#if someone for whatever reason wanted to make fakes and sell them for a profit I think my only thought would be | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vickysaurus · 1 year ago

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We’ve all encountered plenty of whatever the latest iteration of spambots plaguing Tumblr is. But don’t forget to stay vigilant for their human counterparts too! I’ve been getting messages from what’s pretty clearly an entirely human scammer trying to pull what is probably a fake check scam. I’ve been having some fun wasting their time with inane nonsense, but I do think their tactic could potentially get to people, so keep an eye out for it.

(Long scambaiting conversation under the cut)

It started, as these things typically do, with an avatar-less account following both this account and @vickysaurus-art. But they did have a post on their profile, so I let them be and moved on. But then, later that evening, the messages started.

So if the new follower messaging me out of the blue wasn’t shady enough, the second message absolutely confirms this is a scam. They come up with an incredibly vague statement about liking ‘my profile’ and apparently this unholy mixture of extinct animals, the Owl House, various fictional queer characters, and whatever else I feel like sharing has made them see fit to make me their muse for a mural and immediately throw 300 bucks around. Don’t ever be taken in by such obvious appeals to your ego as an artist. I decided to see if I could make them do a bit of homework and explain what exactly it is that is worthy of being a mural.

Looks like the scammer wants to move off-app as soon as possible. There are several reasons for this: presumably they are trying this shit with multiple people and it’s only a matter of time until enough spam reports come in that eventually even Tumblr staff may take a break from flagging trans people’s posts as mature to close the scammer’s account, interrupting their running scams. Secondly, it is much easier to pressure someone into doing something over the phone, and much easier to get them to accidentally volunteer information. Thirdly, if we communicate here, the records of their scam are going to be much easier to access if this ever were to go to court than direct communication. And finally, one of the main goals of this scam is probably to get as much of my personal details as possible, either to try some recreational identity theft or just to sell them to other scammers. My phone number would be a nice start to that data collection.

My new friend really oversold their plans with the word ‘mural’. 50x50 cm, please, I’ve seen bigger murals painted on chicken coops. However, they did finally settle on what post inspired them so much! It’s ‘the Bat Queen everyone’s been commenting on’. Ah yes, who could forget my legendary viral Bat Queen post, which was both my original work and has been getting comments from everyone. I think it’s this one, which has SEVEN notes. Hot damn, it does deserve to be on a mural.

‘I think the Bat Queen is like a novel, which everyone is interested to have it or a paint of it as well’ is my favourite line from this entire exchange.

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair. But the scammer is moving on from the Bat Queen now. Notice some more working of my ego, as well as the assurance that they’d never dream of cheating me or breaking the law! Trustworthy folk to be sure. If this is a fake check scam, as I suspect, it's critical for the scammer that I trust them and want them to have their share of the 'profits'. Anyway, never mind that because there’s a problem…

I do not come to Tumblr to hear people poo-pooing my Bat Queen posts. They are my legacy and I want to hear an apology for this slander. The scammer stopped replying for a while at this point and I actually began making this post as I figured they’d given up, when suddenly the game was back on!

Well, it’s decidedly mid as apologies go, but I let us move on anyway. There was some other nonsense I felt like trying.

Scammers will often try and rush things along, set deadlines, imply you need to hurry or you may miss out. Aside from playing on good old FOMO, this ensures you don’t start having second thoughts after having some time to think, nor the time to start bragging to others about the obvious scam they’ll surely see through. But I’m scambaiting here, so I’m gonna be as obstructive and annoying as possible and keep delaying things.

If you wanna be annoying, ask someone if you can ask a question. For bonus points, make the actual question a pointless, unnecessary one too.

Plot twist! Though the scammer was inspired by my posts and wanted to make a mural, and the 300 dollars were promised to me merely for being an inspiration, it turns out I’m the one who’s supposed to be doing the painting.

I wonder if, in a later stage of this scam, I would have ended up talking to the ‘client’. Tumblr ended up banning the scammer before things could get that far, so I guess we'll never know. The scammer mentioning the client will be paying through a check written in my name is an important detail, because what's going on here is most likely a fake check scam.

Anyway, it was getting late so I decided to let the opportunity to really drag things out and ask a lot about the ‘client’ go to instead assure the scammer I was very interested and completely taken in by their scam, with the knowledge I was about to leave them hanging for the night.

The poor scammer got lonely during the night :( Also they start asking for my location, and I start doing literally everything except answer that question.

Good morning scammer! Sorry to hear you’re from Florida but then again that’s probably a lie judging by the hours you tried to scam me at. They briefly mention dreams in their continued vacuous well-wishes before getting back to asking about my location. SO LEMME TELL YOU ABOUT MY DREAMS.

Let’s delay things some more with pointless questions about my own dream.

You’re not getting off the hook that easily, buddy. You’re gonna interpret this nonsense I made up before we move on.

Oh, it’s a sign I should proceed with your scam? Convenient. But what if it’s a warning instead? Never mind your bullshit about the client, let us discuss my bullshit some more.

Oh, I guess we should dismiss this dream if it’s not a sign to jump in. Except I am still hung up on talking about dreams. I’m continuing to ignore the location question, not because it’s a secret - I’ve mentioned my actual home country several times on this blog so if they'd done more homework than scrolling down to 'the Bat Queen post' they could easily know - but because it’s something the scammer wants, so I’m not giving it to them. Eventually, when the question does become unavoidable, I’ll just lie anyway.

Gotta love some fool trying to scam people on tumblr talking big about the good legacy they want to leave behind.

If this sounds at all sarcastic and like I'm asking what their mum would think of their being a shitty scammer, it's because it is and I am.

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realise you wanted me to talk about myself! Have a stream of buzzwordy verbal diarrhoea containing no new information whatsoever. I was quite tired from a long day, so 'synergise' was the only buzzword I could actually come up with.

After this, they once again asked me where I was from, and this time with no other parts of their message to focus on and me getting ready for bed, I decided to throw them a bone.

I was hoping they'd take the name of this French town as the insult it doubled as, but if they did they did not tell me about it.

And that's as far as things went, because Tumblr finally got around to banning them during the night. This morning, my reply got a 'Could not send' and when I went to their profile, it was gone. By the afternoon, the chats had vanished too but I took screencaps as I went since I was expecting just such a thing. I was gonna regale them with the entire history of Alsace and its role in Franco-German relations before letting anything else happen too, and maybe throw in another dream I'd had that night.

So, what was the point of all this for the scammer? I think there's probably a combination of two aims here. The lesser aim is to obtain as much of my data as possible, for identity theft, selling to other scammers, and possibly blackmail if I were to start pulling the breaks on the scam. But more importantly, this is probably a fake check scam being set up. Had the scam proceeded, I would eventually have been sent a convincing fake check for the 300 dollars. Probably more. You see, the 'client' has accidentally included the scammer's middle man fee in the amount they sent me! Whoopsie! Now my good buddy will ask me to send them their half of the 600 dollars the client accidentally sent me with the check. And that's the part where they get your money. Because the check I received is fake and will be refused by the bank sooner or later, but the money I sent the scammer is real.

So keep an eye out! The way this scammer talked about my posts, of which my own art is just a small part, made it immediately extremely obvious it was a scam, but a scammer specifically talking about my paleoart instead of 'that Bat Queen post' could maybe have fooled me.

#scambaiting #tumblr #spam #fake check scam #I think the Bat Queen is like a novel #which everyone is interested to have it or a paint of it as well

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skepticalarrie · 3 years ago

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Hello Allie! Do you think Sony is involved is this situation of Harry having fake relationships again??

Hello anon, how are you?

Oh I was just discussing that earlier with someone on my DMs. But basically, yes? As I said before, I do think Sony/Columbia interests are always going to prevail compared to Harry’s own wishes and his management’s. This is not 1D anymore but I highly doubt anyone has much *power* over that. I think is very naive of us to think labels don’t highly advise their artists to do something or not to do something in order to achieve whatever they have planned for them.

That being said, I don't think Harry is being punished by his label or whatever. The way I see it is more like Sony is not particularly happy ($$$) that HS3 is not out yet, especially after FL being so big ($$$). But it’s very clear to me that the idea of making Harry this huge untouchable multifaceted artist in the industry is coming from the Azoffs. And it really makes me think about all the reasons Holivia is happening the way it is. It's being pushed hard, it doesn't seem like it's going to end anytime soon. You see, just like Holivia, Haylor happened to promote something for both of them, but just a few weeks was enough to milk it for years and to make One Direction skyrocket in the U.S. So what is the end goal with Holivia? Because as time goes by it seems to me that this stunt is there to *please* everyone. Let's see:

- The label wants Harry to release HS3 asap, they want profit profit profit. In other words, Sony/Columbia is not thrilled about actor Harry instead of a new album. Plus, how successful Harry is going to be in the movies will also affect directly how much his music will be selling. If Holivia wasn't happening, Harry would be MIA this entire time. We would see him filming on set and that's it. Holivia is keeping Harry in the spotlight, it's keeping him a relevant artist while he doesn't have new music. (AND, Holivia will not end silently, so the end of it can also be used to promote new music and they can also use Olivia for the backstory of the new album, just like they did with Hamille)

- His management needs bargaining power. He has a three-album deal with Columbia, which makes this moment (between the second and the third album) a power game since HS3 could be the last one with the label. So as more successful, famous and profitable Harry is, the more power he has in future negotiations because the labels will want him no matter what the conditions are. It's a great moment to market him as a huge artist and not only a musician. So considering DWD is not a small production, and they need this movie to succeed, a stunt is a PR strategy that probably doubles the chances of making this movie successful and making people interested. Not to mention Olivia's interests in this.

- Holivia also allows Harry to make My Policeman, after all, he still has a £75-80M deal and a career that relies on his sexualized heterosexual image. So as ironic as it sounds, having a girlfriend allows a "soft" coming out. He can say he's in fact part of the community without compromising his image too much. People can slowly get used to the idea. And this does make him one step closer to a full and honest coming out in the future.

However, I think they forgot to think about the public's perception about Harry during all of this. Is that what his fans want? Will it come across as genuine as it should? Because people are not buying it, the fans are not happy.

#ask #holivia #solo harry #management #sony #hs3 speculation #dwd #contracts and business #columbia records #mine

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phoenixyfriend · 3 years ago

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Sugar, Spice, and a Heart to Entice

AKA: Jango Fett speedruns a romance with someone who should be his enemy. (It's okay. We know he makes bad choices.)

Note: Ahsoka uses the pseudonym "Ashla" in this fic. Warnings: slavery, references to drug use, crude sex jokes, undressing of an unconscious person (for medical reasons)

----

The girl that they shove into the chains next to him is... worrying.

(Well, probably a girl--he'll adjust later if it turns out he's wrong.)

She's not that much younger than him, he thinks. It's hard to tell, with the way her skin is taut over muscle and bone, too little water and too little sleep, and probably not enough food for whatever labor she's been doing. He's also, admittedly, not great at gauging ages in the first place, and certainly not for Togruta. Still, he thinks it's safe to say that they're close in age, and that she's probably younger than him.

She's lucky, by some measure. The spice ship is terrible, but it's probably better than the fate tog girls are usually subject to in this industry. They're hazardous conditions, and violent ones, but Jango's yet to see a slave here stripped of their clothing for anything other than a whipping.

He thinks it's probably a matter of money. That kind of violation lowers the profit margins, he imagines. Spice is more lucrative than anything, and pain is a better motivator than... well.

So she's lucky, by that measure, and that measure alone.

They clap her in bindings before he even sees her, even though she's unconscious, and bring her sometime in the night cycle. Jango doesn't have a lot of pity left in him, but some goes out to her. He won't say she's too young for this, because nobody is ever old enough for slavery, nor do slavers have any compunctions about selling babes in arms, but Jango would wager she's already led a hard life.

She's fairly covered, but what little is visible shows enough old battle wounds that he can't imagine she's stayed off of battlefields. He knows how to read a Togruta's markings for stress history, too, and hers tell a story. Her facial marks are thin and delicate, and he'd say they're certainly more complex than the average; the striation on her lekku and montrals is thin and jagged, like marble. It's pretty enough, but it's also a sign of the fact that her life has likely been anything but easy. Some of it might be genetics, and he hopes it is, but with the scars he can see... he doubts it's much.

"Keep that one alive," the overseer orders, eyes on Jango and hand gesturing at the tog girl.

He leaves.

Jango isn't sure what they're hoping to get out of putting her with him. The room is built for four, yes, but they usually don't try to have anyone share with Jango. Maybe they ran out of room, or just assumed Jango was the most likely to know field medicine, or just figured there wouldn't be any trouble until she woke.

As he gets closer, his confusion grows. The tog's got burns all over, ugly ones that aren't going to heal cleanly without bacta. They're going to get infected, as likely as not. He hasn't got much besides water in here, but the overseer's left behind a box of what looks like bandages. If he's lucky, there's burn cream in there.

(He's not lucky.)

He works slowly, careful of every movement. He builds up a story in his head as he does, based on the wounds he finds and what he starts to notice of the clothing. He can't see all the details, not in what little light he has, but there's plenty to notice.

He hadn't realized, with how dim it is, but most of what she's got on as an outer layer is hardened leather, real leather, not synth. There are attachment points for armor at the shoulders and hips, and he thinks he sees signs of wear for vambraces and greaves. She's no Mando'verde, not with how he can see that the fabric at her torso and upper legs is intended to stay light and flexible and uncovered, but the crafting of the leather layers is familiar. He thinks she might have contacts among Mando armorers.

She might even wear beskar, if she's impressed the right person.

The wounds are recent, and unfamiliar, and he thinks she was probably fought into chains, rather than bought in them. She's a captive, not a purchase, or maybe... maybe they just found an unconscious woman, and decided that she was worth keeping.

He thinks she lost a fight, or won but with great injuries, and just... stumbled off and collapsed. He gets the feeling no one on board the ship could have fought this woman, except for himself. It's not based on much, not until he can see her move, but he's got good instincts for that sort of thing.

Jango keeps his assessment of her torso quick and clinical, not even bothering to mentally apologize for stripping her bare. This is medical, and he's not a doctor, not even a field medic, but he's professional nonetheless. Even though there's nothing in the box but bandages, not even the burn cream he'd hoped for, he'd still rather know if there's a broken rib to worry about. He doesn't want to wait for her to wake up and then find out she's got a punctured lung, even if he can't do anything about it. He finds bruising, but... he thinks that if anything is broken, it's hairline at most.

Lucky, he thinks again, in the unluckiest situations.

She doesn't wake that cycle. It's all he can do to get some water in her, dripped into her mouth in a trickle, but it's something.

----

When the Togruta girl wakes up, it's sudden. Jango is wiping down her lekku with a wet cloth in hopes of staving off a fever, kneeling next to the bunk. She opens her eyes, stiffens with a sharp breath, and then twists off the bed. Before he's fully processed this, her legs are up and around his neck, and then he's being wrenched to the side and onto the filthy ground, cheek grinding down into the grit. He feels a bony knee press into his spine, and the growl of a predator.

"Where am I?" the tog girl demands.

"Spice ship," he says, and oh but this place has ruined him for fights; he's having trouble breathing from whatever she's done to him, and she doesn't even have the use of her hands. "Deep space. You're in the slave cells. Don't mess with the collar, it'll explode if you try to remove it."

"Spice refinery?" she repeats, sounding completely baffled. He gives her a second to process, but she blindsides him. "Someone got me in their hands and they went for spice slavery?"

"As opposed to..." he really hopes she gets off soon.

She doesn't answer him immediately, and he can't get a look at her face. He gets his arms out to the sides, plants them to the floor, and shoves back. She doesn't fall off, but she does slide to the side to sit on the floor.

The expression she's got is best described as 'shell-shocked,' he thinks.

"You don't know me," she says, faint and confused. He shakes his head; he's pretty sure he'd have recognized her if he'd known her at all, given the time he's spent cleaning her wounds and trying to keep her alive. She laughs, breathless and a tad hysterical. "You don't--fuck. You don't know me. That's... great. Okay. Okay, I can work with that. Don't know how they missed it, but okay."

"Bounty on your head?" he guesses.

She smiles, thin and unpleasant. "Something like that."

"Thought as much. You're built like a fighter." He intends it as a compliment, but he doesn't think she takes it as one.

"I've never had a choice otherwise," she says, and when she next looks around, it's to find a place to sit. She pushes herself up to the thin mattress of the cot behind her, and Jango mirrors her on the cot across the room. It's not his bed, technically, but it's not like there's anyone to complain. She frowns at him; it's not a rude look, he thinks, but an attempt to put something unfamiliar in place. "What legion were you with?"

He blinks at her. He's been part of an army, but never one that big. "Legion?"

"Were you with special forces?" she tries again. "Or--wait, did you even get off Kamino before--"

"I'm not whoever you think I am," he tells her. "None of that means anything to me. I know what a legion is, but I've never had reason to be part of one."

"But you're..." she trails off, brow furrowed. "I guess just a similar face, then."

"To who?"

"The clones?" she hazards, as if that clears anything at all up. "I have no idea where we are; maybe the war holos never made it out far enough for you to know what they looked like..."

"Which war?" he asks, because he feels like he'd probably have heard of a war that used clones, especially one that had enough holos spread around for this woman to expect him to know what the clones in question look like.

"The... the clone war," she says hesitantly. "With the Separatists?"

None of that means anything to him.

It must show in his face, because her brow furrows, and her eyes go wide in a way he doesn't like. He can't tell if her skin's losing color or anything, but he's pretty sure the curl at the tip of one lek is a sign of anxiety. He's not sure how to help, but part of him already decided he liked this woman, just on the suspicion that she was friendly to Mandalorians.

(It's been a solid year and a half since Jango has had anything approaching a friend. He may be, subconsciously, a little desperate.)

"What's your name?" she asks, voice pitching in discomfort, and tight as a garotte.

"Jango Fett."

She closes her eyes, clenches her jaw, and... he can't see, can't know if she's trembling, but he thinks she is. She lets her head fall back against the wall, and breathes in sharply. It's a shaky breath, and he doesn't like that much, either.

"Fuck," she repeats. "No wonder--fuck."

He gives her a few seconds, but she doesn't elaborate. He asks another question instead. "Do I get to know your name?"

Her eyes crack open, and then she sits up straight and looks him over. Her lips purse, and she comes to some decision, though he's at a loss for what. "Call me Ashla. She/her, if you'd rather stick to Basic."

Fake name. Alright. She mentioned a bounty, so it's probably about that.

"Well met, Ashla."

She laughs, empty and painful. She swears in a mix of Huttese and Mando'a, and a few languages he doesn't even recognize. The Core accent on her Mando'a is strong, but he thinks whoever taught her might have been from Concord Dawn.

"How old are you, if you don't--"

"I'm twenty-one," she says. He was right; she's only two years younger than him. "At least... fuck, okay. What's the date?"

He tells her, and she screws up her brow and mouths something to herself. He's not entirely sure what.

"How long ago was..." she trails off.

"Was what?"

She presses a hand over her eyes. "I don't know what year it is."

Ah. Well, he can help with that much. He tells her that, too.

Ashla drops her hand. She visibly mulls it over, eyes on the underside of the bunk above her. He has no idea what she's thinking.

"Why aren't there other people in this room?"

"Weak ones couldn't sleep because I'm 'too intimidating,' and the rest kept trying to throw their weight around." He shrugs at the look she points his way. "I'm not dumb enough to start a fight with a bomb around my neck, but I'm not letting someone knock me around so they can earn a reputation."

She purses her lips, but lets it lie. "You let me take you down, then?"

"You had the advantage of surprise," he says, and doesn't bother to list every other advantage. She's better fed than he is, has spent less time in spice-suffused air, was unconscious and resting while he was awake to keep an eye on her fever. He's got the feeling she already knows.

When she speaks again, it's low and in fluent Mando'a, heavily accented though it may be.

"You'd get out of here eventually," she tells him, eyes half shut. "But you'll get out faster with my help, Mand'alor."

His stomach twists.

----

"They are either very stupid, or very cheap," Ashla mutters a day later, when he's supposedly helping her change some bandages. It gives him the excuse of leaning in close.

"Probably the former," he says.

She grins, and then stiffens and hisses out a low breath as he pours some of the stolen whiskey over one of the burns. It's not a real disinfectant, but it's the best they've got at the moment. Jango still isn't sure how she managed to get it from the overseers without them noticing, but he's quickly gotten the gist that she's a fair shot sneakier than he is.

"What did they do?" he asks, and she huffs out a laugh.

"I need you to promise you won't try to kill me," she says, and he stills.

She seems to be waiting on his response. Great. "That's not an auspicious start, Ashla."

"Eh, I've survived more than my fair share of people trying to kill me. No offense, bro, but I could take you," she says.

She's probably right in their current circumstances. "Let's hear it."

"I left the Jedi Order when I was seventeen."

The whiskey bottle slips from his fingers.

An invisible hand catches it, and it settles quietly on the floor of their cell. No guards will come running. It's a damning sight, for him.

A Jedi.

A Jedi who--who left.

Jedi committed Galidraan, but she left three years before that, but she was--was--

She has her back to him, trusting.

Or just arrogant.

She phrased it that way on purpose, phrased it so he'd know she left before he--before--

"I was framed by my friend for a terrorist attack," she says, and he can't find his voice to tell her to stop talking. "And sentenced to death by a non-Jedi military tribunal for it. By the time they figured out I wasn't guilty, I'd already been kicked out."

He forces his hands to his knees, grips at the bones that are too close to the skin, and orders himself to breathe.

Ashla turns on the spot, blinks at him. "I'm telling you this because it's how we're going to get out."

"Your people killed mine."

"I wasn't a Jedi when Galidraan happened," she says. There's more she wants to say, he's sure, but she keeps the words locked behind her teeth. That might be a good thing.

"And I'm just supposed to trust you?"

"Only for long enough to get out of here," she tells him. She shrugs, easy as anything. She's done this before, maybe. "Trust me, I have plenty of reasons to hate you, too, but I'm a little more concerned about getting this ship taken into custody, and having all the slaves freed."

"And you can just... make that happen."

"I told you, they're either stupid or skint," she says, with that same disarming grin. "I had lightsabers on me, and they kept them on the ship. They haven't drugged me since I woke up. They put me in normal cuffs, Jango."

He hates the way his name sounds on her tongue.

He hates the fact that he sees her plan already.

"You don't even need me," he points out, resisting the urge to try to kill her here and now. He doesn't have his armor. He doesn't have weapons. He's good, but she's got the Force and thighs that can crush a bantha skull.

"I'm not exactly... legit," she admits with a grimace. "Once you're back in Mandalorian space, you at least have an identity. People that will give you a place to stay. A chain code."

"And you don't."

She smiles, brittle. "Give me a week to scope out what I need and get us out of here, and maybe I'll explain."

A week. Fine.

And once they're out of here, and he has a blaster and a meal and a good night's sleep, he'll handle her.

----

He hates the fact that he likes her, still. People had already noticed, even just one day in. The first time someone notices he's giving Ashla the cold shoulder in the workroom, they joke at him about her not putting out. He's known her one day, and they think--

He stops the thought in its tracks.

Jango doesn't start fights here, but he is tempted.

"Oh, he wouldn't dare," Ashla simpers, sweet as spun sugar. "I bite."

She smiles, every pearly white tooth on display. The fangs near glint in the light. She eyes the speaker, squeezes the tool in her hand. Her tendons strain, but the metal bends with a creak.

The overseer shouts for them to get back to work.

Jango steps closer to her, lets his elbows brush against hers, and glares off anyone that tries to get too close.

"I don't need protection," she mutters to him from the corner of her mouth.

"I keep my word," he replies, hating himself for it.

He said he'd have her back. He may hate what she is, but... she left the Order. She's not a Jedi anymore. If he thinks it enough, he can believe it.

----

There's always a camaraderie in shared suffering. Jango is aware of this, and he feels his fondness for Ashla grow against his better judgment. They're both slaves on a spice ship, and he can't change that. It makes him tolerate her more than he sensibly should.

She acts like a Mando soldier, sometimes. She's not at all like Haat Mando'ade, but she knows some of the jokes that Mandalorians grow up with. She walks like a woman used to beskar'gam. She knows a drinking song or two.

(They don't waste the whiskey. It's for injuries, not intoxication.)

"I had brothers, once," she tells him, late at night. "A lot of them. They had a Mandalorian parent, sort of, but he'd never seen fit to really... let them have the culture. I lost them all, mostly to slave chips, and a few to just normal deaths, but... I learned what I could about Mandalore, after, for their sake. In their memory."

It's not a terrible reason, he thinks.

"Irony for you to end up in chains, then," he mumbles, and she barks out a sharp laugh.

"Tradition, more like," she says, and explains before he can ask for her to keep talking. "My... teacher was born a slave, and I... have a suspicion he ended up back in chains after we lost contact. His teacher was enslaved at least twice that I know of."

"Shitty tradition," he says, because there's nothing else he can think of.

"Could be worse," she tells him. This time, she doesn't elaborate.

----

He likes her more than he should.

----

He likes her so, so, so much more than he should.

----

She steals datachips when nobody's looking, using the Force instead of her fingers. She wraps dismissal around her like a cloak to access computer terminals without anyone but Jango noticing. She slips spice into the drinks held by guards and overseers.

She moves through the ship like smoke, in the dim lights of the false night.

Someone notices. Someone always notices, in Jango's experience, but they have no idea who's doing it. They lock down the cells for the sleep cycle, turn down the temperature, leave all the slaves shivering in their beds.

He pulls Ashla into his cot without hesitation, fits their bodies together to conserve heat, and ignores the rest. They're both soldiers; there's no shame in survival for those like them. The lekku at her back drapes over his neck like a scarf, and he almost wants to laugh.

He's pathetic. His men would be so damn disappointed in him, sharing bunk with a Jedi.

"You're thinking too loud," she mumbles, shifting somehow closer. The chill clings, creeping in through the thin clothes and thinner blanket, but he feels like it's bearable with Ashla here.

----

When they enact the plan, it's so much quieter than Jango would have run it. Ashla holds his hands in the early morning, before anyone is awake, and smiles. When she closes her eyes, sinking into a light meditation, the collar around her neck just... comes apart. Nuts and bolts and curves of metal float about her like a wretched parody of the mobile hanging above an infant's crib, and then land quietly on the nearest cot. When she opens her eyes, hazy and distant, she looks at his throat, and frees him with a thought.

It's a heady thing, freedom.

"Come along, Fett," she goads, almost crooning the words, backing out of the cell with his hands in hers. Nobody is awake yet, or at least they shouldn't be. Her words curl in the air like something cloyingly too-sweet, and he's sure it's her way of trying to piss him off. It's only working a little. "We've work to do."

Said work involves slipping past guards with a Jedi's timing, commanding them to sleep with a whisper and a poke to the forehead, and drugging the ones that she claims are resistant to Jedi tricks. The work is, as such, mostly hers to do. They hide the bodies, but the alarm goes off by the time they get to the weapons locker.

That's fine, because the weapons locker is where they were headed.

"Oh, hell yes," she hisses through a grit-tooth grin, and a matched pair of lightsabers float to her. Jango turns off the energy field by the time they reach her, and she hooks them onto her belt. Beskar plating follows, exactly the pieces that Jango had guessed from wear and tear. It's real beskar, too, not even an alloy, and Jango doesn't ask the questions on the tip of his tongue. She straps it on in practiced movements, without hesitation and almost without thought.

"See anything better than what you got off the guards?" she asks him. "Or did they all take the best blasters for themselves?"

"The latter," he says.

(His eyes trace over the armor she wears, and while she does wear it well... he's jealous.)

(He misses his armor.)

(Envy is unbecoming of anyone, but he thinks he can be afforded a little leeway.)

There are people in the hall by the time they exit, a dozen blasters at the ready.

The people in the hall are... not a problem.

Ashla had called it the Sword and Shield maneuver, when walking him through her experiences working in a Mando/Jetii team. He'd laughed, because the saber was the shield. She'd smiled at him, and he'd cursed himself for it.

If he'd had his armor, they'd have been able to move forward as a pair of unstoppable monsters. As it stands, they're... still doing that, really, just a tad slower.

"You're a Jedi!" one of them shouts. "You're supposed to be diplomats! You're not supposed to kill!"

Jango could laugh at that horrible, horrible lie.

"I am no Jedi," Ashla says, and the words cut through the air like something she's said a million times, and will say a million more.

Jango could do a lot with that line, tucked away in his memories for later.

There's a moment, though, where they're stuck at one end of a hallway, and the door to the bridge is just on the other side, and Ashla grins at him, a challenge in every inch of her body, and asks, "You wanna see something cool?"

He can't help it.

"You planning to show off, Jedi?" He can say the word without flinching, and it's... absurd. It's absurd. What in all the hells is she doing to him?

(He's been told that war makes for strange bedfellows, but he's long known that trauma does the same.)

He takes cover when she moves, and oh, does she move.

Ashla's a whirlwind, dangerous as anything and beautiful in her careful, precise violence. She knocks people out, more often than not, but there's more then one dead body left in her wake. It appeals to something in him. She flips and twists and throws people with the Force. She slices and kicks, and smacks people across the face with the blasters she lifts of their comrades. She headbutts at least two people, and then jumps to bounce off the ceiling and back down so she can land feet first on an enemy.

He hopes he'll get his common sense back when he's had time to put himself together, because the sight of those sabers doesn't make him flinch. After all he's been through, after all his nightmares, it really should. The sound alone should have him shivery and shooting.

Maybe there's just too much spice in the air.

A head drops to the floor in a different direction from the body it had previously been attached to. Jango's throat goes dry in response.

When Ashla stands at the end of the hall, a saber in each hand and the floor behind her littered in both bodies breathing and bodies bereft of life, she looks back at him over her shoulder. She deactivates her swords, and smirks. She's smug, and she makes smug look very, very good.

"So," she says. "Verdict?"

Fuck.

----

The bridge is easy enough to handle. They land the ship on a Republic planet, one with relevant authorities and at least some reputation for actually handling things with a degree of kindness and transparency. Ashla does the talking, letting Jango lurk behind her. She lies.

"Half-truths," she later tells him, in a low voice. The smile she wears is amused and self-assured, just a twist at the corner, and the slightest of pouts. He can't see it, when she leans in to murmur in his ear. "I certainly used to be a Jedi. They don't need to know this wasn't an officially-sanctioned infiltration."

Her breath hits lightly against his ear, and he wants--he wants--

"Have a comm code for any old friends?" Ashla asks, stepping away. Her face twists unpleasantly. Frustration, he's sure. "I've got credits, but no contacts."

He eyes the little pack she's got around her waist. "Stole that from the slavers?"

"We'll consider it payment for services rendered," she tells him, with an impish grin Jango wants to kiss off of her face, because apparently he's kriffing suicidal and wants to bed a Jedi. "I'll give you most of it, if you want. Call it the two years of backpay they owed you."

He snorts before he can stop himself. "Just one year, sorry."

"Oh, it's hazard pay," she insists, blinking innocently. "Dangerous conditions having been what they were, of course."

She presses a comm--probably also stolen--and a few credits into his hand, then loops her arm through his. She sets off at a lazy walk, ignoring the people who stare at them with distaste and disgust. "We'll find a hotel. We'll shower, with real water, and fancy soaps, and a little sonic just for the clothes. I'll run out and get you a basic outfit, and then we can go shopping, and once that's done, and you've had a chance to comm a companion, we can reunite you with your buddies, and you can go hunting for your armor, and I'll split and--"

"Stay."

She tilts her head at him, though she doesn't stop walking, and he feels his face burn. He hopes it's not visible. She hums lowly. He can't learn anything from it. "You hate Jedi, though, and I might not really be one anymore, but I'm still more Jedi than not."

"You wear beskar and speak Mando'a," he says. "You helped the Mand'alor. You're halfway to being one of mine already."

"One of yours, huh?" she mutters, eyes somewhere distant. He doesn't know what it is that she's seeing, but he's gotten used to it. "Alright, let's have this conversation again after you've had some sleep and clothes and a good meal, yeah?"

He can take that compromise.

----

"What do you mean, you're from the future?!"

#Jangosoka #time travel #Jango Fett #Ahsoka Tano #slavery tw #drugs tw #Phoenix Posts #I wrote this on a whim a few days ago but didn't get it edited until today #anyway have a nonsense

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tasteofyizhan · 4 years ago

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Hi, I’ve been wondering this for a while... given how popular both GG and DD are, I would be really amazed if there were no pictures of them together taken by paparazzi or fans. But there seems to be none. I hate to say this but realistically there must be greedy people out there who would jump at profiting from selling their pictures to the media. And it seems that the rumors are that they interact with each other outside of their living space. Anyway, I was wondering what your thoughts were. Thanks!

Hi! I want to start this off by saying that this is fake, this is fanfiction, and is purely my personal opinion on the topic, so please don’t take this as fact. Other people may have a different take, and that’s perfectly fine - the only 2 people who really know what’s what are GGDD. The rest of us are mere spectators, trying to guess at the truth.

Now, with that said, I’m going to break this post into photos taken of them during the Untamed, and photos taken of them post-Untamed. Why? Because I think the amount of photos and BTS of taken during the filming of the Untamed have shaped people’s expectations on the amount of material that they expect to find on GGDD post-Untamed, and I want to talk a bit about why we should be happy that there isn’t more material on them post-Untamed.

So I think there’s some fandom consensus that whatever started between them really solidified/became serious when they began filming the Untamed. I say this because of some of the things that came out from the BTS - for example, the birthday BTS, and DD’s post the next day gives me a very strong impression that for him, at least, was when he had made up his mind about GG. So I’m going to hazard a guess and say that that was when they really decided how they wanted to take things forward.

Now, if we go by that timeline, there are plenty of pictures and videos of them, and all of those can be excused by the fact that they’re co-workers who have to work in close proximity with each other - literally, the very nature of their respective characters means that they share plenty of scenes. To me, this is the perfect cover for a budding relationship, where you can constantly be around and touch someone you’re interested in and pass it off as “guys being guys and hanging out and roughhousing”. So what I’m trying to get at is that there are tons of pictures of GGDD together during this time - just that it makes it harder for people to sort out whether it’s pictures of co-workers hanging out, or whether it’s something more. (I mean it’s easy for us, but that’s because we’re all clowns!)

However, there’s one set of photos that stick out to me, and that’s the Dragon Boat festival. You can read more about that here. I’m going to guess and say that that was probably the first time that GGDD was aware of the spotlight on them - the spotlight being the world outside the bubble of the Untamed set. Sure, there were cameras pointed at them all the time while they were on set, but that’s on set, where there’s an expectation that they would be filmed. This was the paps trying to catch DD on a date with his “girlfriend”, and finding GG there instead. Then after that, the Untamed blew up, and suddenly the whole world was looking at them. I don’t think anyone in the cast or crew expected to find this much level of success - yes, there was already a set fanbase from the books, but this not only turned out to be a massive hit in China, it also swept through Southeast Asia and even caught the attention of people halfway around the globe in America and Europe. Now, if the Dragon Boat photos had put them on alert, the resulting craze for the Untamed would only make them more wary.

The Untamed aired from June to August 2019. According to this incredible post, GGDD’s last joint interview was the Thailand fan meet in September 2019. That’s also the last time we have “good” BTS videos and photos of them - because any interactions between them could easily be explained away as them promoting the show. After that, with exception of when they meet at award shows or for official events, it seems like the amount of BTS photos and videos of them together abruptly drop off, so it’s natural that some fans wonder why it is, when they’re supposedly so close.

My guess is that post-Untamed, they’ve become much more aware of the number of eyes watching them. They know the lengths that some fans will go to, and they’re very careful to take precautions and surround themselves with people they know they can trust. And the lengths that they go to protect their privacy can be extreme - I’m linking to this old article to highlight that as far back as 2019, GG was already engaging in defensive tactics to try and avoid crazy fans. Last year, there was a period where they began adopting each other’s style to the point that on a casual glance, people mistook GG as DD and vice versa. There was some speculation that they did this on purpose so in the event that someone actually saw them, they would have assumed that it was actually the other person. (ie. if someone saw GG exiting DD’s hotel but dressed like how DD would have dressed, they would have assumed it was DD).

In addition, there were clips that showed how uncomfortable both of them were when they realised the full extent of how much BTS there was, and how much BTS had been released. If anything, that would probably only reinforce their need for discretion. Keep in mind that while China has decriminalised homosexuality, however, LGBT folk are still discriminated against. Any photos or videos of them that can’t be explained away would have a serious impact on their careers, so I’m not surprised that they’re now very careful about what they do and how they behave around each other publicly, which might be a stark contrast on how they used to behave around each other when filming the Untamed. You can see how stiff and formal they are around each other at official awards and events, and this is the reason why.

Also, keep in mind that they’re also both busy professionals with very hectic schedules, and who probably don’t have a lot of opportunities to physically meet, and the lack of photos or videos of them together post-Untamed would make a lot of sense.

It’s also good that they’re not always collaborating professionally (even though a collaboration would mean that they would get to legitimately spend time with each other). Both of them are trying to move beyond the label of 小鲜肉 (literally, little fresh meat), which can have negative connotations - ie. they’re just a pretty face with no talent. Their success outside of the Untamed and outside of each other proves that they’re not just one-trick ponies who only are only famous or successful because of fan service, and that’s good.

However! 2020 was kind of an incredible year for how much DD slipped up during TTXS (and on other shows). There were so many instances where he said something that left his brothers scrambling to cover for him. Others have done a far more detailed and better job in covering some of these instances here and here. You have infer a bit more, and you don’t get everything laid out for you in a photo or a BTS video, but their interactions are still there - just in a different form.

#yizhan #bjyx #yizhan bts #bjyx bts #bjyx discourse #neglectedtropicaldisease

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frogtanii · 4 years ago

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hq boys as the crimes they’d commit

warnings: CRIMES, crackfic, probably many typos idk i’m so tired lmaooo, cursing, drinking ??? idfk 😩💦

an: and i did this for what?? inspired by hq hcs royalty @sugardaddykenma @hina-wit-da-glock (AJSKSJ SORRY FOR TAGGING Y’ALL IF YOU SEE THIS, IT IS DEF NOT UP TO PAR W Y’ALLS WORKS ILY)

karasuno

sawamura daichi- insurance fraud!! somehow this is such a dad crime to commit?? dadchi didn’t try (dumb excuse, how do you accidentally commit insurance fraud smh) to commit insurance fraud but at one point in his late-thirties, he was very very broke and was already working as much as possible so, he decided to fake an ankle injury, as you do, and filed a bunch of claims which made him bank. daichi kept doing it until he was able to quit one of his jobs and buy himself a really nice suit and a rolex (uhhh 🥵). he somehow never got caught tho and to this day, none of his friends know how he was able to afford a tesla on a cop’s salary (sorry daichi but acab 😔✨)

sugawara kōshi- child abandonment!! ok you can try and fight me on this but i feel in my bones that suga absolutely despises children. he can tolerate ages 10+ but anything younger than that, he will punt them into the next dimension. the thing is, people just assume he likes kids because of how good he is with his team which is why his aunt begged him to babysit his nephew taro. taro was being an absolute brat when suga took him out for the day and he was 👉👈 this close to snapping. he put taro down for like 3 seconds to pay for their ice cream and when he turned back, the demon spawn was gone. he panicked, running around the park looking for taro when it turns out, taro was just bent down behind the bench. some random karen called the police and suga has never craved murder more.

nishinoya yuu- arson!! you CANNOT tell me nishinoya doesn’t have a ~murder~ playlist that he listens to to get himself hype (me too noya, me too). one night, he got a lil too hype listening to start a riot by duckwrth and watching demolition videos on youtube. he snuck out of his house to an empty shed like 30 minutes away and maybe... lit it on fire while genocide by lil darkie played on a speaker nearby. what he did NOT anticipate was the absolute size of the fire so he freaked out and called the firefighters who promptly called the police. he didn’t want to get grounded so he called daichi to bail him out. daichi still told noya’s parents 😔.

tanaka ryūnosuke- vandalism!! tanaka had been on alt tiktok and saw a group of cool friends spray painting an abandoned building. he thought “that’s cool, lemme do that!” but then he realized he had no friends (AHDGS JK I LOVE TANAKA). he asked nishinoya who was grounded from the arson incident and he knew he definitely couldn’t ask daichi, suga, asahi, or enoshita so he decided to go it alone. that proved to be a MASSIVE mistake. he got the supplies, arrived to the building of his choice (thanks saeko :3), and decided to spray paint a huge p3ni5 in bright red paint. he finished “successfully” and zoomed back home. what he didn’t realize with his two-and-a-half braincells is that he signed his glorious piece with his full name. the cops were at his house the next morning...🧍

hinata shoyō- forgery!! hinata did NOT think that forgery was even a crime. how was he supposed to know that he wasn’t allowed to copy his mom’s signature on a permission form! all he wanted was to go to an overnight training camp 😿

kageyama tobio- attempted murder!! kageyama swears it sounds worse than was and he is absolutely incorrect. what happened was so much worse. he and hinata were having a competition to see who could hold their breath the longest underwater (you can’t tell me they haven’t done some dumbass shit like this) and kageyma lost almost instantly (he has the tiny lungs of an asthmatic). he didn’t want hinata to notice so he held hinata’s head under the water for like 10 seconds. suga walked in though, saw hinata thrashing around in the water and immediately called the police. kageyama never forgave him.

tsukishima kei- cyberbullying!! first of all, i had no idea you could get arrested for cyber bullying!? that being said, neither did tsukishima who spent 80% of his time making fun of people online (and on his real account!! bold). eventually one of the people he bullied (hinata) reported him on instagram and his very lame account was deleted (pls don’t bully people online 😤).

yamaguchi tadashi- shoplifting!! andjksh this is so funny because this scenario has happened to me and i can just SEE this happening to poor tadashi. yamaguchi gets super late night cravings (and usually tsukki will walk with him at like 3 am 🥺 nEWAYS) so he’ll sneak out and walk to the mini-mart near his house. one night, he was so tired but also super hungry so he went onto his nightly routine and basically sleepwalked into the store. he picked out his favorite chips and candy bar (which are sour cream&onion lays and milky ways in case you were wondering 😌✨) and just... walked out the store without paying. the store clerk was mysteriously missing so yamaguchi made it all the way home, ate half the bag of chips and passed out without realizing what he’d done. once he did, he cried for 2 hours straight.

nekoma

kuroo tetsurō- telemarketing fraud!! kuroo originally did telemarketing fraud as a joke?? like he was trying to prank call someone pretending that they had lost their information and they actually gave it to him??? he was mildly concerned but even more excited. he did it over and over again but he never used the info for anything. to this day, kuroo literally has a notebook full of credit card numbers and bank account passwords but he refuses to use it because he believes it’s ✨wrong✨(but it isn’t wrong to take all that information in the first place under false pretenses, not realizing that once people find out, they are forced to close credit cards and accounts but go off self righteous king). once he brought the book up to kenma and he offered to sell it on the dark web. now kuroo feels less bad about what he’s done! :D

kozume kenma- computer crime!! pfttt this one seems kinda obvious but what do you expect from kenma :). he spends so much time on the internet, he’s definitely picked up some less than legal skills that still help him now 👀. kenma did little mini crimes like getting into other people’s wifi but his crowning achievement was when he hacked into the minneapolis pd website and had it so when you opened the page, a black lives matter screen came up. he never told anyone that it was him who did it but he thinks it’s the best he’s ever done.

yaku morisuke- racketeering!! yaku, the feral king, ran an underground gambling ring in the basement of nekoma (do they have basements?? who knows! i don’t!) during his third year. the only reason it didn’t get shut down was because coach nekomata took a portion of yaku’s profits whenever he won (which was literally all the time). everyone on the team has lost money to him which is why they never play with him anymore. they won’t even let yaku play monopoly 😔.

haiba lev- indecent exposure!! poor lev’s head is so empty, he tends to fall for whatever pranks his senpai’s do to him. this time kuroo had somehow convinced him that in order to grow his schlong, he had to run outside naked for 10 minutes because the moonlight had special growing properties. lev was a lil scared ngl because he was already superrr tall and didn’t need to grow his height (or his dick ((boy is hung)) but poor lev is insecure) but he did it anyway. long story short, an old woman saw him parading around the neighborhood naked and called el policia. 0/10 dick did NOT grow and had to spend a night in jail naked 😿

aoba johsai

oikawa tōru- prostitution!! KAKKAKA iwazumi made fun of oikawa for being so shitty and said that he couldn’t pick up anyone if he tried. flattykawa took this as a personal challenge and went out onto the street, asking people if they’d have sex with him. with the way he was asking (and the way he was dressed), people assumed he was a paid w h o r e and someone eventually reported him. iwazumi had to pick oikawa up from the station- he never let him live this one down.

iwaizumi hajime- battery!! it wasn’t technically battery but oikawa is a lil bitch and overreacts (at least in his words -_-). the amount of times iwa-chan has beat the absolute shit out of oikawa is uNREAL. he just can’t handle the stupidity sometimes so he just smacks the crap outta him. not for real for real but the way oikawa reacts, you’d think a murder was occurring. one time, shittykawa screeched so loud, they got a noise complaint -_- hajime hates it in these streets.

matsukawa issei & hanamaki takahiro- conspiracy!! issei and hiro have a secret blog where they discuss conspiracy theories and such but one day, hiro found an article that explained how jfk’s death was an inside job. he sent it to issei who began to theorize how HE’D do it. that devolved into a massive thread on their blog of how’d they murder a president which blew up and caught the attention of the cia who sent the a letter telling them to quietly delete the blog. they did because they were terrified but they kept the letter and now it’s framed in issei’s apartment.

kyōtani kentarō- assault!! baby is an angry little boy but for all the right reasons. he was at a bar (when he’s all grown up, duh) and he spotted an absolute drunk creep hitting on a girl who clearlyyyy did not reciprocate his feelings. kyōtani, being the respectful king that he is, went over to the guy, pulled him by the jacket and beat. the. shit. out of him. while the bartender was happy with the fact that the creep was out, he was not impressed with the damage to his bar. he just sent kyōtani out who casually adjusted his leather jacket and rings, and hopped on his motorcycle to ride away into the night. i am the FATTEST simp for this man ONG 🥴

shiratorizawa

ushijima wakatoshi- stalking!! poor ushijima has no idea how intimidating he can be. he was on a train late at night after practice and the woman sitting across from him left her purse sitting on the seat. being the gentleman that he is, he took the purse and followed her to return it. the only problem is that the closer he got, the faster she ran and when he tried to speak (yknow with his scary, deep, baritone voice), the woman screeched and called the cops on him because he was a “strange, big man who was following her home.” when the police showed up, ushijima was painfully confused and just held up this tiny ass purse in his massive hands. the cops laughed.

tendō satori- ???!! no one knows what crimes (or how many 😳) tendō has committed but each of his teammates have different ideas- ushijima: “i don’t believe tendou is capable of committing any sort of felony. well, maybe murder”; semi: “of COURSE he’s capable of crimes??! do you know how many times i’ve seen him come into the dorm with a suspicious stain of red on his sweater?? *shudders* if i end up dead, tendō did it...” in actuality, the only crime tendō has committed is ~drugs~ but he’s not bouta tell his friends that.

goshiki tsutomu- would be a VICTIM!! my baby tsutomu would NEVER commit a crime!!! i love this man with my everything and the only crime he’s committed is being too damn cute 😤🥺

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kanmom51 · 3 years ago

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Okay, so I am gonna rant and I want you to add your two cents, if you don't mind. Correct me if I am wrong in any way.

Recently, I saw something on the flaming pile of shit that is Twitter and it made me think for a bit. It was about skinship in Kpop, in general. And how BTS aren't really that big in it. And because that is what fans use to determine how close members are that is why JK and JM are considered to not be close or that JK is uncomfortable with JM. Because they use skinship to determine how close the members are. Nothing else. And because other companies are big in showing off skinship/fanservice of their members, that KM aren't that special because they don't show a lot of skinship. Apparently, closeness is determined by skinship. And skinship does matter because the fans use it to determine who is closest. Sorry, hope that summary made sense. Now begins the rant.

I just really can't anymore. People blow my mind. If ALL you can see of KM is their apparent lack of skinship compared to other groups and the other ships in BTS, then why are you here? You say skinship matters, then why and how does it matter when all the boys do it? We say skinship doesn't matter for that EXACT reason. Yes, it may matter to the other companies because it sells, but I don't think BH as a company focuses on that skinship/fanservice to provide a lot of profit. It's a nice side thing to see when watching the boys accomplish their dreams. And these boys have a LOT more freedom when doing things at BH compared to these other groups. Their companies profit off of/depend on the skinship moments between their members. Do we need skinship to determine how close the boys all are and how KM have grown closer over time? HELL NO!

I didn't say it before, but the Twitter post went further to state that ARMYs think that another ship is closer because the amount of skinship moments. Great for them! But did they ever think to wonder how suspicious it is that JK is ever so cautious when interacting with JM? He does not EVER do that with the other members, in my opinion. He looks like he is controlling what he is doing and for what reason?! Furthermore, when we do take a skinship moment into consideration, we take context, tension, and consistency into consideration, as well. Not everything means something, but I can list one that stood out to me. Rosebowl. I have never seen JK suck another members ear into his mouth to do whatever he wanted to do to JM. I don't think we will ever see him do it with another member in that context with that tension. If that doesn't scream closeness, then I don't know what does. I wouldn't put another member's sweaty ear in my mouth, especially if I was a very clean person. Unless, I was extremely close to them and I needed to prove/do something.

So, yeah, we don't use skinship that much or consider it a big deal because other people use it to determine closeness.

However, what we do use is other moments that are not related in any way to skinship.

How about spending so much time together that staff rarely saw them apart when passing by? Oh, I guess that doesn't shout closeness to you. It depends on skinship, doesn't it?

How about taking time to fly from Paris to Korea to spend a birthday and give gifts to someone? Taking time to get a cake and making a video telling them they would get drinks later, just to show up? Only one other member showed up and the other members were doing other things. Oh, but I guess that doesn't count again. Darn it!

Oh! How about being together at 4 AM on another birthday? And how big of a deal it was to them to share it with us? When it literally was not needed information at the time? JK grinning at JM when he finally spilled the beans was very sweet. But, oh gosh darn it! That won't work either, will it?

Ah! What about how consistent JK is with dropping honorifics with JM and speaking informally with JM (I can't really remember, but I think it is a mix between informal and formal speech? Correct me if I am wrong.)? He did a lot of this before he did it with the others. Of course, since they are all close, he does it now. But I do remember him saying that he wasn't comfortable with doing that before somewhere? So, why did he feel and why does he feel comfortable enough to do it with JM? And why did and why does JM let him get away with it? But I guess that was another flop since skinship was not a part of it. Sigh.

How about the GCFs? Tokyo was basically a love letter if you were willing to listen. JM seems to be his main muse if you look at all of them. But, ah! I guess everyone goes on trips with one person they aren't that close with or uncomfortable with. So, that's another bust, huh!

How about having inside jokes that the other members aren't privy to? The volleyball RUN episode and that recent behind the scene where KM were signing a song some online gamer sung (I think it was PUBG, but I don't know. I do know the person was streaming during it though.). That shows that they have there own jokes and that should show some closeness, right? Still, it doesn't have skinship, so I guess that is another one down the drain.

Ooo! How about JK's tattoo? This one is kinda obvious if you are just looking at it from an unbiased point of view! That one does it right? Ah, but I am wrong again, aren't I?

I could go on and on about the things that KM have done and will do that aren't related at all to skinship. Skinship doesn't show closeness. Never will. So, why shouldn't we make these moments bigger in our community and not consider a lot of skinship moments or the apparent lack of them? Why should we take into consideration that others think that another duo is closer due to skinship and that skinship matters more than anything? Why do these moments never get taken into consideration?

Maybe they are blind or just plain willfully ignorant of BTS, KM, and the relationships in it (and to be frank. I really don't take other kpop groups into consideration. I feel as if BTS are another level in how they show themselves, how they interact, and how much freedom they have. No other group I have seen has that much freedom. Tell me if I am wrong please.) I am not and never will be. I will not let others try to stomp on my opinions and these moments because they feel as if it doesn't show closeness due to their apparent lack of skinship. Sure. See it that way. I don't.

Rant over.

Have a nice day everyone and I feel loads better with that off my chest! Additionally, I apologize if everything is all over the place. I am so tired that I am tasting colors and this made me frustrated.

Quite an angry frustrated rant anon. Lol.

Love your nickname for Twitter. Lmao.

What utter bullshit. Unbelievable bullshit.

I agree with almost everything you write.

Skinship not big in BTS? Are they f**king blind?

I think they are a bit muddled up between skinship and fanservice. Two totally different though intertwined subjects.

Here is where I don't agree with something you said anon, because Skinship is about showing affection. BTS practice skinship showing their affection to each other. With Jikook, being as close as they are (time spent together, them literally telling us in not so many words what they mean to each other) the sus part is how careful they are when it comes to skinship. I, like you, feel it's more about JK's fear to lose control of the situation. Skinship when there is friendship and affection is not the same when there is sexual tension in the mix (re BV4 and JK's need to cover up after just a little of footsies with JM). Not every touch causes a reaction. But when you are in love with someone, when you are attracted to someone, their touch can reek havoc.

That was skinship - an acceptable way to show affection within SK culture.

Fanservice is about selling a product to the fans.

Is skinship utilized by other companies to sell their products? Oh yes it is. Does BH utilize skinship to sell BTS? Not as such, in my opinion. It’s not that BH hasn’t used fanservice over the years (JM or JK lifting their shirts during songs, kissing games – in the past) but they never had the members touch each other or pretend to show affection towards each other to sell the band. When members do skinship, it’s them doing their own thing, them showing affection and closeness with each other.

BTS are the epitome of skinship. They take it even farther than other k-pop bands. What BTS are not big at is fanservice. Yes, they do it at times, but it’s not on the level we see in other K-pop bands. Just lately I have started to see a bit of other K-pop bands, the things they go through on stage or in gameshows, the things they do as fanservice. BTS are not there at all.

Yes, they do engage in fanservice, but it’s usually them at a heightened state of excitement doing their thing but knowing just how much the fans love it. Jikook interactions on stage, Taejin interactions, at times could be considered fanservice although it’s not fake interaction. It’s them enjoying themselves and each other in front of their fans.

As for your description what makes Jikook, you are 100% right anon. Take the skinship out of the equation all together. We don't need skinship to see just how close Jikook are.

#ask #anon #skinship #fanservice #skinship and fanservice are not one and the same #K-pop utilizing skinship as fanservice

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felassan · 4 years ago

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Insights into DAI’s development from Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

The book is by game industry journalist Jason Schreier (it’s an interesting read and well-written, I recommend it). This is the cliff notes version of the DAI chapter. This info isn’t new as the book is from 2017 (I finally got around to buying it). Some insight into DAO, DA2 and cancelled DA projects is also given. Cut for length.

BW hoped that DA would become the LotR of video games. DAO’s development was “a hellish seven-year slog”

The DAI team are compared to a chaotic “pirate ship”, which is what they called themselves internally. “It’ll get where it needs to go, but it’s going to go all over the place. Sail over here. Drink some rum. Go over here. Do something else. That’s how Mark Darrah likes to run his team.” An alternative take from someone else who worked on the game: “It was compared to a pirate ship because it was chaotic and the loudest voice in the room usually set the direction. I think they smartly adopted the name and morphed it into something better.”

A game about the Inquisition and the large-scale political conflicts it solves across Thedas, where the PC was the Inquisitor, was originally the vision for ‘DA2′. Plans had to change when SW:TOR’s development kept stalling and slipping. Frustrated EA execs wanted a new product from BW to bolster quarterly sales targets, and decided that DA would have to fill the gap. BW agreed to deliver DA2 within 16 months. “Basically, DA2 exists to fill that hole. That was the inception. It was always intended to be a game made to fit in that”

BW wanted to call it DA: Exodus, but EA’s marketing execs insisted on DA2, no matter what that name implied

DAO’s scope (Origin stories, that amount of big areas, variables, reactivity) was just not doable in a year, even if everyone worked overtime. To solve this problem, BW shelved the Inquisition idea and made a risky call: DA2 would be set in one city over time, allowing locations to be recycled and months to be shaved off dev time. They also axed DAO features like customizing party members’ equipment. These were the best calls they were able to make on a tight line

Many at BW are still proud of DA2. Those that worked on it grew closer from all being in it together

In certain dark accounting corners of EA, despite fan response to DA2 and its lower sales compared to DAO, DA2 is considered a wild success

By summer 2011 BW decided to cancel DA2′s expansion Exalted March in favor of a totally new game. They needed to get away from the stigma of DA2, reboot the franchise and show they could make triple-A quality good games.

DAI was going to be the most ambitious game BW had ever made and had a lot to prove (that BW could return to form, that EA wasn’t crippling the studio, that BW could make an ‘open-world’ RPG with big environments). There was a bit of a tone around the industry that there were essentially 2 tiers of BW, the ME team and then everyone else, and the DA team had a scrappy desire to fight back against that

DAI was behind schedule early on due to unfamiliar new technology; the new engine Frostbite was very technically challenging and required more work than anyone had expected. Even before finishing DA2 BW were looking for a new engine for the next game. Eclipse was creaky, obsolete, not fully-featured, graphically lacking. The ME team used Unreal, which made inter-team collab difficult. “Our tech strategy was just a mess. Every time we’d start a new game, people would say, ‘Oh, we should just pick a new engine’.”

After meeting with an EA exec BW decided on Frostbite. Nobody had ever used it to make an RPG, but EA owned FB dev studio DICE, and the engine was powerful and had good graphic capabilities & visual effects. If BW started making all its games on FB, it could share tech with sister studios and borrow tools when they learned cool new tricks.

For a while they worked on a prototype called Blackfoot, to get a feel for FB and to make a free-to-play DA MP game. It fizzled as the team was too small, which doesn’t lend itself well to working with FB, and was cancelled

BW resurfaced the old Inquisition idea. What might a DA3 look like on FB? Their plan by 2012 was to make an open-world RPG heavily inspired by Skyrim that hit all the beats DA2 couldn’t. “My secret mission was to shock and awe the players with the massive amounts of content.” People complained there wasn’t enough in DA2. “At the end of DAI, I actually want people to go, ‘Oh god, not [another] level’.”

It was originally called Dragon Age 3: Inquisition

BW wanted to launch on next-gen consoles only but EA’s profit forecasters were caught up in the rise of iPad and iPhone gaming and were worried the next-gen consoles wouldn’t sell well. As a safeguard EA insist it also ship on current-gen. Most games at that time followed this strategy. Shipping on 5 platforms at once would be a first for BW

Ambitions were piling up. This was to be BW’s first 3D open-world game, and their first game on Frostbite, an engine that had never been used to make RPGs. It needed to be made in roughly two years, it needed to ship on 5 platforms, and, oh yeah, it needed to restore the reputation of a studio that had been beaten up pretty badly. “Basically we had to do new consoles, a new engine, new gameplay, build the hugest game that we’ve ever made, and build it to a higher standard than we ever did. With tools that don’t exist.”

FB didn’t have RPG stats, a visible PC, spells, save systems, a party of 4 people, the same kind of cutscenes etc and couldn’t create any of those things. BW had to create these on top of it. BW initially underestimated how much work this would be. BW were the FB guinea pigs. Early on in DAI’s development, even the most basic tasks were excruciating, and this impacted even fundamental aspects of game design and dev. When FB’s tools did function they were finicky and difficult. DICE’s team supported them but had limited resources and were 8 hours ahead. Since creating new content in FB was so difficult, trying to evaluate its quality became impossible. FB engine updates made things even more challenging. After every one, BW had to manually merge and test it; this was debilitating, and there were times when the build didn’t work for a month or was really unstable.

Meanwhile the art department were having a blast. FB was great for big beautiful environments. For months they made as much as possible, taking educated guesses when they didn’t know yet what the designers needed. “For a long time there was a joke on the project that we’d made a fantastic-looking screenshot generator, because you could walk around these levels with nothing to do. You could take great pictures.”

The concept of DAI as open-world was stymying the story/writers and gameplay/designers teams. What were players going to do in these big landscapes? How could BW ensure exploring remained fun after many hours? Their teams didn’t have time for system designers to envision, iterate and test a good “core gameplay loop” (quests, encounters, activities etc). FB wouldn’t allow it. Designers couldn’t test new ideas or answer questions because basic features were missing or didn’t exist yet.

EA’s CEO told BW they should have the ability to ride dragons and that this would make DAI sell 10 million copies. BW didn’t take this idea very seriously

BW had an abstract idea that the player would roam the world solving problems and building up power or influence they could use. But how would that look/work like in-game? This could have used refinement and testing but instead they decided to build some levels and hope they could figure it out as they went.

One day in late 2012, after a year of strained development on DAI, Mark Darrah asked Mike Laidlaw to go to lunch. “We’re walking out to his car,” Laidlaw said, “and I think he might have had a bit of a script in his head. [Darrah] said, ‘All right, I don’t actually know how to approach this, so I’m just going to say it. On a scale of one to apocalyptic... how upset would you be if I said [the player] could be, I dunno, a Qunari Inquisitor?’”

Laidlaw was baffled. They’d decided that the player could be only a human in DAI. Adding other playable races like Darrah was asking for would mean they’d need to quadruple their budget for animation, voice acting, and scripting.

“I went, ‘I think we could make that work’,” Laidlaw said, asking Darrah if he could have more budget for dialogue.

Darrah answered that if Laidlaw could make playable races happen, he couldn’t just have more dialogue. He could have an entire year of production.

Laidlaw was thrilled. “Fuck yeah, OK,” he recalled saying.

MD had actually already realized at this point it’d be impossible to finish DAI in 2013. They needed at least a year’s delay and adding the other playable races was part of a plan/planned pitch to secure this. He was in the process of putting together a pitch to EA: let BW delay the game, and in exchange it’d be bigger and better that anyone at EA had envisioned. These new marketing points included playable races, mounts and a new tactical camera. If EA wouldn’t let them delay, they would have had to cut things. Going into that BW were confident but nervous, especially in the wake of EA’s recent turmoil where they’d just parted ways with their CEO and had recruited a new board member while they hunted for a new one. They didn’t know how the new board member would react, and the delay would affect EA’s projections for that fiscal year. Maybe it was the convincing pitch, or the exec turmoil, or the specter of DA2, or maybe EA didn’t like being called “The Worst Company in America”. Winning that award 2 years in a row had had a tangible impact on the execs and led to feisty internal meetings on how to repair EA’s image. Whatever the reasons, EA greenlit the delay.

The PAX Crestwood demo was beautiful but almost entirely fake. By fall 2013, BW had implemented many of FB’s ‘parts’, but still didn’t know what kind of ‘car’ they were making. ML and team scripted the PAX demo by hand, entirely based on what BW thought would be in the game. The level & art assets were real but the gameplay wasn’t. “Part of what we had to do is go out early and try to be transparent because of DA2. And just say, ‘Look, here, it’s the game, it’s running live, it’s at PAX.’ Because we wanted to make that statement that we’re here for fans.”

DA2 hung on the team like a shadow. There was insecurity, uncertainty, they had trouble sticking to one vision. Which DA2 things were due to the short dev time and which were bad calls? What stuff should they reinvent? There were debates over combat (DAO-style vs DA2-style) and arguments over how to populate the wilderness.

In the months after that demo, BW cut much of what they’d shown in it. Even small features went through many permutations. DAI had no proper preproduction phase (important for testing and discarding things), so leads were stretched thin and had to make impulsive decisions.

By the end of 2013, DAI had 200+ people working on it, and dozens of additional outsourced artists in Russia and China. Coordinating all the work across various departments was challenging and a full-time job for several people. At this sheer scale of game dev, there are many complexities and inter-dependencies. Work finally became significantly less tedious and more doable when BW and DICE added more features to FB. Time was running out though, and another delay was a no.

The team spent many hours in November and December piecing together a “narrative playable” version of the game to be the holiday period’s game build for BW staff to test that year. Feedback on the demo was bad. There were big complaints on story, that it didn’t make sense and was illogical. Originally the PC became Inquisitor and sealed the breach in the prologue, which removed a sense of urgency. In response the writers embarked on Operation Sledgehammer (breaking a bone to set it right), radically revising the entire first act.

The other big piece of negative feedback was that battles weren’t fun. Daniel Kading, who had recently joined BW and brought with him a rigorous new method for testing combat in games, went to BW leadership with a proposal: give him authority to open his own little lab with the other designers and call up the entire team for mandatory play sessions for test purposes. They agreed and he used this experiment to get test feedback and specifically pinpoint where problems were. Morale took a turn for the better that week, DK’s team made several tweaks, and through these sessions feedback ratings went from 1.2 to 8.8 four weeks later.

Many on the team wished they didn’t have to ship for old consoles (clunky, less powerful). BW leadership decided not to add features to the next-gen versions that wouldn’t be possible on the older ones, so that both versions of the game played the same. This limited things and meant the team had to find creative solutions. “I probably should’ve tried harder to kill [the last-gen] version of the game”, said Aaryn Flynn. In the end the next-gen consoles sold very well and only 10% of DAI sales were on last-gen.

“A lot of what we do is well-intentioned fakery,” said Patrick Weekes, pointing to a late quest called “Here Lies The Abyss”. “When you assault the fortress, you have a big cut scene that has a lot of Inquisition soldiers and a lot of Grey Wardens on the walls. And then anyone paying attention or looking for it as you’re fighting through the fortress will go, ‘Wow, I’m only actually fighting three to four guys at a time.’ Because in order for that to work [on old gen], you couldn’t have too many different character types on screen.”

Parts of DAI were still way behind schedule because it was so big and complex, and because some tools hadn’t started functioning until late on. Some basic features weren’t able to be implemented til the last minute (they were 8 months from ship before they could get all party members in the squad. At one point PW was playtesting to check if Iron Bull’s banter was firing, and realized there was no way to even recruit IB) and some flaws couldn’t be identified til the last few months. Trying to determine flow and pacing was rough.

They couldn’t disappoint fans again. They needed to take the time to revise and polish every aspect of DAI. “I think DAI is a direct response to DA2,” said Cameron Lee. “DAI was bigger than it needed to be. It had everything but the kitchen sink in it, to the point that we went too far... I think that having to deal with DA2 and the negative feedback we got on some parts of that was driving the team to want to put everything in and try to address every little problem or perceived problem.”

At this point they had 2 options: settle for an incomplete game, which would disappoint fans especially post-DA2, or crunch. They opted to crunch. It was the worst period of extended overtime in DAI’s development yet and was really rough: late nights, weekends, lost family time, 12-14 hour days, stress, mental health impacts.

During 2014′s crunch, they finally finished off features they wished they’d nailed down in year 1. They completed the Power (influence) system and added side quests, hidden treasures and puzzles. Things that weren’t working like destructible environments were promptly removed. The writers rewrote the prologue at least 6 times, but didn’t have enough time to pay such attention to the ending. Just a few months before launch pivotal features like jumping were added.

By summer BW had bumped back release by another 6 weeks for polish. DAI had about 99,000 bugs in it (qualitative and quantitative; things like “I was bored here” are a bug). “The number of bugs on an open-world game, I’ve never seen anything like it. But they’re all so easy to fix, so keep filing these bugs and we’ll keep fixing them.” For BW it was harder to discover them, and the QA team had to do creative experimentation and spend endless late nights testing things. PW would take builds home to let their 9 year old son play around. Their son was obsessed with mounting and dismounting the horse and accidentally discovered a bug where if you dismounted in the wrong place, all your companions’ gear would vanish. “It was because my son liked the horse so much more than anyone else ever had or will ever like the horse.”

MD had a knack for prioritizing which bugs should be fixed, like the one where you could get to inaccessible areas by jumping on Varric’s head. “Muscle memory is incredibly influential at this point. Through the hellfire which is game development, we’re forged into a unit, in that we know what everyone’s thinking and we understand everyone’s expectations.”

At launch they still didn’t have all their tools working, they only had their tools working enough.

DAI became the best-selling DA game, beating EA’s sales expectations in just a few weeks. If you look closely you can see the lingering remnants of its chaotic development, like the “garbage quests” in the Hinterlands. Some players didn’t realize they could leave the area and others got caught in a “weird, compulsive gratification loop”. Internet commentators rushed to blame “those damn lazy devs” but really, these were the natural consequences of DAI’s struggles. Maybe things would have been different if they’d miraculously received another year of dev time, or if they’d had years before starting development to build FB’s tools first.

“The challenge of the Hinterlands and what it represented to the opening 10 hours of DAI is exactly the struggle of learning to build open-world gameplay and mechanisms when you are a linear narrative story studio,” said Aaryn Flynn.

“DA2 was the product of a remarkable time-line challenge,” said Mike Laidlaw, “DAI was the product of a remarkable technical challenge. But it had enough time to cook, and as a result it was a much better game.”

Read the chapter for full details of course!

#dragon age #bioware #video games #SW:TOR #mass effect #I've seen plenty of this info discussed in articles/thinkpieces and on online communities over the years #but it's nice to read it first hand #some very insightful stuff here #these behind the scenes looks are very valuble #a lot of DAI's elements make sense given the context and what was going on in the background and the tech challenges they faced etc #be kind and respectful to devs folks they're human beings #also in general this book is really interesting and easy to read #funny in places too #it has lots of other chapters on lots of other games including Stardew Valley #I def recc buying it #anyway hope this post is useful/interesting to someone!#oh and as always support good treatment of game devs #crunch culture in the industry is harmful and exploitative

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anistarrose · 4 years ago

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Summary: Winters running the Mystery Shack are difficult, but two unexpected guests improve Stan’s day.

Characters: Stan Pines, Mabel Pines, Dipper Pines, Ford Pines

Relationships: Mabel Pines & Stan Pines, Dipper Pines & Stan Pines, Dipper Pines & Mabel Pines & Stan Pines

Happy Holidays, @halogalopaghost! I'm your Secret Santa, here to mash together a couple different prompts through the power of time travel (and Mabel)!

***

It doesn’t take Stan many years to learn that winter’s no good for the rural Oregon tourist business.

Granted, he can hardly blame the tourists — he has to drive on Gravity Falls roads himself, much to his disgust. Between the paved, plowed streets that always turn slick with ice where you least expect them, and the winding gravel roads that you might as well ignore when road and wilderness alike are under identical four-inch blankets of snow, he knows no gallery of fake haunted paintings or taxidermied coyote’s ass is worth the trip in these conditions.

He’s on his third winter in town, now — not counting the first, worst one he arrived at the tail end of — and if there’s a right way to run a business this time of year, he hasn’t found it yet. He always scrapes together just enough to pay his bills, thanks the occasional local who wanders over to purchase a seasonally appropriate if overpriced snow globe — but he’s lucky if he breaks even in December, and knows January through March are a lost cause before they begin. He’ll make it back within the next year, sometimes even before summer ends, but it stings to know he’s about to fail at his one goal for the next three to four months straight, and there’s nothing he can do to change it.

It might sting less if he had another way to spend these winters — if he had a good reason to formally close the Shack for a few months, like an experienced business owner making a grounded and responsible decision. But he can’t even search for Ford’s journals in this weather — he’s learned from his mistakes, his countless brushes with frostbite, throughout those cold, desperate months in the wake of the portal shutting down.

He’s useless right now, and worse, this season’s shaping up to be the bleakest yet. His usually-scammable neighbors have already lined their shelves with winter knicknacks from Mystery Shack visits past, and the bulk of Stan’s meager sales have come from shivering out-of-towners who’ve never tried to take a Pacific Northwest road trip in December before, and probably won’t be keen to try again.

What seasonal merchandise hasn’t he sold yet? Bumper stickers for miscellaneous holidays, maybe — but neither timely bumper stickers nor the usual selection of tchotchkes will convince people to visit the Shack in the first place, under these road conditions. He can’t even walk around selling merch door to door, for the same reason he can’t look for the other journals — he’d freeze to death, presuming he could make it through the snowdrifts to somewhere worth visiting in the first place. Even with snow chains on the Stanmobile’s tires and a bucket of salt in her trunk, grocery runs alone are perilous enough.

Damn it, Ford, he thinks, why couldn’t you have gone missing in Florida?

He could always do what he does best and lie, maybe — send out word that there’s free hot chocolate or something with every purchase at the Mystery Shack, and hope that people hand over their hard-earned cash before they pick up on the false advertising. He might draw in some local customers that way, and even if he loses their trust for the next few months, they always seem to forget about his cons eventually — as if he never scammed them, and they’ve never so much as heard the words caveat emptor.

He’s just about to dial the local paper’s number on the phone, hoping to flatter Toby into letting him run another ad for free, when he hears a telltale knock at the gift shop door. The bell atop that door doesn’t ring, which means that despite the hostile winds and snow they braved to get here, his visitors are still out loitering on the porch — or so Stan thinks for a moment, before it dawns on him that he doesn’t even remember unlocking the door this morning. He’d just been that pessimistic about even seeing a customer.

“Hello?” someone calls — a fairly young voice, probably approaching the tail end of puberty. “Are you there, uh…Mr. Mystery?”

“On my way!” Stan shouts, throwing on his fez and bolting for the door. His neighbors in Gravity Falls might forget and forgive a lot, but he doesn’t want to risk the wrath of a parent whose teenage kid froze to death on the local grifter’s doorstep, so he unlocks and flings open the door as fast as he can. “Welcome, travelers! Prepare to be baffled and bemused by our mind-boggling boreal mysteries, here at this last refuge at the edge of the Arctic we like to call the Cryptid Cabin!”

His visitor — no, his two visitors — both blink slowly, proving to at least be baffled, if nothing else. Both are bundled up in what Stan assumes to be several sheep worth of wool garments, lovingly knitted into sweaters, hats, and scarves.

“But you call this place the Mystery Shack,” the girl speaks up, and the boy nods.

“Yeah, and we’re nowhere near the Arctic! This is Oregon, not Alaska!”

Stan groans — the only customers he might see all week, and of course they’re teenagers. “Look, punks, business is slow these days! I’ve had a lot of time to think about a seasonal rebranding, and not a lot of chances to workshop it, alright?”

The teens’ expressions instantly soften, and the girl exclaims: “Well, you can workshop it with us!” She grabs the other kid — her brother? — by the hand, and pulls him into the gift shop.

Maybe Stan’s judged them too quickly — he’s still not thrilled to have strangers pitying him, of course, but he’ll take it over strangers mocking him any day of the week.

“Dang, you’re right,” the boy comments once inside, and face-to-face with shelves of untouched merchandise. “It really is empty in here in the winter.”

With little light coming in from the windows, and a flickering bulb overhead that will soon need replacing, the often-bustling room is now dim and eerie — aside from the junk food wrappers on the floor, which Stan hastily kicks under his desk.

“Look at all the lonely snowglobes in need of homes!” the girl pipes up, swiping a glass-encased antelabbit off the shelf and giving it a hearty shake. “Good thing I’m here to adopt this lucky little guy — how much is he?”

Stan takes a second to run the numbers — the maximum amount of money a teen would have on hand, versus what Stan needs to charge to make a profit — and replies: “Twenty-nine ninety-nine and nothing more. We don’t do sales tax here, ‘less you’re a cop.”

“Bet there’s a lot of other taxes you don’t do, either,” the boy snorts, rummaging through a shelf of hats until he unearths one with the old Murder Hut logo on it. “Aha! Now here’s a collector’s item!”

“Oh, did you come here before the rebrand and forget to grab a souvenir?” Stan asks. He doesn’t remember these two, but it’s been a couple years since he painted over the last Murder Hut sign — and they do seem pretty familiar with the building, not to mention Stan’s whole… business model.

“Oh, uh, that’s a funny story, actually! Real funny!” the boy stammers with a whole lot more trepidation than the topic should’ve warranted, and looks to his sister for help.

Sure enough, she steps in. “We lived here for a while — in Gravity Falls, I mean! Not here in the Shack, obviously — wouldn’t that be ridiculous, if we lived in your house for months without you knowing? Could you imagine —”

“That is to say, we still visit sometimes!” the boy supplies. His eyes are a whole lot more fixated on the snowglobes than with anything in Stan’s general direction. “You probably don’t remember us — we weren’t in town for very long, or anything…”

Stan sighs. They’re lying, obviously — but hey, there’s no cops in the Mystery Shack, and he doesn’t have a dog in whatever fight compelled the duo to spew this bullshit. He’ll keep an eye on the cash register, of course, but these kids are tolerable company when they’re not being suspicious as hell — so if they want to invent a bad cover story for a low-stakes tourist trap visit, more power to them.

“Well, the hat’s vintage, so that’ll be double price. Twenty bucks,” he announces matter-of-factly, and the boy groans — but there’s a smile behind it, like he’d expected this and now he’s just playing along. If there’s one thing Stan’s willing to believe, it’s that these kids have been to the Mystery Shack before.

“You’re a highway robber, old man, and I’m the coward who’s gonna let you get away with it,” the boy declares, and Stan can’t help but laugh. The kid reaches under several layers of sweaters to pull out a wallet, with a blue pine tree embroidered on, and miscellaneous charms of fantasy characters hanging off a chain on the side. Stan doesn’t recognize any of them, but they still tug at his heartstrings, because he can tell they’re the exact kind of nerdy references Ford would love.

He does take note of the pine tree design, though — it’s generic enough that slapping it on some shirts and hats wouldn’t quite be plagiarism, and in Stan’s eyes, those are always the best souvenir designs.

The kids put their money forward, hovering awkwardly as Stan rings up their items — the girl busies herself attacking a loose string on her brother’s scarf, nimble fingers tying it back in its approximate place, while the boy twiddles his thumbs and stares at the snowy, gray scene out the window. At the moment, only light flurries fill the air, but tomorrow night promises a blizzard… and Stan, grump with a soft side that he is, can’t help but hope that if these kids are really on vacation, then they aren’t planning to drive anywhere tonight.

With it being winter, and him running the business that he does, he doesn’t have much charity to give — but, if he’s going to play along with his customers’ little lie, then he should probably at least bring up the topic.

“You’re not hittin’ the road any time soon, are you?” He makes eye contact only with the green illustrated presidents in his hands, so not to come across as overly invested. “Weather forecast says tonight’s gonna be a doozy.”

“Aww, you’re worried about us?” the girl coos, because apparently both parties here are damn good at picking up on each other’s lies. “That’s so sweet — but you don’t have to be! Our great uncle’s waiting for us in town, and he’ll… well, let’s just say he’s planning to bring us back home before the blizzard hits.”

“He’s, uh — he lived here back in the seventies, so he knows what he’s doing,” the boy adds. “On the roads, that is. Mostly.”

“Well, you two take care,” Stan tells them, hastily adding on: “So you can come back when the weather isn’t terrible and buy more keychains, that is.”

“Oh, we will.” The boy grins, sharing a conspiratorial glance with his sister. “Maybe don’t count on it being next year — or the year after that, even — but you can count on it.”

“Well, uh…” Stan stops himself, resisting the impulse to divulge things he really shouldn’t. “You just shouldn’t count on me running this place forever. Be sure to get your novelty cryptid pins while they’re hot, y’know.”

He’s never really wondered what he’ll do with the Shack when he gets Ford back — and yes, he has to believe that statement deserves a when, not an if — but he figures the Shack’s fate will depend more on Ford’s own whims. If reality lands somewhere between the nightmares of Ford wanting him gone and the fantasies of finally sailing around the world, if Ford doesn’t hate him but still wants to spend more time with Important Science Experiments than with his brother, then Stan could see himself returning to a mediocre life in his moderately successful tourist trap… but with the search for the journals still coming up empty, Stan can only try not to think about the future, and accept that he’ll just cross — or burn — that bridge when he comes to it.

“Okay, Mr. Mystery,” the girl suddenly declares with a tone that frankly reminds Stan of his mother, “you look like you could use a pick-me-up!”

“What?” It’s starting to freak Stan out how well she can read him, and there’s no telling whether it’s just a sharp intuition, or something significantly more Gravity Falls-y. “If I look tired, kid, it’s because it’s December in Oregon, I haven’t seen the sun in a week, and I am tired. Only pick-me-up I need is for you to get out of my hair, and let me go back into hibernation like nature intended.”

“Okay, but counterpoint: you hear us out,” the boy insists. “We’ve got a little something up our sleeve to really light up your winter —” He winks at his sister. “Don’t we?”

“You bet we do!” She pulls a bag of marshmallows out of not her sleeve, but her backpack, and grins. “Prepare to be amazed and astounded by the natural wonders of this town, and also the miracle that is processed sugar and gelatin!”

“Are you imitating my sales pitches?” Stan asks, dumbfounded. “And do you carry those on you at all times?”

“In winter in Gravity Falls, I do!” the girl replies, already heading for the exit with her brother. “C’mon! If this doesn’t put a smile on your face, nothing will!”

“We all know you’ve got time to spare, Stan,” the boy adds, cracking open the door. “Get a move on!”

“Spare time doesn’t mean I’ve got spare limbs to lose to frostbite,” Stan grumbles, but follows them anyway. There’s something captivating about these little punks — not so much this mysterious phenomenon they’re trying to sell him on, as if they could really out-charlatan Mr. Mystery himself, but rather the way they’re not put off by his frigid facade. They see right through him, showering him in alternating kindness and acerbic wit.

Stan can’t help but wonder if their uncle’s kind of like him — tired, bitter, and pretending to be indifferent, but secretly soft on the inside, like a marshmallow that’s burnt on the surface but melted within. It would explain why they’re so good at calling him on his shit — but then again, Stan and this mystery guy can’t be too alike, because if Stan had a niece and nephew like these two, he’s sure he’d be living his life a whole lot differently.

He exits the Shack, and all his questions are immediately replaced with new ones when he sees the teens just hurling marshmallows towards the edge of the woods. The wind’s in their favor, so some of those sugary little fuckers fly far.

“Okay, so I’ve already got a couple concerns,” Stan tells them, shivering. “First off, what the hell?”

“It might take a couple minutes before one shows up,” the girl admits, as if it’s a totally reasonable stand-alone explanation for whatever the hell’s going on here. With about a third of the marshmallows now blending into the snow on Stan’s lawn, she and her brother stop with the throwing, though they still hold onto the bag. “Our grunkle theorized that they move slower in winter, to save energy — oh wait, never mind! Here comes one now!”

“Sorry, what? And where?” Stan squints out into the woods, terrified to lay his eyes upon a woodland monster these kids just lured to his doorstep — but all he sees, at first, are a few wisps of smoke dispersing in the wind above the trees. He’s not even convinced it’s smoke, really, because these aren’t the right conditions for a fire — but to his surprise, he glimpses an orange light within the woods, glowing steadily brighter until the trees and bushes around it are all casting faint shadows.

When it steps into the clearing, Stan realizes he has seen something like it before, albeit only from the overcautious distance he tries to keep from all anomalies. It’s an otherwise normal campfire perched on wooden, spiderlike legs, and it melts a path in the snow as it trots forwards, then lowers itself to the ground to absorb the first of a dozen marshmallows.

It lets out a satisfied little sound — a low, steady crackle that sounds almost like a purr — then scampers up to the next morsel of food to repeat the process.

“It’s called a Scampfire!” the girl explains, beaming. “There’s a bunch of them out in the woods, and they’ll always wander over if you leave out enough campfire food — especially sugary stuff! Isn’t that cute?”

“Our great uncle figured out this amazing trick when he used to live here, and he passed it down to us!” the boy adds, practically bouncing up and down in place. “If you leave them a trail of food, they’ll follow you around until you run out — which means they can clear your driveway, warm your hands, even save your car if you drive into a snowbank! Or help you make s’mores, of course.”

“Our grunkle says he even skipped paying his heating bill a couple winters,” the girl adds with a grin, “but I dunno if we can recommend that in good conscience.”

As the scampfire draws a closer, continuing to purr as it consumes more of the sugary trail, the boy slaps a handful of marshmallows into Stan’s palm. “Give it a try!”

Stan’s not thrilled about bringing a fire onto the wooden porch attached to his wooden house, even as cute as said fire is, so instead he tosses his ammunition at something much more disposable — the golf cart, since if this one croaks, he can always just steal another from the insufferable rich family up on the hill. His aim isn’t great — he blames his cold fingers — but exactly one marshmallow lands right in the cart’s driver seat.

The scampfire breaks course from its path towards the Shack, clearing a path through the snow before it crawls into the cart, absorbing the final morsel and curling up atop crossed legs. Nothing explodes, and in fact, a few of the icicles on the awning start to melt, dripping water into the patch of bare muddy ground surrounding the cart.

“Huh,” Stan mutters. Dozens of harebrained schemes flash before his eyes — if he could find a slingshot, or even better, some kind of cannon to mount on the cart’s front hood, then he’s sure that with practice, he could entice some scampfires to clear a path through any snowdrift…

But no matter his exact solution, it’s a way to get into town consistently. He can finally go door-to-door selling knickknacks, instead of sitting in the gift shop every day and hoping some poor soul would get bored enough to brave the roads and visit. He can actually work out a way to line his pockets even in the winter, instead of constantly waking up from nightmares about getting foreclosed on —

“See? They get food, and we don’t freeze — classic mutualistic symbiotic relationship!” the boy declares, and his sister gently socks him in the arm.

“Nerd!”

“Hey, you knew that too! We’re in the same biology class!”

It’s familiar, but the kind of familiarity that Stan doesn’t treasure anymore. It’s more like the kind that he hides in the basement or in boarded-up rooms whenever he can, and grins and bears with a heavy heart when he can’t, like every time he looks in the mirror or hears someone call him Stanford. He comes so close to asking these teens if they’re twins, because he figures the answer can’t be worse than wondering — but the question dies in his throat, and he tells himself it’s for the best.

“Is your uncle who invented this trick the same one who’s waiting in town for you?” he asks instead.

“Yep!” replies the girl. “He probably won’t get worried about us for like, ten or fifteen more minutes, though — I’m sure he’s got his nose buried deep in a book right now.”

“Do me a favor and let him know he’s a lifesaver,” Stan says. “Also tell him I’m glad he moved out, because he sounds a little too smart to fall for the fake monster wares that I peddle.”

The kids exchange a look that Stan can’t even hope to comprehend, though he’s damn sure it’s worth a thousand words to the two of them. Twins or not, he’s getting an “inseparable” kind of vibe from these two, that’s for sure.

“I’m not sure he’d like the Shack at first,” the brother muses, “but I’ve got a hunch it would grow on him.”

“He does like cryptids — sometimes even fake ones!” the sister chimes in. “Oh, shoot — we still need to grab a souvenir for him! I knew we were forgetting something!”

“Huh.” Stan throws a few more marshmallows in the direction of the woods, and the scampfire stumbles off the cart before trotting along on its merry way back to the forest. “I can get you something, no problem — I don’t call this place a gift shop for nothing, y’know. But for the love of Paul Bunyan, let’s talk about it inside.”

He’s not great at mental math, but he doesn’t have to be to know he owes a lot to these teens and the mysterious uncle he might never meet. Hell, even forgetting the business perspective — he can actually look for the journals in winter without risking frostbite, if he gets one of his fiery neighbors to tag along. Even if he finds nothing, even if he only winds up with more failures to contend with, he’d rather rule out locations than be useless to Ford for months at a time.

None of this weird family that he might never see again, these three benevolent strangers that he can only put two faces to, could possibly know how much they’ve just changed for him — and he can’t tell them, as much as his oversized heart promises he can trust these snarky kids who remind him so much of himself. But he does owe them, so when he reenters the gift shop, he goes straight for a seldom-opened and never-advertised box of knickknacks that he has no intention of charging them for. It’s got the dimensions of only about two side-by-side shoeboxes, so he lifts it onto the counter with hardly a grunt, and opens it up.

“Got lots of goodies in here — mostly stuff that I made or, ahem, acquired in bulk, so they never quite sold out by the time everyone and their mother in town had already bought their own. Take a gander.”

He knows that gander will reveal some Murder Hut-branded shirts with the words written on in marker, plastic six-sided dice with a different cryptids pictured on each side, cheap whistles purported to attract Bigfoot, cheap flashlights once advertised for attracting Mothman, exactly three cool rocks that Stan found in the woods… and the pièce de résistance, a little wooden Mystery Shack-shaped music box, which chirps out a pleasant tune when Stan flips up the roof. That last one’s a rare knickknack that Stan really put effort into personally crafting, back at the height of last winter’s monotony, through cannibalizing parts of premade music boxes and sticking them into brand-new shapes — but he couldn’t sell them for enough to be worth the cost of making more, and could never sell this last one at all.

“Oh, wow!” the girl gasps, clearly delighted. “How can I even choose between —”

“No, take it all. It’s on the house — but don’t you dare tell anyone about this, you hear me? I’ll know if you blab, ‘cause people will start asking me if they can get free crap, too, and I don’t wanna hear a word of that nonsense.”

“Free stuff at the Mystery Shack?” The boy narrows his eyes. “Are you feeling okay, old man?”

“Kid, stuff only goes in the Free Bullshit Box when I can’t sell it anyway.” Stan crosses his arms with a huff, even though he’s technically telling the truth. “The only catch is take it before I change my mind.”

A sudden spark of recognition in the brother’s eyes morphs into a grin on his face, and he nods. “Oh, we will. Don’t worry.”

“I think our grunkle will love this! Especially the dice,” the sister adds. “Hey, maybe we could give all this to him piece by piece for Hanukkah! There’s enough here for a new surprise every night!”

“Whoa, there is! Man, the look on his face the first time we bring out a Bigfoot whistle is gonna be great —” The boys eyes dart to the watch on his wrist, and he coughs into his hand. “But we should probably get a move on, huh? Don’t want to get caught in, y’know, the blizzard tonight.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Stan returns the lid and hands the box over. “You, uh, need a ride back to town? ‘Cause being a man of mystery and all, I know this neat trick to clear a whole road with just a bag full of marshmallows —”

The kids both start cackling, so hard that the box almost escapes the girl’s hands, and Stan laughs with them — not because he thought his joke was that funny, but because the kids’ laughter is absolutely priceless. The isolation’s definitely getting to his head and his heart, but he’ll take whatever reprieve he can get.

“I think we’ll manage on our own,” the boy finally wheezes out, “but thanks for the offer, Mr. Mystery. Thanks for everything, really.”

“See you later!” his sister adds as they leave. “Don’t let the feral gnomes bite!”

“You take care, too,” Stan replies, not nearly as loud — but he figures that the kids can read his lips. They can read so much about him, and know so much about the town, that he’s honestly a hair’s breadth away from assuming they’re two more anomalies from the woods themselves, just in more recognizable shapes than most…

Though if Stan’s honestly considering that theory, then more of Ford must’ve rubbed off on him than he likes to think about — which is to say, it’s a good a reason as any to stop thinking about it. What or whoever they were, the duo were actually pretty tolerable for teenagers, and Stan’s pretty sure they didn’t put a curse or whatever magic mumbo jumbo on him — because if they could manage that, they could definitely tell some less conspicuous lies, right?

He kinda likes the idea of one goddamn supernatural force in this town that’s actually benevolent, actually watching his back when his mood’s at its bleakest, and coming to his rescue with — no, he’s dropping that train of thought. No baseless hoping, just letting himself down easy before he gets up.

It does occur to him, several minutes after the gift shop door swings closed, that Hanukkah has already come and gone this year. Which probably just means the kids are prepared to hide that box for another twelve months… but maybe, when Stan finds the other journals, he’ll double-check for entries on helpful teenage cryptids who can’t lie. Just to be sure.

***

Mabel, Dipper, and Ford barrel into the living room so suddenly that Stan almost drops his mug of hot chocolate. They’re all covered in a ridiculous amount of snow, considering how briefly they were just outside, and Ford looks awfully delighted for someone whose glasses are someone whose glasses have just turned opaque with fog.

“Grunkle Stan!” Mabel shouts. The cardboard box in her arms has seen better days, but she’s cradling it like an infant. “You’ll never guess when we just were!”

Dipper points a gloved finger in the air. “You mean, when we just — oh wait, did you already —”

“Yeah, I beat you to it this time!” Mabel pumps her fist. “Anyways, Grunkle Stan — you’ll never guess who we just visited!”

#gravity falls #stanley pines #mabel pines #dipper pines #stanford pines #gravity falls secret santa 2020 #rosalia writes fic

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wizkiddx · 4 years ago

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This bloody door

a lil blurb of complete fluff - readerxharryholland

“THIS. BLOODY. DOOR.” You shouted at no one in particular, really hoping the door would get the message of how much of a bitch it was being, not letting the key that was crafted just for it to work, instead of relying on a shove from your left shoulder. Which of course it wouldn’t get the message - because it was a door. A plank of wood.

That didn’t matter though. After the possibly the worst day you had ever experienced everyone was in for it tonight, the shoe that had given you such bad blisters that now you were absolutely ruining them by wearing them as slippers; the door; and let's not forget the lift that wouldn’t whisk you away quick enough to hide your tears after… after the presentation from hell. The lanky selfish prick, that most people called James but you simply called the fuckwit of a boss, had literally shredded apart your project in 10 minutes - that had been months of work. He was a dick, the lift was a dick and the door to your shared flat also had many similar characteristics.

“You know it won’t like you if you shout at it” Y/f/n, your best friend and flatmate spoke calmly as she rounded the corner into the hallway - looking at you sympathetically. You weren’t one to blow your top often, she knew today must truly have not gone your way. Replying with a cold hard stare at her, it took a moment before Y/f/n offered any solution. “You wanna rant?”

“Well for one we need a new shitting door because I just almost dislocated my shoulder getting in.” You started sarkily, earning an amused scoff from Y/f/n which didn’t really help your mood. “But chronologically? Well some randomer poured half their coffee down my blouse on the tube this morning which you know was annoying because of my presentation. Then got to work,Fuckwit made a comment about me not scrubbing up well because of the coffee stain- even though he looks like a horse chewed up some hay and then just spat it on the top of his greasy head- and THEN he shat all over my fucking presentation simply because he’s an ignorant arsehole who doesn’t care about the environment EVEN THOUGH sustainability is now a big selling point and I know for a fact we’d be getting double the amount of profit if he launched my range!” Hands were flying all over the place as you raged, Y/f/n just standing opposite with a sympathetic nod.

You had this agreement with Y/f/n - sometimes people just needed to let it all out, no filter, no judgement and no crappy advice. So sometimes, if either of you needed it, the other would just stay quiet and instead just really really listen. It was one of the many reasons you completely loved your best mate.

“And you know I was sobbing and almost ran out the conference room because you know, it was absolutely mortifying. And when I felt like that there was only one person I wanted to talk to, no offence to you but, I wanted to call Harry. And I pulled out my phone to, you know to ask for a bit of sympathy from my boyfriend but instead, I was cruelly reminded of the fact he left me on read almost two days ago. And I’m not a possessive girlfriend who wants to know where he is all the time or whatever, even though I think most people probably would because you know his job means girls literally fall at his feet, but no it's not me. Still though…2 DAYS? I mean he was the one who asked me to be his girlfriend, and I get he’s busy directing on the other side of the world but all I need is a single text saying sorry I’m a bit busy at the moment.”

“Y/n” That wasn’t allowed during a rant, you weren’t allowed to interrupt the other. So naturally, you just completely ignored Y/f/n chiming in.

“And like it's even worse because you know he’s been away for ages and I kind of had a realisation a couple of days ago. Before you say anything I know I don’t know what love is right? I know that but-but I think I maybe possibly might actually love him. And that terrifies me but its the truth. I really do think I could quite possibly be in love with him. So-so now” Your voice broke a little at the point, the rage and anger dissipating into sadness - and there was no other word for it. Just this heavy thing that felt like it was weighing you down.

“Y/n I really-“

“So now I have a boyfriend who I love but is ignoring me, have probably lost my job” The voice breaking now was you gulping down an almost sob, again completely ignoring your best mate “and the door is still a dick” Y/f/n laughed a little at that, however, was too busy staring intently at you to take any real appreciation for your comedy in a time of almost-break down.

“…you’ve got nothing to say?” After what felt like minutes of silence, you prompted Y/f/n to speak - it took her opening and closing her mouth but she got there in the end.

“Sorry just a shock um… I think… I think maybe you should go sit on the sofa.”

“God fucking Einstein aren’t you? How could I forget the sofa fixes a broken heart, unemployment and a door?” You didn’t mean to be so sarcastic and cruel, and Y/f/n knew that too - she wasn’t going to take offence after how angry you are at the world.

“Y/n just shut your mouth and go into the living room” You rolled your eyes but followed her orders, marching angrily into your small and simple living room. Sure it wasn’t a luxury, but renting a two bed in London wasn’t exactly the most affordable thing - both of you had still managed to inject a nice cozy vibe into it though, with fairy lights and throw cushions and blankets.

However this evening it had a certain new piece of decor that definitely wasn’t there when you left this morning. Sitting bolt upright with a shit eating grin was a sight that was almost impossible. A curly haired, skinny but oh so safe looking man perched on the couch. Your curly haired, skinny but safe boy. It was almost impossible but at the same time, somehow, very very real.

“Hi” He uttered awkwardly, almost looking scared of your blank, confused expression. You just didn’t get it you didn’t understand and stood their frozen, hands held out slightly as if you were waiting for someone to pass you a plate or something. After a couple of seconds, Y/f/n got bored of the nothing - gently shoving you from behind, meaning you had no choice but to lurch forward, run and then almost jump on Harry, his back pushed into the back of the sofa with your momentum.

Everything just felt so much more right as you listened to his deep chuckle reverberate around his chest. From your position straddling him and arms clinging round his neck as though you were some sort of a koala, Harry finally had all of you in his grasp after months apart. That’s why he’d arranged this whole thing with Y/f/n to surprise you by coming home earlier than what he had told you- it was also why he had been leaving all your messages unanswered, he’d been on flights back and also thought it would be an even better surprise if you hadn’t spoken in a while. Now though, he just felt extremely guilty as your chest started shaking in a way he’d never seen before.

“Hey it’s okay.... just take a minute yeh?”

Because of course he had heard you shouting from the doorway, the flat was only small. He knew you’d had an incredibly shit day, also knowing that sometimes you need a cry just to let it all out. And so he let you, gently rubbing up and down your back while you sniffled into his chest. With a small nod to Harry, Y/f/n made herself scarce - more than reassured Harry had the situation under control.

It must’ve been a couple of minutes, of you just quietly crying into his chest whilst his heartbeat calmed you down. Eventually, though, you leant back but still with your arms round his neck, just enough so you could meet his eyes. “Hey” Harry whispered, as he moved one arm from around your waist to gently wipe away a singular tear drop on your cheek.

“You’re so bloody annoying” You laughed, a sort of wet and congested laugh but still with oh so soft eyes for the boy in front of.

“That's seriously how your gonna greet me? I flew halfway across the world to see you!” He quipped back, gently squeezing you hip as he spoke.

“Yeah well, you didn’t reply to me!” It was a jokey statement with a faked pout - because not to be cocky but having him infant of you like this you knew. Harry wouldn’t have flown home for someone he didn’t care about, his pupils wouldn’t be so incredibly wide and your heartbeats wouldn’t have exactly synced up - which you had noticed as you were lent against his chest.

“I was just trying to surprise you! But yeh was a bit of a dick move.”

“As long as you know it” He laughed at that and you took the opportunity to try and clamber off him somewhat - yet Harry just clamped you down with his hands again, not letting you move from your position straddled over him.

“So have I made the worlds shittest day a little less shit then?” He taunted making you roll your eyes but instead of sassing him back you just leant down and feathered your lips on his momentarily. He whined when you pulled away since your lips had barely ghosted over his; your hands now cupping his sharp jaw and cheeks. Both of you just took a moment to look at each other, for the first time in too long, trying to commit every aspect and little perfect imperfection to memory.

“So” you whispered, biting your lip, with the knowledge Harry had heard everything you’d shouted at Y/f/n when you came in and knowing Harry well enough to know he would definitely bring it up - to no doubt mock you.

“So… you think you could ‘maybe possibly might be in love with me’ is that right?” There it was, Harry was never one for beating round the bush. Moreover, that just proved you knew him like the back of your hand - it made you chuckle almost silently, shaking you had with amusement. “Well I was wondering what could make you a bit more certain of that and… and I’ve already asked Tom and all his year of carpentry experience to fix ‘that bloody door’”

“And why would you want me to be more certain?” You only asked because you knew. You knew him and you could read everything he was feeling like a book. And you liked to tease him

“Perhaps because I maybe possibly most definitely am in love with you?… what do you say huh?”

“Fix my door first., then we can talk.”

#Harry Holland #harry holland x reader #Harry holland x y/n #harry holland fluff #tom holland #tomholland

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mgkconfessions · 4 years ago

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(screenshots by themessybookofmgk aka nomad)

Kells cheating on Megan was never a question of "if", but rather "when".

I just wasn't expecting it that early on in their relationship like only a month after she had told him that she loved him and in the same month where he released the acoustic version of BV, which he dedicated to her, claimed to be "in love" with her and they began to use their relationship for publicity and to sell his music. In that same month he still managed to invite at least one girl over to hook up with her and even let her knew that he was already dating someone else. The messiness and overlapping of his relationships, dating phases and hook ups will never cease to amaze me! In case there are any newer fans, Kells has always been like that. I don't think that he has ever been in a monogamous relationship before and if he was then either he or the girl have cheated on each other. Even his longest relationship with Hedi was on and off and they had an open relationship. Now I don't know how much his sex drive plays a role here, because if he actually has a sex addiction, which he has hinted at before (not professionally evaluated tho, just his own opinion) then it might also partially explain why he can't stop having sex when he doesn't get it from his official girlfriend, but still if he can't and doesn't want to be monogamous, then don't keep dating girls who want exactly that! It will never work, because both want fundamentally different types of relationships. Anyone who thought that he would never cheat on Megan is a bit naive and if Megan thought that as well, then her too, because you can't expect to get a guy by cheating with him on his then girl and expect him not to do the same to you. Especially not when he has a messed up dating past like Kells! He has always been like this and his relationships have always looked like this too.

The only difference is that he and Megan decided that the attention and publicity was too good and so they started to create this amazing love story to sell to the public although it looks to me like Megan was the one who started it with them having to have this once in a life time romance and tried to force that onto them, while Kells never felt that seriously about them and probably still doesn't, but he went along with it, because again the publicity and attention feeding his ego and career were too good to turn down. Just look at the past week and how he presented Megan like some trophy he wants praise for. Truly disgusting! So whatever they have said and done, it's a big pile of nothingness and meaningless words. Get your tattoos, do your couple podcast and continue to call each other twin flame, but the reality is that Megan has already kicked him out of her car and made him walk because she was so mad at him and he has already cheated on her and the way Megan clings on to him, makes me believe that she's either aware of it or suspects it, but she's still staying with him and both continue their fake and staged over the top show of love, because she as well craves the public attention and wants to get her name out there again more than having any self respect and leaving him. Nothing they do or say has any deeper meaning. It's a show for the public and for themselves in hopes that anyone actually believes it so they can continue to feed their egos, get their publicity and profit of their "relationship".

Kells has multiple songs where he talks about accepting fake love and I think it's the same case here as well. Megan Fox told him they're twin flames and she loves him? Awesome, let's run with it, make her think that's what he believes too (maybe there was a point where he actually did in the beginning), but also sell the shit out of their relationship to benefit his career and feed his fragile ego by treating her like some trophy and not an actual person he should respect and show interest in as his girlfriend. And then there's Megan who apparently wants to have a meaningful and out of this world relationship so badly that she forces that idea on every relationship she has and when she can use that relationship for her comeback and to get back into the spotlight without having to work, even better! In that aspect Kells and Megan fit very well together and in my opinion it's the only reason why they're still together, because they can use each other for publicity. But it doesn't make their relationship any more real, loving, serious or lasting. It only shows how both of them put publicity and their need for attention over the possibility of developing and working on any real emotions and a real relationship that simply can't be forced like Megan did from the beginning.

This isn't even everything I could say about it, but I think you get the point and my thoughts about it and the rest will be mentioned in other posts.

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croc-odette · 4 years ago

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i love ds9 and here are some episode premises that i wish had happened

DND EPISODE: already talked about this but a dungeons and dragons holosuite episode. jake is the overly prepared DM obviously, nog, ziyal, and alexander are players. nog’s player is clearly his idea of sisko, a lawful good paladin; ziyal plays as a cardassian rogue (played by dukat, but clearly based in personality on kira); alexander plays a mage who is kind-of worf kind-of jadzia and keeps switching between them through the game). there’s an NPC version that’s clearly also based on sisko at one point, but from jake’s point of view knowing him as his dad to compare how differently jake and nog, a cadet, see him.

as the game progresses, it becomes clear that the Big Bad is based on a combo of dukat/winn (corrupt government/religious figure). ziyal struggles with the classic DND question of ‘just because i would do this, does that mean my character would?’ except she’s realizing that her dad wouldn’t do any of the selfless things she wants her character to do. alexander keeps trying to solve shit through weird cantrips or puzzle solving instead of fighting and jake is like ‘it’s not deep it’s just a cave bat please roll initiative’. bashir and garak show up as like, the old couple from the princess bride and everyone has to be like ‘jake they’re not dating in real life this rpf shit is kind of inappropriate’ and he’s like ‘wait what? i thought they were dating’. miles is an NPC and dies. nog thinks jake’s-sisko-npc is too silly and disrespectful and jake is like ‘he’s MY dad’ and they have to take a break to argue about it and jake is like ‘your dad is cool too’. nog’s character changes to lawful good paladin rom. actually this whole game is ‘arguing about dads’ time now that i think about it, which jake is not really equipped to jump in on since he has a normal cool dad who he basically just thinks is embarrassing because he’s the ~messiah~ or some goofy bullshit. ends with them calling it a day after the final boss battle and then jake and nog privately talking about whether or not they can trust ziyal if she has to choose between ds9 and dukat, which was an ulterior motive of the game. ziyal is clearly clearly rattled by what the game made her realize and goes to see kira, who she doesn’t tell about the game but who still gives her a hug, and ziyal realizes that kira’s her hero (and like, her mom). alexander tells worf and dax about the game and dax thinks it sounds fun as hell and asks alexander if they can come next time, and worf is like ‘....... only if i can be a blood mage’. nog and jake go home and tell their dads they love them.

shit i blacked out

PRANK WAR EPISODE: escalating series of pranks starting with jadzia putting hair dye in bashir’s shampoo and ending with the space station accidentally going into a meltdown self destruct scenario. garak is torn between helping jadzia and quark, who are clearly the better pranksters, or helping julian and odo, who suck at pranks but are his lunch friends. everyone has to tell garak that he’s way too intense about ‘pranks’ which are actually just really dangerous booby traps he puts in people’s quarters. sisko ends the episode by grounding everyone; no holosuites for a month!! yes even dax

GREAT RACE EPISODE: there’s some kind of macguffin resource on a planet (a klingon escape pod with a survivor with crucial intelligence information?), but they can’t teleport directly to it. a vorta and jem h’dar team and a ds9 team beam down on opposite sides of its location and are both racing to get there first, having to macgyver together vehicles and tools on the way. lots of excellent outdoor on-location settings and comparison of the jem h’dar/vorta dynamic and the ds9 federation dynamic. ends with the jem h’dar almost winning but turning on the vorta at the last few yards, and sisko’s team beams out as the jem h’dar chant victory. no i refuse to think this is same plot as ‘the ship’ or whatever

KASIDY EPISODE: set earlier in kasidy/sisko’s relationship, kasidy agrees to go with jadzia as a third-party observer to negotiations with a nearby bajoran colony over a trade agreement with the federation. jadzia and kasidy bond over gossiping about sisko on the way, but once they get there kasidy disagrees with the starfleet’s contract during negotiations which causes tensions, and recommends that the bajorans reject it. she and jadzia get into an argument about starfleet and its ideals, and why kasidy chose to be an independent captain rather than a starfleet captain, and how that doesn’t make her lesser than starfleet captains. jadzia realizes that kasidy is right and petitions superiors for a new contract, which kasidy approves of. they go home tenser then when they left, but when sisko asks jadzia what she thinks of kasidy, she very seriously says that she has incredible compassion, intelligence, and integrity, and that she doesn’t need or want jadzia’s approval. but has it anyway

MUSICAL EPISODE: someone already outlined a great musical ep where lwaxana comes in with a betazoid cold and it makes everyone burst into song in another text post and like 100% cosigned

SHAKESPEARE EP: holosuite shenanigans; every character is suddenly stuck as someone from a different shakespeare play. garak is an enthusiastically combative beatrice, kira is cordelia, worf is hamlet, jadzia is a very amused katerina, julian is puck, miles is duncan (”i get MURDERED?”), odo is benvolio and kind of bummed he’s not romeo, etc. i actually don’t know any shakespeare play that well but i think it could be neat. julian is the only fucking person on ds9 who actually knows any of it well enough to figure out what’s going on, except for sisko who doesn’t really care for shakespeare but generally knows about the plays (maybe a good opportunity to talk about the racism in most ‘classic Earth’ pop culture that star trek tends to uphold without criticism). i don’t know shit about the 40 plays that shakespeare wrote about british kings but i could see sisko ending up in that kind of intense role and refusing to play into it, as do the rest of the characters who refuse to fulfill their respective roles and instead find another way to end the program.

KLINGON OPERA EPISODE: goodddddddd can we see some klingon opera, mac. i’ve been dying to see some klingon opera. premise is they believe that someone is assassinating ambassadors and so they tag along with a andorian ambassador who loves opera to see if they can figure out who the assassin is, however the andorian plays it down as over-worrying and that they should use it as an excuse to enjoy themselves. worf and jadzia go and have a lovey dovey time, sisko and kasidy go and have a lovey dovey time watching worf and jadzia get super into the opera together. julian is asked to go in case there’s poison used or first aid needed, and miles is like ‘the last time i went undercover i came home with trauma and someone’s cat so no thanks i hate klingon opera’ and after some increasingly overt passive aggressive implications that julian should take HIM, julian asks garak to go with him. bonus points if for some reason they are wearing the stupid tuxedos from doctor bashir i presume. a lot of loud arguing about the opera which almost gets them kicked out. at the end of the first act, one of the actors DOES try to kill the andorian but jadzia jumps in front of the phaser beam (cue worf being very concerned and annoyed that she could have gotten killed, jadzia being very smug and pleased with herself, her head in his lap, in a pose mirroring an earlier couple in the opera). julian feels like he would have noticed if he hadn’t been distracted by garak, and when it turns out the andorian ambassador has sensitive info about cardassia’s civilian government, julian accuses garak of intentionally trying to distract him to make sure the andorian actually died, which turns into a huge argument (ideally in a very opulent klingon opera house bathroom). during the argument, julian realizes that garak was trying to hint to him that something about the assassination attempt was off; he pieces together aloud that the andorian and the actor must have been in league together, to fake the andorian’s assassination so they could not be tried for profiteering by illegally selling weapons to the cardassian central control during bajoran occupation, which they are currently under investigation for. the other ambassador assasinations were planned by the andorian to cover their tracks. the andorian is arrested, as is the actor. at the ballroom afterparty, sisko and kasidy, in a good mood that everything worked out, agree to join in on traditional klingon dancing. worf and jadzia take a peaceful walk through the gardens and worf recites some really lovely klingon poetry about how sometimes it’s NOT a good day to die if someone loves you, that none of us fucking understand without looking it up. julian and garak talk on the balcony, and julian posits that garak is loyal to cardassia, but which part of it? garak answers, very close and meaningfully looking at julian, ‘like most things... it’s complicated.’

i was about to say ‘fake wedding episode’ but literally LITERALLY that was the shotgun wedding lwaxana/odo ep. i love star trek

KEIKO BOTANIST EPISODE: kira accompanies keiko to bajor to help find a medicinal plant that was thought to be wiped out during the occupation but might still exist in a remote mountain region based on local reports. a nice episode where we learn more about bajor and see how bajorans are coping and healing. over a campfire, kira thanks keiko for accepting her into their family. keiko tells kira that she was really intimidated by her when they first met, and then realized she’s one of the most loving people she knows. just a nice episode, maybe some mild nature survival conflict, but ends on a hopeful note of them finding the plant. miles beams down with the kids to have a picnic with keiko and kira, and kira’s happy to see children playing carelessly on bajor again.

JAKE AND ZIYAL EPISODE: everyone thinks jake and ziyal are dating because they’ve been hanging out. julian’s an idiot and mentions to sisko ‘must be hard, huh’ and sisko’s like ‘WHAT must be hard’ and julian’s like oh my god were we not supposed to talk to him about this. jake and ziyal aren’t dating but as soon as sisko tries to talk to jake about it jake is like ‘i’m not but actually maybe i SHOULD ask her out’ and sisko is like fuck. okay no that’s fine. this is more of a B-plot but basically give jake and ziyal age-appropriate love interests they’re both RIGHT there

#i'm really about to write fake screenplays for episodes for a tv show that ended 20 years ago #star trek blogging #THIS GOT OUT OF HAND.

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junie-bugg · 5 years ago

Text

The Boy In My Bed - Everlark Fanfiction

Hey, here’s an Everlark fanfiction I wrote when I should have been doing one of my many homework assignments. This is my take on the Mockingjay ending involving Katniss and Peeta’s relationship. WARNING: there is some mention/description of sex. This whole little one-shot is basically Katniss and Peeta coming to terms with being intimate in their relationship outside of the prying eyes of the Capital.

I do not own the characters. Please do not steal my work!

Enjoy!

The first night I hunger for more than just his warmth next to me in my bed, he is having a nightmare. He doesn't thrash around and scream like I do. Rather, he tenses. His body is stiff under my hands. At this moment he is so unlike the Peeta I've come to know: soft and gentle. At this moment he is as tensely wound as one of my bow strings before I let an arrow fly. I see his eyes moving back and forth under his tightly closed lids. They flutter like bird’s wings. He is seeing things I cannot. I quietly wonder what they are.

I hold him against me until the nightmare stops and he wakes. He doesn't say anything but he does place a warm hand to my face. I do the same. I feel his tears under my palm. I do not tell him that the feeling of his large hand on my cheek makes me wonder what it would feel like on my bare hips and stomach. I do not tell him that the sound of his deep breathing next to me makes something between my legs curl in pleasure. Perhaps tonight is not the night to tell him or perhaps I'm too scared to. All I know is that when I wake up he's gone back to his own house across the green and his side of the bed is cold. I see his kitchen light on through my window. It's not yet dawn. He left earlier than usual.

He's in my bed more nights than he's in his own, but it's still not enough. I slip on my mother's bathrobe, the one she wore when she lived here, and pad down the stairs. My house is dark and empty. When Prim and my mother were here they would fill the rooms with firelight and soft chatter. Without them, there is nothing. The only time I feel like this house is a home is when Peeta comes to sleep in my bed. We haven't talked much since he planted those primroses in my garden, but he knows me well enough that he doesn't have to ask to come under my covers. If I didn't want him there I could just as easily kick him out.

I grip Buttercup by his furry underbelly and carry him into the cold morning air. Dew laden grass blades cling to my bare feet as I walk. Buttercup doesn’t growl in response to his rough treatment. He knows that when I bring him to Peeta's, he gets food.

The hallway is warm and smells of baking bread when I open the door. Buttercup lets out an agitated meow as I unceremoniously drop him, letting him pad his way to the kitchen on his own. Peeta looks up as I enter the room. The shadows under his eyes are blue and his skin looks grey against his blonde curls.

"You look terrible," I say.

"Good morning to you too." He continues molding dough. I smile slightly when I see that he's making a batch of the cheese buns I love.

I wrap my arms around my middle, trying to calm the butterflies that have started to appear whenever he’s around. "Your nightmares are getting worse."

"If I could stop them I would." He snaps, agitated. "I know crying isn't what you expect of a bed partner."

"Peeta," There's a hardness in my voice that I mean to soften. The words come out harsher than I want them too. "I'm worried about you."

"I know, Katniss. I'm sorry." He grips the edge of the table with his flour-covered hands. His knuckles spasm under the force. "I'm just tired."

I hesitate and let the moment close. The kitchen is silent except for the soft roar of the oven and Buttercup's purring. He's playing with a piece of string on the floor. Before, this would have been a setting where I wouldn't have dreamed of touching Peeta. But things have changed between us since the games. There's no faking love for cameras that don't exist. It's just me and him in this warm kitchen. I come up behind him and wrap my arms around his chest. I rest my ear against his back so I can hear his heartbeat. It's strong and steady. I'm reminded of when it stopped during our second games and how I almost lost him.

"I want you to move in with me."

He tenses under my arms.

"Are you sure you want that, Katniss?"

"What do you mean?"

He untangles my arms from around his body, getting flour on my sleeves in the process. A dull pang of hurt leadens my limbs. "I've been having more flashbacks. The shiny memories haven't stopped. Sometimes I'm here and I'm baking or I'm painting or I'm just lying down on the couch and then the next moment I've blacked out and broken something or I've hurt myself."

It's true. I awoke one night to find him muttering under his breath and rocking back and forth on the edge of the bed. He had scratched his palms to shreds with his own nails. The only thing that had calmed him down enough for me to clean and bandage his wounds was when I sang him a song. When he finally heard my voice he seemed to be coming out of a trance. But I'm no better.

Almost every night I wake up in a cold sweat, a scream ripping my throat apart. Some days I muster up the strength to go to the woods and hunt or even go into town to trade. Other days I can't get out of bed. Instead, I just stare at the wall blankly and refuse to eat whatever Peeta brings me. I can tell he's worried about me just as much as I'm worried about him.

"You've taken care of me, Peeta. Let me take care of you too."

We hold each other close in the soft glow of the oven.

It doesn't take long for Peeta to move all of his personal belongings into my house. He has a few boxes of clothing that Portia made for him to wear during our victory tour. He has his easel and an assortment of canvases, brushes, and paints. What surprises me is how much baking material he has. I watch him carry heavy sacks of flour, sugar, and salt from his kitchen into mine. The muscles in his arms and back ripple in the sun. He has an assortment of cake decorating tools that I've never had the chance to look through. He smiles as I lift frosting tips and cookie cutters from their organized drawers and set them all up in a line on the counter. He has so many. He places his shoes next to my mud crusted hunting boots by the door. He places his coat next to my father's hunting jacket on a peg in the front hallway. He places his lips on my temple every morning.

I watch him paint. He brushes colors onto those stark white canvases to create breathtaking landscapes. He begins hanging the paintings I’ve said are my favorites around the house. A spring day by the lake. The beaches of District 4. The training center garden we spent a full day in before our second games. I use the animals I kill and the plants I collect to trade for frames in town. He smiles each time I bring one home for him. If he wanted to he could sell his paintings for a profit but he never does. I understand why. Each picture he makes is a memory. Selling them would be wrong.

He paints a portrait of Prim for me. I’m angry when I see it. So blindingly angry that I hit his chest over and over as he wraps himself around me and tries to apologize. When I’ve cried myself out in his arms we hang it in her old bedroom. I don’t go in there very often but when I do I feel her small child’s eyes follow me. Peeta did a good job. It looks just like her.

One day I peek into the old office that has become his studio. He’s crying as he paints a portrait of his father from memory. He has no real pictures of him to use as a reference.

The first night I work up the courage to straddle him and begin taking off my shirt he grips my hands to stop me.

“Katniss, you don’t have to.” He whispers. He looks sad with his eyebrows drawn over his clear blue eyes like I’ve confused him with someone else. I’m too embarrassed to tell him that I want his hot mouth on mine and I want him to want me. I’ve never seriously considered being intimate with anyone before. Not Gale when I was younger and not Peeta when we were thrown into our first games together. Back then, by the river where I pulled him from the mud and the weeds, I had looked away when he took his clothes off. Now I wish he would realize I’ve changed my mind. I want to see him. All of him. And I want him to see me too.

But instead, I quickly pull my shirt back over my bare chest and roll to my side of the bed. He doesn’t touch me again that night and I don’t want him to. My breath quickens and my face burns with embarrassment.

I don’t sleep. I have too many thoughts racing through my head. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the boy with the bread doesn’t love me anymore. He has his reasons. Because of me, he can’t go a day without a tracker jacker venom-induced flashback. Because of me, his family is dead. Burned to a crisp in those firebombs that took his home. He has his reasons but at this moment I hate him for it. I rise and dress to go out to the woods. I can tell by Peeta’s breathing he isn’t asleep either. He probably never was. We don’t look at each other as I finish dressing and leave.

Out in the woods, my head isn’t any clearer. I’m too angry to hunt or check traps so I just fume in a tree. I twirl the stem of a stray leaf between my palms and think about Peeta’s eyelashes. The sun is starting to set when I decide I should head back home.

Haymitch and Peeta sit at the kitchen table. They aren’t talking but when we’re all together we never really do. What is there to say? Instead we usually just sit and enjoy each other’s company. They are all that’s left of my family here in 12. Today, Haymitch has decided to come at least partially sober. Even when tipsy he’s observant.

“I thought you two were starting to get along again,” He raises an eyebrow at our cold greeting. “Moving in together and all.” He munches on a cookie Peeta has made. The beautiful yellow flower collapses under Haymitch’s jaw as he bites into its petals. Soon Haymitch has eaten all the cookies and has downed more than half of whatever spirit is in his bottle. He begins to stagger back home and I slam the front door on him more forcefully than I mean to.

“Katniss?” Peeta’s voice carries from the kitchen. “Can we talk?”

I don’t respond and elect to silently head up the stairs to take a bath instead. I’m acting childish but I don’t care. I’m hurt.

That night Peeta slides into bed next to me. I expect him to stay on his side and avoid touching me again. Instead, I feel him prop himself up on one of his arms as he begins playing with my braid. I yank it out of his fingers.

I want to stop this. To stop being angry but it’s so hard. I’ve come to realize I love him more than I thought I could. I think bitterly that our roles have switched. He loved me when I barely knew who he was. Now I know that he, soft and sweet like the bright dandelion I associate him with, is the one I love and now he won’t even touch me.

“It’s not that I don’t want to be with you.” He starts. His voice is barely a whisper. His words are low and rough. A shiver travels along my spine and begins pooling between my legs. God, even after last night I still want him. “I’m just afraid that if we are together that you’ll be the one to regret it.”

I am fully unprepared for this. Somehow, this simple confession from Peeta hurts me more than if he didn’t want to be with me. He thinks I would regret being with him. That I’ll regret loving him. A guilty twist runs through my body as I realize I’m not always the nicest person. It comes naturally to Peeta, to be loving. I have to put in an effort. I’m protective, but I’m not as affectionate as he is. Somehow he doesn’t know how deeply I’ve come to care for him. I thought after the games and the war he may have had an inkling of an idea of how deep my feelings run. It’s no longer for the show. Who’s watching us here? I let him kiss me and take care of me and sleep in my bed. But somehow I think he still believes he’s just a place holder for somebody else. But there is no one else, and there hasn’t been for a long time.

I shift so that I’m facing him. He’s still propped up on his arm, cradling his head in his large hand. I look into those blue eyes. The same ones I saw in the cave, on the beach, and in the bunker. The man those eyes belong to has changed, but they themselves have not. They’re just as blue and as beautiful as the day he threw me the burnt bread.

I breathe his name. Our lips are almost touching.

“You’re all I have left,” I whisper back to him. “I could never regret being with you.”

I don’t have to say anything else. This time he lets me straddle him, undo my braid, and take my shirt off. I guide his hands over my bare breasts. It’s a good feeling, to have these painter’s hands on me. He’s gentle and warm. The calluses that have formed on his fingertips from holding brushes and metal cookie cutters glide over me and make me shiver with pleasure. He lifts himself up so I’m sitting in his lap and begins taking his own shirt off. He lets me help and I run my fingers down his solid chest. Our lips meet as he whispers my name. I truly am the girl on fire when Peeta’s inside of me. I feel his hardness between my legs and know that maybe this was always meant to be.

He lays me down and brings his body on top of mine. His lips burn trails along my skin and I feel like I’m evaporating under his touch.

We’re slick with sweat and both breathing heavy when he finishes onto my stomach. I guide one of his warm hands down between my legs and help him rub tight circles into me until I too tense and gasp. It feels like I’ve reached the ocean in Peeta’s painting. It’s waves lap over me again and again and again until I’m exhausted and gasping for air.

When it’s over we hold each other and try to match our breathing. We’re both burning like furnaces and I’m reminded of kissing his hot lips when he was sick with fever. I’m afraid to let him go. The night air outside of the circle of his arms is cold and I want to stay in this moment a little longer.

Suddenly he’s laughing in my ear. It’s one of those clear childlike laughs that I haven’t heard come from him in a long time.

“What?” I lift my head from under his chin to look him in the eyes. I see small tears running down his face. “Was it that good?” I tease.

“I just...I never really thought…” he’s crying more than he’s laughing now. Almost hysterically. I hold him tighter, expecting him to sink into a flashback and start tensing up.

Instead, he asks: “You love me. Real or not real?”

I say: “Real.” And after all this time, I mean it.

#everlark #katniss #peeta #the hunger games #fanfiction #haymitch abernathy #peeta mellark #katniss everdeen #real or not real #smut #everlark smut #everlark fluff

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vagrantblvrd · 5 years ago

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Young criminal Rimy Tim who's only distunguishing feature is his hair hat he dyes a new color when he does crimes. The news calls him Rainbow Hood and the Fakes send Vagabond to look into this new criminal. jermwood?

Oh my God, I’m just. I’m picturing Jeremy who gets caught up with the wrong crowd or something? Has this One Friend who gets into the Crimes back in Boston and gets in over their head, goes to Jeremy for help when they realize they’re fucked and Jeremy tries to help but it escalates out of control and Jeremy’s friend bails.

Jeremy’s friend is a real asshole and tries to pin it all on Jeremy who is legit a Good Kid and is like fuck because there are people trying to kill him and the worst he’s done is get into a (tiny!) bar fight that one time his freshman year i college. He’s a Junior now, not that it matters because he has to fucking get the hell out of the city if he doesn’t want to die - circumstances where he doesn’t want to get his family and friends dragged into things because it would just get them killed, so he runs, right?

Runs and runs and runs, and ends up in Los Santos where he finally has time to think and realizes he’s kind of an idiot? But yeah. No going back now and he tries to get legit jobs, but it’s real hard because he doesn’t have an actual address and so on, and he makes friends with this guy staying in the room next to his at this shady motel.

Guy who points him in the direction of a a guy who knows a guy who an get him work? Under the table kind of stuff, wink wink.

Jeremy’s almost out of money and doesn’t have a lot of options, and maybe thinks it’s just. He doesn’t know, is busy trying to lie to himself about it all and sucks up his pride and all and goes to see this guy.

Starts him out small, just deliveries and the whatnot at first. Stuff Jeremy doesn’t feel too guilty about. (Ignorance is bliss and all.)

After a while he gets more important stuff to do, things he can’t ignore and wriggles out of working for the guy because he doesn’t like where it’s leading? (Others like him who got disappeared for fucking up/asking too many questions and Jeremy knows he’ll be one of them becaue he’s an idiot with a big mouth.)

Finally gets a quasi-legal job washing dishes at some corner diner kind of deal.

Pays not great, but there’s an almost-attic - storage space - above the diner where the owner lets Jeremy stay as long as he keeps his trap shut about it all, you know?

It’s super tiny, maybe four feet at the highest point but enough room for the shitty sleeping bag Jeremy picks up at a surplus store somewhere and the essentials. Jeremy works out a deal with the gym down the street where he teaches neighborhood kids how to box/defend themselves in exhange for a place to shower and all that?

The diner’s owner lets Jeremy have the botched orders - and don’t think Jeremy knows she and the line cook and everyone else fucks a few up on purpose to make sure he eats, but no one says anything about it so he doesn’t either. (They all know life’s hard, no need to make it worse than it needs to be, right? Besides he’s a good kid, would be a crime not to help him out if they can.)

Jeremy doesn’t plan to do more crimes, right? But some developers start looking at the neighborhood, pressure the business there - including the diner and gym - to sell or they’ll be sorry, and after all they’ve done for him and people like him he can’t not do something about it.

The kids or successors of the ladnwowners who lease it out to the business owners. And due to previous contracts can’t just boot them, so they raise the lease and whatnot. Try to drive them out of business so they can sell to someone offering a lot of money for the area for whatever reasons.

Jeremy can’t sit by and do nothing after everything these people have done for him and people like him so he does crimes to get them the money they need?

Anonymous gifts, but everyone knows it’s Jeremy, right?

This Rimmy Tim asshole is short as hell and the cheap dye Jeremy uses never washes out clean and anyway, he’s kind fo shit at lying about it, right?

They don’t say a damn thing because they look out for theirs and this idiot kid is definitely one of theirs.

But the assholes raise the lease higher, and the bruisers start hurting people and while Jeremy’s game to keep on stealin from the rich to give to the poor (the whole Rainbow Hood thing you mentioned?) he can’t beat up all the bruisers on his own. (Forever, anyway?)

He does a good job when it’s one or two on one, but they fight dirty and he gets hurt and it’s just. The business owners beg him to stop for his own good - they can always start up somewhere else, maybe, but he’s gonna get himself killed.

Somewhere in there Jeremy meets this scrawny asshole who likes teh pie at the diner. Claims to be good at computers and kind of “eh”, about things. ~Charms him into getting info on these developers/landowners he can use against them, but!

They’ve heard about this asshole with the revovlving hair color choices and goody-two shoes act and go after him.

Somewhere else in there the Fakes have heard about this Rimmy Tim character who may or may not have robbed one of their allies homes. (Hullum or Burnie with them as mayor and LSDP commisioner respectiely or something along those lines?)

And get curious because there was a lot of damaging information he must have seen/heard but didn’t do anything with? (The Fakes aren’t so much crimes for funsies as crimes for Good Reasons, which is why the mayor and police commisioner is willing to ~consort with them.)

SO.

They send Ryan to look into things while they takcle some other problem - not realizing both are connected.

Ryan decides to check things out as a civvie at first, goes to the diner because pie and sees Jeremy there. Happened to get there on a day the bruisers drop by and gets to see Jeremy toeing the line between smarting off to them/knuckling under so no one gets hurt? (Other customers and so on.)

Comes back later that night as the Vagabond and gets there just as Jeremy’s getting in from Doing Crimes and gets to see JEremy’s reaction at thinking someone sent Ryan to kill him.

The whole oh, shit and what kind of chance do I have against this guy? and finally well at least no one else is here to get pulled into this shitshow as Jeremy realizes he’s fucked.

Watches Jeremy get ready to throw down - resigned to losing but not going quietly and all that, but then!

Ryan’s just like, “You’re not quite what expected,” because the crew thought he was some punk looking for an angle, but no.

Just an idiot like him and Ryan’s kind of impressed with him. Not a polished criminal or anything, but he’s got potential and obvious morals and ethics and so on.

So he offers to help Jeremy, tells a little white lie about being on a murder break so he’s out of crew shenanigans for the time being, and he’s always liked the pie here. (He does, but it’s been forever since he’s been around thanks to crew shenanigans.)

Jeremy’s dubious about the whole thing, but only an idiot would tell the Vagabond no, right?

The two of them working together to take down the asshole landowners/dvelopers which includes shenanigans of their own.

Stupid jokes and the whatnot, Jeremy realizing Ryan’s a major dork and kind of a disater and Ryan realizing Jeremy’s good for someone who never planned on Doing Crimes for a living?

Sharing meals - and pie - and just being around one another and bonding via montage scene stuff? Ryan being invited to watch Jeremy with his students at the gym - can’t shirk his duties there because it keeps the kids from getting in trouble/helps teach them how to protect themselves and so on? And is charmed at how good he is with the kids, how much they clearly adore Jeremy.

Gets roped into helping out, which means Jeremy flips him over his shoulder and pins him to the mat, face flushed and wide grin and all up in Ryan’s space and the oh no, he’s super hot on both their parts. :O

Eventually they get in over their head and while Jeremy is lowkey panicking about it - how fucked not only they but the business owners are - Ryan admits he kind of sort of lied and calls in the crew.

Everyone comparing notes and realizing their problems are really just One Big Problem so why not pool their efforts together?

They need another hacker to help Gav and whoever else out, so they call up this Myatt guy. And of course, of course Myatt is Matt, that scrawny asshole who’s got a hell of a sweet tooth on him Jeremy befriended.

And then shenanigans as they utterly destroy the asshole landowners/developers, teach them a lesson they won’t forget and make a tidy profit along the way.

Jeremy uses his cut to set the business owners up for life - has Matt help him with that - and is trying to decide what to do with his life now when Ryan shows up in civvie clothes, bashful smile and all.

Just all, hey. So I know I kind fo lied to you a bit? But I like you almost as much as I llike pie, and maybe we could do the dating thing? (It may or may not go almost exactly like that because human disaster, right?)

Meanwhile Jeremy’s staring at this asshole like oh my God, realizing he’s the goddamned Vagabond even though Ryan did nothing to disguise his voice/ridiculousness this whole time. (In fact Ryan thought Jeremy figured it out way before now, but whatever.)

Ryan gets all nervous because Jeremy’s just staring, processing the Ryan is the Vagabond business in his head?

Ryan’s about to laugh it off since Jeremy clearly isn’t interested but Jeremy snaps out of obliviousness and is just YES. Yes he would like to do the Dating Thing? VERY MUCH SO.

They’re totally being watched by the diner’s patrons and owners and fucking Matt who’s just enjoying his pie and totes not laughing at these idiots.

And then, like. Shenanigans. (Also, also, the press being Confused at the disappearance of Rainbow Hood and the sudden appearence of Rimmy Tim with the Fakes after Jeremy starts shaving his head/gets Rimmy Tim outfit together to fuck with the others.)

#jeremwood #ragehappy #replies #technically not a fic #vagrant fic #i love the way your brain works anon #<3!#anon #Anonymous

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