#if this gets more people to play outer wilds it will have been worth it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gamequoteshowdown · 1 year ago

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Thank you everyone for making this happen! Now, without further ado, the match-ups for Round 1!!!

Round 1

"I've been waiting for this!" - Akihiko Sanada, Persona 3 / "You're just a corpse who doesn't know he's dead" - Valter, Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones

"Are you going to be our goddess of victory… or our angel of death? Doesn't sound too bad to bet my life on that." - Keiji Shinogi, Your Turn To Die: Death Game by Majority / "Don't fuck with a witch!" - Bayonetta, Bayonetta

"Teammates!? Friends!? To hell with that! Why am I inferior to you!? I was extremely particular about my life, my grades, my public image! So someone would want me around! I am an ace detective! A celebrity! But you… You're just some criminal trash living in an attic!? So how!? How does someone like you have things I don't!? How can such a worthless piece of trash be more special than me!?" - Goro Akechi, Persona 5 / "I was just gunna ask you to sell a gun to this child." - Starlo, Undertale Yellow

"I want you to live." - Charlotte Wiltshire, Hello Charlotte Series / "Your hair… sunset colored. I like it." - Queequeg, Limbus Company

"The hope to end pointless conflict… The hope to tell your daughter how much you care… It is our mission as apothecaries to ensure that everyone lives long enough for their hopes to become reality. Even if it costs us our own lives." - Castti Florenz, Octopath Traveler II / "Game is clear when 2 zombies hold hands!!" - "How to Play" Narrator, Loving Deads: The House of the Dead EX

"Thanks to you, I am saddled with unnecessary… feelings" - Miles Edgeworth, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / "I am so fucking normal right now" - Harry du Bois, Disco Elysium

“SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN” - Harry du Bois (in the form as a potential mural painting), Disco Elysium / "You pull out your cellphone and access your old Tumblr. You have ten, but you specifically access the Garfield one." - Narrator, Monster Prom

"… Nice meeting you again, you FUCKING WHALE!" - Ishmael, Limbus Company / "My guess is no one's ever loved you before" - Woody, Kingdom Hearts 3

"Take care, [player]. I was lucky to have known you. Though the parting hurts... the rest is in your hands!" - Grovyle, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky / "Far out, man." - Netzach, Limbus Company

"I'll be back once I eliminate that devil called poverty from the world!" - Partitio Yellowil, Octopath Traveler II / "Elder gods from the whole cosmos have awoken to taste your cookies." - Narrator, Cookie Clicker

"Hello! This is the part where I kill you!" - Wheatley, Portal 2 / "Now we come to the question : Do I kill you? Do I tear you apart to my heart's delight? The choices of the beautiful are unbearable. How's a girl to choose?" - Alice Angel, Bendy and the Ink Machine

"I am Ferdinand von Aegir" - Ferdinand von Aegir, Fire Emblem: Three Houses / "Her metabolic processes are of interest only to historians." - Miles Edgeworth, Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations

"It ain't a matter of guys or chicks... I'm just scared shitless of being rejected" - Kanji Tatsumi, Persona 4 / "...also Stanley is addicted to drugs and hookers" - Narrator, The Stanley Parable

“You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?” - Happy Mask Salesman, Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask / "I have no idea what to do with my life, but that's okay! Because I'm still working hard! Even if it's on nothing at all!" - Papyrus, Undertale

"Despite everything, its still you." - Narrator/Chara/Frisk???, Undertale / "In this world, it's kill or be killed." - Flowey, Undertale

“Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves. Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves…” - Voices of the Paranoid, Slay the Princess / "In the quiet glade, across old bark. In the ancient glade, it's always dark." - Gabbro, Outer Wilds

"You take away all their sins, and people aren't people anymore!" - Rokurou Rangetsu, Tales of Berseria / "Do you even get how it feels to have nightmares about doing tango with raw chickens? Eh?" - Heathcliff, Limbus Company

"Life is worth living, even if it hurts you, even if you hurt in it." - Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid / "I often think about the god who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle... and wonder if we'll ever get the chance to kill him." - 2B, Nier: Automata

“Oh? Is that how it is? Yeah, okay, I like you too. Neat! Still going to kill you, but now we can both enjoy a mutual romantic subtext to the murder.” - The Razor, Slay the Princess / "Now it’s Reyn Time!" - Reyn, Xenoblade Chronicles

"You lost the coin toss. We both did." - Catherine Chun, SOMA / "I like to drink blood. . . and smoke the weed!" - Dracula, Space Funeral

"Pick a god and pray!" - Frederick, Fire Emblem: Awakening / "Can you believe it? Dragons! In your own homeland! What are you going to do?" - Florentia Candidius, Elder Scrolls Online

""Did you get the Broom Closet Ending?! The Broom Closet Ending was my favourite!" ...I hope your friends find this concerning." - Narrator, The Stanley Parable / "It’s dangerous to go alone, take this!" - Old Man, Legend of Zelda

“Close your eyes for a sec, will you Chigasaki?” “You mean physically? Or to the criminal acts I’m pretty sure you’re about to commit?” “Both.” - Chikage Utsuki & Itaru Chigasaki, A3! Act! Addict! Actors! / "You are all about to perish, do as you please. I'm sorry." - Meta Knight, Kirby Super Star

"Boy" - Kratos, God of War / "Take care of yourself, kid, cause someone really cares about you." - Sans, Undertale

"Almost Christmas means it wasn't Christmas!" - Phoenix Wright, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / "Dios mío!” (Draw a cross.) “A LIBERAL!" - Harry du Bois, Disco Elysium

"That's it. I'm not paying one cent of my taxes!" - Ema Skye, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / ""Trust your partner"... And I do. I can't forgive you, but I trust you." - Neku Sakuraba, The World Ends With You/Subarashiki Kono Sekai

"Hey, you. You’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there." - Ralof, Skyrim / *clap ... clap ... clap ... * "Oh good, my slow clap processor made it into this thing, so at least we have that" - GLaDOS, Portal 2

"hallOO. chikkEN. OKs?" - BOb, Slime Rancher / "Pretty good plan. You could say it was the greatest—" - Charles Calvin, The Henry Stickmin Collection

"Blood comes in four types: A, B, O, and AB. However! No blood test can determine whether a murder was committed… in cold blood!" - Phoenix Wright, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / "You ain't my partner anymore, man. You're my friend! So trus' that, yo!" - Beat (Daisukenojo "Beat" Bito), The World Ends With You/Subarashiki Kono Sekai

"I always come back." - William Afton, FNaF Pizzeria Simulator / "So -- as you can see, I'm a *pretty okay* detective -- and an absolutely GIANT COMMUNIST." - Harry du Bois, Disco Elysium

"Ears have a nice mouth feel, very chewy!" - Briar, League of Legends / "This is like taking candy from a baby, which is fine by me." - Shadow the Hedgehog, Shadow the Hedgehog (2005)

"It's a beautiful day outside. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming... On days like this, kids like you... Should be burning in hell." - Sans, Undertale / "In the dark times, should the stars also go out?" - Steban, the Student Communist, Disco Elysium

“We are a path in the woods. We have no beginning, and we have no end, but something cold and unnatural sits watching us from just beyond our edge.” - The Wild, Slay the Princess / "Strong Pokémon. Weak Pokémon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled Trainers should try to win with the Pokémon they love best." - Karen (Elite Four), Pokemon HeartGold / SoulSilver

#not polls #round 1 #tumblr tournament

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holliday-is-holligay · 1 month ago

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Games media covering Starfield vs Avowed:

"Bethesda just announced their new open world has eightenfucktillion planets in it? Well, time to forget about their consistent downward spiral of quality, unacceptably bad releases, poor writing, and hype up how this game is going to give me a literal blowjob."

"What? Obsidian's new game doesn't have state of the art graphics? Is Avowed doomed? I dunno, I guess I'll give it a chance. Hmmm? I know I gave their last game a 10/10 but I dunno... This MIGHT be fine. I GUESS they're a studio which consistently pushes their own boundaries as far as they can, releasing several of the most critically acclaimed games of all time and the writing, characters, and worldbuilding are the focus... but I dunno that animation looks janky, I think Avowed might be doomed."

OKAY REAL TALK

This isn't even me talking that much shit at Bethesda, even if I'm not a fan of them, and I'm obviously a big shill for Obsidian's games (And yeag, The Outer Worlds proved they can't ALWAYS hit pure gold), but Obsidian's history as a studio has me incredibly excited for this game and whilst Microsoft's marketing is doing them no favours I really cannot get over how the games media have developed amnesia regarding Obsidian's strengths.

And yes, it DOES bug me that I watched this play out in reverse after we saw the gameplay of Starfield, and after every new announcement or reveal of a system -- as games media went wild, all I could think of was "With everything I know about how Bethesda's games play, and their design ethos... this game is going to be bad. Why is everyone so excited?" And then it came out, and it was bad. And I was not shocked, and I was surprised when some people were.

So don't be surprised when Avowed comes out and we get three reactions:

"I'm disappointed because it doesn't feel like Skyrim." I feel bad for both the developers and the players on this one. Cause the developers have said, repeatedly, that they're going for more of an Outer Worlds vibe and not Elder Scrolls. BUT Microsoft has been doing such a shit job of marketing this game that the message isn't really getting out. I hope these players eventually come around to the game and play it on its own terms in a few months.

"WOKE TRASH OMFG" Obviously we're going to get this as a response from every loser with a microphone who monetizes the culture war grift. Not worth listening to, I'm only listing them to be a completionist.

"Oh shit, hey everyone? Avowed is actually good!" The sudden realisation from people that yeah, the elements Obsidian typically isn't good at probably won't be as great (Although I have heard exploration is pretty good!) but that it's worth it for a unique world, a strong narrative, gripping characters, and exploring actual themes... y'know the thing RPG writing should be doing.

Of course there's the extra, fourth group, of people who don't like it. AND THAT'S OKAY! It might not suit their tastes, or they might genuinely think it's bad or mid, but I'm not really counting them amongst the overall group because I genuinely, truly, don't think it's going to be a large enough number of people to be considered a full group of reactions. But I also do wanna acknowledge that no game resonates with all people and it's okay if we don't like the same game!

Thanks for reading this rant!

I wanna be clear that this wasn't made out of a dislike of Bethesda, but out of an intense frustration with the difference in how these games have been covered.

#obsidian #avowed #pillars of eternity

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crystalclear97 · 1 month ago

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now I'VE FINISHED outer wilds 🙏

I've loved it. I really like exploring games but I get lost a lot and spend too many time at one place etc so I found outer wilds perfect for me in this aspect, because I can explore and discover interesting things while having some limits and being very well guided. The way the info I discover is presented to me at the ship makes everything reasonably easy to process and understand. Many people I know struggled with controls (specially at zero gravity) but I got it quickly so perfect... no problem at all.

The DLC though, despite being perfectly fit at the game itself, felt like playing a different game tbh It's a lot harder (to play and to understand / know what to do) and the vibe is very different, but I liked it a lot too. But it was very challenging...

From now on there will be SPOILERS!! ⚠️

The story is very cool, I enjoyed every detail, everything is a big puzzle that fits perfectly. I fell in love with every creature there, really, everybody is so cute (except the strangers... holy shit they are so scary... at least the prisioner was nice) 🥺 So for me the end felt pretty sad. I've talked to some friends about it, and I understand that it's not exactly sad. It's a bit hard to process but life ends so it can start again and everybody accepts it and it's for the best etccc so it should feel even happy, and I get it, but aaaah for me personally was hard. Just seeing all the nomai skeletons after reading so many things about them was very sad during the game. I feel so bad for them because after everything they've done... they all die 😭 they never get to know the truth they were chasing so hard 🥺 same for the hearthians but I kinda feel worse about the nomai xD Anyway I'm beating around the bush xD TO SUM UP: I understand the good things this game wants to tell but my depressed ass just feels sad and empty because it's very hard for me to have hope and see the value of small things and the worth of life ahh but despite making me sad I still love the game!!!!

my bf has been a huge outer wilds fan for a long time and we knew that I was gonna like the game so I played with him watching (but silent...) and he could re-live the experience through mine, that made me more happy! so that's it, I just wanted to talk a bit about the game, just my personal opinion and experience!

So I've finished Outer Wilds. That means that I'm going back to do other stuff at my free time, including spending more time here. I'd like to work a bit more at my music so maybe I'll be still not very much around but who knows... :)

#outer wilds #personal #gaming

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gaast · 1 year ago

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Since October 2022, I've been playing only one game at a time. That might not sound like much but for something that struggles to keep its number of concurrent games even at two, it's a pretty big deal. I did it because I wanted to commit to games, and to commit to finishing them. And for the most part, I've been successful.

As part of this, I've been tracking the games I've played and want to play, and I've been marking down the days I started something (usually) and the days I've finished them.

Now that this much time has passed, I've got a year's worth of games down, and I wanna do little write-ups for everything I played in 2023.

That means that anything I played in late 2022 (Silent Hill 2, Xenosaga Episode 1, Observation, and Red Dead Redemption, among others) can only get mentioned honorably here. But I'm gonna go through everything I started in 2023, beginning with:

Outer Wilds, January 1-January 7

What a way to start the year. Outer Wilds is unique and charming. It's really fun to fly through space in the awfulest space ship ever with the worst autopilot (have fun in the sun!) and check destroyed, abandoned planets, read ancient peoples' logs of their attempts to save the universe, and to be there at the end of everything.

Unfortunately: the fucking angler fish. I hate those fucks so bad that I actually didn't finish the game. I never brought X to Y (no spoilers) because I hate dealing with those guys. So I can't class this a perfect game. Those dudes need some changes.

Still, highly recommended.

The Sims 4, January 6-the ride never ends

I'm not gonna lie. This is just a sex thing for me.

Even still, I don't quite get why people hate it so much. I played the third game, too. This one's fine. This franchise isn't amazing. It's weird and held together by Scotch tape. I like that about it.

What a weird world.

Anyway, this must be around the time my ISP sent me emails telling me to stop pirating shit or they'd kick me off their plan, which would be bad because that ISP is the only one we can get in our building! Imagine being unable to work because you wanted TS4 DLC.

Bioshock, January 14-January 28, canceled

I couldn't do it.

This was my second attempt at getting through this game and I had to just admit that it's not for me. I didn't enjoy it. It was a chore. I decided to just set it aside.

Wish I hadn't paid for a PS4 copy when I already had a Steam copy. Ah well.

The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince, January 31-February 2

A very aesthetically-pleasing puzzleish platformer with a cute story and good music. I enjoyed my time with this simple little game.

Half-Life, February 3-February 5

You starting to see a pattern where I only manage to finish games, like, late at night, so I can't start a new one until later? Anyway.

This was my second attempt to get through this game. I did it this time, and I regret it. I didn't have fun.

I don't really know why I didn't have fun, I just didn't. Maybe the combat was too tedious. Maybe the jumping was too iffy. Maybe it just went on for too long. Maybe it's a case of "Seinfeld Is Unfunny." I don't know. I just know I don't like Half-Life.

So maybe I don't like the game, but I love the Headcrab Fucker 9000.

Poison Control, February 8-February 11

Sometimes you just wanna play a mid game.

Look, I like poison. I love pink. I love androgynous characters in suits. I like NIS. This game had it all. And it was perfectly. It made me want to stop playing a little while before it was over. It had a really good OST. I got the platinum trophy and I didn't feel satisfied.

I liked it. And sometimes that's enough.

This is the first on a small series of mid NIS-related games. I'll have more to say when I hit the other.

Grasping, February 15

Obviously I couldn't play this as intended, but it's not hard to imagine having shoved your hand into an awful box.

Anyway, this was good, I think. I don't really remember it.

The House in the Woods, February 15

Another horror game I absolutely do not recall playing.

Apocryphauna, February 15

I remember this one! It's good! I liked it! I wish there were more to it--like, a lot more. A lot lot more.

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, February 25-March 21

I held off on playing this for a long time because I had always heard it was "made by the B team" and "not as good as the other games." But I decided to play it. It was the gaping hole in my From résumé.

It's not as good. It has a ton of bosses and none of them are memorable except for a select few DLC bosses (Fume Knight, Sir Alonne, Sinh). It makes a lot of weird gameplay choices. It takes way too long for Estus sippies to heal you--like, in terms of the health bar going up. The Iron Keep is infuriating. So many of the runups are abominable. It runs with the clunkiness of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls despite having the svelte ambitions of Bloodborne and Dark Souls III. It has way too many sections where it just says, "okay, deal with a ton of enemies now."

And I loved it.

Honestly, this is probably my favorite of the three Dark Souls games. I think it is by far the most aesthetically complete game of the trilogy. It fulfills its own promise, you know? And I disagree with the people who call it bleak. I think it's the only game of the trilogy that actually offers hope. A real hope, too. One that says that, just because our struggle may not take us anywhere, at least our struggle itself is beautiful.

In a strange way, I think that Dark Souls II is the only Souls game that actually understands the Souls series.

"A lie will remain a lie."

Pokémon Violet, March 21-March 25

I didn't want to play this game. I didn't want to like it. I just wanted to play it. I love Pokémon. Sure, this wasn't a Pokémon game (according to me), but I wanted to play it anyway. The morning I finally decided to go for it, I had read that the professors were antagonists all along. How stupid!

And the reaction. Oh boy. All the glitches. All the performance issues. All the memes. What trash, right? Right?

I fell in love. I didn't think anything could unseat Gen 7 in terms of my love for a Pokémon generation, but honestly, this game might do it.

Did it need more time to cook? Absolutely. I'm not gonna sit here and say it should have been released as it was. No; it is in many ways a disaster, and it is certainly unacceptable.

But every inch of it oozes with love.

This game wasn't just shit out to make a buck. It feels that way at first, but no, everyone who had a hand in making the Gen 9 games absolutely loved what they were doing. You can feel it--from the sound design to the music to the character design to, fuck, everything. They did the best they could with what they had and they made one of the most charming, wonderful games I've had the pleasure of playing in far too long.

There is so much heart here. It convinced me that the future of Pokémon is still bright. Very much so.

Just... let's take a couple extra years to make the next one, all right?

Heroine Conquest, sometime in April

Look. It's actually pretty good.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, March 31-April 18

I'll get this out of the way: I didn't really have fun.

The game has aged surprisingly well. Or Skyrim is just a truly unmotivated sequel. Either way, it holds up.

The problem is that I just don't think that TES games are for me. They're just so fucking boring. And I never end up liking literally any character in them.

I have fun actually playing for a while, but the general guideline with Oblivion is "don't level up." Fun! Either way, it's just rote after a while. Nothing really feels satisfying, and you're always worried something is going to break.

Frankly, the main story quest isn't compelling, either. With hindsight, knowing it'll lead to the rise of the Dominion again, it's like, well, shit.

Anyway, I played it. And it's certainly a game that you can play. If you wanna.

FEWAR-DVD, April 23

I called it "an arcade game" in my notes and that's basically what it is. Doesn't mean it isn't fun.

(Have you noticed I'm not reviewing games yet? It's write-ups; I'm giving my thoughts and impressions. Also, it's been a while, so I don't super remember a bunch of these. Oh well!)

Bleak Sword DX (Demo), April 23

I think I liked this? Apparently it's out. I should review it and see if I wanna get it at some point.

It looks pretty cool.

The Signal State (Demo), April 23

I liked this a lot because it's so unique and it taps into a specific type of autistic urge for me but god is its price tag just too high for what I suspect that it is.

Deltarune (Chapters 1 and 2), April 22-April 23

This was a replay of Chapter 1 and a first play of Chapter 2.

I think when I first played Chapter 1 I felt... you know, I didn't want Undertale, or a sequel to Undertale, but a secret third thing. And when I first played it in... late 2019? It wasn't whatever that secret third thing was. I liked it, don't get me wrong. But I think I didn't... get it?

Not to say I wasn't excited for me. It just took me a while to convince myself to finally get to Chapter 2 and to meet the funny spambot man.

Anyway, I won't bother spending too much time on Deltarune. I'll just say that in this play, I realized that Deltarune is that secret third thing, and that I think it's better than Undertale.

I'm scared.

Pizza Tower, April 14-April 23

I think I'm guilty of wanting this game to be something it isn't.

I wanted WarioLand, and it's like that, but it isn't precisely that. It isn't trying to be precisely that. It's trying to be Pizza Tower.

I like the game, but not as much as I thought I would. Not as much as I think I should.

I'll probably reply this game in a year or two and it'll click and I'll love it the way I was always meant to love it. But for now, I'll just let the "Tombstone Arizona" guitar impregnate me.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, April 19-May 27

...It took me that long? Really? Huh.

Anyway, I love this game. I love love love it. I love the characters and the art style and the way they tell the story and the story itself and the gameplay (holy shit the gameplay!) and just. Man. I wish more games were just like this. Weird, experimental, talky, confident, cool, and unique.

This is the type of game that inspires you to write your own sci-fi. Or to write about its world. To think and to imagine.

And that's the best type of game.

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, May 28-June 6

Come to think of it, how can a sky be unknown. There's just the one.

As mentioned above, I played this after Ace Combat 2. With both of those under my belt, I now know: the way I want to play these games is not the way I'm supposed to play these games.

And that's fine. I feel like "gamers" nowadays are so fixated on the idea that games should let you play them however you wanna play them, and that if they can't accommodate that then they're somehow inherently flawed. It's like everything needs the mutability of Minecraft, the problem-solving freedom of Scribblenauts, and the role-playing depth of Dungeons & Dragons. If it doesn't score highly on all those axes, it's got problems.

Obviously, I disagree. Games can and should have "supposed tos." You should be expected to play a specific diegetic role. You should be limited (and by the way, you're always limited, so don't act like you aren't).

If I ever play another Ace Combat game (and I wanna play Electrosphere), I might do it on easy. I like these games but man do I not know how they want me to engage with them.

no-one has to die, June 4

I had to replay this Flash game that I had originally played once when I was probably 14.

I'm glad I did.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, sometime in 2022-sometime in mid-2023

The strange thing about the Danganronpa games is that they're actually really good.

They shouldn't be. They shouldn't work. But they do.

This was kind of a replay. I had read most of the original orenronen LP back in... 2012, 2013? I only now have actually played it. And it's good. It's really good. I'm glad I went through it, and I'm glad I went through it with my fiancé, and I'm glad he knew nothing of any of the twists, and I'm glad I got to experience someone experiencing those twists for the first time.

SCARLET NEXUS, June 4-June 6, canceled

This was a second attempt after a first attempt in 2022 got deep into Yuito's story before I aborted it.

It's not for me. Not to say I don't like it--I do. A lot. I wish I could play this game. But I demand such fucking perfection from myself when playing it that I get too caught up by how poorly I'm playing to enjoy myself and actually let myself proceed.

I had to stop because I just wasn't having fun. I'm sad about it.

Risky Sanctuary, June 10

This is one of those games that I hope the developer comes back to, not to spruce up but to make anew. Because it's a really fun concept that basically got held back by being made in a month for a jam.

It really shouldn't take that long to clean come off of a wall.

HYPNOSCREEN, June 10

I keep forgetting I gotta play this more.

Parasite Eve, June 9-June 15

I'm still not super sure how I feel about this one.

The plot is fun but it never becomes compelling. There's an obviously evil scientist and he does obviously evil things. Never a good sign.

The gameplay is fun but it never hits nearly the level of intricacy and care that a close relative, Vagrant Story, does.

The dungeons are well-designed, though, and even if the setting is New York, it feels... fresh? It feels like NYC is always a backdrop in games and its specifics aren't important to it (see: Prototype). Parasite Eve actually cares that it's in NYC and it goes to locations there. The game feels like the developers enjoyed making it.

Also the OST is awesome. And Daniel fucking jumping out of the helicopter, getting lit on fire, throwing the bullets to Aya, landing in the water, and surviving is by far the coolest shit I've ever seen in anything ever.

This feels like a game you have to play at least once. I don't know why it feels that way; it just does.

WASTE EATER, June 17

It asks for like 20 minutes of your time and makes you cry. It's awesome.

EXPERIMENT: GROCERIES, June 17

I was more bored than spooked. It was a good try and maybe someone else will find it more fun than I did.

I'm sure if I replayed it and turned a critical eye to it I could talk at length about it. But I just don't want to.

I feel like if you're going to make uncanny the grocery store, there's other ways to do it.

Final Fantasy X: HD, sometime in 2023-sometime in 2023

We're about to see schedule issues. You'll find out why later.

This was, obviously, a replay.

I swear, this game gets better every single time I play it. I don't know what it is. It's such a smart, insightful game, with lovingly crafted characters. I love the inexorable northward journey, the feeling like you're constantly outrunning something even if you know you're running straight into the very thing you're outrunning.

Maybe it's because once you're aware of the spiral, its pull becomes that much stronger. I swear, I cry more with each playthrough, maybe because it just becomes all the more apparent how hopeless the journey is, and how much strength it takes to hope regardless. Yuna and Tidus are fantastic.

The gameplay ages like a fine wine, too. I know, it's turn-based, so it's hard to get clunky, but the game knows how it's being lenient to you and it knows just how to turn it against you. It's a system you can get better at. It's a game that rewards you in proportion to the time you're willing to put into it.

I don't need to tell you that FFX is a masterpiece, I hope. But it's worth reminding ourselves that it is. Because I think it's willing to be vulnerable in a way that most games just aren't anymore. I think the only Final Fantasy game that I've played that is more vulnerable than X is XIII. I respect the hell out of that.

(Speaking of, another honorable mention from the end of 2022 is my replay of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy--and frankly, my love and appreciation for those games grew only deeper. They rule!)

You can talk about X forever. You can live in its world. It's fantastic, and it's always worth returning to.

Even if you have to make Yuna dance again, at least you know there'll be a time when she won't have to anymore.

Succubus Academia, September?-September 16

I tend to stay away from RPG Maker games, not for any valid reason but because creators, especially of eroge, tend not to really edit much. They end up looking fairly samey, with similar gameplay. Menus don't get edited, music is pretty bland, it's a fantasy setting... Exceptions exist, like Miwashiba's games ("that's a different engine!" yeah well they're still well-crafted despite being Made Like That) and, apparently Succubus Academia.

I won't tell you what tag I searched to find it on DLSite but anyway, I found it, I got it, I played it, and I loved it.

The map graphics are standard RPG Maker fare, sure, but the battles are totally custom and they're actually really fun. The music, though, the music fucking rules. I was there to bust a move, not bust a nut, I swear.

The concept is really fun too. "The only way to proceed is to literally get killed the right way. Sorry! But hey, at least you'll save the world. Snrk." Coupled with a battle system that actually has a really fun push-pull kind of resource management/health system, it just works. It helps that the battles all have Live 2D animation work going on, too.

Give this one a shot (no pun intended) if you like eroge. Seriously.

Dohna Dohna, sometime in September?-sometime in October

All right, look. It's not the best at anything. But it's pretty good at everything.

The character designs rule. The color palettes are awesome. The gameplay is fun. The OST is actually pretty outstanding. The combat is really fun. The mechanics are interesting. The writing has a lot of care put into it.

Alicesoft wanted to celebrate its anniversary and they were welcome to do it. I enjoyed celebrating with them.

Kirakira best girl. Even if Joker is truly best girl.

Baldur's Gate 3, sometime in October-November 14

One of the first sounds you hear in this game is a Wilhelm scream. This is a subtly masterful introduction to the game, as it signals to attentive players a lot about the artistic experience they're about to embark on: It will be more or less the same as everything else they've ever experienced, just remixed so it will hopefully be less noticeable.

And that's the thing. We've seen everything that BG3 does before, over and over, and we're so used to seeing all of these signs and tropes that it's actually become difficult to tell when they're being used poorly. BG3 throws so much of the same old shit at the wall and it can only stick because the shit that's there from last time still hasn't dried.

But here's the thing: I don't even know if any of its shit sticks. It's all so bad.

For instance, the party. Each individual party member is a collection of about 3 traits, plus their own unique brand of "horny for you." They're about as complex as late-stage Tales characters, but they have way less charm because they don't have anything like skits to round them out. In fact, because there's no guarantee that you'll have X or Y party member, or that they'll be present for conversation A, your party doesn't really have conversations together so much as they just talk through you like you're a telephone. You don't really have a party. You are a guy who has friends.

So you drag along this uninteresting, blandly-designed crew of the same fucking shit you've seen a billion times (literally one dude's whole thing is "I'm a vampire and I have vampire problems") who never really engage with each other (they'll maybe trade quips here and there, and they've got some dialogue they'll run through ambiently when specific ones are in the party together, but it's clear that This Does Not Matter) through a pretty standard fantasy world that by its own popularity offers little novelty. As you do so you meet asshole upon asshole who has a quick trait or two and says things in a European accent and maybe you'll get the scummiest Narrator I've ever heard say something smarmy based on a passive roll you'll probably fail mid-conversation. Go kill some shit and come back and maybe I'll try to help you not die. Idiot.

But you can't not die. You need to keep dying, and people need to keep failing to help you not die, or people need to keep trying to kill you because you're dying the wrong way for them, or else there'd be no reason to have the game. Honestly, if you lost the tadpoles before you killed the final boss, like, two party members would probably just outright try to kill each other, and everyone else would fuck off back to their shitty little lives, except for the ones who managed to escape their shitty little lives, in which case I guess the adventure continues! I don't feel like any of these people, with maybe three exceptions, would actually keep litigating the campaign if their lives weren't on the line.

But hey, even if almost every time someone speaks it's just to either whine about how hard they have it or to criticize you for a choice you made or to give you a quest because everything in Faerûn is your fucking problem, at least you get to have the gameplay! At least you get to slog through some of the most bullshit combat encounters they can throw at you with their barely-working mess of a battle system! With the most boring bosses imaginable save one! (Why is Gortash the only fun boss? Why does he get to have those explosives systems that aren't anywhere else?)

But oh, you get to make so many choices! You can be whoever you want, so long as they're someone who'll make any of these specific choices. Fuck off.

Meanwhile the music makes you want to fucking tear your hair out because I swear to god every single track uses the exact same leitmotif and it is so boring. Oh my god this game takes absolutely no fucking risks with anything. There's no fucking reason to play this thing. It's miserable. It's miserable, it'll make you save scum, its loading times (to load saves; loading areas is quick as can be!) are atrocious, and every time you have an option to pick something cool, you get fucking despised for it. You can become a fucking mind flayer and the game makes sure to tell you you're a complete fucking scumbag for doing it.

I hate this game. I hate it so fucking much. It is so bad and it has nothing redeemable in it and it has nothing noteworthy in it and worst of all it is just not at all fun. It's awful.

Game of the Year. Play it.

Monark, November 25-December 3

Time to fulfill the promise I made back with Poison Control.

This game is good. It's not great. Maybe it's pretty good. I liked it a lot. I enjoyed playing it.

Does it have problems? Sure. Could they be easily corrected? Yep. Does that hamper my perception of it? Of course.

As I said, sometimes you just wanna play a mid game.

After I finished Monark, I checked out its TV Tropes page, and I of course linked to "So Okay, It's Average." The Quotes page on that trope all seem to imply that just being all right is somehow worse than being bad.

I can't agree with that.

First of all, I think the binary of "good" and "bad" art is a false one. There's value in literally all art. There's something to mine, to find, to take home, to use, to learn--to whatever--in everything. Meaning and worth aren't exclusive to the good.

Maybe something isn't as good as it could be, but it's certainly what it is, and nothing else is as good at being it. Monark maybe isn't a great game but it's awesome at being Monark. I doubt any other game could compare.

So many articles from game writers and journalists lament the concept that "there's so many great games out there that it's just impossible to want to make time for anything that isn't great." That's... such a sad state, to me. Imagine playing a game only because it is considered "great." Imagine needing everything you play to have an award or a green Metacritic score just so you'll make time for it.

I don't think these writers mean to do this when they say it, but they're really benefiting a capitalist mindset. Companies have to do everything they can to get your attention. They have to make "great" games, or you won't play them. They need hype machines. They need stellar reviews. They need people talking. They need public reception to manufacture their game's own greatness, so that it will be great and then be played and then make money. If the incentive to get good reviews is to make money then the game is just a product and it wasn't made to be art.

I don't think people purposely set out to make shitty games or average games. I just think they set out to make the game they make, and the question is how well they achieve that goal. And that's entirely personal. It's something that only the creators can decide.

But in the end, some of the creators are producers and directors and executives at publishing companies who look at games in terms overhead, costs, projected income, earnings statements, financial reports.

But these are the people who make great games. Because they have to money to spend to make them great, the clout they need to keep exploiting their specific workers, and the agents necessary to make sure that reviewing publications will be predisposed to helping make their game great (you know, like what Nintendo relies on pretty much exclusively). The game doesn't have to be good. People just have to be told that it is, and then when enough people believe, they'll police the narrative so much that others will be scared to voice their opinion without getting a ton of clown emojis in their inboxes.

I'm not saying that's every "great" game. I'm willing to argue it's probably most Games of the Year as determined by Big Industry Figure Geoff Keighley, though (borne out for sure with 2022's winner; Elden Ring is so mediocre, dude).

Anyway, there's no need to play all the "great" games that are out. You know what you can play instead? The games you want to play.

You don't have to agree with me that sometimes you just wanna play a mid game. But you'll probably agree that sometimes you just wanna play a specific game. Good, bad, or mid, it's what you want to play because it, in some way, speaks to you.

That's all you need.

Mediterranea Inferno, December 4-December 6

Until now, I was cautious about pandemic stories.

The problem has always been that, sure, the lockdown happened for a year (in the US, at least), but it was only a year. It was major, to be sure, and I'm not downplaying that, but in the grand scheme of human history, it was a year. There's no guarantee (or even, necessarily, reason to believe) anything like it will happen again for a long time. So, I thought, how applicable could stories that come from it be to the future?

Don't get me wrong, I always recognized that in the lockdown was stories about isolation, grief, illness, fear, loss. But those are all distinctly human things we've been writing about since we could write. They weren't unique to the pandemic. Why use the very specific imagery of the lockdown to tell a story about those things when there's definitely more universal things to use?

I'm, as always, an idiot.

Beyond just the fact that it was an event and we'll never stop needing to take stock of it, to examine it, to see who we were and became through it, the pandemic was a world-ending phenomenon, a sea change, a new way of understanding ourselves, or misunderstanding ourselves, or misunderstanding others.

Mediterranea Inferno is about having lost yourself. The lockdowns made three young Italian men lose themselves, and when they came back together in 2022 they found that they had lost each other, too. It presents continuity with their histories: their self-destruction wasn't inevitable, but the pandemic forcing them to grapple with their places in life created living nightmares of isolation, grief, powerlessness, loss of identity, and loneliness.

When you start a new game, a card informs you that the creator made it "about his generation." He seems to think that we're lost, not in the way that the Lost Generation was, but in a different way. Whereas in the 1920s we lost faith in symbols, institutions, and humanity, in the 2020s we lost faith in ourselves and each other.

It's terrifying to admit that we can't do this alone, and that the crutches we always used to get through each day were other people. Claudio relied on his family name; it lost all meaning when his father blew his inherited fortune, revealing that there isn't necessarily a continuity between past success (Nino) and the present. Mida relied on the ways he could keep people at arm's length and when he couldn't get closer to the only person he wanted to grow closer to, he decided that others were there for him to take. And Andrea was never able to identify precisely what he needed from other people to keep him going, mistaking sex and skin-deep pleasure for the validation he so desperately craved.

Of course, if one of them gets accepted to Heaven during the Assumption, one of the others kills their friends and, in one case, accidentally himself. And if none of them make it--or if all of them do--they tell themselves that they're no longer friends. They walk away. They fall to the ground. They feel, sharply, the absence. They try to feel it in the crutches they replaced each other with (the past, the prestige, the plenty). But it isn't there.

Alternatively, if they suffer enough, they can give their spiritual guide through their pain an opportunity as well, and through him learn that they went through all of it to encourage them to revolt against their fathers, against the endless history that suffuses every rock in Italy. Paraphrasing: "There's never been an Italian Revolution. We've always been satisfied with what our fathers gave us, so long as we had permission to kill our brothers." He, like so many, wanted the pandemic to become a watershed moment, one that spurred on change, made the world a better place.

And the Sun Guys reject it. Their revolt is to refuse to be told what to do.

Just give them time to figure out what to do next.

I don't think you can tell this story without the pandemic.

This game is bleak. It's harsh. The style is immaculate. The soundtrack rules. Play it.

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, June 16-ongoing

Here is why the schedule slipped.

I like this game a lot. I burned myself out on it. Over the course of months.

I'm still not done. I'm not letting myself uninstall it until I'm done.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Pokémon Fool's Gold, unknown

The new music was great and the sprites were awesome and I love Eris. But to me this was mostly a fun new way to experience Gen 2. That's not a bad thing, really. Gen 2 isn't great, but there's a lot about it to love.

Pokémon Unbound, unknown

This and the previous entry are the only two Pokémon mods or fangames or whatever that I've ever played. I'm glad I started here!

If you're into playing fangames or whatever you know about this one and you know it rules. I'm not gonna bother praising it directly, though I'll say it earns all the good things said about it.

For me, projects like these really remind me of why we're still drawn to the Pokémon series even when the people in charge of it keep making pretty drastic decisions. I've said for years that the series is for kids and that it's not only fine but right to keep its focus firmly on kids, but Black and White proved that we can actually have our cake and eat it, too. We can have a game for kids that is also just flat-out a good game.

But for some reason, even if I ended up loving Gen 7 more than I did Gen 5, I feel like it's harder to call Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon good games? It's more like I can call them good Pokémon games. But are they good games?

I want them to be.

But what I want Pokémon games to be is totally different from what anyone else wants Pokémon games to be. Fool's Gold and Unbound confirmed that to me. I mean, I always knew it was true, but they confirmed it. What surprised me about them was that they were also good. That even if they weren't my vision, I still enjoyed them as a vision for Pokémon.

But to return to what I said a few paragraphs ago: We're still drawn to Pokémon because in each new entry we find more promises. We find new things to enjoy, to marvel at, to wonder about, to fill in. Every new mainline entry, especially since Black and White, feels like a new reinterpretation of what Pokémon is and can be, and even if we as fans don't always agree, we still have the conversation and we're still often compelled enough by something in the new interpretation that we hang onto it and let it be a part of what Pokémon is to us.

For as much as it stays the same, Pokémon is very much a living franchise, one that changes and, no pun intended, evolves. Maybe it does so in different ways than we might want, but there's nothing stopping us from knowing better. Well, nothing except Nintendo, a company that is more than welcome to fucking die immediately.

Pokémon, both the franchise and its fan works, is constantly grasping toward perfection. But we all know that perfection doesn't exist. We head towards and we know that we'll fail and we also know that even if we were to attain perfection, we'd reject it. Perfection is an illusion, a cruel one; even were it not, it would still be cruel, a poison pill. Real beauty isn't in perfection, it's in striving for it knowing you'll fail. It's about being weak, bad even, useless even, and still being loved. It's about trying, hard, getting nowhere close, and smiling afterward. It's about working together to make something new, something that loves, something that brings us all together to love even harder. It's about the struggle; it's about the effort; it's about the handshake after the battle.

Wherever Pokémon goes, no matter who's propelling it along, it'll be Pokémon. And that's what I want.

#long

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kookies2000 · 3 years ago

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I've been seeing people ask about what was the scariest scene in "Nope". I should say this......

Gordy the chimpanzee scene is #1. I know I walked out on the alien eating a buffet of people but I have to admit, Gordy wins. The chimpanzee scene is the most horrifying thing and that's because it's something that happens in real life and has happened many times. People keep trying to tame wild animals for entertainment or as pets. It's not worth it!!! Lions will bite, monkeys, chimpanzees, any animal that is suppose to be wild will attack one day. They don't care if you're famous or if your rich, they'll do what they want. And that scene portrayed it all wonderfully. The blood, the screaming, the moans of pain. The way everything is empty and you just hear balloons popping, each pop irritating the chimpanzee more. And once the balloons stop popping, you notice Gordan cakms down. He's looking around confused before seeing Jupe. The animal doesn't know what he did, he just got set off from the popping. Then he sees the one person he regonizes that's still alive. And he goes in for a friendly gesture. Whether is be because Jupe didn't look at Gordy in the eyes, Gordy snapped back to his domestic nature or both. It's tragic to see Gordy get shot at the end. He was just an innocent animal that followed his animalistic instincts, it's natural. And then we have the floating shoe. From what I heard, there's a saying "Waiting for the other shoe to fall." Meaning, "To await a seemingly inevitable event, especially one that is not desirable." This foreshadows Jupes death from his actions. He didn't learn from this event, instead he copied it. He tried to tame another animal only to die.

Another scene that I think was scary. The blood house. Second scariest part of the film. I loved it, the cinematography was so well done. All the charaters were trying to take in the new information that this alien ship is in fact the alien itself. But they don't have the time to take it in, they hear the screaming of people outside their window at night. They look out and see the alien flying near by. I laughed when OJ went back in his car though. 🤣 Nope! But what was even better was when the screaming suddenly stopped only to be followed by blood rain. I adore creative scenes like this! Takes a lot of talent to make these unique moments. Why is this my 2nd scariest scene and not the alien eating the people.

Look, I may be disgusted by that stuff, I may avoid it like the plague, but that doesn't make it the scariest. It doesn't have that realism/true events like the Gordy scene. And there's many scene's like this in horror films. Characters getting eaten and gore. The blood rain was creative and gave chills!!! With a moment of humor. And the barn scene with Jupes kids was slow and suspenseful. Yes, I put the barn scene at the same level as the eating scene. The reason why I consider the barn scene scary is because the pay off. It was an illusion. There was never any small people from outer space. It was all an illusion. It was a play on the cliché alines in a barn trope. And the humor when OJ punches a kid is hilarious. The eating scene is also a cliché I've seen again and again but this one was no different than those scenes. So yeah, being a trope that's been done before loses it's scare factor for me. I'm still disgusted by it and won't watch it for now, but I know I'll eventually get use to that scene and I'll watch it without a problem one day.

This doesn't mean the eating scene isn't scary. Claustrophobic people will have a heart attack with it. I almost did and I ran for my life and didn't see it. And it's still horrifying, just not the scariest.......... that can also be because my brother ruined the scare factor for me.

"You couldn't watch that scene? You ran away from that? You handled the chimpanzee scene but ran away from that?.......... IT LOOKED LIKE A WOMENS COOCHIE!!!!" - My brother.

Now when ever there was scene with the aliens mouth, I just rolled my eyes because my brother just has me thinking that this thing has a vagina. 🤣

#nope 2022 #nope #nope movie #nope spoilers

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welcometomy20s · 2 years ago

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January 26, 2023

Gnosia

Review

Gnosia is a 2019 Visual Novel… although I don’t know if I would call it a Visual Novel…

Visual Novel seems to have a porous definition. I would consider Visual Novel to be game-like literature designed to pacify people who are very protective about the idea of video games.

There is a spectrum of interactive electronic objects, on the one end, we have true visual novels, a kind of a pop-up book in digital form, where you click through the slides and fun visuals show up along with the text of the story. Then we can add interactive game-like elements that are used to progress the story but not create a win condition. Then we have games like Gnosia, where the game-like components do have win/lose conditions, but they do not affect the overall story. Then we get stories/games with overall win/lose conditions, but those conditions are rather minor and not the goal. Then finally we have basically what we see as role-playing games with a heavy focus on the plot or mystery, as in adventure games.

Role-playing video games differ from tabletop role-playing games usually since while TRPG mainly do focus on interaction even though there is a game component with overall win/lose condition, RPVG are usually single player with a bevy of characters that you kind of manage through. It’s like your typical action game except the weapons here are people. And when your anime is basically a retelling of RPVG, where the mechanics need to be told diegetically, the slavery implication of the system becomes quite glaring. Hence that problem…

Dating sims are the reverse of RPVG in a sense because instead of having various characters as weapons, you encounter various bosses that you have to juggle through. In some sense, Elden Ring is kind of like a dating sim, with talks of maiden and everything. And this is also the reason why I tend to avoid dating sims… it feels like a lot of work, to be honest.

Right, back to review. Gnosia can easily be described as a one player Among Us, where there is a spaceship with a bunch of bad guys among us and you have to use deduction to figure out the bad guys and then you do that over and over again with the same group of people.

There has been an explosion of detective games or mystery games which constrains the allotted time and expands the system using a time loop mechanic, with some form of other mechanic that makes the game less boring. A really great comparison is Outer Wilds, which has this fiddly spaceship exploration mechanic which the player first wrangles with and then soon masters which leads to the person slowly figuring out the mystery.

It’s a really effective strategy, and the same thing is true for Gnosia. While not as mechanically impressive as the monumental achievement that is the Outer Wilds, going through the character’s quirks and trying to figure out their strategy to better manage the Among Us portion more directly leads to the person being more curious about the overall plot. And what there is in terms of stories and characters are good, the characters and the story are worth playing Among Us for around 100 times with various different settings, again it’s impressive how the construction of the story makes the player explore the full potential of the game itself.

While the story and character gets bogged down with your typical Visual Novel nonsense, it’s not overly distracting or eye-rolling. Whatever problems I have with the plot is more nitpicky than something truly grievous. Perhaps it really might go on a bit too long, but if you get hooked by the characters and the story, and I think you would most likely, this is a fun ride.

#gnosia #video games #review

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dxmmymxmmywrites · 4 years ago

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What You Do to Me

Kakashi Hatake x F!reader Smut

Warnings: oral sex, suggestive themes, lots of swearing, mention of violence/death

Cheers to the first story for the horny blog. Let’s see how this goes. Plot here follows an ANBU reader that is returning home. They are referenced as female, but could be any gender in a dress. Hope you enjoy 🖤

————————————

The leadership position was an honor— one you had fought tooth and nail for, even. You stood apart in how willing you were to climb to the top, to become the best of the best. However, it had its downsides.

You struggled making genuine friendships. You could be polite, sure, but so many people didn’t seem worth the effort anymore. It was easier to catapult all of your efforts into your training and work life.

It did make the good friends you had all the more special to you, though. You loved them dearly, and time and time again they proved their loyalty to you. Thankfully it didn’t waver whenever you were away for extended timeframes.

You had been sent away for an assassination. Somewhere nearly across the map, in a remote scavenger village where trouble had been brewing for the Hidden Leaf Village politically. It had done a number on you. You could recall the screams of the warlord’s wife when she found him in his bed with his throat cut.

As you settled into the routine of being home again, you found solace in Kurenai Yuhi. She was the friend that had been with you the longest, since the academy. You witnessed each other’s growth throughout your short lives and had been there to celebrate with and uplift the other whenever needed. That being said, she had also been quick to notice the subsequent depression that fell over you after your latest mission.

“When was the last time you went out?” She asked you flippantly.

You had come over to her home for tea the moment you had turned in the paperwork to the Hokage’s office. You shook your head.

“I’m here now, aren’t I?”

She flicked your shoulder. “That’s not what I meant. Honestly! For fun. Something that doesn’t keep you holed up in your apartment. You know, with people.”

You gave half a laugh. “You’re scheming.”

“And if I am?”

You sighed. “You’ll rope me into it somehow. Just nothing too wild, please.”

She says it’s for your own good, and she’s probably right. Kurenai arranges dinner at a local bar with your peers, and the other jonin accept their invitations quickly.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. These are people you really loved and appreciated. It would be good to let loose for a bit. And then Kurenai comes to your door to get ready with you as promised, and she throws black fabric in your face immediately.

“WHAt the fuck—?” Scrambling, you take it off your head and your eyes bulge.

It’s a beautiful black dress. Nothing outrageously fancy, but simple and refined without looking like you were trying too hard. You snorted, and Kurenai called out to you from the bathroom.

“Kakashi’s coming, too!”

“Goddamnit... Kuri—“

“Just try it on! I promise it’s not itchy. And you look good in black.”

And as it turns out, you did. The dress hugged you in all the right places without suffocating you, and fell loosely just above your knees.

You and Kurenai looked at your body in the mirror almost surprised.

“Okay, I really like it a lot.” You admitted with a small smile, and she gave a playful smack to your ass.

“I told you!”

...

Everything falls into place accordingly, and as you both approach the bar, you can feel a familiar fire burning in your chest.

You were happy to have time with your friends, but you were itching to see one in particular. You hadn’t seen Kakashi since weeks before you left to execute the assassination.

God, how to describe how you felt for this man and where to begin? He was within your circle of true companions, many of whom you’d known since childhood. But Kakashi— he was different.

You’d admired him from afar as children, intrigued by his protege-level talent, until you had been roped into Gai’s shenanigans along the way. In truth, you think you shocked him by not being so intimidated by his prowess.

Ultimately, you could see he was lonely. You’d had your own losses yourself, but it was hard to imagine everything he had endured. You gained an honest respect for him, and you’d protected him beyond your time together in ANBU. But nothing could deny the pull you felt to him, or how much you wanted to be the person to put a smile on his face.

...Even if you couldn’t see it.

As you wait with your posse, your eyes find him first when he is (of course) the last to show up. You can’t help but observe him greedily when no one else notices, and you can’t help but stand a little taller when you notice his brows rise when he takes in your dress.

And from there, the night is history. You all pile into a cramped booth and order several rounds of drinks and food to last the night. Everyone has something to contribute, laughing, teasing, and bickering the night away. It warms your heart; finally,

you feel like you’re back home.

Your mentality becomes stronger too as you feel the warmth from the sake hit you. With precise aim you manage to toss a piece of sushi into Gai’s mouth from across the table and your audience applauds.

Yet despite your sport, you can’t ignore the looks Kakashi has been giving you even before you laughed in triumph. He’s been particularly quiet for some time, but you can’t tell if it’s the booze or the atmosphere getting to him.

When the waitress comes to gather your third round of empty drinks you can feel your mood shift. She’s a lovely girl,

thin and with pretty doe eyes. You can’t pick it up through the noise, but she makes a comment to Kakashi and you can make out a smug smile through his mask. He holds out cash between two pointed fingers to her, and she happily takes it and bats her eyelashes at him.

Something begins to boil in your blood. It wasn’t like you to get jealous— that couldn’t be it. But you swear you see his eyes dart to follow her hips as she leaves. And it irritates the living shit out of you.

You’d yearned after this man for what? Your entire adult life? How dare he. Disregard the fact you had never had the guts to confess to him.

Fuck him. Fuck him and his pretty eyes, and his stupid soft hair, and his feathery laugh—

God, you were in so deep. Your seething turns into pouting in your head. Sitting on the sidelines sucked.

And even still... something in your resolve is building. It could be impatience, or the fear you were nowhere near drunk enough to pull this off and forget about it if it went sour. But as the waitress eyes him from the bar, you excuse yourself to the restroom while the attention is on Asuma at the other side of the table.

With Kakashi on the outer seat, it’s easy to carefully but firmly hoist his vest into your hand so you can easily whisper in his ear.

“Outside in five, Hatake.”

...

He could easily find you when he got outside to see you weren’t directly by the entrance. You had snuck into the side alley to patiently wait, like a cat waiting for a mouse to show itself from the underbrush.

Your nerves are broiling over while you idle, and the heat in your gut is burning you alive. But just as you’re ready to talk yourself out of it, he sneaks around the corner.

“This is some rendezvous, don’t you—“

He can’t even finish before you’ve swiftly backed him against the wall. You hold his wrists firmly in place by his shoulders, though you’re aware he could quickly break your hold if he tried.

“What the hell’s wrong with you Kakashi?” You pitifully laugh. “Do you think I’m not paying attention to you?”

Your words are more vicious than the defeated sound of your voice.

He playfully arches an eyebrow. “So, you have been watching me?”

“Of course I’ve been watching you, jackass! How could you even— but I know we’re not— but still—!”

Your resolve is quickly dissipating while his expression becomes more amused. Damn him.

“I think that was a confession if I’ve ever heard one,” he calmly adds. You glare at him.

He thinks he’s won, and gets ready to leave, but you press your knee between his legs. He can’t move, and there’s not enough pressure beneath his crotch to hurt, but he then has your attention.

“Do you have any idea what you do to me, Hatake?” You dangerously whisper to him.

Now, you see him sweat. His eyes look away, and that won’t do. Not anymore.

“Every night I was away, all I could think about was you.” You breathe into his collarbone, kissing over his clothed neck until you reach his flushed ear.

“Y/N—“

“I’m tired of playing games. You know how much I want you. Only you.” You suck on the lobe of his ear and grin when you feel him inhale sharply.

Your hands fall down to his hips and grip them harshly to ground yourself. With closed eyes, you have to steady your breathing to calm yourself. “If you don’t want this, tell me. You don’t have to.”

He’s ripped out of his haze by the sincerity of your tone. In the dim light, you can see him pull his mask down with a finger to take you in fully. His smile is so breathtakingly, beautifully raw.

“I do want you, and all of this. Now kiss me already.“

And like that, your heads are tilted and your lips are locked. The fire in your belly explodes to the rest of your body and you feel it amplified every time you touch him.

He moans deeply when you begin to push against him, reveling in how this wasn’t a dream. One of his hands cradles the back of your head through your hair, and you grin when the other trails down to grope your ass.

You gently rub your knee into his crotch, and he keens while you run your hands up his toned stomach and over his tight chest. When you’re to his face, you lower your knee to push your hips together and pull his hair as you slip your tongue into his mouth.

He submits to you willingly, openly, and freely. And it drives you wild.

Your kisses become more desperate as your tongues interlock, and he feels up from your thigh to your ass when you wrap a leg around him for balance.

His grip tightens around the back of your legs. “Jump,” he says, breathlessly.

You smile. “No.”

The wild look in your eyes sends a shiver down his spine.

He goes to ask you why, but then you’re on your knees in front of him and he swears he double-takes. You pause when your hand is at his zipper and he swears he’ll scream.

“You can stop me at anytime.”

“I don’t want to! Please,” he rasps, fingers trying to find purchase at the top of your head.

His begging sends the heat within you straight to your core. So you indulge, and pull down his pants and underwear enough to let his cock bob out into the night air.

He hisses at the cold initially, but almost chokes when he feels the flat of your tongue press against his cockhead. Your eyes are dark with a sinister lust when you stare up at him, and it takes his breath away.

“Fuck, Y/N, please,” he whines, his voice catching.

You flick your pointer finger up and trail it from between his balls up his entire length, not removing it from his now fully erect shaft.

“Please what? Use your words baby.”

He bucks his hips forward trying to get close to your mouth again.

“Please Y/N, blow me,” he pants. “Fuck me with that pretty mouth of yours.”

Did you wickedly grin once more? Probably. But you close your eyes and take his entire cock down your throat at once and he nearly seizes.

You start at an agonizing pace, making him wanton and needy for you. But just as he’s tiring, you speedily lick your tongue around his shaft and deeply suck him, making him yelp in the process.

“AH!— Holy shit!” He gasps and tightens his grip on your hair.

You hum around his cock, happy with his response, and he gives you a low, drawn out groan to follow. It’s enough to distract him while your hands hook around the back of his thighs to hold him in place.

You run your nails down his thighs just as you begin to swirl your tongue over his sensitive head, and then you take him as far back into your throat as you can once more.

Kakashi’s eyes are rolling into the back of his head, completely at your mercy and enjoying every minute of it. His silver hair frames his pearlescent skin so well in the darkness, which must contrast well with the weeping cock in your mouth.

You come up for air, and give him fast, sticky pumps as you look up at him cheekily.

“How are you feeling handsome?”

“S-So good, holy fuck.” He tries to catch his air as well, but he shakes his head. “Please, let me fuck your mouth. You feel so fucking good, please let me.”

Who were you to refuse?

#Kakashi #Kakashi Hatake #naruto #lemon #Kakashi x reader #Kakashi lemon #x reader #kakashi hatake x reader #kakashi hatake x reader smut #kakashi hatake x reader lemon #kakashi smut #dom reader #dom female reader #smut #sub kakashi #kakashi x reader smut #kakashi x reader lemon

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schmergo · 3 years ago

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Weird obscure little rant here: There's this one particular conspiracy theory I've seen floating around the internet a lot lately that's a minor pet peeve of mine. There are a lot of more famous, major, and dangerous conspiracy theories going around right now, ones that are clearly anti-Semitic, anti-science, and doing genuine measurable danger to families and communities across the countries. But those have been extensively covered and analyzed by way more knowledgeable people than me (those articles are very much worth reading), and I don't think there's anything new I can bring up there.

The one I'm talking about is just skirting mainstream discourse and starting to become more widely known. It's the Missing411 'conspiracy.' The reason I put 'conspiracy' in quotes is that this isn't a traditional conspiracy theory with a clear bogeyman or scapegoat like some of the others. A traditional conspiracy theory usually goes something like, "[Group of people] are secretly [doing bad thing] so that they can [accomplish sinister goal]. but they control the [powerful organization], so nobody knows about it!"

By contrast, Missing411 is super vague. It basically boils down to, "Mysterious disappearances are taking place throughout America's national parks and protected wilderness lands, and they fit a pattern!" There are hints among fans of this theory that the National Park Service knows more than they're letting on, but the extent of their 'involvement' doesn't seem really central here. The 'theory' doesn't come right out and explain any root cause for this pattern of events, just drawing attention to the pattern itself, though, once again, there are hints as to a deeper meaning.

Here's the thing: "Missing411" is the brainchild of one guy named David Paulides who wrote a bunch of expensive self-published books compiling these cases. He's an ex-police officer (either retired or fired, depending on who you ask) who also happened to be super invested in Bigfoot hunting before he started with "Missing411," and, indeed, a lot of Missing411 stories do seem to point toward something... sasquatchy without ever coming right out and saying it. The other thing is that Paulides is the only one who can officially label a case a Missing411 case. A lot of people on the internet will say, "Oh, this sounds like Missing411," but Paulides is the one authority on which cases count and which don't.

Turns out a lot of 'missing person' cases in the national parks don't fit these criteria, and others that Paulides claim do are stretches. The criteria themselves are loose, and a missing person doesn't need to fit all or even most of them to be considered a Missing411 case. Missing411 cases include people who were never found, people who were found dead, and people who were recovered safely. Common factors in these 'patterns' include such vague terms as berries or berry bushes playing a role, being found near or in bodies of water, bad weather shortly after the disappearance, someone who is sick or disabled going missing, and someone being with a group at first but becoming separated from them after a surprisingly short period of time. And, of course, the fact that these disappearances take place in National parks and protected wildernesses.

Humans naturally seek and recognize patterns and make connections, but are categorizing cases in a way like this really helpful? I've seen people on the internet gleefully jump to this explanation whenever someone goes missing in a national park. Comments of "Google Missing411!" are common on news articles about this topic. I honestly think it's insensitive to the family members of the missing people who are looking for answers-- and misleading to those participating in the investigations. Currently, there's an incident going on in which a young couple was traveling cross-country in a van and visiting many National Parks. The man returned home with the van but without the woman, who hasn't been heard from in a few weeks, and isn't talking about what happened. Believe it or not, I've seen internet posters comment, "MISSING411!!!!" in response to this tragic story. A few months ago, a young man disappeared in Shenandoah National Park and his body was later recovered. I followed the case closely and the posts by Shenandoah National Park were full of "MISSING411!!!!" comments, despite the fact that it was very clear what led up to the disappearance: according to family members, a new medication caused psychosis and led to him driving in his pajamas from his home to Shenandoah (his family followed him there), crashing his car, and running into the woods, unprepared to deal with wilderness and not in good mental health.

Like I said, I think this gleeful pattern-recognition is a little distasteful, but more than that, I think Missing411's eagerness to spot sinister causes behind disappearances in the wild is problematic for another reason: I think the average American has a difficult time grasping the concept of 'wilderness' and its dangers. We're used to everything being safe and convenient for us in our towns and, because national parks are popular tourist destinations, it's easy to forget that there are many dangers that exist in wild public lands.

Inexperienced hikers often misjudge their skills and set off on trails too challenging for them and with inadequate water and supplies. Even experienced hikers can easily get lost or turned around-- and cell phone signals are usually nonexistent in national parks. Falls from cliffs, ledges, and waterfalls (mossy rocks near waterfalls are often lethally slippery) can mean injured people end up in inaccessible areas where they're not visible from the trail. A sudden health emergency like a heart attack, stroke, or even a broken leg can occur during vigorous physical activity. Abrupt changes in weather can change a pleasant stroll into deadly freezing temperatures in the blink of an eye. Dangerous wild animals like bears do live in the national parks. Although national parks are popular tourist destinations, these dangers are very, very real and can happen to anyone, and the parks themselves emphasize the importance of being prepared when entering wild areas.

On a darker note, remote hikes and camping trips in national parks are often a convenient way for people to cover up foul play (a few of the high profile Missing411 cases seem to fit this narrative). And, like the young man who disappeared in Shenandoah, many people who disappear in the wilderness alone are mentally unwell and, in many cases, disappearing on purpose. (National parks are sadly a popular place for people to take their own lives.)

Some of the common Missing411 traits, like people being found without clothes on, could be explained by foul play but, more likely, it's a phenomenon called 'paradoxical undressing' that happens when you have hypothermia to the degree that you actually feel warm. Family members will talk about how a missing person is an experienced outdoorsman and unlikely to go missing, but 60 years of experience in the woods also comes with the health limitations of advanced age-- the 'mysterious' disappearance of a partially-sighted man with notable mobility issues might not be a huge mystery. Others, like the presence of berry bushes and bodies of water, points to basic survival instincts. Why so many disappearances in national parks? Well, it's a lot harder to be found in dense wilderness than in, say, an Arby's parking lot.

I've watched two Missing411 documentaries, which are easy to find on mainstream streaming services, and, while many of the cases covered are truly strange, some seem easily explainable by Occam's razor, and the selection of why some cases are included and others aren't seems bizarre to me. Some don't even involve a disappearance at all but hearing or seeing strange things in the woods. Some don't involve national parks or public lands. There are very vague hints throughout that 'Bigfoot type creatures seem to exist in the woods and use outer space or interdimensional technology to hide themselves from people or spirit people away, and the government might know about it' but nothing more than vague hints.

Like I mentioned, some of the cases they profiled point toward foul play. The most prominent case featured in the original Missing411 documentary was about a little boy named Deorr Kunz Jr. who disappeared on a camping trip with his family... but there's also no proof that he actually was on that camping trip with his family... and the family's stories have some discrepancies... and even if it really was a disappearance from the campsite, the stories are that the grandfather thought he was with the parents and the parents thought he was with the grandfather.

Life is often boring and repetitive and it's totally normal to use stories to make ordinary life more interesting and exciting, but the almost... gamified way that I've seen internet dwellers react to real-life stories of heartbreaking disappearances and deaths in dangerous and remote locations is kind of disturbing, and similar to the over-the-top fanciful theorizing I've seen from other, more insidious conspiracy theories. The idea that there's a secret 'other world' being hidden from us behind the curtain of society is enticing, but it can lead down paths as confusing and dangerous as the ones that real travelers get lost on in the wilderness.

#national parks #nature #conspiracies #conspiracy theories

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kaile-hultner · 3 years ago

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Nihilism is so easy, which is why we need to kill it

(I initially published this here a couple weeks ago.)

So last night it dawned on me that, after over two years of being relatively symptom-free, my depression snuck back up on me and has taken over. It’s still pretty mild in comparison to other times I’ve been stuck in the hole, but after 24 months (and more) of mostly being good to go, I can tell that it’s here for a hot minute again.

How do I know? Well, it might be the fact that I spent more time sleeping during my recent vacation from work than I did just about anything else, and how it’s suddenly really hard for me to stay awake during work hours. I don’t really have an appetite, and in fact nausea hits me frequently. I don’t really have any emotional reactions to things outside of tears, even when tears aren’t super appropriate to the situation (like watching someone play Outer Wilds for the first time). And I’ve been consuming a lot of apocalyptic media, to which the only response, emotional or otherwise, I can really muster is “dude same.”

For a long time I was huge into absurdist philosophy, because it felt to my depressed brain like just the right balance between straight up denying that things are bad (and thus we should fix them, or at least try to do so) and full-blown nihilism. This gives absurdism a lot of credit; mostly it’s just a loose set of spicy existentialist ideas and shit that sounds good on a sticker, like “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

In the last couple years, while outside of my depressive state, I went back to Camus’ work and found a lot of almost full-on abusive shit in it. Not toward anyone specifically, but shit like “nobody and nothing will care if you’re gone, so live out of spite of them all” rubs me the wrong way in retrospect. The philosophy Camus puts out opens the door for living in a very self-destructive fashion; that in fact the good life is living without care for yourself or anyone/anything else. The way Camus describes and derides suicide especially is grim as fuck, and certainly I would never recommend The Myth of Sisyphus to anyone currently struggling with ideation. That “perfect balance” between denial and nihilism is really not that perfect at all, and in fact skews much more heavily towards the latter.

Neon Genesis Evangelion has been a big albatross around my neck in terms of the media products I’ve consumed in my life that I believe have influenced my depression hardcore. It sits in a similar conversational space to Camus’ work, in that it confronts nihilism and at once rejects and facilitates it. A lot of folks remark that Evangelion is pretty unique – or at least uncommon – in its accurate portrayal of depression, especially for mid-90s anime properties. The thing I notice always seems to be missing in these discussions is that along with that accurate portrayal comes a spot-on – to me, at least – depiction of what depression does to resist being treated. This is a disease that uses a person’s rational faculties to suggest that nobody else could possibly understand their pain, and therefore there’s no use in getting better or moving forward. Shinji Ikari is as self-centered as Hideaki Anno is as I am when it comes to confronting the truth: there are paths out of this hole, but nobody else can take that step out but us, and part of our illness is that refusal to do just that. Depression lies, it provides a cold comfort to the sufferer, that there is no existence other than the one where we are in pain and there is no way out, so pull the blanket up over our head and go back to sleep.

Watching Evangelion for the first time corresponded with the onset of one of the worst depressive spirals I’ve ever been in, and so, much like the time I got a stomach virus at the same time that I ate Arby’s curly fries, I kind of can’t associate Evangelion with anything else. No matter what else it might signify, no matter what other meaning there is to derive from it, for me Eva is the Bad Feeling Anime™. Which is why, naturally, I had to binge all four of the Evangelion theatrical releases upon the release of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time last month.

If Neon Genesis Evangelion and End of Evangelion are works produced by someone with untreated depression just fucking rawdogging existence, then the Eva movies are works produced by someone who has gone to therapy even just one fucking time. Whether that therapy is working or not is to be determined, but they have taken that step out of the hole and are able to believe that there is a possibility of living a depression-free life. The first 40 minutes or so of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 are perfect cinema to me. The world is destroyed but there is a way to bring it back. Restoration and existence is possible even when the surface of the planet might as well be the surface of the Moon. The only thing about this is, everyone has to be on board to help. Even though WILLE fired one of its special de-corefication devices into the ground to give the residents of Village 3 a chance at survival, the maintenance of this pocket ecosystem is actively their responsibility. There is no room or time for people who won’t actively contribute, won’t actively participate in making a better world from the ashes of the old.

There are a lot of essentialist claims and assumptions made by the film in this first act about how the body interacts with the social – the concept of disability itself just doesn’t seem to have made it into the ring of safety provided by Misato and the Wunder, which seems frankly wild to me, and women are almost singularly portrayed in traditionalist support roles while men are the doers and the fixers and the makers. I think it’s worth raising a skeptical eyebrow at this trad conservative “back to old ways” expression of the post-apocalypse wherever it comes up, just as it’s important to acknowledge where the movie pushes back on these themes, like when Toji (or possibly Kensuke) is telling Shinji that, despite all the hard work everyone is doing like farming and building, the village is far from self-sufficient and will likely always rely on provisions from the Wunder.

As idyllic as the setting is, it’s not the ideal. As Shinji emerges from his catatonia, Kensuke takes him around the village perimeter. It’s quiet, rural Japan as far as the eye can see, but everywhere there are contingencies; rationing means Kensuke can only catch one fish a week, all the entry points where flowing water comes into the radius of the de-corefication devices have to be checked for blockages because the water supply will run out. There is a looming possibility that the de-corefication machines could break or shut down at some point, and nobody knows what will happen when that happens. On the perimeter, lumbering, pilot-less and headless Eva units shuffle around; it is unknown whether they’re horrors endlessly biding their time or simply ghosts looking to reconnect to the ember of humanity on the other side of the wall. Survival is always an open question, and mutual aid is the expectation. Still: the apocalypse happened, and we’re still here. The question Village 3 answers is “what now?” We move on, we adapt.

Evangelion is still a work that does its level best to defy easy interpretation, but the modern version of the franchise has largely abandoned the nihilism that was at its core in the 90s version. It’s not just that Shinji no longer denies the world until the last possible second – it’s that he frequently actively reaches out and is frustrated by other people’s denials. He wants to connect, he wants to be social, but he’s also burdened with the idea that he’s only good to others if he’s useful, and he’s only useful if he pilots the Eva unit. This last movie separates him and what he is worth to others (and himself) from his agency in being an Eva pilot, finally. In doing so, he’s able to reconcile with nearly everyone in his life who he has harmed or who has hurt him, and create a world in which there is no Evangelion. While this ending is much more wishful thinking than one more grounded in the reality of the franchise – one that, say, focuses on the existence and possible flourishing of Village 3 and other settlements like it while keeping one eye on the precarious balancing act they’re all playing – it feels better than the ending of End of Eva, and even than the last two episodes of the original series.

I’m glad the nihilism in Evangelion is gone, for the most part. I’m glad that I didn’t spend roughly eight hours watching the Evamovies only to be met yet again with a message of “everything is pointless, fuck off and die.” Because I’ve been absorbing that sentiment a lot lately, from a lot of different sources, and it really just fuckin sucks to hear over and over again.

It is a truth we can’t easily ignore that the confluence of pandemic, climate change, authoritarian surge and capitalist decay has made shit miserable recently. But the spike in lamentations over the intractability of this mix of shit – the inevitability of our destruction, to put it in simpler terms – really is pissing me off. No one person is going to fix the world, that much is absolutely true, but if everyone just goes limp and decides to “123 not it” the apocalypse then everyone crying about how the world is fucked on Twitter will simply be adding to the opening bars of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

We can’t get in a mech to save the world but then, neither realistically could Shinji Ikari. What we can do looks a lot more like what’s being done in Village 3: people helping each other with limited resources wherever they can.

Last week, Hurricane Ida slammed into the Gulf Coast and churned there for hours – decimating Bayou communities in Louisiana and disrupting the supply chain extensively – before powering down and moving inland. Last night the powerful remnants of that storm tore through the Northeast, causing intense flooding. Areas not typically affected by hurricanes suddenly found themselves in a similar boat – pun not intended – to folks for whom hurricanes are simply a fact of life. There’s a once-in-a-millennium drought and heatwave ripping through the West Coast and hey – who can forget back in February when Oklahoma and Texas experienced -20 degree temperatures for several days in a row? All of this against the backdrop of a deadly and terrifying pandemic and worsening political climate. It’s genuinely scary! But there are things we can do.

First, if you’re in a weather disaster-prone area, get to know your local mutual aid organizations. Some of these groups might be official non-profits; one such group in the Louisiana area, for example, is Common Ground Relief. Check their social media accounts for updates on what to do and who needs help. If you’re not sure if there’s one in your area, check out groups like Mutual Aid Disaster Relief for that same information. Even if you’re not in a place that expects to see the immediate effects of climate change, you should still consider linking up with organizing groups in your area. Tenant unions, homeless organizations, safe injection sites and needle exchanges, immigrant rights groups, environmental activist orgs, reproductive health groups – all could use some help right now, in whatever capacity you might be able to provide it.

In none of these scenarios are we going to be the heroes of the story, and we shouldn’t view this kind of work in that way. But neither should we give into the nihilistic impulse to insist upon doing nothing, insist that inaction is the best course of action, and get back under the blankets for our final sleep. Kill that impulse in your head, and fuck, if you have to, simply just fucking wish for that better world. Then get out of bed and help make it happen.

#Neon Genesis Evangelion #existentialism #philosophy #media criticism #cultural criticism #spoilers

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jjmaybnks · 5 years ago

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fake dating; jj maybank

requested; Can you do a jj x reader where they hate each but end up fake dating and falling for each other

@obsessedweirdo i hope you enjoy this!! i’m not quite sure if this was what you wanted but i hope it is okay

word count; 2k

you hated the midsummer parties, year after year your mum wanted you to find the perfect kook date, you hated that she did that, they were all boring and cared about materialistic things that had no interest to you.

“(y/n) you need a date for the midsummers, how about that topper? he’s a lovely young man, he helped me with my golf the other day” your mom asked you not looking up from the newspaper she was reading whilst sipping on her coffee.

you rolled your eyes. out of all the boys in the OBX she could have suggested, she said topper. you could see how it’d go already, you’d arrive, he’d be complaining about the fact that sarah left him for john b and you’d be downing your sorrows in the free champagne they were handing out. yeah, that was not going to happen.

“i am not going with topper mom and besides i already have a date, i’ve been seeing him for a few weeks” you lied so she didn’t try and set you up with any more boys from figure eight, she already didn’t approve of your friends so she just had to interfere with your love life. great. now you had to find a date for this stupid event.

----

“john b are you home?” you screamed walking into the chateau. you could hear the shower running so you had just assumed it was him taking a shower. you settled on the couch and pulled your phone out playing some random game you downloaded. the water suddenly stopped causing you to look up and see jj walk out with just a towel around his waist. you had to admit, jj was extremely good looking, the way his messy hair rested on his head and fell in front of his sparkling blue eyes and his smile, god, he had the most beautiful smile. okay, so maybe you had a small crush on jj but you both hated each other so it’d never happen.

coughing lightly to get his attention you adverted your gaze so you weren’t caught checking him out. “where is john b?” you asked whilst continuing to look around the rooms of the chateau whilst he stared at you with an emotionless look.

“well if it isn’t the kook princess herself, what can i do for you?” jj replied with a snap, ignoring your question and not hiding his displeasure of you being here or the roll of his eyes.

“i’m looking for john b, have you seen him?” you asked, a small sigh escaping your lips, you didn’t have the energy to argue with jj, not today, it was way too hot in the outer banks and the walk to john b’s from yours didn’t do you any favours.

“nah he’s probably macking off with sarah somewhere. why? got a thing for john b?” jj smirked, his laugh bouncing off the walls in the chateau. his laugh seemed to fade as he looked at your unamused face and held his hands up in surrender as he waited for your answer.

his towel still rested upon his waist, briefly showing his v-line, his wet hair letting droplets of water fall onto his body, cascading down his abs until it reached his towel. you tried your hardest not to stare at him but it was hard when he looked like an absolute god and you wanted to jump his bones. maybe your small crush was a big crush.

“earth to (y/n), what do you want john b for?’ jj asked quizzically, his confusion written all over his face, you didn’t blame him though it wasn’t often that you came rushing to the chateau in search of john b.

“i just wanted to know if he’d be my fake date to the midsummers, my mum is forcing me to take a date this year and she wanted me to go with topper and i hate topper and i told her i was going with someone already which is a total lie and i need a date and yeah” you rambled out breathlessly, somewhat nervous of jj’s reaction and as much as you hated to admit it, you wished it was jj that you were asking to the midsummers.

“i hate to break it to you princess, john b isn’t going to be your ‘fake date’ he��s going with sarah” jj chucked as you let out a groan. just your luck, you were happy for him though, after everything that had happened with his dad, he needed some sort of normality in his life and well, sarah, she’d be good for him.

“i’ll just ask pope, it’s not a big deal” you let out, picking yourself off of the couch and walking towards the door, adjusting your bag as you moved through the chateau. the sun beamed through the windows causing a gold shimmer to rest upon your face as you turned around and gave a small wave to jj but before you could leave he stopped you.

“ah i’m afraid he’s going to be working there so he can’t help you out” jj smirked at your misfortune, you had no idea who was left to ask unless you asked jj, it was a wild shot in the dark if he’d accompany you but it was worth trying.

“jj be my fake date, it’s only one night and then we can go back to arguing every day i just need to get my mom off of my back” you practically begged, it wasn’t often you begged, especially not for jj but you needed him right now. the look on his face surprised you, his smirk seemed to turn into a wide grin and his eyes seemed to twinkle at the thought of you both attending the midsummers together and thought made yourself smile and bask in the thought of you and jj together. you quickly shook that thought out of your mind and looked at him with pleading eyes and he knew you were desperate.

“fine (y/n) but don’t get too attached” jj whined but deep inside he was happy, he was ecstatic to spend the time with you. he liked you, a lot. did he show it the best way possible? no. he pretended to hate you just as much as you pretended to hate him but somehow the feelings went oblivious to everyone.

“i owe you one, thank you jj” you replied sincerely, you didn’t expect him to say yes if anything you expected him to laugh in your face and tell you to jog on. smiling softly at him you left the chateau, walking down the beat-up drive with the sun beaming on your exposed shoulders and you walked back to figure eight.

---

your midnight blue dress fit you perfectly, the scooped neckline seemed to enhance your cleavage and hugged your curves flawlessly, your black lace-up espadrille platform sandals added an inch or two to your height. your (y/h/c) hair was loose and wavy down your back and you kept your make-up to a minimum, beige eyeshadow and a nude lip gloss. you looked like a goddess. you felt good, it wasn’t often you dressed up, keeping your outfits casual when you were with the pogues or working at the wreck.

you took a deep breath and stepped out of your room, jj was waiting downstairs for you, you could hear him on the phone to john b whilst he was waiting for sarah to finish getting ready. you had to admit, you were nervous. would jj like your dress? would he think your make-up was bad? the thoughts were rushing through your head like a tidal wave causing an array of different emotions to run through your body. you didn’t hear jj tread up the stairs in search for you and once he found you, his jaw dropped. for the first time in a long time, jj was speechless, he couldn’t take his eyes off of you, you were absolutely gorgeous.

the butterflies in your stomach never faded as his crystal blue eyes never left your (y/e/c) eyes. the blush that stained your cheeks seemed to deepen at his lingering gaze whilst you tried to regain your composure. “we should go we don’t want to be late” you managed to cough out, taking in his appearance, his blonde hair was brushed back and slightly gelled into place, his bruises on his face was fading slowly, the only remains of them was the light green marks that stained his face. his black tux looked good on him, it contrasted against his tan skin making him almost glow. you couldn’t take your eyes off of him, you were in deep and you were sure there was no way out.

grabbing his hand, you ignored the sparks that ignited at the skin on skin contact and nervously walked down the spiral staircase of your house with jj following you behind. the sun started setting causing a golden glow to cast over the both of you. jj thought you looked angelic, you were his angel even if you didn’t know it.

---

the stares you and jj received as you both walked through the bar were enough to tell you that you made the right decision in attending with jj, you were fed up of the disapproving glares the kooks chucked at you for your friends, all because they were pogues. you didn’t care who your friends were, you knew they were lifelong and would be by your side no matter what and well jj, you had no idea what it was.

the soft music that was playing made you want to gag, this was not a party you were happy to attend, you needed the classic pogue party, the unlimited supply of weed and alcohol, the tourists you could mack off on, that was a party. not this, this was full of people who cared more about their social status and having the newest range of designer. these were not your people.

out of the corner of your eye, you could see topper staring at you intensely ignoring whatever rafe was blabbering on about to him. you pulled jj closer to you, to make it look believable that you were together. god, how you wished you were. taking two flutes of champagne from the servers, you handed jj one and quickly downed it whilst he joined you. pulling jj with you, you went to the middle of the dance floor and took his hands in yours, slowly dancing with him whilst you ignored the endless chatter from the kooks beside you.

“i’ve not told you how beautiful you look tonight, (y/n) you look absolutely stunning” jj whispered in your ear whilst he twirled you around. you didn’t expect his confession and hid the blush that permanently marked your cheeks in his shoulder whilst you swayed to the music. the flutters in your stomach never ceased as you listened to the slow beat of his heart, you knew jj had a way with words, that and his good looks it was had all the tourists swooning over him.

“you don't look too bad yourself john” you smiled at him, you knew he hated it when anyone used his real name but he couldn’t bring himself to hate it anymore with you, he knew he had fallen hard for you. you didn't know how it happened or who leaned in first, you just knew your lips were on his and they moulded together perfectly.

“well I didn't expect to see this” kie grinned proudly. you pulled away and noticed all of your friends had witnessed your make-out session with jj. they all smiled widely whilst you hid your head in jj’s chest once again hiding the blush that was etched onto your face.

it was good, life was good and you couldn't be any happier to know that jj reciprocated the feelings that you had for him. for once in your life, you liked the midsummer parties, all thanks to one jj maybank.

tags; @aberette13 @pancahke @boobear729 @sexualparkour @afterglowsb-tch13 @ilover5r9 @obxwriterfan @dolanfivsosxox @maybankiara @drizzlethatfalls @hmspoguee @verdeevidenziatore @chalametnpeaches @dallasandjjmaybanksbitch @lovelymaybankk @procasination-nations @spilledtee

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lu-undy · 3 years ago

Text

Un-alone, Chapter 17

Here it is!

“So, how’s your uncle?”

“Not too bad. I was tellin’ the others that he probably could come but the physio’s insisting for him to not rush things. At his age, stuff takes a real amount of time to heal up.” Mundy took a sip of his drink while Larry returned to one of the couches. Richie went to the other end of the counter, tending to other customers. That left Mundy and Mark alone.

“How long before you think he’ll be alright?”

“Physio reckons it’s gonna be an extra month, maybe a month and a half.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Why? Does he owe you money or somethin’?” Mundy chuckled.

“No, I just miss talkin’ to him. He’s a cool guy.”

“Could still visit him at home. I'm sure he’ll be happy to see some people.” Mundy said, without thinking too much.

“You think so?”

“Yeah. I mean…”

“If you don’t wanna, it’s fine.” Mark answered, and now for Mundy, it was clear. Mark was not asking to visit his uncle as much as he was scouting Mundy’s heart. As one would dip his toe in the water of a calm lake to measure its temperature, Mark was testing Mundy’s mood, where he stood with respect to him.

“Wanna play some darts?” The blonde asked.

“Sure.”

Better leave it blurry, Mundy thought. There was no point anyway… Or was there?

Both men stood a few metres away from the target and Mark threw his first dart.

“Ha, not bad, eh?” He proudly said.

“Yeah, true.” Mundy closed one eye and took aim. He looked at the target and saw the blurry dart in front of his face. “Hm!” He threw it.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me…!” Mark laughed and shook his head. “A bullseye? on the first try?”

“Well, if there’s somethin’ I can do, it’s aim.” Mundy said and took a step away for Mark to replace him in front of the target.

“Oh, that I know, Aussie.” Mark threw the second dart. “Ha! I’m gettin’ closer, man!”

Mundy smiled under his hat. He took Mark’s place and shot again.

“What?! How d’you do it?!”

“Told ya.” Mundy’s raspy voice chuckled through his words. “I can aim.” He raised intense eyes to Mark. The American looked left and right.

“Wanna get harder targets?”

“Pff, Mark-”

“It’s ok if you don’t like the challenge, eh.�� The blonde quipped. “I’ll just let you win and assume it’s your luck.”

“Told you, Mark, I’m a hunter, gimme darts, arrows, a rifle, anything, and I can aim with it.”

“I'm a hunter too.”

“Are ya now? Where’s your game then?”

“Maybe…” Mark looked left and right. He took a step towards Mundy, leaving hardly a few inches between them. “... I need a few lessons from someone who's clearly better than me, and a little bit older, huh?”

“You could ask yer Dad.”

Mark's head swooshed to Larry on the couch.

“He’s too busy right now, I wouldn’t want to bother him while he plays God knows what with his friends.”

“So you prefer to bother me?” Mundy answered and the blonde raised lustful eyes to him. Ha, Mundy had never been too good at telling the hints, seeing the signals, but the way that Mark stared at him with his hazel eyes was louder than sirens.

“Yeah.” Mark blinked delicately, or maybe he fluttered his eyes slightly. “So? Is your van free for another lil’ trip?”

Mundy pondered for a split second. His head was showing him wild pictures. Was it worth it? Would he end up living in New Mexico with Mark? Would he introduce him to his parents? Nah, he wouldn’t. Mark was way too hot-headed, Mundy did not really like that. But…

But his guts screamed at him. It had been a while since anyone had hit on him, and his ego was more than pleased with it all. The colder Mundy looked at Mark, the colder he behaved with him, the harder the young American clung to him. Gosh, Mundy loved the feeling, looking down in his eyes and seeing how much the other wanted him… When was the last time that it happened? Far too long.

“Alright.”

THe night was as dark as the last time that it had happened and the privacy of the van wasn’t enough for Mundy. He raced through the dry and golden desert of New Mexico, which now was as deep as the night could be. The Moon wasn’t there.

“Oh, yeah, M-Mundy… Take me - arh!”

The Aussie shut his head and listened to his body, to his blood pumping everywhere, to this feeling of sharing something with someone, doing something exceptionally not alone. Well, yeah, he could just lay there in his bed and do it with his hand. But nah, he was there with someone. And as Mundy looked under him at the man laying on his stomach, he felt everything mix within him. As the thrusts of his hips resounded in the slapping of his sweating skin against Mark’s, as the groans of the blonde filled him, as the golden streaks of sweat raked Marks skin under the old, yellow light in the van, Mundy realised he heard nothing and saw nothing either.

Only his thoughts were there. The same thoughts he had when he was alone. Was that person the right one? Did he like them? Was there something in his heart that would push him to do the unthinkable for that person? Would he drop hunting for them? Would he drop hunting beasts for them? Would he drop hunting… men? Would Mark fill the part of himself that unbearably itched for decades now? Could Mundy let that itch irritate him and burn him instead of deafening it as best as he could with one-night stands?

What did his heart think? Heart? Heart? Is there anything there for Mark and me or…?

Ah, yeah, well…

“Mundy, I’m gonna-I’m gonna… Arh!”

Mundy almost stopped thrusting as he rose back from his daydream. The blonde had somehow risen to his knees and elbows, and as Mundy recovered his ability to see, he realised that Mark had been frantically using his hand on himself until, well, the end. And it pulled the Aussie to finish too.

“Oh, man… It was even better than last time…” Mark concluded as he rolled on his back.

Mundy’s lips pursed into a smile, but the voice inside him still banged at his heart’s door.

Heart? Heart! Tell me! You can’t just not answer! C’mon! Tell me if I can hope for something with this bloke? Yes or no?! How hard can it be?!

He banged again and again, as both him and Mark cleaned up and lay down to sleep, this time together, in the narrow bunk inside the van.

Heart?

-- A few weeks later --

It had become a habit. Mundy would meet with Mark and spend his nights with him, without either of them questioning it. And it took less and less for Mark to ask him. As of late, a simple nod of the head towards the pub’s main door sufficed to signal to Mundy that the American was in the mood.

Mundy indulged every time. Why? Because it never felt bad to have someone to do it with rather than his own hand, to be blunt. But of course, the more they met, the more Mundy wondered. And the more he wondered, the more he harassed his own heart and his head for an answer, because quite frankly, if he asked what he had below the belt, his relationship with Mark could last forever…

During his days, Mundy became more familiar with the geography of the city and the overall State of New Mexico. He appreciated dearly the patch of desert not too far from his Uncle’s and spent time there when he wanted a corner of solace, an outer haven. And he spent his time there alone, as always. Not that he would fight anyone who would like to join him, but no one ever did want to come along.

Not even Mark.

Mundy had asked him one day.

“D’you wanna stay here tomorrow mornin’?”

Mark was half asleep, naked next to the Aussie in his warm van.

“Nah…”

“You sure?”

“What would we do here in the middle of nowhere?” The American spoke half into the pillow.

“We could spend the day huntin’, under the sun, just you and me. We’d be far from people and uh, y’know, just enjoyin’ ourselves.”

Mark chuckled in the pillow.

“You’re a funny guy, Mundy… See ya tomorrow.”

The Aussie thought about that slice of conversation again and again, it was playing on loop in his mind as if it had been recorded on a broken disc. Was Mark just too tired to have a chat after their usual meeting? Or did he genuinely laugh at Mundy’s suggestion?

The Aussie sighed. In the silence of his lonely van, he thought about it. Hold on. Mundy may not know Mark’s intentions but he knew how he behaved. The American would always ask to be cleaned, then roll to his side and sleep. The only thing Mundy would hear from him was sometimes praise of his performance of the day, and a “Night, night.”. Well, then maybe he did not really laugh at him…?

The Aussie finally decided to exit his van. He had been parked in front of the pub for a long enough while, just lost in thought. He needed a distraction, and a beer would surely-

“Hey, Aussie.”

Mundy gasped.

“Oh, hey, Mark. Sorry, I didn’t see ya.”

“No worries.” The blonde chuckled. “You came here early today.”

“So did you.” Mundy answered.

“I’m just playin’ the taxi driver for my Dad. He wanted to have a chat with Richie to organise the next big party here. Samantha’s gettin’ married with Jerry.”

“Oh, alright, congrats to them then, eh…?”

“Yup.” Mark nodded. “But what're you doin’ here this early?”

“I just wanted a beer or somethin’.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

“Sure.”

Both entered the bar and got served quickly. It was too early to be really busy, although a few patrons were enjoying their lunch there.

“So, uhm, Mark…?”

“Yeah?”

“D’you uh… Would you like to maybe spend some time in the desert?” Mundy asked with his eyes down on his beer. Mark laughed.

“Again with the desert stuff? You like it more than lizards do!”

Mundy smiled.

“Yeah but, I mean, it’s nice out there. Nice and calm. We could go for a bit of hunting, eat what we catch.”

“Pfff, and then what? Grill under the sun for some wild thing to make us their dinner? Nah, Mundy… You go and get roasted if you want, I like it better in the shade.”

Mundy frowned slightly.

“Right, then uh… What about somethin' else?”

“Like what? You’re not tryin’ to take me out on a date, are ya?”

“N-No, nah, I'm not the date kind of guy…” Mundy shook his head. “I just… Gets quite lonely out there, just lookin' for some company, and uh… You’re a hunter too so I thought that uh…”

“Well, it’s my father who’s big on the whole hunting thing. I follow him sometimes when I’m bored but I’m not huge on it.” Mark took a gulp of his fresh beer and Mundy’s eyes dropped to the floor.

“So you don’t wanna hang out with me sometime?”

“I think we’re good the way we are.” Mark answered. “Why change it?”

Mundy sighed. He looked at his beer and he didn’t want any of it anymore.

“Right.” The Aussie took off and left the bar, his pint still almost completely full.

“Mundy?”

He turned back to Mark with a hand on the pub’s front door still.

“What?”

“You angry at me?”

“No.”

“What? What’s this mean then? You just leave and you haven’t finished your beer?”

Mundy sighed and looked left and right. The last thing he wanted was his private life and his interest in men exposed to people who knew Phil very well. He entered back and went to Mark.

“Listen, if you're just with me for the nights, I’m not in anymore.”

The bluntness with which he spoke shocked Mundy himself.

“I thought you liked it better that way?”

“No-Yeah, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter.” He spoke between gritted teeth.

“So much for tryin’ to make me believe you're not mad…” Mark said with a scoff. “If you don’t know what you want, I can’t answer you, Mundy.”

“Alright, then. Here’s what I’d like to know, Mark.” Mundy removed his hat and slammed it on the counter. “Are you just with me for the nights?”

“I mean, that’s what we’ve been doin’ and I-”

“Answer me.” Mundy’s fierce glare made Mark gulp down audibly before he frowned.

“Yeah, guess I am.” The American finally admitted.

“D’you wanna go on like this or d'you wanna…?”

“Do I wanna what?” Mark frowned, now he was as mad as Mundy.

“I don't know!” The Aussie answered. “Maybe we could do stuff together instead of just using each other like that?”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Mark asked.

“Nothin’!” Mundy got his face closer to the American’s. “I just don’t like bein’ used, is all.”

“For someone who doesn’t like it and who’s a grown up man, you never said no, you never even raised the concern and you were the one fuckin’ me.” Mark spoke between gritted teeth for his shouts to be muffled into hard whispers. “You were the one to open your van, you were the one to get me out of my clothes, and you were the one to put it in me! Now if you didn’t want any of that, you never even gave me a clue about it! How could I have known?!”

Mundy sighed.

“Look, I don’t know, I just… I can't go on like this.” Mundy answered and spun on his heels to leave again.

“Alright then, go back to spendin’ your days alone in the desert, see if that does you any good!”

Mundy stopped sharp.

“What did you just say about me?” He said, slowly, and growling menacingly.

“I said: go back to the desert you like so much, I bet you’ll feel better there.” Mark repeated.

“Pray that I never find you again, Mark.” Mundy pulled the hat down on his eyes and left.

“Or what, huh? What're you gonna do, huh? Hunt me down like I’m a deer?!” This time, Mark had raised his voice, but as he did, Mundy left and was already outside.

The Aussie slipped in his van and drove back home. No. He needed the desert. He shifted gears to reverse.

“Mundy! Mundy, wait!”

The Aussie almost didn’t hear the voice calling for him. Larry came running to the van and banged the door on Mundy’s side.

“Mundy, hold on!”

The Aussie lowered the window, his face as dark as his boiling rage made it. The shy Mundy within him wanted to blush. After all, Larry was Mark’s father.

“Your mum’s called here, they’re asking you to go back home.”

Mundy’s eyebrows jumped and his face brightened, as if the storm raging within him a second ago had been pushed by the sun.

“Oh, uh, ok, thanks, Larry.”

“Pleasure, son, see ya!”

Mundy nodded and drove off. It took him the usual fifteen-ish minutes to reach back home.

“Mum? You wanted to see me?” Mundy said as he entered. “Oh? What’s all that?” As he had pushed the door and entered, Mundy’s feet bumped on wicker bags. That one had towels at the top, oh, there was a cool box there.

“Yeah, Micky, come in and go help your Uncle, will ya?”

“Sure… What’s with all the bags?” The Aussie entered the kitchen to find his mother making sandwiches.

“We had a chat with your Uncle today. They say the weather’s gonna be real hot and sunny for the next week at least so we decided to go to the beach for a few days.”

“Oh…” Mundy’s eyebrows jumped out of surprise. “Alright, sure. You said Uncle Phil needed my help?”

“Yeah, he’s packing his stuff. I already dealt with your things and I assume you have some swimming shorts in your van, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, I have.”

“Then it’s all good. I’ll drive his car and you get your van with Marty next to you, yeah?”

“Works for me.” MUndy nodded with a smile.

“Perfect, now go before he goes mad. I’ve been hearing him grumble to himself…!”

“Sure, thanks, Mum.” Mundy came to leave a kiss on his Mum’s cheek.

“No worries, baby.”

About an hour later, everything had been loaded into the van and the car, and Marty happily joined Mundy in his van, on the passenger’s seat.

“How long is it till we get there?” Mundy asked.

“We’ll have to drive through the state and then through more or less the entirety of Texas to get to the sea.” Philip answered. “But if you ask me, better Texas than California!”

“Alright, you know your business, UNcle Phil.”

“It’s a twelve hour drive but of course, we’ll make a lot of stops and we’ll sleep on the way there. I know a few good places along the way. Used to make the trip with some colleagues at work once a year at least in summer.”

“Wow, twelve hours… I don’t think I’ve ever driven for that long.” Mundy answered.

“It’s fine, son, we won’t do them all in one bite, eh?”

“I know, I know.. Still…! Right, let’s get started then.”

“You’ll just have to follow your mum, I’ll be with her to guide her.”

“Ok, thanks Uncle Phil.”

“Thank you, son.”

Mundy climbed in the van, on the driver’s seat. As he did so, Marty who was sitting on the passenger’s seat started wagging his tail.

“Hey, Marty, ready for the journey?”

The dog leaned into Mundy’s hand to enjoy some good head scratching.

“Right, gimme a paw then, eh?”

The dog obeyed.

“That’s a good boy right there, good puppy. Right, Mum’s starin’, you sit and be a good boy while I drive, yeah?”

#tf2 spy #tf2 sniper #sniperspy

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babybuckleys · 5 years ago

Text

In Jail & Needing Bail.

Drew & Rudy x Reader. (just friends but a bit flirtier with Drew.)

Summary: Hanging out with the outer banks cast was always eventful but you didn't expect to be in a jail cell with two of your closest friends.

Word Count: 2.1k

Warnings: trespassing, smoking, a few bad words.

A/N: this is my first fic with no relationship and the most warnings so bare with me. But the boys look so hot in handcuffs. Also I do not know anything about prison. This is my first fic on here, hope you like it. (I guess this means im open to requests.)

Nothing was supposed to happen, you guys were just supposed to be having a good time . Now you were sitting in a jail cell with Drew and Rudy. Now if we back up a few hours to where it all started this would all make sense.

You were all sitting in Chase’s apartment and were starting to get bored. Earlier in the day everyone had come over and you guys had a movie marathon day. But now as it was starting to reach around 10pm and people were starting to get antsy. LA usually was very awake at 10pm, people at restaurants and just walking around the city. So when Madison suggested that you guys go explore the city everyone agreed. Anything to get out of the stuffy apartment.

As you headed into town someone through the bunch of your friends suggested first you should grab a bite to eat. Food was important if you wanted to last the night so a bunch of murmurs were heard throughout the crowd. After finishing up, you guys headed on a walk to wherever your feet would take you.

LA had many different sides to it. There was the jam packed side overflowing with people and places. Then there was the sketichier side of LA. The side where it was darker and there were less open shops and buildings. As you and your friends headed to the darker side of LA you huddled closer together. Still laughing and having a good time together. As you headed forward, your group of friends came to a halt. You lost your balance a little since you were towards the back and it was an unexpected stop. Everyone looked forward to see what was up.

“Shit look guys.” Chase said. Everyone followed his gaze to an abandoned house in the middle of the street.

“How about we sneak in, we got nothing to lose.” Austin spoke out.

“I don't think that a good idea, it's kind of scary.” Madelyn said.

“Yeah I agree” Madison and you said.

“Come on, let's live a little.” Drew said as he bumped your shoulder with you. Drew was your best friend, also as was Rudy. So usually when you guys told each other stuff to do, you guys did it no matter the circumstance.

“Sure, why not.” you told him, what you did for and with your best friends you thought as you shook your head.

The boys headed in first and you girls stuck behind. What a great way to be spending a night in LA with your friends. In an abandoned house at midnight. You weren't one to break the rules so when you didn't see any sign about no trespassing you though it was ok. At first it was kind of scary but after the eerie feeling went away you decided to walk around and explore. Some of your friends even thought it was a perfect time to record it for their Instagram stories. You headed one way by yourself as your friends all headed separate ways. You turned on the flashlight on your phone and tried not to be too scared. As you were walking more you heard creaking but thought that maybe they were just your steps.

“Boo.” Drew grabbed your shoulders and whispered in your ear. You screamed and dropped your phone. You heard the scatter of your friends footsteps as they ran to the source of the screaming.

“You're an ass for doing that, you know that.” you told Drew as you shoved him.

“But you love me.” he said as he wrapped your arms around you.

“Y/N, you ok?” asked Madison, searching for your voice in the pitch black building. Out of the two girls you were always closer to her, and talked to her when you couldn't talk to the two boys. Soon they all reached you and Drew.

“Yeah I am, someone just decided to be childish and scare me.” you told her. Soon you all explored together. For the next thirty minutes you walked around. It started to get around 1:30am and Jonathan started to yawn. You knew that it was about time to head out since it was getting late and you guys were getting tired.

As the rest of your friends headed out, you stayed behind to tie your shoe. Rudy stayed behind so you wouldn't be alone. As you got up from tying your shoe, you felt around your pockets for your phone.

“My phone, shit where's my phone.” you said as you frantically searched your clothing pockets.

“How about we retrace your steps, when was the last time you had it?”

“Uhm I think it was when Drew scared me.” you thought as you remembered that when you guys were upstairs you must have dropped it. As you guys were headed upstairs Drew headed in to see what was taking so long.

“Hey guys y'all aren't doing any funny business.” Drew said as he walked in with his hands over his hands.

“Shut up Starkey, we aren't even dating.” you said as you looked at him. You were best friends with both boys but always tended to be a bit more flirty with Drew, but of course would never date any of them, because you liked how your friendship worked.

“Ok then what's taking so long.” he said in an exasperated tone.

“I lost my phone and don't know where it is. Can you help us find it?”

“But we gotta hurry up cause this place is giving me the creeps.” Drew said hugging his hands to himself.

You guys laughed as all three of you headed up stairs to the last spot you were at. While you were looking, your other friends were outside.

Currently waiting for the rest of you to come out. “What's taking them so long, it's getting cold.” Madelyn said.

“Maybe someone should go check on them.” suggested Madison. As your friends played rock,paper, scissors to decide who would go in; they saw police lights in the distance.

“Shit are they coming this way?” Chase asked.

“Nah I don't think so, maybe it's a coincidence.” said Austin. As your friends continued on waiting for you they heard the speaker of the police car.

“Hands up where I can see them.” said the police officer through the megaphone.

“Shit , shit, run.” said Jonathon.

“Shouldn't we wait for them or at least warn them.” Madison said worried about the rest of her friends.

“I don't think that's a good idea, our best bet right now is to run or else we’re going to get arrested,” Chase said. Your friends ran as fast as they could as you guys inside headed back downstairs.

You headed outside and the first thing you heard was “hands on your head and step out carefully.” You couldn't believe you were about to get arrested and where were your other friends? Nowhere to be seen.

“No fucking way.” Rudy said.

As you stepped down towards the cops they handcuffed you all a bit too roughly. “Anything you say will be held against you.” he said as he put all of you in the back of the cop car. As you started to drive off Drew spoke up.

“I guess it's time to take a ride downtown.” You just shook your head as you buried your head into your hands. Rudy put a hand on your leg to ease the tension. You could not believe you had just gotten arrested for trespassing with your two best friends.

As you were put into a cell all you could think about was how this was crazy. Drew and Rudy were handcuffed together in one corner and you were in the other. You werent gonna lie, your two best friends were attractive but something about them handcuffed together just sparked something in you.

“I don't understand why we have to be handcuffed, it's not like we are going to fight each other.”

“Well I got to say it's pretty hot that you too are handcuffed.” you didn't know where you got this new source of confidence and you were kind of shocked.

“Damn Y/N, jail is turning you wild.” Drew said. You looked down blushing and ignored his comment. Rudy was becoming stressed, you could tell because first he was shaking his leg up and down. Next he did something that he only did when he was stressed, he pulled out a cigarette.

He started smoking it and offered Drew one too. “You want one Y/N?” he asked.

“No thanks Pankow, two people smoking in here is enough.” You weren't a fan of smoking but again something about your friends in handcuffs and smoking was so hot. You sat in a corner and hoped that you could get out of this soon. Because you didn't think that you could last much longer in here with your friends looking that hot, barely doing anything and you not doing anything stupid. The officer came in a bit later and said that you guys can call someone.

“You guys get one call, make it worth it,” he said in a grumpy voice.

“What the hell, why do we only get one call if there are three of us.” Drew questioned.

“Watch you tone.” the officer said. You grabbed his arm and looked at him in reassurance to not say anything else. “Hey it's ok, they'll answer.” You really hoped your friends answered. You weren't sure what time it was but you decided that your best bet was calling Madison, she had always been there for you so you hoped this was the case.

You punched in her number and after three rings there was static on the other end.

“Hello, Madi, Are you there? Please tell me you're there.” you said trying not to break down in front of your friends.

“Y/N oh my god, are you guys ok, I'm sorry we couldn't stay back.” she said. You knew that they couldn't stay back because instead of three being arrested it would be eight.

“Oh god Madi, I don't know how long I could be in here with them.” you told her suggesting the fact about how they were looking so hot.

“Why? Are they being gross? Have they posted bail for you guys.” you knew you couldn't tell her with the boys around so you suggested to them that they go ask the officer how much your guys bail was set at. When Drew stayed behind you spoke up.

“Can you both go, I have to tell Madison something.” you looked at him pleadingly. He shook his head and jogged up to catch Rudy.

“Gosh Madison I don't know, it's just something about them in handcuffs and smoking that's so hot.” you exasperated to the brown haired girl.

“Damn seems like someone has a crush on two guys and has a kink, I thought you hated smoking” said Madison laughing of her best friend in a joking way.

“Don't say it so loud. They're attractive guys but just my best friends that's it. Now shh they're coming back. “ Y/N said as she turned around and saw both boys heading her way.

“He said the bail is set at $500.” Rudy said.

“Did you hear that Madison?” Y/N told her friend on the other line.

“Yeah I just told the others. Hang in there, We will try to get you guys out soon.” She said as there was shuffling on the other end then and the line ended.

“Ok they said that they'll try to get the money as soon as possible, I guess we just have to wait.” You sulked back to the jail cell sleepily. You closed your eyes and laid your head on Drew's shoulder. About what seemed like a few hours later the jiggling of keys startled you awake.

“Someone here to bail you out, come on get up.” the officer said. You and your friends headed out of the cell sleepily. As you headed out of the police station you noticed as the sun was rising. You saw your friends leaning against Chase’s car. You all pulled each other into a hug.

“What a night we had.” Austin said.

“You're not the one who got arrested” you said looking at him with a serious face.

“Yeah man it was your idea and you didn't even have to be in a cell for god knows how many hours.” Rudy said.

“Well it's now 7 in the morning so you guys were in there for about five hours, sorry it took us so long to get the money.” Madelyn said.

“It's all good, what matters now is that we are out and that we should get some food cause I am starving.” Drew sighed.

“I agree with that statement, let's go get some food.” you said. You had an eventful night that you never expected would happen but now you were glad it was winding down with your friends and food.

taglist: @heartbreak-hemmings (thank you for helping me with the title), @thelocalpogue, @outrbank, @jayjaymaebank, @beautyandthebleh, @ceruleanjj, @pogue-style, @shawnssongs, @flowersinvegas, @baby-bearie, @myrandom-fandomlife, @calumbroutledge, @bellaguarneri.

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arcadian-asgardian · 4 years ago

Text

Rescue from Jerusalem

A very late gift from the Christmas Winter Whumperland exchange 2017 (😅) for the gracious and ever-patient @collapse-and-comfort!

Also available on Ao3

Fandom: Assassin’s Creed I

Tags: Gen, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Altaïr/Maria, Malik, OC Villain, Whump, Hurt/Comfort, Fever, + 1 x bonus fanart

Summary: After Altaïr mysteriously vanishes whilst on a mission in Jerusalem, Maria Thorpe sets out for the city, determined to find him and bring him home. But it seems the hand of an old enemy is still at play, and Maria is horrified by what has become of Altaïr when she finally discovers him.

Words: 5,997

___

It had been more than a week since Altaïr was last heard from.

Maria Thorpe crouched on the sandy rooftop, her blades ready at her wrists and fingers itching with worry and anticipation. Below her, a group of Crusader guardsmen were dragging several figures through the shaded alleyway towards the building she had come to infiltrate. It was too dark to see the victims’ properly, but Maria could hear frightened whimpers and sniffling from underneath the bags that covered their faces. As they reached the building, the doorway was unlocked from the inside by two more guards, and the prisoners were ushered roughly inside. Straining closer, Maria thought she heard a voice with an unusual accent - something European, but unfamiliar - but then the door was slammed shut. Even from the rooftop, the clank of the key in the lock and thump as the door was barred from the inside were clear to hear. She would not get in this way.

Cursing, Maria retreated from the edge of the rooftop. What now? Perhaps she should return to the Bureau and seek Malik’s advice. Two days had passed since they had arrived in Jerusalem from Masyaf, having ridden as quickly as their horses could manage, fear for Altaïr’s safety spurring them on. That made it a total of nine days since Altaïr had vanished. The first morning in the city, they hastened straight to the Bureau to question the new rafiq. He knew little of Altaïr’s mission - only that it was in some way connected with the Knights Hospitalier, and with one of Altaïr’s previous Templar targets - Garnier de Naplouse. Altaïr had rested at the Bureau when not out investigating, and then one day had not returned. That gave the rafiq little cause for alarm, but when several days had passed and Altaïr neither appeared nor was there any talk in the city of the hooded man or any suspicious deaths, he had become worried and sent word to Maria and Malik at Masyaf. The following two days were spent scouring the city for clues to Altaïr’s whereabouts.

Maria crept over to her bags and reached inside for the map Malik had found in the Bureau’s archives. Mingling with the people, she had soon learned that something - though it was not clear precisely what - was going on in this fairly innocuous-seeming compound. Disappearances, they had said. Those who went in never seen again. And occasionally, some swore, screams. She shuddered.

The map detailed the layout of the building and the surrounding streets. With frustration, she marked a cross against the entrance in the alleyway below her. Access from the ground would not be possible. She could enter via the roof, but archers patrolled it at all hours of the day - to take them out without alerting the guards inside would be difficult.

She frowned. There was no simple option. This would need cunning, resourcefulness, and all of her skills as an assassin. She placed the map back into her bag and shouldered it, and then began to quietly clamber back down the side of the building to the deserted city streets. As she climbed, a plan began to form in the back of her mind.

* * *

“Assassin! Heretic!”

Maria almost laughed as she sprinted ahead of the Saracen guards, dodging and weaving expertly through the crowds in the direction of the compound. These men were faster than many she’d encountered - not quite the typical middle-aged ex-soliders, invalided back from war and just looking for an easy living, that she was used to - but they weren’t as fast as her. Her feet pounded the dirt as she began to approach her target. The guards, a small group, were about twenty paces behind her, though she was widening the distance with every second. She had to be careful not to lose them until the exact correct moment.

She rounded the corner with the agility of a wild gazelle, and the main entrance to the compound suddenly loomed in front of her. There were four guards on the gate, wearing unmarked armour yet still unmistakably Crusaders. She hoped the men pursuing her would be an even match for them.

She dashed past the door guards before they properly had a chance to register her, though a faint cry of “Another assassin!” reached her ears as she darted off down a side alley. She heard the metallic slice of swords being drawn, but then- just as she’d hoped: cries of alarm and Saracen shouts, followed by the clashing of blades and the sound of a struggle. She didn’t stop, fearing that one or two of the group wouldn’t have taken the distraction and could still be chasing her. Instead, she sprung sideways, leaping nimbly up a pile of crates that had been left against the outer wall, grabbing the closest window ledge and beginning to haul herself rapidly upwards. She heard more yells coming from above as she ascended - the archers on the roof running to join the fight. This was her chance.

As she reached the rooftop, she paused, trying to figure out exactly where each man was from the sound alone. There were curses and the panicked sound of arrows being knocked to bows, all coming from her right side. Dangling from the roof edge, she carefully shimmied her way around a corner in the building, the ground far below her, and then peeked her head over the parapet. They were all distracted, facing away from her. Good.

Close to silently, she lifted herself up and then quickly slunk her way over to the centre of the roof where the access hatch was, watching the archers warily the whole way. They were too preoccupied with the fight - which seemed to be going badly for the poor Saracen soldiers - to notice as she lifted the hatch and dropped noiselessly inside.

Inside the building was considerably darker than the sunny streets had been, and far quieter too. Maria paused as her eyes adjusted, relying on her other senses to assess the situation. The air was heavy and smelt… well, frankly, foul, not unlike the scent from the slaughterhouses behind the butcher’s market, but mixed with all manner of strange herbal and spiced aromas. There was little detectable movement in the air, so the building had to be well and truly sealed off from the outside. As the darkness ebbed away, she realised she was standing in a storeroom, surrounded by shelves of bottles, jars and odd-looking equipment. Altaïr wasn’t here. In the distance, the sound of the fight she’d started seemed to be petering out. She couldn’t hear anyone in the rest of the building, but it was still best to be cautious.

As she crept through the maze of rooms, her heart began to pound and her stomach grew more and more anxious as the buildings’ secrets were revealed. The place wasn’t as unoccupied as she’d assumed. Everywhere there were beds and raised tables, and on these lay the sorriest forms of humanity she’d ever encountered. Most were drenched in filthy bandages, many stained with blood, and their skin as grey and loose as the tatters of cloth. A few looked up as she passed, their sunken eyes pleading, but Maria regretfully had to push on past them. Occasional cries of anguish echoed out from hidden corners.

She needed to find Altaïr. Her worry for him had tripled now that she saw what horrors had been occurring here.

She went to round another corner but stopped sharply as a tall figure passed immediately in front of her. Pressing herself flat against the wall, she held her breath as the man walked unknowingly past, and then stopped at the end of the corridor. He turned to inspect the contents of a cabinet, and Maria got a first decent look at his face.

She knew this man from her Templar days. His name was Baldwin de Carreo. He was an associate of Garnier de Naplouse, and also a member of the Knights Hospitalier, though not, she believed, a Templar himself. She had never personally interacted with the man, but from what she had overheard, he was devoted student of de Naplouse’s, and tended to the doctor’s work with a zeal and eagerness that was known to put even the other Templars on edge. The doctor’s death at the hands of the Assassin Order - at the hands of her beloved, in fact - probably only pushed him further in that evil, twisted fanaticism. She could well understand why Altaïr would have considered even rumours of the man’s presence in the Holy Land to be an urgent concern worth dealing with personally. Now, it seemed, it was up to her to deal with him.

De Carreo turned and continued along the corridor, still unaware of Maria’s presence. Slowly, Maria peeled away from the wall and began to stalk him through the space, crouching low, like a leopard fixed on its prey. Suddenly he stopped. She froze. He didn’t turn around, but his head cocked slightly to the side. Had he heard her? Should she attack now, while there was still perhaps a chance to catch him unawares? He outweighed her, and was taller, broader, and likely at least a decently skilled fighter. A scuffle between them might alert the other guards, or he could call for help. Maria had only seconds to make a decision.

She sensed de Carreo begin to turn towards her, and seized her chance. She leapt forward, swiftly grabbing his nearest arm and twisting it high against his back, then used the leverage to drag him closer, forcing him to bend his knees. He tried to struggle but her hidden blade flashed quickly to his throat. That stilled him. He seemed surprised at first but the shock on his face was quickly replaced with a sinister confidence.

“Where is the assassin?” Maria growled at his ear.

“Assassin?” he began to chuckle, but the noise became strangled as Maria squeezed her blade tighter against his throat. “I don’t know what you mean. None of my patients is a killer.”

“A man in a hood,” she pressed. “With a blade, just like this. Altaïr.”

“And if I tell you, you will let me live?” de Carreo asked.

“I don’t see that you deserve to.”

“How so?” he said.

Maria scoffed. “What you’re doing here is unholy. You are torturing innocents!”

“I am trying to help mankind!” responded de Carreo, his voice suddenly full of anger. “To advance the understanding of healing, to save countless lives in the future! That a few lives should be sacrificed for the good of the world is surely something you Assassins understand.”

Maria paused, her blade still held against his throat.

“Your ‘brother’ was equally ignorant,” de Carreo added, with a twisted smile.

Fury filled Maria. She tightened her grip on his arm. “Where. Is. He?” she repeated.

“If I may not bargain for my life, I do not see why I should help you,” he said casually.

“Very well,” replied Maria darkly, and then she dug her blade into the flesh of his throat and drew it sharply to the side, ripping through the tissue and sending a cascade of red hot blood spilling to the ground. De Carreo made a strangled cry and clutched at the wound, sinking to his knees as she let him go, but his hands could do nothing to stem the flow and he soon folded to the ground into the puddle of his own blood, the light quickly fading from his wide eyes. He twitched a few times, and then was still.

Maria regarded his body coldly, with nothing but stern conviction in her heart. Then she shook herself and returned to the search. She peered into every room as she passed, hoping, pleading, to find her beloved in one of them. Panic was beginning to set in. She had to find Altaïr soon, before the guards discovered either her or de Carreo’s body, or this would all have been for nothing. Where was he? She entered an alcove, and was suddenly greeted with a sight that both filled her with relief and horror.

Altaïr lay limply on top of the table. His wrists and ankles were bound with coarse strips of leather, so tight that she could see sharp cuts in the red, raw skin around each restraint. His eyes were closed but as she stepped closer she could make out the shaky rise and fall of his chest, and breathed a sigh of relief. Alive. She gently swept the hair from his sweaty forehead and cupped his face. “Altaïr? Can you hear me?” His eyelids fluttered in response but remained closed. At his side, however, his fist clenched and he began to pull against the restraints. Quickly, Maria cut each of the bonds with her hidden blade and laced her fingers in his, squeezing his hand tenderly. “I’m here. It’s me, it’s Maria. Oh, my love,” her voice cracked. “What have they done to you?”

From outside there came a muffled voice. Maria froze. One of the guards from the gate was walking towards the room, calling back to someone else in the building. She could hear each heavy footstep thudding closer and closer. Altaïr mumbled something faintly. She squeezed his hand again, silently begging him not to rouse now, not when they were at their most vulnerable. The guard was getting closer. If she killed him, the others would soon wonder where he had gone and she could not move Altaïr in time to avoid a confrontation. But suddenly there was a cry of pain from another part of the building, and then the sound of the guard’s footsteps fading away as he went to investigate that instead. Maria exhaled shakily. They needed to leave, now.

Turning back to Altaïr, she saw that his eyes were open, but clouded with pain and unfocused, gazing blankly at the ceiling. “Altaïr?” she whispered again, leaning close over him. His eyes moved hazily towards the sound of her voice, but his gaze was blank and soon drifted away. What was wrong with him? Looking round in confusion, Maria now noticed several bottles and jars of dried leaves next to his bedside. She didn’t recognise the concoctions but there was a strong smell, like hemp or maybe poppy. Combined with the general odour of death and blood, it was nearly enough to make her gag.

She shook her head to clear it and then leant over Altaïr’s body and slid her hands underneath his shoulders and heaved. He cried out in pain as she hauled him off the table and his legs buckled, dragging them both to their knees. Maria’s hands shot to his sides to steady him, but she was shocked to feel something hot and wet beneath her fingers. She pulled them away with a sickening feeling and glanced slowly down. Her fingers were stained with crimson blood. It was starting to seep from beneath Altaïr’s robes, from some wound in his side. She swore violently. Altaïr slumped forwards against her, his breath laboured at her ear. For a moment she just knelt there, holding him closely in her arms and trying to think what to do. There was no time to try to stop the bleeding; another guard was bound to come through at any minute. If they could make it back to the Bureau they could treat Altaïr’s wounds and everything would be alright.

Decided, she pushed Altaïr away and wrapped his arm around her neck, trying to ignore his wince as she gripped the band of damaged skin around his wrist. Taking his weight on her, she staggered to her feet. His blood had begun to trail down his leg and drip onto the floor. With her free hand she tried to clasp at the wound, causing him to groan in pain and flinch away from her. No time for comfort - she began to stumble towards the exit, half-dragging Altaïr whose head still hung limply. His breathing was ragged as he limped along beside her, but he seemed to be conscious enough now to understand the need for silence, each groan he made muffled through gritted teeth.

The other patients seemed to understand as well, many of them staring pleadingly at Maria as they passed their beds, but remaining silent. Maria only wished there was time to rescue them as well. But Altaïr could not wait - when he was healed they could return and liberate all of de Carreo’s prisoners, but not now as blood continued to drip from his side.

They reached the door, unlocked it, and awkwardly negotiated their way through. Outside, Altaïr recoiled at the blinding sunlight, almost trying to push Maria away in his attempt to shield his eyes. She gripped his arms tightly. “Come on,” she whispered, and firmly but gently guided him out into the street.

Navigating their way back to the Bureau was challenging. Where possible, Maria kept them to the back alleys, away from prying eyes. Altaïr soon struggled to stay on his feet, trailing his free hand along each wall as they passed to support himself. Between his moans of pain, he had begun to murmur something, but Maria couldn’t make out what. On several occasions, Maria had to carefully set him down in the shadows, hating herself for it as he grimaced with pain, and eliminate a number of guardsmen who were blocking their path. By the time they arrived at the Bureau they had garnered far too much attention and she was exhausted.

“Altaïr!” Malik shouted. He ran forward to help as Altaïr finally slipped from Maria’s grasp and sunk to his knees. “What has happened?” Malik said breathlessly, alarmed to see the red staining Altaïr’s robes. Altaïr looked up at him as he firmly clasped his shoulder. His eyes were brighter now but still hazy and uncomprehending.

“Inside,” was all Maria replied. Malik nodded. Together they lifted Altaïr back to his feet and carried him inside the Bureau’s sanctuary.

“Lay him on the counter,” Malik instructed as he swept the books and quills hastily to the floor. Altaïr grunted and clawed at his side as Maria did so. His forehead shone with sweat.

“Water,” Malik gestured to the rafiq, who darted off.

“Who did this to you, brother?” Malik asked softly, his hand back on Altaïr’s shoulder. Altaïr was too weak to reply.

“Later,” snapped Maria. She drew her hidden blade and used it to slice open the sodden, bloody fabric around Altaïr’s wound. Malik nodded and helped her as they peeled away the robes to reveal Altaïr’s chest.

“By God…” Malik whispered. Criss-crossing Altaïr’s torso were at least five deep cuts, all quite fresh and unbandaged. A few had crude stitches holding them shut, including that at his side, where the threads had been broken by the movement of the last few hours. Several looked badly inflamed. Each was at a different stage of healing, and there was an awful precision to the sharpness of their edges. This had been deliberate.

The rafiq returned with a large jug of water. As Maria stepped back, stroking her hand across Altaïr’s forehead, Malik carefully poured the water onto the wounds. Altaïr started at the sensation, and Maria had to press his shoulders firmly back to the table. Again he mumbled something, his head rolling from side to side, but she couldn’t make out what it was. As the blood caked around his side washed, away the worst injury became clear. Malik examined it closely.

“This will require stitches. But first we must stop the bleeding.”

He motioned Maria to pass him a clean section of fabric. Folding it, he placed it carefully over Altaïr’s side and then positioned his hand on top and leant down with all of his weight.

Altaïr’s reaction was immediate. He cried out - in fear as well as pain - and his bleary eyes shot open and darted around wildly. “No no no. Not again. Stop this. Not again!” he gasped. His hands were gripping the edges of the table, knuckles shining and muscles shaking. Startled, Malik and Maria leapt back. As the pressure relented, Altaïr relaxed and fell back, his chest heaving.

“Altaïr?” Maria said uncertainly, taking his hand. “It’s us. We’re trying to help you. You’re safe. It’s alright.”

Altaïr made no reply, once again turning towards the sound of her voice but not seeming to be able to focus on anything around him. She squeezed his hand but got no reply.

Dismayed, Malik picked up the material and hesitantly pressed it back against Altaïr’s side. Altaïr cried out again and his legs kicked out, knocking the jug of water off the edge of the table top.

“Hold him down!” instructed Malik. The rafiq scurried to Altaïr’s legs and gripped both of his ankles where the restraints had cut into them, pressing them down hard. Altaïr writhed and fought even harder. Maria gripped his shoulders and leant over him, forcing him flat. She could feel his whole body trembling under her palms. He continued to moan “No no no no…” over and over.

“It’s alright, my love,” she whispered soothingly down at him. He didn’t seem to hear her.

Malik pressed down on the cloth again and Altaïr let out a strangled cry. His breath was coming in short, panicky gasps, and his body jerked as he tried to fight off whatever foes he was seeing through his clouded eyes. His cries and murmurs grew gradually louder as the others stood around anxiously and waited for the pressure to stop the bleeding. It seemed that whatever potions de Carreo had inflicted on him were beginning to wear off.

The fabric slowly stained red as it soaked up Altaïr’s blood. Eventually, the bleeding appeared to slow enough for Malik to cease the pressure and remove the cloth. He began to prepare a needle and thread for the stitches. Altaïr quietened and relaxed a little, giving Maria a chance to stretch her arms. They were already aching with the exertion of holding him down. And the worst was yet to come.

Malik managed to thread the needle and turned apprehensively to Altaïr. He steadied himself, and then reached down towards the edge of the wound.

“Forgive me,” he murmured. Then he pierced the needle point into the flesh.

Altaïr screamed. A raw, guttural howl of agony and horror, tearing out of him as his body bucked and thrashed against their grip. Tears pricked in Maria’s eyes. This was awful. What had de Carreo done to him to make him so frantic to escape? If it wasn’t taking all of her strength to hold him down against the table, she longed to cup his face, to do whatever it would take to make him realise that he was safe and with friends, and that - whatever horrible things had been done to him - it was all over now. They weren’t trying to hurt him. A teardrop dripped from her eye and fell down onto Altaïr’s chest.

Malik continued with the stitches, staring intently and grim-faced at his work and obviously trying to block out all the other distractions. Maria wondered how he could manage it. At least the quicker the wound was stitched, the sooner Altaïr’s pain would be over. A broken whimper escaped from Altaïr’s mouth amidst the roars and gasps of pain. His struggles were growing weaker, though it still needed both Maria and the rafiq to hold him still enough for Malik to work. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, and every inch of his face was contorted with agony, his eyes screwed tight.

“Stop. Please stop,” he managed to plead, his voice beginning to break. Maria’s heart twisted at the desperation in his voice. She’d never seen him like this before. He was always so strong. Seeing him like this… it hurt more than she could bear.

“Nearly done,” Malik muttered. He pulled the last of the stitches through Altaïr’s blood-stained side - eliciting another gurgled cry - and snapped the thread off at the end. Altaïr’s body slowly slackened as the pain ceased, and he collapsed exhausted against the table, eyes still closed and panting heavily. Maria removed her shaking hands from his arms and went to stroke his face again. He flinched weakly away from her touch at first, but seemed too weary to keep fighting. His skin was as hot as ash underneath her hand.

“It’s finished, my love. Rest now,” she whispered.

“I will prepare somewhere for him to rest,” said the rafiq, and vanished into the courtyard.

Malik fetched clean bandages and began to carefully wrap them around Altaïr’s chest, concealing the horrible wounds. Maria breathed a small sigh of relief as she lifted Altaïr’s now-limp form up so that the cloth could be passed underneath. His head lolled weakly against her, eyelid fluttering, but he remained silent as they worked, and only let out a faint moan as she set him down again.

Once the bandages were done, Malik warily reached for Altaïr’s wrist and inspected the damage. The skin there had been rubbed raw to the point of bleeding, and cut into by the edges of the restraints. Altaïr flinched ever so slightly away. Saying nothing, but with a grave expression, Malik poured out two bowls of water, and clean pieces of cloth to go with them. He handed one to Maria, and then, taking a wrist each, they began to slowly wash away the blood from Altaïr’s skin. The depth of the cuts and bruised skin around them was gradually revealed, but it still looked better, cleaner, without days’ worth of crusted redness. Altaïr lay still, exhausted.

“How could we have allowed this to happen?” Malik murmured quietly, not looking up.

Maria shook her head. They could never have foreseen something like this.

“I take it the one responsible is-”

“-Dealt with,” Maria finished, her voice cold. Dead by her blade. As he goddamn deserved. “He will never lay hands on an innocent again,” she said.

Malik nodded, seeming satisfied.

They cleaned, dried and bandaged both of Altaïr’s wrists and then his ankles. Altaïr barely stirred as they worked, though Maria could tell by the heavy rhythm of his breaths that he was still conscious. Then the rafiq returned and together he and Maria lifted Altaïr’s listless form off of the table and carried him out to the courtyard, where the rafiq had arranged rugs and cushions for him to rest on. Bowing respectfully, the rafiq returned indoors, and after offering a consoling hand on her shoulder, Malik followed him, leaving Maria and Altaïr alone.

Maria sighed deeply and gazed at Altaïr with sorrow as she stroked his forehead. His brow furrowed slightly into a frown and she watched intently as his eyes slid blearily open. They were glazed with pain and confusion, but not as worryingly blank as they had been before.

“…Maria?” he whispered weakly.

“It’s me, my love. I’m here,” she squeezed his hand.

His gaze flickered around the empty courtyard. “…W-Where…?” he croaked.

“You’re safe, you’re back at the Bureau.” She ran a hand through his tangled hair and smiled softly. “It’s all over.”

Seeming relieved to hear it, Altaïr slumped back into the cushions and his eyes fluttered slowly closed again. She gazed down tenderly at him as his breathing settled and the last of the tension drained out of his body. His forehead was still very hot and clammy to the touch, which aroused a wave of concern in her, but seeing him almost peaceful and back with them, safe, was enough to dampen the worry for now. She leant over and placed a quiet kiss on his forehead, and then left him to his rest.

* * *

Altaïr’s fever broke on the third day.

It had been a horrific ordeal for Maria to watch as he suffered and burnt up from the inside out, and there were dark moments in the dead of night when she honestly didn’t know if he was going to pull through. She had barely slept since they had brought him back. Though she and Malik took it in shifts to stay by Altaïr’s side, she found that not even the bone-deep exhaustion was enough to steal her away from fear for him when she tried to get some rest.

Malik, likewise, seemed grey with tiredness, bitten with worry, and constantly uneasy. When it had become apparent that the fever ravaging Altaïr’s body wasn’t abating, he’d sent the rafiq out to seemingly every apothecary in the city for any poultices and tinctures that might help calm the infection. Maria got the sense that he didn’t really know what to do for Altaïr much better than she did.

They applied fresh poultices to Altaïr’s wounds often. At first, it needed both of them, as Altaïr continued to try to fight them off, but as he grew weaker and more delirious in the grip of the fever, Maria found she could manage alone. She still couldn’t stand to look directly at the cruel incisions as she carefully peeled away the old bandages and replaced them with fresh cloth. Altaïr would still stir whenever anyone touched him. He was too feverish to be fully conscious - when his eyes were open, they were dull and distant, and never managed to stay open for long. During the worst of the waves, he began to writhe underneath his blankets. His head would toss from side to side, his face twisted with anguish, and his hands clutched emptily at the air or sometimes at his bandages. Maria had to gently pry his clawing hands away, and often sat for many hours holding them at the wrists and trying to soothe him back into sleep.

He also shied away when she tried to help him drink the potions they’d acquired. Whether that was because of the foul taste, or because of associations with whatever had happened to him during his captivity, she didn’t know. It broke her heart, but she still patiently cradled his head and poured each dose down his unwilling throat.

What distressed her the most, however, were the quiet cries that constantly slipped from his lips. He would call out through the delirium with muffled curses or pleas as he tried to fight against whatever invisible demons he was imagining around him, or sometimes mumble strange things she didn’t understand, about mankind or science or morality, apparently arguing with people who weren’t there.

On one occasion he seemed to ask after her, and for a moment her heart was lifted, thinking he had finally returned to them, but when she leant close over him and whispered “I’m here”, he just continued to repeat the same breathless murmurs - “Maria… w-where are… where are you…” - eyes unseeing. Eventually she tried to harden her heart to his cries, and just stayed for hours by his side, tending to his injuries and wiping gently at his clammy forehead with a damp cloth.

On the third day, she was almost dozing off with Altaïr’s head cradled in her lap, when suddenly she heard him speak. “Maria?” His voice was croaky, but sounded more his own than it had since he first descended into the haze of the fever. Hope leapt in her heart and she looked down at him. His eyes were fully open, bright and alive and gazing up at her. He moved to sit up, and though he grimaced and pressed a hand to his chest, with Maria’s help he managed to get upright. He looked around the courtyard and then turned back to her.

“How long have I been out?”

Her face broke into a smile as relief flooded her. “Three days, my love. I thought- …I worried you would not return to us.”

She rubbed at the back of his hand. He squeezed back hers back.

“I dreamt… ” - he frowned - “…strange things.” A dark look crossed his face like a cloud eclipsing the sun. Maria held his hand tighter.

“De Carreo is dead,” she announced. “And the rest of his patients have been liberated.”

Altaïr nodded, but Maria could see in his eyes that his mind was still elsewhere, doubtless dwelling on the last clear memories he had. He shuddered ever so slightly, but then he blinked and turned to smile at her, this time consciously.

“Did you come alone?” he asked, surprised.

Maria shook her head quickly, suddenly remembering. “Malik!” she called out loudly.

There was the sound of movement from inside the Bureau, followed by a loud thump and muffled cursing, and then Malik appeared in the doorway. His hair was dishevelled and he looked dazed, but his eyes shone as he noticed Altaïr.

“Brother, you’re awake!” he cried, smiling widely.

He rushed to kneel beside them, and grasped Altaïr’s shoulder firmly.

“It is good to have back with us,” he said. His voice was warm with sincerity and relief.

Altaïr bowed his head and lifted a hand weakly to his chest in acknowledgement. The shift in position made him wince and Maria felt his weight suddenly pressing back on her again as he faltered. “Easy, my love,” Maria calmed him. Malik quickly caught Altaïr by his other shoulder and they lowered him back against the cushions. A few beads of sweat had reappeared on his forehead and his eyes were outlined with frown-lines as his face twisted with pain.

Maria picked up the wet cloth and dabbed gently at his face. He leant subtly into the cool of the cloth as Malik unfastened his robes and began to unbandage his chest. “Just breathe,” Maria whispered. Removing the bandages, Malik examined the injuries underneath.

“Argh! Son of a jackal…” Altaïr flinched and cursed beneath his breath as Malik pressed carefully at the edges of the cuts.

“Apologies, brother,” Malik responded, but with a wry smile. He finished his examination and straightened up. “Your wounds are healing well,” he declared happily. “In a few days, we should be able to return to Masyaf. It will be better for you to finish healing there.”

* * *

Two days later, the three assassins sat aside their heavily-burdened horses, the road ahead winding into the parched mountains and Jerusalem slowly disappearing into the sand-haze behind them. Maria rode behind Altaïr, keeping a watchful eye on him. His injuries were not yet fully healed and she knew the jostling of riding had to be paining him, but he seemed to handle his steed confidently on the rocky path. The strength of this man she called her beloved never ceased to amaze her.

She paused and turned to look back at the city. She hoped it would be a long time before they ever had to return to Jerusalem. She felt no doubt that they would both be plagued by the memories of what had happened there for some time to come. But for now at least, they could put it behind them and focus on returning Altaïr to his full strength.

“What is it, my love?” Altaïr’s voice cut across her senses. She turned back around. He and Malik had halted their steeds, and were waiting for her. Altaïr’s face was lined with concern as he gazed at her. Another pang of love for him blossomed in her heart. She drew her horse alongside his, and leant over to him.

“Nothing, my love,” she smiled, and kissed him deeply, feeling his lips soften beneath hers as he ardently returned the kiss.

Malik sighed with feigned impatience ahead of them. Altaïr’s mouth rose into a smirk as he and Maria slowly parted and settled back into their saddles. Then, spurring their horses on, they continued together along the path towards home.

#long post #my fic #my art #assassin's creed #assassin's creed 1 #altair ibn-la'ahad #maria thorpe #whump #hurt/comfort #winter whumperland #winter whumperland 2017 #haha #i hereby ban myself from participating in fic exchanges ever again XD

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the-river-person · 4 years ago

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Worldbuilding Tangent Part 1

This is gonna be a post where I get sucked down a rabbit hole about the worldbuilding of the Underground. There are a some things I think are worth noticing. I’ve seen a couple fics and comics where people acknowledge the size of the Underground. But I don’t think we’ve really stopped to take a good look at it much, and I want to cause its fun. Please note that these are my own observations from the game and that It’s possible I might interpret what I see in a different way than others. Let’s start with just the Ruins and the city of Home. (plus some mentions of New Home. But its relevant.) We know that the Monsters were sealed away Underground and trekked across the massive cavern to where the Ruins are now, and they made a city called “Home”. The book in Toriel’s home says “Cavern’s” indicating that its a single cavern with the possessive apostrophe on the end instead of multiple caverns. A cavern is defined as a category of cave that is particularly vast and has formed naturally in soluble rock and grows speleothems (Cave formations like flowstone, stalagmites, stalactites, columns, straws, or drapery). I thought this meant there was only one single vast cavern until I came upon “The Glossary of Geology” which said that the word ‘cavern’ could either be used to talk about one single vast cave or a system of caves, chambers, and connected tunnels. This sounds more like what I see in the game, because we know that there seem to be large cave areas separated from one another and connected by tunnels and smaller caves. So we have a series of connected large caves and tunnels. The first of which we see is the Ruins. The ruins are supposed to be a small part of the ancient city of Home, where the monsters lived for a while after being sealed Underground. Why did they eventually decided to move back to the main entrance where they were first sealed? We don’t know for sure, but based on the timing, it might have been due to Chara. We know Chara fell down the same hole as Frisk does at the start of the game, because the flashback cutscene shows this and because Toriel returned Chara’s body there and buried it. Yet we also know that Asriel and Chara left the Underground through the only real entrance and exit available to them without a ridiculous amount of climbing... The one we find in New Home. One possibility is that Asgore built the city of New Home AFTER they died, but this doesn’t work because Asgore tells us that Toriel became disgusted with his actions and “She left this place, never to be seen again.” Since we know the place Toriel ended up was the closed off Ruins, then New Home would have needed to be built sometime before the death of the royal children, but after Chara’s initial fall. (there is the possibility that it was built before that. I have doubts that Asgore and Toriel would be letting little Asriel wander alone through a set of abandoned ruins, but you could make an argument for it depending on various possible circumstances). Anyway, you the player get to see the ruins as you follow Toriel and solve puzzles. And while they’re somewhat sizable, they don’t seem much like an ancient city, more like a couple of old streets, a park, or something like that. Perhaps a set of gardens since it appears to be set outside (will come back to this in a moment). Then we come to an area where we see the actual city of Home, inaccessible to the player. We’re on a balcony, suggesting that the city is at a lower elevation, and that the ruins we’ve been traveling through are much higher up, possibly part of a castle. The city itself is quite big, containing towers and domes and buildings of all kinds, stretching into the distance. Looking at the Ruins themselves, we know that they’re open air (as much as you can be underground). There are piles of leaves everywhere (despite there only being a single tree, suggesting that there are leaf bearing plants growing above or on the walls outside of the player’s line of sight. And beds of flowers grow in various places. Even the occasional pool, stream, or fountain makes its appearance in this area along with all of the puzzles (this stream could be the very source of the River we see later in the game with the River Person in his boat and Ice Wolf sending blocks of ice down to Hotland). Along with the addition of Toriel’s Home, which appears identical to the one in New home in almost every way, we might guess that this area is an upper area of the original Castle (or Royal Palace, whatever word works) and that it was probably an open air garden area for the Royal Family or others near them. Personally I feel like it could be a play area for the young Prince Asriel to practice at puzzling without his parents worrying too much, but I don’t know that there’s much evidence supporting this. Also there’s the more dangerous puzzles involving spikes, which might have been added later, but we’ve no way of knowing for sure (Didn’t Papyrus suggest that spikes were every child’s dream?). Toriel’s Home itself, much like Asgore’s Home at the end of the game, also acts as a guard to the main exit. An exit to the Ruins into the rest of the Underground, and later an exit from the Underground altogether. This sort of thing fits with the whole Boss Monster idea, which in traditional games act as threshold guardians. So in both cities, the King and Queen were overseers of the main door in and out of the city, placed directly in their living quarters. I have to assume that both are part of a much bigger castle because while they appear tiny when we actually play in them, there’s a scene in Waterfall where we get a good glimpse of the city of New Home and there’s definitely a big whopping castle there in the middle. So either Asgore and Toriel just...don’t live in the big castle (why would they build it?) or Asgore’s home is just a small part of the castle, the royal family’s living quarters. And since its identical to Toriel’s home in the ruins, which is elevated above the main city for unstated reasons, I think it might be reasonable to assume that it too is part of a large castle or palace and acts as the royal family’s living quarters apart from rooms where matters of state are dealt with. Though based on the rooms of various levels it could be a training ground, store rooms, or a set of different rooms that make up that level of the castle. The entire area of the Ruins and Home are populated by various small and weak monsters. Some of them being almost feral or wild in nature, while others appear to be there just to hide or make trouble. A Froggit tells us that Toriel was seen coming from the lower city itself with groceries, which makes it more or less certain that some sort of civilization is thriving in the main city itself, with enough Monsters around for a working community and things like stores you can buy groceries from. Finally the end of the Ruins, reached by going through Toriel’s home and down to a lower level (which would put it back down on the same level as the city of Home and lower than the rest of the Ruins you travel through), is a large pair of doors with the Delta Rune on them. Beyond them is another long tunnel ended not by a door but by pillars and a wide open dark space occupied by Flowey and a patch of grass and bare earth. Most of the Ruins have the purple flooring, like tile or paved stone. Only the first area where you fall down and this area have this... open feeling. I suspect this area might have been a courtyard just outside the main castle doors but before the outer wall. And indeed we find a second set of ornate doors to leave through, entering out into the Snowdin Forest. The very first thing we see there is the doors we came through set in a very large and purple stone wall. We don’t see much of it, but we know that the Ruins are inaccessible to us and the rest of the Underground, so the wall must be either very tall, or might totally seal off the Home area from the rest of the caverns. It is certainly not a natural feature due to its color, the resemblance to the stonework of the rest of the ruins, and the stylized doorway of the same colored stone set in it.

#I'm having fun #cant you tell?#undertale #worldbuilding #analysis #the ruins undertale #snowdin forest #home undertale #toriel's home #Flowey the Flower #cavern #cave #caverns #part 2 eventually

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