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backupherewego · 1 year ago

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WORKING AT BRAWN GP (James part)

2/14, 2011

Name: James Vowles Job Title: Race Strategy Engineer Age: 30 Lives: Oxford Hobbies: Motorbikes, Motorsport, Mountain Biking

Q. What studies did you complete before you worked in Formula One?

A. I wasn't entirely sure where I wanted to go in life when I was younger. I can say I was studious as most of my school reports stated James is clearly very intelligent, when he applies himself! I completed most of my education in Geneva at an International School and at about 16 years old, I started to dedicate myself a bit more, particularly enjoying Maths, Physics and Computing. This led me to return to the UK to study Computer Science at the University Of East Anglia as a stepping stone until I figured out where I was destined. I had done my fair share of karting to this point and loved motorsport. When I was growing up Sundays were mostly spent watching Formula One races with a friend who truly was like a brother to me. Until that point I considered motorsport a far fetched dream and after sending out CVs to all the F1 teams, with zero positive results (including one CV actually sent back to me!), I decided to dedicate my life to both getting into and then being successful in F1. I started working weekends at Snetterton Race Circuit, which was near my University, with Formula Ford and GT teams, building up both experience and contacts, until I finished my degree in 2000. From there, I was one of 20 students lucky enough to be selected for the first Cranfield University MSc in Motorsport Engineering course. The course was a baptism of fire, with the other 19 students being of extremely high calibre, all with Engineering backgrounds, most of who now work in either F1 or GP2. In September 2001 I graduated with a distinction, picking up a Prodrive award for the design of a school racing car.

Q. Where did you work before Brawn GP?

A. In terms of motorsport, I started where all budding engineers should – scrapping rubber from GT racing slicks in a cold garage on a Sunday morning! When I was still doing my MSc in 201, Ray Rowan, who ran successful FIA Sportcars and F3 teams, gave me my first engineering role. I started as the Data Engineer for the F3 team and after a few months Ray felt comfortable enough to let me run the programme and engineer the car

from then onwards. That same year I became the Senior Race Engineer on their Le Mans programme, taking the Pilbeam LM675 car to Le Mans. In 2001, I applied for an Assistant Race Engineer position with British American Racing, and whilst I wasn抰 accepted for that role, I made enough of an impression for a new role to be created, and my first goal of entering Formula One was achieved. In 2002, I started work on a Race Strategy system and shortly afterwards joined the Race Engineering department and started travelling to the races. My role has expanded over the years combining Race Engineering duties, Friday car running with Anthony Davidson as our third driver in 2004 and 2006 and of course Race Strategy. In 2008 I was privileged enough to start working with Ross Brawn and we haven looked back since.

Q. Describe your job on a day-to-day basis?

A. Prior to each race, I gather all the historical data, patterns (traffic, overtaking, track changes) and team performance data. Brawn GP has a number of custom simulation packages which we run to ensure that we gain a good understanding of the running plan for the weekend and the estimated tyre performance, highlighting any potential problems and considerations. During Friday we will build a picture on our competitors performance, tyre usage, weaknesses and strengths. I work closely with the senior race engineers to ensure we get the most out of our car and modify the run plans if required during sessions. The Friday data then allows us to determine a qualifying plan including which tyre compounds and in what order and just as importantly, the final qualifying fuel figure. We always create several plans, depending on where our competitors are relative to us in each qualifying session. On Sunday morning Ross and I sit down and discuss all of the potential race scenarios and plan actions for various events such as safety car deployment and accidents. This planning is the key to solid race strategy as we may only have a matter of seconds to react to incidents on track. During the race, the decisions we make are what order to run the tyre compounds, what the next stop lap will be, what to do in case on safety cars on every lap, who we are fighting, and what we can do to defend or beat them. We are continuously updating the driver with his targets, both lap time and position to allow them to manage their tyres and the gaps to other cars around and ultimately their pace. Following the race I will analyse all of the decisions and data gathered from the event, understand what we did right, and what we could have done differently and improved on. This analysis is then used to build a further understanding with regards to our competitors for the following event.

Q. What do you like about working in Formula One?

A. Formula One is unique – it's my passion, my hobby, my life. Outside of the race weekend, the entire team is trying to work harder, faster and better than the nine other teams to ensure that by the next race, we do a better job than them. The business solely

focuses on a single event, which lasts around two hours roughly every other week, where the result of hard work and dedication can be seen the world over. The other aspect is the reactivity of Brawn GP and how quickly we can react to other competitors, rule changes, and problems. We are able to draw, manufacture and run components that were first discussed only a few weeks ago.

Q. What's the best thing about working for Brawn GP?

A. For me, it's all about the people you work with, the team work, the development. The race engineering group has been together for a long time and is very close which makes for a great working environment. I think it抯 fair to say the engineers spend nearly as much time together as we do with our respective partners! The other reason is Ross Brawn who has changed the way we work together as a team. It's a privilege to work alongside him during a race weekend.

Q. What’s the most challenging aspect of your job?

A. The first challenge is making a strategic decision during qualifying or the race, sometimes in just a few seconds, based on as little or as much data you have available at that time. The difference between making a good or bad decision can be as much as several positions by the end of the race and therefore having the most accurate data possible at all times is key to this. The second is managing driver expectation and performance over a race weekend. During the race the goal is to work with the engineers to give the driver targets to hit, manage his pace, and keep an eye on your competitors to understand both their performance and usage of tyres.

Q. What has been the best moment of the 2009 season so far?

A. There have been several. The first would be when we took the BGP 001 car to Silverstone watching Jenson drive a few laps to ensure all was well before we shipped the car to its first test. The relief from where the team was just a few months ago was indescribable. However my best moment in 2009 was, without question, Monaco. A one- two result from Jenson and Rubens is an incredible achievement. More specifically from a strategic perspective, we had the right strategy, putting the cars first and third on the grid. We managed a difficult tyre situation and reacted quickly to the dynamic race to bring the cars home first and second. At the end of the race I was standing just next to the podium, Ross Brawn just behind me with his elbows on my shoulders watching Jenson running down the straight after leaving his car in Parc Ferme. It's a memory that will stay with me forever.

#james vowles #pics #interview #brawn gp

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woodofthewillow · 3 years ago

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A Hucow Fic

(Hi, this is my first attempt at writing a horny fic, and is told as a trans girl PoV. Sorry if it's not your thing!)

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You never would've expected your career as a hucow to be quite so amazing. Sure, you've had your fantasies about being milked by a strong farm girl, but you had no idea how good it would actually be.

It started simple enough, with the sudden boom of the breast milk market. You'd been keen on the whole ordeal, as you had recently managed to get a decent lactation output from all your inducing! And what with how poorly your last job was going, when you saw the advertisement to apply as a milk producer, naturally you jumped at the chance.

It was only natural you'd be nervous during the interview. But hey, at least you were one of the applicants who were already lactating, so you had plenty of an edge. The excited flutter you got in your stomach when the manager sampled your milk and she said it was "the best she had tasted all day" was indescribable. You could feel your face flushing, which only worsened when she then asked...

"How about we taste a sample from a bit lower down?"

Needless to say, you passed the interview with flying colors, since you qualified for the trans wing. Not only getting your tits pumped, but your cock too? Dreams really can come true.

But that was months ago, and it's so much better than you could've hoped for. You live in the factory these days, it's just so much better for production to get you straight to your milking post, your tits are always so full when you wake up. And your rooms are so nice. Being able to hang put with the other girls all the time has made you feel so at home. And there they are, waiting for you when you step over to your seat.

"Morning, sleeping beauty!" Crystal says playfully.

You roll your eyes and chuckle. That's all you can ever seem to manage when the girls tease you, you're always so flustered during milking. But who can blame you for feeling so embarrassed, when you've got the smallest cock of all the girls?

"Oh shush. Go ahead, honey, take your seat," says your roommate Marlene. You love sitting next to her, her cock is so mesmerizing to see in action.

Taking off your pajamas, you go to position yourself. As usual, the special prostate stimulating plug attached to your seat is nice and lubed already. You slide it in and shudder at the pleasantly warm bulb filling your ass, vibrating ohhhh so gently so as to help draw things out. Erin, the technician, steps forward and helps get your milking apparatus attached, first the cups that gently suckle at your leaky tits, then the special compartment where your dick is placed.

Of course cum is already a valuable product to extract for use in various high-end cosmetics, but to maximize product, you can't be made to climax too quickly. Your rigs are designed for various levels of simulation. From gentle massage and rubbing, to occasional vibration. Both shaft and balls are given constant simulation, with gentle sucking to move precum forward for further processing.

Careful monitoring must be maintained throughout the workday to ensure milkers are only ever brought to the edge of orgasm, never fully allowed to climax. That will come later.

As usual, Erin provides you with your needs, putting on your preferred porn (and rubbing out a few herself during the day), serving you your specially formulated breakfast and eventually lunch, helping you get unhooked on the occasion you need a break of any kind. And after lunch, everyone is unhooked. With the milk tanks filled, and all the girls positively churning with pent up lust, it's time for Daily Breeding.

Of course, nobody ever gets pregnant in the process, but by the time breeding begins, everyone is in such a horny daze you can almost forget that part. (And besides, the surging of hormones is great for both production and teambuilding.) Marlene points you to Crystal, and immediately you know what she's thinking. Crystal is already beginning to spread her legs and present to you and Marlene. You already know that's where you're required to go.

You move forward, and begin caressing her plump cheeks. You never get tired of seeing her adorable asshole, slightly gaped and still lubed up from her station. It's always so fun to trace your tip around the edges, as she jiggles and whines, desperate to receive your load. You slide in, inhaling heavily as the warm wet hole slips around your aching shaft. But before you realize it, you feel Marlene pressing her thick dripping cock between your ass cheeks.

"You know, I was thinking we'd do a spit roast, but now I'm feeling like taking a ride on the breeding train, eh?"

You grin smugly. Marlene always feels the best inside you. As all 7 inches press deeper into your ass, you can't help but whimper. You can feel her balls churning against yours. You're ready to burst already. Thrust after thrust, in turn pushing you deeper into Crystal, whose sticky seed already seems to be staining the hands you grip her soft thighs with. When did she cum? You can't remember, you just know your feeling Marlene slip in and out and back in, so gentle, yet so strong. You hear her panting in your ear, you hear Crystals whines, so delighted by the over-stimmulation...

You feel it deep inside you, Marlene flustered and almost grunting while she pumps a thick, warm load into your belly. It's too much, you love the feeling so much you don't even notice your dick slip out of Crystal's ass, and you glaze her back, your head swirling, your fat udders heaving, and all of you lovingly melting into the other girls now moving in to join in the fun...

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After everyone has had their fill of the fun, it's time to hit the showers and the rest of the day is yours to do as you wish. Marlene has been wanting to take you bra shopping, both of you have been feeling more restricted lately, what with your breasts having swelled up even larger. Heck, you could probably write it off as a business expense. This really is the best job you've ever had.

#hope y'all enjoy #I certainly enjoyed writing it X3 #long post #my stuff

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possiblyimbiassed · 4 years ago

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The lying liars who lie

Years and years late to the party, I’ve finally gotten my hands on all the DVDs of BBC Sherlock, and I thought it would be fun to watch the extra material carefully, one piece after another, and also listen to at least some of the show makers’ commentary of the episodes. But at this point, after S4 where DVDs seemed to be a constant lying device in general, I tend to look at them with a bit more suspicious eyes...

I still love the show of course, but now that I’ve taken this deep dive into all the special features, I find them a truly hard thing to try to wrap my head around. Even this long after the fact, I’m amazed by the amount of shameless, self-congratulatory BS in the DVDs, where the people involved can’t have enough of complimenting each other and their show, while they skillfully avoid to discuss anything actually meaningful about the plot line. ;) For example, Moffat claims in the S2 DVD that “In fact, you’ll never see a more obsessively authentic version of Sherlock Holmes than this one”. But if we follow their light-hearted commentary, which basically takes the show at face value, I’d call that not just hyperbole, but an outright lie. If you want to see the ‘authentic’ stories from ACD’s work in this show, you’ll definitely need to go much deeper into the subtext and meta levels - neither of which are mentioned on these DVDs of course. Here’s my own (rather subjective) ‘review’ of the whole thing, trying to pinpoint why I view most of the commentary of the show from its own makers as an advanced art of deception.

(My musings under the cut)

Series 1 - a wealth of extra material

First of all - as many of you probably knew already - the whole of the Unaired Pilot is added to the DVD of S1. In the extra material about the making of the series, they (Sue Vertue, Mofftiss and others) talk about what things they changed between the Pilot and ASiP, claiming that many changes were necessary improvements once they knew that they had a whole series and a lot more time at their disposal.

Which I can perfectly understand and agree with in general. But I think what’s missing in their discussions is more interesting than what’s actually there (”Mind the gap” ;) ). Things that I would expect from the show makers when they go to the trouble of comparing the pilot version with the aired product. There’s not a word, for example, about the fact that they added both Mycroft and Moriarty to the story in ASiP - two characters who later turn out to play major roles and appear in almost every other episode until the end of TFP. Or about the choice that one of the screenwriters would play Mycroft.

Neither do they discuss why they chose to relocate the place where Sherlock was challenged by the cabbie from 221B to Roland Kerr’s School of Further Education. Instead they focus on the details, like for example the new design of the interior of 221B.

Not to mention the fact that almost every scene in the Pilot is mirrored in ASiP (as pointed out long ago by @kateis-cakeis X), but at Angelo’s in the Pilot Sherlock follows the events with the cabbie while looking in an actual mirror. I even noticed that in the Pilot the cabbie is offering Sherlock dark-coloured bottles with the pills in them, while in ASiP those bottles are transparent, as if the cabbie is offering Sherlock to play Black or White in the chess game that he is simulating. What’s with all these mirrors, though? Not a word on the DVD... ;)

Now, even though these rather remarkable choices are neglected together with a great bunch of minor ones, I still think that the most interesting fact about all this is that they actually included the whole pilot version within this DVD, which is sold by the franchise. Why even do this, when it raises far more questions than it answers? The only logical reason I can come up with is that they’re laying out a track of little hints that anyone with a deep enough interest in the show to actually buy the DVDs can try to follow. And it seems to me that lying by omission is one of the first steps in the long line of cryptic and misleading author comments on this show. But at the same time, they clearly want the fans to have access to it all, even the abandoned version.

Moving on to Series 2, time for bigger lies

In the extra material of this DVD Benedict himself describes how his character "faces one of his deadliest enemies in the shape of Love, and it comes in the form of Irene Adler, who is this extraordinary dominatrix [insert here a bunch of superlatives regarding Adler]...”. And then we see how Adler whips Sherlock with a riding crop (without any kind of consent, I have to add) while he’s lying on the floor, and we have Lara Pulver telling us how it was to have a go at Benedict on set. So Holmes whips dead bodies and Adler whips living; seems like a match made in hell! :))

Gatiss claims, grinning with his whole face, that “they’re clearly, absolutely made for each other”. OK, so I think we can see Sherlock being intellectually impressed by Adler, and even trying to protect her from Mycroft, and we can see John acting jealously. We can also see her being dressed and styled as a perfect, female mirror of Sherlock. But I’m still at a loss what all this has to do with love on Sherlock’s part? Especially since he’s not even responding in any fashion to her various attempts at seducing him.

And there’s more: Paul McGuigan, the director of ASiB, claims that the scene where Sherlock has a conversation with Adler inside his Mind Palace about the crime case with the car that backfires "is a part of a kind of love story, if you like...” No, I don’t. Maybe it’s just me, but if their aim really was to convey to their audience a love story between Sherlock and The Woman, I think they failed miserably. All I see is a guy ’mansplaining’ to a clever woman how to use her brain, while she’s trying to flirt with him by expressing her admiration (to no avail, though) and make deductions at the same time. Nothing new under the sun, really. John did the same thing repeatedly in ASiP (without making own deductions) and got far more attention from Sherlock, but I’ve never heard any of the show makers call that ”a love story”. But by ’lie-splaining’ the scene with Irene to the audience, they try to manipulate us all to see it as such...

In all the direct commentary of this episode, where Steven, Mark, Sue, Benedict and Lara are present, I get the impression that every time they even touch on the relationship between Sherlock and John, they hurry to add the term “friendship” or “man love” or similar words in case they forgot them at first, avoiding even the tiniest possibility that there could be anything more going on between them. They even explain that when Irene calls them “a couple” she does not mean anything romantic. This whole approach feels almost paranoic in the midst of all the laid-back jokes and light-hearted talk about the filming. It’s as if a sort of restrictive, heteronormative filter or blanket is being constantly applied, to teach the audience the ‘no homo’ lesson of it all. And the more I listen to this, the more tiresome it becomes.

In the commentary Moffat does reveal an interesting detail, though: that the ‘Flight of the Dead’ in ASiB was inspired by a cut out scene in the Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service. To me this is just one more reason to question the ‘authentic’ quality of this scene, as opposed to possibly taking place in Sherlock’s Mind Palace. But I digress...

Listening to the commentary in general, it’s like it’s aimed to distract the attention from what’s going on at the screen rather than highlight it and try to explain their intentions. They do mention that Irene didn’t actually ‘beat’ Sherlock in the end of ASiB, but there’s no explanation of this obvious deviation from canon, where Adler does indeed fool Holmes, taking advantage of his prejudices.

The rest of the extra material of S2 is mostly about technical stuff, special effects and such, and also about filming techniques and Benedict’s delivery of fast deductions. But the part I really do love is the one where Andrew Scott talks about how much he enjoyed playing the scene where Moriarty dances before breaking into the Crown Jewels. That’s one of my favorite scenes of he whole show. :) Also, the takeaway message from this DVD is Moffat’s words at the end:

“These are still the formative years of Sherlock Holmes, and the most important thing about this series is not that it’s updated; it’s the fact that those two men are still young and they’re still at the beginning of what they don’t yet know is gonna be a lifelong partnership”.

And then comes Series 3...

...and its extra material, with the most blatant attempts at deception so far, I believe. At this point Sherlock is called a “psychopath” by both the show’s characters, John’s blog, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as if it were true, which is a big deviation from ACD canon. That simply doesn’t happen there; while Holmes is sometimes described as eccentric, no one in the books is ever claiming that Sherlock Holmes has some kind of mental illness leaning towards cruelty and egotism - not even his enemies say this about him. In the show, however, they begin in ASiP with making him torture a dying man for information (something that is not included in the Pilot). And in S3, where they avoid discussing the reason why they turned Mary Morstan into a ruthless assassin, this major shift is glossed over by the fact that in the same episode (HLV) they also turn Sherlock into a murderer, who cold-bloodedly blows the brains out of a blackmailer for threatening to make said assassin’s crimes public.

But without ever getting into the “why” of it all, the cast and crew seem overly happy and smiling describing these rather morbid choices as something positive; “fantastic”, "fresh and new” and "amazing” are their choice of words. Benedict claims that Mary, who has literally shot and almost killed Sherlock in HLV, is now "a new best friend of Sherlock’s”. Amanda claims that Mary “is protecting John” when she shoots Sherlock in the chest. Now they’re both psychopaths, and poor little John is forced to stomach them both because he’s addicted to danger. In Amanda’s words, Mary also “kind of gets in between the two of them, but she wants them to be together as well”. Which is a load of BS considering that Mary tries to kill the protagonist of the story.

Lars Mikkelsen thinks it’s “such a good script” because “you’re mislead as an audience”. But he never gets the chance to expand on what the misleading actually contains, because then Mofftiss cut in to express how much they love playing with “what ifs”. As if this whole mega-budget project of a show were just a big experimental playground without any actual story to tell.

Benedict repeats his line from HLV that Magnussen “preys on people who are different” and Moffat also says he “exploits people who are different”. Which is really confusing, considering what we can see Magnussen actually do in the show. Lady Smallwood and John Garvie are two well-established, powerful governmental politicians whom Magnussen blackmails by finding their respective pressure points. In Garvie’s case his pressure point seems to be alcohol problems in his past, but according to media he’s later arrested on charges of corruption. Lady Smallwood is blackmailed on the basis of her husband having sent compromising letters to a minor many years ago, in spite of later claiming that he thought she was older and stopped when he found out the truth. And then Magnussen is blackmailing an assassin who recently threatened to execute him but shot Sherlock Holmes instead, in order to try to get at Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, another powerful governmental figure.

But what does media seeking out dirt on certain people in power and their families have to do with “people who are different”? Despicable as the method may be, isn’t this unfortunately how political power play usually works in our society? Or are TPTB somehow a repressed minority group now? Unless this whole “people who are different” accusation is actually about something entirely different, something that none of the show makers even cares to mention... ;)

In these DVDs, none of the involved persons is ever discussing the change of roles with regards to canon, though, or the (lack of) logics in this turn of events, or even a hint about the narrative motivation behind them. It’s all about the great Drama, the extraordinary visual effects and the aim to endlessly “surprise the audience”. Which is fine by me to a certain extent, but when this is all that’s being said, it feels extremely superficial, as if the audience is merely seen as a bunch of consumers that have to be triggered more and more by horror, special effects and cliff hangers to be able to appreciate the show. (“Warm paste” indeed, like Gatiss has later criticized some viewers of wanting...) While the "why”; the idea behind this surrealistic adaptation, made by self-proclaimed fanboys of ACD, is not even touched upon. Around this, the silence is total and therefore totally confusing.

Maybe I shouldn’t even go into Series 4...

...but why not, since I’ve already started? :)

First of all, there’s a lot of extra material on this DVD and I particularly love the parts about the music and composing and Arwel Wyn Jones’ work with the design and build-up of John’s and Mary’s flat and the interior of 221B. Those bits are truly enjoyable. What I could live without, though, is the leading commentary that kind of instructs us, the audience, how we should interpret the show.

Benedict is on it again on this DVD, telling us that in TST they picked up where they left off in S3 and “It’s a very happy unit of three people that then become four.” Why does he feel the need to make this statement, considering how S3 ended? Actually, if there’s anything I totally fail to see in S4, it’s happiness. The banter between the three of them may seem entertaining for a while, but who could have a relaxed, warm relationship with someone who tried and almost succeeded to kill you less than a year ago? Without any sign of remorse? Now there’s a dark tone of discomfort and mean jokes that feels forced and not even a bit happy to me.

But Martin tells us how excited John and Mary are about starting a family and Amanda mentions how much they’re looking forward to the baby. Again and again it’s repeated, as though trying to rub it in: “they’re in a good place, they’re a loving, married couple”. Yeah, right - a child that (judging by TSoT) wasn’t at all planned and now with an assassin for a mother... Twice we see the new parents complain that their daughter has the mark of Satan on her forehead and debate which horror movie she’s from. The clichéd hypocrisy of it all is sickening, and I’m willing to bet that it’s really meant to be. ;)

But Gatiss chimes in, deciding for us all that the christening of Rosie is “a funny scene” and “they’re enjoying each other, enjoying being on adventures as a three”.

An interesting detail is that Gatiss also tells us that the working name of this episode was “The Adventure of the Melting power Ranger”. So this little blue guy was that important? :) And - even more interesting - is when he says: “Cake is now the code for violent death”. So how should we interpret Sherlock, John and Molly going out to have cake in TLD then, on Sherlock’s (supposed) birthday?

These might be jokes, though, but when they tell us that Sue cries every time she sees Mary’s death I strongly believe they must be joking. How could anyone feel truly moved by this overly sentimental long monologue where far more efforts are put into reacting to Mary’s speech than saving her life? And John’s mooing like a cow, is that also moving? :)

One thing Martin says about TLD that actually disgusts me is regarding the morgue scene where John assaults Sherlock and Sherlock lets it happen: “From there, really, their relationship can only sort of rebuild, that’s the absolute worst it can get”. As if outright physical abuse would be something that makes you want to rebuild a relationship? Wow - just wow... How far can they go with this crap?

Anyway, when we finally arrive at the absurdity of TFP and Sherlock’s ‘secret sister’, everything is of course discussed as if she actually does exist on the given premises, and everything she does is ‘real’, no matter how impossible it would be in real life. The abandonment of any attempt to have the story line make logical sense is skillfully covered up by more distraction with fascinating technicalities of the film making process. This is where Gatiss makes his now almost classic statement that after Sherlock and John jump out of the window at 221B when a grenade explodes there, it’s just “Boop! And they’re fine.”

Of course there’s no serious attempt at explaining this logically. Except perhaps Gatiss claiming that they both landed on Speedy’s awning - whatever good that would do to them, since the awning is leaning downwards, but never mind... But we never even saw that happen, did we? A great deal of time is then dedicated to show all the precautions to have Martin and Ben jumping safely at low level onto a madras supported by empty cardboard boxes.

Sian Brooke did say something interesting about Sherrinford, however, that got me thinking. She said that Eurus “wants revenge for the years and years that she has been held captive” there, isolated, and that in TFP the Holmes children are now “lab rats” and “it’s an experiment”. On a meta level, I think we can indeed see this episode - and maybe the whole show - as a kind of experiment, but maybe we, the audience, are also lab rats? Since Sherrinford is slightly shaped like a film camera (not commented in the extra material, of course), it leads my thought to all the adaptations through the years and years where Holmes and Watson have not been allowed to be together. A whole century when Sherlock Holmes has been held captive, restricted by the very same sort of heteronormative filter that all this extra material imposes; it’s like Sherrinford, isn’t it? Which gives all the more meaning to Moriarty’s arrival to the island, accompanied by Freddy Mercury’s “I want to break free”...

I think I’ll let the final words in this little exposé come from Mark Gatiss in The Writers’ Chat (my bolding):

“Moriarty is a fascinating thing in that in our sea of ongoing lies, one thing we’ve genuinely been completely consistent about is telling people he’s dead. But no-one believes it! And it’s a rather brilliant thing.” Again - self-congratulatory statements. But instead of providing some actual evidence of the death of this character, who has kept popping up in almost every episode since his supposed demise, they think that the more a confirmed liar repeats something, the truer it gets? And the more we’re supposed to believe them? Well, all we can do is wait and see. :)

Tagging some people who might be interested:

@raggedyblue @ebaeschnbliah @sarahthecoat @gosherlocked @lukessense @sagestreet @thepersianslipper

My earlier meta on a similar topic (X)

#bbc sherlock dvds #Deception in BBC Sherlock

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enterunderscore · 4 years ago

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Could you tell more about how you recreated the PlayStation 2 start up animation? In particular I’m wondering about the motion blur, aliasing, and other PS2 specific rendering quirks. Thanks <3

gladly! actually most of that stuff is done in blender’s compositor! i can break it down for you.

early game console motion blur was not true motion blur -- that is, the physical simulation of a camera shutter being open for too long while something is moving. to do this today, the renderer takes note of the location of every vertex in the scene during the last frame, and compares those locations to the current frame. then it will take those positional differences (sometimes creating a few extra “steps” in between those two positions for extra data) and create a blur between them, achieving this:

the PS2 (and the other consoles at the time) was a graphical powerhouse compared to its predecessor, and thanks to new rendering techniques, was able to sort of simulate motion blur without the full cost of actually simulating motion blur, like we do today.

to do this, there was a technique often referred to as “color accumulation blur”, where the last 2 or 3 frames were simply overlaid on top of the current frame at a lower opacity. it cost next to nothing, reduced aliasing (or jaggies) on some edges, and for the time was a pretty convincing full-screen motion blur effect—at the expense of it looking like “ghosting” or “afterimages”:

now, without doing some crazy render layer trickery, blender doesn’t necessarily have the compositing tools to do this exact effect (at least to my knowledge, i’m not a wizard or anything), but it’s very convenient that during the PS2 boot animation, the camera moves smoothly forwards in a single direction.

we can't use blender's default motion blur feature for this effect, because it'll actually be high quality motion blur instead of the kind we want. blender just so happens to have a very nice feature in its compositor called directional blur.

here is first bit of the compositor node setup. here, i take the currently rendered frame, and pump it through a directional blur node, which will blur the frame outwards from the center. those “zoom” and “spin” sliders modify the intensity of the blur and the spin of the blur, and i animate those upwards as the camera gains speed towards the end of the animation. the iterations slider is what determines how many copies of the original image will be overlaid against each other to create the blur, and considering what we learned above, i set that to 2 so it looks nice and choppy.

after that, i hook up the original image and the new blurred image into an add node, adding them together!

this one's pretty simple. the PS2 typically rendered graphics at a resolution of 640x480 (it could do 240p and 480i, but for simplicity's sake i stuck with 480p). so in blender's render settings, i set the resolution to 480p.

anti-aliasing is a technique where you take a rendered image and through one technique or another, reduce the appearance of jagged edges on pixels—allowing the image to look smoother and cleaner.

the common anti-aliasing techniques of the time were extremely expensive especially for a console, so most titles didn't use it at all. this is why a lot of older games (and a lot of new ones too) can have graphics with pixelated shimmery edges. however we mostly had CRT TVs at the time back then, and CRTs are notoriously good at covering up aliasing.

blender, however, has anti-aliasing enabled by default. to fix this, we need to head over to the scene tab, and go to film > pixel filter.

blender's anti-aliasing method is called pixel filtering, and by default the "width" (strength) is set to 1.5px, which will sort of let each pixel affect the next half-pixel in all directions. it ends up looking like this:

don't worry i barely understand it either, we just need to turn it off. so i set the width to 0.01px, and bam! crispy jaggy aliasing.

finishing touches

finally, i had to give the render an old-school analog feel. the PS2 rendered digital images and sent them through a low-quality analog cable. that’s right, i’m talking about these bad boys:

since only one of these cables were used for sending a video signal, they had to send chroma (color information) and luma (brightness information) data through the same pipe... so naturally you’d get some crosstalk between the two, resulting in some odd looking color smearing:

to achieve this in blender, we do some more compositing!

here, i am taking the frame with all effects applied up to this point, splitting it into its red, green, and blue color channels with a separate RGBA node, and then ever-so-slightly applying a blur to the blue and green channels before re-combining them back together with a combine RGBA node. it’s definitely not accurate to how chroma-luma crosstalk works in real life, but it’s good enough that the effect is convincing! (NOTE: for this screenshot i’ve dialed the blur way up to make it more apparent for this post—it’s much more subtle in my final render)

...aaaand that’s about it!

there’s definitely a lot more at work here to make it PS2-authentic but those are the big ones! i also rendered the little colored balls of light as a separate render layer and added them on top of the frame, lowered the contrast a bit to look more like a recording of a real PS2, and turned off raytraced shadow casting.

here’s what the frame looks like before it hits the compositor:

and here it is after:

thank you for asking and thank you for reading! i love talking about this stuff.

#ask #tutorial #3d #blender3d #blender #retro #rendering

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the-blind-assassin-12 · 4 years ago

Text

Hokan’yc

A RESOL’NARE FLASHBACK ONE SHOT

A/N: This is long overdue and something I started working on WEEKS ago when @darkmist111 asked a question regarding Din and Navina’s former relationships. I mentioned a girl named Aashi that Din fell for when he was still a teenaged mando learning how to become a warrior and decided that I needed to tell their story so we know what happened and why he’s flying solo now. This is CHOCK-FULL of my personal thoughts on what training in the covert would be like so forgive me if my HCs contradict canon and please enjoy some young mandos in love.

*this story will regularly be using words in Mando’a. for a good list of references click here.*

Warning: violence, death, injury- they are Mandalorians you guys, This is the Way and all that jazz.

Word Count: 6k

-- -- -- --

He noticed right away.

The others did, too. They always did. It was an increasingly rare occurrence as they got older. The youngest in the covert were far more used to the sudden appearance of a new student among their numbers. Whether they’d been born a member of The Tribe or taken in as a foundling like he had, all children began combat training after their 8th birthday, so the addition of a new face- or more accurately an unfamiliar helmet- in class was anticipated, expected. But by the time they’d advanced through mid level and into the final years of their required training, newcomers were few and far between.

And they stood out. Hushed whispers of buyca circulated through the room, heads tilting in the direction of the only helmet not decorated with dings and dents.

The Instructor’s gloved hands came together in two thunderous claps to signal the start of the day’s training, the chatter in the dimly lit sparring hall dissipating as the upper level class fell in line for drills. There were no assigned rankings, the students simply using height order to determine who stood where, the tallest in the last of four rows. Third row had been his designation for years, never quite the largest or most formidable in the room. But the new addition had crowded the second row by one, the overflow meaning that he would need to step back.

Fourth row, finally, thanks to the shiny buyca.

He was welcomed to the ranks of the teenaged giants with a rough elbow from Hast, the blunt jab to the ribs serving both as a kind of jovial congratulations for moving up in the world as well as a reminder that he was still the smallest of the giants. Before he could return the gesture with a thump or smack of his own though, the Instructor's booming voice silenced both of the boys’ grunts and laughter.

“Hast! Djarin!” He flinched behind his visor and knew the broad shouldered hulk beside him did, too. Though he didn’t need to, both of them already aware of what they were in for, the Instructor pointed at the front of the room, indicating that they should join him there. “Looks like you’ve volunteered to be my demonstration assistants for today’s technique.” Dank farrik.

As he and his friend reached the front of the hall, feeling the stares of the rest of the class and knowing that under their helmets they were all biting the insides of their cheeks to keep from laughing at the misfortune the two had found themselves in, he prepared himself for a rough three hours. They’d worked on a single combat series that started with a sweep from the standing position and progressed to the ground, working on maintaining control during a fight before ending in a leg attack that when applied at full force was developed to disable the knee joint completely. Both volunteers had taken fall after fall, their limbs manipulated over and over as the Instructor demonstrated and the students got their practice in. While they were only applying light pressure as they torqued and twisted and pulled on the two volunteers’ legs, the two were left sore and aching from the repetition of the series.

If the reps and demonstrations weren’t enough, the half hour of sparring rounds afterwards certainly was.

Despite the over-torqued joints, fatigued muscles and sore spots from tight grips and unexpectedly harsh contact with the ground, he held his own for the first four rounds grappling almost as he did at full capacity. Vizsla was twice his size and always got the best of him, though still no more than usual. Hast had it just as rough as he did that day, so neither of them completed a submission during their round. He managed to sweep and submit Gralin, which was actually an improvement on their last match up, and he and Kevaz had each pulled off a submission within the allotted time of the round. Trying to control his breathing in the quick respite allowed between friendly simulated warfare, he hoped that there was still some herbal salve left in the jar back in his quarters. I’m going to need it.

His final round turned out to be the one that did him in. And it was against her- the buyca.

He, like all Mandalorians, knew that it didn’t matter if a warrior was male or female, large or small. It didn’t matter if they were quick or strong. What mattered was how well they could use the attributes and skills that they did have to defeat their opponent. He, like all Mandalorians, knew that underestimating your enemy before the fight begins is the first step in losing that fight. That’s not what he did with her, though the outcome was still the same.

The last thing he noticed as he squared off facing the newcomer, was the fact that even though she had also just finished three hours of drills and four rounds prior to that one, her helmet was still completely undented. It wasn’t even smudged. Has she even hit the ground? Mere seconds into the round he was on his back and he didn’t know how he’d gotten there, but she hadn’t let up, taking full advantage of his disorientation and finishing a very basic but extremely efficient shoulder attack. The rest of the round had been more of the same, though he was able to at least fend off any more completed submissions. By the time the Instructor called for the end of the day’s training, he was spent. But she seemed only mildly inconvenienced from the hours of physical exertion they had all just endured.

He decided right away that he had to learn what she knew.

Able to walk with far more ease than he could at the moment though, she was out of the sparring hall and heading towards the system of tunnels leading to the living quarters. Sighing, he waved off Hast and Vizsla’s attempts to get his attention, and gritting his teeth, hobbled as quickly as he could after her. “Hey,” he huffed, raising one hand in her direction even though she was facing the other way.

She slowed her pace to allow him to gain some ground, though she didn’t turn or stop. “Hey,” she responded almost questioningly, tone a mixture of uncertainty and amusement.

“I… you fight well.” He clenched his eyes shut and dropped his chin. You fight well? Di'kut.

That did make her stop, but only until he was immediately to her left, starting up again once he had a fair chance at keeping stride with her. Releasing a breath that sounded like a laugh, she nodded. “I know I do, but thanks.”

“I meant… your technique. It’s-” He tried to recall how she’d upended him so quickly, where she’d made her grips, the placement of her weight, but it was a blur. He shook his head. “I’ve never seen it. Not even in class.” So how do you know it? That was what he wanted to ask. How does a foundling know how to fight like that?

As though in answer to his unasked questions, she turned her head to face him. “We learned differently on Concordia.”

He blinked, the mention of Mandalore’s moon stopping him in his tracks. What? Of course it made sense now that she wasn’t new to Mandalorian culture. On the contrary, she’d been more heavily steeped in it than any of them. But I thought… Oh. It clicked then, that the buyca wasn’t that at all, not if she was raised on Concordia.

“When things… when we had to leave, my family came here.” She gestured at the walls of the tunnel they were walking through. “Dantooine is the only Mandalorian covert they knew of, so we joined our brothers and sisters here.” Turning back in the direction that they were walking, she nodded. “This is the Way.”

There was pain and heaviness in those words as she spoke them, but he knew that was true no matter who they came from. “This is the Way,” he responded.

She cleared her throat. “Right. So now that you know I’m no foundling, you don’t have to feel so bad for what happened back there.” She jabbed a thumb backwards towards the sparring hall.

He tried to shake his head but a sudden pinching sensation shot down his neck in protest so he aborted the motion. “No, that’s not what I-”

“No?” She stopped near the split of the tunnel where one branch led to the mess hall and the healing wing and the other to the collection of carved out spaces each occupied by Mandalorian families. He stopped as well, thankful for the chance to rest. She crossed her arms over her chest and stuck one hip out. “Then what did you chase me down for exactly?”

“I told you.” He was slightly confused by her question. “The technique that you used against me. I’ve never seen it before.”

She regarded him silently for a beat. “No, you haven’t.” She began walking again. “That was pretty clear from how quickly I had you down.” The smirk, or what he imagined might be one, was back in her voice.

He followed, trying and failing to hide the slight limp the day’s training had left him with. “Well can you-“ He stopped short to avoid crashing into her as she spun around again , the unexpected shift in his weight causing him to wince behind his visor.

Hands on her hips, she tilted her head, the dim light from one of the torches hitting the still undented, unmarred surface of her helmet at an angle that threw light around the dark hall. “Can I what?”

“Can you teach it to me?”

A small snort of laughter came from her, shoulders bouncing as she shook her head. “Didn’t you take enough of a beating for one day?”

He shrugged. “The Instructor says we don’t learn if we don’t lose. This is the Way.”

Mandalorians were taught not to fear or resent loss. Not in life and not on the battlefield. Though victory was the goal of every Mando’ade who engaged in combat, in sparring, losing was viewed as an equally valued outcome. Every loss came with the opportunity to learn. To adapt. Each opponent is a teacher and the true winner is the one who leaves the training hall with more knowledge and sharper skills than those they came in with. He was only trying to adhere to what he’d been taught, only trying to become the best warrior that he could be.

She nodded slowly, the motion giving over to a head shake instead as she let out a burst of air. “This is the Way.” She agreed, taking a step towards him. “But,” she placed her hand on his shoulder and he was glad she couldn’t see the slight wince the light contact forced across his face. “No.”

He cocked his head to the side, taken aback, the jerky motion sending a sharp pang of soreness through his neck and down his left flank. Damn that- but he ignored the twinge and focused on her refusal. “Why not?”

He knew that she was new to their covert, but the unspoken rule in the training hall was that all trainees had something to teach each other. It had to have been like that on Concordia, too. It was more than a rule, it was a responsibility, a duty to ensure that every member of the fighting corps was as well prepared as they could be. It was important to learn not only to trust but to depend on each other in battle, in the field. They were training to join the ranks of the elite within the corps, which meant that being anything shy of lethal would be considered unprepared. I know she’s new but she-

“Because,” she laughed, the lilting sound making him snap his attention to her hidden face. “It’s Djarin, right?” He confirmed with a nod. “Well, Djarin, I can’t teach it to you now, because you’re already in rough shape and I don’t want to explain to the Instructor next class why his best training dummy is all torn to shreds.” She was teasing, he could tell, her hand still on his shoulder as she gave it a light squeeze, and despite only having known her for a few hours during which she and the rest of the trainees had taken turns trying to rip him and Hast limb from limb under the Instructor’s tutelage, he thought she might be smiling. “But,” she went on. “I’ll give you a few days to heal up and then,” she nodded and dropped her hand from his body. “Then I’ll teach it to you.”

-- -- -- -- --

A few days later, the two of them agreed to meet in the sparring hall on a rare day off from drills, the sound of his body hitting the ground echoing in the nearly empty space each time she swept him. His grunts, every time she planted her foot on his hip filled the room, the clatter of his helmet scraping against the stone beneath him as she dragged him down and extended the leg she had planted to flip him over her head, the sound of their gloved palms smacking together as she offered him a hand back to his feet after a particularly harsh sweep. But each time she sent him off his balance, he picked up another detail of the technique, piecing them all together to understand the motion.

He could feel the bruises forming each time he hit the ground, and he knew that later that night when he got undressed to wash up, just like the day he’d met her, his hip and the side of his thigh would be covered in purple-blue splotches. Planting his hand firmly behind him, he let out a breath and pushed himself back to his feet. “One more.” His eyebrows came together in concentration beneath his helmet. “I think I have it now.”

She tilted her head, arms crossed over her chest. “You don’t quit, I’ll give you that.”

“No,” he shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

On the next try, he got the jump on her, accurately making his grips and bracing the sole of his boot in the crease of her hip. Dropping his weight in a sacrifice style throw, he extended his leg like she’d shown him, finally getting the timing right to send her flipping over his head and onto her back. Following her momentum and keeping his grips, he rolled backwards over his shoulder to come up in a mounted controlled position. That was it. I- She coughed out a wheeze, the air clearly knocked from her lungs. Oh, dank farrik I-

But before he could concern himself with whether or not he’d inadvertently hurt her, she grabbed his ankle, trapped one of his arms and with a bump of her hips, rolled them both over to reverse the position so she had the upper hand once more. “Nice work, Djarin.” She released his arm and ankle and stood. “But don’t forget to maintain control once you have it.”

She was right. He knew that. The Instructor had been drilling it into his and all of their heads since they were eight years old. If he caught me losing control that fast he’d make me regret it. He sighed. “Right.”

“That was,” he looked up at her as he got to his feet. “That was really good, though. Do it again.”

-- -- -- -- --

By the end of the month he was hitting the move against Kevaz and Gralin during live rounds. He’d also learned the buyca’s clan name was Zurn, and that she was an excellent training partner for him. In two on two drills, they teamed up against Hast and Vizsla, their individual attributes complementing each other’s well. Their extra time spent drilling together had allowed them to develop good non-verbal communication skills, and they learned to read each other well.

By the end of the year even the Instructor had noticed, and he recommended that the pair complete their final stage of the elite training program together. It was customary for recruits to team up for the last tests of their abilities as the missions that would determine whether or not Mandalorians were worthy and capable of the duties that they would be expected to perform. Protecting the Tribe. Striking first against known enemies. Reconnaissance. Responding immediately to threats. They were responsibilities that the man who raised him had taken upon his shoulders- a deeper level of the Creed that was sworn by all Mandalorians. This is the Way.

His buir had given his life in that line of duty only a few years prior, when the young Mandalorian was thirteen and had just finished his mandatory training. He had mourned in the moment, as was appropriate, but he, like all in his Tribe knew that his father was not gone. He had joined the Manda and would always be a part of the collective soul that each Mando’ade shared. His choice to follow those footsteps was a choice he made to honor the man. Had he not been a member of the elite fighting corp, he would not have been there to rescue the scared boy in the bunker, and that scared boy in the bunker might not have made it out.

That boy was no longer a boy nor was he scared. He and Zurn accepted the recommendation, and one year and two months to the day that they had first met, the two of them were sent out on their first overnight mission: staking out a rebel base on the planet that had been attracting a lot of traffic to Dantooine. The covert’s main goal was staying safe, secret and hidden from the Empire. But the increase of rebel activity wouldn’t go unnoticed for long, and the Tribe needed a clearer picture as to what they were facing, and if they needed to consider relocating the covert. He’d heard whispers that Nevarro, another planet in the Outer Rim, was the selected backup, but he, like everyone who heard those rumors, hoped that that’s all they would stay.

They were camped out behind a large outcropping of rock, completely concealed from view of the base in the dark of the night. They had spent the day charting a lay of the area and choosing a position that would keep them hidden until the morning, when they could hopefully get an idea of the goings on at the rebel encampment. He leaned against the cool rock, chin tilted upwards. The fire had burned down to just the embers, still providing enough warmth to get them to sunrise, but dim enough now to see the night sky and everything in it with no interference from the flames. Once he finished his training and had a real helmet, he would be able to change the filter on the visor to block out any amount of light he wanted. But for now he had to wait.

And he had been waiting. The last time I saw the sky at night I was-

He froze, a sudden weight falling into his right hand where it lay open on the dry ground. That’s… His eyes widened as he registered what it was, her fingers curling into his palm. She isn’t...

He was still wearing his gloves, but she had taken hers off to warm her hands by the fire. She hadn’t put them back on. He could feel the difference even through the worn leather, and it caught him completely off guard.

“Six,” he blurted, immediately cursing himself the second the syllable was out.

But instead of laughing or teasing him, the way she always had in sparring, he felt her grip tighten as she moved closer. “Six what?”

I… what do I say? Should I- He tilted his head down, watching his fingers close around hers as though they were acting of their own volition. Dank farrik, why did I just-

“Djarin?” He snapped his attention back up to see that she had turned, resting the side of her helmet against the boulder so she could look at him as she spoke. “You said six.” He sighed and nodded. I did. “Six what?”

He wasn’t sure if anyone aside from his buir knew this fact about him, the man gone and this fact with him. Why would anyone care? It doesn’t matter. But instead of ignoring the non contextual number slipping out, she had asked him what it meant. Which meant that it mattered to her. He realized in that moment that there was no one else he felt comfortable enough around to let his guard down and enjoy the stars or think about how long it’s been since he’d seen them. It was only because he trusted her that he had allowed his mind to wander into memories, that he was relaxed enough to even make the slip and say something he hadn’t meant to. He realized that he actually wanted to tell her. It shouldn’t matter but it… it does.

His right hand was still occupied with hers, so he pointed with his left at the endless, swirling silver pricks of light poking through the thick velvety blue black sky. “Ca'tra.” She followed his direction and trained her gaze upwards. “I haven’t seen the stars since I was six.”

Dropping his arm back into his lap, he felt her thumb swipe across the top of his glove. She was still touching only fabric, her thumbnail snagging on a loose stitch near the opening. But she was so close to making skin to skin contact that if he so much as sneezed she would leave her thumbprint on his pulse point. If that happened she’d feel it racing.

“Me’ven?” She whispered her disbelief, swiveling her head over to look at him. Yes, really.

None of the children ever left the covert at night. It was dangerous, they were told, because outside the halls of their underground home, there were people who would capture them, hunt them simply for being what they are- Mandalorians. That was one of the many reasons that their education revolved so heavily around weapons and combat; so they would be ready to defend themselves and others when, not if, they needed to. She and her family had come to the covert later on in her training, and things had been different where she was from, so she had no real frame of reference for what it was like to give up the stars, grow up without them. For the ones born here, they don’t… they don’t even know what they’re missing.

He took a breath, readying himself to explain. Before he could, the fire cracked as the flames found a pocket of moisture or an unlucky beetle in the wood, spitting a few red hot embers towards the pair of trainees. Without thinking, he pulled her out of the way and nearly on top of himself, one of her legs falling between his knees. He heard her surprised gasp as she caught herself, reaching for his shoulder to prevent their foreheads from colliding. His left arm curved awkwardly around her shoulders as he moved them both further from the fire and out of range of any more stray embers.

As he shifted, her fingers did too, sliding from his shoulder to his neck- to the narrow sliver of his throat that was visible between his collar and his helmet. To the place where his blood ran quick and hot beneath his skin at how close they were. He swallowed, knowing she would feel the movement of his muscles beneath her touch, unable to help the way he had reacted.

He still had her hand in his, was still holding her closer than he’d ever held anyone. Say something. “Sorry, I… the fire was-“

“Djarin?” She hadn’t taken her hand away, her fingers curling around to the back of his neck.

“Y-Yeah?” He cursed himself for the waver in his voice. Another reason to look forward to the helmet he’d receive upon the completion of his training was the modulator in the speaker component. It served multiple purposes. To further disguise a Mandalorian’s identity by modifying their voice, yes, but also to cover any vocal slips of emotion or signs of weakness. Though if he was being honest with himself he wasn’t even sure if the device would be enough to hide the effect she was having on him.

It didn’t matter though. Nothing did as she slipped her fingers into the wavy curls that stuck out from beneath his helmet at the base of his skull and he thought that every last star in the galaxy could burst, the entire sky exploding at once, and it wouldn’t take his attention from that feeling.

She… she’s… His mind was working as hard to form a thought as his lungs were to keep his breathing even. Both were failing.

“I’m glad you got to see the sky tonight.” She made no move to get off of him, and he tried to stay as still as the stone they’d been leaning against, unwilling to allow his own anxious movement to be the thing that chased her away yet unsure of what to do next.

He gave a small nod, keeping space between them so he wouldn’t knock her helmet with his own. “Yeah,” he let out a careful breath, trying not to let it shake as her light touch continued to ignite his skin. “Me too.”

Her fingers spread wide against the back of his neck, pinky dipping daringly under his collar, and suddenly he felt himself tighten the arm he had around her, his hand curving over her shoulder. This… if she doesn’t want this she’ll- He focused on the horizontal slit of her visor, his heart beating behind his eyes as he found himself wondering what color hers were, and what they would look like if he could see her now, what she’d look like, wanting this.

Wanting me.

She tilted her head down, a tiny motion that he might not have even noticed if not for the way the firelight flickered in the reflection of her helmet. “And I’m,” she paused and he felt her shoulders and back expanded under his arm as she took a breath. “I’m glad I got to see it with you, Djarin.”

“Din.” Like the number six, his name leapt from his tongue before he could pull it back, and its release into the world left him feeling almost dizzy. That’s- I just...I shouldn’t have- He felt her freeze and stiffen, heard her shocked gasp, and knew he’d made a mistake. I shouldn’t have told her. She doesn’t...we’re- we aren’t-

“You...did you just-” She brought the hand that was still twined with his up between their bodies, resting them both against his chestplate. Something in the weight of them and the way they looked covering the carved ironheart symbol in the center, made him wonder if maybe it wasn’t a mistake. She’s still… she hasn’t moved. She didn’t get up or… The fingers of her other hand curled around the back of his neck, gripping him more tightly. “Djarin, is that your-”

“Yes.” He watched their hands rise on his chest as he took a deep breath, then glanced up at the place where he wished he could meet her eyes, finding only the smoky lens of her training visor. “My name.” Wished he had followed her lead and shed his gloves too, he ran his thumb along hers, pressing down. “It’s-”

“Din.” She whispered it back to him. Though the times he had heard his given name since swearing the Creed had been few, he knew that it had never sounded like that. Before he could fully appreciate the charged, electrified way that it made him feel, she was sending another jolt through his chest as she spoke again, lowering her forehead even closer to his. “Aashi.”

That’s her...She told me her n- He moved the hand he had on her shoulder to her back, flattening his palm over her spine as the charge ran through his bloodstream. Gulping down another breath, all attempts at keeping his reaction from her discarded, he pressed her closer. “Aashi.”

Until that moment he’d only known her by her house name, Zurn, and the clan signet that she’d painted on the dented steel plate that covered her left thigh. Two daggers. He never thought that the symbol fit her. It was perfect for her Buir, the woman more than proficient with blades. But she- Aashi, his heart flipped in place just thinking it- was just as skilled and dangerous without knives or vibroblades, maybe even more so without them. He’d known that from the very first day he’d met her, when he first referred to her only as buyca. And now I know her.

She closed the remaining space to let the curve of her helmet meet his with a soft but audible, tangible clink. “Kar'taylir, Din Djarin.”

He sighed out her name again as her fingers slid higher up beneath his helmet in his hair. And to think I was impressed with the stars.

That night, for the first time since coming to live among the Mandalorians, Din Djarin felt the press of lips to his bare skin as she sat behind him and lifted her own helmet just enough to kiss the back of his neck.

Kar’taylir, Aashi Zurn.

-- -- -- -- --

He noticed right away.

As he looked back over his shoulder, the tilt of her helmet was off. She was moving too slowly. A sudden chill gripped his chest making it hard to take a breath as he shoved his way back through the fray to get to her. No! Cyare! Another blast hit the wall of a nearby home that came crumbling down, and he knew that at her current pace she wouldn’t get out of the way in time. Launching himself at her, he caught her in his arms and rolled them both safely out of line of the debris, shielding her battered body with his own. He was extremely grateful that they had both just received their beskar helmets, knowing that the metal placeholders they trained in would do nothing to protect them in this situation.

But as he dragged her into an alley to safely assess her injuries, he saw that having the beskar wouldn’t matter. Not for her, not this time. No… No, Aashi… His hands shook as he placed them over the growing red bloom at her shoulder.

Aashi’s helmet, one pauldron and both thigh plates were pure Mandalorian beskar. The rest was just durasteel. Since the Great Purge beskar had been extremely hard to come by. The Armorer had to be discerning in her distribution of new pieces, oftentimes awarding warriors with beskar for achievements or special services for the Tribe. It was how he had also come to possess select pieces made of the precious material. Her wound though, was on the shoulder not encased in impenetrable armor. And he knew what that meant. She did, too.

Another year had passed since the night by the fire- a year that had kept them and the rest of their squadron busy in protecting their covert from the encroachment of Imperial violence. A year that had been spent deepening their bond not only as warriors but as partners. A year that made him certain that he was bound to her in all but ceremony.

“You h-have to go, Din.” Her voice was hoarse and thin, the modulator in her helmet doing little to hide the obvious agony she was in. He felt her weak grasp on his wrist as she tried to pull his attention from her bloodied shoulder to her face. “Din…” Hearing her speak his name in that tone broke him, and he dropped his head, letting her take his hand, letting her bleed slowly into oblivion.

“I won’t leave you.” He could hear how stubborn he sounded and he hated it. Hated that he couldn’t detach like he’d been trained to, hated that he would have to leave her, hated that he hadn’t been there to take the hit that she’d taken.

Using what little strength she still had, she brought her hand up behind his neck, fingers sliding slowly into his sweat slicked hair. He let out a shaky breath and realized his eyes were damp. “You could n-never leave me, cyare. You are a p-part of me, always.” She bent her fingers gently to nudge his helmet down to meet hers, and he placed both of his hands on the sides of her head. “B-but you have to...to warn the others. You n-need to… the covert. They need to…”

“Shh,” he silenced her, moving one hand down to mirror her touch, placing it on the back of her neck. “I know. I… I will.” He knew that she was right. He had to get back to the covert to help as many of the Tribe escape off planet to Nevarro as possible. He hadn’t gone through additional training, sworn additional oaths just to forsake it all to die in this ally with her and let the rest of the Tribe suffer the same fate. “I will.”

“Kar’taylir, Din Djarin…” She managed once more to tell him what he’d felt for so long, and then he felt her go limp, felt his heart stop, felt the world dim.

She was gone.

No. He shook his head, banishing the heartache that threatened to claim him. No. Not gone. She could never be gone. Like she told him, he was a part of her. And she was a part of him. She would be, always.

Leaving her there was the hardest trial he’d ever undergone, but there was nothing more he could do for her, and he refused to let her death be for nothing. He pushed himself back up and ran back to the covert, alerting who he could and helping as many to safety as possible.

It wasn’t until night fell three days later on Dantooine that he allowed himself to finally feel the cuts, the breaks in his heart. He had stayed behind with the rest of the elite squadron until all of the Tribe’s members were accounted for, either fallen or fled to Nevarro. Only he, Hast, Vizsla and a handful of others remained on the planet, and would be leaving in the morning never to return.

He’d spent that day solemnly traveling to the place of their first mission together, to the outcropping of rock where they’d hidden from the rebels and bared their souls to one another. When he arrived there, he felt her, as though some part of her presence had stayed there that night. He thought a part of himself must have, too. Silently, he knelt down and took the blade from its sheath on his boot. Kaysh meg miit'gaana, oyacyi. The act of writing, even something that was unlikely to be read, even something that only he knew existed, was an act of commitment. Though Mandalorians were not known for making monuments to the dead, remembrance was of personal importance to all who swore the Creed. Placing his other hand on the cool stone, he brought the sharp edge to the rock face and began carving into it. One symbol, then the next, etching the lines until all five were legible. He didn’t know how long it took, but when it was done he knew how long it would last.

“Kar’taylir, Aashi Zurn. Darasuum.”

Thank you for reading! Please feel free to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from the tags! :)

tags: @something-tofightfor @alraedesigns @pheedraws @valkblue @malionnes @gollyderek @fific7 @becs-bunker @commanderlola @greatcircle79 @cannedsoupsucks

#din djarin #mando #the mandalorian #young din djarin #pedrostories #the mandalorian fanfic #resol’nare #resol'nare one shot #din's first girlfriend #aw #this is the way #mando'a #din djarin fanfic #din djarin fanfiction #mando fanfic #mando fanfiction #din djarin x oc #pedro pascal characters

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theunconcernedembalmer · 4 years ago

Note

what’s the issue with elisop? is it just bc you hc aesop as ace? im so concerned by seeing ppl adamantly opposed to mlm/wlw ships but im also genuinely curious about why you dislike it and other lgbt ships so much lol

hmm. that is a strong accusation, n i find it just a bit odd. are you new here? or perhaps you are taking personal offense at my dislike towards a favourite ship of yours and using the lgbt argument as moral high ground?

whatever the case may be, i thank you for asking. if u r truly looking for an answer, its below the cut n it is very very long. mind u these are all my personal opinions n i am in no way policing how others enjoy ships. just in case this wasnt clear; i dont wish to start discourse on this blog, especially since my takes are probably... unpopular.

firstly i would like to address the “disliking lgbt ships” bit, because this has very strong implications in itself. i have nothing against lgbt ships. i enjoy them, even. if the two characters have chemistry between each other, i ship it. however, the moment characterization is broken for the sake of romance, i lose interest. this is generally my stance on ships in general, n this applies for both straight n lgbt ships.

the ships themselves are fine. however, i do have issues with the ship dynamics, so ill let u in on that.

i want to touch on mlm ships in particular; i believe u are familiar with the top/bottom dynamic that is rampant in these kinds of ships? (i wont deny that this dynamic can be found in other types of ships, but for arguments sake i will be focusing on gay ships because i feel that this occurs more commonly here) its such a popular dynamic that is prone to stripping the personality from one if not both characters, only for them to be reduced to being dominant/submissive. for a character to be pigeonholed into a stereotypical category based on... preferred sexual positions? its just downright insulting, never mind the larger more problematic implications of it. top/bottom is not indicative of someones personality, by the way. flattening multi dimensional characters into these stereotypes is so so so insulting.

unfortunately this is The Most Popular portrayal of just about any gay ship around. ive seen it being used everywhere in so many fandoms n it just about becomes apparent to me that ppl come to stories looking for a Ship. not the stories, nor the characters, just a ship. while id like to say theres nothing wrong with that, keep in mind not everyone is just looking for 2 characters that look pretty next to each other. if i ship something, i see interesting n meaningful interactions between 2 characters, which is so often not the case once u bring in the top/bottom dynamic. why is it so popular? because somehow this is what ppl like from a gay ship n hence it sells. ppl want the drama, characterizations be damned. ppl want to see the big kiss that happens in the end, n maybe the sexy parts that come after. characterizations be damned.

so u can say im a little wary of gay ships when they cross my feed. hell, as a joseph aesop shipper i see this trope everywhere n im pretty disappointed as well. small tangent but i feel like this is the reason why zh0ngli n ch1lde is so popular in g3nshin. i try to see the appeal, i really do, but after a long while of analyzing their respective characters i dont think they have as much chemistry as ppl think they do. dont even get me started on how incredibly ooc they make either of these very interesting n unique characters in ship portrayals. all because of the top/bottom dynamic that ppl want to see. i say this for that particular ship, but this is pretty much the case for a lot of ships out there, n the latter part is painfully true even when the 2 characters do have potential between each other. ill say it again im disgusted by the blatant disrespect to the characterizations if all ppl ever want is 2 pretty puppets to mush lips together. cos thats what theyre essentially reduced to this way.

n its so obvious to see when an artist subscribes to this rhetoric, because u can so clearly see it in the way they draw their characters. the “top” generally has sharper features to go with their “dominating personality”, while the “bottom” has disturbingly softer, feminine, dare i say sometimes child like features “to submit”. n thats where the uwu soft gay trope comes from, i believe. which, in case u still dont know, i hate with a burning passion.

so again for ppl with impaired reading comprehension, im fine with ships, including lgbt ones, but the moment u break characterization for the sake of the ship, im not that okay with it. u want to do it for a short crack comic? fine. but if thats the only way ur portraying the 2 characters then im immediately wary of ur content. ill still look at it cos usually the art is really good, but im very very wary. so im not “adamantly opposed”, just very critical of how the ships are being portrayed. if other ppl want to enjoy their ships like that, sure. just dont expect me to join in on something i dont agree on.

now id like to address not shipping “because i hc aesop as ace”. for ppl who are new to the blog (hello there), im an ace in a romantic relationship, so thats definitely not the reason i dont ship elisop. its more of being in a relationship has largely shaped my views towards romance as a whole. even before i met my boyfriend, i hated the romance genre in stories n media. most of it comes off as incredibly forced, especially those love triangles they seem to love putting into teen novels. thats one reason why i stopped reading when i was younger, but i digress.

did i partake in shipping when i was younger? i did. for a gay ship too (if anyone really wants to know, its kurotsukki from haikyuu. at least this was one that i can remember, i was mostly working on my 20 odd ocs for the longest time). i also used to write little short romance ficlets that i never posted anywhere cos i hated (n still do hate) my writing. but writing romance when u dont have experience was really just a way of projecting n probably a way of coping for myself, not that i knew at that time. but after i actually started a relationship with my boyfriend (whom i love n cherish a lot thank u very much), i began to see how much all these have skewed my views towards romance n have actually done some harm to our relationship. the bullshit that the general media feeds u constantly doesnt help in the slightest either.

quick topic shift to elisop in particular (about time, right?). i already stated that i only ship characters if i sense chemistry between the two personalities, n if u have seen the part where i dont ship elisop then u must have seen how agonized i am over not being able to have a concrete personality for eli. that is the main problem i have with elisop: eli does not feel like a solid character to me. n that is a huge problem, because if he doesnt have any defining characteristics besides being mild n nice, then he can be whoever i want him to be. (i have done this in my exorcist comics, i will admit this. n the fact that i can just do that... it really does not sit well with me personally.)

n that is dangerous.

back to young me doing lil ship things. i think its also pretty safe to say when u really do ship 2 characters, chances are u kinda really relate very very hard to at least one of them. that very quickly can turn into projecting, n shipping therefore is not “exploring the relationship between 2 characters” n it becomes “my preferred dating simulator 101″. of course this isnt always the case, but at least it was for me, n subconsciously it might be for lots of ppl too. n since this is ur mental playground, u call the shots, n there is no consequences if u slightly (or even entirely) alter one or both personalities to fit ur desired narrative. n u wouldnt even notice or know, cos ur blind to ur own biasness.

we bring our perceived notions into real life, im sure u know that. so when ur partner does not become that perfect knight in shining armour, or when they get upset at things that u do (which is a very normal thing by the way), n u think (very subconsciously), That isnt what my otp would do, something is wrong here (nothing is wrong, actually its just ur skewed perception of a stable romantic relationship). why wouldnt ur otp do this? because u are both halves of ur otps, there is no hidden secrets between them (apart from the pining part but thats irrelevant), n again they have been altered to fit ur preferred narrative.

a real relationship requires a lot of communication between parties, because newsflash, liking someone doesnt mean that u have to like every single thing they do, they will make mistakes n it will hurt u, n guess what, the reverse is also true. if u do go with absoutely anything that they would do with 0 objections whatsoever, ur not crushing on someone, ur idolizing them, n that power imbalance is detrimental to a relationship. these things are not obvious to ppl, especially when the whole climate is hell bent on getting into romantic relationships by a certain age or some bullshit. communication is key n is pretty much the only way to solve relationship issues, because the other person has a lot that u r not seeing n vice versa. as similar as 2 ppl can be, i doubt u can have 100% the same thoughts on all things. i dont make the rules.

so in ur mental playground u focus on the fluffy parts, maybe there is communication, but rarely is there any meaningful conflict. thats unrealistic, n if u bring that mindset to an actual relationship, thats not going to end well. i say meaningful conflict, because yes, generally u shouldnt have conflicts with ur significant other. but inevitably when ur with each other for long enough, u will realize that there are habits that u must change in order to be with the other person. habits that are harmful to the other person directly, or harmful habits towards yourself that indirectly harm the other person. these are meaningful in a sense that if left alone, it will manifest into larger problems that will harm u, the other person n the relationship as a whole. its meaningful to the relationship.

all these is made even worse if ur neurodivergent. maladaptive coping practices, self sabotaging behaviours, inherent disabilities. all these must be adjusted n addressed. im so incredibly thankful for my boyfriend for being incredibly patient with me when working all these out, n it has not been easy for me to work on myself n all my problems, n im still not done working on them. this aspect is often not explored in romance in general (or properly), n there is a very good chance i would have still been stuck in the unhealthy mindset of “this isnt like my otp, maybe we’re not meant to be”. because loving someone is a choice. no one is made for each other, it is a conscious choice made between 2 ppl to make things work. this is how arranged marriages work, i am told, n i do see the appeal, not that it actually does appeal to me culturally.

special mention to the kurotsukki ship, cos from there i found a very, very good fic that explored their relationship before n after getting together, n it actually showed aspects of this problem in the incredibly slow burn of (at that time) 20+ chapters. it was just one fic (n a very good one at that, i believe it was called Leviticus), but it had a lesson i never thought i needed to learn, n learn it i did, with a lot of help from my dear.

this is also probably the reason why i dont really want to delve too much into romance now. i know its a lot of work, n everything (mostly) that the media feeds u is really false advertising, but ppl eat that shit up n so it remains one of the most popular genres to date. im just very wary that if i do start on a romantic story, i want to be able to show it in a way like that fic did, the truths of relationships, because i dont want to make something that sells, i want to make something that meaningful to me, if a little indulgent. n that also includes being very careful in how the respective characterizations will change in a relationship. almost too careful now that i think about it, but its not something that i mind. i was never one for romance from the start, n now im very careful about shipping because of what happened to me persoanlly.

okay enough about me, lets talk about aesop. in any au u put the character in, the essence of the character must remain despite the change in environment. so lets say we have ur typical modern au. dead mom, check. shitty mentor doing illegal stuff? also check. autistic boy with social anxiety? we’re good to go. all these have implications on aesop as a character, n while ppl are aware of this, again the way they go about portraying it can go, in my personal opinion, very wrong. ppl who immediately woobify aesop completely because he has autism annoy me. ppl who reduce him to uwu soft boi cos he has social anxiety do not know how the disorder really works n as someone who has that i hate it to the core. ppl who do all these for the sake of ship have lost my respect. its insulting.

remember the top/bottom dynamic? not that elisop is completely free from that (even if i dont know much about eli, to put him in either one of those stereotypes feels very insulting to his character. i wont even say anything about doing it to aesop its so upsetting), but its not entirely made up of either. but now i want to introduce another trope i am very wary of, which is “i can fix him”. im sure u guys have seen the meme going around poking fun at this trope (for those who havent, its along the lines of “u can fix him? well i can be his worst nightmare”) n no doubt yall would have seen it n gotten sick of it in some forced hetero romantic bullshit. we have one damsel in distress with a saviour that solves all their problems just by existing n being romo with each other.

remember “my preferred dating simulator 101″? this is not mutually exclusive n from my point of view this is dangerously close to this trope. lets be real, if it was actually a thing that all ur deep rooted trauma magically disappears if someone were to waltz into ur life, we would want it. definitely. no painfully dissecting ur own problems n constantly facing them head on. real life states that this is not the case, but it will not stop us from dreaming. n so this trope is born n lives n will go on.

(finally) pulling aesop n eli into this, at least in my mind, u have one severely traumatized boy with lots of issues n u have this. nice mild guy who can be anything u want him to be. i hope u can see where im going with this, n thats the direction i see some elisop heading towards (i dont read a lot of elisop to be fair). if u came from my eli character talk, i mentioned that it is incredibly one sided. this is exactly what im talking about.

putting it all together in case u havent already, aesop is the damsel in distress, whose problems magically disappear because of elis godly kindness n little to no work on improving himself, n they lived happily n gayly ever after.

can u tell how much that does not appeal to me.

never mind the butchering of character that inevitably happens somewhere somehow, the unrealistically perfect themes n implications of this trope makes me so viscerally uncomfortable. this is, of course, due to personal reasons, n i definitely see the appeal of this dynamic because i would probably have been interested in this once upon a time as well. but as i am now, with everything i have explained up there n everything i have been through, i would politely rather not.

n its difficult to think of another dynamic, because of how little i know about eli apart from him being this saint, which easily makes him a candidate for being aesops trauma panacea. never mind aesop rarely, if ever, does anything for eli as a character in return, n its so damaging to buy into this rhetoric, where a person like this who would solve all ur issues no strings attached exists somewhere in the world. they really dont. a relationship has to be mutually benefitting, or it will be draining n disastrous. maybe u say, Oh its nice to imagine it once in a while. n yeah, i agree, except once in a while is a little difficult to keep track of n that is sort of what happened to me. id rather stay as far away as possible from this kind of unrealistic fantasy, i just got this shit sorted out with myself n my boyfriend.

i have some other reasons, but theyre more personally problematic, so i wont go into them here. but this is mostly n generally why i do not ship elisop romantically. if u do, u do u, and have fun, but again dont expect me to join u. thank u for coming to my ted talk, this took a lot longer than expected.

#mun rambles #its me the mun #unconcerned ramblings #posting this now cos this is a question ive been getting #although this has been worded in the most unnecessarily passive aggressive way possible that i do not appreciate #im wary about all u so called social justice warriors championing this n that liberal idea when all u want to do is stir shit #thankfully i dont have much experience with this but just passively seeing all these ppl run their mouths is getting very annoying #but just know that i will not tolerate any of that bullshit here. because if u really do care about ppl as much as u say u do #then why r u attacking ppl period #ur really just hiding behind a righteous excuse to harm people. thats disgusting. i dont want u here

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oftenderweapons · 5 years ago

Text

The Calm After the Storm - maknae line

Pairing: maknae line member x reader

Wordcount: 1.1-1.2k words each

Genre: smut, fluff

Rating: 18+

Hello jell-o to everyone again! I usually try to publish by Sunday night but it’s exam season so I’m a bit busy with uni. Also, Jin’s part was super difficult to start but then boom, it turned out to be the longest, so every delay is due to that and I refuse to postpone again so I’m publishing it unedited. Might reread in a couple days and actually edit the post. Every piece is about 1100-1200 words (they’re getting longer and longer!)

The original theme for the week was going to be aftercare, but me being a chaotic mess made me go a little bit wilder than just aftercare. I tried to adjust every scenario to how each boy would approach intimacy with his partner, and how each couple would recover from different types and degrees of interaction, It also depends a lot on the kind of ideal girlfriend I imagine for each of the boys.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: ahem. It’s very descriptive, some parts more than others. So, let’s get this started. Oral sex galore (highly recommended if you’re a fan of being eaten out yay!) crude language, unprotected sex within a safe and established relationship (please be careful guys, use condoms and dental dams I can’t recommend it enough), voyeurism, overstimulation, biting, spanking, some bold PDA, cockwarming (you know who that is), sex toys (more specifically ben-wa balls), slight angst/insecurity/trauma due to toxic masculinity

Member disclaimers: Jimin is a brat and we all know it, can actually dom but need aftercare afterwards, I love him loads, he’s my squishy and I’m gonna protect him for life. Taehyung is an art freak and an overall freak whoa yeah, let’s move on (also, Where, When and How pt.2, The Return of The Sex Toys). JK goes from soft boy to hard dom to soft boy again in 0.2 seconds and I still don’t know why or how. He’s young and wants some fun and loves his girlfriend because she’ll always embrace his softer side and have fun with his naughtier/playful side. Enjoy!

Here you can find the hyung line

And here you can find my masterlist

Jimin

“Who’s been a good girl?” He teased, the tip of his sex resting on your entrance.

“I have.” You beamed, satisfaction filling your voice as he smiled down at you, his spare hand gently reaching for your cheek, caressing your face and slipping his thumb in your mouth.

“You have, my princess, indeed.” He pushed the tip inside. It was the loveliest shade of pink, pillowy and thick where it attached to the shaft. You knew it very well since you love looking at it and you were just done having it in you mouth for almost forty minutes. You had provoked him endlessly, keeping him on your tongue without moving, just the tip laying there, your lips wrapped delicately around it. No suction, no friction, just there. In the meantime his hand had started toying with the hem of your panties, finally moving them aside, letting one of his fingers rub on your skin.

“Please, Jimin. I’ve been so good.” You dragged your vowels as you breathed out, getting adjusted to the feeling of him inside you. His size was all you needed, not too much and not too little. His dick was the most beautiful you had ever seen, the colour, the texture and the dimensions making it look so pretty you didn’t feel the usual embarrassment or fear that you usually felt while approaching your previous partners.

“It’s all yours, love.” He said with a small grunt. He got relatively more quiet and whiny as he kept pushing in and out of you, staying close to you, the position so intimate you felt like he was becoming your whole world, his hips working their magic on you.

“Are you gonna cum for me, princess?” He asked, his hips keeping up the pace.

“Yeah, so close.” You gritted out of your closed teeth.

“Good.” He moved his mouth to your chest, your left nipple engorged in his pretty pout.

“A little faster, please.” You asked.

“Such nice manners. You aren’t giving me any reason to punish you, princess. Such a good girl.” He praised you again.

This kind of role reversal didn’t happen very often, but sometimes Jimin liked taking care of you, reminding you that he is both your boy and your man. That he can be whatever you want him to be. He needs to feel like you could never do without him. You addressed this sense of inadequateness of his, every now and then, reassuring him and helping him state his own self and his needs.

“Do you like it? That I’m doing exactly what you want me to?” You asked, but you both knew you were asking whether he felt like being harsher and punish you.

“You like obeying me, pet?” He asked, his voice dripping in sugar as he pronounced your nickname.

“I love you, Jimin.” You said softly.

He almost mewled at that, reassured by how that sentence, that feeling meant that he was at your own level, how much of a praise it was to be your equal, to be strong enough to match you, to own you.

“Are you close?” He asked, his thrusts becoming more intense. “I want to take you from behind but if you’re close I can keep going.”

“From behind, please.” You squealed, already eager to change position.

He grinned and slipped out of you, the shift happening so quickly you felt a bit dizzy when you realised your face was pressed on the pillow, your ass up in the air as he entered you again. He started slamming into you his hands pressing your ass against his hips, the sound warning you that the whole attitude had changed too.

“You like it like this, princess? You like getting it all dirty and rowdy?” He groaned, his voice anything but his usually loving and obedient self.

You emitted a muffled ‘yes’ as your hand reached your clit.

“You touching yourself, ____?” He said, using one hand to turn your face towards him. “You better come quick or else you’ll have to lick me till I’m hard again. You’re not gonna cum without my cock inside you, understood?”

“Yes, sir.” The title riled him up enough to get his pace a bit faster, sending you miles deep into pleasure.

His cry echoed yours, signaling his own orgasm. After taking a couple deep breaths he slipped out of you, removing the condom and getting rid of it quickly. He was in your arms again a couple seconds later, laying by your side, one leg entwined around yours, his arms hugging your middle, his head nuzzling in between your breasts.

“You alright sweetie?” You asked.

“I feel so good when I see you that happy. Fills me with joy.” He kissed your breastbone, then, as you lifted his chin with your forefinger, he pressed his lips to yours.

“Do you need anything? Some water? A snack? Shall we get in the shower?” You caressed his hair back, looking at how sweaty he was.

“A shower would be amazing. But I want you close.”

“Would you prefer a bath?” You kissed his forehead. He was all small smiles and fidgeting with your fingers.

“Yes, please.”

“Such manners, always so perfect.” You almost snickered at the contrast between him right now and the man he’d been a few minutes ago.

“Let’s go.” You said, sitting up before he got too tired to get out of bed. “You look amazing, babe.” You couldn’t help but comment, looking at him sprawled on the covers.

He smiled, his pupils disappearing behind his crinkled lids, then he stood up, thinking whether he should wear something or not and feeling insecure for a second, but then following your cue he decided to stay naked.

As you slipped into the tub you let him slide in with his back against your chest, hugging him to you, your nose nuzzling the top of his head. “Is it to your taste?”

“Yes, thank you babe.” He replied. “I really like your bath soap.” He yawned, smiling some more as you caught him. He looked ten times lovelier right now. You felt that fuzzy feeling in your stomach intensifying, and you began rubbing the tense muscles on his back out of fondness and gratitude. “That's truly amazing.”

“You are truly amazing.” You kissed his nape and continued with your caregiving, washing his hair, rinsing him, helping him out of the shower, drying him and applying some lotion over his skin, smiling at him with your eyes through the reflection on the mirror as you brushed your teeth while sharing the sink.

“I love you,” you whispered in his ear as you hugged him under the sheets.

“I love you, too.” That’s bliss.

Taehyung

“Don’t you dare move, you little demon.”

With a forceful hammering of his hips against your bottom, Taehyung slammed into you at an impossible pace, finally snapping forward as he lost his regular rhythm and bent down, his head propped on the back of your neck, his breath fanning out along your spine before he grunted the manliest sound you had ever heard.

You were shocked: laying there, ass up, your boyfriend collapsed on top of you with his exceedingly long dick planted inside you, its girth becoming slightly less bearable as the high of your climax ebbed away.

“Tae, it’s so good.” You moaned. “Too much.”

“Stay put, love.” He helped you lay down, without any intention of parting from you.

“We can’t stay like this forever.”

“Watch me.” He replied cockily.

The whole night had been wildly unusual. It had all started in the afternoon. You had been to an art gallery where the whole exhibition verted on photographs of naked bodies painted into art. He had held you tight, his hand gripping your waist, his thumb fooling around the hem of your jeans, tentatively trying to slither under the fabric. He had asked you about your favourite, pointing out pieces he was very enthusiastic about. You had looked at him baffled as he pointed out the picture of a woman with two big breasts and a Virgin Mary painted on her belly, the model’s pubic hair painted a strange rainbow mesh of colours as if simulating a cloud from which the painting was emerging.

You had been slightly uncomfortable standing before it, but the rest of it hadn’t been that extreme. Well, except for another couple pictures.

One had also attracted your attention. In the back of the gallery one very explicit picture had sparked something between the two of you. As you walked in you thought it was just an empty room but as you turned around you saw a giant poster of a vagina, every detail so precise that you asked yourself what kind of lens and camera could take a picture with such impressive high quality. On the women's thighs seven lines of paint mimicked two branches of a rainbow leading to the model’s inner labia, while a sun — or a halo — surrounded the clit. The poster occupied the whole wall, at least three metres tall and five metres wide.

You were standing in the middle of the room, taking in every detail, seriously impressed by the piece. You were as tall as her slit, for God's sake…

"It looks like you really like this one." Taehyung said, hugging you from behind, his nose toying with your earlobe. His voice made your insides tremble.

"I really get it." Taehyung said. "I would do that too." Silence stretched as he got caught in his thoughts and fantasies. "Your pussy's so good I would take an absurdly high quality picture of it and have it printed as if it were wallpaper and installed in a private room in my apartment and simply sneak in sometimes and stand in front of it and just admire it."

You kept looking ahead, too caught by the luscious way his hips pressed against the small of your back. "Your cunt is art, babe." He whispered and pressed some more into you. "Literally paradise. I'd lick it for days and fuck it till I can't even get hard anymore."

You tried to get your mouth to salivate again. He was playing it dirty. And the fact that you had to go back home and get ready for a nice dinner together and a night at the club with Jimin and his girlfriend made you even more tense. You knew you would have to wait for some relief.

As you reached your apartment Taehyung decided to pick your clothes and have you get ready right in front on him. He settled on the bed, sitting, as you rolled on your stockings and wore a suspender belt that matched your underwear. Slowly you let your deep green silk slip-on dress roll down your body, and you felt his hands stretch towards you, grabbing you by the waist. You stood at the edge of the bed, his chin propped on your belly. "My dove, I have a question for you."

"Yes," you replied, your hands pushing his hair back.

He showed you a blue velvet pouch and you smirked. "Do you want to?"

"You wanna help me wear them?" He nodded.

And that's how you found yourself grinding on him desperately in the club after he had fed you chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert. Not that you complained about that. But the Ben-Wa balls heavily rolling and rubbing against your g-spot were making it difficult for you to fully enjoy your night out. Especially since every time you closed your eyes you saw Taehyung's lips wrapping around them and lubricating them before he helped you insert them.

It didn't take long for the two of you to get too desperate to care about decency, but since you needed to think about Taehyung's reputation you decided to call it a night and feign tiredness in front of Jimin's eyes — who called both of you out on your state of arousal and blessed your intentions for the rest of the night, letting you go home without making too much of a fuss.

When you arrived at the apartment you were both too impatient to reach the bedroom and used the sofa to dull the edges of your needs, Taehyung staring at you wide eyed, kneeling on the floor between your legs while you rubbed yourself passionately. As you reached your first high he dove in between your thighs, his mouth landing on your clit, sucking on it devotedly, eyes fixed on yours. Overstimulation hit you hard, the geisha balls still moving inside you. He made you cum again with his tongue lapping and lashing at your wetness.

He carried you to the bedroom in silence, his gaze dark and desperate, completely oblivious to the way his long and heavy sex strained against his linen slacks. Laying back, you let him tower over you, teasing the underside of his erection as he took off your dress definitively. "You're so beautiful." You whispered religiously.

"Are you talking to me or my cock?"

You chuckled lightly. "Mostly to you."

"Mostly…" He mused.

He pressed his hand to your belly, removing the silver spheres from inside you.

"Mostly, uh?" With that he entered you violently, thrusting in with one smooth, powerful stroke.

"Tae—" You whined. He kept doing you like that, with evenly paced, blunt thrusts. However, since you kept teasing him with the firm squeezing of your inner walls encouraged by your own fingers brushing your clit, he pulled out of you, flipping you around and pushing your backside up, entering you once more. It didn't take long for him to get lost in his own rhythm, for his hand to come up to your tender spot and rub you until your legs gave out.

And now heavy with the sleepiness of bliss, you questioned whether your boyfriend was intending to get out of you. "Tae, baby, we should get cleaned."

"Let me stay inside, love. Please. I feel like I'll want to go at it again in a while, just let me stay in." He muttered, his hands pressing against your hips to keep you close.

"You sure you don't need anything?" You asked again, knowing how needy he could get when he gets sleepy.

"Just you pressed up and around me. This is heaven."

A small laugh. How could you deny him?

Jungkook

You had loved every second of it. The gentle way he had kissed you on the sofa, and how he had carried you to bed. How delicately he had touched you and held you, how he had made love to you. It had all been amazing. Until the initial feelings of fondness and devotion gave way to a hunger deeper and more desperate. Then he had pushed you around, sitting himself up on the balls of his feet, dragging you up with him in the process. You could still feel the echo of the beastly groan he had emitted against your ear as he let your back slide down his chest, his sex entering you and reaching so deep inside you. Your head had rolled back against his shoulder as one of his hands grabbed your breast and played with your nipple.

“You like it, don’t you? You like me so deep inside you.” He had stated, his tone so arrogant. “No wonder you can never get enough of me.” He picked you up by the waist, using you as if you were nothing but a cocksleeve, dragging you up and down his dick. “That’s it. That’s what you like. Being a lazy princess and making me do all the work. You love it when I force you a little, don’t you.” He dropped you down with exceptional violence, moving one hand to squeeze your breast, the other angling your face towards him. “Answer me.”

“Yes.” You replied, almost unconsciously. You were willing to do whatever could please him, make him start again.

“Yes what?” He grabbed your other breast, his hand heavy and possessive.

“Yes, I adore when you use me.”

“That’s my little toy. So mature and composed, but so dirty. You love that I get all those naughty things you like.” The way he propped his hands behind his back and leaned on them shifted the angle once more, his hips snapping back and forth with a mind shattering intensity.

“Come on. Get it how you like it.” He freed one of his hands to slap your ass. It didn’t take that long for the both of you to orgasm, especially after he moved the hand on your chest upwards, his fingers merely resting around your neck, without even needing to hold it, while his other hand worked your clit matching the rhythm of the contractions of your insides.

He clinged to you almost desperately when his high subsided, his hold almost too tight. You were trying to compensate for the lack of contact during the latest round, your hands struggling to find any part of him that you could hold, until your fingers intertwined with his over your left breast.

“I thought I would lose you during the last month. I was never home.” You understood his insecurities. You also thought he would find someone more suitable to his career, someone who could understand what it means to belong to that world.

“I thought anyone could make you see how much of a shitty boyfriend I am.”

You let him continue.

“I thought you would meet a smart university kid at campus, or that cute barista at the coffee shop at the end of the street. I thought of how they would court you, all the attentions, the pretty dates, the small gifts. I thought of them taking you out for dinner, of them taking you home. Trying to kiss you. Sometimes, late at night, I asked myself if you would invite them upstairs. It always got me so fucking mad. Once I almost hit my personal trainer because I was thinking of that. He got mad, told me to keep my head in the game.” He was still inside you, you could feel his shaft throbbing softly, as if it was his heartbeat. Maybe it was just an impression. His head fell to your shoulder.

“I would never, and you know it.”

“I know, but some part of me can’t help but go there. If you could only see the way men look at you when you’re not watching. And our relationship being private only means that they don't know that you’re taken. Makes them think that they’re allowed to look at you like that. I feel so hopeless whenever they act all bold. I can’t be like that. I can’t give you the time and attentions they can give you. Because of who I am, because of me being so fucking shy...”

“I love you.” You said, as if it were a magic spell that could fix all his insecurities. You turned your head to look at him. “And right now you’re inside me. You’ve made me cum twice tonight, with nothing but your body, the way you moved on top of me, behind me, inside me.” He blushed a bit at that.

You loved talking with him after sex. It was so common for the two of you. Sex was like a key to open a secret place of vulnerability and intimacy. All the confessions Jungkook had offered you in bed, laying close to you, protected by you, had very often come in the aftermath of bliss. “I am with you,” you continued, leading him to lay on your side.

“I wanna stay inside you, but I also want to face you, look you in the eye.”

“Same here.” You needed to see his face.

“And I also need a snack.” He considered. He took a long pause. You waited for him to formulate his thought. “If you ever realised you’re no longer happy with me, you would tell me, right?”

“Of course I would tell you. However, I think you should know I don’t think that could happen in this life or in any on the next ones.”

He giggled. “I can’t wait to get you away from anyone. We should do like Namjoon hyung and his girlfriend: get on a private island for vacation. Wear nothing all day. Stay in bed for how long we want. Swim when we want. Make love under the stars. God, that’s heaven.”

“You would miss the guys, you know it.” You smiled knowingly.

“Just a week or so. A quick getaway.” Some part of his mind was already plotting.

“I’ll see what I can do. But would you resist without working out?”

“We could workout together,” he mused naively.

“Yeah, yeah...” you conceded, voice dripping in irony.

“Can I carry you to the kitchen to grab a snack?”

“Maybe if you turned me around and I held on you like a koala bear?” You chuckled

“Do you think that if I lay on my back and you sit up and turn around I can get you to climb me like a koala-bear without me having to get out of you?” He asked, the honesty in his voice getting you to fully laugh out loud.

“I think that’s called corkscrew — it’s a corkscrew if you turn around me… whatever” You thought out loud.

“Let’s try! Ready? Three, two, one, Go!” You both laughed at your attempt, joy filling your hearts.

—————the following morning —————

“So, uhm...”

“No.”

“But—”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Guk, listen, I love you, but you’re not dragging me to the gym at eight a.m. on a Sunday morning after what we did last night.”

“But I love you. Like, a lot.”

“No amount of love will ever fix the organs you so thoroughly rearranged last night.”

“I’m sorry.” He looked like a scolded puppy. “But it’s not like you didn’t like it. You actually begged for it at some point.”

“So rude of you to remind me of that.”

“Sorry. I love you.” He kissed the tip of your nose.

“I love you too. Now go back to sleep.”

“Okay.” He palmed your chest lovingly and closed his eyes again.

#bangtan sonyeondan #bts imagine #bts reaction #bts #jimin x reader #taehyung x reader #jungkook x reader #jimin imagine #taehyung imagi #jungkook imagine

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edie-k · 4 years ago

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Legally Ginger Chapter 4 (Romione, PG-13)

Title: Legal Ginger, Chapter 4 "Not Completely Unfortunate Looking"

Pairing: Romione, minor Ron/Astoria, Harry/Astoria

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Ron makes his first East Coast friend

Thanks adnei for all the beta help!

Bolded dialogue plus the chapter title are verbatim or very very heavily ripped from the movie.

Thank you for all your comments last chapter! I think the fun of these RomCom inspired fics is to surprise you with what character ends up where.

And to be clear, I love Harry - not as much as Ron but I am one of these weirdos that somehow thinks the main character is underrated in his own series. But the very few times Harry was mad at Ron, he knew how to cut and I'm going to have some fun with that. I doubt you'll hate Harry when this story is complete. But you might at the end of next chapter.

Click below or follow the link to AO3!

Ron stormed back to his room, struggling with the lock as his hands shook. After finally getting the door open, he quickly grabbed for Pig’s leash. The pug has out of his bed and at Ron’s feet in a flash.

Ron, who didn’t have patience for Pig’s short legs today, scooped him up and stomped down the hall and out to the parking lot. He jerked open the door to his Escape and deposited Pig in the passenger’s seat before taking a deep breath.

Pig tilted his head quizzically.

“We need to hit something.”

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

After driving about 10 miles, Ron spotted it. A large building that had seen better days with steel cages and a dilapidated miniature golf course outside. The weathered sign outside it said “Hogs Head Sports Center and Pub”.

He cut through two lanes of traffic to turn into the mostly empty parking lot. After putting the car in park, he took a second to dig for quarters in his center console but came up empty. “Shit,” he sighed.

Ron grabbed Pig’s leash and the dog hopped down to follow him towards the building.

Upon entering, Ron found the inside to be about as unkempt as the outside but it was surprisingly clean. Another pleasant surprise was that there was a bar to the right with a few grizzled townies eating nachos and being served drafts by a grumpy looking bearded bartender while they watched Sportscenter on a small flat screen. In the back was a sole batting cage, a few arcade machines and a beat up door with a paper taped to it that said “Simulator in Use”. To the left, a small counter with golf clubs, colored golf balls, and tiny pencils.

Behind the counter was the biggest man Ron had ever seen in real life and he’d been lucky enough to meet three Lakers, two Warriors, and a Ram. Similar to the bartender, he had unkempt hair and a wild beard but unlike the old guy slinging drinks, he was middle aged and his face split in a big smile upon seeing Ron.

“Hello,” the giant of a man greeted him. “What’s doing?”

“I need some quarters for the cages,” Ron said, holding out a $5.

“Sure,” the man agreed and opened the cash register.

“Thanks,” Ron muttered and started to walk out the door before stopping short. “Shit.”

“Something wrong?”

“I don’t have my bat,” Ron said, shaking his head.

“Came to the cages without a bat?” the guy said, his accent so thick that Ron had to pause to process before answering.

“Uh yeah. I sort of just needed to find something to hit that wasn’t…” Ron trailed off.

“The other guy?” The giant man finished his sentence with a chuckle.

Ron laughed. “Pretty much.”

The man walked into the back room and came out with two worn bats. “I’ve been there,” he said, handing Ron one.

“Thanks.”

“You look like you could use some company,” the man said.

Ron considered for a moment. He’d been lonely as hell this week. Growing up with six siblings, living in a fraternity house… he wasn’t used to all this time to himself. And this guy was only the second genuine conversation he’d had since arriving in Boston.

“Sure,” he replied. “My name’s Ron.”

The man outstretched a giant hand. “Everyone calls me Hagrid.”

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

“We hooked up the night before graduation and she’s already engaged to this d-bag?”

“I don’t get it,” Hagrid said. “What’s so great about this guy?”

Ron had spent the last half hour spilling his life story while hitting balls off the fastest pitching machine in the cages. Hagrid had proved himself to be a captive and empathetic audience - almost like talking with one of his older brothers.

Ron shrugged. “He’s obviously smart.”

“Why? Cause he got into Harvard? So did you. Better looking than you?”

“I mean, he’s a little scrawny. If I’d actually been dumb enough to hit him, I’d have won before he even knew we were fighting but he’s decent looking enough. I’ve got a sister and he’s her type.”

“He seems like a total asshole so no way he’s got you beat on personality,” Hagrid said.

Ron laughed. “You’ve known me for forty minutes!”

Now Hagrid shrugged. “Lived here my whole life. Not to paint with too broad a brush but there aren’t a lot of Harvard kids kicking back with the counter guy at a rec center. You check out.”

“That’s probably true from what I’ve seen,” Ron agreed. “But I’m not really a Harvard kid. I just...I actually don’t know what I expected.”

“You expected to spend the rest of your lives together! I don’t get why it’s so hard. Isn’t that what all the TV shows tell us women want? My girl, Olympe, she dumped me a few months back. She took everything. Our home, the Dunkie’s rewards, my baby Fangs…”

“Fangs?”

“Best mutt there is,” Hagrid said. “Although this guy’s pretty great.” Hagrid leaned down to scratch the Pig’s ears.

“I'm sorry, that sucks,” Ron replied, shaking his head.

“It happens all the time,” Hagrid shrugged. “You ready for a beer?”

“Always,” agreed Ron and they walked back toward the main building.

Upon entering the building, Ron set his bat on the counter. “What’s the old man got on tap?”

When Hagrid didn’t immediately reply, Ron turned to look at him. He was standing frozen, staring across the room where an attractive middle aged brunette woman in a polo shirt and jeans was pushing an empty dolley out from behind the bar and towards them.

“Hi, Hagrid,” she said with a smile. Ron turned to grab the door and hold it open for her.

“Uh, yeah, uh hi,” stammered Hagrid. He tried to slide his bat on the counter but only succeeded in knocking the one Ron used to the floor with a loud clatter.

She waved as she left the building.

“Could I be any more goddamn spastic?” Hagrid bemoaned. Ron gave a sympathetic wince. “Now I really need that drink.”

Ron followed him over to the bar and slid onto the stool next to him.

“Abe? Can we get a couple?”

The bearded old man behind the bar grunted and poured them two drafts.

Hagrid took a sip and shook his head. “This women stuff is hard. Never thought I’d be in this position at my age. But you’re still young. Doesn’t have to be this difficult for you. Smart guy, good guy, athletic guy like you. You’d find another girl in no time.”

“I mean, maybe, but Astoria…. she’s worth fighting for, you know?”

“Well, engaged ain’t married,” said Hagrid. “Never, ever, ever give up.”

Ron burst out laughing. “That’s Michael Scott advice!”

“Eh, it worked out for Jim and Pam,” insisted Hagrid.

“Well, I’m not giving up yet, so don’t worry.”

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

Ron entered his first class Tuesday morning, feeling much more confident. After leaving Hogs Head with a stomach full of greasy nachos, Hagrid’s number, and an offer to text anytime, he'd returned to campus and poured over all the syllabi and orientation packets again. He felt confident that he’d done the pre-work needed to enter his Criminal Law class.

He plunked down in his seat and looked around. In front of him sat Astoria and what’s his face. Harry had his arm draped behind the back of her chair.

Engaged ain’t married. Engaged ain’t married. He repeated to himself.

In addition to his studying last night, he had tried to scour social media to see if there was a wedding date set, but the news seemed totally non-existent. On a whim, he had texted Lavender. Lavender had said she was working for LiveNation post graduation but Ron wondered if she’d actually joined the FBI - thirty minutes later, she had emailed him a whole mess of screenshots from various social media accounts, college newsletters, and local newspapers. He thought he might even have Harry’s social security number in the file. The only thing he cared about was that she had confirmed there was no date set and that they intended on a long engagement.

“Hem, hem.”

The noise came from a small woman standing at the front of the hall. She had a flat face and her style of dress was atrocious - fluffy pink cardigan over a shapeless tan shift dress. He vowed to get a discrete picture of her to throw in the group chat.

“Welcome to Criminal Law. I am Professor Dolores Umbridge. I have high expectations of how you will perform and how you will conduct yourself in my class. I expect you to push yourselves to excel and outperform your classmates and yourselves. And bear in mind, performing well this year will have you well placed for one of four highly regarded internships at my firm next year where you will be applying your skills to real world cases.”

“Now, let’s commence with our usual torture,” she said. She studied a class roster.

Please not me. But I can do it. But also, please not me.

“Mr. Weasley.”

Goddamn it.

“Would you prefer your client have committed a crime malum in se or malum prohibitum?” Professor Umbridge asked.

“Well,” he said carefully. “I prefer they not have committed the crime at all.”

The rest of the class snickered.

“That is the dream, Mr. Weasley,” she said with a wry smile. She looked down at the roster again. “What about you, Mr. Potter?”

“Malum prohibitum,” he said confidently. “I’d rather they commit a regulatory infraction as opposed to a dangerous crime.”

“Well said, Mr. Potter,” Professor Umbridge replied. “Let’s take a closer look at malum prohibitum, shall we?”

Harry shot a glance back at Ron over his shoulder and gave him a shit eating grin before running his fingers up and down Stori’s arm.

We’re in the middle of fucking class and he’s mauling her like they’re at a kegger.

Before he could think better of it, Ron raised his hand.

“Oh,” said Professor Umbridge. “You had a question Mr. Weasley?”

“No,” said Ron. “I just changed my mind. I’ll take the dangerous criminal. Unlike Potter, a challenge has never scared me.”

Harry whipped his head around to glare at Ron.

“Exactly the spirit I like to see, Mr. Weasley,” Umbridge said approvingly.

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

“Come on boy,” said Ron, urging Pig along down the stairs of the dorms.

The semester was now three weeks old. Ron was dutifully completing his reading each night and when McGonagall had come back at him again with a question, he had managed to piece together an answer that satisfied her.

Campus life, however, had continued to be fairly lonely for him. His debacle in McGonagall’s class had spread like wildfire and he’d been shunned from every study group he approached. He’d taken to reviewing in the bar at the Hogs Head for the company. He wasn’t sure if Hagrid liked him or Pig better but at least there was one place in town they were always welcome.

“I didn’t know pets were allowed in student housing,” he heard a voice say.

Ron glanced up to see a face that looked somewhat familiar to him. After a tick, he recognized the woman speaking as the same one who had reassured him that first day of classes.

“Service animals are,” he told her.

She looked at him skeptically, brushing her voluminous hair behind her ears. “Is he a service animal?”

“He provides services,” Ron said, giving her a cocky grin.

She pursed her lips as though she was trying not to smile. “Such as?”

“Getting the attention of beautiful women,” Ron answered.

The brunette stood up and crossed her arms against her chest but there was really no hiding her obvious amusement. “Wow.” She shook her head and started to walk away.

“Come on, that was a good line, right?” Ron called after her.

She stopped and looked back at him. “I just didn’t think that was an area that you needed assistance in,” she said slyly, before walking away.

Shit, what a response.

He grinned, watching her go. He was about to call and ask her name - after all, she was the friendliest person on the campus - when he caught a glimpse of Astoria out of the corner of his eye. She was standing about twenty feet away with fucking Harry’s arm draped around her shoulders, talking to a couple of other students. For fuck’s sake, is she full of helium now? He’s constantly got an arm around her to weigh her down. But she was watching Ron through narrowed eyes.

Ron gave a small wave and Stori blushed, clearly embarrassed that she was caught. At that moment, Harry seemed to notice his fiancée was distracted and glanced in Ron’s direction. He threw Ron one of his patented spoiled rich dick smirks. Ron smirked right back and winked.

I’m not as out of the picture as you think. We’ll see who wins this one.

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

Ron was just stepping out of the bathroom when he spotted his phone lighting up.

Fred

FaceTime as soon as you can!

He sighed, threw on a shirt, and dialed his brother.

Fred’s face appeared before him. Sort of. Wherever he was was dark, loud and full of strobe lights.

“What’s going on?” Ron asked.

“We’re celebrating!” shouted Fred. The camera turned and Ron suddenly saw a whole slew of his friends.

Parvati came into view. “Seamus proposed and Lav said yes!”

Over her right shoulder, Ron spotted the aforementioned couple kissing. Over Parvati’s left shoulder though, he saw…

“Are you at a strip club?” Ron asked.

“Of course!” yelled George. “It’s 6pm on a Monday. Half price drinks and free buffet at Diamond’s!”

“I just bought a ring, I gotta pay for a wedding, and student loans are coming due,” Seamus said, now closer to the camera. Lavender’s face wasn’t in view but he assumed the hand with the ring on screen belonged to her.

“Congrats buddy,” Ron said, feeling a sting.

“June 9th. I need you as one of my groomsmen, right? Lavender’s first cousin is like six two. If she wears heels, only you can match up to her.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Ron assured him.

“Ron! Did that stuff help? Has she dumped that douche yet?” Lavender screamed, not aware of just how close she was to the mic.

“Uh, I’m making progress,” Ron said.

“Almost October bro,” George said. “If anyone can make it work, you can.”

“Or just come home!” he heard his sister shout from far away.

“I’ll see you all soon,” Ron said. “Have fun.”

“I’ll slip Destiny a $5 and tell her it’s from you in case you change your mind,” Ginny called. Then the screen went black.

God, he missed his friends, his family. He missed having a bunch of guys at the frat to hang out with at the drop of a hat. He missed having a dozen teammates, available for a run at the drop of a hat. He missed Tim, the coffee cart guy who always knew his correct coffee/milk/syrup ratio.

He didn’t think Harvard would be easy. He didn’t think that it would be easy to get Astoria back. But he assumed making friends would be easy. He didn’t even remember how he made friends at CULA - did he even have to try? He sighed and picked up Pig’s leash, ready to take him for one last walk.

“It’s a Cambridge tradition - pass it along to everyone,” he heard someone say down the hall. “8 o’clock tomorrow at Gord’s Pub”

“What tradition?” Ron asked, coming around the corner. “Oh.”

There he was, face to face, with Harry Potter.

“Uh, sorry,” said Ron. “I heard the word pub.”

Harry looked at him and then gave a slight smile. “Yeah, man. There’s a trivia night at Gord’s Pub tomorrow night. It’s sort of a law school tradition to hit it up.”

“Trivia night, huh?” Ron asked.

“Yeah, the guy who does it prides himself on coming up with the most difficult questions he can. It’s impossible to win. Everyone completely bombs on every question so everyone just gets drunk by the second half. I hear it’s a pretty good night,” Harry said.

“Cool,” said Ron awkwardly.

“You should stop by. I’m sure there’ll be a team you can jump onto,” Harry suggested.

“Yeah, yeah, maybe I will,” Ron said.

“Cool dog,” Harry said, pointing at Pig.

“Uh, thanks. Have a good night,” Ron said, walking away.

Am I so desperate for friends that I’m hanging out with this douche? I guess so.

#romione fanfic #au romione #ron x hermione #ron and hermione #hp fanfic #rom com

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lihimsidhe · 3 years ago

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Full Review: https://youtu.be/nMBgmV3QMwY

Summary

Stories Untold is a sci fi psychological horror adventure game released in 2017 by the studio No Code Lt and published by Devolver Digital.(1) Adventure games are characterized by exploring, puzzle solving, and narrative interactions with game characters. (2) The ‘adventure’ label hails from the 1st known adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure developed during the 1970’s. (3). In Stories Untold the player will do mostly 3 things: enter text into a writing prompt and hope what they entered progresses the game forward (text adventure), click around the environment to find interactive elements and utilize these elements in a specific order (point and click), and do some very light exploration.

Stories Untold’s origins lay in Ludum Dare; an event where game developers around the world challenge themselves to make a game from scratch in just a few days aka a ‘game jam’. (4) House Abandon was the product of such a game jam. (5) House Abandon would prove to be so well received that it is the very spark that would grow to become Stories Untold. (6). House Abandon became just one of the four stories featured in Stories Untold.

Each story has the player assume the role of an unidentified person using various electronic equipment ranging from locations that include an abandoned house, a laboratory, and a remote radio station in a blizzard. There is a fourth chapter but to explain its location and tasks can easily wade deep into spoiler territory.

It’s very difficult to reveal if this game attempts to execute on a specific message or not without spoilers. So treading as carefully as I can I will say that yes there is a message to be found here. A tragic takeaway that can hit hard for some players who put in the work to leave no narrative stone unturned.

Analysis

Disclaimer: I’m not a fan of puzzle games, or puzzles in games. They too often devolve into ‘guess what the developer was thinking’. More on this in a bit. Back to the regularly scheduled program:

The development studio behind Stories Untold, No Code Ltd, describes the game as the following:

“Four Stories. One Nightmare.

From the prototype 'The House Abandon' comes the critically acclaimed, and BAFTA winning, 'Stories Untold', the latest madness from No Code. Four short stories, tied together in a complex web of psychological-horror, intense visuals and genre-bending adventures.” How does this game execute on these selling points? Let’s address the last line first: genre-bending adventures. In my playthrough I walked in expecting a fairly basic adventure game with excellent presentation and left having experienced that same notion. This is all to say that Stories Untold, as far as I can tell, is not bending any genres.

The text adventure portion of Stories Untold doesn’t make a noticeable departure from one of the earliest text entry experiences ELIZA; a program created in the 1970’s that simulates a psychologist by responding to a user’s text entries (7). In fact after having played around with some ELIZA clones online (8) I’d say that Stories Untold actually underdelivers in this genre compared to ELIZA that was developed nearly fifty years ago. Point and click began with the game Enchanted Scepters in 1984 released on the Mac (9). In that game you do much the same as you do in Stories Untold: Moving your cursor to find an interactive point that hopefully drives the game forward. An activity unfavorably described as ‘pixel hunting’.

While I do concede that Stories Untold executes well enough on its mechanics would I also concede it is genre bending? Absolutely not. Mechanically speaking it falls very strictly within its genre.

As for the intense visuals the game advertises it has? I’m strongly inclined to agree. This game’s visuals are a love letter to the 80’s. It’s as if the game reached into the past and brought a portion of that era forward in time both temporally and visually.

Stories Untold also executes on psychological-horror aspects as well. There were times I was genuinely frightened both via jump scares and/or the dense atmosphere the game draws the player into. This game evoked feelings of fear, mystery, and foreboding of what was behind the next event.

“It is up to the designer to provide the appropriate information to make the product understandable and usable. Most important is the provision of a good conceptual model that guides the user when things go wrong.” (10) -Don Norman

The promise of a text adventure sounds great on paper: enter some text and the game reacts to what one entered driving the player’s progress forward. Just the thought of that fills my mind with excitement at being able to utilize my conversational skills I’ve learned in life to interact with a game sounds incredible The thing is, and the reason I’m personally not a fan of puzzle games is that they almost always seem like playing a game of ‘guess what the developer was thinking’ instead of the player applying their common sense to solve a puzzle.

If for example in a text adventure game you are trying to walk around a house you simply typing ‘walk around the house’ may or may not work. Perhaps the developer perceived ‘walk into yard’ as walking around the house. For me this creates a schism where it stops being about me vs the game and instead becomes a battle of how my exact wording for doing something very simple differs in verbage in how the developer would write it. So instead of walking around the house and losing myself in the story I’m now trying to guess what the developer thinks are the right words to say. What compounds this here is that the feedback is binary; either what I typed works or it doesn’t and I get the equivalent of an error message that doesn’t offer any guidance on exactly what the developer was thinking. This ‘guess what the developer was thinking’ issue wasn’t as pronounced in the point and click sections of the game. These were almost always tests on one’s observational skills and parsing over every little detail until the path forward reveals itself. Some of the puzzles I was willing to endure and some… I just looked up a walkthrough to solve them so I could get back to enjoying the game’s incredible atmosphere. The crazy thing about Stories Untold is me as a player desperately trying to scrutinize every little detail to move forward shares a strong connection to the game’s narrative. I really appreciate that despite my misgivings with this game’s puzzles.

As for the game’s narrative itself… I say I left the game mostly satisfied. Throughout the game the music, visuals, and gameplay really got my mind racing with the possibilities of the world that was spilling out before me. “Where could this story be leading?”, I excitedly pondered. And sometimes I was even afraid the game would provide an answer. Seeing how it was resolved was a bit underwhelming. I won’t lie. I went from a mind racing with possibilities to a flat, “Oh it’s that? Well that’s something I guess.”

If there was one thing I wish this game did differently it would have been to have focused entirely on the text entry mechanic presented in House Abandon. I said before I went and played with some ELIZA programs online and I loved that there was no failure state. The conversation just continued even if the code emulating a human would sometimes spout nonsense. I don’t expect anyone, let alone Stories Untold, to conjure up a fully realized artificial intelligence to amuse me for my 3 hour adventure game. But I can’t help but muse about a more realized text entry loop.

This game has 12 total achievements to earn. (11) Since the game utilizes a level select system, there are no missable achievements. Most achievements are earned by just progressing through the game. The ones that aren’t awarded in this manner are obtained by light exploration and finding some collectibles. All in all very easy to 100% in one sitting.

Significance

Stories Untold has received several notable awards (12) including British Academy of Film and Television Arts Game of the Year in 2017 (13).

Steam Reviews has it sitting at ‘very positive’(1) while Metacritic has it at a 7.0/10 user score. (14)

It has sold at least over 100,000 copies on Steam (15). If Steam sales remained roughly the same on the other platforms it was ported to (Nintendo Switch, Playstation, Xbox) that would imply at least a few hundred thousand people have decided to enter the world this game provides. While adventure games have drastically changed since the days of Colossal Cave Adventure with games like The Walking Dead and Until Dawn, text adventures have mostly fallen out of mainstream gaming discourse. For that reason the fact that Stories Untold managed to break through in the way it did favors it being a touchstone for many adventure and text adventure games going forward.

Recommendation

Ask yourself the following: Do you like arbitrary puzzles? Do you mind some psychological horror in your entertainment? Do you ever wish you could just play through chapters in your favorite book? If you answered yes to both these questions then this game was made for you.

What if you’re like me and you can barely stand puzzles in games because they seem to evoke a ‘guess what the developer was thinking’ type of feeling?

I would still recommend this game. The reality of the game is that it can be completed in just a few hours. When you get stuck, look up a guide, solve your roadblock, and get back to enjoying this game’s stellar atmosphere. It’s really worth experiencing. Especially if you lived through and/or are a fan of the 80’s

If you’re completely puzzle adverse but still enjoy interactive narrative? It might be worth looking up a playthrough or livestream.

Sources

1. Dev & Publisher: Stories Untold on Steam (steampowered.com)

2. Adventure Game Def: https://www.britannica.com/topic/electronic-adventure-game

3. colossal cave adventure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure

4. ludum dare: https://ldjam.com

5. game jam: http://www.nocodestudio.com/development-updates/2016/9/5/the-house-abandon

6. dev interview: https://www.pcgamer.com/crafting-the-unique-genre-defying-horror-of-stories-untold/

7. ELIZA (origins): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00146-018-0825-9

8. ELIZA (interactable): http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/eliza.htm

9. 1st point click game: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/01/history-of-graphic-adventures/

10. Don Norman: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E257T6C/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_2BZA3S6D0KPFSKXFKHVM

11. Achievement List: Steam Community :: Stories Untold :: LihimSidhe

12. Various Awards: http://www.nocodestudio.com/nocodegames

13. BAFTA: https://www.bafta.org/media-centre/press-releases/british-academy-scotland-awards-2017-winners-announced

14. Metacritic: https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/stories-untold

15. sales: http://www.nocodestudio.com/development-updates/2017/9/21/stories-untold-news-patch-indiecade-awards

#storiesuntold #nocode #devolverdigital #videogames #sciencefiction #horror #adventure #scifi #horrorgames #horrorgame #textadventure #videogame #enchantedscepters #ELIZA #colossalcaveadventure #adventuregames #adventuregame #scienceficitiongame

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occasionalhumor · 3 years ago

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Makumakuren Chapter 1

Chapter Art by @corvaous (see below)

Also available on AO3

[CW: Blood, abuse+violence (various), illegal activity]

Summary: An AU where Keigo was born with his mom’s quirk. His dad is a notorious criminal and known for stealing precious jewelry and fine art. The Takami Thief is a small team that rules the underworld with valuable items and, with the help of the Tokoyami family, has expanded internationally. But what happens if Keigo grows up with a collection of golden pining eyes instead of large red wings?

Chapter 1: Yosuzume: The Takami Thief

Tucked away in the ceiling raft, keys clacked as Tomie’s nailed fingers formatted a 3D map of the building. A few floating eyeballs twisted and rotated like targeting orbs, watching for security as a few others zoomed down hallways.

“Almost done?” A low voice spoke over her earpiece.

“Mhm.” Tomie responded with a hushed moan.

The free eyeballs made their way back to her, floating back around her body. She closed the lid of the laptop, securing the 3D model of the building, as well as the target location. She slipped her way over the berm to find her husband, Takami Kanaye, waiting on the cement ledge.

“Took you long enough.” He grumbled, red feathered forearms puffing in from the breeze of the high tower. The 2AM city lights illuminated his hardened expression.

Tomie stared at him with dull eyes and spoke quietly, “...here’s the map.”

He snatched the laptop from her hand and opened the model. The detailed map gave them an advantage over the security measures of the building. Cameras and laser traps were labeled as well as the shortest distance to the target. Of course, the timing of patrols and a simulated dot to show their routes.

Kanaye smirked and ran his fingers through her plush hair. He gripped a fistful of her hair and dragged her limp head in circles, “that’s my downy girl. This pay out is going to be fucking huge. You've earned your share, Tomie.”

Tomie took his loving aggression as she always did. Something about the way he grabbed her, the way he praised the use of her quirk, the security he provided with money and a place, the way he took care of everything for her, she got off on it despite his abuse.

He released his grip with a small shove, pushing her head away from him, “Let’s rest up and get to work tonight.”

The Takami’s were suited in their stealth gear, fitted in matte black long sleeved shirts and blak cargo pants. Kanaye packed a duffle bag with tools, a case of wireless earpieces, and the computerized map. Tomie followed closely behind him, using her eyeballs to scan the area for security.

Kanaye leapt off the rooftop onto the next building, using his hardened feathers to stabilize himself on the structure. He reached his hand out for Tomie, who leapt off the ledge, and reached for his palm. He hoisted his wife up aggressively, tossing her over the edge onto the rooftop.

He climbed his way up and tossed the black canvas bag in front of her, “get set up.”

Tomie unzipped the bag gingerly, “not going to help?”

“No, I’m about to finish the job. Set me up and pull your weight, yeah?” He huffed before mumbling under his breath, “... worthless bitch. ”

Tomie flinched with a bout of anxiety at the comment, as she unpacked some technical instruments, the computer with the 3D model, a hand held small suction, and an amber marble with a red feather in the center of a black cat-eye.

She cleaned the concave piece with an alcohol wipe and lazily handed it to Kanaye. He stuffed the laser into a cylindrical pouch on his belt and scratched the marble from the ground. He rolled it between his fingers before chuckling and placing it into his breast pocket.

Tomie opened the computer and placed an earpiece around the cartilage of her ear. She handed Kanaye a matching piece and played some testing beeps.

“I don’t hear anything, Tomie. Don’t tell me you fucked up and broke the comms.” He gritted, grabbing the collar of her shirt, “I swear to the Gods, cunt , if you-...”

He was interrupted by Tomie handing him another earpiece. He shoved her forward by her collar and huffed. After he placed the tech in his ear, she played the testing audio again. He looked down at her disgusted and humphed while taking a few steps to the edge of the building.

“If this is an easy job, you’ll get a good fucking for all your hard work. If not…” He smirked over his shoulder, “...you’ll get a good beating. But you’d like that, right? You fuck up missions on purpose so I beat you? Like the whore you are.”

Tomie didn’t answer, she stared at Kanaye blankly until he turned to her. His chest puffed out and he furrowed his eyebrows, “not going to answer me? Then maybe I should beat you first.”

He took two large strides toward her before she spoke coldly, “I would like to be rewarded for an easy job.”

He stopped in his tracks and stood straight, “Good.” Kanaye closed the distance with soft steps and knelt to Tomie on the ground, “I hate punishing you, it hurts me more than it hurts you.”

“I know, everything you do is what’s best for me... For my health, my safety, and my security.” She mumbled as he planted a peck onto her forehead.

“That’s right, my downy little girl.” He gripped the back of her neck tightly between the pads of his fingers, “Don’t forget who you owe your body to.”

There was a long pause before Kanaye brought his hand across Tomie’s cheek in a small, yet forceful, slap. “Give me your eyes, bitch. We’re late.”

Tomie glazed over, floating a set of three eyes to follow Kanaye as he began his descent into the building through a vent. Tomie curled up, folding her legs, and resting the laptop in her lap. She watched as a dot moved slowly on the 3D model, showing where Kanaye is located.

A bout of static filled Tomie’s ear, “alright, GPS. Where to?”

Tomie fed him directions to the jewelry gallery. Kenaye paused, “where are the traps?”

Tomie took a moment, “pressure sensor rimming the case, take the glass with you. The floor has a rotating electric tripwire. Wait for my signal, I’m going to scout it to check the timing.”

“Quickly, Tomie.” He huffed in frustration.

Tomie’s eyeball glided across the open space, close to the ceiling until she spotted the green ray rotating slowly across the floor.

“From its current position, you’ll have….93 seconds.” She stated.

“That’s enough time.” Kanaye dropped from the vent with a thud of his heavy boots.

He ran his fingers through his greasy hair and hardened a crimson feather, plucking it from his forearm. He scraped the feather over the glass in a circular motion to score and pulled the suction from his pouch. He placed the piece of rubber over the glass and ran his sharpened feather another pass over the score. Kanaye applied a little pressure and the glass easily released itself.

Kanaye smirked and slid the glass off the suction, placing it in his pocket. He eyed the gold pocket watch in the blistering white case. The Breguet Antique Number 2667 glistened its $4.5 million watch face on the rotating pillow as he reached into the case and gingerly pulled the it from the pedestal.

“20 seconds, Kanaye.” Tomie’s static voice spoke in his ear.

“Package secure, Tomie. You fucking earned it tonight.” He mumbled placing the watch in a small velvet bag and into the crossbody satchel. He pulled the marble calling card from his breast pocket and placed it in the viewing case.

He jumped back up into the vent and was directed back to the rooftop where Tomie was waiting. The two packed their gear and made their way back to the hotel. But not without warranting some aggressively lewd statements from Kanaye.

Kanaye escorted Tomie into their modest hideaway and he dropped the satchel and tech bag on the table. He grabbed Tomie’s arm firmly, not allowing her to get too far and yanked her into him.

He squeezed her rear, taking her small cheek into the palm of his hand. He dug his nails through the thick fabric, while squeezing the back of her neck with his other hand. Almost unwelcomed, he shoved his tongue down her throat until he laid a resounding smack on her ass and she opened her mouth for him to ravage.

Tomie blanked, her body defaulted and allowed Kanaye to do as he wanted. He stumbled them to the bed, in a series of sloppy backsteps. Kanaye shoved her onto the stiff sheets and flipped her, forcing her hips up.

He tugged at her pants, pulling them over her small and bony structure. After he could see her skin, he pulled his half-erection from his pants and found a home for another slap on her bare body.

“It’s only good when you moan, bitch.” He tugged himself twice before slipping his head in raw and dry.

The thing is, it did feel good, only after a while. Tomie’s forced and faked whimpers turned into deep moans to accommodate his aggression and girth. She loved how he felt inside, but only after proper attention to her sex, which she never received.

Within minutes, he was quickening the pace and pulled her hair, bringing her neck into his palm. He got off on her gasping, the way her throat contracted in his hand as he applied more pressure.

He brought her close to hear her cries until he finished himself with a final pump inside her.

Uncaring he dumped her body, letting it hit the slightly wrinkled sheets as he undressed to shower.

Tomie gently tapped the traditional shoji door with a gold plaque etched Tokoyami , “sumimasen…Fumiko-San?”

A short and slender woman with a raven shaped face slid the shoji open and ushered her inside, “hello Tomie-San! Looking for another job? Is Kanaye-San with you because Tsukiya is at the meetup apartment.”

“I actually came to talk with you. Kanaye is out of town with another gang.” Tomie squeezed the hem of her cardigan.

“Of course, you’re a long time friend! Let me get some tea and we can catch up!” Fumiko disappeared into the kitchen to collect a Tokoyami custom tetsubin (cast-iron kettle), a large vase of water, tea leaves in a porcelain dish and two tea cups.

Fumiko brought the kit to the irori (sunken hearth) where Tomie sat. She filled the kettle with it’s first round of water, bringing it to a slow boil. The women sat in silence for a while, absorbing the company.

Fumiko’s porcelain skin peeked from her sleeves, her raven face analyzed Tomie’s body. She took account of the bruises that were barely hidden on her forearm.

“How have you been Tomie?” Fumiko asked, replacing the boiling water with fresh water and tea leaves. She placed the kettle back over the flame to officially prepare the tea.

“Fine. Lots of jobs, thanks to the Shadow Mafia.” Tomie smiled.

“Tsukiya does all the work finding the connections for you and Kanaye. You are the greatest thieves in the underworld. To be frank, you’re a hot commodity by some of the big names across Japan…” Fumiko paused, to flip the cups over, “...and with this new deal, maybe worldwide.”

Tomie chuckled, “it’s an honor to work with you. Do you really think we could get international contract?”

Fumiko scrunched her nose in disbelief, “oh absolutely! How could you not? You’re clean on jobs, efficient, and The Takami Thief is murmured as a thing to be feared. You and Kanaye will have so many jobs to choose from. Dealer’s choice!”

Tomie paused, taking in her compliments. She gripped her cardigan that lay over her thighs, “I don’t know how well that will work…” She leaned onto her knees.

Fumiko pulled the boiling tea from the flame and poured it into the cups. She gently handed one to Tomie and pointed to her bruised arm, “are you planning to leave?”

There was a dense bout of silence before Fumiko continued, “are you planning on getting out of your marriage, Tsukiya can help. We can have our prediction team, Dark Shadow, watch over you. Neither of us like that Kanaye beats yo-...”

“I’m pregnant.” Tomie muttered in a dry and cold tone.

Chapter 2 available August 20th

#hawks #bnha hawks #hawks mha #mha #bnha #bnha fanfiction #bnha au #mha au #keigo takami #mha takami keigo #keigo au #keigo takami au #takami keigo #takami keigo au #hawks bnha au #tomie takami

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junejalow · 4 years ago

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"Is everything okay?"

This fic is for thicciq who requested IQ/GSG9 with the prompt "Is everything okay?"

Honestly took me awhile to come up with something for this but I hope this is alright <3 Thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

The last two months had been hectic and rushed, It seemed like once a team was dropped off, another was being picked up at the same time. The White Masks were pulling one stunt after another. Everything seemed to be on the table right now, hostage situations, bomb threats, bank robberies, networks being hacked for information, well known people being targeted for assassination. The world was on high alert and for good reasons, they had never been hit like this back to back. It was almost like a last ditch effort to make a push against the world but they were also having trouble getting past Rainbow who shielded and protected everything and everyone they could from the terrorist's. But this is what Rainbow was brought back for, to serve and protect. IQ let a few thoughts linger, she loved her job and her teammates. Monika wouldn't give up her position for anything. This was her perfect area to work in, she could be her best with Rainbow and she was never alone. She rubbed at her tired eyes as she updated her Spectre, it had glitched out on her last deployment and it nearly cost her and Capitao their lives despite the injured ankle she gained from the C4 blast that rocked them. He didn't hold it against her, blaming it on the jammer the terrorist had set up to block them out from Ash and Thermite who had overseen the mission.

Her gaze settled on the crutches resting against the work table beside her as the dull ache in her ankle bit at her as a reminder that her gadget wasn't always reliable but she needed it to be. Never again, I won't let them jam my device again. IQ though to herself as she got back to work once the update finished, she was applying a thicker cover to the device to protect the electronics inside it. It also didn't help she currently had no one else from the GSG 9 to hang out with. Blitz, Glaz, Ace, Ying and Jackal were currently out on a hostage rescue operation somewhere in Florida while Bandit, Warden, Clash, Rook and Castle were out defending a VIP in Greenland that had been under an assassin's scope for a while now. Jager was busy flying teams to and from base, taking small naps in between the trips in his helicopter. She wished she could at least keep the pilot company but she had no flying experience and wouldn't be of any help to him. The door to the workshop suddenly swung open, causing the German woman to glance up from her work. She was greeted by Twitch who held two cups of steaming coffee. The French woman walked over and handed her a cup, earning a quiet thank you and smile. They simply sat in silence for a bit, Emmanuelle could easily find most of the operator's even if they didn't want to be found and could cheer them up within minutes of simply chatting or sitting with them with an offering of snacks and a drink but considering it was still very early in the morning snacks were out of the question. Doc would fuss at them about eating properly and avoid snacking or forcing them to do extra training with Rook and Montagne to work it off. Either way Twitch always waited for the other to speak first, most were glad for that but IQ wasn't sure what to say. She missed her team, all of them. She was out of the rotation for missions and resting for the other's she was sure would happen. "You are worried about them, yes?" Twitch asked with a smile, she had already been fully aware of the reason IQ stayed in certain parts of the base.

The workshop for a legitimate reason this morning and secondary familiarity of having to drag Jager away after over night stays working on his magpie, Bandit from the gym if he couldn't sleep due to nightmares or insomnia, pestering him to go visit Doc and finally Blitz from the training simulations, he was always worried his shield wouldn't go off at the right moment or it wouldn't be able to block everything the enemy had to offer. Monika felt like the big sister of the GSG 9, always worried and looking after them and they very much apricated it, even someone like Bandit. She nodded in reply, "Marius mostly, he hasn't slept a actual bed for almost three day's. He's been napping in his helicopter between transporting equipment and teams to different locations." "He'll be fine, Jager has spent nights in worse places before, besides he loves flying so he's living the dream right now." Emmanuelle chuckled, "Although I'm worried about Rook as well. He just got over a cold and he's back out on the field." "Really? He seemed okay and was his usual hyper self when they left out." "He just doesn't want anyone to worry but he's been in near daily contact with Doc just to make sure he's doing okay. Everyone should be back tomorrow afternoon at the latest." IQ smiled and nodded a bit, taking a much needed sip from her cooling coffee. She couldn't wait for them to get back and for Jager to get proper rest, despite Twitch's words she wouldn't rest either until her family was home safe and in the GSG 9 dorms but thankfully with a small spread of word around base they helped each other pass the time. Monika even got a lift cross the court from Tachanka who was going the same way instead of trying to navigate the busy hallways of the central area of the base. The recruits had been put into over work by some of the operator's around base, wanting to get work done and keep reports, paper work and equipment flowing for their friends out in the field. Tachanka carefully set the injured German down, allowing her to use his arm as support until she got her crutches under her good enough. "All good?" He asked with a smile tugging at his forest camo balaclava. "Ja, thank you for the help Alex." She replied with a grateful smile, earning a gentle pat on her shoulder from the giant man before he disappeared into the building to track down Kapkan over some subject he had been tasked with replying. Monika on the other hand worked her way around to the common room and spent a good few hours there, checking her phone for messages and replied to a few from Blitz and Bandit before getting distracted by a movie Mozzie and Gridlock were watching, enjoying it and laughing along with them until Mira and Twitch came to gather her, wondering if she wanted to come down them to greet everyone back. She nearly jumped at the chance before Mira reminded her of the injured ankle she had much to the German woman's frustration. They eased their way to the landing pad with Doc joining them halfway with his medical bag in tow just incase anyone was injured, he took a moment to inspect Monika's ankle before following them to the landing pad, dreading the injuries their friend's might be sporting. Usually he knew before hand but with the base in such a scramble he didn't have time to answer every call unless it was his personal cellphone only Harry and the other operator's had his number to. Jager's beloved helicopter came into view along the airstrip, swinging it around to land on the helipad with practiced skills. Once the blades died down and stilled the side door slid open as the exhausted operator's filtered out one at a time. Ace turned around after he hopped down to help Ying out, her left shoulder nestled in a sling. No one else seemed injured aside from dirt and grim sticking to them, possibly some scrapes and bruises from their jobs but otherwise they were in good health. Doc preformed a quick and thorough with each other before he escorted Ying to his infirmary with Ace in tow for a mission update on any injuries he tended to in the field. IQ pulled the GSG 9 crew into a large group hug despite protests from Bandit and Jager, both disliking close contact or public affection until Blitz who caged them in from the other side. Her family was finally home and safe, she held back her emotions until they returned to their dorm room. Mainly from the fact that Blitz had given her a piggy back ride all the way while Bandit carried her crutches without a word. His attention on bothering Jager who was trying to stifle yawns from lack of sleep. Once they reached the German dorms she was carefully sat down on her bed while the boy's left to get showers and change into more comfortable clothes. When they returned from the shower room they paused at the door to hearing soft sobbing and sniffling. Blitz shot the other two a look of concern which was promptly returned before he carefully opened the door to inspect the reason behind their teammate's crying. "Mein Freund, was ist los?" (My friend, what's wrong?) Elias asked softly as he knelt down in front of IQ who was hiding her face behind her hands. "It looks like you sprung a leak." He added after a moment, trying to lighten whatever burdened their teammate. He always tried to cheer them up the best he could. "Is everything okay?" Jager asked as he fidgeted with the swing on the front side of his sweat pants. He still had a hard time picking up on social que's but knew the air was a little heavy right now, watching Bandit take a seat beside their friend and gently bump her shoulder with his own. "Ich weiß, du hast uns vermisst, was sollen die Tränen?" (I know you missed us, what's with the tears?) Dominic said in a uncharacteristically soft tone, worry clear in his honey brown eyes. "J-ja... I missed all of you. I'm okay." IQ replied, wiping her tears away and gave them a genuine smile. She had her boy's back, everything was diffidently okay.

#rainbow six siege #IQ #Jager #Blitz #Bandit #GSG 9 #Fanficiton

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