#like i’m not constantly worrying about every single post blowing up or whatever

[esoteric-crow]

hey actually isn’t there something kind of really sad about the fact that the hardest difficulty (that isn’t just like. hell or hell. which is just ‘haha hehe Blow up.’) is called Dante Must Die. i think about it a lot. i can’t quite put my finger on why it makes me miserable but maybe someone else can.

but you know what i CAN talk about and i DO have actual fully formed thoughts about?

regenerating like crazy is great. but isn’t there something kind of inherently fucked up about the fact that, because of the regeneration dante and vergil have, neither of them will ever have tangible evidence to themselves or others of their suffering? asking themselves, was it really that bad? did it even happen at all? no matter how much you put vergil through hell and how afraid he is inside, there will never be a mark on his skin that says “i have suffered”. the world leaves no proof, nothing to take home from this experience aside from a more broken mind. vergil doesn’t say his feelings, or even allow them to surface properly, because that’s a kind of vulnerability he cannot handle. the only way he could perhaps earn someone’s sympathetic care is by expressing what he has suffered through, but he cannot verbalize that. and he looks perfect. unmarked by time or trauma. there isn’t a single part of his body that could scream out for him that something horrible has happened that he cannot figure out how to deal with alone.

and dante is just as poor off. and he’s very difficult to figure out emotionally to a passerby. dante purposefully puts on a happy face every day, and to the majority of the world, it’s convincing. there’s certainly no evidence to themselves contrary. not a scratch on him. but he is like kind of constantly getting the ever loving fuck beat out of him. stabbed and jabbed. when you look at him, you see happy, sweet, goofy dante. for all the years of pain he’s gone through, there isn’t a single marred inch of his skin that could tell you even a day of the agony unless he told you. and why would dante do that when he can pretend it simply isn’t happening until he’s alone and can sit with the terror that’s constantly in him and the loss he’s been living with, over and over losing people and being surrounded by the ghosts of their presence. whether the ghost is a wayward descendent, a gun, or just a lingering smell of ash in his childhood home. but that will only be private. he can be the walking dead, he can treat himself like shit, but his body refuses to show anything for it. and he’s certainly not going to die.

obviously, the same thing can be said for the opposite side of the spectrum: scars can be a constant reminder in the mirror of what happened that you cannot erase, always to some degree a part of you. among other stuff. so both sides of the coin are full of The Pains and The Anguishes.

on a side note, i really like when people give them like, one scar. i don’t really have a favorite one that people give vergil but i really like dante with just the one bigass gnarly one in the middle of his abdomen from the rebellion gettin jammed in there. his One scar. a treate. like it defies his regeneration somehow.

i love making a scarred up guy. i have plenty of scars n marks myself, and i feel like they should definitely be more normalized, so like, no this post isn’t anti scars or something. they’re normal and not ugly or whatever the hell people try to say. this side note is probably entirely unnecessary, but i’m tired and i’m worried about someone misunderstanding me i think. anyway i’m trying to say ooh scar angst yeah but sometimes No scars is also fucked up too. that’s the point here.

to sum up: i believe there can be something Fucked Up and angsty to be said about the fact that the sparda boys heal perfectly fine, but only externally. it is 3am. this is not articulated as well as it could be i don’t think. aaaand post.

[paracosmicessence]

twitter makes me feel like i need to fight for my life so that i can get people to see my art but tumblr feels safe enough where i can take a step back and breathe and i don’t have to worry about numbers bc i wanna admire all the cool art and sillies here and not feel negative emotions the entire time i’m on the app

[breannastewart]

i’m worried she’ll get cancelled for this like i know she’s a big hp but she can’t do that in 2024…

alright, I’m gonna be 100% real with all of you when I say all of this, and I am saying this as someone who was directly targeted by JK’s comments when they started publicly years ago: this whole notion of cancel culture, is complete bullshit, and does nothing productive for the people you’re supposedly canceling all these people over for. I haven’t touched the books since the first tweet got posted years back, and I would literally curl up under the covers and stay up for hours reading them as a kid when I discovered them (very late compared to others, but still) and when she went out and did all that, it was the first time I felt truly hurt by a famous person. however, I still watch the movies after Dan Rad’s statement. and ultimately decided not her, nor anyone gets to decide how I react or interact with any of it. you have no idea how exhausting it is to face this stuff day in and day out, and knowing there are people in power in the country I live in who would love to strip every right and safety from me and others with the single stroke of a pen. that scares me more than her dumbass twitter fingers right now or whether or not I care if the online warriors “advocating” for us care if I watch the movies at the same time. I have to pick my battles at this point for my own mental healthy and energy. if you want to cancel me for still watching the movies, then by all means. if people want to cancel Stewie for this, then by all means. the people who most likely will, are just teenagers who think that will save people like me, or whatever cause it is we’re canceling people for not being perfect about. it was the same nonsense the new teenagers in the fandom pulled with sue when one tweeted about her being a “raging z*onist” and claimed she signed this or that and blah blah blah, when it took me a couple google searches to debunk that as false. it’s literally that easy to think for yourself. these people are so quick to jump the gun because if they don’t look the most perfect online to oomfies then they might get canceled too. the world is not that black or white.

you can be like oh that’s disappointing, or oh that’s not the “perfect” response to something. but at the end of the day, literally none of us are gonna be perfect. if you wanna view the world this way constantly worrying about will I get canceled or omg my fave might get canceled :( then we all might as well stop engaging with any form of anything because none of it is going to be perfect. and if I’m being perfectly honest? it wouldn’t be a total loss if that demographic decides they can no longer “stan” her because it’s not like they actually care about any of these causes beyond making sure their online persona looks good and they can post a bunch of smut instead. these people drop who they stan for every other day when they find out one did this or that. I really don’t care if they decide she’s canceled. am I gonna personally post anything about the shoes? nah. am I gonna cancel and unstan her over it? nah. those people will just come crawling back to her eventually anyway because like I said, it’s not about caring about the cause, it’s just making sure you look like you care enough until it all blows over.

and I have friends who are also trans who don’t agree with me, and I don’t agree on every point they have either, and we’ve talked about it in depth and detail, literally did it today when stewie posted the shoes. but we don’t love or understand each other any less. I’d encourage people to have those conversations with people like us rather than making sure they scream the loudest that so and so is now canceled. at least that’s actually productive.

[thefirsttree]

A personal update + my next game

OK, time to do this. I’ve been meaning to do a big DAVID WEHLE™ update for a while now and explain why I haven’t released a new game yet, but you know how life gets in the way. Especially when life is a quarantine hellscape, you have three beautiful, amazing, exhausting kids to raise, a spouse’s job you support, a viral YouTube channel that turns your brain to mush, a thousand emails waiting in your inbox since your game is free on the Epic Games Store (with an impressive number of redemptions too! … meaning lots of emails and customer support issues), etc., etc. What also contributes to my lack of updates is because… I just don’t really like posting online. Fascinating correlation, I know!

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a venting/ranting blog post (well, maybe a bit), because my life is seriously AMAZING and INSANELY BLESSED and LUCKY. I can’t believe how many dreams keep coming true, so much so that I feel I don’t deserve it and I really pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes… but I did want to at least be honest, because I owe that to myself.

Wow, where do I even begin? Well, how about we start with the reason I’m even a full-time indie game dev now: The First Tree. This small hobby project I worked on at night morphed into this gargantuan beast (or fox) that took over my life the past 5 years. Which is great! I’m living the dream! And yet, I really didn’t expect it to do as well as it did. At its core, my game is a slow-paced, sad walking simulator (ahem, I prefer the term “exploration game,” but you know what I mean) that somehow seemed to launch at the right time to the right audience. It resonated deeply with some of you, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I still get emails almost daily how my game changed their lives in some formative way. I’m beyond honored.

However, with that spotlight came criticism and demands from the ever-present, insatiable internet. I would randomly be surfing the gamedev subreddit trying to decompress, and I would see a comment by some rando saying how much I didn’t deserve my success, and how it was all one huge lucky fluke. And I believed them!

And to add to it, some devs considered me an indie marketing “guru”, which I was uncomfortable with. I worked hard to market my game every week, and after my GDC talk, people assumed marketing was my passion; the reason I got up every morning. Just to clarify… NO, I don’t like marketing, and I hate being the center of attention. I don’t like asking people for money and wishlists. But I did what was necessary because I was passionate about telling stories, and I wanted to give my story a fighting chance to be seen on the crowded pages of Steam.

So now, you’re probably wondering “well then David, why did you make fancy YouTube videos showing off your success? Not very modest if you ask me.” This honestly could be a long blog post all on its own, because my experience of putting myself in the spotlight and becoming a “content creator” is… complicated. It was an unusual step for me, especially since I never even showed my face online (as a game developer) until my GDC talk.

First off, I always wanted to teach and start a YouTube channel. I love video editing, especially since I’ve been doing it longer than making games! It’s a huge passion of mine. And teaching people who didn’t know they could make and finish games was a huge motivator (and it’s been so rewarding already). But the second reason is, I was scared. I was self-employed, and I was riding the success of a “huge lucky fluke” that would probably not happen again. I wanted to make sure I could provide for my amazing family, and give them food and health insurance and security in these tumultuous times. I was turning my lifelong passions and hobbies into a business, and it wasn’t as simple of a mental transition as I thought.

So, I went all in on YouTube and the accompanying online course called Game Dev Unlocked. I spent years editing the scripts and videos, and polishing them to a shine. At first, no one watched my videos, no one was buying… and in the blink of an eye, the YouTube algorithm picked up my main autobiographical video (“How Making Indie Games Changed My Life”), and I started getting 5,000 subscribers a day. Right now, I’m at 150,000 subs, which is still hard for me to believe. I always had a dream of earning 100k subs on YouTube, so I was pretty happy with the whole thing. Sales were OK, but mostly people didn’t want to buy the course. Then the emails came in…

Something you should know about me: I am a textbook “people pleaser,” and if someone asks for my help, I take it very seriously. If someone is mad at me, even if I didn’t do anything wrong, it’s all I can think about, and it ruins my day. So, taking an onslaught of people begging for help and multiplying that by an impossible amount of people for my brain to truly comprehend thanks to the internet… and let’s just say it wasn’t a healthy mix.

I received thousands of emails from people who were begging me for some kind of reassurance that everything would be OK. That their dreams would come true too. And I wanted to help every single one of them. I went from a nobody working on a game for fun to becoming a spokesperson for the indie game dream. I couldn’t even get a shake from the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru without someone recognizing me and asking for game dev advice. And it didn’t stop there… I would get emails from suicidal kids asking for help, teenagers from Afghanistan asking me to get them out of their country, and on one occasion I received an email from a hopeful game developer in a war-torn country who had just experienced a bomb blowing up their neighboring village. His friends were dead, and he was hoping he could finish a game before he died too, and he needed my help. How do you say no to something like that? Didn’t I owe it to everyone because I was lucky with my hit game and I needed to “pay it forward”? (Something people constantly reminded me of)

And then to top it off, after you’ve given everything you’ve got to other people in need… you get hate mail in your inbox. You spend the whole day serving your children and strangers on the internet, then when the kids are finally asleep, you hit the bed to relax and take a look at your phone to decompress, and you randomly come across an angry gamer in your Twitter mentions telling you your game they got for free sucks, and that you took away a potentially great game from them and that your apology isn’t good enough.

Long story short, I went to a mental therapist for the first time in my life. I was broken trying to care for two toddlers and a new baby in a pandemic (which is very, very hard), taking care of my course students who gave me their hard-earned money and demanded results, and the countless people begging for help on the internet. I was this introverted, internet-lurker trying to take on the weight of the world. I was so tired and hurt that no one cared about me and my needs… only what I could do for them.

Quitting my day job and making this hobby my full-time job has stirred up… mixed emotions. This statement may disturb some of you, but I was definitely 100% happier when I had a full-time job and I was working on my game at night. I missed working with the amazing team at The VOID, working on Star Wars… back when the success of my game was this abstract thing I could only daydream about. Mostly, I was making my game for me with no outside expectations to pay the bills or satisfy the ever-demanding internet, and that brought me a lot of joy.

It’s not all doom and gloom though! I’m actually very happy now and in the best shape I’ve been since the pandemic started. I’ve had to confront my weaknesses and personality quirks, but I’m a better person for it (and I’m sure these issues would’ve come out eventually). I hired an awesome community manager for Game Dev Unlocked who is helping SO MUCH with the emails, I can’t even tell you the mental burden it alleviates. I even leased a co-working office to help separate work from my home, and that’s been a huge help too. I’ve decided to work with my old friends from The VOID on a cool, new VR experience. It will take me away from my projects a bit, but I’m ecstatic to work with a great team again (and not manage anything, whew).

These are all things I would’ve never guessed I needed, because I thought I knew myself pretty well… turns out I didn’t.

The reality is: running a business is HARD. Running it solo is even harder. You have to remember, I was burnt out on The First Tree well into the Steam release in 2017, but I kept working on it for 4 more years due to my fears of failing again and not earning enough money for my family.

So, I was wrestling with the age-old concept of commercialism and art. There was this dichotomy of doing whatever I wanted and being true to my vision (what most people assume the indie dev dream is like), and doing only what customers wanted to buy. This is something that has killed me with YouTube… in one specific instance, I was super excited to make the exact video I wanted to make. I loved every part of its creation, and I thought it had a message that would inspire everyone. I lovingly edited it over several weeks, posted it, and excitedly waited for the stats… and it was by far my worst performing video.

This is not a new problem. Even the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo was a commission forced upon him by the very violent Pope Julius II. My wife and I regularly talk about the fine balance between artistic integrity and commercialism, a problem she is very familiar with as an artist who constantly needs to balance what she wants to make with what the customer wants to hang up in their home.

For The First Tree, I was lucky. It was pretty much what I wanted to make (I had to compromise a lot of things of course), and it turned out millions of people wanted it too. Recently, I thought the safe business decision would be to do it all over again, so I started work on a spiritual successor to The First Tree (an idea that I may revisit one day since I do love the story idea). But that isn’t happening anytime soon. Trust me when I say I am now currently burnt out on animal exploration games.

So that realization left me with a question: what do I do next?

I’ve decided I need to make a game that I want to make, for me. It will be a bit different and I’m almost certain most fans of The First Tree will not love it… but it’s an idea that gets me super excited. It’s an idea that could help me fall in love with game development again.

A few more details: this game will be story-driven, first-person, and will use the Unreal Engine. That means development is gonna be slow going, because I have to learn a whole new tool. The “smart business” decision would be to make something quickly in Unity which I’m already familiar with… but I want to do this for me, and UE5 looks like a lot of fun. I’m also shooting for an early-ish release date so I avoid burn out and I keep the game short: I want to release it in Fall 2022, but knowing game development, it will probably take longer.

With the help of my therapist, I’ve also concluded that I’ve been too accessible on the internet and that my self-worth isn’t determined by the amount of people I try to help online. Of course, I love helping people and seeing them succeed, but I need to step back and focus on my family and myself. I will delete my social media apps on my phone (I will still post big updates occasionally) and stop responding to most emails, tweets, DMs, etc. It’s not that I’m ungrateful… in fact, if I don’t say thank you or at least acknowledge the incredibly nice people who share a sweet message about my game or want to tell me how I inspire them (still hard for me to believe, lol), I feel a ton of guilt… but I need to let that go. Please know I’m extremely grateful to all the fans who follow my work, so even if I don’t thank you directly, I truly mean it: thank you.

I will still post and stream occasionally on YouTube when I want to (and I still do live Q&A’s for my GDU students). The online course sales will help support my family as I work on a potentially risky game idea (and my new job will help alleviate the risk too). I’m gonna try one more marketing experiment and sell a mini-course soon (and add an Unreal section), and after that I’m done working on it. A gigantic thank you to the people who bought my course and are part of the amazing community, it has helped me and my family tremendously, and it’s inspiring seeing the games you make!

I’m a bit worried about the whole thing since this new game idea could flop, which could definitely affect my family. But a sappy, high-school yearbook quote is coming to mind…  I think it applies here: “A ship in harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.”

Thanks for reading,

David

[uponrightful]

I've been wanting to send this one in for a while. What was going through the Wolfpacks mind and how much did Wolffe hear?

“I’d heard about him a lot from your brothers, how angry he was and that they thought he could use someplace like here. Home. But I didn’t think that he would ever show up. And, after a couple times something happened. I don’t know who really even started it.” The girl took another steadying breath, before continuing on the now spilling thoughts and feelings she’d been bottling up for months now. Completely unaware of the three men’s attention being drawn out the window where a grey and blue painted trooper walked towards the front door.

“I think about him, all the time. I hear his voice when I wake up, and I constantly dream about him. It’s like I’m constantly in this fever dream where I’ve finally been given something that I can’t deny I want.” All of the confusion crashed down in a wave of crystal-clear realization. Audience of troopers aside, the girl hadn’t thought it all through so straight.

She was brought back to Rex, sitting there drinking his caf with a look of disappointment when she’d mentioned that there wasn’t anything she wanted out of life. Other than helping the troopers. It hadn’t been the first time he’d asked, and she hadn’t realized why until now. She had the ability to have what she wanted. Regulations didn’t affect her, and neither did anyone else who didn’t have her best interests at heart. Rex hadn’t meant love specifically, or anything of the like, but what she didn’t get was why it mattered. His constant reminders spoken to the fact that without knowing… she couldn’t possibly go about getting it. Whatever “it” is. The girl’s sudden epiphany was that she finally knew -for once in her life- that there was something she wanted more than anything.

And that was Wolffe.

Her awestruck reaction and frozen posture thawed to see not a single pair of eyes focused on her. Boost, Sinker and Comet were all watching high above her head into the kitchen at something positively damning. Behind her, the heavy sound of boots thumped against the floor echoing off the silent walls of the house. Her heart, already thrumming with personal-realization began working double-time as the steps got closer.

Commentary Track for Welcome Company

Copy 500 words -or more- of any of my fics and I’ll give my thoughts/rambles on what was going through my head -or the character’s- when I wrote it!

*Send one in here*

@taz-107 You and I have some of the best discussions on literally everything Clones, and I'm so happy you sent this one in! I kinda went all-in, because I know you don't mind my word vomit 😅

I love you dearly 🤍

***

Let's start with the Wolfpack shall we?

Comet and Sinker know Pup the best, obviously. They think she's sweet, and they've always had a sense of little-sister vibes from her. It's the way she always invites them in, and never let's them leave without being adamant that they come back again... Preferably leaving less time between visits. Her home is one that the Pack really doesn't get to spend much time in, but when they do get the chance it's like they never left. Habits are created very easily, so the same dinners are almost always on the menu and there's almost a bedtime ritual they both have which never goes abandoned. Comet and Sinker are men of habit, but they never miss out on Pup's willingness to oblige them basically anything they want.

For Boost, his normal happy-go-lucky (and troublemaker) attitude is absent. This is the first time he's meeting Pup, and like most troopers he's hesitant for a number of reasons. It's illegal what they're doing, and although this girl has been nothing but a god-send for his brothers, it's nerve-racking to be in an unusual situation like sitting in a living room and talking just for the enjoyment of it. In a matter of an evening though, he's already falling into that same trap of love and affection that everyone else does when they meet Pup. She's sweet, and overly worrisome about his boots not being comfortable. (Something Boost wasn't sure he'd ever thought about before.)

The Pack's decision to make a visit wasn't a difficult one to make. Each of them had seen the changes in Wolffe's personality, whether big or small, and right away they knew that it was because he'd finally went for his own visit. It wasn't until Chapter Five that they realize there's something more going on than just what Comet and Sinker are familiar with experiencing during their stays at Home. It's the way their Commander doesn't seem to respond to them quickly -like he's off somewhere else in his mind- and the many times they've caught him taking a nap during a mission, mumbling to himself with the occasional slip-up of her name crossing his lips. The entire Wolfpack -Plo Koon included- know that their Commander has it bad. And initially, they're a little bit confused as to why Pup would ever take a liking to someone as harsh as Wolffe.

Note: Until this point, no one has seen Wolffe interact with Pup, and I made this decision very carefully. It was crucial that Wolffe come to form some sense of habit and security with her before this moment happens. It's to better display the completely different way Wolffe acts as a Commander, versus when he's with Pup. Wolffe is extremely talented at prioritizing tasks, whatever they may be. Therefore, when he's a soldier that's the only thing he normally has the mental capacity for. But when he's with Pup, he takes that romantic role just as seriously as he would directing troops on the frontlines.

The Pack know Wolffe is the one coming in the door. They also realize that they'd incidentally forced Pup's hand, and now they had no way of stopping her from talking without making everything even more awkward than it's already becoming. With every second that passes between seeing him walk past the window, Pup just keeps talking and the collective hope of the 104th is that Wolffe's change in attitude isn't just a passing fancy for Pup, and that her proclamation of love is one that their brother will see as something significant. In the background of this apprehension for Wolffe's reaction, they're actually shocked to hear Pup admit what she does about Wolffe.

They've always known Wolffe to be a little on the stiff side of rules and decorum, and even the mention of him being the least bit romantic enough to capture her attention is just another blow to these men's (hopelessly misguided) ideas about their Commander. He's not the most gentle person, and Pup is nothing short of an angel... (That's literally Sinker's nickname for her.) They make for a strange pair, and there's a bit of all three of them that have the same worry that Rex does; Can she actually handle him?

Note: I've always thought of Wolffe as a tortured soul, that never deserved the copious punishments that was handed to him in his life. And in the fic, there was a huge motivation to really play up just how worried troopers get about their brothers who end up the way Wolffe is when we see him post-cybernetics. He's angry and vicious to an extent. Not that he was a really carefree guy to begin with, but it's such a contrast that all of the men who knew Wolffe closely can see a very scary change in the Commander once he's brought back for duty. (Fives and Rex's conversation in Chapter Five is where I tried to make that fear a little more palpable and realistic of what war has done to Wolffe through the eyes of men who've seen things similar...)

They hear her words, and they're all staring at Wolffe who's got the most impassive expression they've ever seen before. It's stiffer than when he's at a parade rest, and even his posture looks like it could fucking snap at any second. But the second Pup's pause of realization hits her, Wolffe suddenly decides to join them all. Every last one of the Pack are holding their breath for this; Literally none of them have any idea of what to expect. They're all making subconscious guesses, trying to read his movements, literally anything that might help try and relax this tension. But when Wolffe just sits himself down at Pup's feet; Stretching out his leg and visibly melting back against her chair...

It's utter shock.

Note: I chose Boost for the next POV because he fit the need perfectly. Not only does he know Wolffe extremely well, but he doesn't have this predetermined idea of what Pup is like. He knows on a surface level that she's very kind and a little shy. But I needed him for this moment because it's truly perception-bending to see Wolffe take such a submissive posture towards this girl. (Her admittance that she loves him aside.) Boost has never seen Wolffe carry himself like that, and I wanted you to see it through his eyes because that's Wolffe's constant personality. Pup is the only one who's seen Wolffe soft -so this isn't new to her- but for the Pack, this is unprecedented behavior.

Now for our sweet, sweet, Commander 🤍

Wolffe was very preoccupied with his conversation with Anakin from Chapter Six and the upset over being forced to come back so late in the evening. He wouldn't dare not return after promising that he would, but the idea of making her wait up so late didn't sit right with him in the slightest. Being so caught up in his own head, he doesn't notice the Wolfpack staring at him through the open window dressings, and he's completely unaware that they'd chosen to come and see her as well. (He tries not to worry himself too much about what they do on planet-leave, and this was just one of his weaker moments.) Not that Wolffe would ever admit to being constantly worried about his brother's getting into trouble, and him not being able to get them out of it.

But all of that changes the second he walks into the house and hears Pup talking. It's not what she's saying at first; But instead just hearing her voice is enough to make Wolffe pause and listen as he pulls his bucket off his head. She's so soft, but this time there's a different edge to it; And standing in the hallway is when Wolffe finally realizes that she's talking about him. It's a miracle he didn't drop his bucket in a loud clatter to the floor in that instant.

Pup is saying things that Wolffe couldn't have dreamt about even coming from her mouth. Admitting that he’s in her dreams like she constantly takes a place in his. Detailing just how surreal it is to have him around her, just like it feels in his own mind. Pup is speaking exactly what Wolffe has been feeling for months and it's all Wolffe can to do try and stay quiet, just so he doesn't miss another word. Every syllable is spoken like she read it right from his heart, and Wolffe is so speechless that he's on the verge of busting through the house to find her and really show her exactly what a fever-dream he could provide for her.

But the moment he sees his brothers, all staring at his shadowed figure in the kitchen he realizes that they knew he was listening, and that now there was no turning back. Wolffe is feeling really pressured at this moment. Not because he doesn't love Pup -because he really does- but it's hard to traverse the admission with his men watching him for a reaction. They know nothing about his relationship with Pup, and he's kept it that way for fear of someone thinking it was unprofessional, and attempting to do something about it that would not only risk himself and the other men who need her, but Pup herself for providing care and warmth to men who were considered GAR property. He doesn't suspect that his men would ever do something like that, but there's this sense of fear that makes Wolffe present himself so emotionlessly. That is, until he can collect his own emotions for hearing her, and try to play it off.

Note: Wolffe is very skittish. And that's all to do with the treatment he faced after his fight with Ventress. He thinks very lowly of himself personally, but has an unbreakable expectation that he do everything exactly as it should be done without failure. This makes him a wonderful leader, but god-awful at admitting he has feelings aside from diplomatic neutrality. He's struggling to do the right thing here, when there really isn't a textbook example of how to handle expressing the emotion of know the person you love, admitting to loving you back in front of a small crowd. Wolffe doesn't understand that anything he could've chosen to do would've been acceptable here. But in the end, Wolffe's diplomacy is what guided the plot. (Once again, I only write for the characters, I hardly ever get creative liberty when coming to the conclusion of what my non-OC characters do. Even then, my OC's are very diligent in reminding me that they have their own personalities and I can't just make them do anything.)

Wolffe chooses what feels comfortable to him in this moment. At this point, everyone -including Pup- is waiting for him. And when he walks into the living room, his first instinct is to go where he feels the safest. And that's with her. (It's important that he sits at her feet and I'll tell you why in a moment.) Wolffe wants to be with her as best he can in this moment. He still feels that emotional relief and warmth of hearing her say she had the same feelings for him, but the last thing he wants to do is put either of them on the spot in front of his brothers that are appearing very worried and utterly confused at the moment. So to tone down the tension he'd accidentally created, he just does what feels right; And that's to let Pup know he's happy to see her, and give the apology he'd been meaning to all along.

"Sorry m'late."

From there, his men -sharp as ever- realize that he has wants to do this one his own, and Comet takes the initiative to take conversation somewhere else for the time being. He's silently grateful for that, and although he never says anything to them about it, Wolffe is certain that they did so on his behalf and wouldn't expect a thank you for it.

The rest of the night is easy to get lost in. His boys -always needing to show off- take turns coming into themselves again, and decide that a competition of war-stories and funny -albeit stupid- stories are in order. It feels natural like this, and Wolffe hasn't ever felt so proud having all of his brothers and his precious lady all in the same room where they can just be normal for a little while. He's extremely attentive to Pup's attempts at touching him, and he has to bite back a smile when he feels her secretive touches against his back. She's doing it on purpose to avoid his brother's notice, but Wolffe realizes she's probably just as nervous to be outright about it as well. After all, he'd not made a single comment about what she'd said, but he was kriffing surprised that it didn't change her desire to be close to him.

Note: Wolffe sat on the floor for a reason. And it wasn't my decision in the slightest. The way the living room sits, Pup has the best view of the room. Her back is to a corner, and the couch and chair that Boost, Sinker, and Comet occupy and positioned to face in her direction. It's strategic -and instinctual- that Wolffe put himself at the center of attention. That is basically a requirement that he head his squad at all times, and naturally he doesn't distinguish this scenario apart from any other. It's simply the Commanding Officer in him. But to a -wonderfully complex- part of Wolffe's character, he's doing it because that puts Pup at his back where he knows she's safe. His brother's aren't harmful in the slightest, but Wolffe knows that should there be a threat, he'll see them coming, and they'd have to go through him to get to her first. Protecting Pup is one of Wolffe's greatest motives throughout the entire fic, and this was one moment I wanted to play that theme out silently. (I don't know if anyone really picked up on it.)

This choice to sit at her feet appears very submissive to the Pack, and to Pup for that matter. But really Wolffe is subconsciously staking claim and protective charge over Pup without even realizing that he's doing so. For example; he could've picked her up and sat down in the chair with her in his lap, he could've sat down next to one of his brothers instead, or even chose to stand somewhere. But all of those choices leave Pup undefended. Wolffe doesn't see that he's doing it, and neither does anyone else in a very direct way. But if you pay attention to the way I toned the scene, you'll notice that Wolffe doesn't ever lose control of the room. Focus and power is always on him even when no one thinks wiser. It's what makes Wolffe such a commander figure all of the time. He has a natural predisposition to hold command, so even when Wolffe isn't trying have dominance, it's always present in the subtle way he moves, speaks, and presents himself to those around him.

***

Thank you for sending this in my love ☺️ I hope it wasn't too long, and you covered everything well enough! If not, let me know what I missed and I'd be glad to fill in the blank spots!

Much Love, Rightful 🤍

[mymindwide]

I’m gonna heal you

Pairing: Ashton x Female reader

Word count: 2059

Warning: none, this is full on fluff with one mention of a prevoius sexual encounter.

Summary: Your boyfriend fell sick, and you’ll see a side of him you haven’t before, while you two share cute moments because of it.

Author’s Note: It was written more than a year ago. Again something I didn’t think I’ll post, but here we are. :) (If you bump into any grammar mistakes, I apologise in advance, that’s because english is not my native language.) Nevermind, I hope you’ll enjoy it!

***

You have a very bad habit, but at least you’re getting better and better while practicing it.

For a while now when you wake up earlier than Ashton (which is almost every single day), and give him his morning kiss he doesn’t even notice it, and you like it that way. Whatever body part you can reach – it always depends on what position he’s sleeping in at the moment of your waking. Sometimes it’s one of his cheeks, sometimes a shoulder, his neck, his forehead. You couldn’t explain why it’s so important to you, maybe you’re just weird, and like watching and admiring him while he sleeps. Knowing how hard they work, it just feels good to see him not worrying about anything and just having a well-deserved rest, even for a few hours.

But this morning something didn’t feel right, not like usually. As your mouth gently touched his temple, his skin felt strangely hot against your lips. You knew you should check it again, but the thought itself made you sweat, because you were not sure he wouldn’t wake up this time. But you convinced yourself pretty quickly that it’s for the good of him, and if he runs a temperature indeed, he needs to wake up anyway to take something in as soon as possible.

You leaned back again and pressed your lips against his temple, and then you tried it with the back of your right hand while your left one checked your own forehead for comparison. Miraculously he didn’t wake up, or leastways didn’t show any sign of will to move or open his eyes, his breathing remained steady, although at this point you wouldn’t even care, because he definitely had fever. Murmuring a low “fuck”, you headed for the bathroom to pick up the thermometer and went back with it to the seemingly sleeping boyfriend.

“Sweetie, just keep it there and do not move, please. We have to measure your temperature” you put the thermometer in his armpit.

He muttered something with his eyes still closed, but on one hand, you didn’t understand, on the other hand you left him there to check what medication you have in the bathroom cabinet. You were happy to acknowledge that you were fully prepared for such disasters, albeit since you moved in with him, thankfully, you didn’t even need to open the medicine box.

You had a slight guess about the possible outcome of this fever measurement, therefore with quick steps you ran to the kitchen to make a tea for your newfound patient. Coming back you put the tea on the nightstand and reached for the thermometer to reveal the truth. 102,2 Fahrenheit.

“Double fuck” escaped your lips as you looked at the display of the digital thermometer.

“Do we have to? I’m not feeling too well” came a drawn-out groan from Ashton.

“No shit Sherlock…” but of course this assumption made you smile. “I wasn’t talking about wanting to fuck. I’m talking about you having a fever. 102,2 °F actually.”

“Oh” this seemingly woke him up as he pushed himself up on the bed.

“Whatever you were planning to do today with the guys, it is out of the question now. And take these in” dropping an antipyretic and painkiller pill on his palm you gave him the now not so hot cup of tea you’d made.

“Yeah I guess so. I’ll tell them” he said before swallowing the pills.

“I’ll be here if you need anything” you indicated the living room. “Lay back and try to take a rest or sleep back” you pecked his forehead.

You turned back from the doorway just to look at him once again, and the cutest sight caught hold of your eyes. Or leastwise your sick girlfriend heart considered it cute… he was sitting in the same position you left him a few seconds ago and just stared in front of him, wasn’t even blinking, you could almost see his brain still processing the info that he most likely got sick. End of the world. You felt for him, you really did, but he looked so lost it was cute. He looked adorably useless and that’s certainly something you have not seen him yet.

For you the bright side of the situation is that at least you really can be here and look after him, since last night you could cook while he was out with his friends. In the background you heard him run a shower.

“So much for resting… but at least it’ll help him cool that body temperature down a bit, so after all it’s not a bad idea at all” you thought.

You made yourself comfortable on the couch and already decided you’ll watch a movie that is entertaining enough to switch off your brain for a few hours, and you exactly knew which one is the perfect choice that meets your high expectations and requirements.

While you were considering your options Ash finished with the shower too and joined you in the living room wearing his leisure pants and a clean white t-shirt.

“Is everything okay? I mean besides the obvious.” you tilted your head back against the sofa backrest to look up at him.

“I have a headache and I start feeling my throat.”

“Sounds like the definition of miserable.”

“Right?! Thank you.”

“Would you like to join me?” you smiled at him grabbing a pillow from the couch that you laid on your lap tapping it a few times.

You didn’t have to ask him twice; picking up the plush blanket which is constantly lying at the end of the sofa he laid down, wrapped himself under the blanket; his head resting on the pillow in your lap, his posture facing the TV. Your fingers, as a pavlovian reflex, dived into his gorgeous hair, whisking away a few stray curls from his face.

“And what are we doing?”

“I was about to watch the greatest movie of all time.”

“The Pursuit of Happyness?”

“Nope, Avengers: Infinity War.”

“That Hiddleston again.”

“Hon, you know he’s going to be killed off in the 10th minute into the movie, right?” you had to laugh.

“Good. He deserves it.”

“What is it? Do I hear jealousy?” you got bloody happy and started enjoying your conversation even more.

“Abslttthhaa nauh” he mumbled something under his nose that reminded you of absolutely not.

"Last time I checked it's not him who's lying on my lap dying."

"Lucky for him, cuz that'd be the last thing he does..."

“Ashton, you’re killing me” you couldn’t contain your laughter.

“Wasn’t kidding.”

“I know” you grinned as your thumb stroked his cheek.

This new Ashton entertained you more and more. You leaned forward to blow tiny kisses on his temple and yoke bone leading a path to his ear.

“Also, last time I checked it wasn’t him who had his way with me on the kitchen counter the other day…” the tip of your nose brushed his ear as you whispered and the mention of your latest lovemaking made a smug smile spread across his face. “And do you know what else I remember?! I remember moaning a three letter name, but it wasn’t Tom… help me out… oh wait, that’s it, it was Ash...” you were trying to add a slight annoyance to the tone of your voice.

“Convinced enough?”

“I have no strength to disagree” reaching back for your right hand to take it in his, he towed it to his lips and planted a kiss on your wrist. Without saying anything he interlaced your fingers and just pulled it to his chest. As if his grumpiness had been cut off, he nestled a bit to find the perfect and most comfortable position, then got fully relaxed and your left hand slipped back into his hair to caress and massage his scalp, to play with his soft black locks.

“Alright, play it, I want to see if he resurrects for the millionth time” he egged you to press the play button to start the movie.

“Oh, we’ll see…” you smiled insinuatingly.

“You’re just joking, right?” he turned his head upwards to look at you. “No, you’re not. They just can’t get rid of that guy, can they?”

“Get comfortable baby, two and a half hour fun just awaits for us” you winked.

Although you watched the movie together, you were pretty sure Ash's thoughts were going somewhere else since you weren’t even like 40 minutes in, when he started playing with your fingers. Your eyes jumped back and forth from the TV to your hands, but eventually your attention ended up on what he was doing. His fingertips grazed your palm and fingers with slow, tender and deliberate moves; it felt intimate like never before, as if he touched your hand for the first time, he went from finger to finger, as if he wanted to get to know and memorize the shape of your hand, the feel of your skin.

Your first thought was “if he won’t stop I’m gonna cry”. But he didn’t stop and eventually and surprisingly you did not cry either, although this scene undoubtedly made you quite emotional, because you haven’t seen him this cuddly in a long time. He’s an affectionate man, but definitely not a clinging one. And you really enjoyed this situation; sometimes you crave this kind of attention like air.

A few more minutes have passed during which your focus returned back to the screen. You felt his hand stopped playing with yours, and with his eyes closing shut he turned over and nuzzling his face close to your belly he fell asleep pretty quickly. Getting your right hand back, now it could rest on his waist, while your other hand could keep caressing his hair, neck, shoulder, just with extra carefulness not wanting to wake him up.

By the end of the movie he still laid on your lap breathing smoothly, and watching him made you think about him being such a positive force. Not only in your life but so many others’, as well. Family, friends, members of other bands whom they met only sporadically…  You loved listening to their stories about Ash being nice and thoughtful and polite. That’s how he treats people in general, even strangers. It’s so effortless for him, yet you have no idea how he does that.  Always thinks about making others happy, but is he happy? Do you make him happy? You can only hope, because he deserves the world. At this point, an unpleasant feeling put a stop to your train of thought.

As much as you didn’t want to do it, and wished to stay like this forever, it was time for you to stand up since you started feeling your legs getting numb after sitting stock-still for the last two and a half hours.

“Ash” leaning over his face you started caressing his cheek with your nose.

Your technic was clearly successful, because he slowly turned over nuzzling his nose against yours demanding more contact. You kissed his cheek, his nose, the corner of his mouth, while he enjoyed the love showering on him.

Soon your lips met in very light kisses that became needier with every touch from Ashton’s side, as you felt his tongue brush over your upper lip. Your heart ached but you had to pull back an inch ending the connection between your lips resulting in a dissatisfied moan escaping his lips.

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if we go into this deeper, you may risk losing your nurse to a deadly disease” you whispered smiling on his lips.

“I’ll make it up to you… in a few days… when I get better” he said sleepily.

“Make up for what?”

“For the canceled double fuck.”

“I can’t with you, Irwin. I swear to you I’ll lock you up in the bedroom until you sleep enough.” you had to laugh tho.

“But you love me.”

“Yes, yes I do. What a correct observation.”

“Good, because I love you, too.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Now come Captain Obvious, let’s sleep a bit more.”

And with this you took his hand in yours and led him into the paradise of peacefulness that is your hospital room for the next few days.

[braunbakery]

salvation, maybe (iii)

☞ reiner braun x reader [fem bodied] [chapter word count: 2.2k]

☞ sfw, angst, fluff, post-season 3 [after 4 year time jump], season 4 spoilers

☞ cross-posted on ao3 (very much ahead on ao3, just wanted to bring it to tumblr)

☞ fic plot: you have walked these streets many times before. you have passed this bench many times before. you have seen this man (lost in his thoughts, always drifting, always looking lost) many times before. but this time, this time you take a seat.

prev. next

iii. to be with

"so, you lied?" reiner asks. his hand is still on the doorknob of his house, but now the door is slightly propped open. you had just told him where you actually live (practically mumbling and very much ashamed) and now he is looking at you amusedly. you're staring at the ground, still in disbelief that you had asked if you could stay the night. a light wind blows against your skirt and you instinctively pull reiner's jacket tighter around your body.

"yeah, i...lied," you confirm, uncomfortably shifting. and even though you're embarrassed (humiliated even) at the sudden rush of confidence that had led you to ask someone you had only met today to stay with them, your heart can't help but race when you look up at reiner and see the small smile playing on his lips. and he's stuck. he feels like this is some practical joke, that this is some test from an omnipotent being wondering if he's strong enough to reject the only thing that has brought him some kind of peace for the first time in a long time. he doesn't know why he can feel himself smiling, or why he's already slightly opened the door even though he hasn't given you an answer.

he wants to be strong, really, he does. he wants to stay true to the promises of solitude and isolation that he has made himself. he wants to be able to distance himself before you find out what he really is and what he's really done. he wants to be able to distance himself before your knowledge of his true self throws him down an even darker hole than the one he's already tumbling down. he doesn't want to be selfish. he doesn't want to let himself be selfish.

but the door is now wide open, and he can already see the dark silhouette of the stairs, and your eyes are glinting in relief, and the wind is cold and you both feel like you'd rather die than have to spend another cold night alone. especially this night.

"come on, then," reiner says, holding the door open for you and trying to ignore the voice in his head berating him for succumbing to the weakness he'd spent years battling against. but, as he watches your figure walk into the house, his house, suddenly the voice doesn't seem as loud.

you look back at him once he closes the door behind you, barely able to make out your surroundings as the darkness of the night envelopes the house. you're somewhat grateful for the shelter it offers, and even though you were the one who instigated this entire ordeal (going all the way back to sitting next to him on the bench earlier this morning), you're still finding it difficult to force any words out of your mouth. you're suddenly overcome by an awareness of how you're in reiner's house, wearing reiner's jacket, and-

"couldn't let you walk all the way back alone," reiner quietly says to you (and also himself. more excuses, as usual), locking the front door behind him and making his way towards you. your heart is pounding so loud, you wonder if he can hear it. he brushes past you, making his way up the stairs, and as he does he can hear your breath hitching in your throat. when he hears the stairs creaking behind him, he bites the inside of his cheek. it's like a weird confirmation of the fact that you're really here with him. with him. even though he's seen you, and he's spoken to you, and, god, he's spent the whole day with you, it still feels like he's stuck in those first few minutes when you first sat down next to him.

you both walk into his room, reiner first, and you watch as he waits for you to come in to close the door behind you, holding up a finger to his mouth. you only realise now that reiner's family are here, probably fast asleep, and silently curse yourself for being so impulsive. you don't know if it's just his mother, or if gabi and her parents live here as well, but as your mind races and you quietly scold yourself, you don't feel a single ounce of regret. you look at reiner taking off his shoes (awkwardly), and you look at the moonlight that's pooling into the room, casting a glow on his silhouette and the rest of his bedroom. a child's bed in the corner against the wall, a wooden desk, a chair pushed into it and a wardrobe.

"sorry, i...i didn't really think this through," you say, in response to the reminder not to wake up whoever resides in the house with him. you awkwardly stand in front of the door and reiner looks up at you as he kicks his shoes under his bed. he doesn't want you to regret it. he doesn't want you to take it back. and even though he's practically turned himself inside out in wondering if he really should be letting himself bask in the warmth of someone else (even if it's just from your words or your gaze), he is ultimately grateful that you're here. moments pass as you both continue to stare at each other, reiner's warm brown eyes boring into yours.

"no," he blurts out, suddenly cutting the silent conversation you were having short and rubbing the back of his neck,"i'm glad you said something."

"really?"

"yeah, i...i probably would've beaten myself up if i found out you had walked all the way back alone," reiner says, offering you a cheeky grin. and i want you to stay too, he thinks to himself. you can't help but smile back at him, glad that he didn't say something generic like 'it's okay', or 'it's no problem.' you don't want to feel needy, or like you're craving some explicit confirmation that maybe you're not the only one who's heart is pounding right now, but you really are glad that you said something as well.

reiner walks towards his wardobe and opens the door, grabbing extra blankets, and you shrug off his jacket and place it on the chair pushed into the desk, then begin taking off your shoes. reiner's still at the wardrobe when you're done taking off your shoes, so you awkwardly make your way over to his bed and sit down. it creaks under your weight and you realise that, wow, this really is a child's bed. how does he even fit? maybe this is why he always looks so worn down - he's stuck in a bed made for a ten year old. you quietly chuckle to yourself and when reiner looks back at you with a questioning smile, you finally do feel like it's completely okay to be here. like you don't have to worry about what to say, or how you're saying it. like this night couldn't have ended any other way.

"what's so funny?" he inquires, his hand still in his wardrobe, paused from rummaging for whatever it was he was looking for that aren't the blankets he already has tucked under his other arm.

"nothing," you say. reiner rolls his eyes and goes back to searching through his wardrobe, "what're you looking for?"

"something you can change into."

"what? no, i can sleep like this," you say. and you're being honest. your long skirt and button-up shirt aren't as comfortable as your usual nightdress, but they aren't horrible. you didn't want to impose on him anymore (but to be honest, you just wanted to cut short the time it took for him to find what he wanted and come and actually sit close to you.) reiner turns around and mutters a small 'alright' as he closes the wardrobe door.

"can you pass me a pillow?" reiner asks, nodding his head towards the two pillows leaning against the headboard of the bed. he wishes he could just swallow this guilt that kept rising and falling within him, constantly fluctuating and randomly overcoming him. he would sleep on the floor. that's it, that's the answer. he'd respect your space and manage to maybe keep the voice in his head at bay with the distance. even if it meant he wouldn't get to be next to you or sleep next to you (or feel your warmth, or be able to feel your breath on his skin as you talk, or be able to brush against your skin 'accidentally'.) without thinking, you grab one but, just as you're about to toss it to him, you pause.

"wait, why?" you question. was he not going to sleep in the bed as well?

"i'm taking the floor," he replies matter-of-factly, slowly walking towards you with an outstretched hand ready to take the pillow. without hesitation, you jerk it away from his approaching body and stand up.

"no," you say. it's getting late, and you're getting tired, so maybe that's why you're suddenly willing to act on what you really want, "absolutely not."

"absolutely not, huh?" reiner says, and he leans over your sitting figure, attempting to grasp the pillow you're holding slightly behind you, laughing as you jerk it every which way, more and more out of his reach. as you look up at him, your own laughter melding with his own, his hand drops down in front of you expectantly and his head drops, his eyes dragging themselves away from the pillow suspended in your grasp and boring into your own, "come on, it's getting late. we both need to get some sleep."

"exactly," you reason, shoving his expectant hand away with your free hand, "that's why you should sleep on the bed." you get up, dropping the pillow onto the mattress and grabbing the blankets he had tossed on the floor in his pursuit to get the pillow from you, "i'll take the floor." and really, you want both of you to be able to sleep on the bed, even if it's tiny and reiner would probably hang out of it. even if it's uncomfortable and cramped and you wake up with a sore neck. but, more than that, you want him to say it. as you lean down to grab the blankets you were about to turn into a makeshift mattress, reiner grabs your wrist and pulls you away from them. when you look up at him, he's squeezing the bridge of his nose with the hand not wrapped around your wrist in exasperation and huffing out laughs.

"fine," he says, and for a second you're frozen in place waiting for what he's going to say next. reiner drops his hand from the space between his eyes, "fine. we'll both sleep on the bed, yeah?" you're beaming at him before you even realise, and his heart is fluttering before he even realises. god, what has he gotten himself into? reiner slightly rolls his eyes at you as he watches your smile grow and drops your wrist in favor of lifting up the bed cover that was already spread over the bed and beckoning you to lie down on the side closest to the wall.

"what a gentleman," you remark, shuffling down until your back hits the wall and you're gazing up at reiner's still standing figure.

"hey, don't blame me if you wake up with stiff muscles," he retorts, getting into the bed (finally). and the feeling of the bed sinking as he gets in makes all the days spent steadily walking past the blonde man sitting on a bench with dazed eyes trained on the ground and wondering if he was okay worth it. your body finally relaxes against the mattress. you notice that like you, he's still wearing his day clothes excluding the belt he had discarded when he had come in.

you're both thinking about how small this bed is and how the distance between you is still too large. reiner's legs are hanging off the end, poking out of the blanket, and he awkwardly turns towards you, trying to ignore the blood rushing to the tips of his ears. he knows that, no matter how much he wants to, he probably won't touch you and the small empty space between you will stay empty. but, as he looks across at you, your hand resting in front of you on the pillow as you lay on your side facing him, he thinks maybe that's okay. and as you look across at him, watching him watch you, you're glad to even be holding his gaze. it's warm enough.

"good night," reiner whispers.

"good night," you respond.

when both of your eyes close, and both of your thumping hearts begin to relax, and both of your hands slowly inch towards each other, pinkies slightly brushing as you both succumb into slumber, your last thoughts are ones of relief.

maybe this night will not be a restless one. maybe this night will not be one where every minor sound awakens you both. maybe this night will not be one where the hollowness in your chests threatens to swallow you whole in your dreams. maybe this night will not be one that leads into another morning of wishing someone, anyone, would just be with you enough to distract you from the solitude that follows both of your hearts like a curse.

maybe this night will just be the both of you.

and you both silently hope that the morning will be too.

[bigskydreaming]

In a mood and I’m trying not to be, but oof. Not easy at the moment. Real life stresses are kicking my butt and I’m decidedly limited in resources for addressing that at the moment, so might as well get this off my chest, lol. Already lost the usual fifty followers or so I lose every single time I post about stuff the way I did the other day, so what’s some more, y’know?

So earlier today I tried to get my mind off things with some fic, and happened across one I hadn’t read before that promised Jason and Dick talking things out and bonding. Halfway through I sighed and went oh, this is familiar, and skipped to the bottom to check the end notes and comments to see if there was any mention of this next part, but nope. The reason for the sigh was it took me about halfway into the fic to realize that it was blatantly inspired by my post about what if Jason was missing some memories from his death/resurrection and the Pit, like specifically the ski trip they took, stuff like that. Now I’m not so egotistical as to think nobody but me has certain ideas, but its fairly easy for me to recognize when someone is basing something off a post of mine because of specific turns of phrases that I use and like, they hit ten or so bullet points from my post without missing a one. Like, there’s parallel evolution and similar ideas, and then there’s going down a check list, y’know?

And don’t get me wrong....I don’t mind people basing stuff of my posts, being inspired by them, etc. I WANT that. I’m GLAD to have that happen.

The part I mind is the way this all ties back into my interaction with fandom as a whole....and this fandom’s interaction with me. Which I don’t tend to hear NEARLY as much about as I tend to have people giving me shit about my impact on fandom....but ONLY the negative impact.

In the four years or so that I’ve been active in this fandom, I can think of only three people who have given me some kinda shout out for being the basis of one of their fics. Three people. And in that time I’ve come across literal dozens of fics that I am almost certain can trace their way back to popular posts of mine. There’s the post about Jason’s memories and the ski trip for one - this fic isn’t an isolated occurrence, I’ve found a good half a dozen or so I feel fall into the same pattern. There’s fics based off my posts about how fucked up the blame Dick got for Spyral was, with my certainty based on the fact that I know I’m the only fucking person who ever brought up various key phrases like “Bruce not having an extraction plan for Dick’s highly dangerous undercover op, leaving him stranded when Bruce got/(chose) amnesia.” I made a big deal about that in a few posts because of the fact I NEVER saw that particular element raised in any fics, and a couple months after I started including that bit regularly, I was seeing the words ‘without an extraction plan’ in every other new post Spyral fic. That’s not a coincidence.

There’s been stuff that included bits and phrasings from my post about Dick and Jason being partners who focused on helping kids who had been abused specifically....oh wait, no, my bad. The two fics I’m thinking of there lifted straight up entire lines from that post but just made it about Jason and TIM doing that instead, despite like.....the entire basis of that headcanon stemming from Dick’s juvie origin but whatever. There’s been stuff based on juvie posts of mine, stuff based on posts I’ve made about Mirage, there’s been stuff based on the post about Jason looking into why Dick was undercover as a mob enforcer and then Renegade, there’s been stuff clearly inspired by my headcanons about Jason calling Dick for advice after the Garzonas case. I could go on. There’s a fucking LOT.

I don’t try to give myself too much credit but I’m not unaware of being a loud voice in this fandom and that having an impact. And like I said, I’m not adverse to inspiring people to make their own stuff based off an idea they initially saw me present. That’s fine. People should feel free to do that. My problem is that none of this exists in a vacuum. It exists in a fandom where I regularly get people lecturing me on my presentation, people hyping up how negative I make fandom, my condescension, my anger, my hostility, etc, etc. 

But the thing I never see is any awareness whatsoever that like....dudes, I’m literally just a guy on the internet. And that goes two ways. Yeah, I have an impact on people, but they have one on me too. And I’m tired and frustrated by it being acted like this is a one way street and everyone is just helpless victims of my bullying, while meanwhile SOME OF THE EXACT SAME PEOPLE GIVING ME CRAP FOR MY NEGATIVITY are ACTIVELY adding to their own fics with stuff that I JUST posted about.

And like, I see people vagueblogging about the negativity on their dashes and its impact on fandom right after I have a Dick Grayson rant blow up and get a few hundred notes......but its acted like I DID that to fandom, that’s my negativity and mine alone when its like....y’know, if you’re not following me yourself, and this stuff is still on your dash, you uh....have to be following people who reblog my negative posts for some reason or another. And given that there are obviously reasons you follow THOSE people, maybe instead of worrying about what I’M doing all the time, you can spare a thought or two for the fact that I don’t have any power to make people reblog anything, and for whatever reason, something about my oh so negative post resonated with those people reblogging it onto your dash, which also kinda suggests it wasn’t negative in THEIR eyes, but was actually a kind of validation of thoughts or feelings they already had?

Trust me, there’s no mind control ray at work here. This mood is also brought to you by the cricket sounds that come every time I fucking BEG people to reblog and signal boost posts I make about rape/abuse fandom trends and depictions from my POV as a survivor, specifically. Like I mentioned, I LOSE followers every time I bring that stuff up. It doesn’t benefit me in any way whatsoever, in fact my notes tend to go comparatively radio silent for a good couple weeks after I go off on one of those jaunts, because idk, people don’t want THEIR mutuals and followers to think they agree with some of my oh so controversial stances?

Actually, I say idk, but I do know is the thing, because people actually go on anon and tell me they appreciate me posting stuff like this, and its like.....that....doesn’t actually make me feel good? Because I never expect any single person in particular to reblog me, but when I say crickets after I post on those topics, I mean CRICKETS. I’m lucky if I can get five reblogs on those posts in total, and those are usually all from the same people. It actually kinda sucks knowing that people agree with me and what I have to say there, but they won’t put it on their own blogs because this fandom is so fucking STEEPED in its views, they don’t want to risk their friendships or back-and-forths with certain popular fandom authors by rocking the boat.

Because meanwhile I’m making myself target practice for the people who really would like me to shut up on certain topics but are too cowardly to ever confront me directly about why they dislike what I have to say there, in the vain hope that other people might finally even just START to pass some of that on even for consideration....because I can make waves by myself just by being loud and consistent, but I can’t do shit to actually make CHANGE without other people agreeing in PUBLIC so that fandom is forced to confront the fact that no, certain opinions aren’t just one loud asshole being annoying, there’s an actual viewpoint here that people actually have in greater numbers than we realized and we DON’T have as much of a monopoly on this topic as we thought.

I have anons who give me shit accusing me of driving off certain authors by making this fandom not fun for them anymore, when like, I never even fucking INTERACTED with the authors in question. Some of the names I’m accused of driving off I don’t even KNOW. I’m called an ‘abusive survivor shaming cunt’ with zero irony or self-awareness that they’re literally doing the exact same thing because they don’t like the stance *I* take as a survivor posting about how ‘some survivors use dark fic/rape fantasy to cope’ shouldn’t be treated as a monolithic defense of such things if it leads directly into the same kind of survivor shaming other people view criticism of such fic as being in the first place.

I’ve had to unfollow mutuals because I post about how reblogging posts about purity culture is a direct fucking slap into the face to people like me whose stances on fandom culture are directly based on our own personal experiences and the intersection those have with various popular fandom takes.....like you don’t have to agree with all my takes obviously, but if you can’t see how framing a naive pursuit of ideological purity as the only possible reason people object to certain fandom trends when I’m literally standing right here saying no actually, the way these fandom trends impact me is the reason for me saying the things I say when I say “here’s how this fandom trend impacts me”.....like.....c’mon. 

And I’ve had mutuals unfollow me because despite following me because they liked my takes on social justice issues THEY care about, I just ‘post too much about what’s really just a personal issue’ and has no larger social relevance whatsoever, obviously. LOL. (Oh and this of course has nothing to do with them getting friendly with various popular authors on discord, who happen to be vocal about ‘disapproving’ of any fic criticism whatsoever. Just FYI, there’s a reason I haven’t followed anyone new or made any new mutuals in like....a year. I have my reasons for being....not quick about that).

I get condescended to constantly about not minding the tags, and then radio silence when I list literal examples of ways in which people haven’t tagged things correctly, tagged things at all, or literally used the tags in an attempt TO trigger people they just don’t like. 

And meanwhile, allllllll of this keeps happening while the general narrative is I’m this loud asshole guy with zero concern about anything but his own personal likes or dislikes and who makes fandom a negative place that’s unwelcoming in general. And with basically zero mention of all the ways in which I’ve contributed to this fandom, the amount of content I’ve made that has DIRECTLY inspired people, and the productive conversations I’ve started which have resulted in people actually changing the way they approach various characters or dynamics in fics.

Its THAT part that bugs me, specifically.

Look, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now.....I’m not anyone’s victim. Negative fandom interactions are negative fandom interactions. All this complaining I’m doing here - lol, that’s all it is. I’m venting. I’m pissed off and I think its relevant to a greater fandom dynamic or tendencies a lot of people unknowingly or consciously reinforce, and so I’m just fucking SAYING it because while its not something I EXPECT this post will do much to change, if at all, I would still like it to change so any effort towards that end is still better than no effort at all...hence, my posting this rather than bottling it up so at least people have it to consider. 

If you don’t agree with it, if you don’t like that it exists at all, if it ruins your day to have to consider whether or not you or people you know or even like are active participants in what someone else is describing as y’know....fairly day-ruining in its own way? Hit that unfollow, that block, that make new text post button of your own and have your own rant about what a douchebag I am.

Literally all I’m trying to express is like.....fa*ndom’s got a lot to say about the stuff I have to say about fandom, but like....this is a two way interaction. A lot of people make a big deal about MY impact (again, JUST the negative though, lol) but I don’t ever see anyone ever addressing anyone else about hey maybe you could spare a thought or two about YOUR impact for a change as well.

I mean, what if....just maybe...what if.....a lot of my behavior or attitude has a lot to do with how people approach or talk about me BEFORE that display of attitude or certain behavior? Weirdly....I feel like maybe something that could then have a transformative effect on the kind of behavior or attitude people dislike from me....is.....them acknowledging or addressing things they might have done to prompt certain responses from me?

I don’t actually like being whiny or negative or down in general, just to be clear? If I see something I have a problem with or think could use change or improvement, I say so - but I pretty much always put an effort into expressing both WHY and HOW I think possible change could look - because I’m not generally interested in being negative for the sake of just being negative. I just....want things to be better. That’s not an obsession with purity or perfection, btw, I will NEVER understand how people think that survivors of rape and abuse (which include a lot more ‘antis’ than anyone else seems to want to acknowledge) and the like EVER expects perfection or thinks that the world will ever produce that - lol no I’m actually pretty clear that things being perfect is pointless, I’m just interested in BETTER.

But I mean, I like being goofy and silly and also analytical and contemplative and also creative and spontaneous. I like lots of things. I like lots of moods. I like producing, creating, generating, interacting, engaging, I like a million things more than I like THIS kind of mood, THIS kind of post.

But I’m just not someone who is content to sit and stew in that sort of thing when I know full well that the problem does not actually stem from something broken or flawed inside of me, because I’m also someone who does believe very strongly in periodic bouts of self-reflection and honest self-assessment.....so that I can change things about myself when and where I feel necessary. But this also has the effect of me also being VERY aware of when the problem is not internal, but actually just me having a perfectly valid reaction or emotional response to outside stimulus. Aka fandom’s interaction with me, every bit as much as my interaction with fandom.

So....posts like this. I’ll do my usual rituals, get myself back onto my preferred trains of thought soon enough on my own, because ultimately that is all I can control and just because I make posts like this doesn’t mean I ever EXPECT any specific result - or a result at all - to come from it. 

But, y’know, sue me for being hopeful.

I know. What an ass am I?

[ariihen]

I don’t know if this is your thing or not, but could I get some brotherly Nico/Stolls headcanons, your post about them finishing the Hades cabin for him has me hooked

i got u anon, i will take every opportunity to give nico more siblings.

the stoll brothers did their best to cheer nico up the day that bianca left with the huntresses, but when assuring words like “don’t worry man, bianca will come back!” and “the huntresses visit all the time!” didn’t work, they resorted through other means. 

mainly, by letting him exert that anger. by this point i imagine the hermes cabin was still dealing with the huge blow of luke betraying camp and subsequently some campers with him. it’s not quite the same thing, but they can relate to nico. an older sibling they loved and trusted chose to leave them. they’re grieving and angry, too.

they bring him to the zeus’ fist and encourage him to scream and let it out. they egg him into swearing when they find out that bianca was fairly strict and wouldn’t let him watch things beyond pg-13.

“come on, nico, you know you want to” 

“yeah man, just one bad word. we won’t tell.” 

“rebellion, nico.”

they were pretty sad to learn that nico ran away after finding out that bianca died. i think that moment was a little jarring for travis and connor because, just like the di angelos, they’re full-blooded siblings too. they don’t know what they would’ve done if the other one died. i imagine they spent a long time trying to look for nico but reluctantly were forced to give up after a month, because that’s too long a time for a demigod to survive on their own. let alone a 10 year old who was only just learning how to. 

they’re pleasantly surprised when percy resurfaces from the labrynth with nico and welcomed him warmly. they joke about his sudden wardrobe change, but you can bet their big brother instincts reared up seeing just how much this happy little kid had changed.

they tried inviting him to sit with them and eat after the battle but nico didn’t really stick around long enough since he wanted to keep following leads about his past, but this becomes a recurring habit every time they see nico visit camp.

they’re constantly trying to encourage him to join them in camp activities, like they’re still his counsellors. they notice easily how uneasy the other campers are around nico and can see the affect it has on the kid, so it also becomes a habit to deflect that attention onto themselves so that nico doesn’t have to deal with the brunt of their focus.

more below the line because i got very carried away

and the thing is, nico notices. not at first, because he thought mischief was just in their blood like that, you know? but then he starts seeing the pattern. how the stoll brothers would act up and let him fade in the shadows so he doesn’t have to deal with people’s scrutiny.

he notices their offers to spend time with them, naturally, but given how the hermes cabin was already getting mistrusting looks from the other campers due to the situation with luke, the last thing he wanted to do was aggravate it more with his presence. so he politely and regretfully declines and goes.

after the first war, they spot nico eating alone on the hades table and pretty much invite themselves over to eat with him, cheerfully ignoring chiron’s disapproving looks in favour of asking nico to help them with their pranks.

he can summon the undead, travel through shadows, and is a proficient fighter? you can bet they want him at their side.

nico’s very surprised by how unaffected they are by his powers. most people tended to get unnerved by it and treat him accordingly, but the stolls remember the cheerful little boy who won all their valuables from them during poker and no amount of dead things was gonna change that.

plus, shadow-travel is a convenient getaway. they’re more than prepared to catch him and feed him after.

of course they do notice the colder reception the other campers start giving nico again after a while and see how badly the kid is taking it. they tried their best to help him and let him know that they were there, but were ultimately disappointed when they find out he left again.

disappointed, but not entirely surprised. because there was still a lot to fix after luke and honestly some of the kids in chb can be pretty cruel. they can’t blame nico for choosing to run away again.

they still give him a very warm reception whenever nico does visit though, as temporary as it is. connor’s the one that notices that nico always makes sure to greet them whenever he was around and he’s pretty glad to know that nico feels comfortable enough with them to check in.

i’m still on the belief that it should have been the stolls to find nico when he was sneaking up on the romans tbh. the “there are people here who care about you” line would make much more sense from nico’s former camp counsellors.

i like to think that they’re one of the first people in chb nico feels comfortable enough to tell about his sexuality and and tries not to cry when they respond by hugging him and thank him for telling them.

“want us to hook you up? we’re very good wingmen.” connor tells him

“i think mitchell from aphrodite is single” travis comments

they’re both very pleased to startle a laugh out of him. nico giggles himself silly and for a moment the stolls are reminded of the little 10 year old who toddled after them and spouted off little mythomagic facts he memorised by heart.

nico does end up helping them with pranks. he figures if the other campers were going to look at him like he was going to do something to them anyway, then he might as well earn it. 

he’s also more than willing to get them contraband outside of chb, especially since chiron basically gives him permission to do whatever the hell he wants. 

they’re probably on the very small list of people who nico’s willing to talk about bianca with, especially when the anniversary of her death approaches. especially when they helped him grieve her the first time she left, too.

[hollands-poppet]

Don’t Make Me Choose// Chapter 5

Mob!Tom Holland and Mob!Harrison Osterfield AU series

A/N: YO!!!! It’s been so long since I’ve posted anything!! I hope everyone is doing okay and is well! Due to COVID, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands!! I hope you guys are still reading and want to catch up! Talk to me, I’m free haha -Amy 💛💛💛

Word Count: 3.3K 💛

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 

playlist

Warnings: angsty, alcohol abuse, italics is flashback,cussing, I didn’t proofread this at all  

-

“Listen Haz,” he blows out another puff. The two make eye contact as the wind blows through there stiff, gelled hair. “I just want you to know that, I never intended to marry Y/N.”

Haz’s heart stops dead in his tracks as he hears his friend fessing up. He decides to take another sip at his tea, not believing what he is hearing right now.

Tom continues as the sunflowers in the back move slightly as the wind blows, the aesthetic helping the energy stay calm. The brunette clears his throat as he looks at the flowers, not being able to keep eye contact with his own best friend.

“I know you wanted her first and I just never thanked you for letting me keep her.” Tom confesses as he looks back at Haz who is already choked up.

This was a lot for for Harrison because his best friend usually never fessed up to anything. It was almost a healing process for him as well, a huge open wound that is healing slowly. It was a big deal for both of them because of the fact they have been on different wavelengths and it was like Tom wanted to fix that.

Harrison cracks a smile, “Thanks man. And I’m sorry for being a mess and thank you for being there for me.”

Tom sets down his cigar on the tea plate and nods his head, “Before we all get mushy, we have a problem..”

Tom leans forward and brings the cancer stick in between his lips, “It’s getting serious, mate.”

Haz watches his best friend in fear that he might have gotten the wrong idea about him and Y/N. There is no Y/N and I.

“What’s the problem?” Haz asks as he sits up straight in his seat.

“Well,” Tom removes the cigar from his lips. “It seems as though one of our clients up in Newcastle had a problem with one of our shipments.”

Haz then again adjusts himself in his seat while fixing his blazer collar while he responds, “What does this mean?” The seriousness of the matter still hadn’t hit the blonde as his best friend questioned his oblivion in his thoughts.

“What does this mean?” Tom replies in an almost sarcastic laugh and runs his thumb across his bottom lip. “It means that the crew’s leader in Newcastle put out a public threat against me.”

Haz nods in response, he still didn’t think much of this only because Tom ran most of the country between the gangs. He was the main guy, so he still wasn’t understanding the big deal. Tom had gotten threats before and with his status..he was untouchable.

“Alright Tom, so what do we do now? Do we send out James to do a couple of hits?”

Tom exhales deeply, releasing a puff of smoke that moves around between the two of them. “The problem is that we don’t know who is going to be hired to actually do the deed against me.”

Before Haz could even respond Tom continues, “We have an even bigger problem than that to be quite honest.”

In the blonde’s head this was wild because hits happened all the time whether it was against him or Tom or even one of the guys on their crew. It was inevitable, it was almost like a norm within the community. It was the name of the game, being marked wasn’t a secret in this lifestyle

“What is it mate, I don’t understand how being marked is a big deal, no one will touch you.”

“Y/N is marked.” Tom gets up from his seat and unbuttons his blazer. Even saying that out loud made him uncomfortable, how could he let that happen? “She’s fucking marked, Haz.”

Haz gets up from his seat and runs his hand through his hair worriedly, “What do we fucking do?”

Tom takes one more puff from his cigar, the smoke escapes his mouth as he speaks. “What we’re not going to do is tell Y/N, we can’t scare her...not before the ball.”

“Are you kidding, Tom?! Fuck the ball!”  

Haz now understood why Tom was so worried. Y/N was marked and if the boss’ wife was set to be wacked then there was a huge problem. A public threat like that is usually against retaliation for Tom’s title and whatever he did to piss of the mob boss really put Y/N in danger. A public wife wack on his wife is a huge fuck you, so what was the real plan?

“The ball is what Y/N waits for every year, we- I can’t do that to her. We’ll-” He sighs. “We’ll figure out.”

“But Tom-”

A quick shove to his chest causes Haz to lose a gasp of air, he didn’t even get to finish his sentence.

“But nothing.. don’t forget your fucking place, Harrison.”

An awkward silence floats around between the two, tension so thick it could be cut with a knife.

Tom sighs, “I’m going to check on Y/N, we’ll discuss this later.” He turns his back on his best friend and begins to make his way back into his home. He felt slightly disrespected, he felt threatened and not for his throne. He knew Haz meant well but he wasn’t going to let him try to tell him how to run things.

He knew the ball could easily be canceled but he feared that Y/N would leave him. And literally cancelling a ball should be no big deal considering he is trying to save her life but this lifestyle has been an issue since they met. If she knew the reason it was getting canceled...she would leave. She almost left before.

When Y/N found about Tom’s lifestyle, the money, the notorious fame.. the killing, that was something she could never really settle in her stomache. She loved him, so she stuck by his side no matter what baggage he came with. She didn’t even know if she could live with mob wife status but she compromises with it everyday.

Tom’s back face his friend as he makes his way inside, he turns around once more to catch Haz worriedly running his hands through his locks.

In those few seconds, Tom could feel something was wrong. He wasn’t stupid or an idiot. He felt the vibe that he had walked in on between Haz and Y/N. That was something Tom wasn’t going to believe. It was something that he didn’t want to believe..even if it was a gut feeling.

“Y/N is the best thing to happen to me, I won’t screw this up...I can’t.” Tom says as he presses his lips tightly together, and then he turns his back on his friend again.

FUCK. That’s all Haz could think, did he reveal himself without even knowing? A drink would be really good right about now.

_________________________________________________________________________

Later that night for dinner, Y/N and Tom had invited Bella and Harrison for a double date. To Y/N’s confusion, Tom insisted they stay home and would just hire a caterer for dinner. Without her knowledge, it was for her own good and safety.

Even though dinner was going to be in their home, she dressed up as if it were a fancy cocktail and not because it was because she wanted Tom to want her that night. She knew Tom wanted her every night but she had been recently hit with the baby bug.

Y/N has always wanted to be a mommy but these days she’s had baby fever. Besides, she felt like Tom would make a really good dad, and possibly leave this lifestyle that she had a love/hate relationship with. She knew it was a big ask and she herself loved the lavish lifestyle but at what cost.

She’d rather live in a flat, and be with Tom and start a family. That sounded like pure heaven to her.

As she loses herself in her thoughts while applying perfume behind her ear, she feels two arms come around her waist, “Mr. Holland, you’re terrible at trying to scare me.”

Tom lets out a breathy laugh into her neck, good chills come up her spine. “I wasn’t trying to scare you darling, I just couldn’t resist not touching you.” She turns around while in his arms, “You know Tom, tonight I was thinking we could-”

Before she could finish her sentence, he interrupts with a single kiss. “And then some?” He grins as he holds her by the waist tighter.

She nods, “Yes.. I mean always but..” She hesitates but decides to just ask. “Maybe we could work on a little Holland?”

Tom’s energy immediately changes, and she knew he didn’t like the question. He even knew the possible consequences that came with a baby. They’ve had these discussions before Y/N could never change his mind, and the answer was always no but she never gave up and she was going to try again.

He drops his head while letting out a sigh, “Y/N-”

“I know what you’re going to say but I feel like a little one would be good for us, don’t you think?” Her hands move from his shoulders onto his chest and back to his face and lifts his head. When his head comes back up, he is slightly confused.

“Good for us?” He asks. “What the fuck does that mean? It sounds like you’re trying to fix us.”

His hands drop from her waist and to his sides, “What are you trying to act like we’re broken, Y/N?”

A scoffe escapes her lips, “You’re fucking kidding right? I’m not trying to fix us, I just want to expand us. Imagine how much more perfect we would be with a little one here-”

“No!” Tom yells, his veins peeping through his neck. It didn’t even take a second for Y/N’s tears to flood her eyes.

She pulls it together for a few seconds, “Please, I-”

“Y/N, do you understand the amount of pressure I’m constantly under over your safety?” He begins to pace side to side, his hands running through his silky brown hair. “ I can’t bare to lose you, imagine my head if we had a kid?”

A single tear manages to escape her eye and roll down her cheek, “I’m just- lonely...I’m lonely when you’re gone, Tom.” She swallows the ball that burns her throat.

He takes a moment to pull together his thoughts, “It’s alright, darling. I forgive you.” His right hand comes up to her right cheek as he wipes away her tear.

Y/N with no hesitation immediately removes his touch by quickly moving his arm. She looks him dead in the eyes, “ I am not apologizing for wanting a family. You’re not listening to me, Tom.” She sighs as she looks back at the ground, “Just- just leave me alone.” She makes her way past him and her shoulder knocks his, she’s pissed.

“Y/N, wait!” Tom yells out as he turns around to catch Y/N stop right at the door.

She turns around, she doesn’t respond. She crosses her arms waiting for her husband to say what he has to say.

“You’re everything..I can’t lose you.” He says defeated.

Y/N looks at Tom, his temper quickly turns to near tears but she couldn’t let him control what she wanted. She loved him, she truly did but she wanted more than this.

She sighs as she looks at the rock sitting on her ring finger, “You might have already have.”

Y/N looks back up at Tom, and without hesitation leaves the room. She doesn’t even get to see Tom’s temper turn into heartbreak.

_________________________________________________________________________

Dinner went on as planned and it was as awkward than anyone can have imagined and not for the reason being that Y/N and Tom had a fight but Haz was late to the double date.

Bella had been crying for about 15 minute now, she couldn’t believe that Haz had stood her up. She wipe her tears as she move her spaghetti around with her fork.

Tom looks at Y/N who doesn’t make eye contact with him, he didn’t know what he could do to even fix what had happened between them earlier. He play around with the spaghetti in front of him with his fork and clears his throat, “You know..Haz should be here any minute now. He’s never usually late.”

Bella doesn’t even acknowledge Tom’s comment but continues to move spaghetti in front of her plate too. Her tears drops trickle onto the table as she sobs, “We’ve been here for over an hour.”

Y/N looks up at her friend and avoids her temptation to look at Tom through her  peripheral vision, “He’s probably caught up in something babes, I’m sure he’ll have a good excuse.”

Bella drops her fork and grabs the cloth that rest on her thighs and wipes some of her tears away. “I’m just embarrassed, I guess you could be right.” She grabs her wine glass while trying to holding in her tears, “Tom, how about a toast...hm?”

Tom sets down his fork as he lets out a smile, “Sure..why not?” He looks over at Y/N who is still avoiding him but she picks up her wine glass. She raises it but keeps her head down, no interest to even look at her husband.

He clears his throat and continues to look at his wife despite her cold vibe, “A toast to Y/N and possible new beginnings.”

And with that, Y/N’s head shot up to look at Tom so quickly. Whether he was referring to a baby or not, change was going to happen. It was a little hopeful for her but still maybe Tom would be willing to compromise. As horrible as this sounded, she couldn’t wait for Bella to leave so she could talk to him.

“I would like to quickly add something,” Y/N inserts as she raises her glass a little higher. “I just wanted to toast to Bella who still came out to dinner and is joining us tonight.” Y/N lets out a hopeful little smile to her hurting friend that she cares about.

Even though she was emotional, Bella appreciated her friend’s gesture and raised her wine glass high as well.

Just before their glasses were going to clink, the dining room doors swung right open to cause a huge banging sound.

“Hi, welcome to chili’s!” Haz blurts out as he catches himself on the door handle.

Tom can’t help but laugh at his friend and his random burst at the door. Bella on the other hand isn’t very amused, she shoots up from her chair and makes her way to the blonde.

“Haz, how dare you stand me up!” She crosses her arms, she’s so upset. She is so mad that her cheeks become so red that it enhances her blush, “Why the fuck are you late?”

Y/N turns around in her seat to watch the two talk, she doesn’t realize that something is wrong yet. None of them do.

“I, honestly..where am I?” Haz finishes the question with a burp, he stands against the door holding onto the handle for dear life.

Bella becomes emotional again, she couldn’t believe the way she was being treated and she couldn’t believe the way he was acting. She couldn’t believe that she had fallen in love with him, “Goodbye, Haz. Call me when you’re ready to grow up.” She walks right by him, not even looking back.

Tom takes a sip of his red wine, “You really fucked that one up, mate.” He laughs into his cup. Y/N looks back at Tom and gives him a stink eye, “Nice.” She rolls her eyes and turns her attention back to Haz.

This is when she begins to notice that something is really wrong. Haz can’t even keep his balance, and she begins to get up from her chair. “Harrison, are you feeling alright?”

The blonde nods and smiles, “I-I’m just hung-“ and before he could even finish his response he lost grip of the door handle and he falls straight onto his left side of his body and a big pop is heard.

“Harrison!” Y/N yells and Tom jumps from

his chair from the moment he seen his best friend tipping.

“FUCK!” Haz yells out, he tries to turn face up but he can’t even move. “I-I think I broke something.”

Y/N and Tom are kneeling over their friend as he lies in pain.

Tom’s hands over his body and is panicking, “Haz, man! Let me help.” As soon as Tom get closer to his friend, there was no way to hide smell that was coming off of the blonde. Y/N reaches over to see if she could help him move over on to his back but that’s when she smelled it too.

“Harrison..” She stopped because she didn’t want to ask in front of Tom because this wasn’t the time for a fight. “It’s going to be okay. Tom, go call for help. I’ll watch him while you go.”

Tom nods in response, he’s visibly upset. There is so much going on and he himself knows that his temper can get bad, he knows this isn’t the right time to pick an argument. He gets up from the floor and makes his way to his phone which he left up in the room.

Y/N removes her heels and moves closer to Haz, “You’re wasted aren’t you?”

Haz is breathing heavy at this point, sweat dripping down his head from the pain, “That sobered me up really quickly.”

She touches his right arm which is face up to the ceiling, “I can smell the bourbon... what the hell were you thinking?” She remarks as she moves to a kneeling position. “Let’s try to get you on your back.”

He nods no and flinches in pain, “I couldn’t help it..I felt like a-alone.”

Y/N’s jaw slightly drops because she’s surprised to hear what Haz says but before she can reply, he continues.

“I can’t feel my shoulder, it feels detached.” He lets out with a heavy breathe, he cries a bit.

She nods and just tries to stay calm so that she won’t scare him more, “It’s okay, we’ll wait here for help. Here, hold my hand.” She brings her left hand to his right hand, and holds hand tightly. “Tom is probably calling an ambulance, you’re going to be alright.”

Even through all his pain and his heavy breathing, he manages to let out a panting smile.

“Why are you smiling?” Y/N asks as she runs her hands through his hair trying to keep him calm.

“I love you so much, Y/N.” He lets out a slight grunt from the pain, any tiny movement really hurt. He thought maybe more booze would probably help numb the pain.

“Harrison, stop. You’re drunk.”  

“I’ve loved you from the first moment I seen you.” He rests his head on the floor, he’s noticing that she’s becoming more blurry. “You-you...” And he closes his eyes, the pain so severe it causes him to pass out.

-

-

A/N: Wow, I can’t believe I finally posted something again hahaha💛 anyway, let me know your predictions, thoughts, questions! ANYTHING! LOVE YALL. -Amy💛

p.s not everyone that is on the taglist asked to be tagged but if you want me to remove you let me know!!

Taglist: @ladybirduris​ @thedaydreamingwriter​ @a-walk-in-silence​ @tomhaz​ @mischiefmanaged49​ @tomshufflepuff​ @smexylemony​ @musicgirl234​ @spidey-pal​ @greenarrowhead​ @superheros-and-others​ @captainbuckyy​ @kawaiigothfishpasta @hollandechart​ @thollandx​ @glader-witch-wolf​ @amren-rhyssecond​ @peteryesparker​ @hazhasmycoffee​ @the-queen-procrastinator​ @hollandroos@spiderboytotherescue @hotsterfield @thedaydreamingwriter

[et-lesailes]

two artists

pairing: steve rogers x reader

word count: 1707

prompt: “Hi! May I request a fix with Steve rogers where the reader is a writer & has a scar on the right side of her face (eyebrow till cheekbone, diagonal) & Steve keeps seeing her in a caffe & thinks she's gorgeous not even caring about the scar & sketches her & finally decides to ask her out when he sees her silently crying over her laptop because she just killed off 1 of her favourite characters? Maybe shes a but insecure too?Thank you so much!”

themes: just a quick little fluffy piece :)

taglist: @evanstush, @chibi-crazy, @tanyam93, @bval-1, @wonderwinchester,  @patzammit, @rohaintahquil, @deidrashouseofpain, @sammyslonglostshoe, @mizariomi, @jadedhillon, @bohemian-barbie, @marvelouspottering, @sebabestianstan101, @lille-kattunge, @peach-acid, @heyiamthatbitch, @cptn-sgrogers, @heyyouwiththeassbutt, @bangtan-serendipity, @troublermalik, @beardburnsupersoldiers, @hannie-stark, @bookish-shristi, @kind-sober-fullydressed, @whores4thor, @gingerninjaprincess16, @straightforwardly, @danathewitchywoman, @denisemarieangelina, @mango--mango, @frencchfries, @xlanawriter, @littlemoistcarrot, @pottxrwolff, @arianatheangelworld, @ifuseekamyevans, @southerngracela, @nsfwsebbie, @rororo06​, @almost-had-the-stars, @sebastian-i-stan, @whysparker​

notes: i have removed a handful of people from my taglist due to lack of interaction with my fics, and will be removing more the next time i post based on how reaction with this fic goes. it takes a LONG time for me to manually tag every person so please understand that the least you can do is read my work and give it a like if you are asking to be on this taglist! anywho thanks to @allthefandomstogether​ for this lovely graphic!!

He comes to this cafe almost everyday, and each day he is almost sure to see you, much to his pleasure. 

To be fair, he started coming to this cafe far before you did. In the 1940s, to be exact. It is now run by the original owner’s granddaughter, and he is sometimes shocked when he sees the similarity between her features and her grandmother’s, though he keeps this to himself. He does not like to draw attention to the fact that he is Steve Rogers, Captain America. 

He sits at his regular table near the back and you sit at yours, also towards the back but on the other side of the room. He goes there to have some peace from the craziness that is the Avengers; he often brings a couple books, his sketchbook, and the iPod Touch Tony had gifted him when he had first come out of the ice. He can easily upgrade, but he has no desire to. He prefers being old fashioned, he hardly even likes using the complicated smartphone SHIELD has set him up with for missions. 

You only started coming a couple of weeks ago. He isn’t sure if you come every single day, but most of the days and times he is there, so are you. While he used to spend most of his time reading, he has found himself beginning to draw more and more. He used to draw quite a lot back in the old days; ever since becoming an Avenger, he simply did not have the time, and, quite frankly, the muse. Now, it is all coming back to him. He feels inspired upon your mere presence, and he simply has to draw everything he feels. At first, it is the items around you. He draws the latte you seem to favor, the journals you’re constantly writing in, the brown bag you keep your things in, even the sleek MacBook Air. Finally, he wholeheartedly accepts his creepiness and draws you. He can’t help it. You are incredibly intriguing to him, and not to mention beautiful. How could he not want your image displayed in the pages of his sketchbook? 

It is another day and he’s shading the delicate features of your face. He loves when you furrow your brow in concentration as you write, how your tongue even sometimes sticks out slightly. It’s adorable to him. 

His pencil begins to outline the thin scar across the right side of your face. He does not know how it got there, and while he is curious, he sees so much more to you than such a mark. All he can hope is that whatever happened, it is not bothering you anymore. He knows how mental scars hurt just as much as physical ones, probably even more. God knows he’s collected quite a few over his century of living.

He also wonders what it is you’re writing over there all the time. Is it a story? A memoir? A journal? He wants to read all of it, at the risk of sounding like some kind of creep. Perhaps he’s already too far in to be worrying about that, though. 

He’s so absorbed in his drawing he almost does not notice your change in expression. It is when you momentarily cover your face with your hands that he frowns, looking to you as if you will somehow understand through telepathy that he never wants you covering up that beautiful face. However, once you remove your hands, he widens his eyes as he sees tears running down your cheeks. You sniff and rub them away, taking a deep breath before returning to typing away on your laptop. He has no idea what to do, but he knows he has to do something. The thought of you being in any type of pain is breaking his heart. What is wrong with him? He doesn’t even know you.

He stands up rather abruptly, causing the people at the tables around him to give him an odd look. He avoids eye contact, adjusting his baseball cap. He finds his legs walking towards you, no plan of action in his normally calculative, strategic mind. He is standing before you now and the presence causes you to look up.

The eye contact almost blows him away. Your eyes are wide and slightly wet, making even your pupils glisten slightly. He’s never met anyone who looks pretty while crying, God knows he certainly isn’t. “Are you okay?” he asks somewhat suddenly and awkwardly, and you blink- he stares at your eyelashes wondering how such a small part of your face can look so beautiful to him. “Y-yeah, I’m okay,” you say with a sad smile, even chuckling slightly. He decides he wants to hear your real laugh as soon as he possibly can. “I didn’t know anyone saw me, that’s embarrassing.” You look away now and he frowns. He wants you to look at him. “Do you maybe want to talk about it?” he offers, hoping he doesn’t seem like some nosy freak. You wipe at your eyes again and he notices you’re still looking away. “Oh, it’s really not that deep,” you assure him, still laughing awkwardly. “I- I’m a writer, see, and I’ve been working on this story for a while, and--” you pause, taking a deep breath, “--it’s stupid, really, but I just killed off one of my favorite characters, and I’m just… sad now. I got too attached.” You rub the back of your neck, looking down at your keyboard. “Silly, isn’t it?”

He’s never been more enamored. 

He chuckles softly and shakes his head. “No. Not at all. Writing is a form of art, and art…” he hums thoughtfully before continuing, “art evokes strong emotions. Even if you’re the one creating it.” He remembers rather morbid sketches he drew after Bucky’s death. Sure, he could have drawn something happier to help him feel better, but it was more important to let his grief and emotions out rather than pretend everything was okay. You look up at him again and he instantly takes advantage of the returned eye contact, studying yours as his smile barely grows. “Honestly, you’re the only person I’ve met who responded like that,” you tell him softly, your voice somewhat shy. “Everyone else would just tease me, tell me that I’m the one writing it so I can just change it. But it’s not like that, you know?” He immediately nods, smiling wider. “I completely understand. Sometimes the happy ending… isn’t always the right ending.”

You look up at him for a few moments before realizing this eye contact is too intense, naturally shying away again as you look back down at your laptop. You have good and bad days when it comes to your self esteem, especially with the thin scar running across your face, and it’s safe to say you’re feeling significantly more insecure sitting before such a handsome man like him. He frowns slightly and clears his throat, gesturing to the empty seat across from yours. “Do you mind if I sit with you?” You blink and barely gaze up at him, hoping you don’t look as nervous as you feel. “Um, yeah, sure, go ahead…” He smiles, clearly happy as he sits down, and you feel even more shy now that he’s right in front of you. “My name’s Steve, by the way. Could I know your name?”

You blink, everything suddenly clicking. He had seemed familiar but you had brushed it off-- considering how outrageously handsome he was, you had assumed you had seen a similar face in a damn magazine or TV show or something. Upon hearing his name, however, you now realize just exactly who this is, and now you’re even more confused as to why he’s sitting with you. “Y/N,” you introduce yourself nonetheless with a small smile, looking at him somewhat curiously. “Not to be rude or anything but-- why exactly do you want to sit with me?” He chuckles, finding you adorable already. “If we’re being honest, I’ve seen you here a few times, and I’ve always wanted to come talk to you.” You blink and glance down as you barely play with a strand of your hair, anything to keep your awkward hands occupied. “Me…?” He chuckles, barely biting on his lower lip. “Yeah, you. Is that so hard to believe? I was actually kind of hoping I could ask you out on a date. Get to know you better.” He’s a little surprised with himself; for someone so sculpted and “perfect”, he’s never really been quite smooth with the ladies. Perhaps he wants to be more confident to help draw out your own confidence. 

“A date?” you repeat, practically bewildered. Is this some type of prank? No, Steve Rogers would never do something like that. As you look up into his eyes, all you see is hope, sincerity, and a kind, friendly twinkle. You quickly look back down. He’s being serious. “I-- um, I haven’t been on a date in… a really long time…”

“So what better time to start than now?” He grins, cocking his head to one side. “Please? Just one, and if you hate it you never have to talk to me again. Though I’d be really, really sad if that happened.” You can’t help but giggle softly, looking up at him again. This time, you actually maintain eye contact for more than five seconds. “I doubt I would hate it.” You respond, surprised that you’re actually beginning to flirt a little. “Alright. Here’s my number.” He playfully pumps his fist in a triumphant movement as you scribble your number out on a piece of paper, handing it to him. “Thank you. I can’t wait.” He feels his work phone buzz in his pocket and he sighs. “Though right now, duty calls. I’ll call you later tonight, alright?”

You watch in somewhat of a daze as the muscular superhero stands up, taking out some hi-tech device you wonder if he even fully knows how to operate. Probably something invented by Tony Stark. “Alright,” you manage to say, nodding your head and even giving him a little smile. “I’m looking forward to it.”

[pockpop]

nct dream reaction to nctzens hating on their mixed s/o

↬ synopsis; black and korean s/o dating a member of nct dream and receiving an enormous amount of hate because of it

↬ genre;some fluff,some angst, lots of cute stuff

↬ requested; yeet

renjun ♡

“hey what are you looking at?”

you quickly hide your phone and roll over on his bed, trying to tuck your phone under the pillows but he’s tickling your sides making you laugh loud and toss and turn before he finally got a grip on your phone and unlocked it.

when he saw you were looking at your twitter mentions, his big smile settled into a frown as the sweet compliments about your relationship became littered with ones bashing every single thing they could. from your darker skin tone to your laugh, to the way you dress. saying you weren’t a true korean and that you weren’t enough for renjun, he was internally glad you didn’t know much mandarin because those were even worse than the korean ones.

“i hope you’re not taking these things to heart or letting them get to you..” he’d whisper, not being able to look you in the eye. he would be beyond pissed and definitely would scream about it later to the boys but when you laughed, he’d be hella confused,

“yeah it kind of sucks your fans aren’t fond of me but it’s nothing i’ve never dealt with before.”

when you kissed his cheek, he swore his heart just burst in his chest and would just want to spend all day wrapped up with you, escaping their hateful words and thoughts with his lil angel.

jeno ♡

of course he’s aware that you’re receiving hate and just bashing from his fans, but he was pretty oblivious to just how bad it was until you two were out on date.

it was the first time he was able to see you in a few weeks and naturally he was being a little clingy. holding your hand, arm wrapped around your waist, resting his chin on your shoulder but you stiffened every time and during his last attempt to hold your hand,you pulled away so he asked you what was up.

“this whole night, you keep pulling away from me and acting weird. i haven’t seen you in forever, why the awkwardness?”

“i just don’t want to give your fans more to hate me for. they already complain we touch too much.”

cue a triggered jeno alright, he’s a teenage boy that just really wants to shower his fine ass girlfriend with affection after all this time and she is rejecting him because of his fans.

“they say i’m not good enough for you, look at this foreign girl coming in and stealing all the good korean men we have even though i’m half korean but whatever. they don’t get why you’re attracted to me or if it’s just for the publicity!”

he’s just not having it at all, he can tell they are getting to you so he’d be the one to shut that down real quick “and you believe them? you really are stooping down to that mentality? i’m dating you because you’re just my type, you’re funny and beautiful, and i just want to spend sometime with my baby without all that negativity that doesn’t matter at all.”

when you nod and agree, sweet jeno is back into play showering you in kisses and giving you the best night of your life, reminding you that you and him are all that matters.

haechan ♡

he’s just straight up not having it. sure, he can handle the hate he receives, he can take it with a grain of salt because he’s been going through it for a hot minute, but hate towards his baby? and from his fans? think again mmkay.

so extra that he posts pictures of you and him all over your social media, showering you in affection and showing off his queen, petty with his captions too like ‘ don’t hate her cause you ain’t her’ bull. he’s so ready to face the backlash from the company and k nctzens just to prove he’s serious about you.

and if the comments are actually getting to you and he sees you questioning if you still want to be with him, he’d be even more hurt and upset. always trying to assure that it’s only you two in the relationship and literally deletes your twitter app just so you don’t have to see any of the hate anymore.

jaemin ♡

more than anyone else, I feel he’d be the most hurt. probably more offended than you tbh.

everybody and they mama know jaemin loves loves nctzens but to find out they are bashing your name, bullying you online and especially when he’s not around, it brings out the worst in him.

like one night you two are hanging out around the dorm and he’s laying in your lap, letting you play with his hair as he tells you a story when your phone is just blowing up. he gets to it before you can out of annoyance and their instagram notifications and when he sees all the negative comments under the photo of you two, he’s mortified. they were making all these kinds of racist remarks or just plain out asking how you got so lucky and how did he even end up with someone like you.

“don’t look like that, i always get comments like these.”

jaemin looks at you in surprise but you shrug it off,”those are nothing compared to the ones i posted from when we went see your family, the comment section had some mixed reviews.”

“why haven’t you told me about this?” jaemin’s whole demeanor had changed, the heartbreak in his eyes as the comments rolled in made your heart hurt.

“because it would ruin the mood, because its negative and i don’t know” your voice trailed off as you avoided eye contact. “i expected it and sometimes its not too bad.”

“you know none of what they say is true?” he starts slowly,tossing your phone aside, his attention is solely on you now,”like you know i love all of you, from here,” he touched the crown of your head,” to here,” he let his fingers trail all the way to your toes making you wiggle your toes in your fuzzy socks. 

“love is strong word,” you mention and jaemin is all smiles because he’s sure he does love you and there’s nothing anyone can say or do that would change that.

chenle ♡

you two were out on your first date and subsequently a fan came up while you guys were seated.

“yeah i’m a big fan!” but then her eyes turned to you and her smile faltered slightly, her eyes looking you up and down, chenle noticed her gaze and beamed at you. “and this is?” the fan asked and chenle grabbed your hand, a pink tint coming to his cheeks.

“this is my s/o,” 

the fan smiled at you but it made you uncomfortable as the smile wasn’t genuine at all. chenle was oblivious to the whole ordeal and took pictures with the fan and conversed a little more before the fan was gone. 

turning his attention back to you, he noticed you scrolling through your phone, milkshake discarded, pout on your lips.

“hey i’m sorry about that, for the whole day you now have my complete attention.” 

“no it’s not that, i just think now our relationship isn’t a secret and your fans aren’t so happy about it.” 

chenle would be the one to brush it off, try to relieve you of any worry or troubled feelings. he knows how fans can be, how ruthless and mean but he’s so down to shield you from ever believing or listening to anything they say or do.

“maybe they aren’t happy but i am happy, you make me happy and if they can’t accept you then that means more extra love from me.”

this made you smile letting him hold your hands,”that was hella corny but i’ll take it.”

jisung ♡

it makes him uncomfortable and angry all at once. especially if you’re his first serious relationship and he wants it to work, but he would have a hard time figuring out how to handle it. like if you don’t care and you don’t take the comments to heart, he wouldn’t worry too much but if you were one to take offense to the things fans say, he would constantly be making sure you knew he was truly down for you.

like always blowing up your phone with memes and funny pictures of himself, texting you like crazy and just being a reminder that you two can make it work no matter what. 

lets say one night you two are out and about for the first time in forever, like an amusement park and even though he still gets nervous around you, he’s holding your hand in a death grip.

you had been telling him about the comments you had been getting lately and he just wanted to show you good time. he’d win you tons of stuffed animals and you two would share a cotton candy and just be cliche af. ending the night with a lil kiss on the top of ferris wheel,you know the cute stuff haha

but he would always avoid any drama or confrontations from fans in public like he’d hold his tongue just to keep the peace but it would be hard cause he ain’t the one  

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

An Explanation of Why Louis and Violet are Both Terrific Love Interests [2/5]

+Why both romantic routes are not only amazing but better than other games I’ve personally played in the past.

+Why some people are idiots and get off on picking stupid fights.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Romantic Option #2: Warren Graham

Uhm.... Warren’s a person in this story, too.

He, uh, he’s really nerdy. He does some science shit. He has a huge crush on Max which is made very obvious by the everything about him. Uh..... he took a fist to the face and got a black eye because he was helping Max, uhm.... he took a picture that was pretty important to the plot... um....

I literally can’t remember anything else about him.

I couldn’t even remember his last name. I had to look up his wiki to remember anything about him.

That’s how forgettable he is.

Hell, fans of the game took his character and made him more interesting in fanart and fanfics than he ever was in the game! I remember more about THAT version of him than I do about the him in the canon of the game!

I gave you that whole bit about Chloe from memory. That’s how much more fleshed out and important she is within the game than Warren is. Everything I’m about to talk about here if from reading his wiki and remembering things that way.

We meet Warren and find out that he’s into nerdy shit like Max. He’s also obviously into her and does a shit job at hiding that fact, but then Nathan comes over and beats the shit out of him because plot.

When I first played, it was pretty obvious that Warren would be romanceable, and truth be told, I liked Warren. He was fine! He’s dorky and weird, but I thought he and Max could potentially be a cute couple, and so does the rest of the school since you can’t talk to any of the girls without them implying that Warren likes Max.

I kept waiting for Warren to be important, but it never really came! I mean, you could talk to him and help him with a science experiment [in which he fucking blows up] and you text him a lot. Oh, and you can go to a Planet of the Apes marathon with him which you never actually get to go to, but the game constantly reminds you that you’re going because Warren won’t shut up about it.

Let’s see, he also sends you instructions on how to build a bomb so that you can break into the principal’s office, and then he beats Nathan up, and then he shows up and takes a picture of him and Max that ends up being important in the final episode and then.... he doesn’t do much else.

Well, okay, he does talk about Max’s powers a little bit in ep5 and you can give him a smooch or hug him or disregard him completely.

And that’s about it.

........Wait a minute.

A boy with boyband hair who has extensive chemistry knowledge, knows how to make bombs, uses said bombs for pranks, gets fucked up by one of the antagonists AND was a throwaway character that the writers threw in there to further the plot along but doesn’t really do much so the fandom took him and made him better than the game ever gave him credit for...?

.....Welp, that’s a whole thing that I’m not gonna get into. One post at a time, folks.

ANYWAY

Back on topic, Warren’s a romanceable character, apparently. You can agree to go on a date with him and smooch him. You can tell people you think he’s cute. It’s fine.  

With all that about these two choices in mind, compare Warren to Chloe.

There is no comparison because Warren’s “romance route” is... is nothing! It’s a whole lot of little things that don’t amount to much! With Chloe, Max has all this chemistry and you spend 90% of the game with her! You forget that Warren exists until you get another text from him or another character brings him up!

You know what Warren feels like? He feels like a character that the writers threw in because they were worried that players wouldn’t want a tragic wlw love story between two best friends, who reconnect and fall in love over the course of five episodes.

Which, fair, because people are idiots.

Could they have made Warren more important? Sure, but like with Skybound and Telltale, they didn’t have an unlimited budget to pack everything they wanted into the game to make it better, and that’s not just limited to the relationships, that’s clear in the endings we got. And I’m sure that some Warren stans will read this and retaliate and tell me that he’s just as important than Chloe, I just don’t understand because I’m a shithead.

And maybe that’s true, but look me in the eye and tell me that if you took Warren out of the game, it would have drastically changed the story beyond repair.

Now, what does all this mean?

Compare Chloe and Warren to Louis and Violet as far as love interests go and how they were handled.

In TWDG, Louis and Violet are fairly even.

In LIS, Chloe and Warren aren’t even in the same universe. It doesn’t matter if you like Warren more, or if you like Chloe more, Chloe got more time and effort put into her story and romance than Warren did.

Think of it like this: Chloe is at a 90% and Warren 10%.  Louis is at 48% and Violet’s at 52%, and that’s depending on how you look at it.

If TWDG did the routes like this, then Violet would’ve been way more important, would’ve have ten times as many scenes with Clementine, and if you took her out of the story, the whole thing falls apart because she’d be 90% of the plot, while Louis over here would’ve been used as background noise and plot convenience once or twice. Sure, we would’ve gotten to know him a little bit, but not nearly anything substantial and not nearly as much in comparison.

That’s what we could’ve had, okay? The writers could’ve given us a single love interest and said: “We want you to pick this person... but we’ll also throw in this other person just in case y’all are homophobic/racist/fucking stupid/whatever.”

In conclusion: We were blessed with Louis and Violet who each got an arc and love story, both of which are fairly even. 

Have I made my point yet? No? You need more examples? Fine. I’ll give you another alternative to what we could’ve had, or rather, what we could’ve missed out on.

[Note: I want to add that I haven’t played Life is Strange 2, but I know that its playable character is also bisexual and can choose between a boy and a girl to romance, but I can’t comment on how well it did because I’ve yet to play it.]

[persona 4 and the relationships you can’t have]

This one time I tried to romance my partner but he was too busy trying to convince everyone that he’s straight to even notice.

Persona 4 is a game that came out in 2008, then re-released with new content in 2012 under the name Persona 4: Golden. The game follows your nameable protagonist who has just moved in with their uncle and cousin. During his year-long stay, he becomes involved in investigating mysterious murders while harnessing the power of summoning Persona. 

Great game, one that took over my life for about a year. Great characters, great voice acting, great story, great antagonists, and great romance and romanceable characters. 

While the romance is more of a side thing depending on if you decide to take that route with one of your social links, it’s still nice to have special moments with them to break away from all the TV murder and whatnot. 

And you have several great options to choose from! You’ve got Chie, Yukiko, Rise, Naoto, and then you’ve got several other girls around the school that you can start a thing with, but they’re not as important as those core four. 

Each of the girls has an incredibly well-written story and share a deep bond with you, the protagonist. So, the reason I’m putting this example here is that the choice between all these great girls is super hard, right? 

Wrong. 

Because when I played the damn game, I didn’t romance any of them. Not because I didn’t like them or because I didn’t want my character to have a romance, but because the asshole I WANTED to romance wasn’t an option. 

Because I’m not allowed to romance the dudes. 

And that includes this dude. 

Yosuke Hanamura

Remember that pin I mentioned about how great it is that Clementine’s bi because not only does it give us well-deserved representation but also allows the player to romance both girls and boys? 

The Protagonist of Persona 4 is not bisexual. 

I can only romance the girls because he is straight. 

But not really, because MY Protagonist pursued and sought after Yosuke despite the fact that the game would not let me romance him. Which is bullshit, because he clearly feels the same way, and no, that’s not my crazy brain making shit up. 

My entire playthrough was pretty much 

I won’t get into it because Persona is a long game and a complicated one to even try and explain to someone who hasn’t played it so that’s another rant for another day, but know this: 

Yosuke was the perfect opportunity to tell the story of a boy dealing with internal homophobia, falling in love with his best friend [PARTNER] after the girl he cared about died horrifically and faced his shadow learned to accept himself and his insecurities. The potential here was wasted. 

There are a shit ton more layers to that, but on the barest of bare-bones, that’s what I wanted. 

Hell, according to a bunch of people, Yosuke was going to be a romantic option, but they scrapped it! Insult to injury, I’ll say!

Comparing this to TWDG, you could argue that Clementine only gets to romance Louis and Violet, but some wanted to romance Mitch, Aasim, Brody, ect. 

Fair enough, but what I’m saying is this:

It sucked that I couldn’t romance the person I wanted to when I played Persona, and it still sucks every time I play a game and my person of desire is unattainable. This isn’t just Persona, that’s just the first game that comes to mind when I think about characters I always wanted a romance, but that includes all the other missed opportunities from other games, as well.

The Final Season is different. 

The writers of TFS could’ve said, “Oh you want to romance Louis/Violet? Oh no, sorry, we were gonna do it but we changed our minds! But, don’t worry, we’ll leave hint after hint that they have feelings for you but you can’t actively pursue them. Allow us to tease you with the wonderful romance that could’ve been! Midnight piano lessons! Conversations under the stars! Lots of smooches! You’ll never see it in canon!”

Or, they could’ve only given us one of them, but that’s the topic of the next game. 

In conclusion: They didn’t have to give us Louis and Violet or make them romanceable. If you want Clementine to have a relationship with them, you have the option to do that, which is something you can’t say with other games.

Continued in Part 3

[mayleitz]

The Stalking

Okay so here’s this.

Elliot stalked me for over a year before we dated. The first time I met him, he spoke to me in my discord server right when it was new. He said he did not pledge money to support my videos, he didn’t really watch them or care about them. He supported me so he could have a direct line to talk to me. 

Naturally he started flirting with me and because at the time I was miserable and repressed, I went along with it at first but then told him to stop and to just be my friend. He doesn’t take rejection well so he kept trying and when I felt pushed away by his advances he would get mad at me for being a bad friend. 

This went on for a pretty long time, until he came out as trans. I was super excited for him and because we sorta knew each other and had been around, I forgave him for all the advances that were unwanted because I know trans folk pretransition have a tendency to be a bit like-that. 

And after that I grew to trust him a little bit more even though he really never knew me. But I always needed people to talk to and my resources were limited (the person I was dating at the time didn’t really let me have friends) so I talked to Elliot occasionally. He slowly gained my trust so I slowly opened up to him more and more. He was in some bad relationships, and so was I so we had that in common and could talk about it. 

On the night that I broke up with my then partner, I was suicidal. It was rough. I was trying to please them for so long that I just...didn’t honestly remember what doing anything for myself was like. I felt so backed into a corner. So I called Elliot.

We started to have a closer friendship where we would talk on the phone for hours at a time. I exclusively wanted to be his friend and he was constantly pining after me from this point on. He told me that he viewed YouTube like a dating site and that each channel was like a dating profile. He said he had dated multiple YouTubers and had dirt on all of them and planned to one day post some call-out thingy about all of them. I didn’t know the people in question so I didn’t question it much. But this was absolutely a through-line to our relationship. He viewed youtubers as possessions that he wanted to have. And god did he want to have me. 

It started really simply with telling me he was in love with me. He kept telling me and one day I said it back. Like...I love you, as a friend, who is into women. I had to constantly remind him that I was a lesbian and I was only interested in women. I had never really gotten a chance to experience that as myself and that was exclusively what I wanted.

Anyways so he started sending me unsolicited nudes. Usually when drunk but he did it a whole bunch of times. He would call me at parties and orgies he was at, sometimes while high on hardcore drugs or exceptionally drunk and he would say things like: “I’m gonna come visit you and we’re gonna have sex.” “May, are we gonna have sex when we’re together?” “God I want to fuck you.” and so on. 

And so I told him to stop because I was uncomfortable and I did not want any of it. It was all explicitly against my consent. And because I didn’t know what to do, I wouldn’t hang up so he just started passing the phone around to all his friends. One of them told me he wanted to blow me and I got so skeeved out that I tried to end the call. 

But then when I told Elliot I wouldn’t be having sex with him and I would like him to stop, he turned his attention a bit towards: “Just kiss me then.” “We have to kiss.” “There’s no way I’m not gonna kiss you.”

Which wasn’t a lot better.

The next day I was super angry. I told him I was tired of him sexualizing me without my consent. He got really upset and distant and I was worried that I would lose, in essence, my only friend, so I let him off the hook and said it wasn’t a big deal and I still cared about him. So he just started right up again. This happened multiple times a week.

He demanded to come to visit me but I was uncomfortable with that. My apartment was sorta my private space where I could transition in peace and be left alone. I didn’t want to bring a man into that space. Like ever. It was sacred to me. 

But he persisted so much that I finally said okay. He immediately got a plane ticket and oops now it had to happen. I was terrified. 

I felt a lot better when he got here because he wasn’t like most guys I’d known, at first. He was sweet and fun and funny and sure, he said a lot of off-color things but I mostly ignored whatever red flags were around. He asked if he could kiss me one night and I gave in and was like...well alright. He kissed me violently hard. With no kindness or gentleness. It felt like an attack. It was in my car and I had no real place to go so I just awkward looked around and waited for it to be over. 

But after that, I could sense that he wanted it to be more romantic that just friend stuff and so I held his hand and at one point I told him we were on a date and stuff to make him feel good and loved. It was clear that he was really happy and I wanted that more than anything. 

But then things started to get more serious and scary and my inability to say no to him made everything so much harder. It kept getting harder and harder to say no even though I knew this was not what I wanted. This person basically stalked me, sexually harassed me and treated me like an object of desire for over a year and somehow I was afraid to hurt his feelings. 

We got a tattoo together. It was my first tattoo and I was really nervous and scared and he held my hand and was very warm to me and I thought about how alone I would soon be again when he left but I was hesitating because I didn’t want to be in a relationship with him. 

By this point, he got his way and we had had sex. I didn’t want to but I knew it was what he wanted so I did my best to power through my feelings. I even tried to be really into it so I could convince myself that what was happening was okay. 

I told him I didn’t really want him to go and that I would miss him and I loved him and stuff but inside I was relieved when he was leaving. I wanted my privacy and my space and I wanted some distance. Things were fucking hard with him around and I needed to get back to work on myself. The whole week that he was here he joked about just never leaving. Like, just randomly staying here with me and dating me and stuff. Of course, again I was a lesbian and he knew this. But like...me not rejecting his advances made him believe that I was actually into guys and more specifically him and I wanted it too. 

So on the day when he was set to leave, he didn’t really pack or get anything ready because he had his mind made up. Part of me wonders if this was the plan from the start, I don’t know. But he basically announced that he was staying. The whole situation was so stressful and surreal that I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to unravel the threads and say ‘no, I’m still a lesbian, we’re still not dating and I still want to be here alone.’ so instead I was like ‘okay whatever,’ and went to take a shower. While I was in the shower he posted about it on facebook instead of telling anyone directly and then he abandoned his partner, all his friends, his family and everyone from his home. 

The first week it was exhausting but so surreal that he was living here that things seemed alright. The limited solace I had was my job at the mall where I could be aware and get some clarity. I tried to tell him that staying with me was only temporary and he could just move back when he was ready. I tried to help him get a job so he could pull his own weight (he didn’t I paid for everything. Even when he had a job, he mostly blew his money on meaningless stuff instead of helping me.)

It was a disaster and I was trapped. He constantly joked about cancelling me if we ever broke up, he constantly joked about tweeting out the ‘n-word’ on my account and ending my career. He constantly joked about publicly shaming me. When we were with friends, he would publicly shame me and when I started doing it back, he got really hurt so I stopped and just let him do it to me.

There’s so much more but my hands are tired. Not like it will make a difference. He’s a liar. He’s a fucking liar and manipulator. He is a sex pest. He repeatedly fucked me until I was bleeding and then we turn around and do it all again moments after I told him he needed to stop. He would tie me up and ridicule me. He demanded that I do that to him as well and I did only twice. The first time triggered my DID and my alter just wanted to kill herself. It scared me to fucking death. It scared me so bad that it happened that I could barely sleep and of course he used that as part of his call out. 

He openly tweeted about my ptsd and DID and used that to say I was a bad person when what I was every moment we were together was scared. Lina too. These people overran my life. They took over leaving me nearly no control. I was scared to death that they were going to hurt me and when I finally distanced myself from them and went off to have the life I actually wanted from the start, they took my career from me.

Since they tweeted about me being ‘an abuser’ I have lost over 1000 followers on twitter, 3000 subscribers and $600 on Patreon. I can barely pay for my life and they put that in jeopardy. I had a small savings for surgery that is now gone. I am still losing things every single fucking day. I’ve lost countless friends. No one checked on me or listened to what happened to me. I had to beckon the limited friends that would hear me, to tell them what happened. And naturally every time I post or say or do anything about this, I get an influx of people telling me I’m a liar and I’m actually the problem. Elliot’s friends from Washington have all tweeted threads about how I’m actually bad, but the truth is, I liked all of them. They were all super kind to me and I tried my best to be a good partner to Elliot in their eyes. 

The point is, I’m afraid to say any of this because I know for a fact they will retaliate. I don’t want that. I don’t want to deal with any back and forth or anything. I just want to return to my life and I’d like to stop losing everything and I’d like to be left the fuck alone. Every day since that post came out, I have had to explain myself to hundreds of people. It’s exhausting and enough is enough. I wasn’t going to say anything because I didn’t want to hurt Elliot or Lina. I still don’t. Give them their privacy and please respect mine. 

May

[ckret2]

How long does it take for you to write a story (not oneshots but like multi-chaptered shit or just a very lengthy one chapter) and how much do you research and map it out? Is researching fun, tedious or exhausting for you?

It depends on how long the story is! “Man Of Dreams” on FFnet, about 108k, I wrote in uhhh, I’ve been saying “about a month” for years but I don’t remember exactly how long I spent where writing it was my primary project, but I DID write it over one summer break and spent about another month proofing it. “The Cop & the Cryptid,” about 130k, I wrote in about a month and a half and proofed over a few weeks. (That’s not counting the time those fics were with betas.) Cold Day In Hell, at 24k, took me... god, idk when I started it. Maybe a couple weeks, week and a half? I’m pretty sure I didn’t have time to start it until NaNoWriMo ended on Nov 30, and I posted it Dec 13, so.

If you want to see exactly how much I map out a long fic, you can directly compare “The Cop & the Cryptid” to its outline. In a lot of places you can go paragraph-by-paragraph in the fic and find a corresponding line/sentence in the outline. TC&TC is 130k, and its outline alone is 40k.

I was able to write the outline super fast because it’s incredibly goofy. When I write an outline, I just ramble it out at a couple friends in a chat room, and i can write like 10k a day if all I’m doing is rambling. And then, once I have that outline, I can also write the fic super fast, because I’ve already written the fic, I just need to make it sound like a fic instead of like i’m gossiping about someone’s weird workplace drama that i overhead. So even though in total I’ve written 170k between the outline and the fic, it goes a lot faster than if I’d just tried to sit down and write the 130k fic all by itself, because the first time i’m only worrying about plot but don’t have to worry about word choice and the second time i’m only worrying about word choice but don’t have to worry about plot. When I was writing TC&TC, I literally had the screen split between the outline and the actual fic, and just glanced back and forth going line by line on the outline and expanding it into proper narration & dialogue and tweaking as needed as I went.

And jeez, how much do I research. That is a difficult question because like. I’m constantly researching. If I get a tiny seed of an idea for a detail in a story, and I don’t know whatever I need to know in order to write that, my next instinct IMMEDIATELY is to look up whatever it is I need to look up in order to know enough to write that thing.

Example: when I was writing “You Made That?” and decided this giant frigging pteranodon was going to blow glass using a volcano as the oven, I had to go look up how exactly blowing glass works, because like, I know Apply Heat To Sand, but I wanted to be realistic, I wanted to know what kind of sand Rodan would have to get and what other ingredients. And because of that research I discovered that the lava in volcanoes isn’t actually hot enough to melt glass. And then I discovered that the lava in volcanoes isn’t hot enough to melt lava. The mantle where rocks melt into magma isn’t hot enough to melt rocks. And then I spent the next five hours feverishly trying to find out first how rocks melt into magma if they’re not hot enough to melt, and then how the hell humans got fires hot enough to melt glass back when all they had was wood fires to work with. And I read a lot of very academic papers about volcanoes and glassmaking with a lot of words that I had to go look up, because I have not studied either of these fields, except to the extent that I’ve learned about volcanoes in order to write about Rodan.

(The super simplified answer, for those of you who are now going to be haunted by the thought that the mantle isn’t hot enough to melt the rocks that it clearly is melting: the melting point of a rock gets lower when a) it’s mixed with water, or b) the amount of pressure on it is suddenly reduced. As rocks in the mantle are pushed upward toward the crust, water from the surface gets sucked underwater that mixes with the rocks, and the pressure on the rocks is decreased because it’s now closer to the surface/has less weight pushing down on it; and both of these things combined lower the melting point of the rocks enough that they can melt into magma. Then, once it’s on the surface, it’s no longer mixed with water and the pressure is stabilized rather than decreasing, so the melting point of the rock increases again and it solidifies. And you can melt glass with a wood fire by, first, putting it in a little oven so that none of the heat escapes, and second, blowing air over it at the EXACT right speed so that it maximizes the amount of oxygen reaching the wood fire and makes it burn hotter but doesn’t go so fast that it blows some of the heat away. Trying to maximize the heat of a wood fire in an oven like that is all about trying to hit the exact balance between “add more oxygen” and “don’t blow away heat” where you reach the point where the fire is as hot as you can mathematically make it.)

And like once I knew that, I just made sure that Rodan had a makeshift oven in order to contain heat and the ability to blow air over the fire to make it hotter and bam story’s done.

And like... nobody was making me do that. I needed a tiny factoid for the story, and I was possessed by an all-consuming hunger to obtain that factoid and nothing could drag me from my course until I’d obtained it. I didn’t need to know how the mantle melts rocks, but like... I needed to know how the mantle melts rocks.

Sometimes when I do research it’s like that, I know I need a specific factoid and I go out and find it; sometimes it’s more general, like, “oh, one of the characters I’m dealing with worked in the radio industry in the 1930s, what was that like?” and when I’ve got spare time or am bored I go read up on the history of radio, even though I don’t need it right now, but because I don’t know what I’m gonna need until I need it. What if it turns out that people who worked in the radio industry in the 1930s, like, carried around forks for good luck? Then I can say this character carries a fork everywhere and that’s a weird character detail I never would’ve gotten if I hadn’t done the research even if I didn’t know I needed it. (Note: to my knowledge, there is no association between lucky forks and the radio industry. I made up this example to illustrate the kind of thing you can’t possibly know you don’t know unless you’ve already done the research without looking for a fact like that.)

And sometimes research flows into each other. Like for one thing I needed to know what a traditional radio sign-off format sounded like, back when radio stations turned off at night and played the national anthem before they went dark; and because I was looking that up, I found a YouTube video talking about how a radio station in 1939 recorded an entire day of broadcasts, so now I know I can go look that up and listen to an entire day on one radio station in the 30s and learn a lot more about how radio broadcasts sounded within a few years of the timeframe I’m working with for the above character. I wasn’t looking for that when I was looking up radio sign offs, but because I have that it’s gonna be hella useful.

So, like, tl;dr: I research a lot. I research anything that crosses my mind as something I want to put in a story that I don’t already know enough about to write about. I research for tiny details and I pre-research big broad concepts that might be relevant to my stories later. My research leads to more research, and prior research tells me about things I can look into on future research. The research never ever ends. There is a whole amazing world out there with billions of people alive and that’s only counting the people alive right now, not all the people that were alive before, and ALL of those people were Doing Stuff and Creating Things and Making Discoveries and ALL of it connects together and you’ve gotta understand all of it, the whole universe and everything in it, all of the science and every single human achievement, before you can write a story.

But failing that you’ve gotta at least understand whatever’s surrounding your characters.

If I try to write without research like that, it kind of feels like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with only 20% of the pieces. I am annoyed and dissatisfied that I don’t know those things.

The argument against that much research is typically “oh if you’re writing sci fi/fantasy you can just make that stuff up” but let me tell you, the creativity of one single human writer will never match the creativity of tens of thousands of hardworking humans trying to make a discovery or accomplish a task. One single human writer all alone will never be able to match the fascinating weird details of the real world and all the things we’ve put into it or discovered in it. If you try to make all that stuff up—like, if you’re writing high fantasy and you just make up how forging a sword works—then you have shackled yourself to the limits of your own imagination. If you do the research, dig into how actual swords are made in the real world, then you have supplemented your own creativity with the creativity of however many humans over the millennia have contributed to that craft. There’s so much interesting stuff out there. And I am bound and determined to find it.

[the-only-straight-fander]

Volleyball AU

A super niche fanfiction about the sides on a volleyball team. What can I say, I’m a sucker for Sanders sides and volleyball.

[excerpt from the latest edition of the Daily Post newspaper] 

And in other news, the star setter of the Oakheights High School men's volleyball team has signed with Long Beach State. Drew Amsterdam is the projected favorite for the next year of college volleyball thanks to both his remarkably clean hands and his devilish good looks. He leaves behind him in Oakheights a sea of equally disappointed and admiring faces. Without his astounding assists, it is rumored that Oakheights may drop as low as class 3A or 2A within the following years without their key setter. However, despite his acceptance to Long Beach, it is rumored that Amsterdam may not be the main setter quite yet… (more on page three).

[end excerpt]

Roman le Roi lets out a contemptuous snort as he disdainfully throws the newspaper back down onto the floor by his feet. Not looking up from wrapping his foot, Remy asks passively from his seat on the floor, "Was I right, or was I right?" 

Letting out an obnoxious sigh that whooshes his wavy chestnut hair out of his face, Roman mutters unwillingly, "You were right."

Still not looking up, Remy reaches his hand out in a "give me” gesture. Roman makes a face at the hand, but moves to his bag after Remy snaps once. He carefully counts out five dollars and sets it in the waiting hand. It's out of sight in an instant. Thus further shamed, Roman expels another heavy breath and leans his head in his hands. At this moment, Emile prances in, his usual floaty, dreamy self. "It's finally time for volleyball! I'm so excited to see everyone! I haven't played in so long!" he sing-songs as he skips further into the still mostly deserted locker room. The bubbly smile on his face becomes slightly more wry when he catches sight of Roman. "Ohhhh. You saw the article didn't you?"

Roman gives a muffled grunt of affirmation.

"He paid me already, too," Remy adds in, finally looking up as he leans back on his arms, pushing his sunglasses up to wink at the newcomer. "Long time no see, babes."

Emile gives a soft giggle. "Already winning money off the young ones I see. You really shouldn't do that you know; it's not fair: they don't know any better."

Remy snorts, but is still smiling sweetly. "Then they should learn. And who better to learn from than yours truly." Saying this, he promptly lies down, replacing the ever present sunglasses.

Emile shakes his head fondly and steps over his splayed form with practiced ease.

Emile takes several minutes to pull on his knee pads and is tying his shoes before he is struck by a thought. Confused by the silence, he directs a question at Roman. "Hey, where's your brother? I haven't heard any screaming, so he can't be here right now."

The pitiable Roman lets out another groan and seems to melt even further. "He's currently grounded. No volleyball allowed."

Making a sympathetic face, Emile goes over and pats him on the shoulder. "Maybe he'll learn his lesson."

"HA. NO. He has been a terror! He's cooped up with no way to let off steam other than pester and torture and harass me! I'm in hell! I can't wait until school starts and I only have to see him a few times a day!"

A soft chuckle comes from the floor, and Roman finally lifts his head in order to glare at the offender. As though sensing the dirty look, Remy offers a middle finger, but quickly lowers it at the displeased noise that comes from Emile. 

The three wait in the locker room for roughly ten more minutes, and in that time are joined by several other returning players. Finally, Remy sits up and removes his sunglasses. He stretches and yawns. Grabbing his water bottle, he stands, placing his hands on his hips. "Alright ladies, let's go get down to business." 

"To defeat, the Huns!" chimes in Emile excitedly. "Sure," follows Remy's reply. It comes across cool and monotone, but the smile on his face speaks of barely contained excitement.

On the way out of the locker room, Roman looks all around him and counts heads. "Five, six, and Remus is missing, seven. Someone isn't here." Remy spins around and, walking backwards, takes a glance at the faces before whirling back to face forward and offering his findings. "Patton isn't here." 

Roman freezes mid-step. Whirling around to check for himself and finding Remy to be right, he shouts in alarm: "Where is he?! He's our libero! We're doomed for sure without him!"

Pulling a face at the volume, Remy takes a gulp from his water bottle before saying, "Chill. It's the first summer practice. He could be busy or, more likely, late. Fashionably late entrances are his specialty after all."

Somewhat mollified, Roman nods, but his brow is still furrowed. Seeing his distress, Zay -- another sophomore -- claps him on the back. "It'll be ok dude. This year will be great, you'll see." But no one was so sure about that. 

Patton did show up -- to Roman's immense relief, but late. He does indeed give a grand entrance, although not on purpose. While the others are in the middle of warming up, the gym doors suddenly slam open, hitting the walls behind them with a crash. In flies their libero -- Patton Clover -- glasses askew and hair mussed. “I’m so sorry I’m late I forgot we had practice and then I went the wrong way and then I got caught at three stop lights in a row and-” 

“It’s ok Pat,” reassures Coach Sanders, trying to hold back his laughter at the unnecessarily flustered boy.

“Oh. Ok.” The freckled boy gives a sheepish little smile. “I am sorry though, and-” Whatever Patton had planned on saying is cut off as he is tackled to the ground by a blur.

“Patton! I’ve missed you so much! We were worried you weren’t coming!” says the blur -- who is one desperate Roman le Roi.

“You mean you were worried,” Remy shouts over his shoulder wryly.

With a pout, Roman stands and helps his friend up. “Fine. Yes. I was worried. But, I’m not anymore, because now,” Roman announces dramatically, spreading one arm wide with the other wrapped around Patton’s shoulders, “practice can truly begin.”

The first practice was, as foretold by both Remy and the newspaper, a travesty. 

Roman's passing was rusty, Emile was nervous to be head setter for the first time, Remy moved as though sleepwalking, Patton's glasses prescription wasn't up to date so he could barely see, Zay kept blocking wrong, Lee couldn't seem to hit it in, and the others were just brought down by everyone else: all in all, a colossal mess. So much so that Coach Sanders called it early. As everyone gathered into the huddle, he pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to decide what to say. 

Settling for the truth, Thomas Sanders runs a hand through his hair. “Alright guys, we obviously have a lot of work to do. But, this doesn’t mean we’re doomed. You’re all somewhat out of practice and we’ve lost several core players, with very few incoming freshmen to replace them and bolster our numbers. All this simply means that you’ll all have to fight harder than ever this year. We have a legacy to uphold, and I know you’re capable of not only meeting these expectations, but exceeding them. That said, I’m going to let you go now, but come ready tomorrow. I’ll send out a school-wide email and see if there are any fresh players we could snag.”

The pattern of depressing practices continues. However, they do improve slowly. But, there are so many hiccups that the improvement is hard to notice. Having graduated their best middle and head setter, there are gaps to fill. The decision is made to place Roman in the middle. This doesn’t work well due to Roman’s lack of experience in said position. Used to playing outside, Roman has created a certain approach and swing to maximize his power. However, he has less room to build up speed while in the middle, and his arm swing constantly ends with him in the net -- an automatic loss of the point. He stays, day after day, and practices quicks with Emile, but he misses almost every single time. After the third day of staying late, he lands for the sixth time, the ball falling to his left, untouched. “Arghhhhh!” he yells, fluffing his hair vigorously with his hands in frustration. After his outburst, he stands staring at his hands before clenching them into fists and turning to Emile desperately. 

“Can we take a break? Set me a 4? Just once? Please?” The hint of hopelessness and pleading in his voice cause Emile to give his consent (ever the bleeding heart). Roman sets up and tosses the ball to Emile. As it leaves the setter’s hands, he begins the approach. He flows smoothly, leaps, snaps his arm, and BANG. The ball collides with the ground with incredible force in front of the ten foot line. Rising from the crouched position where he landed, Roman rolls his shoulders and shoots Emile a smile.

“That’s the stuff.” The sheer volume of the ball hitting the floor caught the attention of most people in the gym. Thomas, not for the first time, wonders whether he made the right decision placing Roman in the middle. The new assistant coach -- Joan, a friend of Thomas’ -- has never seen Roman hit, really hit, and is standing, open-mouthed. They turn to Thomas, dumbfounded.

“You’re telling me that’s how he normally hits? And you moved him to the MIDDLE? You’re giving that up!?”

Thomas sighs again, watching as Roman hits a vicious cut shot to the outside on the opposite side of the net. “He’s a superb blocker and could be an incredible weapon in the middle if he could just figure it out. I’m hoping time and practice will bring out his potential.” 

But it doesn’t get better. After innumerable failed attempts at hitting middle quicks, the pair begin to practice twos. These Roman can actually hit, but not with the incredible power and accuracy that he is capable of on the outside. In addition, his pride suffers a serious blow. As one who rarely gives up, the shift to twos feels to Roman like he’s admitting defeat. Consequently, the normally upbeat player can never bring himself to be as encouraging as usual, which is unfortunate, as he’s usually the one that brings the hype.

Everyone has a brief glimmer of hope upon the return of Roman’s twin brother -- Remus. During the third week of practice, he rolls in an hour late and walks onto the court in a pair of tattered sneakers and jeans. When asked where his shoes and knee pads are, he replies with a shrug. He takes his outside position and is his usual powerhouse hitter self, but having lost his usual back row counter part, he is forced to rotate to the back row and pass. This… is not good. At all. During the first drill in which he is rotated to the back, the whole team holds its breath, and winces collectively as the first ball ricochets wildly off his arms. 

See, Remus is… interesting. Roman would call him a “menace” and a “terror,” which honestly may not be far off. He’s known for his explosive and unpredictable temper. Thus, after the first failure, the majority of the team exchanges glances as Remus lets out an angry, animalistic growl, and settles into a crouch once again. The second time, Remus doesn’t even try to pass it; he attempts to hit the serve back over. He makes contact, but it sails clear out of bounds and smacks into the wall with a loud thud. This show of aggression prompts Roman to begin yelling: “What was that? It was coming right to you! If you’d just stood there with your arms together you would have passed it!” 

“At least I can touch the ball, middle hitter,” retorts Remus. 

“At least people can stand to have me around!”

“Oh please, your pretentious attitude pisses everyone off.”

“I don’t disgust everyone who knows me!”

Remus gives a malicious sneer. “They just lack taste and imagination. Or they’re cowards.” Here he gives a fake gasp, as though he realizes something, and points at Roman. “Like you! You’re afraid of failing! So now you hit easy balls because you’re scared!”

This time, Roman is the one who growls and advances angrily toward his brother. “I am not! You’re just jealous you can’t hit as well as I can.”

An ugly look crosses Remus’ face; he starts toward Roman. “Whatever will father think when he sees your failure, I wonder,” he spits. They both approach each other quickly and meet in the middle, Roman throwing the first punch at Remus’ lopsided grin. They each get in a few more blows before Remus is grabbed by Thomas and Emile and Roman by Remy and Patton. Remus offers a bloody smile and spits a glob of blood onto the floor before snapping his teeth in Roman’s direction while giggling. “Your punches are weak too! You must really be letting yourself go!”

Unsurprisingly, fights are not uncommon between the twins. Or rather, fights between Remus and anyone are common. He’s taken to tripping other players or purposefully running into and knocking over or elbowing anyone he blocks with. Even in the back row he's like a juggernaut, bowling over everyone in his path. He tends to ignore people calling the ball and just goes after it himself. He made several other freshman quit last year due to his aggression. This is partially why Thomas put Roman in the middle: he isn’t afraid to block with his brother and will give as good as he gets. If the pair come away from practice with matching black eyes and bloody noses and a multitude of new bruises, this comes as a surprise to none. 

True to his word, Thomas sends out a notice a few weeks later that volleyball practice has begun and that anyone interested is welcome. Due to his effort, several new faces appear in the gym. Two are freshman and one is a new sophomore. The freshman are Declan Edge (who simply goes by D) and Alex Taylor. Alex shows up first by joining in on a practice. Declan’s debut is slightly more dramatic. The same day that Roman is hitting on the outside after practice in order to relax, in walks D, quiet as can be. He eyes Roman’s hit with a gleam in his eye. Roman’s next swing never hits the floor. The ball flies perfectly to the setter spot from where D is crouched on the floor, arms still together and face perfectly impassive. He straightens up and fixes his shirt in the silence that follows his feat. “Nice hit,” he offers and walks out of the gym. Everyone left in the gym stands stock still. Remy -- who is lounging on the bleachers -- eventually breaks the silence. "Who the fuck was that and what do I have to do to get him on the team?"

Apparently that sentiment is shared by Emile, because the next day the senior arrives with the incredibly short freshman in tow. "Ow, geez, don't yank my arm off, muscles," intones the new boy sarcastically, rolling his mismatched eyes as Emile drags him forcibly through the door, hand gripping the younger’s arm tightly. From outside the gym a yell is heard from Remus: "Feel free to yank me anytime Pixie!" A growl is heard and a loud thunk quickly follows. A pouting Remus walks in, rubbing his head, Remy close on his heels, one hand in the pocket of his black jacket and the other nonchalantly holding his ever present water bottle, his face impassive.

Remus' spite is quickly forgotten as he catches sight of the newcomer. "Holy shit!" he yells, pointing, "It looks like you have-" 

This time every one can watch Remy smack him on the back of his head. "Don't scare off the new recruit, asshole," Remy chides.

"My name is Declan, but everyone calls me D. And none of you look that scary to be honest." To back up his statement, D puts his hands on his hips and surveys the gym, examining all its occupants. He nods once after he's scanned the whole room and then points to Remy. "He's the scariest one here, but everyone knows he's too lazy to do anything." Remus puffs himself up to respond, but is forestalled by Coach Thomas walking up to D. Instead, he fixes an icy glare on his back. Most of the team is worried for the newbie.

Turns out, D passing Roman's spike from the outside was no fluke; he's just that good. All through the next week, the shortest boy rapidly makes a spot for himself on the team. To everyone's relief, it is decided that he'll play back row for Remus. Patton is afraid that D might take his spot for a while, but apparently he has issues with passing soft balls, whereas Patton is steady and consistent both when people bring the heat and when they barely touch it.

Now, the final newcomer -- the only one who is not a freshman -- was something of a mystery. An incoming sophomore, Logan Decker misses the first few practices and shows up only a few days after D has officially joined. The first anyone sees of him is at the beginning of practice when they all notice him sitting on the bleachers speaking to Thomas. 

“He’s so tall!” mutters Patton to Roman. The latter snorts. “Yeah, well, so am I.”

“What do you think he plays, babe?” mumbles Remy to Emile as he helps him stretch his arm. Emile shoots a thoughtful glance to the bleachers and hums softly. 

“Well, he looks like he’s got some height so maybe something in the front row? If I had to guess I’d say middle, but I’m not sure.” Dropping his voice to a whisper he continues, “He looks kinda scary, doncha think?”

Remy shrugs. “He ain’t got nothin on Remus. Or me for that matter. But don’t worry honey,” he says cheerfully, releasing Emile’s arm only to pull him in for a side hug, “I’ll protect you from the new string bean!” 

“My hero!” the other giggles happily, any worry forgotten.

Similar conversations are being held all over the gym up until coach Thomas calls them over. They all dutifully jog over, somewhat faster than normal due to their curiosity. 

“Guys,” their coach pronounces, “this is Logan. He transferred recently and wants to join up so you’ll have to show him how we do things around here. Logan-” here he turns to the boy who is still sitting down on the bleachers and gestures for him to stand up- “that’s Roman, Remus, D…” The only one who actually manages to respond when their name is called is Emile, as the remainder of the boys are all too busy staring. At Thomas’ gesture, Logan had indeed stood up… and up… and up. Playing volleyball, the boys had come in contact with a multitude of players of varying heights, more often on the higher end of the spectrum. However, they were unprepared for this much height. After Thomas finishes introducing the team, he claps his hands and smiles at them all. “So, any questions?”

D’s hand shoots into the air. “Yes?” replies Thomas patiently.

“How tall-” 

“Exactly how fucking tall are you ya damn tree?” Remus interrupts, weaseling his way past his brother who had valiantly attempted to keep him quiet for the majority of the introductions. Remus then shoves his way into the newcomer’s personal space, leaving literally no room between their chests as he stands on his tiptoes and measures the top of his head against the other’s face. Obviously disgruntled at the proximity, Logan quickly takes several steps back, Remus following delightedly. “I would guess six foot five. Am I close?” he purrs into Logan’s carefully blank face.

“Extremely,” the other says dryly, shoving the shorter (still tall but it’s all relative) man away. Logan adjusts his glasses as he answers the question: “I’m actually six foot six.”

Remy lets out a low whistle and D snorts. “You’re actually over a foot taller than me. That is so excessive.”

Logan glares down at the other player. “I can’t control my height, you imbecile.”

D snorts again. “You might not want to be tossing around insults so soon. You’re not even officially on the team yet.”

“That is where you’re wrong,” Logan replies, somewhat smugly, adjusting his glasses. “Coach Thomas just accepted me onto your team. And let me just say-” Here, he pauses and takes a moment to look around at the circle of faces staring at him. “I haven’t decided whether or not it’s nice to meet any of you yet.” With that somewhat cold greeting, the newest member of the team hefts his bag up onto his shoulder, and makes his way to the locker room, the others staring after him. 

“Well, that was rude,” Roman states with a sniff, before turning back to practice. One by one the others begin to drift back to warmups, leaving only Remus staring excitedly after their new recruit. He finally turns away, giggling to himself. “This should be fuuun,” he singsongs to himself as he turns away. He’s quickly distracted after seeing an opportunity to body slam his brother midair.