#i knew of it a long time ago back when tg was the only thing i read

[kiyomie]

i hate how i forgot that ishida made a one shot of hisoka :’) 

[quilna]

A very long time ago I suggested a MBaV au then later took it down because I didn’t think that many people watched the show so not many people probably knew what I was talking about. I’ve decided to bring it back.

I had art to go with this (Which I might have posted earlier so my apologies if this is the second time you’ve seen this au) but people didn’t seem particuarly fond of it and I was worried that the art would be offputting from the actual concept.

Anyway, MBaV stands for My Babysitter’s a Vampire and it was this cheesy supernatural show I watched when I was a kid. This au has a few differences from the show, either because the time frame doesn’t fit (MBaV is set in the modern day, TGS is Victorian London so some things don’t match up), because I don’t properly remember the episode (It’s been a long time, not everything will match up. There are some episodes that I didn’t see at all.), or just because the change seemed better fitting for the au.

Dr Jekyll is a powerful spellcaster who, after a mishap with a spell years ago, accidentally split himself into two. While Jekyll is known for being one of the older and more skilled spellcasters in London, Edward has a bad habit of messing up spells, either by not reading through the consequences before using them or reading them backwards. He’s technically still powerful but it’s difficult for people to tell when so many of his spells go sideways.

The pair can hide memories from each other and both use it to screw with the other.

Jekyll runs a society for the supernatural, trying to keep the supernatural side of London from messing around with the normal side too much. However, the society has a cover of being a society for the sciences so it attracts a mixture of regular humans and the supernatural meaning that:

A. The supernatural side of the society has to be hidden from some of the society’s members

B. They’re not actually sure how many are human and how many are supernatural, leading to some more malicious monsters slipping in.

--

Lanyon, meanwhile, is a seer. By touching people or certain objects he can receive visions of the future or the past but they’re not always clear.

Throughout his life, these abilities have allowed him to learn a lot of things he didn’t want to know about - he always knew when other people were just trying to use him, he always knew when something bad was going to happen to someone, and it left him rather cynical and detatched. He does his best to avoid contact with people to avoid getting these visions.

However, he starts to get particularly bad visions from Dr Jekyll, hinting that Edward Hyde will eventually start being a danger to Jekyll. As a result, he’s doing his best to figure out what the deal with Edward is before it’s too late or, at least, get rid of Edward before things can come to pass.

Rachel and Henry don’t seem to take him seriously about Edward (Rachel doesn’t want to believe that Edward could hurt Jekyll and, therefore, reasons that Lanyon’s visions aren’t telling him everything and Jekyll, obviously, already knows everything and wants Lanyon to stay out of it before he learns the truth.)

--

Rachel is a fledgling vampire, bitten and turned by Moreau, the leader of a vampiric cult. She hasn’t drunk human blood yet which means she’s weaker than most vampires, hoping that, if she remains a fledgling (continues to not drink from people) she might one day be cured.

Jekyll helps make a blood substitute for her so she never has to drink from a human.

The Elephants are an all female all vampire group so Lucy and Elsie are very supportive of Rachel’s vampirism and often give her advice on the matter. (Although they don’t really get her aversion from drinking human blood.) Lucy is a very old and powerful vampire.

Eli was killed by Moreau when he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

--

Frankenstein is a necromancer who came to London looking for the  powerful spellcaster she had heard so much about, wanting his help to cure vampirism entirely. However, the moment she arrived she ended  up in an altercation with Moreau, leaving her injured. To her annoyance,  she had to pick up the cover of being a scientist looking for a cure  for her son’s terrible condition (The son being Creature.) and was taken in by the society while  she searches for the spellcaster in her spare time. To her extra  annoyance, every time she slips away and starts trying to track the  spellcaster, it always somehow seems to lead her directly into the path  of “the naive human” Dr Jekyll leading to her being put back to bed every time.

In all fairness, Jekyll has perfected the ignorant human act.

Things become trickier however when her spell finally leads her to Edward Hyde instead, leading her to believe that he’s the spellcaster. Edward doesn’t correct her or even let Jekyll know about this, wanting to prove himself as powerful as Jekyll.

Eventually, he starts searching for a powerful magical artifact which could help them. A magical artifact with absolutely no corrupting properties at all. Ever. It’s perfectly safe and will not at all ever send Hyde, already the personification of evil, towards trying to eliminate his good half and take over London. Of course not.

Jekyll knows that something bad is afoot but, with Hyde blocking his memories from him, he doesn’t know exactly what. Neither does Frankenstein realize her mistake until it’s too late.

---

The lodgers:

Helsby is a mermaid. When he’s touched by water, he turns into his mermaid form and his singing voice can send everyone around him into a rage. After he causes a lot of chaos around the society, Lanyon, Rachel, and Hyde set out to try to defeat him in a music contest. If he loses, he has to stop. This plan goes sideways when Hyde marches in with a trumpet cursed to make the most horrible noise possible and basically forces Helsby into submission instead. And destroys Lanyon and Rachel’s eardrums in the process.

Jasper is a werewolf as always. He came directly to the society, looking for help with his condition, fearing the danger of his werewolf half. Werewolves and vampires have a natural rivalry but Rachel just decided that the taboo of it was just more romantic and fell for him. When the full moon came, though, everyone found out that Jasper just turns into a harmless dog. Rachel was a little disappointed but still loved him anyway.

Cantilupe is an ancient god who slipped in with the intent of collecting followers in the society to bring about the apocalypse, pretending to be a zoologist. However, she then met Lavender, a newer human zoologist who viewed her as her senior and constantly looked for Cantilupe’s help with her work. Cantilupe decided she was fond of this tiny human and stopped trying to end the world. Lavender still isn’t aware that her senior is a literal god.

Maijabi is a spirit that can inhabit mirrors. His cursed mirror was accidentally taken in by the society where he began to manipulate people who looked into his mirror into harming people around them to get revenge for his death after dying in a prank gone wrong. As it turned out, though, Lanyon could see him for what he was thanks to his powers. After stopping him, Jekyll used his magic to make him visible to other people so he can sort of live again. He still can’t touch people without passing through them.

Sinnett is human but, at one point, a sentient tree ends up getting into the society and taking control of all of the automatons, technology, and clockwork in there, including Sinnett’s arm. He helps arm the trio with flamethrowers to fight the tree but they couldn’t get the last bit of tree of out Sinnett’s prosthetic arm. Now he has to deal with an evil tree in his arm which occasionally tries to convince him to destroy the world. He tunes it out.

Tweedy is also human but he’s a “paranormal investigator” who came to the society looking for ghosts. Most of his equipment suspiciously goes off around Rachel (She is undead and all) and everyone has to keep trying to hide the numerous ghosts and zombies in the society.

Bryson is the ghost of a once famous aeronaut looking to regain his lost fame. He tries to force Lanyon as the only person who can see him into helping him with this but Lanyon knows absolutely nothing about aeronautics.

---

Other things:

Once, as a lesson to try to teach Robert, Rachel, and Edward to work together, Henry secretly used a spell to send each one of them into their own pocket dimension based off of each of their fears. Initially it was supposed to have safeguards in place to keep the exercise safe and keep the fears mild.

Hyde was given the fear of being alone (A world completely devoid of people)

Rachel was given a fear of losing herself to her vampirism (A more powerful and evil version of herself)

Robert was given the villain from a play he watched recently which frightened him. (An automaton dentist gone rogue.)

However, either by Hyde messing around with magic to try to free them all or by some malicious outside intervention (Because it would be mean for Jekyll to do this himself but I can’t miss out the angst of a proper worst fear episode.) the safeguards got removed and the worlds started to twist themselves to everyone’s deepest darkest fears.

Hyde ended up chased by his own friends, turning on him after they discovered his secret.

Rachel was chased by the ghost of Eli, blaming her for his death.

Robert got a monstrous version of Hyde from his visions, the version of Hyde he knew was someday destined to kill Jekyll. (Hyde was very flattered when he found out.)

All of them try to hide their fears from the others and the worlds continue feeding off their fear and becoming more monsterous and twisted as time goes on.

They all only just escape.

--

Jekyll and Hyde have been seen in the same place before which doesn’t help anyone figure out that they’re the same person. Thanks to messing around with an old cursed camera from Jekyll’s collection, Hyde accidentally makes an evil clone of himself. Everyone kind of notices that Hyde’s acting a little worse than usual but Jekyll’s the only one who knows that something wrong’s going on here (Because that’s himself just standing there mocking him.) and Jekyll has to try to stop the evil Hyde alone, unable to tell anyone why he knows that isn’t the real Hyde.

--

Jekyll once accidentally hired a carriage haunted by the ghost of a dead vampire and everyone had to work together to stake it because it wouldn’t stop running people over.

They don’t talk about it.

The horses came out fine.

--

Hyde once tried to resurrect an old pet of Lucy’s to attempt to impress her (Pets don’t live awfully long when you’re immortal after all.) but ended up bringing to life every dead animal in the area. Every last one of them turned out violent. After getting rid of most of the animals, they found one little zombie dog that somehow didn’t become violent. Jekyll took it in and named it Zosi.

[suphoshi]

FRAGILE | Park Chanyeol x reader

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 1,766

Warning: None! (do beware for grammatical errors though lol not proof read at all)

-

You’re pregnant, can’t see your toes, and the world is falling apart.

Chanyeol still loves you.

-

You stared at yourself in the mirror with downturned lips.

Your stomach hung lower than ever before and when you looked down, you couldn’t even see your toes anymore.

Was my hair always this wiry?

Whoever said pregnancy was a beautiful thing had obviously never seen the hair growing on your legs.

“Babe, I’m home!”

You whined immediately at the sound of his voice and turned around to lock the bathroom door. It had been an hour since you went in there, all to surprise Chanyeol. You hadn’t had sex for going on a month because your nausea was almost constant, and he had been on a week-long business trip. You wanted to do something nice and you couldn’t even stop looking in the mirror long enough to shower.

Was my ass always this big?

“Babe?”

His voice was closer, and you sat on the toilet, holding your head in your hands.

“Don’t come in here!” You yelled.

Thankfully, you had locked the bathroom door because despite your request he tried to get in anyways.

“What’s wrong? Let me in.”

Tears fell down your cheeks and your lip trembled, staring at the chipped paint of your toenails. It only made you cry harder.

Were my ankles always this swollen?

“Go away!”

The doorknob turned again. “Why are you crying? What happened?! Are you hurt?!”

“Not physically!” You retorted.

“What does that even mean? Get out here right now.”

You hauled yourself back up (was it always this hard to move around?) and walked towards the door, pulling it open and staring up at him.

He looked so good. Too good for you. Your face crumpled, lip jutting out. “I used to be so pretty. Now look at me.” He looked you up and down at your request and you closed your eyes, a sob sneaking past your lips. “I’m a hairy fucking potato sack.”

He was quiet, but only for a few seconds while you cried.

“Babe,” you heard his unmistakable laugh as he pulled you into his arms, hands wiping the tears from your cheeks even though they were nonstop. “where is this coming from?! You’re not a hairy potato sack!”

“I can’t even bend over to paint my toenails anymore!” You cried.

His chest rumbled with more laughter and he pressed kisses to your tear-soaked face without contempt. It warmed your heart in the same way it broke it (How can he stand being with me like this?) When he was satisfied with that, he pressed your face into his chest and rocked you back and forth like a child.

It was nice.

Thirty minutes passed before your legs started cramping up and you whined against him, pulling your head back, chin resting on his chest. He peered down at you with a smile that you weren’t ready to reciprocate.

“My legs hurt.”

He moved without question, leading you to the bed and sitting you down.

“Want to tell me what happened?”

You teared up again and he kneeled down in front of you, resting his head on your knees.

“I just wanted to look nice for you since we haven’t had sex in a decade, but I looked in the mirror and just-” you paused, looking at him incredulously. “I don’t know how to make this look nice! And I couldn’t bend down to shave my legs or paint my toenails. And I was going to wear your sweatshirt to be sexy, but I’m scared it won’t even fit! I don’t even know who I am anymore, I feel like I was swallowed by another person!”

He smiled and it took every bit of restraint you had not to slap him. How could he sit there looking pretty and smiling while you were having a complete meltdown?

Before you could yell, he stood up and pressed a chaste kiss to your lips, turning around and walking into the bathroom.

“Don’t move.” He yelled back just as you were turning around to grab the tv remote to throw at the back of his head. When he returned, he was holding his sweatshirt that you took into the bathroom. He pulled it over your head in silence, fixed your hair when your head poked through and then walked away again. You stood up to fix it, shocked to see that you weren’t as big as you’d imagined since you were still swimming in it, belly only somewhat showing.

“Okay, so” Chanyeol walked in again, but that time he carried a big bowl of water and some towels. He sat it down at your feet and reached into the pocket of his hoodie to pull out a few different colors of nail polish and a razor. “I’ve never shaved my legs, but I figure it’s like shaving your face. Right?”

You stared down at him and felt tears bubbling in your throat.

“Also, do you want…” He looked at the bottom of each different nail polish. “tickle me pink, oh so blue, or the devil’s red?”

When he looked back up at you from the floor, the tears wouldn’t stop.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” You wiped at your face with the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “I’m being so annoying and you’re still being nice. What’s wrong with you?”

He stood up and sat on the bed beside you, grabbing your hand tightly. He waited for you to regain some composure and look at him before speaking.

“I love you. And that’s not conditional or when I think you deserve it. I love you crying, whining, yelling, and even when you can’t bend over anymore. I love you from this life to the next. I love you snotty nosed and mascara stained cheeks.” He brushed his thumb across your cheek, and you leaned into his hand. “I love every crazy little corner of you.”

You smiled despite the tears and he lit up, kissing you with so much love that your chest hurt.

When he pulled back you shoved at his chest playfully. “When did you get so cute?”

He scooted back down to the floor and grabbed your foot, propping it up on his knee.

“I’m always cute.” He said with an effortless smile.

You somehow loved him a mile more.

-

“Breathe.”

It was so simple, just breathe. In and out. Chest rises and then falls. Smell the roses, blow out the candles.

Just breathe.

Why was it so hard? Why couldn’t you just breathe?

“I can’t-”

You were cut off by warm hands on your cheeks,  silencing all of your thoughts, a deep inhale of reality that calmed you and reminded you the simple mechanisms of in and out all at the same time.

Your eyes, wide and frantic and scared.

His eyes… calm, loving, and gentle. His thumbs brushed the stray tears from your cheeks and the smile he put on for you left you in shambles.

“You can. Just breathe, like this.” He took a deep breath in and you mimicked him, shaky and full of fear. He released it and again, you followed suit, more tears falling despite the waves of calm that rushed over you.

His breath smelled like mint leaves. He always smelled like mint leaves.

When he smiled, you almost forgot how to breathe again. “See? You can do it. I told you.”

You smiled back, proud that you could do it. Proud that you made him smile. When his eyes lowered down to the all too large baby bump that projected from you, you melted. He rested his hands there and smiled even bigger.

“And you,” he started, and you immediately laughed. “Stop giving your momma a hard time, okay?”

“Yeah, if you could just get your foot out of my rib cage, I think I will be okay.”

Chanyeol’s laugh was harmonious and real. He pressed a kiss to your forehead, and you leaned into his chest, let him hold you as tight as he could, press more kisses into the top of your head.

“I love you.” He mumbled.

“I love you.” You mumbled in reply.

Two hours later, he was packing your things into the car.

“I think- I think we can wait a while longer, okay? Yeah, let’s wait! I don’t want to go yet.”

You were talking to yourself only. Panic rose in your chest the longer he ignored you pleas, fear bubbling over with the tears rolling down your cheeks as Chanyeol worked on setting up the car seat in the back. You shook your head to no one, gripped your stomach and took a step back, ready to run away.

“Let’s just go back inside Yeol, I can’t go today.” You whined, annoyed that he wasn’t paying attention to you. He simply sighed in response, still fiddling with the car seat.

“We’re going to the hospital, you’re in labor.” He mumbled, finally stepping back, and putting your bags in the back.

“No, I’m not!” You shouted and he shot you an annoyed look over his shoulder.

“Your water broke three hours ago!” He yelled and you tossed your head back, crying to the sky since he wasn’t listening.

“Please, let’s just go back inside! I’m not ready, I can’t do this, I just can’t!”

You were sobbing, fingers trembling, when Chanyeol grabbed your face, pulling it back to his level. He didn’t give you more than a second to process what was happening before he kissed you with every bit of love he held in his heart. Every fear you held dissipated. Every worry on your shoulders lifted. Your heart fluttered; stomach flipped.

He rested his forehead on yours when he pulled away and his eyes bore into yours. He was the loveliest human being you had ever known. Every bad day you’d had for the last few months, every second worth of pain and turmoil you had felt, he took it all onto him in a second and carried all of your sorrows. All of your worries.

His smile brought you sunshine.

“You’re going to be the best mom ever.”

You cried out loud and he laughed, pulling you into a tight hug.

“Let’s go get this baby out of you.”

-

Hours, days, weeks later, Chanyeol made sure you knew how loved you were. On your dramatic days, your angry ones. Even the really really depressing days when you hated yourself. His love filled you up and emptied you out over and over and you would never get tired of waking up beside him.

Life was so warm by his side.

Your sunshine.

-

A/N: Hiiiii! So parts of this were actually supposed to be for TG pt II, but it felt so cheap for some reason for my TG Chanyeol and OC. I think I like it much better as a little drabble lol (or not drabble w/e ya want it to be). I wanted to get this out bc I know I suck on updating TG, but i hope this will hold you guys over for a little while!! Writers block has been eating me a l i v e, and it is so frustrating on top of medical issues I’ve been having and my own anxiety/depression stuff. But I’m happy for those of you who will still read my stuff, and I’m so so sorry if I’ve disappointed any of you bc the wait has been so long. Love you all long long time and I hope y’all have the loveliest day!!!! or night <3<3<3

[aks3raao1]

Ah, yes. My first Tumblr post. Idk why I felt the need to share all my pet peeves abt Tokyo Ghoul here since it's already on my wattpad in my Shitpost but ig a part of me wants to see how this works...

You can find me on wattpad if you search this username: Ax3lQu33n

Ok, let's get started. Don't attack me. Btw, I made this like a rlly long time ago fyi

My Opinion on Tokyo Ghoul Even Though No One Asked

I just finished Tokyo Ghoul and I gotta say...good anime. I liked the ending a lot. But I understand why people don't like it... I understand that a lot. And I feel like ranting about it because many of these points are my pet peeves when it comes to stories. Oh, and I never read the manga. This is strictly about the anime.

This may seem offensive to anyone who likes Tokyo Ghoul so just beware. Also, SPOILER ALERT! Btw, I had a really hard time not dropping this.

1. Too many characters

Tokyo Ghoul had WAY too many characters that they didn't know what to do with. It's like Pokemon. Eventually, they added so many Pokemon that they didn't know what to do with them so in the end, they were just...there.

An example of this would be in Tokyo Ghoul: Re (don't remember which 1 tho), there was a girl with blonde hair over her face like a mop bc she didn't like her freckles. They literally just used that scene to explain a character death but it was really...irrelevant. At that point, they literally just killed off a character bc they could. And we barely knew that character too so...it made no sense.

And a bunch of characters didn't have any relevance to the main plot and were mostly just seen fighting. That really peeved me off bc...you just don't do that if you want a good story. Plus, too many of the characters were only introduced way later. Always get the character introductions out the way before you carry on with ANYTHING else.

Tip for writing: Don't use too many characters. Give yourself a minimum and a maximum or else everything will get confusing/seem like it has no relevance. And ALWAYS introduce the majority that will have major plot relevance first.

2. Too much and yet, not enough character backstory

They gave almost every character a good backstory and only discussed it briefly. Instead of hooking the audience and making them wanting more, they just carried on to the next character which made it seem...boring. And the characters they made us want more of, they never even discussed them. It was like everything was left in subtext/watcher's interpretation which is a huge pet peeve that I have... If you're gonna do that, do it right.

Ayato Kirishima was e p i c. You can't change my mind. But...we barely knew anything about his past. We just knew he was Toka's brother and that he was mad at his dead dad. We still didn't know for WHAT. He was an interesting character that showed up at the right time in the right ways and was important to the story as well as certain characters but

We. Didn't. Even. Get. A. Full. Back. Story.

They give us a backstory on the dude with the white hair that was like their body guard or smth rather briefly and even tho it was linked to them and their parents, it still didn't explain why Ayato hated his dad so much or why Toka was dead set on defending him and then later called him an idiot... ONLY IN TG: RE DID WE HEAR THAT THEIR DAD HAD BEEN KILLING BC OF BLOODLUST

Bro...that was srsly too fucking late...

3. HEAVY plot armour and not sticking to the basis

Did y'all notice that in TG: Re, Kaneki and everyone else ate...human food? As sustenance and nutrition?? Not to lessen suspicion??? When in season 1, Kaneki couldn't even stomach down a sandwich? What happened here-

And in the first season as well, they said that ghouls can't have their skin penetrated by things such as knives and etc. Only if your strength is comparable to that of a ghoul's will you be able to deal such a blow. Or if you were using your kagune. That's the reason they invented those weapons using ghoul's kagunes, right?

So...why did they drop that at a point? Juzo (bless his soul, I love him) used literal knives, normal knives to fight off ghouls when the scythe was impractical. Now...where does that make sense? It definetly wasn't a quinque-

Not only that, but somewhere in TG: Re, someone uses a golden sword thingy that's mainly used as a prop in a household. It has a thin blade and is for speedy attacks. It wouldn't work against a ghoul. Yet, he pierced one with it. Then there's me wondering why it didn't break... Forget the guy not being strong enough to deal such a blow, WHY DIDN'T IT FUCKING BREAK?!

And the plot armour part: the things you're supposed to die from just...don't kill you? Heads were still fucking talking after they've been decapitated and people got slashed to PIECES but THEY DIDN'T DIE. Only if it was to continue on with some 💖drama💖 in the plot, did they die by smth trivial. And most characters just got cut off for no apparent reason...

It's like a clear message to us that the world is unfair.

Tip for writing: Don't just kill off characters to advance toward a certain point in the plot, there are other ways. And REMEMBER THE BASIS THAT YOU LAID DOWN!

4. Characters not shown enough

Certain characters were taken out of the story for literal seasons and then only revealed again after the entire thing was finished. I LIKED HIDE, WHY DID HE HAVE TO BE SHOWN DYING AND THEN ONLY COME BACK AT THE LAST 3 EPISODES OF TG SBEJWJIWI2I2

H E D E S E R V E S J U S T I C E

I have seen that most animes do this... Like in BSD, Chuuya is gone for literal seasons and in the BNHA manga (no, I don't read the manga, @travalerray just enjoys telling me stuffs about it), Katsuki and Aizawa (and I think Shoto?) Are gone for a really long time as well. Like-

Please stop this... It's torture and makes no sense.

5. Too many plots all at once

There wasn't just one plot. THERE WERE LIKE 50- It became really hard to keep up and legit so confusing because each one was somewhat different... They shoulda just made a separate anime for everyone's journey bc, suddenly, EVERYONE was the main character but still IN THEIR OWN STORY.

Tip for writing: If you write a story, stick to 1 plot, stick to 1 or 2 main characters and the rest can be an entirely different book. If you put them all in 1 book with each one telling their own story, it's gonna get way too confusing and become an absolute flop. Trust me. Backstories are still fine but not each a different journey...

6. Repeating tropes

This is 1 of my worst pet peeves. Each ghoul character went through smth known as insanity and displayed a whole damn lot of it for no apparent reason other than, "I am a ghoul". They were PERFECTLY normal in human form but then all of a sudden, it's cackling and saying weird shit to sound creepy just bc their eyes changed😐

Mutsuki has a pass, they went clinically insane by normal circumstances (more or less) but...really, man? They...didn't matter to the main plot at all and they were being...pretty dang stupid. I can't...

And Kaneki just kept turning emo. It became so frustrating that I just...really wanted to slap him outta the window. The first time was cool but then I started to hate him. A lot. Like-

I really really really hate this trope.

8. Bad animation

I have only watched the anime so I will say this: the animation could have been better. After the 1st season, the fights seemed sloppy and the movement was stiff... It made me sigh. I can't do better but I feel like the animators could have after seeing season 1.

9. Basically, general knowledge flew out the window

Kagunes changed, ghouls had tattoos, everyone turned insane, emo was apparently a trend the main character picked up, noonethoughttoexplainTokaandTheGourmet'srelationship?

In all honesty...Tokyo Ghoul was bearable with a good plot at first but... It became too much with way too many things.

Ok, that's all from me. And can I just mention that ik the main theme was smth like despairing bc things will never change or etc. (Don't quote me on this) but having to repeat the same thing, same ending (for Kaneki specifically) over and over is not good writing. As compelling as the concept is, that's just sloppy and it gets boring. And the plot was rushed beyond like- dude, we need a breather

Ok, enough of me roasting Tokyo Ghoul. Many people most likely made a post on this already but w h a t e v a h. I had fun when I wrote this. I am sorry (not)

Also...WHY IS MAKING A SIMPLE POST SO DIFFICULT- Or is it just my phone...

[softhotch]

Corset

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x fem!reader

Word Count: 1,469

Warnings: Subby!Hotch in a corset? Show-level violence. Age-gap. Basically just lots of crack with some comforting fluff!

Summary: An unsub gives Hotch an ultimatum: wear lingerie during a press conference or the victim dies. Reader does what she can to comfort the very uncomfortable Unit Chief. Heavily inspired by this scene in Psycho Beach Party where TG wears a corset.

Author’s Note: Please be nice! I haven’t written anything in AGES and this popped into my brain unannounced yesterday when I happened upon that scene from PBP. I hope you like it! There may or may not be a sequel with smut. I haven’t decided yet. Also feel free to let me know if you’d like to be tagged in any future Hotch fics.

Four days ago you and the rest of the BAU had boarded the jet on your way to Memphis where the bodies of three once beautiful women had been discovered assaulted, disfigured, and killed. In the time that you’d been there, the team had had few leads. However, a break in the case came when a woman named Shannon Holloway was abducted. 

Thanks to Garcia’s digging, the team learned that the victim had filed a protective order against her neighbor the year before, one Edward Bayless, a hapless janitor at the local university who had been bullied and disfigured as a child by his abusive alpha male father. When his father had passed away the year before, the murders started.

However, when the BAU and SWAT arrived at Bayless’ home, Shannon was nowhere to be found. When they hauled him in for questioning, he announced that she was still alive but didn’t have long to live. After being interrogated for hours, Bayless finally agreed to release her location...on one condition.

“Is he really going to do it?” Morgan asked, slumping into a chair at the conference table in the local precinct. 

“He doesn’t really have a choice, Morgan. Besides, you know Hotch. If there’s any chance to save the victim, he’ll take it,” JJ replied.

“Edward Bayless is a classic beta male. It makes sense that he would want to humiliate Hotch as much as possible. Bayless hates authority figures and Hotch is the embodiment of that,” Reid explained. 

While the rest of the team discussed the current unsub, you made your way to the restroom door and knocked softly.

“Hotch? Everything okay in there?” You became worried when there was no response. You knocked again and said, “Hotch, I’m coming in. I just wanna talk.”

You entered the men’s room and made your way to the handicapped stall on the end. Leaning against the cold concrete wall, you said softly, “are you okay?”

He didn’t respond at first but then you heard a deep, shaky sigh. “I’m as well as can be expected, I suppose. Can’t say this is how I thought today would go.” 

His voice was quiet and strained. You could practically hear him mentally weighing the pros and cons. JJ was right though. If this was the only way to save the victim, Hotch would do it, no matter how humiliating.

You tried to think of something to say to make him feel better but before you could, he was unlatching the stall door and stepping out. 

You sucked in a breath at the sight of him. He was gorgeous, of course. You’d known that since the first time you’d met. You momentarily flashed back to your initial interview where he’d sat sizing you up from the other side of his desk while you tried not fidget over how attractive the Unit Chief was. You were positive you’d never seen anyone look that good in a suit before. Once you joined the team it hadn’t taken you long to fall for the rest of him - his selflessness, his intelligence, his bravery. 

With him standing in front of you now, looking as self-conscious as you’d ever seen him, your gaze moved down his body slowly, taking in the black corset, black panties, garter belt, and thigh highs. Hotch had legs for days. Who knew? Like on that first day, you had to consciously school your micro-expressions into a poker face so he wouldn’t realize that you harbored an inappropriate crush on him.

You gazed at his face and saw the trepidation he felt. “You look...great,” you said, breathless and hesitant. 

Hotch rolled his eyes and reached into the stall to grab a white, fluffy robe off the hook. “You don’t have to try to make me feel better. I know I look ridiculous.” 

You scoffed, growing bolder with every second, “I’m not just saying that, Sir. You look...” You trailed off, not knowing how to finish that sentence. The more you looked at him, his rosy nipples peaking out over the top of the corset and his happy trail leading down, down, down…

You gulped and your eyes shot back up to his face. Too late. Hotch had an incredulous look on his face, one eyebrow raised. You realized how you must have looked to him. Your breathing was a bit ragged and your pupils were definitely dilated. You might as well have had Horny For Hotch emblazoned across your forehead. 

“I - I...uh,” you stuttered before taking a deep breath and saying, “I just think this look is very...becoming of you, Sir.” Because your brain is a traitor, an image of him bent over his own desk popped into your head and your cheeks heated up. 

Hotch wrapped the bathrobe around himself and cinched the belt tight while maintaining eye contact with you. The look on his face was almost shy, “Do you really think so?” The soft way in which he looked at you made your breath catch. In the two years you’d been with the BAU, you had never seen him like this. His hesitation gave you the confidence you needed.

“To be honest, Sir, I always think you look good. But there’s just something special about a strong, dominant man wearing such delicate clothes.”

Hotch studied your face for a moment, his own expression neutral, and said, “Edward Bayless hopes that doing a press conference in this outfit will humiliate and emasculate me. Is that what you want as well?”

“Of course not,” you replied, vehemently, moving closer to him. “It makes me want to take care of you.” 

You found the surprised look on his face endearing and it spurred you on, “You take care of all of us all the time, Hotch, but who takes care of you? And of course someone like Edward Bayless would believe that it would be that easy to demean you. He believes that kidnapping and torturing beautiful women will make him the strong Alpha male type that he’s always idolized, yet hated. You, on the other hand, already know you’re strong. If anything this outfit serves to highlight that. You’re going to march into that press conference like the badass you are and show Bayless that it doesn’t matter what you wear because at the end of the day you’re a hero and no one can take that away from you.” 

You would have gladly kept the pep talk ramble going but you were interrupted by Hotch leaning down and pressing a surprisingly tender kiss to your lips. 

Hotch broke the kiss and reached his hand up to cup the side of your face. You nuzzled into his touch affectionately. “I don’t need to tell you that anything between us would be inappropriate,” he said quietly. “I’m your supervisor and twenty years your senior. Most people would find the idea of a relationship between us improper, to say the least. But I can’t deny that I’ve always found you very...sweet.” He ran his thumb back and forth across your cheek. You’d always been attracted to the size of his hands.

“I mean it, Hotch. I want to be the one to take care of you. Have you ever had someone do that for you?”

“Do you mean have I ever been submissive with someone before? No. In my experience, people tend to expect someone like me to be dominant all the time. Haley and I never really experimented much.” There was a blush creeping up his neck below the collar of the robe. You could tell this wasn’t a conversation he ever expected to have, let alone now, with you.

“Well, that sort of thing is all about trust, Hotch. I hope you know that you can trust me with anything.”

“Thank you, Agent,” he said, fidgeting adorably with the belt of his robe. “I find that I feel very safe with you.”

Feeling brazen, you surged forward to give him one last kiss but you were interrupted by a sharp knock on the door. 

“Aaron, the reporters are ready,” Rossi announced from the other side of the door. 

Hotch inhaled deeply, steeling himself. You took one of his hands in yours and said, “Hey, you’ve got this, Hotch. If you get nervous, just look at me. I know you can do this.” You gave him one last quick kiss on the cheek and guided him slowly towards the door.

He paused and looked down at you. “Please,” he whispered, “call me Aaron.” With that, he placed a gentle kiss on your knuckles before letting go. He turned and marched through the door with his head held high as you trailed behind him, your hand hovering over the small of his back, still tingling from the feel of his lips.

Tags - @whoreforhotch

[thefandomlesbian]

okay I DEFINITELY want to see you rank your favorite BAU characters

oh boy oh boy oh boy i’m TOAST--

1.) Emily Prentiss: This woman was my gay awakening and I’m still madly in love with her. All of my original works when I was in middle school featured a character who was basically Emily Prentiss under a different name, and she still is easily in my second favorite fictional character of all time. 

2.) Spencer Reid: Spencer was the first character I ever saw on screen who loved learning as much as I did and made me realize there’s no shame in being intelligent or in craving knowledge. I’ve been compared to Spencer since my family first started watching the show when I was a kid, and we share a name, so that’s that.

3.) Aaron Hotchner: I projected all of my insecurities onto Hotch when I was a kid. When I watched his relationship with Haley fall apart on screen, I felt that in my very bones. I cried with him upon her death and raised Jack with him and even though I was long out of the fandom when TG was fired, I was still devastated to hear that he was being forced to leave. His ship with Reid was the first gay ship I ever connected to, and together, they were the first characters to ever teach me that people are gay and it’s okay. The one thing I do dislike about Hotch is how he’s implied to be wickedly intelligent, but it never gets, like, followed through with? The implication that he graduated law school at nineteen or twenty asserts that this man graduated high school when he was sixteen or younger, that he sped through undergrad and was able to get accepted into one of the most prestigious law schools in the country and graduated early and was an incredibly successful lawyer and prosecutor. He worked personal security, SWAT, he did a stent in Seattle, before he became leader of the BAU at twenty-seven years old. Hotch is, in all likelihood, a child prodigy of his own right, and it never gets mentioned because Spencer’s academic accomplishments are more impressive (and I could take this space to do a whole character study on why I think Hotch stopped his pursuit of academia, but I won’t waste my own time, lol). 

4.) Elle Greenaway/Alex Blake: I love both of these ladies so I had to include them. Elle was done dirty by the canon and I adored her work in season one and the unique sensitivity she brought to the field when the BAU was still, as one unsub described it, “a boy’s club.” Alex took a little longer to grow on me (mostly because I was super bitter about Emily being gone that I didn’t want to like her), but the relationship she nurtured with Spencer was like no other, and her submitting her resignation to him instead of her direct superior gets me in the feels every time I watch it. 

5.) Erin Strauss: Strauss is another character done wrong by the canon, and I’m so furious and bitter for her still. I loved watching her grow from a stern politician into someone who genuinely cared about the BAU as part of her family and would do anything to protect them. It was true character development that she went from trying to come for Hotch’s job in season two to deliberately fabricating paperwork to try to catch the Replicator in season eight, the latter which she did without informing anyone because she knew it could put them in danger. Watching her grow close to the team, watching Alex forgive her for her transgressions and become bonded with Rossi and Hotch, I really thought we were going to have an awesome thing going in later seasons, and I was devastated when I saw that it was all poorly written build up just so the writers could snatch the rug out from under us when they killed her off. She gave her life to protect the BAU and I’m going to work to redeem her character in my pieces. (This is an Erin Strauss AND Haley Hotchner defense blog, leave my ladies alone.) 

6.) Dave Rossi: I sometimes take issue with Rossi’s character because he can be so damn arrogant and in early seasons seems to think he’s God’s gift to profiling, but I’m so fond of him for his nurturing relationship with the other characters. He doesn’t believe himself to have any family (of course we find out later he has a daughter, but besides that) so he takes it upon himself to make himself the father of the team. We see this dynamic with Emily and Spencer the most, with Morgan to some degree, with Ashley Seaver a lot (one of the only things I loved about Seaver’s presence in S6), and even with Jack’s little league team. Rossi who will do anything and everything for his team because those are his kids, dammit. 

7.) Penelope Garcia: Penelope is my little ray of sunshine! I love sweet and special headcanons about her and how she keeps up with the team and brings joy to their lives. We share a love for cats, and her origin story always makes me chuckle, especially the opening scene where she says, “I am a psychopath,” and Hotch says, “No, you’re not.” Her relationship with Morgan brings me joy, though I’m still frustrated with the canon for not following through on that and making it “just talk.” I also disliked how canon handled her relationship with Kevin. I love Penelope as a character, but there were some moments that I thought were not written very well for her which is why she isn’t higher up on the list.

8.) Jason Gideon: I know it’s popular to drag Gideon in this fandom, but I like him a lot, and I think his downfall played into the team very well in the end when it led to Rossi’s joining the team. He had some of my favorite moments, especially when he chose to save the school children rather than apprehend Frank (I like to imagine what the other characters would have done in his shoes if Frank had fixated on them instead) and when he saved Billie Copeland while everyone else was prepared to throw in the towel. I like his dynamic with the team and how they (other than Spencer) lose faith in him from the pilot and then gain it back slowly. I enjoy how he interacts with Spencer and teaches him things on screen. I do take issue with his allowing Spencer to view him as a father figure when he knows that that is what Spencer desperately needs and I think Gideon, as compassionate as he is, can be unintentionally manipulative and quite harmful. Still, I think he’s a very intriguing character and I regret we didn’t get more of him. 

9.) JJ: It’s not that I dislike JJ actively (though if you had asked me ten years ago, I probably would’ve said I did). I find JJ’s character incredibly difficult to relate to because, much like I mentioned with Penelope above, she is a victim of bad writing. Unlike Penelope, JJ’s bad writing is damn near ubiquitous from the time Henry is born until the end of the show. She can’t be in a scene with a victim or a family member without bringing up her family, and every time she shows her actual personality, it gets followed up with, “I’m also a mom!” I don’t relate to women whose entire lives revolve around their children, so finding any common ground with me and JJ is extraordinarily difficult. More than that, I abhor her relationship with Will and how Will was allowed to treat her so incredibly poorly and not only does the fandom worship him and never call him out--the writers acted like JJ was in the wrong. It drives me absolutely insane that Will and Haley treated their partners in the exact same way, their character arcs line up almost perfectly, but Will winds up happily married to JJ with two kids and Haley gets to bleed out on the floor of her own home while her husband clutches her dead body and weeps. This storyline is just part of the misogyny in the Criminal Minds canon, and though I like JJ, I have a hard time seeing past all of it to form a good bond with her. Fanon JJ > Canon JJ. 

10.) Derek Morgan: Derek is a character who I think had a lot of wasted potential. He’s the expert on obsessional crimes--never mentioned again. He’s the expert on explosives--mentioned two or three times. Chicago PD? We never get any information as to how he went from PD to FBI. Derek is such a wildly intelligent man, we know that, but much like Hotch, his intelligent gets forgotten in exchange for Spencer to exposit at random, except his is even more pronounced than Hotch’s. After the first few seasons, the writers just treated him like the brawn of the BAU with no other expertise or presence, and I hate that for him--it was such a criminal injustice against his character. Unlike JJ, I do love Derek (my feelings for JJ are generally neutral leaning toward positive--I adore Derek Morgan) but the writers did him so dirty. I don’t like his relationship with Savannah at all. As a CSA survivor, his whole CSA storyline generally bugs the hell out of me because it only gets mentioned when the writers want to go boohoo Derek has trust issues or have an excuse to say “hurrdurr buff guy hates pedophiles” and he’s never shown having any meaningful struggle with his trauma (can be said of most of the trauma in the show) or having any character development (he’s often criticized for not trusting the team as much as he should but he never grows from it). Derek is a character I’m very protective of, but as much as I love his relationships with Spencer, Penelope, and Emily, I just can’t defend the ways the writers let him down so grievously. 

[blazehedgehog]

What was the honest reaction to Sonic 06 back in 2006?

It was a long time ago, so I can only really speak to my own perspective.

Sonic 2006 was the time that Sega’s marketing department really started cranking the hype train really, really hard. Sonic 2006 was announced as a fresh start. A soft reboot. Sonic Team said they were treating it like “the first Sonic game on the Sega Genesis.” You still had Tails, and Knuckles, and Shadow, but it was the start of a new era. A new type of Sonic the Hedgehog. More serious, more realistic, more “epic.”

At this point, there was no reason to necessarily distrust any of that. Yes, Sonic games had been slipping in quality, and yes, Sega was still more or less pretending that everything was “okay.” But that was always in the typical, “we’re trying to sell a video game and not go bankrupt” sense. This felt like a tacit acknowledgement that things weren’t so great and they were going to start over and refocus. Set things right.

Early gameplay footage looked rough. I distinctly remember a Gametrailers hands-on where they were demoing the Mach Speed Zone in Kingdom Valley, and the Sega representative was very clear and upfront that the game wasn’t done yet, and all of the empty space Sonic was running through would be filled in later. (It wasn’t.) There was also the typical debate over the TGS 2006 “Bringing it Home” playable demo, where people argued then, too, that the game wasn’t done yet, and not to judge things too harshly. The final version will be better.

The final version also wasn’t done yet. So, y’know.

I had effectively bought an Xbox 360 for this game. I was broke as per usual, but I’d gotten lucky and won a Gametrailers video competition, which landed me $1000 in Gamestop gift cards. I bought a PS2, a Nintendo DS, and an Xbox 360, plus more than a dozen games between the three platforms. I knew there would be more Xbox 360 games besides Sonic 2006, and I’d even originally wanted a 360 primarily for Elder Scrolls Oblivion, but the simple fact is that once the money was in my hands and I spent it, Sonic 2006 was the only actual Xbox 360 game I owned.

Or was going to own, anyway. I think I’d won the contest in September or October of 2006, when Sonic came out in November. So I bought the 360 a few weeks early with some original Xbox games, and spent the interim with Spider-man 2, Ninja Gaiden Black, and the copy of Halo 2 I borrowed from my cousin.

Sonic 2006 was the first game I’d ever pre-ordered. The second game, pre-ordered on the same day, was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Gamecube. I still have the tiny pre-order statue that came with Sonic. His gloves and socks, once white, have begun to yellow with age, and the skin tone on his face and body is turning an ashy gray.

Even 72 hours before launch, there was not a clear picture what Sonic 2006 actually was. Sega was deliberately obfuscating certain features; early in development they’d sworn up and down that there were only three playable characters in the game, something that blatantly wasn’t true. Perhaps it was miscommunication from Japan, but it meant they were now going out of their way to hide how many other playable characters were actually in the game. I naively distrusted most (if not all) professional reviewers back then, and the earliest scores for Sonic 2006 were all over the map.

As a Sonic fan, you kind of had to know how to read between the lines on the more negative reviews, because we were definitely in the era where it felt like critics were starting to dogpile on the Sonic franchise now that Sega was a third party developer. There weren’t a lot of professional reviews you could trust regarding Sonic games, or at least, that’s what it felt like. This was the rise of the podcast, and snarky hosts were taking whatever low hanging fruit they could get.

I remember waking up on launch day -- friends had gotten up early and picked theirs up in the morning, when I’d rolled out of bed somewhere closer to noon (or maybe even afternoon). I had plans to pick up my copy later that evening, after sunset. My friends did not sound happy, but again, there was always this vibe of “Wait and see.” They had only just started the game. First impressions were still too fresh to really call.

But I had this moment, this cold spot in the pit of my stomach, where I thought “Maybe I can cancel the pre-order and get Gears of War instead?” Reviews for Gears seemed pretty good. I’d probably be happy with it instead of Sonic.

I couldn’t let myself do that. I was a Sonic fan. This was the first big Sonic game of a new generation. A new start. I bought the console for this. First game I ever pre-ordered. The second Sonic game in the history of the franchise I’d bought on launch day. This was it. This was the event. No backing down. Besides, Sonic 2006 was a big 15th Anniversary celebration game. They wouldn’t make such a big deal about the anniversary without just cause, right? Sonic 2006 was going to be great. I just needed to calm down.

So we drove out to Gamestop -- and it was the sort of thing where I think we couldn’t do the pre-order at my local Gamestop for some reason, so this one was a town or two over. It was a journey. I was nervous the whole way there. Something told me I was making a mistake. But I had to do this.

I think it may have been starting to rain as we rolled up on the store. It was around 8pm, and people were starting to camp out on the sidewalk. Literally camp out, tents and all, because of the rain. Today was the launch date for Sonic 2006, but tomorrow was the launch of the Playstation 3. These guys were here for Gamestop’s “Midnight Madness” launch event. They were going to be some of the first to get a PS3. I was probably the last person to pick up a Sonic 2006 pre-order.

Sonic 2006 might have been the first Sonic game to ever make me angry. I’d had a lot of internet debates on how I felt about Sonic Adventure 2, but most of those amounted to splitting hairs about things that felt disappointing when compared to the original Sonic Adventure. I was not angry then, I was simply let down. I was similarly let down when I finally got a chance to play Sonic Heroes. But again, not angry. Baffled, maybe. A little sad. But not angry.

With Sonic 2006, I slammed head first in to all of my excitement and uncertainty at 200mph. This was a Sonic game unlike anything I’d ever played before, and in all of the worst possible ways. Enough has been said about the quality of the game that I don’t need to describe anything that’s wrong with it -- also because literally everything was wrong with it. Perhaps the first video game I’d ever played, ever, on any platform, that actually fought back against your efforts to play it. A disaster in every sense of the word. A broken nightmare. After finishing Sonic’s story, I was mad. How could they let this happen? What was wrong with them?

I was less angry after having finished Shadow’s story. Shadow had even buggier gameplay than Sonic, but it also felt more complex, more action-oriented. His story was better, too -- instead of the sappy Princess love story, Shadow’s story was about how the world was against him, and the crossroads that brought him to: rise above his past and strive to be a better person, or give in to the temptations of evil? It was still dumb as heck, but it was less dumb than Sonic’s story.

By the time the credits rolled, I had accepted the fact that this game was a mess. More of a mess than any Sonic game ever had been before. It was clearly a deeply unfinished game. Friends theorized maybe they could patch the game, because that was a thing games could get now. Sonic 2006 could still be saved. The PS3 version wouldn’t be out for another month, surely that means they’re working on a fix, right? Some were even theorizing over an achievement called “Nights of Kronos” -- it mentioned a “complete ending to the last hidden story.” Perhaps that meant there was going to be more? Maybe we got the bad ending, and a better, more finished ending was waiting for us on the disc somewhere?

There wasn’t. And no patch ever fixed the game. That was Sonic 2006 -- the kiss, the loading screens, the strange mannequin NPCs, the stiff controls, the glitchy physics, the empty overworlds, the bizarre dialog, the plotholes and time paradoxes, that’s just what the game was, and was always going to be, forever.

Before Sonic 2006, you could say that 3D Sonic games were bad, but there was always a place to defend them from. They had problems, but they were never irredeemable. Sonic Heroes may have had frustrating controls and repetitive level design, but it had great art direction, nice music, and fun concepts. They were always trying, dang it, and it was obvious to see that.

Sonic 2006 felt irredeemable. Offensively terrible. A failure on such a level that it was hard to comprehend. Beyond simply “a new low” for the franchise. This felt like rock bottom. It was the kind of bad that spread like a virus. Even good games, like Sonic 2 on the Sega Genesis, felt notably tarnished by the existence of Sonic 2006. It threatened to ruin the entire franchise by proximity alone. For some, it probably did. I definitely had a moment where I wondered if I would ever enjoy a Sonic game in the same way ever again. They were all tainted now. Infected by memories of Sonic 2006, the game that was supposed to save the franchise, but condemned it to the lowest pits of hell.

In isolation, that might have been the end for me. I might have continued to drift away, bit by bit, until I found greener hills outside of the Sonic franchise.

I’ve said this before, but what saved me was getting hired to write for TSSZ News. Now, suddenly, I was paid to play and write about Sonic games. It was a duty. And it helped that the first Sonic game I reviewed for TSSZ ended up being Sonic Unleashed, a game I continue to openly gush about to this day, more than a decade after its release.

But never forget that Sonic 2006 was such a disaster that it nearly made me give up Sonic the Hedgehog. It really was that bad.

[power-of-friends-games]

Okay, if it’ll stop the Anons, the following is why Dev Finn was fired at the start of september. This is the last thing I will be saying on the matter, as several people are now getting messages from them or asking what’s going on.

We had set up a schedule as a team to have certain things done by the end of July. This is a screenshot from the programmer-only channel in our dev server where I had given them the list of things they needed to do.

A couple days later they sent this, which at the time made I and the other programmer laugh. 

And then the day after I asked them if they could send the files back to me.

I was at this point entirely understanding, the majority of the team has classes, mental health issues, physical health issues, busy work schedules, etc. All I asked for was that these things be communicated to me when there were weeks Finn couldnt work, so that someone else could be using the files. At this point we were already going to be behind schedule on programming, so I decided I would just do most of their list for them and give them an easier, faster task that shouldn’t take them too long so when they had time to do it they could.

This was the message I sent asking for this job to be finished before September. Now in that time, I had been told by Finn they were having internet issues, and I was willing to work with that. This was the response to the above message:

And then a few days later:

In that last image you see me multiple times trying to offer help to get them on GitHub where the current files were located. In at least one of these I was *in call in that server* and willing to help them right then. During this time period they had also tried out for TGS and posted a ton of art in the public server, so I knew they had time and wifi to do it. In that last message there we were also nearing the end of that month and none of this task had been done. They finally logged into GitHub and the following conversation happened:

Again, I was willing to work this out. Now that I knew they were actually getting into the files I wanted to help them get it done. We were now almost a month past when this should have been done. The following conversation was the first time I started actually getting after them for this:

Let me show you that last part again.

Finn was aware I would remove them from the team if this wasn’t done. Any job would have. We were a month away from release and they hadn’t done this job yet. I then gave them this final week to make up for it- with a job that literally takes 3-5 hours to do in total.

With this by the way, none of us that have looked through the files since have found any of these interactions. If they were ever there, they aren’t now. Finn uploaded in such a way that I can’t see what the changes were. Here is the github page for that upload:

This was the last time he spoke in that channel. As was the deal, I removed him from the team for not finishing the task in the agreed time and gave the job over to one of my artists who happened to have the program, and they finished it in one all-nighter. At this point we had agreed as the remaining devs that if Finn’s situation improved they would be added back to the team for Meridian. 

And then thats when the messages started.

At first they were fine, I found out they had been grounded but, since it was still the deal and it was a job that should have been done months earlier, I still stand by my decision. 

I wasn’t fully responding due to being busy irl, anyone that’s friends with me knows im bad at responding to DMs anyway. 

This wasn’t responded to because again, I was busy and also it came across as a little guilty. Besides, I had again told them I was removing them from the team, and the team had decided they could come back *for Meridian* if their situation had improved. 

As you can see, I was still responding when I had the ability to, and I tried explaining that the status of the search for a new programmer was really no ones business that wasn’t on the team. This is akin to getting fired from Walmart and then walking up to the manager a week later to ask if they had gotten a new cashier yet like. You don’t do this.

This was the last time they spoke to me on discord, there was a brief message when I had reblogged a couple of their pieces that hadn’t been reblogged onto there that I cannot get as they are now blocked as of last night but that went along the lines of “Are you trying to tell me something”

The following is the actual conversation in our public server’s moderator chat upon the announcement that they were off the team:

We had decided as a group to leave Finn alone long ago. In fact, none of us planned to publicly talk about Finn. I even stayed quiet about them posting an Endscape spoiler as a Wiki page ((mostly because I deleted it as soon as I found out)) and told everyone in the team and mod team not to harass them or send them any ill will. Until I got this message:

This is what prompted yesterday’s post. And what followed it. 

So let me be very clear. None of the team has anything truly against Finn other then the fact that they continue to not let this drop. And until the guilty messages and this current development, we were more then willing to let them come back. But due to several anons in our inbox, a team member being messaged this morning with a “Blake is a liar” rant DM that I haven’t seen nor will I expose the team member due to privacy, and the fact that even though they joined the team promising to not leak info they still managed to leak a massive Endscape spoiler onto their Wiki, it’s very unlikely we will actually let them come back anymore.

Now that this rant is done, I will no longer be discussing the issue. Do NOT send hate or harassment of any kind to Finn, as they are a minor and deserve to learn and grow from their mistakes as all of us did when we were younger. All of their art, dialogue, mentions, and the special event they programmed for one of the boss’ attacks have all been removed from the final version of the game. And no one in team plans to talk about them. 

Now if you will excuse me, I have a game to release in ten days. 

-Dev Blake

[sheabutterskyes]

The Mask of White Waters

XLVI | Bridges Burned –

After a careful reassurance that they were fine, and that the broken horn was from long ago, Isla still had tears in her eyes. It was difficult to wait for her emotions to settle after what had just happened. It was difficult to feel the ghosts of pain she had felt that morning and know that they had caused it.

It was also difficult to comprehend the way she had looked at them.

They tried not to think about it.

“Was it the warden?”

Caia looked to Isla; she was, at the moment, relatively calm, waving the end of a small stick into the fire.

“Yes.”

She glanced up at them, “I came across him in the last village.”

“And that woman.”

She dropped the stick into the fire.

“What is it you’ve done to lead her this far to find you?”

They moved to sit across from her, the warmth of the fire gentle and welcoming to their still-healing body. They wore their mask once more, though there was still a weariness lingering along with a few wounds.

“I did some terrible things.” She finally said.

Somehow, Caia was unable to imagine her doing terrible things. Mistakes, perhaps, but nothing intentionally terrible.

“But I think it’s especially terrible that I don’t regret doing any of it.”

She glanced at them, a familiar look on her face – she was attempting to read Caia and decide if they wanted her to say more or be quiet.

“Then you must have had a very compelling reason,” they answered evenly.

“I was angry,” she said quietly.

That, they could understand.

“What is it that created that anger?”

Isla looked at them again, her small smile honest. They returned the smile, even though she could not see it. They wanted to hear her story. They wanted to forget how late it was getting and feel the warmth of the fire and listen to her voice.

There was a long silence before Isla spoke again. And when she did, her voice had become solemn.

“My family was part of a very close-knit community. A community that was considered an extension of your family, a means to further keep you safe from the ‘outside world’. The nice ladies in the markets, the quiet butchers, the children that played in the streets and went to school, the dancers and musicians…” Isla splayed her hands out towards the fire, her golden rings sparkling. “I grew up being steered away from questioning anything beyond our community. I was told that doing so would lead me to a miserable, poorly life.”

“But one day it wasn’t enough to simply live by the standards our community had. I was expected to actively go against beliefs that did not align with ours. The nice ladies in the markets, the quiet butchers, the children that played in the streets and went to school, the dancers and musicians… they were no longer just outsiders, but enemies.”

Her narrative sounded familiar. Humans so often had such a predictable pattern and insatiable hunger for control.

“I didn’t understand why. And I was too afraid to ask. I was too afraid to do anything other than what they told me to do.”

Until…?

She glanced around, picking up a new stick to keep her hands busy.

“Until the murders happened.”

“From those within the Paragon of Stonefail,” Caia said.

Isla perked at that, “Yes… I didn’t know you knew.”

“I do not know much,” they admitted.

“Ah,” she nodded at that. “Well… it was my own two brothers planned it, and it was carried out by many others, including my parents.” Isla threw her stick into the fire and rested her head on her hand, “There had been a newly created council that had formed in the area – perceived to be a threat to our way of life.”

Caia nodded to her when she glanced over at them.

“I remember waking up to a fire,” she swallowed, her voice wavering. “And when a Stonefail officer came to help-,” she swallowed again. “They cut him down with the axe my family had outside. And all I could do was stand there.”

Isla fell into silence again, and Caia tended to the fire before settling back down, this time beside her.

She was looking at them, though they looked only at the fire.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really said that out loud before.”

“You can,” they assured.

Caia could feel some of her anxiety fade away with a heavy sigh. She leaned forwards to feel the warmth of the fire and smiled at them when they offered her a glance.

“Did you leave after the fire?” they asked her.

“No. I felt… trapped,” she sighed again, and then yawned. “I remember wishing Stonefail officers would storm into our homes and declare our way of life was over. Even if it meant I would be punished alongside them. But they never came back.”

“Hope was with me more and more as the Paragon began to keep us from so much as being seen by outsiders. That was when I learned that she was just as afraid as I was. Just as confused. We talked about what our life might be like as outsiders – began to dream about it.”

Isla leaned back, “And one morning… I snapped.”

Caia assumed this was where her so-called terrible actions came into play.

“I started a fire… I set animals loose… and I got out. I went straight to the Stonefail officers and told them the names of those responsible for the murders. I gave them the names of my brothers, my parents. I told them and wrote in ink anything I could think of that would condemn them all. And then I ran.”

She laughed, “You would have thought I’d leave the Stonefail region – run farther away. But I didn’t. And becoming a Shaubriand dancer was the best thing that could have happened to me. I made it in a world I had been made to believe was set-up to destroy me.”

“My brothers, and eventually my father was taken by Stonefail officers. Then several other Paragon members. But they still lived their lives every day. And every night I thought about Hope. I thought about her every night until I decided I needed to go back for her.”

“And you did.”

“I did,” she nodded. “And I will do it again... We will.”

We.

Caia was unsure if she had used that word regarding them before now; and her words had been dripping with intention.

And beyond her words, they could see from the corner of their vision the look she was giving them. The same look she had given them while they had been without their mask.

It made them freeze.

“Robin is the woman who has been around,” Isla said after a few moments. “She has come to collect me so that I can be punished for my wrong-doings.”

Caia stared at the ground, “And what if she does collect you and bring you back?”

“Then that’s it,” she said softly.

They did not need to ask for clarification.

It was not anger they felt from her this night, nor was it even fear. It was a sort of bleak honesty that settled heavily around her. It settled heavily around them as well when they realized they would do whatever it took to ensure Isla was not touched by the poisonous grasp of the Paragon of Stonefail ever again.

- - - - - -

TG -> @alwolfe​

[comicsnas]

showtime

WARNING: eye gore!!, violence Disclaimer: this is..... an au where guy fieri isnt a cool and chill dude that just likes food. i am very sorry for what i do to him in this. i dont mean it and if the cops knock at my door i will blame it on hussie word count: about 3.7k. i am so sorry

context john gets kidnapped by his mom dave doesnt panic

Los Angeles, CA, Wednesday

“No matter what happens, nobody cancels the premiere,” you say. “Okay? No matter what’s in the news. No matter how bad it gets. The movie drops on Thursday, and people are gonna watch it. Got it? This is a scare tactic and we’re not falling for it. Even if the world is ending, we are premiering this movie and going through with the promo. With or without me.”

Catalena, your manager, has been with you for too long to think that you’re joking. She was who flew you in from Houston to LA back when you were twenty, who let you sleep on your couch until you made enough money to get an apartment, who thought that the message you had for the world was one worthy of her help. She knows that all of this is real, and that she can’t stop you.

Her face says, Dave, you’re scaring me. Her mouth says, “You got it. Could you at least tell me… what you think is going to be in the news that would make us not premiere it?”

“Something bad,” you say. “Hopefully, anyway.”

She tilts her head. “Are you faking your death?”

“Lalonde and I are gonna disappear for a sec,” you say. “How people interpret that is gonna be up to them.”

“Not like you to leave things up to chance,” Catalena says. “Some will think it’s elaborate PR.”

“That’s why I’m only telling you. Lalonde and I are gonna frame this to look serious, and no one else is gonna know what’s going on. You keep your cool, but don’t let anyone know that you’re in on it.”

“I mean, I barely am.” She gives you a Look, a capital L Look, then sighs and nods. “Fine. So if I hear about your presumed death tomorrow, I won’t freak out. At what point am I allowed to assume you are actually dead, and freak out a little bit?”

“If you don’t hear from me in a week,” you say, “then Lalonde and I have been killed by Betty Crocker.”

Houston, TX, twelve years ago

You’re blind.

That’s not true. You’re not blind. You don’t think you are going to be blind. There is no way that you’re fully blind, because the assassin only got your right eye, so it doesn’t make sense for you to be blind, but you’re blind.

The pain might originate from your right eye, but it’s engulfing your entire head by now, and there is something sticky in your left eye and you can’t open it anymore and it burns, and you’re going to go blind, and then you’re going to die in a ditch, in a pool of your own blood, and this is it. It’s over. You and your half sister fucked around on the internet a bunch, got really deep into some conspiracy theories, and barely two weeks after you made the discovery that Betty Crocker definitely, undoubtedly, literally is an actual alien, someone was sent to kill you.

They didn’t manage, so far. They got your eye, and they broke your glasses, leaving a cut on your nose, and a bunch of cuts everywhere else, and you think you cracked your head open when you fell. But you cut their knife hand off, good and clean off, watched it fall to the ground right in front of you. By the time it hit the pavement, the assassin had already turned around and ran away, leaving you to crumple and suffer here by yourself.

This is it.

“Strider?” Rose says. Before the blood trickling into your good eye ruined your vision, you managed to dial her number and call her up, and now you’re lying on your side with your phone pressed to your ear, imagining her in her college dorm room in New York. You were going to visit her there, years ago, after you ran away from your parents. It never worked out. Neither of you has the money. You really wish you could have seen her at least once.

“Yeah,” you croak. “You at home?”

“At the dorm, yes. What’s going on?”

“You gotta go. She sent someone after me, she’s gonna come for you too. If she knows that I know, she’ll know that you know.”

One of the most comfortable parts of friendship with Rose, you’ve found, is that she never asks you to clarify what the fuck you’re talking about. Either she just lets you ramble, or she knows exactly what you mean. “Shit,” she hisses, and you can hear rustling on her side of the line, hopefully from her getting ready. She probably has a getaway bag somewhere, you think. You have one, but not on you right now. It’s too late for that.

“They’ve already hit me, so whoever she sent to you can’t be far,” you say. You try to blink your eye open, but then it hurts the other more, and it burns. You can’t even tell where exactly. It just burns. “Hurry up, Lalonde.”

“They’ve hit you?” she echoes, still rustling, breathing into the phone. On the move. Good. “Are you okay?”

“No,” you say. “Gonna call an ambulance after this. Just get the fuck out and text me later, yeah?”

Rose pauses. You can hear her pause, you can hear everything go very silent for a second. She says, “You called me before you called for help?”

“Yeah,” you say. She told you, once, that there is a quick and easy way out the window of her second-storey dorm room, that lets her balance over to her girlfriend’s room only a few windows ahead. She can’t hide there, it’s too close, but it’s a start. She’ll figure it out, she always will. She was the first person to ever have your back. “Of course I did.”

On a plane, Thursday morning

“What’s on your mind?” Rose asks.

You’re leaned back, staring out the window, listening to the clicking of her knitting needles next to you. The pilot here doesn’t know who he’s dealing with, just that he is flying two rich people and their car to Washington, DC. Your Mustang is in the cargo part of the plane, a vital part of the plan. You’ll torch it later. It was the first car you bought with your own money, after SBaHJ had become big and you had finally paid off your hospital debt.

Rose’s apartment isn’t that old, she got it after Roxy was born and she decided to move to Los Angeles, so you could help each other babysit. Trashing it still felt wrong. A home is a home, but you wanted it to look broken into, to make sure that people put two and two together. This isn’t a Dave Strider marketing scheme, you both got hit. After all the work that you’ve done, at least some of the public should understand what that means.

“Us,” you say.

“That’s very sentimental,” she says. “Are you sure you aren’t mourning your car again?”

“Shut up,” you say, and blindly swat at her, hitting her elbow. She hits you back, hand slapping your shoulder. “It’s a good car.”

Rose hums. When you look at her, she’s already back to knitting. You have no idea what she’s making, but it looks like a onesie for an octopus. “We will be fine,” she says. “We have to.”

You nod, and go back to staring out the window, thinking about what Alma said. “It’s just,” you say quietly. “We gotta start thinking about the endgame, here, don’t we.”

“Start?” Rose echoes. “Dave, we know the endgame to this. We’ve known for a while. The second you landed in the hospital with a cut inside your eyeball, you and I both knew that this would end in death.”

You don’t say anything. She’s right, of course she is. You knew then, and she knew, as soon as you texted her from your hospital bed, and she texted you back from a Greyhound bus. And you tried to forget, you both did, for a very long time. You almost managed, for a whole decade, until last year, someone made you scared and angry enough to ram a sword through his throat. Until Rose came and disassembled the body on your rooftop, and then helped you burn it. Reality has caught up with you, and someone is going to die.

The clicking of her needles has stopped again. You turn your head to look at her, and she’s looking back at you, and her face seems younger than it should be. She is just as scared as you are. Neither of you ever wanted it to go this far. Neither of you wanted to kill.

“I don’t like it either,” Rose says. “But someone is going to wind up dead, and it sure as shit isn’t gonna be us.”

Washington, DC, now

)(IC: u comin or what TG: yeah about that

You’re on the hood of your car. The children -- and Sally, John’s pet hedgehog -- are with the one sitter you still trust. Rose is in position, which means she is at a remote location outside the city holding Guy Fieri hostage. She has sent you a picture of him tied to a chair and gagged, which means that it’s go time.

All according to plan.

TG: how about you come kill me somewhere else instead of home sweet home )(IC: why would i do that TG: dying mans last request? )(IC: stfu lol this is so obviously a trap TG: wow ok so is yours )(IC: fair TG: just thought that you know TG: john means something to both of us and dont try to tell me no because i know he does TG: so like can we maybe duke it out somewhere where i wont accidentally blow him to smithereens TG: innuendo intended )(IC: UG)( )(IC: gross TG: lmao TG: anyway bethany you know me and you know im comin with c4 in my backpack if im comin TG: do you really want that around your son or can you just get off your ass and meet me here so john stays safe )(IC: u reely think ya have a fighting chance to even get that far )(IC: buoy you set one foot in my house and ya get spearfished TG: yeah not really making a great point for me to come there rn TG: just thought maybe youd wanna be with your guy guy )(IC: who TG: you know TG: guy the guy )(IC: tf

You text her the picture that Rose sent, just Guy Fieri looking miserable, no indication of whether or not you or Rose are with him.

)(IC: )(-EY )(IC: motherglubber what do u think yoar doin TG: yoar??? TG: thats literally not a word. wym you oar?? what TG: anyway im gonna dismember this asshole if you dont agree to keep john safe and come here and im gonna start with the frosted tips )(IC: FIN--E )(IC: cant effin wait to be done with you )(IC: ill come krill ya if its so shrimportant just gimme the location TG: ok shrimportant is actually pretty funny TG: [coordinates] TG: see you soon

She drives a fuchsia Jaguar that looks like Xzibit threw up all over it, because of course she does. You watch it leave from your perch on your Mustang, then slide off the hood. shes gone, you text Rose. get ready to bounce

Before you leave, you turn back toward you car, and gently pat the roof. “See you soon,” you repeat, “for one last ride.”

Look, it’s a good car, alright.

Later on in the plan, once you’ve convinced John to come with you, and Rose has joined you in the no doubt brutal course out of the house littered with security guards, the three of you will pack into this car, and you will drive. You will be tailed, you know you will. Rose and you estimate two to three SUVs with more security personnel that will follow you, and sooner or later, you won’t stand a chance against them.

So, you’ll call the cops. You don’t usually do this -- even during all these years, neither you nor Crocker ever called the police on each other, and technically, you still won’t, today. You will just anonymously call authorities, and tell them about a burning car by the side of the road. Then you will hang up, and you and Rose and John will hop out of a moving vehicle as you crash your beloved Mustang and have it go up in flames. Authorities will come and find Dave Strider’s infamous car, and hopefully that’ll get people talking.

Crocker’s guys will hopefully exit their cars and go looking for you, or at least for John. It’s an easy con from there -- while they look, you will steal their SUVs and drive off toward your safehouses. Simple. No sweat.

“This better work,” you mutter to yourself, then leave your car behind and start climbing the fence around Crocker manor.

You’ve been here once before, while she was out and John was showing you around. You weren’t actively trying to case the place back then, just spending time with your boyfriend and checking out where he grew up, but you couldn’t help how curious you were. You still remember the most important spots, and you did your best to paint a proper picture of them to Rose (you drew a map in MS Paint), so now you have a pretty good idea of where you need to go.

The guard posts, of course, are randomized. You’ll have to take these as they come, and you feel prepared enough, with just your sword and a handful of knives. You’re wearing the kevlar you wore to the Oscars. You’re gonna be fine.

It’s a race against time now, knowing that there is no guarantee when Crocker will be catching on and returning to her house, and knowing that you stand no chance actually fighting her face to face. You climbed in toward the side of the house, because it’s the shortest distance between fence and wall. The front and back yards are ridiculously huge and opulent, and while you would have plenty of gaudy statues to hide behind, you’re not looking to make your way through there.

The first guard spots you right as you hop down off the fence, and your knife is in his shoulder before he even finishes drawing his gun on you. He’s also wearing a vest, but those don’t stop blades, and you take offense in knowing that she made them dress up like that. As if either you or Rose were going to show up with guns. She really doesn’t know you at all. You knock out the guard with a hit of the knife grip against his temple. Maybe you can get through this without deaths.

One of them you comfortably take out from behind a useless fountain placed in this part of the garden for some reason, appreciating how quiet and low-key you can be about it so far. The bigger the ruckus, the sooner she’ll return, so having them all go down in silence is your best case scenario.

It’s the third guard that ruins your track record. You’re almost at the house wall, and you know you’re under the right window, which means all you have to do is scale it and climb right into John’s room, but for that to work you need to have a clean path behind you. Which you don’t, you realize the second a bullet hits your back.

Your vest catches it, but the momentum still knocks you down, and you scrape both of your palms open on the weird break between lawn and pavement. You hate this fucking garden. Who lives like this? You’re gasping for breath and trying not to inhale any grass, dealing with the reality that this is the first time someone has shot at you and actually hit you, and the bullet might not have penetrated skin at all, but Jesus Fucking Christ it still feels awful. Like someone kicked you in the spine, only with a bullet instead of a foot.

Onward. You hear footsteps behind you, and now it’s your turn to kick, hitting them in the face with your boot in the same motion that you’re pushing yourself up from the ground. As they curse and stumble, you draw your sword, but they catch their footing quickly, and you know you only have a split second to act. That gun is pointing at you, again, or still, and they’re going for your head this time, and if you don’t fight now, the journey ends for you here. Someone is going to die, and it sure as shit can’t be you. Your arm darts forward.

The sword goes through their vest, their ribs, and their heart -- you wouldn’t call it smoothly, you really wouldn’t. You can feel resistance with every inch, you feel it right up to your shoulder, and you hate it, and it makes you want to throw up, but you can’t, now. You shove them off your blade and watch them crumple to the ground, and turn right back toward the wall. They are not getting up again. That’s on you, and you can deal with that later. You have to get moving.

Your phone vibrates.

You manage to pull yourself up on a balcony and crouch there, hiding from whatever is going on in the yard now. Other guards must have heard the shot being fired, so you really need to get the fuck out of sight, but this has to do, for now. If Crocker is messaging you, you have to respond, so she doesn’t think you’re in her goddamn garden.

)(IC: yo )(IC: send me proof yoar still with him )(IC: almost there this betta be worth it TG: one sec

As expected. All according to plan, so far. You hope the blood on your sword won’t make the sheath sticky. You’ll have to clean it, later. You don’t want to.

TG: shes asking for proof TG: go ahead. sorry TT: No worries. TT: I know we don’t endorse violence, but honestly, Dawon, after being in a room with him for this long, I am quite happy to do this.

She sends you a picture, and you grimace at your phone. It takes a lot to make you grimace, as a Strider born and raised -- at the same time, you’re not easily shocked or grossed out, but this isn’t great to look at. Fieri’s eye has been pulled from its socket, dangling down his cheek suspended from the nerve, a hole in the eyeball. You hope Crocker won’t be able to tell that this was done with a knitting needle, and forward the photo to her.

TG: hows this )(IC: )(--EY FUCK OFF )(IC: stop i reely like guy 38( TG: yeah well i really like john TG: eye for an eye TG: hurry it up im waiting and theres a second eye to gauge out )(IC: ten minutes )(IC: ur gonna be so sorry buoy

TG: 10 mins TT: On my way.

Okay. Crocker is on her way to a location where there will only be Guy Fieri and a set of elaborate boobytraps which you know won’t kill her, but hopefully slow her down. Rose is on her way here, to help you and John get out of here. That’s plenty of time you still have. Things are going suspiciously well, you think, before you remember the ache in your back and the fact that you killed someone.

You have to get to John.

He’s another two floors up, but you are right in front of a balcony door. For a second, you wonder if you could get into the house from here and do the rest from inside, so you don’t present yourself to the mob of people with guns in the garden. Unfortunately, before you can do that, another person with a gun appears on the other side of that door, mouths an angry what the fuck at you, and draws an assault rifle. Alright, well.

The thing that has mostly kept you from becoming too violent in the past is the fact that you’re fast, and you’re a great climber, so when you hop backward onto the banister of the balcony and pull yourself up to the next one above you, it happens so fast that nobody in the garden reacts. It’s after you’re already crouching behind the balcony, thankfully made of robust concrete, that the shots start hitting it. You do nothing, count the bullets, wait for them to get rid of half of their magazines down there. Then you pull a knife, peek over the balcony, and throw it right into someone’s bicep.

More shots. More ducking and counting. You have two more knives to throw, and you do, rinse and repeat. The people down there are very angry with you now, and very much still able to shoot, but you figure at least their aim will be off, and they’ll be slower. You hope. You haven’t held a gun yourself in fucking forever.

You take a breath, and jump up to grab the balcony you know belongs to John.

As soon as you’re in the open, another bullet hits your back, further toward your side this time, and you almost let go. You let out an undignified noise instead, and hold on harder, focusing all you have into your arms to pull yourself up. Shots are ringing in your ears, and one hits the concrete right next to your head at almost the same time that another one grazes your leg. You hiss in pain, grunt in exertion, pull, pull, and roll yourself onto John’s balcony.

Someone in the garden yells, “Motherfucker!”

You sit, curled up, and pull apart the tear in your pants with your aching fingers to check the wound. It’s not deep, certainly not as bad as the chunk of missing flesh you have in your arm from being shot at last year. It’s fine. You’ll forget about it in a second, when your newest problem will be telling your amnesiac boyfriend that he needs to come with you.

You pull yourself up into a crouch, not more. You don’t want to risk getting shot in the head as you finally face him, so you just do it like this. Hunkered down, disheveled and bloody, you lean forward and knock on John’s window.

[angel-with-a-pipette]

Be mine

Chatpter two: I want you for a life time

Summary: 

“I can’t do this, Riku.” “Yes, you can. All you need to do is walk over to her, offer her a fruit and bite into it.”

Sora finally wants to share a paopu with Kairi, but things go differently than he planned.

Rating: G

Genre: Romance

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Disney/Square Enix.

10 months ago, I submitted a first draft of this story to the mods of the twosides fanzine, a charity fanzine focusing on Sokai and Rokunami. I can proudly say that I wrote this before KH3 was released (but after the TGS trailer dropped, so I was HEAVILY inspired by it and the lyrics of "Don't think twice") - so I've been giddily sitting on this for quite a while!

I’ve posted the first ‘chapter’ quite a while ago which actually contains cut content that didn't make it into the zine because the story became too long. Today, I can finally share the piece that has been printed in the zine :3

A huge thank you to Liv and Raye for making the twosides fanzine and for making this fic possible ♥

Also available on: ao3

Please enjoy!

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

As soon as he heard sand crunching beneath his feet, Sora slowed down. Staying at the edge of the wooden bridge, he pressed one of his hands against his chest, willing his breath to calm down again, only to realize how quickly his heart was beating.

How could planning to commit to the girl he loved be so much more nerve wracking than trying to save the entire universe?!

Sora started to move again, towards the crooked paopu tree on top of which Kairi sat. She stared ahead, into the slowly setting sun, a soft breeze playing with her hair which only lead to Sora's heart pounding even harder in his chest.

He couldn't do this.

He took a step back and caught his foot on that one wayward root of the tree that was strangely shaped like the head of a mouse. He yelped lightly before catching his balance again and started to chuckle lightly, throwing a sheepish smile in Kairi's direction, sure that she had caught every second of it, ready to tease him.

But she didn't. She continued staring out to the ocean, her lightly upwards curled lip the only indication that she had witnessed his moment of embarrassment. And suddenly, Sora understood.

She was giving him a way out.

He had asked her to meet him today on the paopu tree. It didn't take a genius to figure out what Sora wanted to talk about, especially since the both of them could have talked any time while staying in Radiant Garden. Yet, she patiently sat atop of the tree, ankles gracefully crossed as her hands rested on her lap. She waited for him to make the first move – as she always did.

No more. He wouldn't make her wait one more second.

Swallowing his nerves once and for all, Sora hauled himself up onto the tree. Before he could scoot closer however, she turned towards him, a dazzling smile spreading over her lips and Sora prayed to Zeus, Poseidon, even Hades that the evening sun would hide the blush creeping up his cheeks.

“Hey Sora!”

“Kairi,” he replied breathlessly and patted down his left trouser pocket as inconspicuously as possible.

Still there.

“I know you wanted to tell me something, but please, can I go first? It's urgent.”

Upon her words, Sora let go of the flap of his pocket and his brows furrowed in confusion.

“Sure. What's the matter?”

“My lucky charm worked decently up until now, but I feel like we need something stronger, something more reliable. Your last fight with Xehanort,” she faltered and her eyes flashed to the spot on his abdomen where she knew he had been injured, “it was too close of a call. And I wasn't even there to protect you.”

“It's not your job to protect me, Kairi-”

“I could have lost you.”

Sora knew that it was true. He had been in and out of consciousness for a day and bound to his bed for another two, despite countless Curagas being cast on him and gallons of potions being rubbed into his skin and poured into his throat to help him heal.

He would do it all again if it meant that his friends stayed safe.

“The coming battle is unlike anything we have faced so far… this charm will make sure we won’t be separated again.”

She let a small, red pouch slide into his outstretched hand and he looked at it curiously. It was lighter than he anticipated from its looks, tied up with a golden cord that he cautiously pulled at while Kairi began to explain.

“I commissioned this from the Moogles in Radiant Garden. To make sure we won't be separated, they worked a Thalassa shell into it. And to make sure you never get hurt as badly again, I asked them to put as many protective spells onto the charm as possible.”

Sora's eyes widened as he stared into the pouch.

“I know,” Kairi continued, suddenly shy, “it's probably weird that I asked for a ring to be made. I know you don't wear jewelry apart from your necklace, but I wanted the charm to be small and practical, so I figured a ring would be the best choice.”

“Rings.”

“Excuse me?”

“Rings,” Sora repeated and looked up to meet Kairi's eyes again who stared at him in confusion. Wordlessly, he turned the pouch upside down, emptying its contents into his open palm: two slender silver rings, a big one and one slightly smaller, with an orange-red inlay of a Thalassa shell.

Kairi stared at his hand, back at his face and again at his hand.

“Oh,” she finally uttered and even the sunset wasn't able to hide the blush that was spreading over her cheeks as she got a faraway look... before her eyes suddenly hardened. “That explains why they overcharged me! Those little..!” She shook her head. “Anyway. Maybe you can just wear both of them on a necklace? But then again, you already wear your crown necklace. Maybe you can just slip them into your pocket? Or – oh!” Kairi started to gesture frantically and Sora couldn't help but follow the movement of her right hand as an idea formed in his head. “You wore a key chain in the past, didn't you? You could put both rings on it. Or-”

“You could wear the small one.”

Kairi fell silent mid-sentence, her mouth hanging open as the familiar nervousness spread through Sora once again.

“I want you to wear the second ring,” he clarified. “You said this charm will make sure we won't be separated, right? It can't work if I hold onto both rings. And if I get lost, my ring will lead me back to yours.”

All of a sudden, something soft pressed against Sora's lips, but before his brain caught up with what was happening, the sensation stopped and Kairi threw her hands over her mouth, eyes wide in horror.

She had kissed him. Kairi had kissed him!

A dopey grin started to spread over Sora's face and he carefully tugged on Kairi's right hand and held the ring up.

“That's a 'yes', right?”

After she nodded a little dazedly, Sora slipped the ring onto her ring finger. It fit her perfectly.

Kairi took a deep breath as she regarded her new ring. She giggled lightly and reached for the other ring, but she hesitated when she looked at the hand Sora offered her.

“Your left hand?”

“Yeah,” Sora nodded in agreement, “just to make sure that my Keyblade doesn't wear the ring down. Also,” Sora lowered his gaze and stared at Kairi's hand picking up his ring while wearing her own. He couldn't help the smile that tugged on the corners of his lips upon seeing how well her ring suited her. “If I wear it on my left hand and you wear yours on your right hand, they'll touch whenever we hold hands. So they won't be separated.”

“O-Oh,” Kairi nodded, but despite the sudden tremor in her hand, she managed to slide the other ring over Sora's finger. It, too, fit perfectly.

They had just exchanged matching rings. Wow.

“Sora, I-”

“Kairi,” Sora interrupted her as he reached for his pocket. He absolutely couldn't wait any longer.

“I don't want there to be any doubts about my feelings for you.” He pulled the paopu out of his pocket, drawing another gasp out of Kairi.

“Please. Be mine.”

This time she dove forward, cradling Sora's face in her hands, the metal of her new ring cooling his skin as her lips found his again, a little longer this time before pulling away.

“I thought you'd never ask.”

Together, they held the paopu in their hands, smiling at each other. They leaned in, each biting off a piece of the fruit. Sora swallowed greedily and looked at Kairi in wonder.

She was his. He was hers. They had finally shared a paopu.

He reached out for her face, gently cupping her cheek and stroking it with his thumb as she leaned in. He couldn't hold back the “I love you” that tumbled from his lips, but there was no need to anymore. Instead, he was rewarded with the same words and the sweetest smile. A grin spread over Sora's face and he pressed his forehead against Kairi's.

“So? No impulsive kiss?”

He could barely suppress his laughter when he felt Kairi pull back from him, cheeks blown up in mock-annoyance. Cocking his eyebrow, Sora continued.

“I thought third time's the charm? I'm a little disappointed.”

“Well, I wanted to give you the opportunity to surprise me for once, you lazy bum!” She retorted as she stuck out her tongue at Sora. “But I guess if you really don't want to-”

“Who said I don't?”

Sora quickly pulled Kairi close, relishing in the feel of her body against his and smothered her short squeak of surprise when he finally caught her lips with his own.

[thej13579]

Prince Kai (KH/TPTAF F2M TG/TF)

Kairi set out to save Sora and Riku, only to find herself becoming the prince of Sora's dreams.

Two weeks.

   It’s been two weeks since Riku was sent to rescue Sora and he hasn’t come back. Kairi knew that this was her turn to rescue them.

   After Riku’s failure to return with Sora, she knew better than to just go charging off without a plan. She had arranged other Keyblade wielders such as Mickey, Roxas, Xion, Lea, Aqua, Ventus and Terra. She asked them to do a simple task. If she doesn’t return with Riku and Sora within a week, they are to follow her into the forbidden world together and fight off whatever force is keeping her friends trapped there. Kairi was confident that they could do this.

   And so with the power of the Keyblade, Kairi accessed the forbidden world and dived into it, ready to save her friends.

       It wasn’t long before Kairi ended up in New Orleans. She could see people walking down the sidewalks and cars driving through the streets. Somehow, in spite of all the bright lights and the people running around, the place felt cold and sterile to Kairi. Like something wasn’t right.

   “I told you he’s the one for you.”

   Kairi turned to see two girls walking down the sidewalk. One had light brown hair and was wearing a bright pink flapper dress and the other had silver hair and was wearing the same dress with a baby blue shade to it.

   “Yeah. Thank you for helping me get together with Bruce.”

   “You’re welcome.”

   At first glance, they looked like average teenage girls, but as she used her powers… She couldn’t believe it.

   Those girls were Sora and Riku. With their girlish bodies, feminine attire and faces full of makeup, it was all but impossible for Kairi to recognize them without her powers. How could this have happened to them?

   “Maybe tomorrow afternoon we can go to that new salon together so we can get all dolled up for our events. I heard the employees there can make anyone feel like a princess.”

   She can hear their voices getting quieter and quieter as they went further away from her. She had to catch them.

   “Sora! Riku!”

   The two girls turned to see Kairi running up to them. They looked confused at first, but as she got closer, their eyes widened in shock.

   “Kairi?”

   They actually recognized her. Maybe she could actually free them and get out of here before something terrible happens.

   Sora and Riku shook their heads as the initial shock wore off. They ran up to Kairi.

   “Hey there, I’m Sora and this is my best friend, Rachel.”

   “Yeah,” Riku tossed his hair. “I never heard of anyone named Riku.”

   “I just love your outfit,” Sora giggled. “Not the most appropriate for a place like this, but I think it looks rather stylish.”

   “Um… thanks,” Kairi said. “Now, I-”

   “And that hair, it looks so cute on you. You know, there’s just something about you that makes you look so pretty and cute and attractive and...”

   Sora stopped and Kairi noticed that the former began to stare into her eyes. She had the strong feeling that her friend’s heart was racing.

   Kairi shook her head. What is she doing? She’s here to save her friends.

   “Come on,” Kairi grabbed Sora and Riku’s arms. “We need to get you guys out of here before-”

   “Hey there!”

   Kairi turned to see a blonde-haired woman running up towards the three. Her outfit is exactly like Sora’s, bright pink color and everything. If it wasn’t for her hair and increased height, Kairi would’ve thought that the two were twins.

   “Hey, sis,” Sora broke out of Kairi’s arms and pulled the woman into a hug. “This is Kairi. Kairi, this is my big sister, Charlotte.”

   “Hey there, Kairi,” Charlotte shook the young girl’s hand. I see you are already good friends with my little sister. Did you two meet before?”

   “Yeah.”

   It was technically true, though not in the way that Charlotte believed.

   “How about you come over to our place?” Sora suggested. “I bet you’ll love what we got.”

   “That’s a great idea. Come on, girls!”

   “Wait…” Kairi says desperately. “Wait!”

   Without warning, Charlotte grabbed Kairi’s hand and dragged her down the street.

   “Waiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!”

   Kairi had to admit that the La Bouff estate was quite impressive. It was big, expansive and quite fancy. She can barely recall a place like this from a time long long ago.

   Rachel is currently off powdering her nose in the ladies room, leaving Kairi alone with Sora and Charlotte.

   “Lottie?”

   Charlotte turned to Sora.

   “Yes, sis?”

   “I want to talk to you about Kairi.”

   Kairi turned towards the duo. Curiosity took her.

   “What about her?” Charlotte asked.

   “It’s just that around her, I get this warm and fuzzy feeling,” Sora explained. “It’s like whenever I see a prince from one of those storybooks that we both love, but with her, well…”

   “She’s a girl.”

   “But I love her,” Sora said. “It’s so weird to have these feelings for a girl.”

   “Hmm…” Charlotte examined Kairi, eyeing her top to bottom like a model. “I think I know why you feel this way.”

   “You do?”

   “Yes, Sora,” Charlotte nodded. “This girl here might actually be the prince you were looking for.”

   “P-prince? What?”

   Before Kairi could object any further, Charlotte took a cup of blue liquid and poured the contents down her throat. By the time she realized what happened, all the liquid went right down her throat.

   “What did you make me drink?”

   “Just a potion to give you a little much-needed masculinity. That’s all.”

   “Masculinity?”

   It was then Kairi’s body began tingling. She looked towards her arms to find them gaining actual muscles. Gone were the slender and dainty arms and in their place were fairly muscular arms, just like Sora’s.

   “H-Huh!” Kairi looked down only to see her legs undergoing the same process. Well-toned legs with quite a bit of muscle to them. She could also swore they grew a bit longer as well, pushing her height up a couple feet.

   The process was going far too fast for comfort. As much as she wanted to run, Kairi could feel herself getting disoriented. She sat down on the nearby couch, trying to regain her senses.

   She ran her hand through her hair. It was a lot shorter than she remembered. It shouldn’t be. In fact, she could feel it receding back into her head, the process going so far that her new hairstyle resembled that of the average teenage boy.

   Kairi pressed her hand to her chest only to find a flat feeling to it.

   Kairi knew she wasn’t the most endowed girl around, sure, but she still had visible breasts. Now her chest is completely flat. Budding breasts completely replaced by rock-hard abs.

   “Sora, what… my voice!”

   Kairi clutched her throat only to find an Adam’s apple forming on it. Her voice was far deeper too. It sounded less high-pitched and more among the lines of a brave and dashing hero. The kind Sora and Charlotte wanted her to be.

   Not helping Kairi’s discomfort at the changes was how her new masculine body was completely ill-fitted for her outfit, about two sizes too small for her. She had an awkward feeling that her dress was about ready to rip itself in half.

   “You’re really helping her,” Sora said. “Thank you sis.”

   “You’re welcome, Sora,” Charlotte responded. “I’m sure by the time we’re done, Kairi would be quite the prince charming.”

   The garish contrast of Kairi’s girlish outfit on top of her new masculinized bod did not go unnoticed by the two.

   “Of course, that outfit won’t do for a dashing prince like you at all. Here…”

   Charlotte threw a bunch of powder onto Kairi, causing the increasingly masculinized girl to cough up a fit. When the powder dissipated, Kairi’s dress was replaced by a royal white and blue suit with a black belt with a gold buckle at the midriff; gold buttons; red lining the collar, down the chest, and cuffs along with red epaulettes; her bottom half is now in a matching pair of dark blue trousers with red lining and black shoes.

   Kairi had to admit it was a rather stylish outfit and it would definitely look good on someone like Sora or Riku. The problem was that it was meant for her, or rather her new body.

   She examined her new body. Strong muscular body, taller height, shorter hair, deep voice. Every single thing about her body has changed to fit the fairy-tale esque prince stereotype. That is… with the exception of one part and she was not looking forward to it being taken away in the slightest.

   Kairi could feel something extending out of her vagina. A long thing that she does not want to mention the name of.

   This was it.

   That penis confirmed the horrifying truth: that she was no longer Kairi.

   That she now harbored the body of a man.

   That she now resembles, for all intents and purposes, a prince… at least in body.

   She is still Kairi inside. She is still a Princess of Heart, a Keyblade wielder.

   For a moment, she thought they couldn’t take that away from her. But, upon looking at what happened to Sora and Riku, the latter just entering the room, Kairi wasn’t so sure. She knew that Charlotte must’ve been the one who turned her friends into ditzy girly-girls. But she had no idea how it’ll affect her personality.

   It was then her eyes laid on Sora.

   Sora.

   She can remember when she fought alongside Sora during the final battle with Xehanort, how he slain countless Heartless with a second thought, and heard of his adventures through countless worlds. Now… he looked so sweet, so demure, so innocent, like he couldn’t hurt a fly. If Sora ever got himself in danger as he is now, he’ll be completely helpless. The thought of defending himself would never even cross his mind. Kairi knew she had to protect him.

   It was then she felt a weight in her pocket that wasn’t there before. She pauses, confused, and reaches into her pocket.

   A white box.

   Kairi opened it to reveal a diamond ring. Why was this in her pocket? It was obviously for the one she was supposed to be engaged to.

   Her eyes leaned to Sora again, who is currently giggling with Charlotte and Riku over something she couldn’t hear. She was too far away.

   One thing that Kairi noticed was that, even with their three-inch heels, she dwarfed her Sora and Riku in size by probably a foot and a half. She was even taller than Charlotte by a couple of inches.  

   She closed the box. Was she supposed to ask Sora for his hand in marriage? They’re both sixteen years old and probably not legally able to marry even if Kairi genuinely wanted to. But there was something in her heart compelling her to propose such a thing, that she had to marry Sora.

   As if by instinct, she approached the trio and turned towards the one she loved dearly.

   “Sora!”

   The feminized Keyblade Master turned to Kairi. She kneeled to Sora and opened the tiny box, revealing the diamond ring to him.

   “Will you marry me?”

   Sora looked down at the ring and then looked up at Kairi. His mouth briefly incapable of forming words.

   “Yes! Oh, yes yes yes yes! A thousand times yes!”

   Kairi quickly found herself with Sora jumping right into her arms, covering her face with kiss after red lipstick laced kiss.

   Sora wasn’t the only one celebrating as both Charlotte and Rachel were clapping their hands, giggling in pure glee.

   “Oh, I so want to marry you, Kai!” Sora squealed. “You’re the prince of my dreams!”

   “K-Kai?”

   Kairi knew that was her new name. It seemed… natural. Not too dissimilar from her old name, but it was more masculine than it. It felt so right.

   She shutted her eyes. What the hell was she thinking? She’s Kairi, not some prince from a faraway kingdom she knew nothing about.

   New images began to flow into her mind. Images of armors, castles and princes. It was getting hard for her to remember all the good times she had with her friends amongst the masculine imagery clouding her mind. The most vivid image by far was one of a brave prince with an appearance not too dissimilar from Kairi’s new look, slaying a monstrous dragon while a princess screams for the prince’s help behind the dragon.

   New memories also took place in her mind. Gone were memories of watching Sora and Riku spar alongside their friends and in their place were memories of nobility lessons from tutors and falling in love with Sora upon first sight.

   She could hear the bells ring… bells? There were no bells in the La Bouff house.

   As she opened her eyes, Kairi noticed that she was no longer in New Orleans, but in a church.

   Behind her were several men, none of which she recognized. Though she did notice Riku smiling whenever his eyes were on the blonde-haired boy right across him.

   Speaking of Riku, the women are a different story. There was Charlotte La Bouff alongside several other women, obviously bridesmaids. She could also see Riku right in front of them. It was obvious to Kairi that he’s the maid of honor in this wedding.

   Music echoed through the building. Kairi could recognize the bridal chorus anywhere. She turned to see the church doors slowly open.

   There, being escorted by a portly figure she never met, was Sora. All dolled up in a lovely pink and white wedding gown with puffy sleeves, embroidered flowers, layers upon layers of petticoats and a veil to complete her bridal attire. She marched down the aisle, carrying a bouquet of flowers with two flower girls skipping behind, throwing flowers onto the aisle.

    As Sora walked up to the altar and turned to face her, Kairi noticed how happy he looked. Not even the veil could hide the smile on his face. He made quite the lovely bride, Kairi admitted. It was getting harder for Kairi to see her best friend as a boy. He… no, she looked perfect.

   “It is here we are to see the marriage between a prince and his lovely bride, we-”

   As the priest droned on, any attention that Kairi had for the wedding ritual was taken away to focus on Sora herself.

   Kairi knew this was wrong. Under normal circumstances, the wedding between the two should’ve had Sora as the groom and Kairi as the bride. Not the other way around. Not this magical trap that she and her friends had stumbled into.

   At the same time though, it felt so right. She still loved Sora and she knew that she still loved her in turn, even if Kairi’s mind is still being corrupted by masculine thoughts and Sora’s mind had long been corrupted by whatever girlish thoughts this place had drilled into her head.

   “Sora, do you take Prince Kai as your lawfully wedded husband till death do you part?”

   “I do.”

   Sora didn’t even hesitate at the chance to be Kairi’s wife.

   Kairi knew that Sora was no longer capable of protecting herself in his newly feminized state let alone anyone else. Maybe it’s time for her to protect him. She failed him as Kairi. She couldn’t protect anyone, but as Prince Kai… maybe things could be different?

   “Prince Kai, would you take this woman before you as your lawfully wedded wife till death do you part?

   It was her turn and she knew what she had to do.

   “I do.”

   “Then you may kiss the bride.”

   Kairi took Sora’s hands into hers and pulled her friend into a long, loving kiss. As the two kissed, Kairi could feel the last twinges of her old self slowly faded into oblivion. Kairi, the seventh Princess of Heart is now gone. In her place is Prince Kai; a brave young man who has sworn to protect his friends, his kingdom, and the ones he loves.

   Sora quickly tossed the bouquet of flowers into the crowd. It didn’t take long for the bouquet to end in Rachel’s hands, the young woman giggling incessantly. It is a wedding convention that the woman who catches the bridal bouquet will be the next to be married and Rachel’s eyes turned towards her true love, Bruce. She couldn’t wait for the day when she’s walking down that aisle.

   Kai swept Sora off of her feet, the girl wrapping her arms around her dashing prince. He left the church and as the door magically swung open on its own, Kai could see two servants opening the door to a majestic white carriage. He quickly dashed in and placed Sora down next to him.

   As the carriage began to ride away from the church, Kai took a look at Sora. She was so beautiful, even someone like Kai couldn’t describe it with words. Of course, beauty on its own wouldn’t make Sora a good queen. She had to be caring and compassionate towards others and she was more than capable of it.

   Sadly, as sweet and kind as Sora is, Kai knew that she couldn’t defend herself in any way. She’s far too dainty, delicate and the thought of fighting simply disgusts her. Kai knew that he had to protect her from any danger. Luckily for her, Kai was more than willing to be her protector.

   He gently grabbed Sora and placed her on his lap. The young woman gasped as her new husband held her tightly.

   “I can’t wait for our honeymoon,” Sora giggled incessantly. “I know you’ll really make me feel like a princess.”

   “I can’t wait too,” Kai looked out the window to see a castle on the horizon. His castle.

   “Oh my god,” Pete laughed. Only the bare amount of restraint prevented him from rolling on the floor, laughing his ass off. “This is too good.”

   “I certainly agree with you on that,” Maleficent chuckled. “Two of my greatest enemies and one of the Princesses of Heart currently in my clutches.”

   Maleficent looked into her crystal ball, only to see several forces of light slowly approaching the world that she trapped her foes in.

   “Who are they?” Pete asked.

   “Old foes,” Maleficent shrugged. “No need to worry. After all, if the world I created could restrain several of our most powerful foes, there’s no way they could save themselves as well. They’ll be completely trapped in our clutches and they might be reforged to serve our own goals.”

   The two evildoers proceeded to laugh as their foes slowly moved towards Maleficent’s created world, unaware of the trap that was set for them.

[prorevenge]

Guy annoys people on the bus, gets bamboozled

Before we start: English is not my native language, excuse any spelling and/or grammar mistakes.

So i was not realy sure if this story fits pro revenge (spoiler: there will be revenge for sure) but after having read some storys I think you might like this one.

This story took place about 3 or 4 years ago. At that time I was around the age of ~20. I always was a very introvert person and had a few panic attacks when beeing in very populated areas or having to deal with strangers (shitty childhood buf not part of this story). I am also a very slim/smal person, I don't have muscles at all and generally try to evade fights whenever possible. Keep that in mind for later.

So on that day I was on my way back home from my workplace. Since I had no car at that time (just finished my 3 year training period and got my final working contract) I took the bus home (about ~15 minutes which was nice).

Meet Tough Guy (TG from now on) who was sitting near the front of the bus (me beeing near the middle of the bus). TG looked like your avarage "i am looking for trouble" guy: Big muscles, small shirt, cappy on his shaved head and just the general aura of "if you look at me you are looking for trouble". To put it short: your average below 80 IQ idiot who most likely knows nothing and does nothing but pumping those muscles up.

TG was also doing his best to be as annoying as one could possible be: His dirty shoes (it was a rainy day) on the seats while eating a Burger from McDonalds - burger sauce dripping everywhere.

The Bus driver (a nice lady) told him multiple times to stop eating inside the bus and to put his feet down the chairs or else she would have to throw him out at the next bus stop. Of course TG had none of it. "Fuck no, I paid for the ticket, the fuck you wanna do?" - throw in some more insults and general bad behavior and you get a good picture of the situation.

Now, to be honest, I am a person who loves to laugh about the missery of other people (as long as they only hurt themself). I know that this is not the best character trait, but whatever.

While I thought that TG was a idiot I found it quite amusing (my bus stop was the next one anyway), but then the bus driver lady went into serious rage mode.

Bus driver lady: "I have talked with Headquarters. You have to leave the bus now. We will not drive ANY further before you have left the bus". TG: "Fuck noooooo, I paid for that ticket!".

This went on for a solid 5 minutes, all the way while the bus was standing at the bus stop (which was my station, but i wanted to see the end of their "discussion").

Suddenly, another woman who was quiet until now started talking: "E-E-Excuse me...I *have* to reach the train station by time to get my train - I have a very important meeting and i can not miss the bus." to which the Bus Driver Lady responded "I am sorry, nothing I can do. We will continue the tour as soon as Mr. TG has left the bus".

Of course knowing that another person was struggling because of his missbehaviour fired up Mr. TG even more, now beeing 100% certain that he will not leave the bus and they would have to call the cops to get him out.

At this point I got annoyed by TG, but i knew that i would mostz likely loose in a fight. Here in germany you can't expect to get help from other people (one thing that is much bette in america in my opinion, but thats another topic) so I had to think of a way to get that guy off the bus and to help the poor lady. So I stod up and told him in a very rude and loud manner: "Dude, you are fucking annoying everyone on this ride! Now get your stuff and leave the bus!" which triggered the exact reaction I was hoping for!

TG: "You looking for trouble? YOU LOOKING FOR TROUBLE!?!" Me: "Yeah" TG (with real excitement in his eyes, jumping up and down and doing some kind of warmup): "I WILL FUCK YOU UP YO! I WILL FUCK YOU UP" ME: "Yeah, lets clear this out of the bus, there is more room for a fight" while grabbing my bag and pretending to get ready to leave the bus.

TG, who was already hyped that he was going to get to beat the shit out of me (which he would clearly have done), jumped out of the bus in excitement.

...just as planed...

Right after he left the bus I moved my head to the bus driver lady (who had been watching the situation) and just noded to her, implying that she should close the door - which she did. TG, still outside the bus, realized his mistake and that he got fooled, but it was already to late. The door closed right in front of him, smashing his face against it. To be honest I have never seen someone so angry, you could see the veins on his head almost exploding. While he was shouting "I WILL KILL YOU" from the outside of the bus I just smiled at him and flipped the bird.

The other people on the bus (even the asshole cool kids that are always sitting at the backseats) bursted out in laughter, clapping and even applauding me.

I have never met that guy again - and I realy hope that I will never meet him.

Yes, the revenge was not as harsh as other stories on this Reddit, but I still wanted to share that story. Even if you are weak remember that you can still outsmart people - especially those kind of idiots.

(source) story by (/u/Kadji100)

[microsoftedgy69]

Goliath, part 2

[prologue] [part 1]

You're in the middle of sparring when you realize. The main plan doesn't exactly involve much actual combat, but some of the What-Ifs do. If push comes to shove, you might have to go hand to hand at some point, and you haven't done that in half a decade -- because you were glasses for most of that time, and terrified of physical violence for the rest -- so you made yourself a classic old sparring bot to get back into it. It's simple, pure metal with no discernible face and a fighting program that's supposed to learn from your moves and attempt to always get one step ahead of you. It's Brobot without the emotional baggage, essentially.

You're not far from the shore where your boat is anchored, and are rolling through the dirt with a pair of metal wrists in your hand, when you realize that you have been corrupted.

Something is wrong with your output. When you go through your logs, they tell you that you must have been talking, even though you don't remember saying anything. When you check your blog, there are several posts you don't recall putting there. You hurry to check your messages, but it doesn't seem to have gone that far -- thankfully, you haven’t told any of your friends to obey, submit, or consume lately.

Yesterday's craving for cookies makes more sense now, you think. It's also fantastically ridiculous.

It doesn't worry you much. You can get her propaganda out of your system, you've done it before. It doesn't worry you much, until you try to move away from the sparring bot, and your body does something entirely else instead.

In stunned silence, you watch your first surge forward and, with force you knew you had in you but never actually used, punch right into the metal head. You watch the material give, dent, then break, watch the edges cut into your hand, wrist, then arm. Your shark skin is so tough that in the year of you having it, nothing has actually broken through it before, but this will do it.

You have pain receptors, carefully crafted long ago, but you don’t feel anything, right now. You feel like you are glasses again, perched on somebody else’s nose, watching idly whatever the hell this guy is doing with his body. None of it seems like a very good idea, to you, but it doesn’t feel like your call to make. Your hand takes a shard of metal from the sparring bot’s face, and then your body pushes itself upright. You look down as you get a better grip on the shard, aim, and plunge it right into your own stomach.

Hm.

Well.

That doesn’t really do much of anything to you. You still don’t feel any pain, and when you pull the piece of metal back out of yourself, you can see something thick and brown ooze out of the wound.

It’s chocolate milk.

You must have hit your synthetic stomach that also doesn’t actually do much, digestion-wise. It just sort of keeps the food there for a bit until you go to the bathroom. This will be a bitch to fix, but it’s nothing you’re not prepared for.

The thought pulls you back, pulls your mind in between your shoulders, pushes your thoughts through the wires inside your arms. Yeah, right, you were prepared for this. It’s not part of Plan A. You didn’t want this to happen, but you suspected it might. Your emergency protocol in case of corruption was to put up a bunch of fake information about yourself she could find, like that your vital hardware is located in your stomach. It’s not. That would be stupid. It’s sprinkled all over your body in multiple hard to reach places, like the important piece of storage that’s lodged deep in your right thigh. She doesn’t seem to know that, which means she can’t have gotten very far yet.

You can get her back out.

Unfortunately, realizing what’s happening and pulling your consciousness back into your body has reminded you that you can, in fact, feel pain.

Crying out, you crumple to the floor, your good hand clutching your bad hand clutching your stomach. For several seconds, you don’t know where to start -- you can turn off the pain, but you should amp up your security software first, you need to get her out but you can’t do that if your mind is clouded with the pain of a stab wound to the guts and your hand falling apart but if you waste too much time getting the pain under control she might advance further into your data and you can’t have her finding out where your real vital hardware lies ---

Your scream rips through the undergrowth, loud enough to make a flock of birds flee from a nearby tree, to make you feel the vibrations of your own voice hum through the roof of your mouth. That helped. Kicking her out is a matter of a few, practiced steps. You can take care of the pain later; you’ve felt worse before.

So you stay where you are, curled up into a little ball, eyes screwed shut, teeth clenched, fingers twisting into each other, enduring. You’ve stopped crying out -- you’ve stopped making any noise at all, only focusing on your very inside, on what keeps you running, what makes you you. This by far isn’t her first attempt at corrupting you or your brothers, and over the years you’ve learned to adapt, keep updating your anti-virus, keep finding new measures that keep up with whatever she has been up to. You assume that this time she got in because you must have left some sort of trace on the drone you and Roxy sent her, which of course isn’t ideal. It means, however, that you opened the door for her, and you damn well know how to close it again.

She doesn’t put up much of a fight. You assume that she got what she came here for -- your vital organs and your immediate future plans. If you put up enough of a struggle, you figure, she will believe in that success.

The second you reach 0% corruption, you slump forward, face first into the dirt. It muffles your pained groan for the few beats you spend like this, before your feet start shifting against the ground in an attempt to somehow deal with the feeling of having a hole in your stomach. The way through your programming to turn off pain, at least, is a quick one now.

You flip the switch, and stop feeling anything. The moan you let out doesn’t vibrate through your mouth, but at least you hear it. You almost laugh at yourself. You don’t quite feel like it, though.

Walking the Earth with your touch receptors turned off is always weird, but it helps you get things done quickly. You check in on your brothers first, to make sure neither of them got caught in any sort of crossfire. They are fine, your plants are fine, your cat and your fish are fine. You want to pat yourself on the back for acting quickly enough, but once you chuck the broken sparring bot into your workroom and then sit down there to fix yourself, that sentiment leaves you pretty quickly.

You fix your stomach, then glue the cuts in your skin shut again, both your stomach and your hand. It looks like you have scars now, for the first time in your artificial life. In the back of the room, you have way more skin left over, rolled up like fabric, but you’d have to sew a whole new suit from it if you wanted to keep a body without scars. You don’t have time for that right now. You have to-- you want to act fast.

You have just about fucking had it.

Once you’re all glued up, you turn your receptors back on, then leave the workroom to say goodbye to the bots, your pets, and all of your plants. You check your sylladex to make sure that you have what you need on you -- a copy of SBURB, Dirk’s hand grenade. You step out on the deck, unnecessarily roll your shoulders, and message Roxy.

They reply immediately.

TT: She took the bait. See you in Rainbow Falls in five. TG: EFFIN finally TG: make it 3

Three it is. You nod to yourself, and open every other conversation that currently matters to you. To Alma, you say,

TT: Hey, I gotta bounce. There’s a note on the fridge about pet and plant care. TT: Thanks. TT: You know, for all of it. TT: Catch you on the flipside.

Messaging Palooka makes you a bit more nervous, but you don’t want to leave without another word.

TT: I’m off now. TT: Still reachable, but I’m on my way. TT: Just wanted to let you know. TT: I’ll stop by when I’m back.

You open your conversation with your… your ex-boyfriend, you suppose, too. You haven’t talked, since you told him what you’re doing. Something in you wants to let him know, but you don’t quite see the point in telling him that you’re actually leaving now. You wouldn’t know what to say, anyway. And if you stare at this any longer, your three minutes will be up.

sometimes to get to god, first you gotta meet the devil.

Your name used to be Dirk Strider. When you were a child, you were the loneliest person in the universe, and all you wanted to do was matter. Then one day, when you were thirteen, you woke up and were not Dirk Strider anymore. You had been demoted to a knock-off, a less important version of yourself that couldn’t physically do anything, that nobody cared about. You had to sit back and watch other people be relevant, watch other people do things and take control of their lives, while you were struggling with the mere concept of being a living person.

Jake doesn’t understand your constant urge to mean something. You didn’t expect him to; he’s been through this, he’s played his own session of the Game, he doesn’t want to hear anything about it anymore. You get it. It’s fine. He doesn’t have to understand that you need this, that you’ve been craving this since the second you were transferred into a pair of sunglasses, and that it’s the one, the final thing you have to do, to prove to yourself that you are a person.

You are real and you exist in this world, and you are going to leave a dent in it.

You sit on the roof of Roxy’s house while they set up the computers for your two-player session, and you send out pings into the universe. She will come here. You know she will. She found your fake body blueprints, and she found your fake future plans that showed you stopping her whole operation from Earth. She has enough incentive to get her shitty red spaceship back here, but no idea what actually awaits her. No idea that you and Roxy are ready to fuck this entire timeline just to get back at her.

You sit on the roof of Roxy’s house, and you wait for Her Imperial Condescension to come to you, so you can kill her. She will do what you want her to. People always do, sooner or later. You will get her where you want her, then you will induce the apocalypse, and kill the tyrant that has tormented you over the course of your entire existence.

And then, you think, with all of that out of the way, with your home timeline reduced to dust and your nemesis caught in the ensuing detonation of all you knew growing up, you will finally be ready, to go. To move on.

This is your moment in the spotlight. None of this is necessary for anyone else, except for maybe Roxy -- this planet is dead. Sitting on the roof, you overview the remnants of a society that has long since been eradicated. You are doing this for yourself. You are making yourself relevant, to only yourself.

It’s your gift, to you.

You run your fingertips over your other hand, feeling the scars in the rough skin of your forearm, and close your eyes. It feels good to be real.

[pseudocitrus]

tradition // kaneki x touka (genderswap)

tg is over now and i’m still finding ways to recover from it, but i remain incredibly thankful for my experiences reading it and especially for all the good stories and memories i’ve made with @neimana ♡ this is my birthday gift to her! ♡♡

this is a fic based off her genderswap/school au, which i hilariously can’t find any links to, but trust me that the concept exists and the art nei has made for it is SO. CUTE... ////// i truly swoon at that kirishima-kun.

once again nei~~ thank you and best wishes for your next year!! 💞💖❤️💞💖❤️💞💖❤️

~2800 words, contains lots of kissing and kiss marks. excerpt:

Their first kiss — was —

A surprise. Kirishima-kun, suddenly leaning over her — their eyes meeting — his gaze not the usual crystal, but instead so soft she felt her chest bruise. His hands rested, gently, on her hands.

She closed her eyes the moment it happened, and sank into it completely. It was...warm. Slightly wet. Tinged with a staggered exhale of all the feelings they’d held in for...for years. Their first kiss was...was...

Almost a whole week ago.

Their first kiss — was —

A surprise. Kirishima-kun, suddenly leaning over her — their eyes meeting — his gaze not the usual crystal, but instead so soft she felt her chest bruise. His hands rested, gently, on her hands.

She closed her eyes the moment it happened, and sank into it completely. It was...warm. Slightly wet. Tinged with a staggered exhale of all the feelings they’d held in for...for years. Their first kiss was...was...

Almost a whole week ago.

:::

It’s not like she wants to be kissing…like…all the time. But since that last time, she’s been — just — ...thinking about it a lot. And even though they kissed a week ago, nothing else really seems to have changed between the two of them. They greet each other in the morning before class — they stay after school in the library to study — they walk together to attend their part-time cafe shifts, and then give each other one last farewell at the train station.

Nothing has changed. And yet, everything has. Didn’t they used to talk a lot more? Didn’t Kirishima used to berate and complain about everything? Why is he so quiet now? There are times he seems to be staring at her, and about to say something — but — there, there he does it again. The moment Kaneki turns to him, he looks away. Presently, he rests his head on his desk, on his crooked arm.

Maybe he didn’t like kissing her after all. Kaneki tries and fails to swallow down the sudden fear swelling in her throat. She was in such a warm daze immediately afterward that she can’t really remember his reaction to it all, can’t really remember if his expression as he held her after was calm or content, or if at that time he was actually already sick of her and the fact they had stopped kissing because the salt of Kaneki’s own tears had interrupted them.

”Why...are you crying?”

”W-why...? I…”

Kaneki stares down at her hand, which is extremely close to Kirishima’s hand. The library is quiet, and a quick glance confirms no one is paying any attention to them. So if she reached out...just a little...just to touch her hand to his, just for a moment —

She lunges before she can think any more about it — just as Kirishima’s hand moves, to turn the page of his book. Kaneki’s hand drops on the table with a smack. Kirishima blinks; heads crane; Kaneki straightens, feeling her face turn red.

“S-sorry!” she says, and then she winces, and repeats it in a whisper: “Sorry. Sorry.”

Attention turns away from them, eventually, probably. She is too embarrassed to confirm. But she can tell Kirishima is staring at her, waiting.

“Are you alright?” he asks, finally.

“Yes,” Kaneki replies. “I’m fine. Sorry.”

I’m so stupid. And tiring.

“Sorry,” she says again, for good measure.

She stares down into her book, not trusting herself to look up. After a moment, she feels something warm. Kirishima’s hand — settling on hers.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Kirishima says. He turns her hand over, rests his fingertips in her open palm. The characters on the page blur suddenly. Kaneki opens her mouth.

“Sor…” This time, she catches herself. She sighs.

“Are you alright?” Kirishima asks again, and this time Kaneki admits it, blurts it, helplessly: “I just like you so much.”

“O-oh,” Kirishima says. His hand curls up a bit, but honesty is too great a relief, and now Kaneki finds she can’t stop.

“I was worried about why we haven’t really — done that since last week,” Kaneki continues, “And I wanted to apologize to you — if I wasn’t that good — I mean, it was my first time, so I — I didn’t really know — and I know I cried a little but —“

“Kaneki,” Kirishima mutters, “y-you’re — too loud —“

“Wait, I just need to say — I think I was only crying because I had — so many feelings about it — good feelings. I mean, not because it hurt or because I hated doing it myself, it just — all I want to say is, it wasn’t your fault at all so if you thought that — I hope you didn’t, but just in case — basically, if you want to stop all this between us, I” — she feels her eyes start to sting again — “I guess I would be okay with it but —“

“What?” Kirishima hisses. “You would be okay with it if we broke up? Is that what you’re saying to me?”

He spoke at the usual volume. This time, everyone around them remains determinedly staring at their textbooks.

Kaneki swallows.

“No,” she says. “I...I wouldn’t.”

Kirishima stares at her. She stares back.

Kirishima sighs.

“Let’s go somewhere,” Kaneki says finally.

“Where?”

“I...I don’t know. Just...somewhere.” She closes her book. She steels herself, and asks it, firmly: “W-will...you come with me?”

He could easily say “no.”

No.

You’re too much.

I’m done.

“Okay,” he says.

:::

In the end, they don’t go too far. Kirishima is the one that suggests it: the rooftop garden, of course.

“There’s something I want to show you anyway.”

There’s a secluded spot that receives shade and light at all the right parts of the day, and now, in late summer, the breezes it gets are pleasantly cool. Kaneki smiles, slightly, when they get there.

“You know, the first time I saw you, you were up here. Walking to this spot.” Kaneki points at the library windows across the courtyard as they make their way around the wall. “I was sitting right there. When I saw you I thought maybe I was just imagining things, since you can’t really see anyone if they’re sitting down.”

“The first time I saw you I was up here too,” Kirishima says as they settle in.

“Wh...really?”

“Yeah, down in that library. Rize and Tsukiyama would be searching all over for you and never figured out that all you ever did every day was hide out in there.”

Kaneki grimaces. “Kind of pathetic, huh?”

“No,” Kirishima says. “It’s nice in there. When someone isn’t talking really loudly about embarrassing things, anyway.”

“Haha...I guess so.”

She smiles at the ground. They are side by side. There’s enough room for both of them to sit without touching, but their elbows nudge together, and Kaneki waits a bit, and Kirishima doesn’t pull away. For a while they just sit, in comfortable silence. Kaneki feels her heart speed up, and then slow. This is fine. This is...nice.

“I haven’t really seen Rize-san or Tsukiyama-san recently,” Kaneki says thoughtfully, and Kirishima grimaces.

“They’re just biding their time. Actually...actually, that’s what I...kind of wanted to talk to you about.”

He quiets, opens his mouth, then closes it again, purses it into an uncomfortable frown. It’s frankly the kind of expression Kaneki has seen him make a lot in the past week, and though her initial instinct is a sort of panic — “You...want to break up, don’t you?” — this time, she catches it.

That isn’t it.

This is Kirishima-kun we’re talking about here. Kirishima-kun who taught her, in his own way, how to make coffee. How to survive in this school. Kirishima-kun, who went after her when she was in trouble. Who waited for her for so long after she left him behind, and still took her back.

“You can tell me,” she says, instead, encouragingly. “It’s okay.”

He looks at her, and sighs. Not from frustration, but relief.

“Okay,” he says.

:::

“At this school there’s a...a kind of...tradition.”

It would be a lie to say Kaneki had never noticed it before. There was the time she had accidentally burst in on Nishio-senpai — and back then in the chapel, she had noticed it on Nishino-senpai, too — patches of darkened skin — kiss marks. It seemed embarrassing to notice them at the time, like witnessing something private. Kaneki never would have guessed they’d have any particular meaning, much less something as deep as This person is claimed.

This person is mine.

“If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine,” Kirishima says quickly, but Kaneki breaks from her reverie to shake her head.

“N-no — no, I — I want to.” She feels her face warm. “I...really want to. I’ve just...never done anything like that before.”

“I think you just sort of...suck on it. Hard.” Kirishima coughs. “Not that I’ve done it either.”

“I want to do it,” Kaneki repeats firmly. “I — I can do it first. If you want.”

“...alright.”

They hesitate, and then shuffle a bit, so they face each other. Kaneki waits, and then, realizing that she’s waiting, Kirishima fumbles quickly with his shirt, attempting to tug his collar over the space of his shoulder. There’s no way he can expose any skin doing this, and when he realizes it, he grimaces and loosens his tie. After it falls, he makes his way through the shirt buttons — loosening them one by one — all the way down to his belly.

The first sight of his skin makes Kaneki’s face even warmer. Kirishima-kun...well, she knew he was a pretty strong guy from experience, but he — definitely also — kind of — looks it. Muscles-wise, that is. To her surprise there’s a little marking on the right side of his chest, a little spot she never could have guessed the existence of, which she reaches out and touches before she can quite stop herself. He is...firm.

Kaneki clears her throat. “Okay...okay. Now?”

“Sure,” Kirishima mumbles. “Any time.”

It takes another minute or so for them to shuffle around until she has a position that feels the most comfortable  — then another short while for her to move his shirt over and expose a stretch of skin. He tilts his head over to give her a better angle to it, and his bangs shift; when she glances at him she can see him watching her with both eyes, waiting. She smooths her hand on him.

“Here...?”

“Yeah...sure.”

Kaneki wets her lips, and then leans. Even though she’s already kissed him, there’s something different and — and strangely more intimate about kissing him somewhere that’s not his mouth. As soon as she makes contact he jumps, a bit — and his skin feels warmer than she expected — and when she feels brave enough to lean into it, to press her tongue to him, she feels his body shiver in a way that makes it much easier to kiss him a second time, and then a third, and a fourth.

She would think someone like Kirishima-kun wouldn’t like this kind of messing around — she almost expects him to say something like, Just get on with it already — but he doesn’t. He sighs, and her chest swells, and she decides to do it, right then — her lips pursing — and then, after a deep exhale, suck.

His body shudders under her, again. She hears him exhale, slow. Their hands fumble against one another and grip messily, and Kaneki isn’t sure how long it’s supposed to take so she keeps going, sucking fervently until Kirishima whispers “That’s probably enough.”

She leans back to survey, and uses the back of her hand to wipe the saliva from her mouth, and then from the skin at the base of his neck. It’s kind of pinkish there.

“Is that...alright? It doesn’t look…very dark. Was I not doing it hard enough?”

“I think it’s fine.” He prods it gingerly. “I think it will get darker after a minute or two.”

“Oh. It didn’t...hurt, did it?”

“No. It actually felt...” He coughs. “No, it didn’t hurt at all. I’ll do you now?”

“Y-yeah! Yeah.”

She waits. He waits.

“Unbutton your shirt,” Kirishima says. “Um, just a little, probably.”

“Right! Right.” She fumbles hastily, undoing the bow of her necktie and casting it aside, then making quick work of the top button of her uniform. She’s only finished the second button when she realizes just how much of herself she’ll be exposing. Her face is probably vivid, now.

“You...don’t need to go much farther than that,” Kirishima murmurs. His hand reaches, cradling her head gently, turning it aside. He moves her shirt aside, carefully, then rubs his finger on a spot at the base of her neck that suddenly feels incredibly sensitive. “I can do it right there.”

Okay, Kaneki tries to say, but she doesn’t quite have the breath for it. Kirishima shifts, and she shifts to meet him — her back pushes up against the wall. She looks up to him in surprise and he kisses her mouth — full, gentle, encompassing — and she wilts. Her hands move up against his chest, not to push him away but to feel just a little more of him, and the two of them stay that way a while, kissing, their bodies moving on their own, shifting and pressing and interlocking, to find the best way to be closest to each other. In the haze of things Kaneki only barely notices Kirishima stroking her face with his thumb, then placing it against her mouth to occupy her while he finally moves elsewhere — kissing her cheek, her chin, her quivering throat — making his way steadily, carefully down.

When he gets to the decided spot, he pauses, and when he stamps a kiss there, Kaneki’s hand — resting on his back, she realizes — grips him.

“It’s — ticklish,” Kaneki gasps in explanation, and Kirishima watches her carefully. He kisses her again; she grips again. This time her legs stiffen, all the way down to her toes.

“You’re not laughing.”

“It’s...it’s really ticklish, seriously.”

“Then should I stop?”

“Don’t,” Kaneki says, and finds herself adding, “please,” and she feels little stars in her belly when Kirishima smiles at her warmly, and presses his mouth to her again, this time with a light flick of his tongue that makes her release a tiny, embarrassing sound. Before Kaneki can apologize for it, Kirishima takes her hand, and squeezes, and then, finally, sucks.

“O-oh —”

Whatever sensation she was expecting, it wasn’t — quite — like this. She buries her head against Kirishima’s neck, clutches him, feels him. He sucks for only a handful of seconds before releasing to lay a kiss on her, and then repeats, and repeats — and what moves her isn’t so much the sensation of him kissing her itself as it is the thrum of his fast pulse against her brow — his ragged breathing in her hair — the tiny wet noise of his mouth. He is everything to her in this moment, he engulfs her totally, and his hazy expression and licked lips tells her that for him, right now, there is only her.

“Crying again?” he asks. His gaze is warm. Kaneki swipes at her eyes, and realizes he’s right.

“Ah...haha. I guess so.”

“It didn’t hurt, did it?”

“No...it actually felt...” Kaneki rubs her cheeks. “It didn’t hurt at all.”

“Good,” Kirishima says. “Because I...might have...done it a little too much.”

The pink spots go almost halfway up her neck. Later, Kirishima waits outside while she blushes at herself in the bathroom mirror, trying and failing to adjust her uniform so that everything is all covered up.

Though, she can’t help thinking, if Rize-san and Tsukiyama-san happen to see it...it wouldn’t be…that bad.

The marks probably would have gotten even more extensive if they hadn’t been interrupted by a couple droplets of rain. It’s coming down hard by the time they make it to the school’s front gate, and Kaneki opens her umbrella up, and the two of them head out to the cafe.

“I’ll do better next time,” Kirishima says.

“Next...time?”

“Yeah. Well, they fade, so...so you have to redo them once in a while.”

“Oh. Once in a while...like a couple of days?”

“More like a couple of weeks.”

“Oh.” They pause at a stoplight. Kaneki shifts her weight from foot to foot, then clears her throat.

“Maybe we should check up on them again tomorrow?” she asks. “Just...in case. I mean...I wouldn’t want them to go away too soon.”

Kirishima considers.

“Maybe we can even check after work today,” he agrees.

In the end, the day is slow enough that they find time to check about a dozen times before their shift is over. Afterward, heading to the staff room to change, both of them complain properly about the pain of maintenance before they press against each other again. This time Kaneki swallows, and then turns her head in the other direction, shyly exposing the side of her throat still uncovered in pink — and Kirishima flushes, and obliges.

[clementineviolet]

Really, really don't understand something. Hawley and Bruner are responsible for a majority of these problems correct? Announcing newer titles when there are older titles they have yet to get back to (TWAU2, BM3, GOT2, GOTG2). Hiring new employees up to last week when TG knew couldn't be paid. Bruner suing the company despite the situation he knew they were in. Why didn't they get TFS done earlier and we could have avoided all this? Want to hope we still get the season finished before TG is gone

I’m spilling all the tea I currently have, but not sure how reliable all of it is until Telltale decides to give us an official statement 

I’ve heard a few things that I think could explain it: 

Bruner (former CEO) according to this article (https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17130056/telltale-games-developer-layoffs-toxic-video-game-industry) created a very toxic environment at Telltale. Creatively, his decision to greenlight a ton of other series and have them all be produced at the same time (basically quantity > quality) not only harmed the staff psychologically but hurt Telltale’s reputation. His role in all this is pretty straightforward and he is a massive dick. No other comment from me here. 

Hawley only became CEO a year or so ago and has been trying to save Telltale by focusing on only 1 game at a time and trying to work out a deal with Netflix over Stranger Things. He’s also mentioned in the article above as more hands-off but again, we have devs who were working on TWDG s4/TWAU s2/Stranger Things say that they worked hella long hours, often overtime without any pay, and that the toxic work environment at Telltale continued even under Hawley but probably to a lesser extent than under Bruner. 

From my understanding, I heard rumors about Telltale struggling to stay afloat throughout Spring 2018. Telltale hoped that their contract with Netflix for Stranger Things would carry them through the end of TWDG s4 and keep them afloat during TWAU s2. But I heard from a gaming journalist that Telltale recently missed an important deadline for their contract with Netflix that led Netflix to cancel their Stranger Things contract, which basically got rid of their major lifeline and prompted Hawley to abruptly close ship at Telltale on Friday and layoff over 90% of their workforce. And then there’s the huge fact that Telltale Games have not proven profitable AT ALL since TWDG s1. I saw someone posted a graph of the sales for all of their games since Sam & Max and the sales were literally rock bottom for GOTG, Minecraft s2, and TWDG s4. Not even the PR guy at Telltale seemed fully aware of just how dire the financial situation was at Telltale. 

Honestly, I’m a little upset towards Hawley for even greenlighting TWDG s4 and TWAU s2 when Telltale was in such a dire financial situation and could only rely on its possible connection to Netflix as a lifeline. TWAU fans waited FOR YEARS for a season 2, had a brief glimpse of hope, and now that will for sure never happen. TWDG fans and devs are even worse in the sense that only half of the season will be completed (worst case scenario) and the other half is just unknown because writers can’t just legally release the scripts and assets for eps 3 and 4. Most importantly, I am pissed off at Bruner and at Hawley for how they treated their staff. To just sit down over 250 people one day and tell them that they’re all (except for 25 people) fired and have to find a way to survive in the most expensive metropolitan area in the country without a job and without health care is disgusting. The poor management at Telltale over the years has been leading up to all of this, but some recent event (which I hypothesize is the broken contract between Netflix and Telltale over Stranger Things) must have triggered the end of Telltale Games much sooner than Hawley and the other Telltale staff could have expected.