' Champion (Justin Groot / Glixel) "'God, I'm crying a lot, I'm sorry,' said Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma, one of five Super Smash Bros. Melee players (the others being Adam "Armada" Lindgren, Joseph "Mango" Marquez, Kevin "PPMD" Nanney and Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman) known as "Gods" for their lopsided domination of the modern competitive scene."

Darwin's Demons - Natural Selection Applied To Space Invaders (Scott Manley / YouTube) "Darwin's Demons is a student game project which applies genetic algorithms to space invaders to make each level harder than the last. "

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

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include A Night In The Woods' cartoon realism, a history of Loom, and much more.

Well, it's almost GDC time (latest announces here), so next week's Video Game Deep Cuts will be the final one before the show. Then the weekend after that may turn into a 'Game Developers Conference 2017 highlights' joint, because I may be a BIT too busy to find new links that week, heh. BTW, while you're waiting for the show, read up on this year's IGF finalists and with alt.ctrl.GDC exhibitors via the linked Gamasutra interview series.

- Simon, curator.]

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

Why road-building in Cities: Skylines is a pleasure (Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun) "Cities: Skylines is a sim that feels uncommonly alive and reactive to your planning... They may walk or take a bus or train, but you’ll mostly notice them driving, creating traffic which fundamentally represents the health of your city, a pulsing network that’s driven by Cities: Skylines’ beating heart."

'Metacritic' Still Matters, But For How Long? (Chris Baker / Glixel) "Marc Doyle was headed off for a weekend getaway in Santa Barbara with some of his old college buddies when he received the news that the Washington Post's critic did not enjoy the video game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End."

Coming to Video Games Near You: Depressed Towns, Dead-End Characters (Laura Hudson / New York Times) "In the coming video game Night in the Woods, a young woman named Mae decides to drop out of college and return to the former mining town where she grew up. It’s a place where there is little opportunity and most people are struggling to make ends meet."

How to Make the Best of Working on Licensed Video Games (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "Bowler is used to games with unique challenges; after shipping Game Party Champions, he was seen as someone who could shepherd others like it to the finish line. It's how he ended up as lead designer on a mobile tie-in game for Zack Snyder's Superman reboot, Man of Steel."

Why Yakuza 0 is a Masterclass in Managing Tone (Writing On Games / YouTube) "Yakuza 0 is a wildly dissonant experience, swinging violently between super-serious gangster intrigue, slapstick violence and over-the-top melodrama. It's the absolute best. In this episode of Writing on Games, I analyse why embracing this dissonance allows the game to tell more human stories."

Direction (Rob Fearon) "We are in times where games are in abundance. I wrote about this a few weeks back and I think it’s (hopefully) a useful primer for understanding why Valve are doing what they’re doing. We’ve gone from not many games being sold under our noses to lots of games."

What do developers and publishers really think of SteamSpy? (Ben Barrett / PCGamesN) "It’s constantly referenced by players, journalists, publishers and developers for a variety of reasons - but how accurate is it versus Steam’s unpublished numbers? What do developers think of it, and the ways it’s used? Importantly, do they wish they could be removed from it?"

The long and troubled history of Apocalypse Now, the video game (Adi Robertson / The Verge) "In late January, an exciting and unlikely project showed up on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter: a request for $900,000 to make a video game adaptation of Apocalypse Now, officially blessed by the film’s director Francis Ford Coppola."

Bonchan Looks Back on His Rise in eSports Unfold (Mike Stubbsy / Red Bull eSports) "Bonchan’s Street Fighter origin story is one of the most unusual we’ve heard yet. As he tells us in the latest episode of eSports Unfold, back when Street Fighter was on something of a hiatus, Bonchan met up with a legend of the scene, and quickly rose to the top when things started to pick up."

The Gamer Motivation Profile: Model and Findings (Nick Yee / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2016 GDC session, Quantic Foundry's Nick Yee presents the results of a global survey that help inform game developers about the different motivations of players, showing the different types of potential customer that exist in the video game market."

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas Explains Blizzard’s Newest Experiment, the 'WoW' Token (Heather Newman / Glixel) ""It’s kind of my baby," Ion Hazzikostas says about the WoW token. Though he's now WoW's game director, Hazzikostas has worked on the initiative since its inception. Here, he talks with Glixel about how the death of the Diablo RMAH made the WoW token possible, what people have been spending it on, and its impact on gold farming."

How Chicago's Overlooked Video Game Creators Scored an Extra Life (Sam Greszes / Thrillist) "Yes, dear Chicagoans, your humble hometown, the Second City, the City of Broad Shoulders, the Many-Nicknamed City That Is Barely Habitable Eight Months Out of the Year, deserves some recognition when it comes to gaming. It doesn’t get as much credit as the tech havens on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, it really is at the forefront of video game development -- and has been for years."

Metacritic's 7th Annual Game Publisher Rankings (Jason Dietz / Metacritic) "Which game publishers released the best games last year? For the seventh straight year, we have sifted through 12 months of data to determine the best and worst game publishers of the year, based solely on the quality of their 2016 releases. [SIMON'S NOTE: I find this a little bizarre, but it's certainly interesting to peruse!]"

Loom (or, how Brian Moriarty Proved That Less is Sometimes More) (Jimmy Maher / The Digital Antiquarian) "In April of 1988, Brian Moriarty of Infocom flew from the East Coast to the West to attend the first ever Computer Game Developers Conference. Hard-pressed from below by the slowing sales of their text adventures and from above by parent company Activision’s ever more demanding management, Infocom didn’t have the money to pay for Moriarty’s trip."

For Honor's mastermind: "My greatest fear was that I would die before I could share this with the world" (Wouter McDutch / GamesRadar) "According to Jason VandenBerghe, creative director on Ubisoft’s For Honor, there are only a handful of lucky developers who get to create the game of their dreams. It took him almost ten years to get the vision he had for For Honor greenlit and the game has since been in development for almost five."

Art Of The Title: Doom (2016) (Will Perkins / Art Of The Title) "DOOM’s end credits are the perfect coda for that kind of gameplay experience. A four-minute reprise of the player’s gib-filled journey, the title sequence is a hard rockin’, shotgun-blasting, demon-dismembering battle across Mars and into Hell itself."

The story of Warframe: how a game no publisher wanted found 26 million players (Tom Marks / PC Gamer) "In early 2013, Digital Extremes finally released the free-to-play space-ninja shooter it had wanted to make for over 13 years, but that doesn’t mean it was a happy time for the studio. Every publisher with an opportunity to back Warframe had passed, and most even said outright it would fail."

How the Yakuza helped sell Nintendo's first game (Chris Bratt / Eurogamer) "Join me in today's episode of Here's A Thing, as we take a look back at a very different kind of Nintendo and how, surprisingly, the Yakuza helped ensure its first game was such a massive success."

Other Places: Hitman (Other Places / YouTube) "Other Places is a series of short films celebrating beautiful videogame worlds. [SIMON'S NOTE: not writing, but certainly beautiful and a great idea - there's a whole YouTube channel of more if you like 'em.]"

Devs discuss the history and the future of so-called 'walking sims' (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "In many games, walking around is just something we do before jumping over that wall or shooting that menacing enemy. But an increasing number of independent games are tamping down on feature-creep and reimagining how we consider putting one step in front of the other."

The Story Behind YouTube's Strangely Compelling 'Hot Pepper Gaming' Channel (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "Nothing lasts forever, not even a YouTube channel about people eating obnoxiously hot peppers and trying to talk about video games. On February 6, Hot Pepper Gaming uploaded its its final episode, a tear-filled video about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's recent remastering."

Meet Hungrybox, the Most Resilient 'Smash Bros.' Champion (Justin Groot / Glixel) "'God, I'm crying a lot, I'm sorry,' said Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma, one of five Super Smash Bros. Melee players (the others being Adam "Armada" Lindgren, Joseph "Mango" Marquez, Kevin "PPMD" Nanney and Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman) known as "Gods" for their lopsided domination of the modern competitive scene."

Darwin's Demons - Natural Selection Applied To Space Invaders (Scott Manley / YouTube) "Darwin's Demons is a student game project which applies genetic algorithms to space invaders to make each level harder than the last. "

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

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include A Night In The Woods' cartoon realism, a history of Loom, and much more.

Well, it's almost GDC time (latest announces here), so next week's Video Game Deep Cuts will be the final one before the show. Then the weekend after that may turn into a 'Game Developers Conference 2017 highlights' joint, because I may be a BIT too busy to find new links that week, heh. BTW, while you're waiting for the show, read up on this year's IGF finalists and with alt.ctrl.GDC exhibitors via the linked Gamasutra interview series.

- Simon, curator.]

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

Why road-building in Cities: Skylines is a pleasure (Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun) "Cities: Skylines is a sim that feels uncommonly alive and reactive to your planning... They may walk or take a bus or train, but you’ll mostly notice them driving, creating traffic which fundamentally represents the health of your city, a pulsing network that’s driven by Cities: Skylines’ beating heart."

'Metacritic' Still Matters, But For How Long? (Chris Baker / Glixel) "Marc Doyle was headed off for a weekend getaway in Santa Barbara with some of his old college buddies when he received the news that the Washington Post's critic did not enjoy the video game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End."

Coming to Video Games Near You: Depressed Towns, Dead-End Characters (Laura Hudson / New York Times) "In the coming video game Night in the Woods, a young woman named Mae decides to drop out of college and return to the former mining town where she grew up. It’s a place where there is little opportunity and most people are struggling to make ends meet."

How to Make the Best of Working on Licensed Video Games (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "Bowler is used to games with unique challenges; after shipping Game Party Champions, he was seen as someone who could shepherd others like it to the finish line. It's how he ended up as lead designer on a mobile tie-in game for Zack Snyder's Superman reboot, Man of Steel."

Why Yakuza 0 is a Masterclass in Managing Tone (Writing On Games / YouTube) "Yakuza 0 is a wildly dissonant experience, swinging violently between super-serious gangster intrigue, slapstick violence and over-the-top melodrama. It's the absolute best. In this episode of Writing on Games, I analyse why embracing this dissonance allows the game to tell more human stories."

Direction (Rob Fearon) "We are in times where games are in abundance. I wrote about this a few weeks back and I think it’s (hopefully) a useful primer for understanding why Valve are doing what they’re doing. We’ve gone from not many games being sold under our noses to lots of games."

What do developers and publishers really think of SteamSpy? (Ben Barrett / PCGamesN) "It’s constantly referenced by players, journalists, publishers and developers for a variety of reasons - but how accurate is it versus Steam’s unpublished numbers? What do developers think of it, and the ways it’s used? Importantly, do they wish they could be removed from it?"

The long and troubled history of Apocalypse Now, the video game (Adi Robertson / The Verge) "In late January, an exciting and unlikely project showed up on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter: a request for $900,000 to make a video game adaptation of Apocalypse Now, officially blessed by the film’s director Francis Ford Coppola."

Bonchan Looks Back on His Rise in eSports Unfold (Mike Stubbsy / Red Bull eSports) "Bonchan’s Street Fighter origin story is one of the most unusual we’ve heard yet. As he tells us in the latest episode of eSports Unfold, back when Street Fighter was on something of a hiatus, Bonchan met up with a legend of the scene, and quickly rose to the top when things started to pick up."

The Gamer Motivation Profile: Model and Findings (Nick Yee / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2016 GDC session, Quantic Foundry's Nick Yee presents the results of a global survey that help inform game developers about the different motivations of players, showing the different types of potential customer that exist in the video game market."

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas Explains Blizzard’s Newest Experiment, the 'WoW' Token (Heather Newman / Glixel) ""It’s kind of my baby," Ion Hazzikostas says about the WoW token. Though he's now WoW's game director, Hazzikostas has worked on the initiative since its inception. Here, he talks with Glixel about how the death of the Diablo RMAH made the WoW token possible, what people have been spending it on, and its impact on gold farming."

How Chicago's Overlooked Video Game Creators Scored an Extra Life (Sam Greszes / Thrillist) "Yes, dear Chicagoans, your humble hometown, the Second City, the City of Broad Shoulders, the Many-Nicknamed City That Is Barely Habitable Eight Months Out of the Year, deserves some recognition when it comes to gaming. It doesn’t get as much credit as the tech havens on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, it really is at the forefront of video game development -- and has been for years."

Metacritic's 7th Annual Game Publisher Rankings (Jason Dietz / Metacritic) "Which game publishers released the best games last year? For the seventh straight year, we have sifted through 12 months of data to determine the best and worst game publishers of the year, based solely on the quality of their 2016 releases. [SIMON'S NOTE: I find this a little bizarre, but it's certainly interesting to peruse!]"

Loom (or, how Brian Moriarty Proved That Less is Sometimes More) (Jimmy Maher / The Digital Antiquarian) "In April of 1988, Brian Moriarty of Infocom flew from the East Coast to the West to attend the first ever Computer Game Developers Conference. Hard-pressed from below by the slowing sales of their text adventures and from above by parent company Activision’s ever more demanding management, Infocom didn’t have the money to pay for Moriarty’s trip."

For Honor's mastermind: "My greatest fear was that I would die before I could share this with the world" (Wouter McDutch / GamesRadar) "According to Jason VandenBerghe, creative director on Ubisoft’s For Honor, there are only a handful of lucky developers who get to create the game of their dreams. It took him almost ten years to get the vision he had for For Honor greenlit and the game has since been in development for almost five."

Art Of The Title: Doom (2016) (Will Perkins / Art Of The Title) "DOOM’s end credits are the perfect coda for that kind of gameplay experience. A four-minute reprise of the player’s gib-filled journey, the title sequence is a hard rockin’, shotgun-blasting, demon-dismembering battle across Mars and into Hell itself."

The story of Warframe: how a game no publisher wanted found 26 million players (Tom Marks / PC Gamer) "In early 2013, Digital Extremes finally released the free-to-play space-ninja shooter it had wanted to make for over 13 years, but that doesn’t mean it was a happy time for the studio. Every publisher with an opportunity to back Warframe had passed, and most even said outright it would fail."

How the Yakuza helped sell Nintendo's first game (Chris Bratt / Eurogamer) "Join me in today's episode of Here's A Thing, as we take a look back at a very different kind of Nintendo and how, surprisingly, the Yakuza helped ensure its first game was such a massive success."

Other Places: Hitman (Other Places / YouTube) "Other Places is a series of short films celebrating beautiful videogame worlds. [SIMON'S NOTE: not writing, but certainly beautiful and a great idea - there's a whole YouTube channel of more if you like 'em.]"

Devs discuss the history and the future of so-called 'walking sims' (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "In many games, walking around is just something we do before jumping over that wall or shooting that menacing enemy. But an increasing number of independent games are tamping down on feature-creep and reimagining how we consider putting one step in front of the other."

The Story Behind YouTube's Strangely Compelling 'Hot Pepper Gaming' Channel (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "Nothing lasts forever, not even a YouTube channel about people eating obnoxiously hot peppers and trying to talk about video games. On February 6, Hot Pepper Gaming uploaded its its final episode, a tear-filled video about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's recent remastering."

Meet Hungrybox, the Most Resilient 'Smash Bros.' Champion (Justin Groot / Glixel) "'God, I'm crying a lot, I'm sorry,' said Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma, one of five Super Smash Bros. Melee players (the others being Adam "Armada" Lindgren, Joseph "Mango" Marquez, Kevin "PPMD" Nanney and Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman) known as "Gods" for their lopsided domination of the modern competitive scene."

Darwin's Demons - Natural Selection Applied To Space Invaders (Scott Manley / YouTube) "Darwin's Demons is a student game project which applies genetic algorithms to space invaders to make each level harder than the last. "

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

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include A Night In The Woods' cartoon realism, a history of Loom, and much more.

Well, it's almost GDC time (latest announces here), so next week's Video Game Deep Cuts will be the final one before the show. Then the weekend after that may turn into a 'Game Developers Conference 2017 highlights' joint, because I may be a BIT too busy to find new links that week, heh. BTW, while you're waiting for the show, read up on this year's IGF finalists and with alt.ctrl.GDC exhibitors via the linked Gamasutra interview series.

- Simon, curator.]

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

Why road-building in Cities: Skylines is a pleasure (Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun) "Cities: Skylines is a sim that feels uncommonly alive and reactive to your planning... They may walk or take a bus or train, but you’ll mostly notice them driving, creating traffic which fundamentally represents the health of your city, a pulsing network that’s driven by Cities: Skylines’ beating heart."

'Metacritic' Still Matters, But For How Long? (Chris Baker / Glixel) "Marc Doyle was headed off for a weekend getaway in Santa Barbara with some of his old college buddies when he received the news that the Washington Post's critic did not enjoy the video game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End."

Coming to Video Games Near You: Depressed Towns, Dead-End Characters (Laura Hudson / New York Times) "In the coming video game Night in the Woods, a young woman named Mae decides to drop out of college and return to the former mining town where she grew up. It’s a place where there is little opportunity and most people are struggling to make ends meet."

How to Make the Best of Working on Licensed Video Games (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "Bowler is used to games with unique challenges; after shipping Game Party Champions, he was seen as someone who could shepherd others like it to the finish line. It's how he ended up as lead designer on a mobile tie-in game for Zack Snyder's Superman reboot, Man of Steel."

Why Yakuza 0 is a Masterclass in Managing Tone (Writing On Games / YouTube) "Yakuza 0 is a wildly dissonant experience, swinging violently between super-serious gangster intrigue, slapstick violence and over-the-top melodrama. It's the absolute best. In this episode of Writing on Games, I analyse why embracing this dissonance allows the game to tell more human stories."

Direction (Rob Fearon) "We are in times where games are in abundance. I wrote about this a few weeks back and I think it’s (hopefully) a useful primer for understanding why Valve are doing what they’re doing. We’ve gone from not many games being sold under our noses to lots of games."

What do developers and publishers really think of SteamSpy? (Ben Barrett / PCGamesN) "It’s constantly referenced by players, journalists, publishers and developers for a variety of reasons - but how accurate is it versus Steam’s unpublished numbers? What do developers think of it, and the ways it’s used? Importantly, do they wish they could be removed from it?"

The long and troubled history of Apocalypse Now, the video game (Adi Robertson / The Verge) "In late January, an exciting and unlikely project showed up on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter: a request for $900,000 to make a video game adaptation of Apocalypse Now, officially blessed by the film’s director Francis Ford Coppola."

Bonchan Looks Back on His Rise in eSports Unfold (Mike Stubbsy / Red Bull eSports) "Bonchan’s Street Fighter origin story is one of the most unusual we’ve heard yet. As he tells us in the latest episode of eSports Unfold, back when Street Fighter was on something of a hiatus, Bonchan met up with a legend of the scene, and quickly rose to the top when things started to pick up."

The Gamer Motivation Profile: Model and Findings (Nick Yee / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2016 GDC session, Quantic Foundry's Nick Yee presents the results of a global survey that help inform game developers about the different motivations of players, showing the different types of potential customer that exist in the video game market."

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas Explains Blizzard’s Newest Experiment, the 'WoW' Token (Heather Newman / Glixel) ""It’s kind of my baby," Ion Hazzikostas says about the WoW token. Though he's now WoW's game director, Hazzikostas has worked on the initiative since its inception. Here, he talks with Glixel about how the death of the Diablo RMAH made the WoW token possible, what people have been spending it on, and its impact on gold farming."

How Chicago's Overlooked Video Game Creators Scored an Extra Life (Sam Greszes / Thrillist) "Yes, dear Chicagoans, your humble hometown, the Second City, the City of Broad Shoulders, the Many-Nicknamed City That Is Barely Habitable Eight Months Out of the Year, deserves some recognition when it comes to gaming. It doesn’t get as much credit as the tech havens on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, it really is at the forefront of video game development -- and has been for years."

Metacritic's 7th Annual Game Publisher Rankings (Jason Dietz / Metacritic) "Which game publishers released the best games last year? For the seventh straight year, we have sifted through 12 months of data to determine the best and worst game publishers of the year, based solely on the quality of their 2016 releases. [SIMON'S NOTE: I find this a little bizarre, but it's certainly interesting to peruse!]"

Loom (or, how Brian Moriarty Proved That Less is Sometimes More) (Jimmy Maher / The Digital Antiquarian) "In April of 1988, Brian Moriarty of Infocom flew from the East Coast to the West to attend the first ever Computer Game Developers Conference. Hard-pressed from below by the slowing sales of their text adventures and from above by parent company Activision’s ever more demanding management, Infocom didn’t have the money to pay for Moriarty’s trip."

For Honor's mastermind: "My greatest fear was that I would die before I could share this with the world" (Wouter McDutch / GamesRadar) "According to Jason VandenBerghe, creative director on Ubisoft’s For Honor, there are only a handful of lucky developers who get to create the game of their dreams. It took him almost ten years to get the vision he had for For Honor greenlit and the game has since been in development for almost five."

Art Of The Title: Doom (2016) (Will Perkins / Art Of The Title) "DOOM’s end credits are the perfect coda for that kind of gameplay experience. A four-minute reprise of the player’s gib-filled journey, the title sequence is a hard rockin’, shotgun-blasting, demon-dismembering battle across Mars and into Hell itself."

The story of Warframe: how a game no publisher wanted found 26 million players (Tom Marks / PC Gamer) "In early 2013, Digital Extremes finally released the free-to-play space-ninja shooter it had wanted to make for over 13 years, but that doesn’t mean it was a happy time for the studio. Every publisher with an opportunity to back Warframe had passed, and most even said outright it would fail."

How the Yakuza helped sell Nintendo's first game (Chris Bratt / Eurogamer) "Join me in today's episode of Here's A Thing, as we take a look back at a very different kind of Nintendo and how, surprisingly, the Yakuza helped ensure its first game was such a massive success."

Other Places: Hitman (Other Places / YouTube) "Other Places is a series of short films celebrating beautiful videogame worlds. [SIMON'S NOTE: not writing, but certainly beautiful and a great idea - there's a whole YouTube channel of more if you like 'em.]"

Devs discuss the history and the future of so-called 'walking sims' (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "In many games, walking around is just something we do before jumping over that wall or shooting that menacing enemy. But an increasing number of independent games are tamping down on feature-creep and reimagining how we consider putting one step in front of the other."

The Story Behind YouTube's Strangely Compelling 'Hot Pepper Gaming' Channel (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "Nothing lasts forever, not even a YouTube channel about people eating obnoxiously hot peppers and trying to talk about video games. On February 6, Hot Pepper Gaming uploaded its its final episode, a tear-filled video about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's recent remastering."

Meet Hungrybox, the Most Resilient 'Smash Bros.' Champion (Justin Groot / Glixel) "'God, I'm crying a lot, I'm sorry,' said Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma, one of five Super Smash Bros. Melee players (the others being Adam "Armada" Lindgren, Joseph "Mango" Marquez, Kevin "PPMD" Nanney and Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman) known as "Gods" for their lopsided domination of the modern competitive scene."

Darwin's Demons - Natural Selection Applied To Space Invaders (Scott Manley / YouTube) "Darwin's Demons is a student game project which applies genetic algorithms to space invaders to make each level harder than the last. "

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

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]