#if this were a normal post i'd go back and edit it

[captainsophiestark]

Vigilante Book Club

Jason Todd x Reader

Masterlist - Join My Taglist! - Part 2 Part 3

Written for my personal fic writing challenge for 2024, Sophie's Year of Fic! Featuring a new fic being posted every Friday, all year long :)

Fandom: DC

Summary: After having an all-around terrible day, the only person who might be able to make it better is a certain book-loving vigilante.

Word Count: 1,562

Category: Fluff

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

I sighed heavily as the tomato I'd set on the counter and turned my back on for two seconds rolled onto the floor and went splat. Some days were just meant to be shitty, apparently.

Today had started out perfectly nice and ordinary. The sun had even been shining, which was a miracle in itself sometimes in Gotham. But then, I'd left my bag unattended at the coffee shop while grabbing my order from the counter, before returning to my table. It didn't have anything legitimately valuable in it, in terms of what the thief got, but it did have my favorite copy of my favorite book, which I'd had for the better part of a decade. All my little notes, bookmarked favorite pages, and the first edition put into print before a few typos and errors were corrected on later runs; in other words, irreplacable. And now it was gone forever.

The rest of my day had likewise been terrible, although normally mundane events might've been colored a little by the loss of my book. Now, all I wanted to do was eat something I liked and then immediately go to bed. And even that wasn't going to plan.

I huffed, setting down the knife I'd grabbed when I turned my back on the tomato and intending to replace it with some paper towels. I froze mid-turn, however, at the sound of the window in my hallway sliding open. Because of course this day hadn't ended yet.

Slowly, as quietly as possible, I turned back to the counter and picked up the knife. I knew I'd locked that window, but apparently someone had managed to just quietly and easily slide it open. That wasn't a good sign.

I crept across the kitchen, tensed and ready to run at a moment's notice as I neared the corner to the hallway. I wanted to see who or what I might be dealing with, while also being prepared to run if I needed to.

I paused at the edge of the kitchen, taking a few deep breaths to calm my nerves. Finally, I mustered up the courage to slowly lean around the corner to peek into the hallway. When I did, I found someone standing much, much closer than I'd been expecting them to be.

"AH!" I screamed, jumping back while brandishing the knife out in front of me. I made it halfway across the room in one leap as the person in my house shifted backwards too.

"Shit," he swore, voice slightly distorted by the vocal modulator in his very recognizable helmet. The Red Hood. Standing in my apartment, apparently after having broken through my window.

I lowered my knife slightly and stopped in my living room, just a few steps from my kitchen. I wasn't completely relaxed, but in general, the Red Hood seemed to have a helpful, non-dangerous-if-you're-not-evil reputation. But he'd also just broken into my house.

"What the hell are you doing?" I demanded. Red Hood held up his hands to show he was unarmed, and apparently also to answer my question: he held a familiar bag I thought I'd never see again in his hand.

"Sorry for scaring you. I didn't think anyone was here, I was planning to just drop this off and go. But I busted some black market smugglers today, and one of their lower-ranking guys had this. Seemed like something you might want back."

I barely let him get through the end of his sentence before I dropped the knife on the nearest table and rushed across the room to grab my bag. I yanked it open while it was still in Red Hood's hands, peering inside with my heart hammering in my chest. I almost collapsed on the spot when I found my book inside, looking exactly the way I'd left it.

"Oh thank goodness!" I cried. I turned back to Red Hood, still clutching my book tight. "Thank you so much for bringing this back to me! I was heartbroken when it got taken."

Red Hood just shrugged. "Glad I could help."

He started shifting back towards the door, carefully setting my bag and the rest of its contents down on the counter, but I couldn't just let him leave like that. He'd quite literally saved my day; I wanted to do something for him in return.

"Wait! Can I... offer you dinner, or something?" I asked. "I was about to start making some tacos..."

Red Hood's gaze drifted to the kitchen as mine did, landing on the pitiful start I'd made on dinner and the tomato still on the floor. I couldn't be totally sure because of the helmet, but I thought I heard him snort.

"I appreciate the sentiment, but that doesn't look anything like dinner. Maybe next time I bust some criminals I'll find a cookbook I can bring you."

I scoffed in mock-indignation, but I couldn't quite hide a smile all the same.

"I know how to cook, alright? Today's just been... a little rough. Until you brought my book back, at least!"

Red Hood chuckled. "Well, I'm glad I could help. Makes my day a lot better, too."

We shared a smile (I assumed, since I couldn't technically see his face), then I lit up as a shock of inspiration hit me.

"Oh! What if I let you borrow this book!" I cried. "It's absolutley fantastic, I promise you won't forget it. Since you knew it was important, I'm assuming you're a reader?"

He stared at me, looking a bit taken aback.

"I'm a very big reader, but... you'd actually let me borrow this?"

He gestured to the book still clutched tightly in my hand, and I whipped it up to my chest again, holding it tight to me.

"Hell no! I won't let anyone borrow this copy, ever. But I have a loaner copy I've used to get my friends invested in the story that I'd be happy to share with you. And... maybe you could come back when you're done reading it, and we could talk about it? Maybe over dinner? I promise I'm a better cook than the current state of my kitchen would suggest."

He didn't respond right away, to the point that I started to get a little nervous. Maybe he'd really wanted to leave when he'd first started heading back to the window, and didn't want anything to do with me or this conversation. Just when I started crafting something to say to let him off the hook, he finally spoke up again.

"...As long as you're sure it wouldn't be an inconvenience for you."

"What? Of course I'm sure! If you're interested, I'd love someone else to talk to about my favorite book. And I'd still love to make you dinner as a thank you for bringing this back to me."

Red Hood nodded. "Okay. That'd be nice, thanks."

"Sure thing. Let me go and grab you my other copy of this book, one second."

I ducked into my bedroom, going straight to the bedside table and carefully setting down my copy of my favorite book. No way I wanted to take a single risk of anything happening to it again.

Once that book was safe, I turned to my brimming bookshelf to grab the copy for Red Hood. Only a fellow reader would understand the importance of returning the copy he brought back to me, and honestly, I couldn't wait to hear his thoughts on the story after his first read through.

I returned to the hallway and handed the book over with a smile. Red Hood took it, tucking it safely away in a deceptively large pocket in his hero suit.

"Thanks," he said. "I'll come back in... a week?"

My eyebrows shot up. "Is that enough time for you to read it?"

"Of course. I've gotta do something to fill the time I'm not running around catching book thieves."

I smiled, and I got the distinct impression that Red Hood was doing the same. After a moment, he cleared his throat, and started heading back towards the window again.

"Anyway... thanks for the book. I'll see you next week."

"See you next week! Bring your thoughts on the book, and maybe a different mask so you can actually eat dinner."

He chuckled. "Don't worry, I wasn't planning to try to force it under the hood."

"Good. And feel free to use the door instead of the window next time!"

He just waved, clearly making no commitment as he stepped out onto the fire escape. I smiled as I watched him go, waving back when he met my eyes and shut the window. I moved closer and watched him as long as I could before he disappeared over the rooftops, off into the night for whatever other vigilante stuff he had to do tonight.

I sighed, staying at the window for another moment to process the past ten minutes. Everything had started to feel like a hallicination, possibly brought on by my truly terrible day.

No matter what, though, I could reassure myself it was real with the newly-returned book on my bedside table, or the knife I'd left in my living room. Somehow, my precious copy of my favorite story had made its way back to me. And even better, I now had a date with a vigilante scheduled to address said book.

I just needed to figure out what dinner went with 'Red Hood comes over to discuss literature'.

****************

Everything Taglist: @rosecentury @kmc1989 @space-helen

DC Taglist: @gaychaosgremlin

[haliteatiger]

Happy Werewolf Wednesday, ya'll! We're serving up a big pot of tea tonight so get those cups ready!

Special thanks to Blackbackedjackal and King for their help in putting this together, editing, and especially to Jackal for being so supportive and encouraging. I'm very much not normally the type to do call-out posts, but people need to be aware of Dogblud, as she has hurt, not only myself, but quite a few others as well, and seems to have somehow gotten away with behaving like this for 20-odd years. I'm of the mind she shouldn't be allowed to do so any more, hence this post.

TL;DR - Beware of Dogblud, aka Ashryn, aka DogofBlud, aka ThatDogMagic. Very, very long post under the cut.

With everything happening with DogBlud and Blackbackedjackal's studio, I felt emboldened to come forward with my own experiences with her. This is something I've been carrying around since it happened roughly 2 years ago. It was one of the main reasons that put me off drawing werewolves, my own characters, or engaging any more in the fandom. I've hinted at it a few times but I've never had the energy to come forward and deal with the fall out. I wanted to move on with the rest of my life because IRL was more important than online drama. And I knew her behavior would come back to bite her sooner or later, regardless of what I did. 

It's been very validating to see that I was right.

It was around the time that Blud and I became friends that I was feeling a bit burnt out on werewolves. I'd been trying to pull together my own werewolf-related project for something close to 12 years. The past 4 years had also been pretty draining on me creatively and socially, as it had for a lot of artists with regards to the pandemic. I also had some IRL things I was dealing with: mainly with my marriage and transitioning between medications to manage my anxiety + bipolar.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the foresight to screenshot everything at the time. I do have logs from back when we roleplayed together. There are several conversations in them but because they were saved as text documents, they're pretty dubious in terms of solid evidence. 

It would have been better if I had taken screenshots as it was happening, rather than just saving the logs. With what I *do* have, however, I feel as though it may be enough to make the point that I'm trying to make, and to exhibit how horrible things got.

I'll provide some context.

I had talked with Blud on and off over the years, and we had always gotten along. We had a lot in common and after we had started talking more, our friendship eventually grew into a collaborative project. We were going to combine our stories and write a comic based on it. We had a lot of discussions on how Blud was reticent to do this in the beginning and how she wanted a contract to be made up so that in the event that something *did* happen, we could both walk away feeling like it was handled fairly.

Honestly, I should have listened to the first alarm that went off in my brain, when, in an act of ominous foreboding she said something along the lines of don't be so sure, it could happen. It was in response to me being like "we're getting along so well and share so much of a bond right now. I can't fathom that being a problem!" 

The contract never materialized. It was something we had decided to do *after* we had put together something of a prototype project to see how well we worked together. It made complete sense to me at the time as we were both eager to focus on the fun parts of writing and drawing together.

It was decided that I would be the lead artist (doing coloring and final lines) while Blud would do everything else (which was inking, layouts, and the majority of the writing). The both of us felt that she had more experience in those areas. I also believed that she had a better knack for it as well. I had felt that she had a better understanding of story structure than myself. And I thought that Blud had felt the same way about my art. That I had the experience to take point on that. 

Since I had collaborated with other artists and writers before, I attempted to approach the project with the same sort of professionalism I always do. Especially the projects that I genuinely thought stood a chance of being published in the future. We had started out trying to get a feel for each other's flows and rhythms. I had expected Blud to try and meet me in the middle of where our processes would potentially differ from one another, so that we could develop a fairly smooth workflow.

I had also expected, according to our discussions on the matter, that we would value each other's opinions on things and take them into consideration. We had such good synchronicity already.

In the beginning, there wasn't any unusual behavior that caught my attention. Blud was a bit uncomfortable with trying out new things but I did my best to accommodate her so that our project could move forward without too much turbulence. She had also mentioned to me before that she was autistic, and since my husband is also autistic, I knew how difficult it could be when it came to adapting to new routines. But when it was time for her to deliver the first set of layouts, it wasn't at all what I expected.

What I had expected was something with margins, clearly marked boxes, and figures that I could do rough lines over. I also expected notes that confirmed what we had discussed earlier about the project; that way I knew what she wanted or if there would be any changes. She took offense to this, feeling like I was violating our agreement. Though Blud did try to give me space with regards to the actual art, and while she would offer criticisms here and there, I trusted her opinion as an artist and as a friend. But apparently that didn't go both ways. In fact, Blud seemed to be offended that I expected more from her.

Blud agreed to concede. She suddenly seemed fine with the changes that I had asked for after seeing the layouts. I guess she was feeling overstimulated by the change and I might have been applying too much of a critical tone to her responses to begin with. I have had to deal with rejection sensitivity throughout my life and it's certainly prompted me to approach what people say to me online with a bit of scrutiny (sometimes too much).

And while I was mildly annoyed, although admittedly I was more concerned with Blud's overall reaction to my asking for clarification about several things in the layouts, I let it go. But it seemed like there was a problem. The majority of my ideas were either rejected or outright overridden with Blud convincing me that my faulty memory had made me unable to remember what we had agreed upon. Or that I might have been misremembering in my own favor.

There was one time where we were discussing a monster's design. Blud had already decided to settle on one design that she had come up with, even as I continued to offer other suggestions. The story was to take place in my setting, so I was under the impression that I got to decide what kind of creatures should populate it. The conversation ended somewhat ambiguously. I had assumed that we'd come to a solid conclusion later. 

I came back the next day and it turned out that we were using her design because that was what we had decided on. "Don't you remember? You really need to do something about that faulty memory of yours, Tek. I can't be doing this for you all the time."

At which point, Blud would go back and meticulously scour the conversation until she managed to find a set of lines that would make it seem as though I had 100% agreed. Even when I tried to explain that I had meant something else, she took it as an affront on her inability to understand nuances due to her autism.

I admit that my memory isn't that greatest at times, but I've never had anyone complain about it before. And none of my friends have ever minded providing reminders to me if I did misremember something incorrectly. We all forget stuff at times, right? It's *still* something that I'm self-conscious about because (like a lot of people with ADHD) my memory seems selective at times. This was, apparently, a problem that I needed to manage. 

And even as I'm remembering these incidents to the best of my ability, I've already spent so much time recounting all of this to friends. I feel confident in my recollection. There are some details that may overlap or become entwined with other things, but it all basically tells the same story. Especially in conjunction with what's been said by others. You're free to take it as hearsay since I do not have screenshots to back this up.

I will mention (since I've been told it's something that Blud has taken particular interest in) that at one point, I did have a crush on her. I was having some problems IRL, and it was nice to have someone whom I felt actually understood me. I also felt like I saw a lot of myself in her. I think that, at one point, I did describe her as the kind of "girlfriend" I would want. Blud seemed to indicate the feeling was mutual.

Between our collaborative partnership and all of the details we shared about our lives, it did feel like an intimate relationship at times. I had no intentions of pursuing it. We were not compatible in our romantic and sexual identities, and I had no intention of leaving my current partner for her.

I had begun to notice red flags, even if I wasn't ready to accept them yet.

I've had experience with abusive relationships in the past but they were in person, and not online. I knew what to look out for and yet I was being willfully ignorant about our friendship. I wanted to give Blud the benefit of the doubt. I wanted the project to work *so* badly that I was willing to work with her increasing demands as the months went by.

I had no idea that those demands would change into, quite literal, temper tantrums. It would then trigger my fawning response which was due to an abusive family situation that I had dealt with before I moved to Canada. The tactic was this: concede to someone until there was a time that they either understood reason or I had the chance to use it against them if necessary.

I started to take screenshots. I wish that I had taken a lot more of them so that everyone could get a better idea of what was happening. I did go back and manage to record the majority of the first outburst. It was the first inkling I had that Blud wasn't playing with a full deck of cards. I knew that that would be one of the first conversations that she would promptly delete. And consequently, I was right.

This assortment of screenshots will exhibit the first serious confrontation that Blud had with me. I am absolutely *not* proud of how I handled this. I was literally panicking at the time and doing whatever I could to get her to calm down. Because I have a temper that can look similar to this in person, I knew that I had to wait until the post-tantrum clarity would hit Blud. I tried my best to not lose my own temper in turn but looking back, I feel that I came off as sounding too timid.

I didn't want to ruin this project.

I wanted to make a comic with an individual that I admired and respected as a fellow artist. And, with me not knowing how to respond, my main priority was to not make things any worse than they already were.

Below is the conversation in its entirety:

I had taken this screenshot on my phone after I had stepped away to compose myself. Blud had handled the confrontation and criticism with a reasonable amount of apprehension. But what had not occurred to me was that I could have said something that would remind her of past experiences with a roleplaying group.

It was something that had evidently scarred Blud for life.

I took away the wrong things from what she had told me, choosing to focus on the aspects of the "betrayal" that had appeared to bother her the most. And in hindsight, I did not see the correlation. I was genuinely apologetic that I had hurt her feelings.

But I *will* critique Blud for her poor handling of the situation. Whether or not I had hurt her feelings, no one is entitled to act like this or claim that this is what attempting to resolve a problem should look like.

I wasn't sure on how to initially respond to Blud. It had been ages since I'd had to deal with someone flying off the handle like that.

The following screenshots are where the conversation picked up, after she had already deleted the above message:

We had weathered the "storm" and after Blud calmed down, she was ready to communicate. There was a part of me that was genuinely sincere when I apologized to her. I did mean it when I said that I had no intentions of hurting her and that I hadn't considered how my statement would sound to her.

I had hoped that this had been a stress response due to factors outside of our collaboration. And especially when I took into account how she had interacted with me in the past. I knew that Blud had a lot going on IRL, and that she had already put a considerable amount of energy into this project.

I had taken her meltdown more personally than she could perceive that I would, because this was something that was acceptable to her. She had a "condition" that would absolve her of these abhorrent meltdowns and I needed to get used to them if we were going to continue working on that project together.

I was shaking the entire time we were typing in the chat.

I was sincere in my responses. I really did want to work things out with Blud and give her the benefit of the doubt. I could have been taking the things that she said too personally or maybe I had been reading too much into the situation. Was there a chance that I could have been misreading her outburst? I tried my best to keep an open mind though I was still somewhat baffled by the fact that she would have meltdowns as often as she did.

I confided in my husband and some other friends about the situation. They were also bewildered by Blud's actions.

By this point, I was struggling with the reality that this collaboration was most likely *not* going to work out but I still wanted to try. I still cared about Blud. We would still hang out together and talk about things like music, our characters, or our stories.

While I did have the foresight to go back and screenshot this section, I wasn't fast enough to get screenshots of everything else that I will be going over. Blud *did* admit to going back and deleting certain exchanges due to a mixture of shame; not wanting to look at them when she would scroll through our conversations. 

In retrospect, it was very telling.

And even after that meltdown, I still enjoyed the friendship that I had with her. I kept my guard up but I was willing to make compromises on her behalf if it resulted in better communication between the two of us. Blud made me promise to immediately tell her if I had a problem with something. I also agreed to keep notes of our conversations.

It worked for the most part.

In the end though, it became apparent that Blud wasn't willing to do the same for me (even after we had an extended conversation about it). I then realized that I had been tasked with basically *managing* her autism for her. I was already busy with my supposedly "bad memory" at the time; and Blud was more than ready to scroll back up through our conversations to cherry-pick a line or two of text to remind me of what was said earlier.

Because, for her, circumstances couldn't ever change. If they did, it would mean that Blud had lost control of the situation and that she was in the wrong. She could *not* be in the wrong. 

And if she was in the wrong? It would take solid evidence, three witnesses, and a court of law to prove it.

She had two other major meltdowns after this. I managed to step away from communicating with her through one of them and I don't remember the other meltdown lasting very long. She immediately deleted the texts of both of those instances before I could take screenshots of them.

It seemed like I could do nothing right when it came to Blud, no matter the lengths I would go to accommodate her. I knew that it was a common tactic used by abusers. I finally accepted that our partnership wasn't going to work out and I began thinking about an exit strategy. The final straw was when she began to expect me to be at her beck and call.

I had promised that I would be there for her, within reason, and I was willing to offer reassurances whenever she would ask me for them. The promise had been made back when we had first started to talk to one another with more frequency, before Blud had shown me her true colors. I would end up completely underestimating just how badly she would need reassurance.

To be frank, I underestimated a lot about Blud in the beginning.

I would end up mentioning that I enjoyed my space in several different conversations with her. That there was a chance that I might be offline for several days so I could take care of things IRL and recharge my social batteries. I'm somewhat of a recluse. And an adult who enjoys things that aren't online.

She said that it was fine.

I became incredibly anxious when I would talk to Blud, especially after her somewhat abrupt change in personality.

I then attempted to put my foot down about boundaries and this is what she had to say:

I decided to walk away for a bit and I came back after I had had some time to think things over. This wasn't healthy for either of us. I wrote a couple of sentences to say goodbye to Blud before I blocked her. I knew that my actions would probably infuriate her. She had told me in the past that she *hated* not being able to have the final word... which she was able to do through email:

“And I'm not letting you pretend you have control over the situation, or the high ground. You distinctly have neither. But since you're determined to stick to your 'principles' on this, I've decided to make it easier for you.”

She thought that she was absolved of all sins just because I had said that I would stand by her at her worst. And at the time that I said that, I had no idea that her worst would be her trying everything possible to protect her boundaries while stomping all over mine. It didn't matter what she said or how often she would apologize when I would confront her. She kept doing it.

I admit that I wasn't perfect in this situation either.

There were times when I was condescending, critical, or downright mean when I talked to Blud because that was the way I had felt when she was talking to me. I soon realized that it didn't matter either way. I could have been using the friendliest tone imaginable and she still would have perceived it as either mocking or dismissive on my end. There were even a few times where I would preface my explanations with an advisory “please know that I am not attacking you and try to read this in an understanding tone,”etc. I would then post an explanation I had spent hours picking at to ensure that there was no way she could misinterpret the intent. Even so, she still read the majority of what I said as criticism and would take it to heart.

I never expected Blud to do something that made her uncomfortable; nor did I expect her to overextend herself when it came to our project. I would go out of my way to make sure everything was fine when we would talk about it. I only expected mutual respect in return.

When we would get into discussions (arguments), she would never attempt to understand my point of view or let me explain myself. It would have made it about me when it should have been about Blud and her needs. She sometimes would agree to come to a compromise about something, but only if I would admit that I was in the wrong.

I know that if Blud was to look at these screenshots, she'd be incredulous that I'm trying to distract from the horrible things that *I* did. And those horrible things that I did? I tried my best to work with her.

It wasn't just her poor teamwork that bothered me. It was her attitude and the lack of respect that she showed me. She would never ask me to clarify something that I said; always assuming that it was a criticism against her. I can only speculate that Blud did not want to hear about how any of this was her fault, like in the email she sent me.

I don't know if I was actually her friend at any point. Friends make efforts to understand one another. Ideally, they’d want their friendships to continue, and they would want everyone to be getting along and having fun. She seemed to actively defy that.

I would argue that things like this don't just happen in a vacuum. There's almost always a reason for such things, but it's honestly a mystery to me as to where this vitriol comes from. I don't know why Blud sees monsters in every word, especially if they come from a  "friend". 

I've seen her viscously mock herself during meltdowns; it seems like she hates herself and expects everyone else to hate her too. I think that she wants it to be the truth, so that it validates the feelings she has about herself. The behavior patterns that I'd been exposed to are consistent with the idea that Blud is seeking confirmation about the personal assumptions she has about herself. It's what makes her so volatile to those around her. Yet, she refuses to break the cycle.

I hope that she can make that choice in the future but at this point, I'm not holding my breath.

[otterish]

A weird favor please...

I'm in a weird sort of bind... You see, I'm autistic, and along with that, I have narcolepsy and misophonia. What does this fucked up collection of weirdness mean? It means I am very sensitive to sound (The misophonia and the autism), and I have seizures that are triggered by stress and the tension headaches I get because of my spinal fusion.

Why all this info? You see, I have a lovely little MP3 player loaded with the most perfect white noise that is guaranteed to calm me down. It takes corded headphones, which is great because I can never find any bluetooth buds that fit in my ears. I have a birth defect that makes it nigh impossible to find any that fit. I did find some amazing corded earbuds though! They are the JVC Gummy in ear earbuds, and I've been using them for over 10 years. They only last about a year or two, but they are like 9 bucks and fit perfectly. Here is an amazon link so you can see what I mean: https://a.co/d/0drGMzDN

The thing is... I can barely afford food (We were on SNAP but they fucked everything up. AGAIN!), let alone the earbuds I need. One of my main misophonia triggers is anyone snoring, mouth breathing, and even sometimes just breathing normally. My husband snores really loud, and tends to have a stuffy nose a lot, so I cannot sleep in the same room with him if I don't have my headphones. If I had to, I would find something sharp and puncture my ear drums. It causes that much anxiety that I sincerely want to lose my hearing.

I'm down to my last pair of headphones, and when I couldn't find them at first I had a severe melt down. I wear them to bed due to my husband snoring, and I want to stay near him. I sometimes rest my hand on his back to feel him breathe, and when I wake up screaming due to nightmares, he always wakes up and holds me until I stop crying.

I know this is a long post just to ask for earbuds, but they work best for me and my sanity depends on them. If you can, I'd love it if you were able to slide one or two my way. I'm not picky on color, so my amazon wish list link is here: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/GTTJGT54GKDN

If you want another way, my cashtag is $JustAddOtter.

THANK YOU SO MUCH IN ADVANCE! My disability case is still going slowly through the pipes, plus when it goes through I'm going to have to pay $85 out of pocket for some blue lenses which will help with the seizures.

Also, may the assholes who removed headphone jacks from phones always have angry wasps land in their ears.

TL;DR: I need new headphones to help with my disability.

BTW, no guilt in not donating or even not reblogging but I would appreciate a sage nod of understanding when you read this.

EDIT: Thank you to those pointing out that my wishlist wasn't working properly, it's all fixed!

[dreamofbetterthings]

No Regrets Noah Sebastian x Reader

Prompt: "The problem is, if I kissed you, I don't think I'd be able to stop."

VIP: Noah Sebastian

Band: Ban Omens

Summary: There's no such thing as a "calm" Halloween night, especially when hidden feelings are involved.

Warnings: It's gonna be a little spicy, but not full-on smut. Still, this is 18+ due to descriptive language and some curse words scattered about, so minors, please DNI. 

A/N

Hello everybody! I'm sorry that I dropped off the face of the Earth. I have an abundance of things going on in my personal life and I am trying my hardest to get through it all. I know in the last post I said chapter 3 of It's Been A Long, Long Time was coming soon. That wasn't a lie. It is still in the process of being edited. I'm working on a new uploading schedule for you guys, and a page redesign as well so if everything pans out the way I'm hoping, it will be put into effect starting next week. In the meantime, I have a couple of stories I'm planning on getting out before Chapter 3 gets released. This turned out a lot longer than I thought it was going to be, but I had an idea and ran with it. I've never written for Bad Omens before, so let me know what you think. Enjoy!

This is a fictional story about real-life people. Nothing that is mentioned in the story below represents who said individuals are, or how they act in real life.

Halloween night was always your favorite time to be around certain people, specifically the friends you called Motionless in White and Bad Omens. There was always something up their sleeve to turn the normal night into one that you weren't sure you wanted to remember in the morning. Luckily, tonight was the annual hangout at Chris' house this year, and you couldn't be more excited. Every year you all would get together at someone's house and pass out candy to the kids, then watch a couple of movies after the last stragglers came through. After that, came your favorite part of the night, Hide and Seek. It might seem childish, but watching a bunch of tipsy/drunk people try to stay quiet in a hiding spot was always hilarious.

 You were making another batch of popcorn when Chris walked into the kitchen. "Hey, we just put on The Lost Boys, just thought I'd let you know." You smile. "I'm not surprised. That's almost everybody's favorite." He laughs and grabs another bowl from the cabinet. "I know, that's why we put it on first, so nobody can complain about it later." The timer on the microwave went off signaling that the popcorn was finished, and you carefully took the bag out. You gave Chris the cooling-down bag and picked back up the one you set on the counter before he walked in. After emptying them and grabbing extra napkins, Chris brought the popcorn out to your friends who were talking through muffled and hushed whispers. Before you walked back into the room, he pulled you back for a second to whisper something in your ear. "I pulled the seeker for tonight. Unfortunately, it wasn't you. Maybe next year." You pout and then smile "Fuck, I'm never going to get picked." He laughs as you glanced around at everybody scattered in the room. 

Ryan sat with Justin on the loveseat. Folio was a drama queen and insisted he get his own seat. Nicholas, Vinny, and a few other of your friends, Florence, Nicole, Victoria, and Robert who were invited sat around the coffee table on the floor. Ricky, Jolly, and Noah were on the couch. Then, you and Chris got the two giant bean bags in the corner. The lights were changed to red and the TV just started the opening credits to The Lost Boys. You and Chris give the popcorn to Ricky and Nicholas respectively, everybody else having their own mostly full bowls, and grab your drinks before plopping back down on the bean bags. Folio rubs his hands together and smiles. "Now that our final two goofballs are here, who's ready to watch one of the best horror movies ever made?" Everybody gives some form of yes or a holler, and he immediately turns the volume up. As the movie plays, there is a small conversation here and there, and occasionally someone has to get up for a new drink, but you are relaxed and having fun. 

At about the halfway point of the movie, Noah gets up to get another drink from the fridge. On his way back, Jolly scares him, causing his wine to spill all over the floor and your sweatpants. "Jesus man!" The movie is paused and everyone's attention is on you guys. Jolly laughs and puts his hands up in defense. "Sorry dude, I had to scare you at least once today." He turns to look at you. "Didn't mean to ruin your sweatpants though, my bad." You wave him off. "It's no big deal, these were old anyway. You guys can keep the movie playing. I'm just gonna change into different pants real quick." You take a sip of your drink and get up from your spot to go upstairs. 

After finding your weekend bag, you huff as the extra sweatpants are nowhere to be found. Instead, you pull out a pair of spandex volleyball shorts and go to the bathroom. Noah hears the sink running upstairs as he's cleaning up the accidental mess he made by your spot. He throws the paper towels away and before he gets to the stairs, Chris quietly asks "You good?" He nods, telling the other singer he's going to make sure you're okay, and heads to your bathroom. He knocks a few times and after a couple of seconds, the sink cuts off and you open the door. You were expecting one of your girlfriends to be standing there, but instead, it's Noah. "I just wanted to make sure you were alright. I'm sorry about spilling on your sweats. I hope I didn't ruin them." Holding up the pants, you show him where the stain had previously been. "If these sweats can make it through one of your tours, they can certainly handle a little bit of wine. I just didn't want them to stain, since you drink the darker stuff." He chuckles and follows you back into the bedroom. 

You grab your shorts and get ready to put them on, but Noah points to your leg. "I didn't know you had a thigh tattoo." You glance at it and glance at him confused. "Really? I got it a while ago. I could've sworn I showed you when I got it done. Then again, I'm always in longer shorts, so it's not exactly easy to see." Setting them down, you turn to the side and pull part of your underwear band up, showing the last covered part of the tattoo. Looking up at Noah, you can see he's staring, but there's something else behind his eyes. Just not sure what it is though. You don't flinch when he reaches his hand out, but your skin gets goosebumps as his fingers ever so lightly trace over the ink on your leg. Everybody that came over tonight had seen each other in their undergarments or even completely nude before, whether by accident or on purpose. Hell, you've walked in on him changing plenty of times. 

So why did the room suddenly feel hot? 

It could be that you've had a crush on the man since you were kids. There wasn't anything not to like. His personality just made you want to be around him all the time. He's sweet and kind, and has a terrible sense of humor that only you two get. You could go on and on. He was just an all-around amazing person. You were so caught up in your thoughts, that you missed the hand that was snapping in front of your face. "Hello? Are you there?" Coming back to reality, you saw Noah looking down at you with curiosity. You quickly apologized and asked him to repeat what he said. "I said it looks amazing on you. The placement is perfect and it works great with the curves of your leg." You thank him and can't help but notice just how close he's standing to you. There's a tense silence for a couple of moments, and neither of you moves from your spot. You glanced at his eyes, then his lips, but immediately looked away. 

It felt like you were a school girl again, talking to the guy you've had a crush on for ages. You heard him mumble a "Fuck it" before he leaned in and pressed his lips against yours. They were soft and tasted like wine, courtesy of the drink that led you here in the first place. You felt his hand move to rest against your cheek. His lips were gentle, almost as if he was savoring the moment, afraid it would never happen again. When the two of you finally pulled away for air, your eyes remained closed for a moment, before slowly opening them and meeting Noah's. The two of you looked at each other in pure awe before you let out a small "Woah" He laughed, and you looked down, feeling your cheeks become hot.

The thought of you being so flustered made him blush too. How was it possible for someone to be this cute? Your heart was pounding out of your chest, and you almost couldn't comprehend what just happened. "You know, for someone that always complained he was a terrible kisser, that was uh, really impressive." He could feel you now completely relaxed against him and he laughed a little, slightly embarrassed. "I'd say that I've had practice, but you already know my teddy bear in fifth grade doesn't count." The two of you laugh. Remembering his hand resting on your cheek, you look away and take a small step back. "I think we should get back to the movie. It's gotta be almost over by now, and I don't want them to yell at us for taking too long." He let out an uncomfortable laugh and muttered a "Yeah." 

You never noticed but Noah frowned slightly when you pulled away from him. He felt so comfortable being that close to you. As you turned to the door he realized something. He really liked you and didn't want this to be just a one-time thing, especially if it was going to make things weird between you afterward. He picks himself out of his thoughts just as you open the door. He walks across the room, taking your hand and silently closing the door. Standing there surprised, you ask him, "Are you okay?" It was now or never he told himself. "I'm sorry, I just..." He takes a breath before continuing. "I really want to kiss you again." You stand there just as surprised but decide to see just how far this could possibly go. "What's the problem then?" He lets go of your hand and brings his own up to hold your face. Pressing his forehead against yours, he whispers. 

"The problem is, if I kissed you, I don't think I'd be able to stop." 

He obviously likes you, right? But this is your best friend. You've known each other for years. If he did like you this much, he would've told you by now, right? You two have been affectionate towards each other before, but there's a line neither of you dared to cross. If you crossed it now, you would rather do it with no regrets. It was better than wondering what could have been. "What if I don't want you to stop?" Noah tilts your head so you're looking him in the eyes. 

"Then I won't." 

He pushes his lips against you again, this time with newfound hunger. His hands fall and grab at your waist while yours go around his neck. Your feet follow his backward and you hit the edge of the bed. He pulls you down to sit on his lap, completely forgetting your lack of pants while he pushes himself further back on the bed. His tongue runs across your bottom lip and you open your mouth allowing him in. Your hands gently tug at the now-cut-short hair on the back of his neck and he grabs at your hip hard enough to leave bruises before pulling you even closer to him. Shifting your weight a little, your lower half sits directly on his hardening cock and he groans into your mouth. He pulls his lips away only for them to move down your neck. You tug at his hair a little harder and he sucks at the tender skin that connects your neck and shoulder. A moan leaves your lips and you mindlessly grind down against him. There was nothing that could prepare you for how right this felt. Like you were seeing a whole different side of him, hidden from the outside world, and for your eyes only.

Noah moved to whisper in your ear. "Quiet baby, wouldn't want everybody to hear us, hmm?" You shake your head no, but it doesn't matter as he kisses you again. "Hey, are you guys-OH MY GOD!" The bedroom door opens to see a shocked Chris looking at the two of you. Noah pulls away from your mouth, and the two of you look like deer in headlights. "I'm going to go... quickly." Chris walks away, before coming back and closing the door. You and Noah make eye contact for a split second, before the two of you look away, slightly embarrassed that you were caught. "Maybe we should go back before someone comes in again." He clears his throat and nods. "Yeah, that's a good idea." Carefully getting off of him, you stand up and let him off the bed. You both straighten out your respective clothes, and you finally put on those shorts. 

"Are you alright?" He nods and you get ready to walk toward the door. Noah runs his fingers through his hair. "Um, Before we go, I just wanted to ask...You don't regret any of what just happened, right?" You immediately shake your head no, slightly frowning. Maybe this was all a big mistake. "Not at all. Why? Do you?" He smiles and also shakes his head no before taking your hand in his. "Nope. No regrets." A smile replaces the frown on your face. You ask "Are you ready for them to never let us live this down?" He laughs and glances at the door. "That doesn't sound like such a bad thing to me." Giving him a nod, he opens the door and the two of you walk back into the living room where the rest of your friend group is talking amongst themselves. When they hear you guys walk in, it gets silent. Noah lets go of your hand so you can sit down first, and then goes to his spot on the couch. 

Nobody said anything for the first couple of moments before Chris broke the silence. "You guys fucked in my spare bedroom..." Instantly you and Noah sat up and shook your heads. Your voice and his overlapped and both of you tried to tell your friends that technically nothing happened. Once the two of you were finished explaining, the room was silent for another couple of moments before anyone spoke. The silence was starting to make you uncomfortable, but before you could say or do anything, Ryan threw his hands up and yelled. "Fucking finally!" This breaks the tension in the room and everybody starts laughing and giving you and Noah happy looks. You even saw a couple of people passing money around. Those fuckers bet on you and Noah getting together. When the commotion has died down, another movie has started, and everybody turns their attention to the TV. As you focus your attention on the screen, your phone buzzes, and you pick it up. 

Noah

"I was thinking later we could finish what we started in the spare bedroom?"

You smile at your phone and quickly respond before setting it down.

"Well, we're still playing Hide and Seek after the movie. I'm once again not the seeker, lol. If it happens to be you, don't go easy on me. Depending on how the rest of the night plays out, you might get your wish ;)"

Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Noah readjust himself in his seat. He sends back a text almost instantly, and goosebumps litter your skin again as you read his last text.

Noah

"Oh, I won't. I like the hunt."

Nope, no regrets.

[nepsah]

Progress: 2090/4262.06

hi. hello. i have to have an extra super fun dental surgery on may 20th. : ) it's gonna cost me a lovely $3k. it's not going to kill us but it is going to make things uncomfortable for the next however long it takes me to pay it off because uh. afterwards i'll also have to get a crown done. :') i don't know how much that's going to be yet but that'll be happening in july.

[edit] i had complications that have drawn this whole process out... now i'm not entirely sure what the final bill for the primary surgery is, yay! :') i do still have to get a crown on top off all of this mess, but that won't be happening until october it sounds like...

anyway to help make it suck less i will be doing pwyw commissions for the foreseeable future. this'll be pinned until i'm done with'em, once it's not pinned anymore that'll be the end of it.

payment can be done via paypal or ko-fi.

take a look at @nepartsu for examples of my art (i also use that as a tag whenever i post art here)

(i draw a lot of fantrolls but i can do other stuff!!)

drop me a message if ur interested in gettin a doodle <3

you can take a peek at my ko-fi here!

[edit: 7/24/24] my computer is back, yay! i can resume these commissions. <3 this pwyw offer will still be going on for a while.

[edit: 10/28/24] oh the gift that keeps on givin... It's time for the actual tooth part and that's added another $722.90 anticipated bc y'know. Insurance can be a bitch. So this is still a thing.

more tidbits under the cut bc i have been asked some questions:

if i were doing normal commissions, i charge about 65-70 for a full color, full body piece. you do not have to stick to that price under the pwyw, but i've been asked for pricing suggestions so i figured i'd put that out there as a general guideline! (if you have seen an older comm info post where it was $100, i've decided to lower that cost, so ignore that.)

i do not charge extra for nsfw commissions.

you can commission multiple pieces at once, or later, it's fine!

i can and will create original designs for you under this pwyw promo.

if you have any other questions, pls don't hesitate to reach out! i'm happy to discuss basically anything, haha.

[i-starcreamed]

Since you enjoy the trope, how about "only one circuit slab" with your choice of bot? :3 you know who my #1 is but go with whoever you think it would be most fun with. (If you want a more specific setup I'd be happy to toss some ideas around with you)

hopefully these are good...i had to go with OUR #1 and a couple other bots :3 although you already know that bc you helped with the silly ideas. did not edit this btw my bad if its all over the place

also human reader!! These turned out way longer than I thought, I think idk how to write headcanons and end up writing short imagines but eh, I was inspired

Post includes -> Swerve, Rodimus, and TFP Ratchet

MTMTE Swerve

A completely normal day on the LL, Swerve had closed down his bar for the day and you had stayed back to talk to him even as the last bot left the place. Being the friendly bot he is, he offered to give you a ride back to your room which you accepted

As you rode down the halls of the ship, Swerve mentioned how he has been looking for a roommate for like, ever, and since his room was big enough for another bot it was surely perfect for you.

You agreed of course and he immediately made plans to show you around his humble abode

Well guess what?

You turned the corner and instead of seeing his room there was a big ass crater in place of it

Your jaws dropped and agreed that he can stay In your room instead...at least until his room is rebuilt. Roommates, right?

Only problem blessing was that you had one bed

After some light arguing of who sleeps where, you both settled that you'll sleep awkwardly next to him where he wouldn't crush you and he would turn the other way. You settled down and stared at the ceiling as you stiffly lay there, wanting to give him his space. He respectfully gave you your space but continued to try to make conversation, although it was a bit awkward since you two weren't facing eachother

Another problem arose, you were on the edge of the bed and weren't use to not being nestled into your blankets, the ship was cold, you started shivering.

"I don't even know if you can hear me right now, I mean its not that muffled right? I can always speak a little clearer or louder but I shouldn't keep you up. Are you tired yet? I don't want to-"

"Swerve? Can you turn around?"

He turned and faced the ceiling while his helm turned towards you, he was about to inquire but was immediately silenced when you started climbing him and put down your pillows and blankets on his chest.

"It's uh, its cold. I could always move if you mind th-"

"No."

He blurted out. You could feel the metal beneath you radiate pure heat, more than usual. It was comforting. You sigh and lay down, cuddling up against your blankets and well, him, the best way you could. You could feel the soft hum of his spark beneath you, it was comforting. You didn't pay attention to the way your face heat up as your eyes fluttered shut

Swerve could only lay there, absolutely frozen. For once he was at a loss for words and he wondered if you could tell his spark felt like shooting out of his chest

He slowly reached out, his servo hovering above you for a second. You said you were cold, right? He hesitantly placed one servo above you, it ever so gently cradled your sleeping form.

You bet with that amount of warmth you got the best sleep of your life

He was NOT able to recharge that night. On one hand, he was keeping you safe and warm. On the other, the massive grin on his face would not go away

Maybe his room should get destroyed more often, or just maybe he can delay the reconstruction of it

MTMTE Rodimus

The LL had gone onto another one of its expeditions and you just so happened to have gotten lost with the most reckless but endearingly dedicated mech

It's been hours since you've been treading along this strange planet and during that time, you found out that the locals are not human-friendly whatsoever

It gets to the point where the two of you have gone way too long without any rest/recharge, Rodimus has sent an emergency signal and hoped that someone from the crew would find you two soon. However it gets apparent you both need to make a stop before you both pass out from exhaustion, especially you

Rodimus insists on transforming into his alt mode and you sleeping there until the morning, but you're equally as stubborn and insist on keeping watch for him.

He only agreed because of how blushy that made him. You, his special human, want to protect him even in these circumstances? Fine, you can sit on his shoulder and keep watch while he settles down to avoid using any more energon

Not even 10 minutes later, he feels your head suddenly rest near his neck-cables.

"Y/N?"

No response except your soft breathing, there's a soft smile on his faceplates knowing that you had fallen asleep.

He carefully takes you from his shoulder and transforms, in a split second you were laying down and peacefully sleeping in his alt-mode.

It may not be a bed/circuit slab but you're the only human he'd let sleep in his alt-mode, expect the seats to be warm when you wake up or his engines to purr if he's driving

Absolute endless teasing back on the LL btw, WILL ask for you to sleep in his alt-mode again or to have some sort of sleepover

TFP Ratchet

This medic is the definition of overworking yourself

Rarely ever he gets to recharge NEAR you and you swore you have never seen him actually recharge without Optimus or you begging him

This specific day wasn't any different, except you kept tossing and turning in your bed. Something was bothering you and you weren't sure what, it just did not let you sleep. No matter how tired you felt, your body would not let you rest.

Cue you going to accompany Ratchet and him being concerned and scolding you as to why you were up at such an hour

You responded with a slow frog blink

"I can't sleep."

He lets you stay with him a while and just hopes you'll fall asleep eventually, it had happened before after all. He puts you on his shoulder and otherwise continues working, fully expecting you to fall asleep in a couple of minutes

30 minutes go by and you're still awake somehow, your half-lidded eyes staring and probably getting fried by the screen. He has a small mental battle with himself before he sighs and decided to...stop working (explodes)

"Will you get some sleep if I...if I stay with you?"

He says it almost reluctantly. But only you know that its a genuine offer. If you weren't so tired you would've leaped up in the air and shouted YES!! But instead you sleepily nodded your head and clung onto him.

He groaned and headed over to his room which was bland besides some belongings, gifts from the kids, and his unused recharge slab.

There he would lay down, expecting to wait for you to sleep and then continue his work. But he didn't expect it to be this relaxing

You laying there with him, near his shoulder armor and neck-cables, softly breathing and huddled against him. It didn't take him long for his exhaustion to finally catch up to him. He blames you for being so...calming and wonderful.

Before he drifts into recharge, he turns his helm towards you so his cheek is still in contact with you. Hes just trying to make you comfortable obviously, no, it's not out of his own enjoyment. Hes just tired, okay?

Speak of it in the morning and suddenly he forgets how to talk and cant get an explanation out without sputtering

[tiny-brass-bot]

Hi! I saw a post where you had a game made in godot with old school rendering, do you maybe have any tips on how to make godot render a game like that instead of its normal rendering method?

I'd be right happy to!

I'll try to make this concise lol, I always end up overexplaining and then getting lost in the weeds. Buckle up, it's a loooooot of little little things that all add up.

First off, you should decide which look you're going for. N64 and PS1, the two consoles I'm emulating, both had drastically different specs. (plus, there's plenty of other early 3D systems I've not even touched!)

The N64 had texture filtering (textures were interpolated aka "blurry"), it had floating point vertex precision (points moved correctly), it had perspective correction on its textures (no warping)

The PS1 had no texture filtering, no floating point vertex precision (vertices snap and pop around), affine texture mapping (textures warp weird). I also think the color space they operate in is different? Don't quote me

So you can go hard one way or another or pick and choose what you think looks good! We don't have anywhere near the hardware restrictions they did in the 90s so go nuts.

RESOLUTION

To get a low resolution window, I set the window size of the game and the window override size to different amounts

In green is actually how big the window is on my screen (4k monitor) and in red is the retro resolution I want. If you set the stretch mode correctly (an option a little further down the Window tab) then it'll make the pixels big

COLORS

Now the PS1 had the capability of showing you over 16 million different colors, but it could only display 50,000-150,000 at a time, so in order to get more fidelity out of it, the engineers implemented a dithering effect to better blend the otherwise sharp edges between colors.

I used this shader to achieve the dithering effect. If you don't understand shader languages, that's fine. There are a few different pre-built ones for looking like the PlayStation 1 out there.

TEXTURES

Textures for the PS1 could be as big as 256x256, but they were typically 128x128. And they would squish everything a model needed into there usually, at least with like player models and objects and such.

As mentioned, if you're not good with shader language don't worry. There are countless resources out there that people will either let you use or teach you how it works. But I'm gonna touch on it a little bit here.

PS1 textures had no pixel filtering, so you could see individual pixels.

This is what determines that in the shader code. If you want it to look like the N64 (blurry lol), the proper hint is "filter_linear". Note that it won't be 1:1 with N64, cuz they used bilinear filtering (which kinda sucks and causes weird quirks) whereas now you'll only find linear or trilinear filtering. It's a negligible difference imo.

PS1 textures also were only saved using 15 bit color. I'm told that Photoshop's "Posterize" filter set to 32 can achieve this, but don't use photoshop if you can help it. I use GIMP, and while a newer version might have a posterize filter, or there may be a plugin out there, my version doesn't so I cluge it a little.

Change your color mode to "indexed", set color dithering to how you like it, and the number of colors in the palette to a number to get a good result. Usually I'll do 16, 8, 32, but occasionally I'll cheat and do a non-multiple-of-8 teehee >:3c

You can change it back to RGB after to make further editing easier.

LIGHTING

N64 and PS1 both implemented vertex lighting, as opposed to the more modern and (now) ubiquitous per-pixel lighting. Godot as it is right now (4.2 i think?) claims it has vertex lighting that you can set as a shader property but they're lying and it doesn't work yet.

The old consoles could only handle like, 2 lights though so it doesn't matter much.

The real star of the show, and in my opinion the one thing that makes a game most look like the 90s is the inclusion of vertex colors.

By multiplying the color of your texture by its stored vertex color, you can do all the shading yourself!

Plus you can reuse textures like crazy just by coloring them differently. The N64 also made heavy use of vertex colors by forgoing a texture on models entirely and just painting them using verticies. The only textures on SM64 Mario are his eyes, stache, hat emblem, buttons, and sideburns. Everything else is done with vertex colors.

Here you can see this level from my Crock Land with no vertex coloring, with some of the vertex colors only, and then with the two combined.

Rare loved this. Look at how colorful that cliffside is in Jungle Japes. It makes it so much more interesting than just a brown cliff face. Plus you can see the vertex coloration instead of textures at work on DK and the Gnawty.

My go-to example for PS1 is always Spyro, what a gorgeous game. All of those colors there are not made by a light or an environment. They're hand painted babey! Also! With spyro! The skyboxes are actually just huge domes made up of vertices that are colored in different ways! That's how they can look so colorful and "hi-res".

There's plenty more you can do, like adding a CRT filter or a little bit of chromatic aberration which I haven't gotten into yet.

The way I've learned all this is just by being curious as to how the old consoles did their thing, and slowly accruing the knowledge over time. There's still infinite stuff I don't know too.

I hope that helped! And wasn't too longwinded or confusing! Like I said, it's all about piling up tons and tons of little things, small details, weird graphical quirks that really bring out the retro 3D feel for me.

And I didn't even get into the modeling side of things! That's an entirely different "color-of-the-sky"-sized post though.

I'd be happy to re-explain or explain more about any of this!

[jillvalentine]

re: my relationship with my abuser, currently @/gwendaria (part one?)

[edit: new usernames + accounts since this post has been made: scarymovies, walkingdeads, samcarpenters, the-mummy]

My abusive ex has unfortunately been going full-on with the latest DARVO / smear campaign, and this time it seems to have reached a few people. These callouts are made-up, and they've been popping up continuously in different forms since early 2021 in an attempt to silence or smear me, regardless of their inconsistencies. One second I'm an emotionally abusive gaslighter who they've finally been freed from. The next, I'm someone they don't even know about. The next... I'm a renown stalker. The next... I'm a random girl who got romantically obsessed with them and turned into a terf when I got rejected. The neeeext... I'm a terf stalker racist? Okay! I don't even know anymore. There's definitely more.

I mostly want to focus on the facts. The facts are that I've shared about my experiences enough that I shouldn't have to entertain stupid shit anymore. There will always be the next narrative, more scandalous than the last. Going forward, I just want to make the evidence more accessible so that anyone can find it.

I still have all of our texts, discord logs, whatsapp logs, voicemails, facebook messages, hundreds of screenshots from me and from others (onlookers & other people who have been harmed), and I've become friends with people who have also been friends with or intimate with this person and came out from the other side (some are public and others aren't, because, hey! Look what happened to me after I came out. I have been stalked almost on the hourly for about 4 years now, and I know it won't stop, because I know exactly who my abuser is.)

About 3 years have passed now, so a lot of the 'big' conversations or screenshots I shared earlier on when I spoke out about what had happened to me have been buried in time. (but they are, still there.)

Screenshots where they ragged on and on about my friends, about me being naïve and that I'd know better when I was "a real adult" like them, telling me to drop dead, telling me about slitting their wrists, telling me that someone was messaging them about 'cumming on my face' after I posted (1) selfie. Blocking me everywhere for a bit over that selfie. Unblocking me. Yelling at me. Blocking and unblocking me again because I said something about how they were being awful to me. Rinse and repeat with the next insane shit.

This was during covid lockdown, and it was 24/7. I couldn't fucking breathe. I got questioned about going to the supermarket with my mom. I got mindfucked for not explicitly saying I was back home when I said I was getting the mail, under the guise of caring so much about me, of course.

One time, I sent a snap of these leggings I liked online. Because the photo sent as a file instead of a normal-full-screen-just-taken snap, it became a whole argument of "Did you share this with anyone else?" and I would be like... what would be wrong if I did? Why is it wrong for me to send a photo of some leggings I think look good to a friend to get her opinion? A lot of conflict happened this way. They were incredibly controlling and suffocating, all under the claims of past trauma, undiagnosed mental illness, and most of all - flowery apologies or proclamations.

I used to think I was able to push through anything that happened because they would apologize to me, and it made it okay again. I genuinely thought they just needed someone to give them a chance to heal and get better, or get back to how they used to be early on in the relationship. I wanted to be that someone, I wanted to be strong enough to take all of it and be okay at the end. It gradually got worse, and I found myself trapped in the relationship. Anytime I was close to getting away, I would get drawn back with push-and-pull manipulation tactics. If I had pulled away to recover from their mistreatment, I was then the one apologizing for having had to pull away, and how bad that pulling away had affected them. How awful I was and how much I regretted being affected by anything. I would blame anything else (it wasn't you, it was my own anxiety) to make things calm down.

I didn't see any of this coming from the start. It was a gradual process. Near the end, I was googling things about how to fix toxic relationships (it didn't work because the relationship wasn't a two-way street, it was abusive), trying to think for 5 different people to avoid outbursts, trying to explain away how someone might gaslight and manipulate others without it being fully conscious and intended. I found out it was 100% intentional when I got out. They were telling others that I was doing to them what they were doing to me, along with a bunch of other bullshit to pre-emptively plant seeds.

Gwen frequently tries to use the worst buzz words to create stories and alienate people from one another. She doesn't care about any social issues. What she likes or dislikes is entirely based on what she needs to get out of a situation. If someone she's fixating on positively likes xyz thing, she likes it too. If someone she's fixating on negatively likes or dislikes something, she'll do the opposite. She constantly invented stories and tried to frame people I'd known for years, or anyone who dared to interact with my posts anywhere. She literally impersonated people and had accounts hacked. All she does is obsess over people. She constantly monitored me and created conflict over anything, real or made up. She especially liked to create conflict when it was late, or when I was otherwise not-fully-there, like when I was drugged following a surgery. I was so out-of-it that at that point I didn't want to fight for myself or others anymore.

Near the end of the relationship, I had a private account that I would hide on because social media, and really anything social, had become a minefield. Multiple people had witnessed the change from before the relationship, the start of it, up to the end. I deactivated my main twitter for a period of time (although I was careful enough to reactivate it once every 30 days so it wouldn't be permanently lost) and had to ignore people, stop myself from posting or liking things, and plead with people not to mention anything about me because I would have to answer for it. Multiple people remember me asking them to delete certain posts, or just be careful not to give out that I was doing anything with them. I was abnormal and an immature adult for wanting to spend a bit of time with or buy a gift for my friend on their birthday. We had an age gap, and at first, it was all "you're probably more mature than me :)" - until it turned to Real Adults Don't Spend Time With Friends, lol. Real adults are 100% focused on their partner. Real adults aren't on social media, and other thinly-veiled degradation + mindfuckery. Funny how my age became a bad thing, but they were the experienced 29-year-old who knowingly pursued the inexperienced 23-year-old.

Near the end of the relationship, I was starting to hide away to spend more time with people who treated me well, and it helped me get out. I saw that the way I felt every day wasn't normal. It reminded me of what good relationships are like and what they feel like. My friends tried their best to be supportive, but it was very difficult because my partner was trying very hard to isolate me from them through threats, aggression and manipulation. I'm incredibly lucky that they stayed by my side and told me that what was happening wasn't normal.

Getting out was hard. Staying out was hard. Even after everything that happened, following the split, I told my friends I didn't know what I would do if they tried to get me back again. SO fucking glad that's over.

[honey-worm]

R.I.P Liam Payne.

Many things went on through my head the day I found out that a member of One Direction passed away. It was Wednesday October 16th, 2024 around 3pm. I was having a pretty normal day at work until I got the news via text from a friend.

"Bitch Liam Payne from One Direction died" "You're fucking joking"

I was in literal shock. I really thought they she was joking (if you can even joke about death.) I went on Instagram and the first post was, of course, Liam passing away at the age of 31. I literally booked it to the restroom to scroll down multiple social media platforms, verifying what I had just read and messaging friends back who were also freaking out. People who I haven't talked to in years, you know, the ones I would just scroll by on Facebook, stated that I was the first one they thought of. They wondered if I had posted about it. I didn't realize how big of a fan I was until they mentioned it to me because it's not like we were ever best friends back when 1D was the it band. I honestly couldn't believe it. There was just no way that Liam Payne, from one of the biggest boybands in the world, was no longer with us in the flesh.

After the devastating news, the next hour at work was a blur. I couldn't concentrate on what was needing to be done. None of my coworkers were going through what I was feeling. Though, I already knew they wouldn't understand... They're all 50+ years old. I had no one to talk to about this.

The moment I got into my car after work, my Made in the A.M. album CD was already playing. I checked Twitter and TikTok, feeling the emotions of every single directioner. Retweet this, retweet that. Repost this, repost that. I got myself off the apps and headed home, singing along to the boys I hold so close to my heart. I started to cry because suddenly I was 17 again and things would never be the same. The songs would never be the same. All my 1D memories were flooding in rapidly. All the tweets, all the fanfictions, all the youtube videos, all the posters, all the merch, all the talk... All of it. Teenage me was surfacing.

As I got home, I took my dogs out, fed them, and immediately got into bed. Back to doom scrolling. I needed to be with people who understood me. Tweet after tweet. I was reading everyone's tweets about how sad we all are and how so many of us don't have anyone in our real lives to understand the impact this actually has. We all gathered on social media to start grieving. It felt like we had jumped back in time, constantly tweeting and talking about a boyband that made us so incredibly happy during such bad times in our lives. My whole timeline was filled with photos of the boys again. Every tweet was a directioner, just like it was 11+ years ago. It was such a bittersweet feeling. Happy because it's all about the boys again, but, upsetting because it's all about the boys again due to a tragic death of one of them. We aren't teenagers anymore. I wasn't just grieving Liam, I was grieving my inner teen. Grieving the fact that we'll never get to go back to that time again. It was such a weird feeling. I'd cry, be fine, feel numb, dissociate, go back to crying, back to being fine, cry again, go numb... It was a literal rollercoaster of emotions.

What's so crazy to me is that I spent the 2 weeks prior of this loss, binging all 1D songs. I was in the middle of reminiscing about my teenage years of being absolutely obsessed with the band, rereading the fanfic I wrote when I was 19, watching frat boy Harry edits, remembering the way I felt during those times...... Then Liam dies??? What was the universe up to??? I couldn't believe that every day for 14 days, I was listening to all albums before, during, and after work. They were just on all day every day. I was reliving my teenage years, remembering how infatuated I was with "frat boy" Harry. The one that made me fall in love with 1D in the first place.

Myself, and so many others, were never expecting a tragedy to happen to one of our idols so early on in life. We weren't expecting to experience such a loss at the ripe ages of early 20s-early 30s.

I hope that all fans are spending their time with loved ones (online or in real life) during this time because what you're going through is so so valid. You aren't alone. The whole world is mourning such a big part of our lives. Continue to let 1D live on. Watch those YouTube videos, read those fanfictions, listen to those 1D songs, watch those 1D movies.

You and that inner child deserve to relive such a happy time during a traumatic chapter.

And please remember to love one another. Continue to be a lover. Give love, choose love. Love everyone, always. No matter what, treat people with kindness. You never know what someone is going through.

All my love,

R. x

[magnifythesun]

Hiii so mexican salsa YES this post is a prompt! Feel free to change it to whatever you like, but I'd love a lil' story like this:

Ian and anthony are both very obviously in love and the whole smoffice knows it, but them lmao! I'd love this fic to be just text messages or slack posts or sth, where the cast and crew report of sightings of Ian and anthony doing very ianthony stuff and not realize it themselves. Maybe they come up w a way to show or nudge them in the right direction? But Ian and Anthony will still make it a bro moment (broment) bc they think the other one just wants to be bros LMAO ~ Japhan2024 💖

@japhan2024 FANTASTIC IDEA I have to believe that the Smosh cast legit has a secret group chat for stuff like this hahaha the looks on their faces whenever Ian and Anthony do something shippy is priceless

im going to wrack my brain for my favorite moments lolol I hope you enjoy!

(mid writing note: i first wrote basically all texts but it wasn't quite flowing the way i wanted it to so now there's a little more prose lol. this also taught me i do NOT know enough crew members' names)

read on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56346769

---

It took Erin less than ten minutes to create The Group Chat following the slapping video caress incident.

Erin: "okay so what the fuck"

Tommy: "i'm beside myself."

Angela: "SO WE'RE FINALLY TALKING ABOUT IT"

It began, and all hell broke loose from there.

Most of the cast and crew didn't know Anthony too well when he first returned, but everyone could tell Ian began to positively glow once he came back. It had started mostly with little under-the-breath comments about how big Ian had smiled at something Anthony did, or shared glances after they looked lost in each other's worlds. It's not that everyone wanted to speculate about their bosses, but rather that their bosses were practically giving them no choice.

The real watershed moment was the birth of The Group Chat, which finally provided an outlet for all ianthony incidents witnessed by the cast and crew.

---

Shayne: "Please tell me how Anthony managed to turn his smosh cast interview into an hour of us complimenting Ian."

Tommy: "i swear he practices in his car on the way to work"

---

Erin: "not them discussing deepthroating injuries for like three whole minutes..."

Erin: "while Anthony sucks on his rainbow lollipop......"

Chanse: "they are not beating the allegations"

---

Josh: "So this is I think the fourth video I've edited where Anthony has called Ian daddy??"

Josh: "WHAT is the thought process. I just can't put it together. is Anthony just like yeah I'm going to call my bro daddy about seventeen separate times with varying levels of seriousness and that's good and het and normal."

Erin: "Josh, istg you don't see the half of it. Come watch them film and pay special attention when the cameras are OFF."

---

Erin: "im losing it"

Arasha: "oh god. what happened"

Erin: "i am not fucking kidding right now anthony just called him submissive and breedable."

Keith: "WHAT"

Erin: "he said what he said."

Angela: "BREEDABLE????????????"

Erin: "in front of god and everyone."

Angela: "BREEDABLE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!"

---

Tommy: "catching up on the main channel sketches and i just have to ask"

Tommy: "How many men can Ian date in his sketches until he realizes he'd like to date one in real life?"

Chanse: "don't SPEAK to me about it"

---

Tommy: "bicurious, hmm? Ian would you like to share something with the class???"

Chanse: "hes so deep in the mental closet his art is trying to scream it at him through his subconscious."

Chanse: "ive been there 😞"

Josh: "I've never been more prepared to edit a video in my whole life"

---

Angela: "Erinnnn not u directing them to stand closer together 😭😭"

Erin: "look I'm at my wits end. I'm thinking forced proximity might do it"

Keith: "if that could work they would have gotten it during kissing currency 😙💸"

Shayne: "@ courtney is this your thought process behind wanting a kissing video"

Courtney: "HA"

Courtney: "yes."

---

Courtney: "okay so if our plan at this point is just to make them read so many fanfics about themselves out loud that they spontaneously realize they're in love, we've got to find some fics that don't contain the word 'cummies'"

Angela: "what are cummies?? 😇"

Shayne: "ANGELA I SWEAR TO GOD"

---

As the incidents kept piling up, a plot began to form. Maybe Anthony and Ian were just so oblivious that they all needed to adopt a certain 'push-comes-to-shove' mentality, and do what had to be done. Everyone agreed, they had to find a way to put them in such a charged situation that this would all finally boil over, and the astounding tension that had plagued the office would be resolved. The ultimate achievement of this long-weary Group Chat.

Erin: "okay so one more time. everyone has talked with HR, yes? and everyone slated for the vid is comfortable with the concept of spin the bottle"

Angela: "what's spin the bottle? 😇"

Tommy: "STOP"

Shayne "1) Yes for the thousandth time, we promise. 2) What the FUCK are we going to do if this bottle never lands on Anthony and Ian"

Erin: "I will keep this shoot going as long as necessary."

Shayne: "That sounds like a threat?"

Chanse: "I'm suddenly regretting my decision. May I take my week's vacation right now?"

---

Erin: "how..."

Courtney: "did you see the look in their eyes????? :O"

Angela: "FATE WAS ON OUR SIDE. IT LANDED ON THEM THREE WHOLE TIMES"

Erin: "yes but,,,,,"

Tommy: "don't speak to me I'm still reeling"

Keith: "oh please don't tell me it didn't work."

Chanse: "i just have one question. how did they kiss THREE TIMES and still not realize."

Courtney: "they were both practically levitating from giddiness"

Arasha: "they just kept looking away from each other and laughing it off... they didn't see each other's expressions 😭😭"

Angela: "guys. guys"

Erin: "what"

Angela: "do u know what this means"

Angela: "now that we've pushed them over this hurdle... They're going to start bro kissing in their sketches"

Chanse: "oh my god"

Josh: "oh fuck you're right"

Erin: "that's it."

Erin: "im quitting smosh"

Amanda: "Oh hey guys! We have a group chat?"

Shayne:

[purpdrawsthings]

How's life being... Well, like that? Are you two being treated at least semi-decently? You're not being used as punching bags for Mr. Puzzles's emotions, right? Right?

SMG4 : Oh! It's... Not bad actually... Aside from having such terribly planned deadlines and overworking because Mr. Puzzles always gets ideas from... Who even knows who, to the point you even question your own mental stability... It's decent I guess. This is better than what we expected...

SMG3 : As for that semi-decently thing... I guess you could say it's like... Decent? It's like a normal worker and boss relationship but worser? He is a decent but a bad boss at the same time, moreee on the bad side cuz he's him. Also, we are not used as punching bags for Mr. Puzzles emotion. He does let it out sometimes but whenever it's in front of us he would make that crazy face for a second then go back into his office and scream so loud that everyone could hear it. He really thinks we wouldn't notice.

SMG4 : Huh, speaking of decent things, I actually got this "Best Writer #1" mug from him a few months ago because I was doing a good job as a lead script writer. I'd never knew he gave gifts.

SMG3 : And here I was thinking where the hell you even got that.

SMG4 : It's my emotional support mug by the way.

SMG3 : What.

PS : Yes I'm adding context to my older posts so people would actually understand.

Context : They live in actually pretty stable and decent environment. Think of it as a movie/office studio or whatever. Butttt due to them being kinda clumsy and very tired, the place got a bit dirty. Still nice either way. Though, it isn't nice that they don't get fresh air and are always stuck in there for eternity.

As for how Puzzles treats them, I would have to say kinda bossy. He always gives them work and well, other stuff. Like editing videos late. Buttt when they get a little sick, he let's them rest. And by rest I mean only for a day and nothing more than that. He wants to keep his movies coming out as consistent as possible. The reason why he acts like this is because all his time of making low quality films, he was just making them alone with nobody tbh. That's why he manages them so poorly

And no, Puzzles does not use them as punching bugs. He actually doesn't even use violence. He just shouts and gets way too frustrated. If he gets a little stressed, he would just go in his office and scream to let his stress all out. Great way of coping Puzzles =D

As for the last part, that was just a funny last part I just wanted to add because I thought it would be fun. I decided that if an employee [ basically one of the crew ] did a great job, he would reward them. In his case, 4 got three mugs with messages that were way too relatable to him =]

[kazoosandfannypacks]

Could u draw when penumbra from ducktales 2017 is shrunk down permanently and can’t be normal sized again and has to live the rest of her life as a tiny moon warrior goddess while webby takes care of her

You know what? I'm going to say something in response to this that I haven't said to a fanart request in a very long time: No.

No.

I don't usually like denying requests. I like the challenge of drawing something I wouldn't think to draw. I like drawing some favorite characters. I like making other people happy.

But honestly? I'm just tired of all this at this point.

Last week, you asked me for a fanart. And then you sent me the same ask five times, some of them even after I told you I recieved your ask and was working on the drawing. And you dm'd me about it. And after I responded to your sixth ask about it and told you it was in the queue, you asked how long until I'd post the drawing.

It seemed clear that you were excited about it. And yesterday I posted it. Where did that excitement go? Did it funnel into a reblog so all your followers can see the art I drew specifically for you? Did you respond with a comment, even just a "thx," or a dm or ask (since you're so fond of those) to show your appreciation? Did you even give me a like to show my efforts to please you were not in vain?

No.

Instead, you rushed right back to my ask box to make another request. Within twelve hours of recieving the art you'd begged so tirelessly for, you sent me four asks requesting another art, a more detailed one. Some of them don't even ask. They just demand.

What do you think an artist is? Is it simply a machine that lies idle until someone makes a request, then kicks into high gear, spits out a drawing at you, and then goes inactive until it gets another request? Do you think they delete every ask they get in their inbox, then go "oh, no, I've forgotten this drawing, if only someone had requested it seven more times!" Do you think we exist solely to supply your demand and respond to your every whim?

I'm an artist. I love drawing things. And embroidery. And painting. And making moodboards. And editing videos. And gifmaking. And writing. And poetry. And bracelet making. And baking. I love art.

But I also love my job. That's right, I work a real job in between drawing things for free for strangers on the internet. And I like to spend time with my family. That's right, I have family, and we have a good relationship, and I enjoy spending time with them. And I enjoy going to church and volunteering and working with kids and playing games and going shopping and driving to work and talking with my friends and watching tv and eating meals. And I do things I don't enjoy, too, like clean the bathroom, fold laundry, do dishes, clean my room. I am an artist. But I am also a human.

And I am a human who does not have time to keep responding to or deleting multiple asks begging for the same thing. I am a human who does not have time to make art on demand only to turn around and have even more art demanded of me without so much as even acknowledgement of the art I made. Not only do I not have time to do these things, I don't like to do them. I don't like being pestered by strangers to make art I don't want to make. I don't like not receiving recognition for my work. And I don't like to have to be the bad guy and set boundaries when someone is treating me like dirt.

I'm a human. I am not a robot. I am not a content-making machine. I have never once been a proponent of ai generated art, but you make me stop to consider if maybe it's a good thing that it exists, just so that no human artist has to deal with people like you who think they're entitled to our time.

Of course, I am still against ai "art," especially because there's something even better that you can do in order to get exactly the art you want: instead of yelling at a plagarism algorithm or harassing a tired human, just pick up a pencil and a piece of paper and draw it yourself.

You have an idea. You know exactly what you want it to look like. You can capture your vision in a way no one else can. Trace screenshots if you think you "can't" draw. Or just keep trying until you're good. That's what I did. That's what all of us artists did. We kept at it until we got good at what we did. Behind the fanart that you spent a week pestering me about because you were impatient is literal decades of practice that I put into my craft. It might be good for you to try it out for yourself, too.

And to everyone reading this and thinking "oh, no, maybe kazzy has had enough and I shouldn't request art from her and I was a horrible person" or anything along that lines: please do not think that for even a second!

I love art requests. I love when someone looks at my art, says, "I would love to see more art like this!" and asks me to draw something they love. It's a HUGE honor! And I do have a LOT of fun drawing things and stepping out of my artistic comfort zone, and I love every single person who sends me an ask for my drawing challenges. I love when you guys ask for characters I've never drawn before. I love that I don't have to worry about art block because I've got a well-stocked tumblr inbox. I love the service you guys provide in requesting art and helping me hone my practice. I even love when one of you sends multiple requests for a drawing challenge! You mean you like my work enough to ask me for multiple things you love? That's an honor!

Thank you all for all your art requests; they've helped make me the artist I am today!

And also. It doesn't really matter if you reblog. I love reblogs, and, yeah, I get a little disappointed when people don't reblog requests from me, but at the end of the day, your blog is your blog. You don't have to reblog everything I make you. You don't have to comment on it all. You don't even technically have to leave a like on all of it. As an artist, I just love to create things. But as a human? It's nice to recieve that validation.

(Especially with requests for incredibly specific things. There are a lot of people who will reblog my art in various fandoms, especially character or ship art, but sometimes the more niche stuff recieves less love. Which is fine! Fandoms are under no obligation to like every art they see! But I know from experience that when people request incredibly specific art that caters only to them, and they have very few reblogs on their blog of anything at all, I'm about to pour a piece of my soul into making something that is about to go unloved. And after a while, that kind of stings.)

The Tl;dr here? I'm not a fan of people who don't treat artists like humans, but I love nothing more than creating art for people who appreciate it.

[vgperson]

What Did I Do In 2023?

Whatever I wanted, mostly.

----

As I mentioned last year, my site now has an RSS feed with basically everything I've done back to 2020, so this will mainly be going over the same stuff from that, just with added context.

In January, I finally sat down and properly realized an idea for a short story I'd had sitting around for a while: From the Sidelines, about a fantasy RPG expedition going sideways. I remain very proud of it in both concept and execution, and hope people read it.

In February, Your Turn To Die was released on Steam Early Access, receiving character profiles and some bonus mini-episodes, adding two more later in the year.

After finishing From the Sidelines, I carried that momentum to revisit my Ut0p1a story series about funny computer animals. I'd always meant to continue it - and conclude it - but hadn't been satisfied with the ideas I had for it until totally rethinking them this year. In March, I posted the remaining stories one after another: Right to Code and Left to Code. I'm very proud of these as well. Also in March, Kenshi Yonezu released LADY. (Video, interview)

In April, Uri released the Data Book of the Strange Men Series, a big collection of the writing she's done on the games in the series, with a lot of new parts as well, all translated by me.

Then in May... uh, well, let's see. In April, Capcom released the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection. I always adored the Battle Network games, and was initially excited that they finally did the thing... but by the time it came out, I was pretty disappointed by how, while you certainly couldn't call them low-effort ports, the effort didn't extend everywhere I thought it should, with the biggest offenders being the total absence of any "convenience features" except Buster Max Mode, the bad font, and the almost entirely untouched translations.

So, I ended up deciding I might as well just replay the originals, and that was a fun time (aside from the parts that were bad). Doing this, I couldn't help but notice how... turbulent the translations were, even if I'd always known they were less than ideal. I mean, the first two games just used periods for ellipses despite the tight character limits, then in BN3 they had an ellipsis character... but it's center-aligned, Japanese-style? Aside from the intro, which has normal ones? Gosh, somebody should fix that - it's simple enough to find and edit in YY-CHR. "JapanMan" is silly, too - I wonder if anybody made a patch for that? Wait, what do you mean there's just a tool to extract and insert text in all the Battle Network games including the Legacy Collection???

Thus began a journey that sort of occupied the rest of my year. First I did the BN3 Translation Revision, trying not to worry too much about cross-referencing the Japanese text unless something seemed wrong, so that I didn't spend too long on the project. Then I began to consider BN2, with its unfortunate "foreigner" text that would need some more significant reworking. I established more convenient tools for comparing with the Japanese script, and thus did a much more thorough job with it, releasing the BN2 Translation Revision in June (AKA Princess Pride Month).

Finally, after giving myself time to recover and actually finish replaying the series, I knew what I had to do to close things out. With the BN4 Translation Revision, you can finally play Battle Network 4 with a translation that isn't such a mess. Whether you'd want to is for you to decide, though if you can get over the structure, I don't think it's the worst game in the series by any means. (Oh, and in December I also updated the BN3 Revision to 1.1, doing a thorough pass with the methods I'd honed. But I think I'm pretty much good on MMBN translations now.)

Anyway, backtracking to other things that happened during my Battle Network haze... June had Kenshi Yonezu's Moongazing (video, interview), and July had Globe (video, interview, interview).

Last but not least, released in November, I translated Refind Self: The Personality Test Game, a short game from Lizardry (creator of 7 Days to End with You) with a fun concept.

----

Obviously I was right to have said "no promises" last year. But really, Your Turn To Die should get its final part on Steam sometime next year, maybe even early-ish in it. That's certainly the goal.

I'm also hoping to buckle down and finish one of my own games, but as usual, who knows how that'll pan out. Letting my whims carry me this year let me finally finish From the Sidelines and Ut0p1a, which was great, and it also led me down a Battle Network rabbit hole, which was... fine, but definitely for a narrower audience. I'd always like to get back to more free game translations and the like, too, but it takes effort to find things I'd want to translate. For now, I think my increasing desire to be able to let loose some of these original games I've been planning, and the stories in them, might come out on top.

[crunchycrystals]

still thinking about That Scene in chris grace as scarlett johansson and i want as many people to watch this as possible so under the cut it goes. watch this if you've ever been interested in representation in media and how it affects the way you perceive yourself

anyways so ive talked briefly about how i love a good full utilization of a format (link here) but now i wanna go more in depth on it bc i love it a lot

make some noise

jesus christ the first time i saw this i paused and started jumping up and down on my couch. let me start with basics !!! i love that the video of the show appears on the make some noise tv. its so unnerving to see something completely detached from make some noise now on the tv after watching dozens of episodes. and sam just saying the normal spiel he does every time leaves you wondering for a few extremely disorienting seconds if they just edited the video onto a normal episode until he starts to introduce chris and you see his nameplate is erased. another extremely disorienting thing because we NEVER see the nameplates empty and it ties in so well with the identity crisis currently happening in the show. he has no idea who he is as a performer like is the performer part of him the real part?? how much has been played up for entertainment??? and then after the horror has been slammed into you by the prompt and seeing chris as confused by all of this as we are, he runs off which leads to the thing that kept me standing on my couch for the next 10 minutes

very important people

first off. i absolutely love the coincidence (or intentional detail???? who knows but either way) of chris's first line on the make some noise set being "my name is..." because that's the thing that started vip !!!!!!! and throughout the rest of the existential crisis dropout trip he constantly says "hello my name is" too ough i love that so much thats why i started writing this whole post. very important people is the perfect show to add to this segment it makes me feel a little feral thinking about it. coming out on stage without any alterations to his appearance, again back to the idea of is the chris grace on stage the real chris grace?? can he ever be??? and again his name is gone like in the scene before. vic says "you can be anything you want" like the thing scarjo said to justify playing an asian character and he still can't come up with anything. then the card transition oh my godddddddd

dirty laundry

(side note i did say before that the cards on the vip set were dirty laundry cards. i was wrong they are vip card the designs just look very similar esp compared to s1 of vip)

this is gonna be way shorter than the two rambles above i just think it's really cool to use the dirty laundry question format for some identity crisis stuff. i don't know how to properly express how cool i think it is i don't think i can do it justice. the "who..." format for the cards is a great way of expressing how he is losing grip of his identity

this section of the post is also to point out that i am only noticing now that the "dropout presents" version of chris is seen on the couch at some point also heckling stage chris which is a nice detail especially since part of the card was "who is generally a hypocrite"

gastronauts

gastronauts hasn't come out yet so i can't analyze this as much as i'd like but to me it just seems like an extension of the thing started in dirty laundry of everyone confusing him for scarlett johansson. i initially see this as a reference to the fact that throughout the whole show it's been going deeper than him playing scarlett as she plays him and then her playing him plays her again, etc, but thinking about it more for this post makes me think it's like the line between the real person and character they play blurring. i think everyone in the dropout audience is pretty familiar with this like we know brennan pissed on game changer isn't actually how he is in real life, but it's extremely easy to fall into that parasocial trap. when you put so much of your actual self in a character or performance it's hard to find the line between, even for the performer. chris keeps saying that he's not scarlett but everyone insists it's who he is

[aerkame]

In the finfolk au, what if y/n knew not to give Wally their real name (or at least was weary of him and didn’t trust him enough to tell) and tried to give a nickname instead? Would he know instantly they were lying? And how would he try to get them to say their real name? Also, how would he and everyone else react if y/n upon transforming into a mermaid was terrified and tried to escape?

If Wally doesn't take notice of something Home is there to help... Side note: Normal puppets are just the equivalent of humans in this AU to prevent confusion.

EDIT: ACK, just remembered the last part of the ask. I shall make a part 2 to this ask then. Hopefully the anon will be able to see it when it gets posted!

You were always warned about the finfolk. Luckily you weren't exactly a normal puppet so you doubt that any of the residents here would try to trap you on the island with them. But that small bit of paranoia kept you on your toes...well crutches. Your leg was still healing and as far as you could tell you'd be staying at 'Home' until the injury healed.

"My name is..." You thought of something quick, giving Wally a fake name. You don't know what exactly will happen if you give him your true name, but you've heard plenty of times now to never ever give it out to the fae, demons, angels, or the finfolk.

The tall puppet clicked his felt tongue before placing his hands behind his back. "What a lovely name."

---

Wally is well aware that you have been lying to him, but who is he to try and pry information out of you? He shook his head at the thought. While the finman really wanted to just force the name out of you, it would be better to get you comfortable here first, and then they could begin their goal on making you a permanent resident. Just like they did with Frank.

Speaking of which...he turned around to look at the puppet in question, humming in delight upon seeing you two get along, sipping tea and sharing stories.

Frank was the perfect tool to get you to open up really. He had no issues with the island, he understood selkies and their current dwindling numbers, he was level-headed, and most importantly, he was a normal puppet before. He could relate to you in a sense. The grey puppet even helped you lean towards staying or at least consider the possibility of staying here, having brought up the issue that poachers and criminals alike will do nothing but continue stealing selkie coats for profit.

"Quite frankly, you might be better off staying here. You and I both know there is not much out there for selkies and it's only going to get worse with the constant poaching and coat thieves, your kind are on the brink of extinction for stars sake."

Frank sighed after his mini-rant, having worked himself up. The topic of poaching and hunting exotic or near-extinct species was an upsetting topic and it was easy to tell. You didn't speak much for a while after that, continuing to listen to Frank while sipping at the hot beverage. "Hey...Frank, if I did decide to stay would the others even be alright with that?" Your voice cracked a bit. You don't know why, but it felt like eyes were pinning you to the plush seat, demanding that you stay put.

His eyebrows quirked and he gave you a questioning look. "I have no doubt that the neighbors wouldn't mind you staying." He crossed his arms looking more stern now. "If anything I'd say that you would be safer here with us."

You gave Frank a small smile. The eyes followed you.

---

"So, neighbor. I heard that you've been getting quite comfortable yes?" Wally swished his wine in small circles before taking a sip, not once taking his eyes off you.

"oh, uhm, yes! It's very nice here, there are so many smaller islands and lots of places to explore. And the colorsss..." Your words slurred slightly "so many colors evenn in the plantss. I've never seen any place like thiss! I mean even the insects and fish are unique here, Frankyy showed me his whole collection which he says isn't done ye-" Your face was beet red and the finman could tell he had you drunk enough once you couldn't stop talking yourself into a mess.

Carefully leaning over, Wally placed a hand on yours as he rubbed circles into your palm. Time to butter you up.

"You know, you could always stay with us here, forever. You'll never not be bored, you'll have friends, and you'd be safe." He inhaled, the small but hidden slits behind his cheeks opening, smelling the scent that lingered on your form remembering it was the perfume he gave you. He sighed, content.

Wally looked down at your small body. You had stopped rambling and now you were avoiding eye contact, preferring to look down into your lap or looking off to the side.

"Ah...you know, I could never get your name out of my mind. It's just so wonderful...If you did stay I could call you by it all I want." He leaned in closer, softly grabbing hold of your chin to lift it up, making sure he could see your eyes.

A thumb brushed over your mouth "I just wished there was more I could do to help you..." He breathed out your false name and watched you struggle internally...good.

"Uhm, actually, Wally, there's something I've been meaning to tell you."

"Oh? I'm all ears." His plan was going along flawlessly.

Wally softly let go of your face, but remained close, fixing you in a position of feeling pinned. "I-I lied. About my name. I lied aboutt a lot of things." Some of your letters still slurred but it was obvious you were trying your hardest to think clearly.

"That's alright dear, I knew the whole time, but I figured you had a reason." Wally was grinning ear to ear.

"My real name is..." Your named slipped your mouth.

Yellow hands flew up to cup your cheeks. Wally held a mixed face that was of bliss and excitement. "Oh my darling I am so sorry I've called you by another name this entire time! Please allow me to make up for it with another dinner? Same time tomorrow."

Your head felt fuzzy as you nodded along to whatever he said. "It's- alriight." You felt numbed. Wait...

A part of you panicked for a second, having snapped into the the realm of reality, but you calmed down shortly after. You trusted him. Wally would never harm you or trap you right? He and the others have been all too kind and welcoming and if they really wanted to trap you they'd have figured out a way by now. Your thoughts were so rapid, everything is fast, too fast.

Wally was so caught up in his own thoughts he didn't pay attention to your swaying body until he heard a loud 'thud' and looked down at your sleeping form.

Oh dear, maybe that beverage was too strong for you to handle.

TL;DR

Don't get drunk around Wally. He's a finman and won't get drunk as easily... and he'll probably take advantage of that to get info out of you. Or he'll just make you a blushing mess.

[superblysubpar]

*originally posted over on my old blog. If you happened to read/interact with this before, I'd greatly appreciate it if you left some love once again. I did re-edit/re-write some things.*

Midnight City:

part one | part two: "Frozen"

modern!steve harrington x fem! reader

Summary: Steve Harrington looks good tonight. You leave your meddling friends behind at the bar and Steve and you get a little lost in each other. | masterlist | steve's music | NSFW 18+

WC Range: 3k-6k

Warnings: modern Steve (smartphone use), drinking amongst group/reader (all of legal age), mentions of Ronance potential, fem reader, use of Y/N and petnames, a lot of swearing, making out in uber/public places, oral and fingering (reader receiving, steve performing), Steve’s a little possessive

Steve knew what he was doing, and you weren't going to fall for it. 

The hat, the blazer, the new amount of scruff on his jawline...he looked good.

The entire wait in line to get into the bar your eyes roamed over him as he talked with Robin and Eddie.

You knew you were staring. You knew you shouldn’t be staring.

As you walked in you saw him fixing the collar of the jacket in the grungy mirror by the door. He caught your eye in the reflection, licking his lips before smirking and asking, “See something you like?”

Cocky son of a bitch.

You rolled your eyes and patted his shoulder as you walked by, “You look nice tonight, Steve.”

You exhaled and bit your lip. You risked a glance back and regretted it immediately as you made eye contact with his stupid smirk.

Steve was your friend. Just a friend. You could appreciate how good your friend looked tonight. It wasn’t illegal to find him attractive. It wasn’t against any rules to think about his lips a little more than you had in the past. 

Your group found a table by the small stage and Eddie drummed on the table looking around, “We probably shouldn’t leave this spot, you guys wanna go get your drinks first?”

Robin craned her neck searching, no doubt if Nancy was here yet. You pushed her shoulder down and laughed, “Down girl. Don’t be so eager - remember, slow game. Just text her where we are,” you looked at the boys, “Go ahead, we’ll wait.”

Steve and Eddie nodded and instead of going around you, Steve squeezed between you and a stranger, pressing his hand to your lower back and mumbled a quiet, “Sorry.”

You willed your face to stay neutral as you mumbled something about it being okay as your body filled with heat. Robin’s mouth dropped as she looked at your face and you squinted at the crowd, biting your cheek.

She smacked your shoulder and you recoiled, “Ow. What the hell is your problem!”

She smacked your shoulder with the back of her hand a few times again, and laughed while shouting, “Holy shit you have the hots for Steve!”

“Robin!” you hissed at her and ducked down.

“Who has the hots for Steve?” Nancy’s voice ringing out over the din of the crowd behind your shoulder.

Robin grabbed her hand and pulled her to the table, “Y/N!”

Oh god, could the two of them be any louder?

Nancy’s eyes lit up in excitement and she opened her mouth but it snapped shut, her eyes twinkling as the boys came back to the table, Steve setting your normal drink of choice in front of you.

Robin cleared her throat, “No drinks for Nance or I, hot stuff?”

Steve shot her a look but responded cooly, “I only have two hands and so much cash Robin. Y/N knows how to pace herself. You on the other hand drink like you wanna swim in it.”

Robin made a face at him, pulling out her phone and began typing as Nancy tapped the table, “No worries, gives Robs and I a chance to talk some more. Come on,” she tugged Robin away from the table who put her phone away as your phone buzzed three times. 

You pulled it out and resisted rolling your eyes as you read the messages.

Robin: holy

Robin: shit

Robin: steve likes you

You started typing and saw Nancy’s name appear in the group chat, three little dots blinking and you waited.

Nancy: he does he totally does

You: guys stop it

You: we’re just friends

Nancy: don’t look now but he’s staring at you

Robin: aww he loves you

You glanced up to see Steve quickly look down and you bit your lip around a smile.

Robin: I SAW THAT

You set your phone on the table, screen down and gestured to your drink, “Thanks Harrington.”

He smiled and adjusted his hat nervously before grabbing his own drink. “Of course,” he held it up and you clinked your glasses together before you both took pretty big gulps.

Your phone buzzed and you took another sip.

“Where’d Eddie-”

“You gonna get-”

You both stopped talking and then spoke in unison, “Sorry, you-”

You clamped your mouth shut and your phone buzzed again and you sighed.

He pointed to it, “Your phone keeps buzzing.”

You nodded and took another drink, “Sure does, where did Eddie go?”

He nodded towards the bar, “Set his sights on a new prospect.”

You grinned and craned your neck to find the dorky metalhead leaning over the bar, chatting up a pretty honey blonde haired waitress.

You jumped at Steve’s voice next to your ear and his hot breath hitting your neck as he whispered, “Ten bucks he gets a fake number again.”

You turned and were shocked that your face was so close to his, your cherry breath mixing with his whiskey, and you narrowed your eyes, focusing on your competitive banter rather than your stomach flipping, “You’re a terrible wingman for your best friend. But, I’ll take that bet. I have faith in Munson. She seems interested.”

Your phone buzzed five times and as you glanced at it Steve took a step back and you picked it up as the girls returned to the table.

Steve fiddled with his drink and nodded towards your phone, “Who ya texting so much?”

Robin had a smug smile on her face, “Yeah, Y/N, you have friends other than us?”

You made a face at her and blinked at the screen.

Robin: Fuck that was cute. You guys are cute together. Cheers your cups together again. I want a picture. 

Nancy: If you get married I call maid of honor. Robin’s Steve's best woman. No arguing. It’s happening.

Oh my god, a match made in heaven those two. 

You tried to focus on responding normally while reading their messages, “Uh..um..Dylan.”

“Dylan?” Steve asked and you looked up to see his frown while he sipped his drink. Glancing back down to see why your phone had buzzed five times before they were back to the table. 

Robin: OH

Robin: MY

Robin: FUCKING

Robin: GOD

Robin: KISS KISS KISS KISS KISS KISS

You closed your eyes and clicked your phone locked and grabbed your drink and downed it, “Uh, yeah, Dylan.”

Robin smirked, pulling out her phone, “Dylan is your boyfriend?”

Steve’s knuckles hit the table a few times, his mouth twisting into not quite a scowl, but he didn’t look happy.

Your phone buzzed as you responded, “He’s not my boyfriend. We just hung out a few times.”

Robin: Watch this.

Robin waited until you looked at her and she smirked, nudging Steve, “Riiight. Hung out a few times. She means they had sex.”

“Robin,” you hissed for the second time that night.

Steve finished his drink, “Yeah, Robin. I got it.”

He tapped his empty glass and walked away and you turned on Robin, “What is your problem!”

She jumped up and down giggling, “Oh my god, he looked like you kicked him in the stomach. He’s so into you.”

Nancy smirked and slid your empty glass towards you, “She’s not wrong. Her methods were a bit blunt, but now you know. Even you have to admit he looked pretty heartbroken.”

Steve was heartbroken over you talking to another guy? You didn’t want to admit to either of these two that the thought made you want to squeal a little, but the thought of Steve Harrington being a little jealous when it came to you made your stomach flip. Could one of your best friends be more than that? As you thought you saw the two of them smiling wider at you, as if they were reading your thoughts and Robin started clapping her hands together. 

You pushed Robin’s shoulders down to get her to stop bouncing, “Okay, okay, okay. If he makes a move, I won’t say no. Okay? But I’m not gonna be the one to do it.”

Robin nodded and you pointed in her face, “No. Meddling. I want him to do it himself, Robin. I mean it.”

She zipped her lips and threw the key and Eddie timed it perfectly, pretending to catch it and unlock her lips as he slid in next to her raising his eyebrows, “Ooo secrets. Tell me.”

“Y/N and Steve love each other,” she responded immediately.

“Robin!” you looked at her in disbelief.

She shrugged, “What?”

You mimed her literally seconds ago locking of the lips and held your hands out, asking what she had to say for herself. She shrugged again, “I said I wouldn’t meddle or tell Steve. Gonna have to be more specific next time sweet cheeks.”

She turned you towards the bar and gave your butt two pats and Nancy made a sound from the back of her throat and you held your hands up, grinning as you backed away.

You sighed as you stepped further away from the table though, glancing across the room to see Steve’s tall frame over the crowd you pushed through. You watched Steve rub the back of his neck, tipping his glass back for a drop of whiskey. You meant what you said, you’d risk your friendship with Steve if he made the first move.

You sighed as he rubbed his new scruff and figured a little flirting wouldn’t hurt, a little nudge in the direction you hoped he wanted to go too. You already had a witty, fairly flirty banter on normal nights, it was up to him to push it further. But you could help get the wheels turning in his brain. 

So, you bumped his hip when you finally reached him, “Hey, let me get your next one.”

He started to shake his head in protest and you stepped in front of him, placing yourself between the bar and him as you waved for the bartender.

Your phone buzzed twice.

Eddie: Woah. Easy there, killer. Gonna give him an accidental boner brush.  

Robin: Delicious.

You smirked and clicked it locked. When you got your drinks and turned to him he was glancing at his phone, his eyebrows furrowed.

You smiled but internally started to panic that Robin had not kept her word, or worse Eddie was now involved and texting him. You hadn’t made him promise not to do anything. Those two could find a crack in any contract, slipping between the lines of questionable and reasonable decisions alone. Together, though, they were a terrifying tornado of well intended though slightly messy chaos. 

You handed him the drink and you both were pushed over to a large post, leaning against it and you took a sip. Needing to find out what those two were up to, knowing you sounded incredibly nosy, you still asked, “Who ya texting?”

He glanced up, “Uh…I don’t know.”

You narrowed your eyes, “You don’t know?”

He looked confused at your tone and glanced back down at his phone. You pulled out your phone and started typing.

You: I’m going to kill you

Eddie: what

Robin: why

Nancy: I know a good lawyer.

Steve kept talking, “Yeah, a random number texted me asking if I still wanted to get drinks. Do you recognize who it is? Did Robin give my number to someone? I have, like, five contacts and four of them are here with me.”

Hey Steve! You still down for drinks tomorrow night?

You tried not to let the emotions coursing through you show on your face, “Oh. No idea, sorry.”

You pulled out your phone and quickly typed nevermind before smiling, gesturing to the table as the lights dimmed and the crowd around you cheered.

You pressed through the people and Steve’s hand on your back was making you sweat. He had girls texting him to get drinks? 

As the band started playing you sipped your drink and stole glances at Steve’s jaw next to you. That green monster churning inside of you. Damn Robin for even saying anything about you and Steve. Damn Steve for the way he looked tonight. And damn whoever that number was.

How did this happen? How did you go from being friends, to thinking he looked good tonight, to being jealous, to having to stop yourself from reaching over and biting his neck.

He pulled out his phone and something came over you, making you push closer to him, bumping your wrist in front of his crotch. 

Think about getting drinks with some other girl while you think about, as Eddie so eloquently put it, my “accidental” boner brush Harrington. 

You felt him stiffen, his thumb pausing over his screen.

You took a sip and let your hand fall back down to your side and felt your own phone buzz.

Eddie: Nice

Robin: What happened to him making the first move?

You glanced over your shoulder to see the two of them smirking at you. Robin glanced down at something and smiled as you felt fingers brush your own.

Your breath caught in your chest and you closed your eyes as Steve’s fingers brushed and moved against yours. The backs of his knuckles barely brushing against your skin, tapping almost in time with the music. 

You focused back on the stage, feeling warm as Steve moved a little closer, his arm against yours now, goosebumps erupted on your skin despite sweating your ass off.

Was this really happening?

You felt your phone buzz and you ignored it, leaning in to Steve a little more. The song being performed pounding in your ears in time with your heartbeat, the haze of a smoke filled bar making everything feel a little heavier, a little hotter. Your arms pressed together, electric static coursing between you and he nudged his shoulder against yours. 

You glanced up at him, your eyes meeting as lights surged on the stage, it was like a freaking scene from a movie. 

It really was like a scene from one of your favorite romantic comedies, lights casting Steve in a golden light, eyes fixed on you like you were the only two in the room, music swelling around you as bodies pushed you closer together. His eyes bounced between yours as he started to lean in, his lips parted slightly, and a flash went off next to you, making you both turn and squint as Robin screamed, “Fucking hell! Shit!”

She quickly threw her phone down, her, Nancy and Eddie all grinning with their elbows on the table, blinking innocently and you rolled your eyes and Steve cleared his throat. 

Steve and you turned back to the stage, the moment had passed and you were honestly a little heartbroken. And a little annoyed at Robin, who you were sure was the reason you felt your phone buzz again.

When it buzzed again you rolled your eyes and glanced down. Your heart thrummed in your chest in time with the music building as you ignored the message from Eddie and clicked on Steve’s name.

Steve: Wanna get out of here?

You bit the inside of your cheek and glanced over at him. You took a deep breath and typed your message while smirking.

You: You can do better than that Steve.

He glanced at his phone and his lips twitched up on the left side. His eyes kept glancing up to you as he typed and your phone buzzed again while he was still writing. 

Eddie: You kids are so cute. Can I be both of your best man?

Robin: ARE YOU TWO TEXTING EACH OTHER WHEN YOU’RE FIVE INCHES A PART

You rolled your eyes and took a sip of your drink and almost choked on it as you read the message that popped onto your phone as Steve slid his own into his back pocket with a satisfied smirk on his lips. 

Steve: You’re right. I can. I ordered an Uber and it’s outside. We’re going back to my place and I’m going to show you how much better I can do.

Steve: all. night. long.

As you finally swallowed, heart threatening to crack out of your chest as you glanced up at him under your lashes, he grabbed the drink out of your hand, setting it on the table and pulled you through the crowd. 

You were breathless from how fast he was going, pulling you out of the bar and into the waiting car. You giggled from how frantic he seemed.

He grabbed your cheeks, “I’m really sorry about this, your tip is already doubled and if you run every red light I swear I’ll quadruple it.”

You looked at him confused but as he pressed his lips to yours and you heard the uber driver sigh and turn their music up, you understood Steve was starting his text message vow, lips a blazing. 

You moaned into his lips, your hands on his scruff, down his neck and under his blazer, scratching your fingers up his back slow and hard, soaking in the thing you had wanted to do since he pulled up to the bar that night. 

His kissing was slow and sure, his hand pulling your jaw open for him as his tongue dipped into you. His other hand squeezed your thigh before roaming up to your hip, under your shirt and toying with the lace of your bralette. 

His warm fingertips on your skin buzzed, his mouth opening against yours, his breathing slow and heavy, panting into you. His breath and yours mixing until it felt like you were the same person breathing, warm and heavy and stars dancing behind your closed eyes.

The car stopped and Steve pulled you out, backing you into the lobby door with his hands on your hips and his mouth on your neck, both of you stumbling inside. 

He pressed the elevator button, wrapping his hands on your lower back and nipping your skin and you moaned, your head falling back against the door.

He pushed you inside as the door opened, bumping another button before attaching himself to your lips again. His fingers held your chin as he kissed you softer and sweeter. Kisses that left your stomach burning, your lips buzzing, your body sweating. He sighed as his thumbs rubbed over your cheeks and pulled you through the open door.

You didn’t stop kissing, bumping into the walls and stopping in the hallway against a wall or strangers door occasionally. Catching your breath in big gasps of air against each other as the other kept their lips moving, refusing to take a break. Frantic, needy, hungry for each other and not willing to waste any time. 

Steve pushed you up against his door and pressed his hands over your head, leaning his weight into you and kissed you so deeply you felt yourself drenching your underwear, his lips sucked on your bottom lip as he opened the door.

Once his front door closed, you were ripping each other’s clothes off. His blazer on a lamp, his shirt in the sink. Your shirt you were pretty sure went behind a plant and you didn’t see where the jeans went. You were down to your bralette and underwear before you saw him press his phone and the same song that had been on in the uber came out of a speaker. He flung it somewhere before grabbing you and lifting your legs and wrapping them around his waist. 

He pushed you down into the couch and removed your underwear, his scruffy cheeks ticking your thighs before his mouth was on your soaking folds, licking a long and slow stripe through you.

You shuddered, “Steve.”

He licked you again, sucking on your lips before his tongue swirled on your clit, the bundle of nerves spasming under his attention. He moved to suck on the bead and you felt his spit pooling on it as he created a vacuum and two of his fingers dipped through your slick and into your entrance. 

The same song started repeating and you gripped his hat and yanked it off as your legs adjusted over his shoulders, him on his elbows and laying across the couch under you. 

You gasped as he pulled his lips away with a pop and pulled his fingers out and you choked out, “I-I like your haircut.”

He smirked up at you from between your legs, his lips rosy and glistening and his eyes blown out wide, pupils taking over the mossy color, his new scruff damp with you. He was handsome and perfect and he was only slightly cocky as he asked, “Yeah?”

You nodded and shivered as his fingers brushed through your wet folds, teasing as he watched how you threw your head back. He kept sliding them up and down, his large middle finger spreading you slowly as the music built and he sighed, his other hand wrapping under your knee, kissing up your thigh as he babbled.

“You’re so fucking hot.”

You whined as his fingers kept sliding, down to your entrance and teasing you and back up to your swollen clit, creating a friction that was building with the coil in your stomach as the music started over again. Kissing your thighs and the dips of your hips sweetly in contrast to the filth that was coming out of his mouth. 

He pulled through you slowly, his fingers making a v, “Your sweet pussy just dripping for me, baby.”

Holy shit.

“Making all this mess just for me,” his tongue swirled around your sensitive nerves again.

“Making all those pretty sounds.”

He licked sweet and quick around your nerves and into your lips before moaning, “I’m making this pussy mine. Nobody else right? It’s all mine. It’s Steve’s.”

You gasped as his tongue licked through you deeper, pushing into you harder and his nose brushed against your clit and you almost yelped from how overwhelming it all was. His words, his mouth, his nose. Steve was burying himself in you as deep as he could, devouring you like you were his first and last meal at once. Every time his lips and tongue moved, his nose hit your clit and you were panting under him as you gripped the couch and screamed as the music and Steve crashed into you.

And then you felt it. 

How his mouth and tongue were moving. How his nose kept nudging your clit at different angles. 

S.

T.

E.

V.

E.

You clenched around him and grabbed at his head, breathless, “Again. Do that again.”

He almost growled into you, repeating his spelling and you moaned as he finished the E and dug your heels into his back, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Steve-”

He nodded into you, “Mhm. Baby. That’s right. Steve’s pussy. Say it louder.”

He started sucking your clit again, three of his fingers inside of you and curling before pulling in and out quickly in sharp thrusts. 

You were panting, sweating, his lips a vacuum seal on the bead of arousal as the coil in your stomach started to snap and your legs pushed against his neck and shook, “Steve, I-I’m-”

His mouth moaned against you, nodding into your folds and the beat in the music broke and you gushed over his fingers and mouth as you screamed, “Steve!”

He pulled his fingers out of you before he licked everything you gave him until you had to pull him away from the over stimulating kitten licks he was still giving you. He kissed up your thighs and stomach before resting over you and grinding his clothed bulge over your wet and tired self.

Your eyelids fluttering and your skin sweaty, you were sure you looked a wreck beneath him as he kissed up your shoulder and neck. He rolled his hips against you and you sighed, your arousal already building again as he kissed your mouth slowly. Yourself, his whiskey and your cherries dancing on your tongue and he whispered against your lips, “How was that for better?”

You laughed around his lips and reached down and started to undo his jeans.

He kissed you sweetly, grabbing your hands and pushing them up over your head, keeping a firm hold on your wrists and dipped down to your neck again. He sucked a bruise into your skin as you started to make a damp spot on the front of his jeans while rolling your hips against him.

He pulled his lips away and his breath was hot against your ear as his fingers started to trail down your body slowly sending a wave of shivers through your body as he asked, “Think I can do even better?”

Steve Harrington knew what he was doing. 

And you were definitely falling for it.