#maybe i can try that idea another time when my brain isn't so bad i need 500 naps

[yawnderu]

If Simon and bimbo!reader ever had a big fight (not petty disagreements), what would they fight about? How do both handle serious fights and making up?

ahhhh :((( anon when I catch you. It'd likely be at the beginning of the relationship, before she knows about his job and he always leaves for weeks without telling her much about it

>Simon and bimbo!reader fight and make up.

“I just don't understand why you do this to me... just tell me.” Your voice is as pleading as it is demanding, eyebrows furrowed and face scrunched up in a mix of frustration and sadness.

“I can't—” He's interrupted by a small scoff coming out of you, your arms crossed as you look away and take a deep breath. He's never seen you like this before, never so... frustrated and angry. Anxiety starts to fill his soul within seconds, stuck between wanting to keep you away from his job, and wanting to reassure you.

“Do you just.... have a second family or something? Is that what it is?” The accusation makes his own face scrunch up in a mix of mild disgust and confusion. Was his unwavering loyalty to you not obvious? He never even looks at other women at all, his eyes are for you only.

“I don't.” It's all he can say to defend himself. How does he go about telling you he kills people for a living? Sure, he's protecting the world and serving the Queen, but would you look at him differently when you find out the same hands that are so gentle with you will forever be tainted with another's blood?

“Then what is it, Simon?” You never call him Simon. Even when you first met, you've always called him Si. He lets out a small sigh, shaking his head. He doesn't want to be around to fight, he just wants it all to be okay like before— yet he also understands why you're acting that way after months of being kept in the dark.

“I'll be back later.” He turns around to leave the shared flat, only being stopped by another scoff.

“Fine. Leave like you always do.” It was a low blow, you can tell that much by the way his muscles visibly tense up, bulging out of his black shirt. He shakes his head, the hand on the doorknob trembling slightly. He loves you more than anything, but can he really handle seeing the expression on your face when he tells you why he's away?

“'M in the military.” He finally turns around, walking back to you and holding your hand, sitting down on the couch and pulling you on his lap, one of his hands running down the length of your hair.

“SAS. I'll show you my contracts if you don't believe me.” He's willing to do anything to make you believe him. Each silent second only increases his anxiety, barely managing to look down at you just to see the gears shifting in your brain, putting two and two together.

“.... Is that why you always stink when you come back?” There's enough mirth in your tone to let him know you're joking, barely managing to hide the smile tugging at your lips.

“Y'sniff me like a fuckin' police dog when I'm back, love. You like it.” No matter how much you roll your eyes in fake annoyance and pretend you don't like it, you both know the truth. You cuddle up closer to him, resting comfortably on his burly body.

“Y'wear the cool uniforms, Si?” Your voice is softer, almost shy to even ask the question. He knows you like masked men— he's heard you rant about Pyramid Head and Ghostface enough times already. He hums softly in reply, nodding his head.

“Sometimes. Cool mask and all, you'd like it.” He's just teasing you at this point, trying to hold back a smile when he feels you rapidly shifting in his arms just to get closer to his face, unable to hide your excitement.

“Yeah? Can I see?” Your giddiness is almost contagious, making a deep chuckle finally escape his lips. You're not looking at him like he's a monster, you're simply excited about the idea of him wearing a mask. Maybe letting you see Ghost isn't a bad idea.

“Hmm...” He drags out, looking away and pretending to think about it just to tease you. The smack to his arm is enough to make him grin at you, stealing a kiss before adjusting you on his lap, finally allowing his body to fully relax.

“Yeah, I'll show you.”

Bimbo!Reader Masterlist

[xenteaart]

you are not difficult

pairing: chan x reader (i wrote it with idol!chan or producer!chan in mind, but it can fit any au, really) word count: no idea but it's short genre/warnings: er, angst, hurt/comfort, implied suffering w depression, implied history of SH. also implied shitty ex. so PLS keep that in mind before you read. also, it's all good in the end. author's note: it's a self comfort thing y'all but i hope you like it too.

it was yet another night where everything felt too much and you kinda hated yourself for it. bad day, maybe some hormonal imbalance due to a certain time in your cycle, history of mental illness — it's hard to put a finger on the exact cause. you're sick of trying, anyways.

chris was, of course, right there for you, and as you were falling apart in his arms, your entire soul was aching so bad that it made you want to crawl out of your own skin. it's usually like that, everywhere in your body like some sort of extreme inflammation, except physically you're perfectly fine.

"'m sorry…" you blurt out somewhere between your sobs and cries, still unable to hold eye contact with him.

"baby, you have nothing to be sorry for," chan shakes his head and keeps rubbing circles into your back, just between the shoulder blades where the ache feels the most excruciating.

"kiss me?" you squeak. almost pathetic, honestly, but it's always been your way of checking, whether he still wants you. whether he still loves you and desires you, even at your lowest, even with your mascara all smudged over your cheeks, eyes puffy and red, lips slightly irritated and swollen. even when there's a gaping black hole where the heart is supposed to be.

chris doesn't even question it, really. he simply leans in and gives you a long sweet kiss full of both a partner's tenderness and a lover's lust, so, so willing to do whatever it takes to calm the thunderstorm inside your mind and ease your struggle.

the kiss doesn't really satisfy you, the feeling is still there.

"sorry," you whisper again as you breathe out into chan's lips but the intimate contact doesn't last long. chris frowns and makes some distance between you two to look into your eyes.

"why? baby, why do you keep apologizing?" he sounds gentle but still slightly frustrated.

"i dunno? cos 'm difficult? for bein' difficult?"

there's a silence as he blinks a few times, processing and putting two and two together.

"just because it was difficult for them to love you and take care of you, doesn’t make you difficult. you are not difficult. like, at all," he puts on his serious tone, the one he uses for you when you can't see the obvious and he has to remind you.

you don't really know what to say to that, so you keep playing with the tissue paper in your hands, ripping it apart piece by piece just to keep yourself busy and focused on something other than the burning ache in your chest.

"dealing with mental health isn't easy, that one is true, baby, but it's so easy to love you. you are easy to love. even now, looking so small and in pain but it's still you, and my duty as your boyfriend is to take care of you when you can't. and, hell, you're one of the most capable people i know, so please just let me hold your hand through it once in a while, yeah?" chan speaks slowly and quietly, as if to make every single word sink in, tenderly forcing it into your stupid lovely brain that refuses to cooperate sometimes.

chris feels safe. he feels like lighting up a cookie scented candle after a long day at work. he's the feeling of the ocean timidly licking at your feet and burying them deeper into warm wet sand. chris is the first sip of coffee in the morning and the cold side of the pillow at night. he's everything worth living and trying for.

"thank you," is the only thing you manage to say, but in the way you lean back into his embrace he's able to read a lot more.

"do you want a nice mug o' hot chocolate and some fairy bread, baby?"

this question makes you hiccup and sob once again. you nod and nuzzle closer into the crook of his neck.

[russellsppttemplates]

My person (Charles Leclerc)

Your brother's best friend is sure you were made for eachother

Note: english is not my first language. Most times I read a brother's best friend trope, it's usually the reader going after the boy, so I felt like doing things a little bit different (also, my brain got a bit jumbled because I was wondering about the perspective, and in the end I went with reader being Joris' twin). Also, I always feel a little bit of impostor's syndrome whenever I post these tropes for which I've read many great pieces about it, and I never know if my ones are good enough to be posted but we're going with it

Thank you so much to everyone who likes and reblogs, your feedback is appreciated 🤍 and I'm taking requests so if you have any ideas or concepts you want to share, feel free to do so as I'll try to get to them the best I can!

my masterlist

Tag list: @myloverjk-blog

Most people thought having a twin brother was bitter sweet because while you had to share everything since the womb, you had a brother so there came a time where you wanted to have different toys, different rooms and different styles.

Different friends, however, was never a question. Even with different interests, you and Joris often came as a duo, so both of your friend groups were pretty close.

"We're going to Charles' apartment to watch the football game, are you joining us?", Joris asked, throwing himself on your sofa and partially occupying your personal space, "Marta is going to be over and I think she's taking Chiara with her, too".

You don't remember a time where Charles wasn't in your life. Your brother knew him since they were in kindergarten and so there wasn't a memory where he wasn't involved. Which brought you to the last time you were with him, just a week before.

Charles spent the afternoon with Joris at your brother's apartment, wanting to relax and game for the rest of the day.

"It's Y/N", Charles said as he gave Joris his ringing phone, your caller ID prompting him to pick the calk up right away, "can you come and get me, please?", he heard you faintly as Joris got up straight away, listening to whatever you were telling as he put on his trainers and jacket.

"Y/N needs me to pick her up from the café - turns out her date thought she wouldn't mind going home on her own", Joris rolled his eyes, "it will be quick, you're good on your own here?", he checked with Charles, "sure", the driver assured, unpausing the game and carrying on.

Another date and another disappointment for you, Charles thought. While you weren't as close as his brother was to him, he still knew about your life as much as your other friends, and lately you had been looking for someone, your person, you claimed. Luck had yet to join your search as every date you went on seemed to go between bad and awful.

If he had the courage to come clean about his feelings, maybe things would be different. For a while, yes, you were Joris' twin sister and that was it. You were a cool girl and he didn't mind spending time with you or having your hang out with their group, but things changed when you went to university.

Maybe it was your glow up, although you never needed one to catch his eye in the first place, but year after year, you grew to exude confidence, your natural beauty enhanced as you turned into a charming, caring and kind young woman.

Since he didn't want to ruin the bond you had, he watched it all happen from the sidelines. How happy you sounded whenever you had a date later in the week, whenever a cute guy came up to you in the club and how you squealed "I think this one might be the one!" as you excused yourself and declined dinner invitations from the group for a date.

He heard the door open and then close, footsteps approaching the living room as he paused the game just in time for you to sit on the sofa, "what's up, Leclerc?", you nudged his shoulder.

"I'm good, how are you?", he quesioned, "I guess that one isn't the love of your life either?", he semi joked.

"He was certifiable, at the very least", you began as the boys chuckled, "Hey! I'm qualified to make such appreciation! He kept talking about himself and he was borderline sexist, but then he said I would be fine going home on my own? I don't know, it was a mess and I can't believe I even experienced that - I'm going to pretend it was a fever dream", you shrugged your shoulders, "I was expecting to spend the afternoon with him - thank Goodness I didn't, - and the construction work at my place is still going so I don't have anywhere to go, I'm sorry if I'm crashing your afternoon", you gulped.

"It's fine, it's nice having company other than us two playing and screaming at eachother", Charles smiled as Joris shrugged his shoulders, "you're already staying her until the building work is done", you brother offered.

"I wasn't asking you, silly; you're my twin, dealing with me it's something that comes with the job", you winked.

When it came to dinner time, the three of you decided to have take out, your brother calling the restaurant and scheduling a time for him to pick it up, "I'm going to shower", you said as you got up from the sofa, heading to the guest room you were staying in.

By the time you got out, your heard Joris shout that he was leaving while you put on some comfy clothes for the evening in. When you went to the balcony so your towels could air dry for a bit, you sat in the padded chair, looking out to the sunset.

He would come, you thought. It wasn't particularly a manifestation or a "throw it at the universe" kind of thing, but rather something to reassure yourself. You were worthy of the standards you set for yourself and there was someone out there for you, and he would come.

"Hey", Charles stepped into the balcony, coming to sit in the chair next to yours, "a cent for your thoughts?", he smiled softly, the warm yellow and orange light hitting his eyes in a glowy hue.

"Do you believe that the right person for you is out there?", you shot softly.

"I know she is", Charles gulped, "Oh, confident!", you giggled softly, "but it's nice, better than being sulky like me".

"I'm not sure how much better it is. I know she is out there, but it's a little more complicated than just going up to her and tell her that", he played with hia thumbs.

"So you're chickening out?", you quirked your eyebrow, partly teasing him but genuinely curious about it. You didn't have enough fingers to count how many girls tried to approach you and befriend you with the only goal of getting into a friendship circle that would lead them to Charles, and he could probably chat up anyone he wanted, so it was hard for you to understand how he didn't have the love of his life with him yet.

"It's not chickening out if you think it might cause some issues with your friends, I think. I'm being prudent, that's all", Charles tried, wanting to take the opportunity to try and see where you stood. Girls were usually sharper than guys, so you said many times, maybe you'd take the hint.

"If I knew who the love of my life was, I would go to him and never look back. I know it sounds silly, but I wouldn't want to be away from him a second longer, it would be quite shitty if he was in a relationship", you mused, "but if we were really meant to be together - if it was a both ways kind of thing - he would know it, right? Goodness, sound a bit like a romantic sop, don't I?", you chuckled, "but I would fight for him, for us".

Charles felt inspired before he felt a little angry. Here you here saying you would fight until you found your person when he was right there. If it really worked as a both ways thing, you'd have to know and feel the person you kept looking for was him. He broke into a full belly laugh as he stated at you. No make-up, hair sitting in its natural wave and comfy clothes, you never looked so beautiful to him.

"Would you let me fight for us, too?", he mused quietly but loud enough for you to hear, "would you want me to do that?".

Giggling at him, you could only shake your head at his words, "I know this sound silly - Joris teases me enough about it enough", you groaned as your hands covered your face.

"I'm not joking or teasing", Charles clarified, turning to face you on the chair, "All I want is for you to look at me the way you look at them", Charles stated, "whenever you talk about your dates before you go on them, you're so hopeful that that guy will be the one, you look forward to it like it will be that time, and you never looked at me that way when I constantly make efforts to hung the stars and the moon for you and stand there hoping they get to you".

His confession took you off guard. Charles just admitted he liked you, in a way with words that was more elaborate than what any of your dates had ever told you combined.

"I thought you were being nice?! Was this some sort of plan?!", you quesioned immediately. He had been around you your whole life, you surely would've noticed it, wouldn't you?

Charles chuckled in a way you found a smidge belittling, "it wasn't a plan! Y/N, I have not been planning this or doing some strategy, it just happened out of nowhere!", Charles bit back, "like you said, the person for me is out there and she's you!".

The noise from the door pulled both of you out your discussion, your brother's singalong voice announcing he was back with the food.

Dusting your sweatpants, you stepped back inside the living room, shaking off the jitters you had as your brother scrunched up his face, "is everything okay?", he asked.

"Of course, I'm just hungry and you drove like a grandpa here", you bickered back as Charles joined you at the table, "I'll get the cutlery and plates from the kitchen", you mumbled.

The dinner was eaten quietly on your side, Charles and Joris making most of the conversation as you exchanged a few looks with the Formula One driver, your twin brother seemingly obvious as he carried on as usual, "I'm going to bed", you said after helping tidy, "are you sure? We were going to watch something on TV?", Joris asked you.

"I'm getting a headache, so I'll pass, good night boys", you gave them tight lipped smile.

In the bedroom, you changed into your pyjamas and finished your night-time routine and got under the sheets, Charles' words replaying as you looked at the ceiling.

"Y/N? Are you joining us or not? Do you have any plans?", Joris insisted, "you've been weird lately", he pointed out.

"I'll join you, yes, just need to get my hoodie and then I'll be good to go", you scrambled out as your heart beat faster inside your chest.

Joris offered to drive to Charles' apartment, getting there when Riccardo, Marta and little Chiara were alresdy inside with Charles.

"The rest of the group couldn't come, so it's just us", Riccardo said as he noticed your expression, "what a shame, more food for us!", you smirked, sitting next to Marta and playing with the little girl on her lap, "hello, my love, hello!", you cooed in the voice you only had for babies, "look at you so grown up! You get more beautiful everytime I see you", you smiled, tickling her chin softly as she giggled loudly.

"Who did the roast potatoes last time we got together?", Joris stepped back into the living room, "I did", you stated as you grabbed one of the toys on the coffee table, ready to sit down on the floor so you and Chiara could play together.

"Don't sit down!", your brother yelled, "sorry, but you can't sit down - Charles needs help with the potatoes and he doesn't know the recipe like you do", he reasoned as you got up, trying not to show how much you didn't want to be in the same room alone with Charles. Watching football while having dinner with your group of friends was one thing, spending one on one time with Charles after what he said to you the last time was another.

"Hey", you said as you stepped into the kitchen, "Joris said you needed help, what can I do?".

Charles smiled a little, maybe at the irony of your quesion, "I don't know what seasonings to use in these", he said as he showed you the vegetable with the ones he already cut up.

"Okay, do you keep the spices in the same place?", you asked as he nodded, encouraging you to use his kitchen like it was your own.

Opening the cabinets and grabbing what you needed, you started mixing the ingredients and cutting up the ones you needed to, "can you get me the olive oil, please? I can't reach it", you asked and Charles complied, "thank you".

"Is this how this is going to be? Interacting like we haven't known eachother since we were little and like I haven't poured my heart out to you?", Charles said, arms crossed as he rested against the kitchen counter.

"I wasn't counting on you saying all of that, I was so caught off guard that I haven't been able to think about anything else in my off time!", you offered, setting the knife down on the chopping board.

"It's not like people have speeches ready and give of warnings when they're about to confess their feelings for someone... I myself wasn't expecting to do it until the words came out of my mouth", Charles gestured as if he was vomiting, "what do you expect it to be like anyway? People have to warn you they have feelings for you and ask if you want to hear it?! Is that what you want?".

"I want to feel loved, appreciated and valued. I want to be with someone that reminds me that I'm beautiful, that I'm smart and I'm wonderful. I want to share my life with someone who has no trouble with me wanting to have both career goals and family goals, I want someone who supports me as much as a support him, who is willing to do silly things because I enjoy them and who loves me for me, flaws and all", you let out in one go, "That's what I want".

Charles eyebrows climbed on his forehead, "Are you insinuating I can't give you that? Is that why we haven't spoken since that evening at Joris' place?".

"I'm saying you're my brother's best friend, and no matter how much I think you can do it - because you make me feel like that just from being my friend, imagine if we were dating -, I don't want to risk whatever we have, all of us", you gestured to the living room where the rest of the group was.

"Y/N", Charles pleaded, "you don't think I've thought about that? I didn't do it on a whim like you think I did, I've been sitting on this for quite a while, actually", he clarified, "I will respect whatever you decide, okay? But can't just sit and pretend that you don't want this thing between you and me as much as I do, because we could be so good-", he was interrupted as Marta crossed the corner and stepped inside the kitchen, "Charles, can I heat Chiara's soup on the microwave?", she asked with the small tupperware on her hands.

"Sure, here", he guided her as you resumed to seasoning the potatoes, putting them on the tray and then in the oven, "the game is about to start, hurry up!", Joris yelled.

"I'll just wash this, and that too", you took the tupperware's lid as well as the utensils you needed for the dressing.

"I need to cool it down a little, maybe in a bigger bowl", Marta said as Charles helped in getting the bowl from the cupboard as you set the utensils aside to dry, "Merci, Charles, off we go then", she said as she waited for you both to leave and go to the living room so she could follow you.

"Come here, sweet cheeks", you clapped at Chiara, taking her away from your brother's arms and putting her in the highchair so she could eat comfortably, "auntie Y/N is going to give you your delicious soup, yummy yummy", you smiled.

Charles couldn't help but take in the sight, how you made Chiara feel like she was the only person in the world as you smiled and spoke to her, finding a million and one ways to get her to eat the soup in the bowl.

The food was ready by the half-time break, so you all helped with bringing the food to the table, eating it as the team you were supporting ended up winning the game.

"She's knocked out", you pointed out to Riccardo, Chiara asleep in the little makeshift cot you made on the sofa with some pillows and blankets to make sure she was warm and secure.

"We can clean up, you guys go home and take this little princess to sleep in her own bed", Charles smiled, stroking the little girl's cheek softly as he watched her peaceful expression.

"You don't mind?", Marta wondered as the three of you nodded, helping the parents gather their daughter's belongings so they could leave, hoping she wouldn't wake up and make it harder for her to fall back asleep.

"Sweet dreams, petite fleur", you cooed as Marta cuddled Chiara into her chest, squeezing her small hand softly before they walked out of the door.

"These need to go on the dishwasher", you sorted through the plates and checked if they were safe to go on the machine as your brother help you.

"We should probably get going", Joris said, not wanting to overstay your welcome, "do you need anything else, Charles? Otherwise, me and Y/N will leave you to it", he said.

"Actually, me and Charles need to talk, if that's okay", you looked at the driver, catching him by surprise before he nodded in agreement.

Joris didn't dwell too much on it like you thought he would, "so you need me to come and pick you up or...?", he trailed before Charles saved you, "don't worry, I've got her", he stated.

When Charles accompanied your twin brother to the door, he was blunt and honest, "She's my sister, but there could be worse guys than you", Joris offered as Charles narrowed his eyes, "Oh, please, do you think I'm that blind? I've seen the way you look at her and how you always go above and beyond for her - she's just being too stubborn about it to see it, too. Still, if you ever break her heart or cause her any tears of sadness and anger, you're going to wish I didn't know so much about you", he threatened, although it didn't go as planned as they both laughed, "I trust you, there wasn't anyone I would trust like this", he sighed, "you're just lucky you have brothers, otherwise I might've taken revenge on you", he nudged his shoulder.

"I bet Lorenzo would enjoy a cuddle every now and again if you'd like", Charles giggled before he showed his seriousness again, "I just want this to work out between us, I think she's my person, you know?", he mused, realising how cliché and whipped he sounded, "I'll take care of her, you don't need to worry", he assured.

Charles closed the door and walked back to the living room where you sat down on the sofa, legs covered with one of the blankets, "I- thank you for staying back", he smiled, pointing with his eyes to the spot next to you silently asking if he could sit.

You opened the blanket so he could sit next to you and you could both keep warm, "I want to apoligise for not saying anything the last time we spoke, and for how I've handled this", you began, "I'm sorry, Charles", you said earnestly.

"Apology accepted", he nodded, "and did you just stay here to apoligise?", he quesioned.

"I- I thought we could have a date, sort of anyway", you mumbled, "and I could also tell you how I feel about you since it seems I owe you that with what you've told me", you looked into his eyes, "it wasn't that you were ever off bounds or anything like that, I never cared for those supposed rules, but it never occurred to me", you blurted and Charles quirked a brow, "shoot, that's not what I meant, ugh", you grunted as he soothingly rubbed your thigh, "what I meant is I always thought you'd never look at me that way - I'm Joris' twin - so I just took all of the affection I had for you and put it in a friendship feelings and all of the things you did for me, I thought you were just being nice because you're a nice guy", you clarified.

"Does this mean you're letting me treat you like you deserve? Because I plan on making sure you feel and know you're wonderful every single day", he smiled charmingly, confident words contrasting with his shy attempt of lacing your fingers together on his lap.

"How can you be so sure we are eachother's person?", you couldn't help but mumble, even if the butterflies in your stomach were dancing like they hadn't been in a long time, "I just know, and I'll help you see it, too", he smiled, kissing your knuckles before he pulled you to his chest, finding something to watch on the TV.

You both watched reruns of one of your favourite shows, pointing out little details you loved and talking about any topic that came to mind, and once Charles' body warmth and his touches along your arm caught up to your system and lulled you to sleep, your head finding it's spot on his chest as he smiled down at you, your beauty never ceasing to amaze him as he noticed every mole, freckle and scar on your face from up close.

Even if he didn't want to move, and that it wouldn't be the first time he slept on his sofa, he reasoned that he should at least offer you his bed. Softly stroking your cheek, he coaxed you to wake up, "I'm sorry for waking you up, but we can't sleep here", he whispered, kissing the side of your head, "you can sleep in my bed, I'll take the sofa", he offered as you stretched a little bit, removing yourself from his chest.

"If you promise you won't do any funny business, we can sleep in the same bed", you yawned.

"Of course I won't, Y/N! I would never do anything you didn't want to, I-", Charles panicked, not wanting you to think he was trying to take advantage of you.

"I'm only kidding, I know you won't", you assured, arms pulling him to stand up with you as you walked to the bedroom after turning everything off, "I trust you, Charles, completely", you smiled.

To him, it meant the world.

You felt his heart race when your hand landed on his chest, "I need a t-shirt, though, this is not comfy to sleep in", you reasoned as he looked for one on his drawers, "here, you can get ready here while I get ready in the bathroom", he smiled, kissing the top of your head before he stepped inside the ensuite.

After you swapped so you could brush your teeth, you were both undoing the bed, pulling the sheets back over you and having eachother.

"I really want to kiss you right now, but I don't want to cross any boundaries", Charles admitted as your heart raced in your chest, "I'd really like that, you can kiss me if you want", you consented.

Charles leaned to rub your nose in his before kissing your lips softly, allowing you both to revel in the feelings that had been put in labelled boxes at the back of your minds.

Parting your lips to breathe, you cupped Charles' cheek, your palm tickling from his facial hair as your thumb rubbed his skin, "I think you might be right", you mumbled, licking your lips, "about what?", he mused, "about the fact that you'll help me see it too", you smiled.

The next morning, you woke up with Charles looking at you, "Good morning, Y/N", he greeted, "See? I didn't pull any funny business", he wiggled his brows chuckling.

This was a sight you could get used to.

"Good morning", you smiled, "did you sleep well?", you wondered, pulling closer to him now that you were awake.

"I did, did you?", he asked and you nodded, cuddling closer to him and basking in the feeling of just being there.

"We are going to take this as slow as you want", Charles whispered against your forehead, leaving little kisses and pecks on your skin, "but I want you to know I'm all in".

"I'm all in, too", you whispered, "I can't promise you it will be a straight line - or that I won't spiral out every now and again because hey, it's me -, but I feel really good about this, you make me feel really good", you blushed as you kissed between his eyebrows, "having said this, not all of us have the day to do some training and sim racing, and I'm one of them. I have to go home to change and then head to the clinic", you pouted slightly.

"How about I make us some breakfast first, then I'll drop you off?", he suggested, stealing a peck from your lips, "hmm, sounds good", you hummed.

.

"Were you expecting us to be surprised?", Marta said as she and her family arrived in Charles' yacht, the three of them seeing you and Charles kissing at the table.

Throwing your head back in laughter as Charles walked up to help them inside, you shielded your eyes from the sun with your hand, "at least pretend you are", you joked.

"Oh my Goodness, I never thought you two would become a thing? Does this mean we can finally stop hearing your disgraced love life stories and Charles' complaints about who you went on a date with?", Riccardo belted out, catching the attention from a couple on the yacht next to the one you were sitting on.

"To be fair, that's how I noticed it", Marta began, "Charles didn't complain anymore about how he was alone and that the universe wasn't working on his favour", she smirked, greeting you two.

"We have been keeping it down low just to see how things would go", you blushed at getting caught and steering the conversation elsewhere once Chiara babbled at you, "Oh, baby girl, hello!", you cooed, pulling her into your arms.

"Soon enough you can get one of those, I bet your kid would be very very cute", Riccardo nudged Charles' shoulder, loving that the group now could have a few teasing moments and themes at your expense, all in good fun.

"What a warm welcome!", you heard your brother yell, a fake angry and ironic tone noticeable in his voice, "First, no one is here to greet me with a glass of something to drink or even a helping hand to step in", Joris clarified, "then I'm presented with a conversation about my sister's and my best friends sex life, which I don't want to know about by the way!!", he said as he came up to you, kissing the side of your head, "I'm happy she's happy, and that you're all happy together, but no talking about that, please!".

[sims3fiend]

Some dumb sims 3 updates/stuf

Or, how to develop severe brain damage in 10 easy steps.

Sooo… This is going to be more of a blog post than anything of any real substance, more of a whinge with maybe a few teasers for some stuff I may or may not release (probably not). Feel free to skip if you're after hot tips or coherent writing.

Stutter "fixer"

Sooooo…. The sims 3 has some stutter issueeesss… Incredible discovery, I know! I started looking at remedying them with settings, found some hidden settings that help reduce some of the issues but that can only do so much when the game was made in 2009 for 2009 computers.

So I had a looky at some things I thought could be causing it, mainly WinAPI functions because that's the easier route (h-haha…), and started to try to "optimize" some of the more common ones:

ReadFile: Was the first, and looking at the sheer volume of like 12783972198 calls a milisecond every time you move the camera, I thought surely I can speed it up a little r-right. Not really. I tried all sorts of… interesting things, file caching in memory, implementing the overlapped flag (took ages), etc. Oh and the performance increase? Literally nothing. It's called weirdly from wherever it's called and so we must suffer.

Threads: So, I had a look at other areas that were potential targets for speedup, ran an actual profile and it showed a problem areas namely threads and some other stuff I don't remember. ZwWaitForMultipleObjects and WaitForSingleObject take up a lot of time, so I very poorly attempted to optimize them, adding some timeout optimizations (and a bunch of other failed attempts). Despite being the most insane, this actually worked, and I got like a 40% speed increase in a very very niche metric that did not noticeably effect the game one single bit. I plan to combine all my failures into a single script eventually, maybe once combined they'll do something…

Actual insanity - Memory IPC: Then I had an idea, everyone hates e12, why don't we shove the games memory into another process and that'll fix it. No brain moment. No clue what past me was thinking, for some reason I thought you could like, access another processes memory if it was spawned from it, but uhh.. no, that's not how things work… I tried a few other things in a similar vein but it just crashed and crashed, so for now I'm just gunna work on:

Alloc/free mee - Current insanity: Currently, I'm still working on VirtualAlloc and VirtualFree (which is what I was redirecting to another process), but more from an optimizing memory usage standpoint than a… whatever the IPC thing was. There's a lot of things to try, and I've had some luck in some areas and some abysmal failures in others. There's a few promising functions calling VirtualAlloc/Free that seem to be potentially pointing towards memory leaks (004e54d0), but I'm too dumb to investigate that. At the moment, I'm going mostly just gathering more logs which takes forever and hurts my brain real bad.. On testing there's like 180 allocs that we could probably yeet no problem, which is like 750mb saved… Maybe idk.

I have plenty of ideas for deduplication, memory pool implementations to reduce churn/fragmentation, shoving things aggressively into pagefiles if they're not being used, etc. etc. Basically, there's a lot of avenues to explore, and I feel like there's potential… though I've definitely said that before and been dead wrong so…

Anyway, rambling over. I plan to release a dumb little renderer settings mod maybe-soon-ish that'll let you do dumb stuff that might be useful for reshade like turn shadows/drop shadows off and post processing off and on. I guess I could add max lots and other settings eventually too since they're static values.... Might also do a mythbusting post for some performance "tweak" stuff I see thrown around that isn't super accurate but I also don't want people to be angry at me so maybe not.

Sorry to whoever read all this, but also thanks :)

[bardoftheshire]

I have something called Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy that I was diagnosed with when I was 15 which isn't caused by flashing lights or strobes, but rather hormones. So, I decided to do something with a reader that is epileptic, just not with something exactly like mine. Enjoy!!

I Won't Tell, I Promise

James Wilson x Epileptic! Reader

Summary; Y/n has been working at Princeton for 4 years, hiding her epilepsy in fear of losing her job. But what happens when an episode comes out of nowhere?

Notes; Everyone I've met and told I have epilepsy always thinks it's light sensitive, but it's not. I wanted to kind of have this as a thing to give a bit of what it's like dealing with that stigma.

Warnings; Foul language, mentions of taking prescription drugs, epileptic episodes, angst.

James Wilson Masterlist

Word Count; 4,230

▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣

You've been working at the Princeton Plainsboro teaching hospital for a short while so far.

Before Prinston, you worked at a hospital all the way over in Oklahoma City as a nurse, then to Chicago as a doctor.

You probably would've never gotten this job if you mentioned what would be considered a "safety concern", to anyone.

You were diagnosed with Myoclonic Epilepsy when you were 17 and though it was said to be hormonal, it still hasn't gone away 26 years later.

"It'll go back to normal, just give it time, it usually goes away by your 20s," the neurologists and your mother constantly reminded you that. And nearly 30 years later and they were wrong.

That's what upset you the most. The fact that they assured you that it would go away and you would no longer have to take anymore of the god damn medicines or switching them constantly. They lied to you.

But, no use in moping about it. It is what it is. This problem, this disorder, is what pushed you to do what you do now. Neurology.

The doctors and neurologists could never figure out what was "wrong" with you. Countless tests, week long EEG's, CT scans, blood tests and draws, more brain scans, everything you could think of. Nothing.

No tumors ever found, nor any family history of it.

You'd just figure it out yourself.

Being in the medical field for almost 20 years has just earned you one of the larger titles.

Dr. Y/n L/n | Head of Neurology.

You had your own office on the floor where all of the MRI and CT machines resided. Made recently for you.

You just got that title just a couple months ago, and man was it difficult.

You had to take an extra dose of medicine due to the amount of stress and lack of sleep you were getting. And you weren't about to give that title you worked so hard for up.

Maybe (you knew it was,) mixing one of the strongest medications with another concentrated one was a bad idea.

750 mg of Levetiracetam, 370 mg of Lamotrigine, and 50 mg of Clobazam 3 times daily. On top of vitamins due to deficiency.

Now, that high of a dose of the Levetiracetam was already bad enough, but mixing it with the Lamotrigine made it worse. But you couldn't have an episode on the job. You feared that if you did, you would lose not only your title, but your job, and at the worst, your medical license.

You just couldn't risk that.

"...Y/n? You okay? Can you hear me?" A hand waved in front of your face with a couple snaps, trying to get your attention

Now see, that was the tricky thing with epilepsy. Absent seizures. You never knew if you'd just spaced out or had another small seizure.

"Oh, uh, sorry. Yeah, I just spaced out for a second, my bad." You respond, forcing a smile with a chuckle.

"Oh, good. Thought I lost you there," Wilson says, putting his hand down and taking another bite of his salad.

Your watch begins to beep, indicating it was time to take the second medication of the day.

One in the morning, one during lunch, and one at night, taking each one with water and food.

"Um, give me a second, I gotta go get some water real quick. I'll be right back." You awkwardly rush.

"Don't worry, I'll get one for you. I've gotta throw my trash anyways."

"No, Wilson. Really it's fine I can get it," You began to panic. Don't panic.

"Then I'll go with you," Wilson smiles, getting up with his trash.

You mutter out an "Okay."

'He's going to ask about the pills. I've never taken my meds in front of anyone before. What do I say?' You began to freak out even more. 'What if he sees them and tells Cuddy about them? I'll lose my job.'

Technically you weren't supposed to supply your own medication to yourself. That's how House got in trouble. It's not like I'm abusing them, though. Right?

"What's that timer for?" Wilson asks.

"Well, sometimes I'll be working and I'll forget to grab lunch, so I don't want to forget to eat, y'know?" Liar.

"Oh,"

You continued walking in an awkward silence before you quickly went to the food bar and bought a bottle of water.

"You left me, what was that for?" Wilson chuckles with a hand on his hip.

'Do I just tell him? He'd be the first to know apart from my family or friends back in my hometown. No one since I left there knows about it. But I could trust him.'

"Uh, well.." You begin.

"Wilson! Come here!"

You turn around to see House marching (or trying more so,) toward the two of us.

"House-"

"Shut up, I need you. You can talk to Ms. Addict later."

'Shit, did House know?'

"Excuse me, what did you just call me?" Unbelievable.

"..real bold coming from you, House." You continue.

"At least I admit it! You’re exactly like me!" House shouts as he walks away with Wilson.

"What do you mean by 'Ms. Addict?'" Wilson asks, you being able to hear him as he walks away with House.

'If House knows, will he tell Wilson? Shit, more importantly, will he tell Cuddy?'

You sigh as you walk out of the cafeteria and go down the stairs to your respective level and enter your office.

"God, I've gotta stop this shit.." You say, picking up some x-rays of brain scans.

The patient was an 8 year old little boy. He was experiencing small seizures regularly, without any family history of seizures or epilepsy diagnosis'.

He'd been in the hospital for nearly a week now, countless tests were run, and he'd been attached to an EEG machine to see what would spike when he had an episode.

'Shit.'

You looked more closely at one of the radiographs. On the right side of his temporal lobe there were two black masses, most likely tumors, which looked to have been roughly 5 to 6 inches in size.

"Fuck.. Fuck, what do I do with this." You began to panic. There shouldn't be masses like that. This could just be something wrong with the machine, right?

You can't just stand there. You had to say something.

'Wilson,' You thought to yourself.

He would be the one to go to. You could only hope that they weren't cancerous tumors.

You gather up the rest of the radiographs and make your way out of your office to go to Wilson's, hoping that House was finished doing whatever he does, and that he would be in there.

"Hey, Dr. L/n, I was wondering if you have any updates on Noah yet?" The boy's mother stopped me in my tracks.

"Oh, good afternoon, Mrs. Pieters. I was actually just looking at Noah's radiographs now. I'm going up to Dr. Wilson's office right now to go over them with him, so the final results should hopefully be out soon," You explain anxiously, still trying to sound as professional as possible.

"Oh wonderful! Once again, thank you for putting Noah in your care. You have no idea how lucky and relieved we feel now." She replies, a big smile on her face.

You feel so bad...

"Of course, Mrs. Pieters. Noah's health is one of my top priorities right now, and I couldn't be more happy to help. If you don't mind, though, I really need to go over these with Dr. Wilson right now."

"Of course. Sorry for keeping you," She apologized.

You wave her goodbye and rush to the stairs to reach Wilson's office.

You urgently knock on his door, waiting for a response, yet none came. You knock once again, and still no response. "James, are you in there? There are some radiographs I need to show you,"

You wait more, and still no response. Maybe House or Cuddy know where he is.

You go next door and open House's door, not even bothering to knock.

There House sat, throwing and catching his oversized tennis ball.

"What the hell-"

"Do you know where Wilson is?!" You cut him off in an urgency.

"He's probably in the bathroom touching himself, I'd check in there if I were you," He says sarcastically.

Oh..

"I'm being serious, House!" You roll your eyes and shout in frustration.

“Why, do you want to finally confess your undying love for him?”

You look at House with your mouth agape, looking like a fish out of water trying to create a response that wouldn't make you seem flustered. “I-”

You figured it would be near impossible to have an actual serious conversation, though not that you wanted one, with House. “I’m just gonna go ahead and go to Cuddy’s..” You sigh, frustrated with the time you’d just wasted trying to talk to him.

“Fine then! Be-” House shouts before you shut the door on him, silencing whatever bullshit he was going to say to or call you.

You make your way to Cuddy's office, looking at the radiographs on your way to make sure they really were something to be concerned about, though you would still look them over no matter what.

You knock on Cuddy's door and barge in, the same way you'd just done with House's. "Cuddy, have you seen Wils-" You say, stopping as you see Wilson standing at Cuddy's desk, going over some files.

"Oh my gosh, thank god. James, please, I need your help and time just for a moment," You plead.

"James? I got upgraded to James now?"

"Not the time now, Wilson,"

"Can you two do this somewhere else?" Cuddy says, a tinge of annoyance barely clear.

You leave Cuddy's office with Wilson following behind.

"What is it I can help you-" He says before you urgently (rudely,) cut him off.

"It's about Noah's MRI and CT scan results," You sigh, sadness in your voice.

Wilson's face softened, "Please tell me it's good,"

You pull up the radiographs and show them to him, not being able to see it all that great.

"Let's go to my office,"

You and Wilson make your way into your office, you put the pictures onto the intensifying screen and take a look at them once more, that feeling in your stomach getting deeper.

Please don't let it be bad..

"Those black masses right there at the temporal lobe, do you think those are.. tumors?" Your voice shakes.

Wilson inspects the pictures and points out the same two that you feared.

"Th-these ones?" Wilson questioned.

You nod your head.

You were horrified, but at the same time, you were anticipated. If these were the cause, then you would know why this was happening to him, unlike you with yours.

Wilson lets out a deep breath and turns to you, "We're going to have to run some more tests.. these are.. definitely tumors, but we don't know if they're cancerous..."

You sigh and rub your hands over your face.

Wilson walks to you and rubs your back with one hand, and places the other onto your shoulder.

You shiver at his touch, you began to feel dizzy and after taking your hands away from your face, you see black auras begin to obscure your vision.

And then, you blacked out.

--------------------------------------

Your head was pounding and your tongue was swollen. You looked around you in confusion as you found yourself laying on your side.

Where am I?

A hand ran through your hair as someone softly assured you that you were okay.

You get up before quickly falling back down to the floor.

"Hey, hey, L/n, just- sit back down. You're okay," a familiar voice assured you.

You blink slowly.

"Hey, look at me, look.. What's my name?"

You look at the male, his face becoming more familiar, though not enough until a couple seconds passed by, him staying patient with you.

"Wilson?" You slur.

"Good- um, what's your name, now?"

You felt like you were going to vomit. Your head was still spinning, though you were starting to become more familiar with your surroundings,

"Y/n? What happened?" You groan.

"Y/n, you just had a seizure.."

Those five words sent you into shock, though now it was beginning to quickly rise up to a panic attack..

"What?"

You put your head into your hands and brought your knees to your chest, a lump began to form in your throat and tears welled up in your eyes, "No, no, no, no, no, oh god, no..." You sobbed. You let yourself stress out enough to the point that you had an episode after not having one for nearly 6 months. You were doing so good. God there's no way you're going to ever drive again.

"Hey, hey, hey, it's okay, it's okay, Y/n." Wilson tried to assure you as he patted your back.

"No, no it's not okay.. shit," You choke up.

You wipe the saliva off of your mouth, presumably from spitting up during your episode.

You rock yourself back and forth, head still in your hands.

Wilson stayed quiet. He had no idea what to say, but you preferred that he didn't. You needed some silent time to gather your mind together.

"God.. fuck, I'm so sorry, James. You shouldn't have had to deal with that.." you exhale and apologize, afraid to even look at him.

"Y/n, don't- don't apologize,"

"You're not going to tell anyone are you? Please don't tell anyone, please, Wilson," You pleaded, tears welling up again at the thought of losing your job.

You didn't know that House had already known before. House had overheard you when you were speaking to Noah that one day, and then found out how much you were taking a day, earning your new nickname 'Ms. Addict'.

Him being the huge blabbermouth that he is, he obviously felt the need to tell Wilson. Wilson didn't know if he told him because he had some sort of worry for you, or if it was just him being an asshole, but by God was he glad that House told him.

"I won't tell, I promise." Wilson said as he wiped the tears away from your face, cupping it with his hand.

You melt into his touch and sigh.

"How.. how much Levetiracetam have you been taking..?" Wilson questioned.

You look at him in confusion, "What? What are you talking about?"

"Your meds.. how much of them are you taking?"

House.

"House- House told me, just earlier today," Wilson admitted hesitantly.

House!

“I’m gonna kill him!” You suddenly shout in a fit of sudden rage.

You get up only to fall once again, not just triggering your vertigo, but also making the previous dizziness you’d just had only mere minutes ago worsen.

You grab onto the nearest table to stable yourself, stumbling around as you try to pathetically attempt to speed walk.

 “L/n– L/n hold on just– Y/n!” Wilson says anxiously.

“Fuckin’ asshole, I’m gonna kill him.. How does he even know?” You grumble to yourself.

You stumbled around the workplace, bumping into things and nearly dodging others, looking like a lunatic disguised as a doctor, or to be more accurate; House.

“Y/n!” Wilson calls out to you, catching up to you far more quickly than you had been “speedwalking”.

He stops you, getting ahold of your left arm and goes in front of you, grabbing your other arm after successfully stopping you from even taking one more step.

“L/n, don’t. I know he’s an asshole but let's just go back to your office so we can sit you down, and then talk about this, okay?”

You were upset, and overwhelmed. He was right. You should go back to your office, sit down, have some water, and focus on Noah.

Noah..

You nod at him and turn around to make your way back to your office, one of his hands on your back and another out in case you fall.

He was so.. caring. You’ve never had someone care so much for you. You haven’t had that in years, you’d forgotten just how nice it was to be cared for, even if it were in upsetting circumstances such as now.

You smile to yourself as he helps you to your office chair, thanking him.

Wilson pulls up a stool in front of you, “L/n, are you okay?” He questions, taking your hands into his own, warm and calloused.

“Yeah, I guess I just freaked out a bit. I’m alright,”

“How much medicine have you been taking, L/n..” Wilson asks concerningly.

You sigh. You didn’t want to admit you had a bit of a.. problem with substances, specifically your prescribed ones. God, I really am House..

“Uh,” You look away from him. You were more than ashamed of yourself. There was a reason the drugs were controlled, because they were addictive..

It had gotten to the point where you depended on them too much. The Clobazam wasn’t even necessary, either.

“750 mg of Levetiracetam, 370 mg of Lamotrigine, and 50 mg of Clobazam.” You mutter.

“750 of Levetiracetam??”

“Yeah.. three times daily.”

Wilson sighs and lets his head fall low, muttering something to himself.

“L/n, you could overdose on just the Levetiracetam and Lamotrigine together twice, maybe even once! But you're mixing it with the Clobazam, too? Three times a day? Who’s prescribing you this much medicine?!” Wilson was genuinely concerned for you, he didn't mean to sound or come off as angry or upset, but that’s definitely what he sounded like.

"Myself," You looked at your hands, his were still holding yours.

"..I'm sorry but- I couldn't risk having an episode, especially not here. If- if anyone else found out I thought I might lose my job or- or my medical license, I can’t risk that, I- I worked so hard for this title, I can’t let it be taken away because of some stupid-” You started to get worked up and hysterical. So much build up just over the years of not telling anyone your worries, not even your parents or friends from home, all of it just spilt out in front of Wilson.

Wilson gets up and pulls you into a tight hug, stroking your hair as his chin rested on to of your head. “I won’t tell anyone, and I promise you, I absolutely promise you that you won’t lose your job if anyone else finds out,”

You tense up, but the sound of his heartbeat so close to your line of hearing made you relax into his arms, wrapping your own across his torso.

“I don’t know about you, but this is one of the first times that I’ve ever been happy that House is an asshole. I’m glad he told me. I’m glad you’re safe.” Wilson continued, holding you closer to him.

His overwhelming affection and concern began to make you tear up. He actually cared for you.

And though House would never admit it, so did he.

You began to cry into Wilson’s lab coat, still not letting go of him in fear that you would lose him forever if you did.

“I care for you, Y/n. I never want you to feel this way.”

He didn’t even care that you were dirtying his coat with your own tears and snot, he only cared for you at that moment.

“Oh, you finally found him. Did you find him in the bathroom touching himself like I said he was? Is that why you’re crying? Do you need a hug from me, too?” House says sarcastically as he barges into your office.

You take your face out of Wilson’s coat to scowl at House. “Fuck off, Greg..” You sniffle.

“House, it’s really not the time for your shit, and that’s a highly innaproppriate thing to say- wait, where did you get that from?” Wilson says, pulling away from you.

“I’ve heard you,” House ‘whispers’ very loudly.

House hobbles over to you and stares for a few seconds before ruffling your hair, making it messier than it already was before.

“Addict,”

“Says you, asshole,” You respond, trying to smooth out your hair for it to look decently.

“..Uh, how did you know? About my..” you continue.

“You have really gotta start being more quiet when you talk to your patients about stuff like that, it was hard not to hear you blabbering to that kid. Do you just do that with all of them? Pretty wreckless if you ask me,” House responds.

“And my medication?”

“You’re not as sneaky with it as you think. Maybe being more open about it would raise less flags. You just might actually be worse than I am, Ms. Addict.”

Wilson stood aside, watching the interaction between his best friends. They hated eachother, but cared for eachother at the same time. He smiled at the scene.

“Whatever,” You say as House leaves your office.

“You two are an interesting pair,” Wilson chuckles.

“He’s a child.” You roll your eyes and smile.

House pops back into your office, sticking only his head in through your doorway. “Druggie addict.” and he disappears once more.

“There’s my point being proven,”

“Oh, I never doubted you,”

You look up at Wilson, with him looking back down at you.

You took in his features for a good couple of moments, 

his thick brows were one of the most noticable features of his, in the best way possible in your opinion at least. You could never imagine him with what people would concider “normal proportioned” brows. They sat atop those puppy dog eyes that held a sort of tired softness to them, you could just get lost in them forever. A single section of hair seperated from his usual kept up hair, laying on top of his forehead. His smile. My god, his smile was so nice.

“What?” Wilson lets out a breathy laugh.

“Nothing, you just look nice today,” You reply back before getting up out of your chair in your best efforts, successfully making it back to Noah’s Radiographs.

“Thanks, you do, too,” He stood next to you at a closer proximity than before.

You and Wilson looked closely at Noah’s Radiographs for a few minutes before Wilson declared, “I don’t think you have to worry about these tumors too much, they look benign to me. We just need to remove them and Noah should be fine,”

You let out a sigh of relief. Noah was an amazing kid. You have no clue what you would do if you had to give news that he had something that could possibly be a cause of death. At least you found the reason for his.

You lay your head on Wilson’s shoulder and smile, “Thanks, James.”

He brings his hand up to grab your waist, pulling you closer to him and laying his head onto yours, “Thank you for letting me help out with him. He’s lucky to have you,”

“..though, I think I would be even luckier to have you, Y/n.” Wilson continues.

Wilson had always been good with his words when he wanted to. They always came out to be smooth, yet not too vulgar or forward. Thats exactly what it felt like now. It felt genuine, it felt like it actually came straight from the heart, and now you felt like yours was about to practically beat out of your chest.

“I think you would, I’m just special like that,” you giggle.

Wilson raises his head off of yours and looks at you, taking in how beautiful you looked before placing a small kiss to your head.

You grin, practically from ear to ear and lift your head off of his shoulder to press a kiss to his cheek, only for him to lift your chin up. You two were practically teasing each other, for as when you went to close the gap, he lifted you up and carried you to your office chair bridal style and sat down with you in his lap, now closing the gap himself as he spun around in the chair with you.

You smiled into the kiss and you could feel he was too.

This would be one of your most memorable days ever, in so many ways. Not only because of Noah, but because of this moment with James that you would never imagine would happen to you in a million years.

Its not to early to think to yourself or say, you love him.

You love James Wilson, and you would scream it from the top of your lungs so everyone else could be reminded of it.

You were in love with him, and he was in love with you.

[anonymous-dee]

LiuShen Omegaverse Scenario

Okay, a Scum Villain AU has been brewing in my head and I need to share it with the class.

So basically Shen Qingqiu is an Omega who has to disguise himself as an Alpha in order to fit in with the rest of the peak lords. In order to be eligible to become a peak lord, you have to be an Alpha, and thus all of the other peak lords are Alphas. When Shen Qingqiu transmigrated, he realized that the original goods had been hiding his status as an Omega the entire time, and just continued doing it for the sake of his image (and to avoid political drama of course)

So of course, this means that whenever Shen Qingqiu goes into heat, he secludes himself inside the Bamboo House to suffer through them on his own. Even though this is detrimental for his health, he would rather die (again) than out himself, and he would rather die TWICE than to leave the mountain and find an Alpha who would be willing to help him. Yeah. NO.

So basically, one time while Shen Qingqiu is going through his heat, Liu Qingge shows up unexpectedly for one reason or another. He senses something is off with Shen Qingqiu, but it doesn't click for him what's going on at first. That's when Shen Qingqiu realizes that Liu Qingge is not an Alpha.

He's a Beta.

As a Beta, Liu Qingge gets the faintest whiff of Shen Qingqiu's pheromones; because the scent is so light, it takes him a hot minute to realize that they're coming from SQQ. Shen Qingqiu is surprised to learn that Liu Qingge is also hiding his identity and pretending to front as an Alpha, but this also spawns a reluctant thought in his Heat-induced brain.

Maybe Liu Qingge could...help?

He dismisses it at first and is actively trying to get Liu Qingge to LEAVE, but the more adamant he acts, the more Liu Qingge gets suspicious/worried for his health. So finally, Shen Qingqiu makes the impulsive decision to awkwardly ask Liu Qingge for help.

It should be fine, since he's a Beta and not an Alpha. Shen Qingqiu would never ask an Alpha for help. Betas are more gentle and they have better control over their instincts. Liu Qingge is freaking out a little, of course, because he's never done anything intimate before, but also still wants to help Shen Qingqiu through his heat.

So he does, but of course things don't go as planned. In the deepest throes of their passionate love making, Liu Qingge accidentally marks Shen Qingqiu. Now, the mark of a Beta isn't as powerful as the mark of an Alpha, BUT STILL.

Shen Qingqiu is FUCKED. He's freaking out, because "Holy shit, you fucking marked me! This is what I was trying to avoid! Everyone is going to find out that I'm an Omega!" And Liu Qingge is freaking out because "Holy shit, I marked him. I fucked up. I fucked up really bad."

So their solution? They clumsily form the idea to fake a bonding ceremony and pretend to be fated mates. Two Alphas being fated mates is relatively rare, so the two of them can use this as an excuse for why it took so long for them to "notice the spark." One Beta and one Omega pretending to be two Alphas in a functioning relationship and totally not a marriage of convenience.

While all of this is happening, Luo Binghe is in the Endless Abyss, and his timeline is similar to that of the canon universe. Luo Binghe is an Alpha, and still has his heavenly demon heritage. Anyways, he comes back from the Endless Abyss to lay claim on his shizun, only to find out:

His shizun smells different. Luo Binghe has his shizun's scent memorized, and he would immediately be able to tell if another Alpha marked him

He realizes that not only does his shizun smell different, he's actually marked! Taken!

What do you think Luo Binghe will do when he not only realizes that his shizun is an Omega, but that his shizun was marked by a BETA? AND the two of them faked their bonding ceremony?

Oh, he's pissed. He's LIVID.

But Liu Qingge And Shen Qingqiu gradually start to acclimate to the other, and soon their feelings for each other become genuine amidst the broiling political turmoil they will soon be entrenched in.

That's as far as this idea reaches. But I'm having a lot of fun with it. Maybe I'll write something!

Let me know what you think!

[puttersmile]

I had a weird dream and crack ship was born

Frowny: Oh…yeah she seems. Nice. Dogday? Where are you going?

Dogday offscreen running away as fast as he can.

I don't even remember the dream but I remember the ship.

I need possible ship name. Ideas? Right now I'm thinking Chocolate Rain lol.

Gametoons is so bad. But I somehow someway had a liking for Frowny Fox (and maybe some of the other forgotten critters)

I also wasn't satisfied by how i drew Maggie in my last comic. That's what I get for trying to draw her from memory and not just...looking up a picture. So I tried again. I like this design a lot more.

A short oneshot fic under the cut. At the last minute I changed it to be Christmas themed which is why the picture isn't Christmas themed.

The Day Frowny Realized Maggie Wasn't Just Scary

The outdoor mall was chaos. With the holidays right around the corner, critters flooded the square, scrambling for last-minute gifts and bargains. Stalls were crammed with shiny trinkets, festive treats, and decorations that probably cost twice as much as they should. Frowny hated this. Crowds made his fur itch, and the pressure of picking the perfect gift didn’t help.

He was here for a Secret Santa gift exchange, and the name he’d drawn—an acquaintance who loved puzzles and had a mild obsession with coffee—had him stumped. He hovered by a table of mugs, frowning at one shaped like a sleeping squirrel. It was cute, but not too cute, right? He didn’t want to send the wrong message.

Just as he reached for it, something slammed into his side, sending him stumbling into the stall. A sharp hiss of pain escaped Frowny as he caught himself on the edge of the table.

“MOVE IT, BUDDY!”

Frowny turned, his tail bristling, to see a yellow gecko in ugly brown pants rushing through the crowd, shoving critters out of his way like a hurricane. Before Frowny could even get a word out, the gecko shoved another critter. This time, the wrong one.

Maggie Mako.

Oh no.

Maggie didn’t budge. Didn’t even sway. She turned her head slowly, towering over the gecko like a tidal wave about to break. Her grin was wide and full of teeth. “You wanna try that again, pal?”

The gecko froze, his cocky energy deflating immediately. “Uh… my bad,” he stammered, his eyes darting for an exit.

“You shoved someone else, then bump into me? Oh, you’ve got guts. Let’s see if you like keeping them inside.”

The gecko's yellow scales turned white. “S-s-sorry ma'am! D-didn't mean to—uh—yeah, I’ll just—”

“Scram,” Maggie growled, crossing her arms. That was all it took. The gecko bolted, nearly tripping over his own tail as he disappeared into the crowd.

Maggie rolled her shoulders and went back to considering some very ornate holiday cookies, looking more annoyed than anything. “Some critters. That's what I thought.” she muttered, dusting her hands off.

Frowny, who had been standing frozen with one paw still clutching the squirrel mug, finally remembered how to breathe. He adjusted his scarf and was about to slink away unnoticed when Maggie turned, catching him mid-stare.

Her grin softened with recognition. Less teeth, more playful.

“You okay, Foxy boy?”

It took a second for Frowny’s brain to catch up. Maggie had just defended him. Maggie, the big, scary shark woman who could probably bench press two wagons full of pumpkins, had stepped in for him. And now she was looking at him, smiling, as if she hadn’t just terrified someone out of their scales.

“I, uh…” His left ear flicked nervously. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?” Maggie stepped closer, her shadow falling over him like a blanket. “You look a little pale. Well, paler than usual.” She smirked, her tone teasing but not unkind.

Frowny wanted to say something clever, but his brain had short-circuited. Instead, he noticed something odd: Maggie didn’t seem scary in that moment. She seemed… safe. Yes. safe, strong and confident, but not in a way that made him want to hide. In fact, it was kind of… nice?

And then it hit him. It wasn’t just nice. It was attractive. Hot even? Did his brain really just go there.

Oh no.

Maggie arched a brow, waiting for a response. When none came, she leaned down, eyes twinkling. “What’s the matter, Foxy? Catnap got your tongue?”

Frowny’s ears burned. He yanked his scarf higher over his face. “No. I’m fine. Thanks. Bye.” The words came out in a rushed jumble as he turned and awkwardly strutted away, his tail puffed up like a bottle brush.

Maggie blinked after him, then laughed. “You’re welcome!” she called, shaking her head. “Weird little guy.”

Meanwhile, Frowny ducked behind a corner, clutching his chest like his heart was about to escape. What was that? What was that?! He’d spent weeks avoiding Maggie because she was terrifying, and now, after one incident, he was—no. No, no,no. This wasn’t happening! He did not have a thing for Maggie Mako.

…But her smile had been kind of nice. And her strength had been… really nice. Pretty smile, very white cheerful teeth that didn't frighten him like they'd used to.

“Oh no,” he muttered to himself, ears flat. “This is bad.”

It was the beginning of the end. Or maybe the start of something good? No of course not! Or maybe it could be? Frowny wasn’t sure yet. He just knew he was doomed.

[nobodyexpectsthe]

okay i'm going to do a veilguard critical post and i want to start it with this post by david gaider that has lived rent free in my brain since i read it.

and i want to be clear as i begin this rant that i am critical of studio leadership. not the development team themselves, because god fucking knows they tried.

i cannot emphasize enough that the game we got is not the fault of individual writers, or game designers, or any creative team leads. the issue came from people way, way, way above their heads.

and that is extremely important to remember that veilguard's active retooling had only been in play for, what, a year? from 2022 to 2023? when the games industry decided it was time for record layoffs?

where like their entire QA team got shitcanned?

and devs had to fight to get more than two weeks fucking severance?

if veilguard had remained an always online multiplayer experience i think it's story would have been praised, because the story was not meant to be the main draw. the gameplay and character customization was. any story in an online game that isn't an mmorpg is generally praised - even if its a stupid mystery box story where you're just drip fed tiny details that will take actual years to pay off.

in a singleplayer experience in a franchise that people went to because of it's storytelling the whole thing just falls so short.

but for me the issues went so much deeper.

i like most of the character concepts. i like most of the ideas the game was built on, but the execution made me angry.

needing to constantly leave and come back to the lighthouse to pop new quests was frustrating. if they dropped me in the middle of the hub it wouldn't have been so frustrating, but to talk to lucanis i have to go from one end of the map to the other.

there was nothing to do at the lighthouse besides that and i guess upgrading my armor. i can't talk to my companions. i can't even like - prog conversations between them? why can't i use my caretaker points to build out areas for my companions to hang out in, drop some fucking items in there associated with them, and maybe get the conversations i want to hear instead of lucanis talking about fucking coffee for the sixteenth time?

there's a dining room. why can't i use that to get ambient banter conversations?

why am i at the fucking mercy of what the npcs want to do?

so much of the gameplay felt like a holdover from the multiplayer version. things that wouldn't have bothered me as part of a game that was meant to be played in realtime, with idk the conversations being daily login incentives,

but nothing stood out to me as bad as the quest recaps did. the quest recaps actively fucked with my ability to get immersed and stay immersed. they were either clearly a holdover from when there were meant to be huge real time gaps between content drops or an extremely poorly thought out addition that really only made the stop-starts of every quest that much worse.

and the little pop-ups that reminded me why a character did a thing or felt a certain way were infuriating. that just happened. literally at the start of this quest.

the companion quests don't change. they come to conclusions on their own, and even if you try to sway them in another path it doesn't ultimately change anything? i think emmrichs is the only one you can drastically affect the outcome of.

like yes, game, you are not terribly complicated. i have a handful of choices so if a character is doing something or saying something directly related to a choice i pushed them to make, i would assume that's why.

except i had no actual choices. i have replayed dragon age 2 & inquisition multiple times just to see how different scenarios play out depending on my choices. i have played BG3 to fucking death to see how little dialogue options get called back.

i am not talking the grand sweeping choices at the end of the game. i am not talking about the four different endings - which i actually did not enjoy at all.

an ending where everyone dies because you didn't amass enough political power and/or recruit all the party members would have fucked hard actually.

and see, one of my favorite rpgs of all time is tales of symphonia. that's a jrpg. that has a set plot, a set way things play out, you cannot change it except for one small detail - your interpersonal relationships.

i do not need to drastically change the ending of the game, i need to feel like the little stones i throw make little ripples. i need to see that my actions, the person my character is, has an influence on the people around them, their willingness to stand with them and follow their orders, and veilguard didn't give me that.

what i got instead was the illusion of a choice.

what if instead of rook assigning people to missions (THAT IT HOLDS YOUR HAND THROUGH TO PICK THE RIGHT CHOICES) it came down to a matter of trust? what if you gave an order and rather than following it, your teammate / the faction decided you knew jack shit actually and deviated from the plan?

or what if their unhealed personal trauma actually came up in the thing that gets them killed? what if instead of it being cinematics, it was something you had to play through ala DA2? where you have the option to try to salvage the relationship one last time before they either die or get themselves killed?

why was i a fucking spectator in this game that was supposedly built around the strong bonds the veilguard had? because like the whole ~hero of the veilguard~ thing falls flat to me if their fatal flaw isn't ultimately what destroys them.

an ending where i got fed up with the same boring repetitive sidequests & didn't go back and forth from the lighthouse often enough to get

the fact that the game auto-saves at key choice points too is indicative that they know this is not a replayable experience.

looking @ corinne bus.che's departure from bioware and her statements, i don't have a lot of hope for the company. i think that she's saying in the politest way that things are still bad and she's moving on to greener pastures and hopes that the studio can fix itself.

and i say this because i'm remembering the actual months of all hands meetings where execs said the same thing over and over again right before they dropped that projects were being scrapped, games were being sunset, and layoffs were imminent. and my boss, bless him, was trying to reassure me that my team was safe.

only for him to log in one day and find out that someone above his head had laid off team members without his say or input. and how this happened again, and again, until i was the one sending him a text message bc i'd been called into a meeting with someone above his head. my whole team was devastated, our already small size reduced even further, and the workload became that much more stressful to everyone left.

and it kept coming. the way the SLT undervalued anything that wasn't their own fucking jobs was disgusting. heaven forbid you don't lose your bonus. but sure, okay, hq needed that luxury spa the almost entirely remote team will never see.

i had to sign stuff saying i could never disparage the company so i could get my severance.

i remember sitting in allhands meetings with my team, watching the divide between the people who actually make the fucking game and engage with the audience & the people who call the shots grow bigger, and bigger, and bigger until we had a blowout during a meeting regarding our bonuses structure changing THREE DAYS after another project was cancelled AND THE COMPANY HIRED AN ADDITIONAL CEO.

i have been the person in meetings with an exhausted dev team, listening to the writer say they want to do more but the studio won't let them. i've seen the artists showing off work they know will never see the light of day because their project was doomed. i've seen the team lead with defeat in his eyes saying they desperately trying to explain to SLT (who had no knowledge or care about the IP what the project needed to succeed) only to be dismissed.

and like, that might not be her energy. that might be my disillusionment with the industry speaking, but it's so fucking sad. so fucking sad.

she's currently getting a lot of flack but like - it's not her fucking fault my dudes!!! the game was pushed out on a crazy timeline, there were layoffs, she inherited so many problems.

i hope she uses her title and experience to find a better studio to work at and has the chance to make the crpg she wanted to. i hope that studio understands that you can't just staple trends from other games & genres onto yours and make it a success, because bioware & EA sure don't.

i genuinely hope baldur's gate 3 and larian's entire approach to game design forces these grifting finance bros out of the industry and i wish so desperately the discourse would focus on how that is the fucking problem here. but i don't think it will.

i'm going to be so surprised if bioware isn't stripped and sold for parts after mass effect 4 drops. i've seen it too many times at this point.

ips are only as strong as the people making them. and if you have created an environment where these people are leaving in droves, or are constantly anxious for their job security, or you keep interrupting it and retooling it to chase a trend, you've fucked yourself and don't even understand why that trend is popular.

why in the fuck is someone going to pay for knockoff of a better game that's doing numbers with an active playerbase? do you seriously think that the dragon age skin you put over it does anything for that?

i am so tired of the conversations around this game centering on how 'wokeness' ruined it. it didn't. these have always been progressive games. the issues with vg came from people far removed from the writing, design & art process. i think a lot of the clunkiness of the game came from the fact that these stories had no fucking time to develop and grow naturally, they had to be shotgunned bc they had no time to do anything else.

when all is said and done, my honest impression of veilguard is that its a miracle it came out. it is. it genuinely is. few games get out of development hell after that long, let alone in a playable state with any redeeming qualities.

but that miracle isn't enough for me to forgive all of its faults. the slog that was act 2 damn near killed me. there was no narrative pacing with the companion quests. there was... no quests outside of the companion quests. it would have been one thing if i was doing a main story quest and then everybody had feelings related to that quest, but i think 99 percent of act 2 is purely fixing everyone's emotional problems so they don't die in the final battle.

anyway the last thing i'll say is i've seen a lot of people criticizing the team for fluffing the project up. and... man, i hate to tell you this, but they can't say anything about it right now. they just can't. and more than that, like... they are allowed to have pride in what they managed to pull together. the fact that game came out at all is, and it cannot be understated, a miracle.

if there are expirations on their NDAs & non-disparagement clauses, we're going to get some tea in 5 - 15 years.

[blacktofade]

not sure if you're still taking gemtho prompts but something with secret relationship/relationship reveal 👀 that isn't much to go off of so it could definitely be paired with another prompt too, i just love that trope (my brain goes to rpf since i love the idea of them trying and failing to hide a relationship from the viewers, but could be in game too)

I'm back to fill more gemtho prompts from earlier this year! I'm not setting a schedule though. You guys will get them as I find time and/or motivation. Enjoy!!

--

Impulse first notices him when Gem steps through the front door of the hotel in Detroit. She’s laughing, glancing over her shoulder at him, and he’s smiling, one hand tucked against the small of her back, the touch clearly familiar. He’s tall with dark hair, and sticks close as Gem pauses just inside the entrance way, dropping her backpack on the ground and crouching to dig through it.

For just a moment, the man looks over, maybe sensing Impulse’s stare, but he doesn’t react, just glances back down at Gem, offering his hand on her elbow when she stands up again. She’s holding something that might be her wallet, but she passes it over, saying something that Impulse can’t hear from across the other side of the lobby.

The man dips down, kissing Gem — quick and chaste — and she smiles, watching him walk away toward the check-in desk.

Impulse almost startles when she turns, catching his gaze, like she’s known he was there the whole time.

Her smile widens and she pulls her backpack on, jogging toward him, as though she can’t contain her excitement.

“Impy!” she says, dragging him into a hug once she’s close enough, and it’s effortless to fold around her, quickly forgetting about everything apart from how much he’s missed her.

“Hey, Gem,” he murmurs into her hair, giving her an extra squeeze, just so she knows how happy he is to see her.

“Is that Gemstone?” a voice says behind them and Gem laughs, finally letting Impulse go as Skizz moves in to sweep her up, lifting her straight off the ground.

“Careful,” Impulse warns, stepping back, but neither of them seem to hear and Tango laughs as he sidles up beside him.

“You think they’re listening?”

“About as well as my kids,” Impulse scoffs and Tango laughs again.

“Are you surprised?”

Impulse isn’t. At all. What he is surprised by is the guy Gem’s with, who’s now edging past them, carry-on bag in tow. But he doesn’t stop to check in with Gem, doesn’t even glance in their direction, just heads toward the elevators, a keycard held in one hand.

“Did you know Gem was bringing her boyfriend?” Impulse asks without thinking, and Tango offers him a look, like he’s lost his entire mind.

“Why would she tell me?”

Which he supposes is his issue, because why would she tell him either? They’re close, but he’s far from being Gem’s confidant.

Impulse tries to shrug as casually as he can. “Was just wondering.”

In front of him, Gem finally untangles herself from Skizz’s grasp before noticing Tango’s there.

Their hug isn’t as enthusiastic — probably much to Tango’s relief — but Gem pulls away, grinning.

“It feels good to be back together,” she tells them. “Where are the others?”

Impulse is pretty sure Grian’s napping in his room, and Pearl isn’t due in until later that night, but he thinks False and Zed are in the hotel’s bar already.

“They’re around,” Skizz promises. “C’mon, let’s get you a drink. You look like you could use one.”

Gem blows out a breath. “I look that bad, huh?”

“The worst I’ve ever seen,” Skizz jokes, nudging her with his elbow as though to make sure she knows he’s only messing about.

“Not surprising,” Gem starts, already walking with Skizz, heading toward the back of the hotel. “The airline lost my bag.”

Impulse finds himself following, automatically glancing over at the elevators as they pass. But the mystery guy isn’t there and Gem doesn’t seem concerned about wandering off without him.

“Man, that sucks,” Skizz says and Impulse belatedly makes a noise of agreement.

“Might need a couple of drinks,” he adds and Gem laughs, nodding in agreement.

“Please.”

-

Gem shows up for breakfast in a flannel shirt that definitely isn’t hers. She makes it look good — the bottom of it tied at her waist, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows — but the collar hangs open, the shoulders too broad.

It’s a man’s shirt.

“Heard anything about your luggage?” he tries, digging into the scrambled egg whites that he’d paid extra for.

Gem shakes her head, sipping at a mug of tea, a picked-apart pastry in front of her. “Nothing yet. Think I’m gonna have to do a clothes-run before the event today.”

Gem doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d enjoy a last minute shopping spree, but maybe she’ll drag Pearl with her to make it fun. Or maybe her secret boyfriend.

“What’s wrong with that?” he asks, tipping his head toward the shirt she’s in, and she smiles like they both know damn well what.

“Did you sleep well?” she asks, cleanly changing the subject completely, and Impulse shouldn’t be surprised.

He sighs and shakes his head. “I’m so nervous, I think I’m gonna have to take a second shower later.”

She laughs, not unkindly. “You’ll have a good time once it starts,” she promises, and Impulse knows that, but that doesn’t mean the jitters will go away.

“What about you?” he asks. “How’d you sleep after everything?”

She takes another mouthful of tea, swallowing before answering. “We woke up early. I guess even just a little time difference can mess me up.”

We. Not I. She means herself and whoever’s up in her room right now.

“You’ll both have to go to bed earlier tonight,” he says, wanting to push, to make sure she knows he heard the slip-up, and Gem grins, clearly enjoying this game they’re playing.

“Guess so,” she agrees, but Impulse already knows that with the group they have, there’s no way anyone is bailing early.

Impulse takes a drink of his coffee, watching her silently, and under the table, her foot gently knocks into his own, once and then again — not an accident.

“This’ll be a fun weekend,” she says and something uncurls in Impulse’s stomach.

He’s getting too caught up in his own thoughts and she’s right. They’re there to have a good time.

Gem keeping part of her life private isn’t something he should take personally. If he did, he’d need to have beef with everyone else on the server. Except maybe Skizz. He almost knows too much about that guy.

He offers her a smile and finds himself nodding. “Yeah,” he agrees. “It will.”

-

He might be less upset about the situation, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to push.

“Snacks for later?” he asks when they’re riding the elevator back upstairs together, watching as she tries to carry a cup of coffee, a banana, a chocolate muffin, and a bowl of fresh fruit.

She glances over at him, the corner of her mouth curled up, before she holds out the bowl.

“Can you hold that for me?”

She doesn’t answer the question, but Impulse still finds himself doing as she asks. He’s a sucker like that.

“Didn’t know you liked coffee,” he tries instead, and her eyes are bright, like she knows what he’s doing.

The elevator slows, the doors opening with a quiet groan.

“C’mon,” Gem says, tipping her head. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Impulse’s room is two floors above and he knows he should probably go back so he can brush his teeth and get ready for the rest of their day, but he hesitates, watching Gem hold the door with her elbow.

He waits a beat, then another, and then nods, his curiosity getting the better of him.

She’s silent as she leads the way down the hallway, but eventually she stops by a room near the fire exit, knocking on the door in a familiar rhythm.

Apparently, she didn’t bring her key. But it doesn’t matter, because after a moment, the door swings open to reveal the man Impulse had seen the day before.

His expression is gentle when he looks at Gem, but shifts into something cooler — maybe a little uncertain — when he notices Impulse is there with her.

“I wanted you two to finally meet,” Gem says, glancing between them, and for some reason Impulse feels the need to vet the guy. Like Gem is his daughter and he wants to make sure she’s not picking up some random lowlife, someone Impulse deems unworthy.

He squares his shoulders and holds out his hand.

“Hey,” he says, “I’m Scott.”

The guy in the doorway shifts, smiling as he takes Impulse’s hand and shakes it firmly.

“Hi, Scott, I’ve heard so much about you,” the man says, and Impulse’s eyes widen as he recognizes the voice.

Gem laughs, delighted, stepping closer to fit herself against the man’s side, grinning at Impulse, clearly pleased with herself.

Impulse finally drops his hand back down, but there’s no doubt in his mind.

“Etho?” he asks, earning a laugh — the same he’s heard in-game so many times before.

“Hey, Impulse,” Etho replies easily, and Impulse’s mind goes a little blank.

“What are you doing here?”

“It’s kind of a half-way point for both of us,” Gem tells him. “We figured it would be an easy way to meet up again.”

Again.

“Again?” he echoes and Gem nods, like it’s not a big deal. “How long have you been meeting up?”

It feels easier to ask than whether or not they’re actually dating. Ironically, after everything, he’s suddenly almost certain it’s none of his business.

Gem shrugs with one shoulder. “First time was just before season ten began? We wanted to wait a bit before we told anyone. Y’know, in case.”

They obviously hadn’t needed to worry about that — the proof being they’re both there together, Gem tucked comfortably under Etho’s arm, like it’s exactly where she belongs.

“He’s gonna join us for the roadtrip,” Gem continues. “I thought maybe we could grab dinner together?”

Impulse is nodding before his brain can catch up. “Of course,” he agrees. “Anytime. I’d love that.”

He stares between them a little longer before laughing, perhaps from the adrenaline of the surprise.

“Skizz isn’t going to shut up about this when you tell him,” he says. “Do you know how many questions I made him cut from the podcast?”

“Part three?” Etho jokes with a laugh and Impulse shakes his head.

“Don’t let him hear you say that,” he warns. “The first thing out of his mouth is gonna be ‘I told you so.’”

“We weren’t being subtle,” Gem agrees. “We’ll let him have that one.”

“I can’t believe — ” Impulse starts before laughing again. “As if my nerves weren’t frayed enough today.”

“We’re about to really find out how good you are at keeping secrets,” Gem jokes and Impulse snorts.

“Hope you guys are ready to go public then.”

Gem shifts, grinning up at Etho, who smiles back, and Impulse can see it — the affection, the respect between them.

“I think we could be,” she says, and when Etho nods, Impulse can tell they’re not lying.

Out of everyone — anyone Gem could’ve picked — he knows she’s made the right choice.

“I’m happy for you both,” he says, and as Gem smiles at him, brighter than he’s ever seen, he finds that he means it.

[themareverine]

Until We Fall ▹masterlist | worst!Logan x mutant!fem!OC

summary: DP&W AU. It's been God knows how many years after Logan's death in North Dakota—and this wouldn't be much of a story without a shiny new villain with a hot new plan, or someone to save the world. Well, maybe two someones. Ok, you win, three. But first, you have track down that said someone—the Wolverine. And who better to do that than the girl who found him the first time? Logan/OC

a/n: *knocks on glass, looks confused* hi, anyone still here? If so, welcome in! here's my DP& W AU. i have no idea what I'm doing. this is a sequel that i'm writing kinda-sorta at the same time as my main series, Mare & the Wolverine, and yes, please know, this is kinda self-insert-y. let me live, will you? reposting from my old account, OC is a mutant.

series masterlist | nav | | next

It's Called an Intro, Motherf******

Hi, welcome to the fuc–I mean freak, show. Don't want to blow the whole damn budget on the first 2.5 seconds of page time, right? Critics, good God–they're the worst. One sentence in and they'll judge the whole effin' book, hook line and sinker without even getting to the plot. Frickin' internet has made everyonea literary genius. Not.

ANYWAY—you're probably wondering what the eff I'm doing in the middle of this shitshow, huh? A story that isn't mine, hell—a story that isn't even technically writtenyet. That's a Fox thing. Or an MCU thing. Or a….thing, I guess? Dunno, this habit of timelines and then redoing and undoing them like a nun unbuckling a priests robes in a spittin' hurry after church is getting old—nobody really knows what the heck is going on. But, that's showbiz, right?

Rabbit trail, sorry. Frickin' brain. Anyway, yes–here. Ahem.

Well, really, we've got ourselves a Code Redpool (see what I did there?) with this one—someone trying to take over the world, rattle some cages, all that jazz. And if you didn't already know, such sticky little cumsucking messes requires a little bit more than a mercenary with a mouth. We already know I can't—don't—save the world. Despite what the box office may lend. It's above my paygrade, my hero tier. This rated R mothereffer hasn't gotten there yet, not on his own. Maybe another million or fifty.

Could be different this go around, though. Who effin' knows. All I know is that to save a world, to make a story, you need a couple of things—a smashin' budget, a whole helluva lot of copyright law, and a hero. An "anchor being," because Marvel has to be frickin' special. Sometimes two when the situation is Redpool, like it is. Maybe three, because I'll be EFFED if I'm not part of this one. Earnin' my stripes, going all Tony the Tiger and shit. You know the drill.

To help me out, I need the big guy. Yeah. Not Jesus, though it could be argued He's a factor, here. Very non denominational, very off script, very demure. Think more…yellow. Feral, as it were. Canadian. Yeah, dumbass—we need the Wolverine. The guy with the forks, the mutton chops from the 70s that were definitely a…choice. Logan. Yeah, him. Mr. Feral Forest Weasel himself.

And we'll probably need someone who can help us get to Logan, since he wouldn't know me from fresh effin' ADAM. If you saw Logan, you'll understand. Though it didn't happen exactly that way, because this is an AU—that fanfiction shit, you know. Sigh. We need someone who's tamed the beast, has clawed under all that adamantium and seen the hero where a trainwreck of a multiple-movies-gone-bad guy has stood.

A girl, genius. We need a girl. And lucky for you, delightful little fourth-wallians, I've got just the one.

Buckle up, mothereffer's—shit's about to get Wolverine-d.

Contents ➳❥ somewhere in the past, north dakota (in other words, the prologue) ➳❥ always sinners, rarely saints

[wayfayrr]

for some reason i've had another idea for a request LODGED in my damn brain ever since i wore my platforms the other week: [they are comfy to me, and the heel isn't very high, just the platform adds like- 4inches lol] someone who has tall ass shoes, and nobody notices until they take em off or something and suddenly they're shorter it sounds bad, cause why would someone be wearing platforms, but i swear i can run in em. [took some trial and error though....] also its just really goofy.

No because I'm just as stubborn with platforms the thing that gets you is stairs. I'm not entirely sure if I've mentioned it on here, but I'm a firm believer that Hylians are short. Time is seen as tall because as far as Hylians go? He is Twilight is seen as monsterously tall. Which mixes into your other ask as well - seeing as Time is fairly average height when compared to humans with Twi being tall even to humans (he grew up with humans so he adapted just a lil he's got a much higher milk tolerance sfvgf) but only Twi really knows this seeing as he grew up in ordon with humans and honestly? Means he has a reason to reach out to the reader in the first place, explaining most of the differences he noticed growing up between him and the rest of the villagers It's not the most but really at that point it's helpful to know anything. and it gets him closer to you which is what he really cares about honestly I write the chain as yandere's most of the time really, but this scenario where he's reader's best hope and they naturally get closer to him? I could see it happening really it's because he can't have a repeat of midna someone from another world stealing his heart and leaving him forever ha nope

As for platforms? that'll be fun to explain to them >:) this turned out a little bit more Twi centric than I meant for it to be but it was so fun to write and flowed so naturally !! <33 [masterlist]

“[Name]? We’re about to have breakfast, you’ll probably want to come get some before we leave the inn. Time’s saying that we’re going to be walking a lot today”

“Hm? Yeah I’m coming wild.”

His eyes looked as if they were about to fall out of his head when I opened the door. Is there something off about my appearance? I’ve just woken up I guess so maybe I just look a bit dishevelled, but after travelling with them this long? Would that really be enough to set them off like this?

“You’re shorter! Are you alright? Twi said humans are way different compared to Hylians but I didn’t assume he meant you shrink sometimes! Come on we need to go show them to know if you’re gonna be okay.”

“Wait no wild I-”

There isn’t even time for me to argue my own point with how fast they’re pulling me over to the others, his strength is impressive even for hylians I’ve been told and that isn’t something I’ll argue with. But what is he on about me ‘shrinking’? I haven’t changed height at all… He’s never seen me without my platforms. That’d do it.

“TWILIGHT! [NAME] SHRANK. IS THAT SOMETHING HUMANS CAN DO? ARE THEY GOING TO BE ALRIGHT?”

“Wild really I’m going to be fine. If you’ll just let me explai-”

“YOU CAN SHRINK? Why didn’t you tell us [name]?”

Now winds come over - great. I’ll have to count on Twi’s glare being enough to give me time to speak. 

“Wild what are you on about humans can’t - oh. You did shrink. How did that happen?”

Bingo. Now I can hopefully clear this mess up somewhat.

“I didn’t shrink. I’m just not wearing my platforms. They add to my height when I wear them, I didn’t realise this was the first time Wild’s seen me without them. Their worry was pretty cute though.”

“So you didn’t shrink..? Can I try them on?”

“Nah wind, not only are they my only pair of shoes but I think you’d break your neck if you tried to walk in them.”

He really does look kind of like a cat when he pouts, you’d assume he’s just had a lemon slice shoved in his mouth rather than being told no for his own safety. It’s nice to see that despite having to become a hero at such a young age he still acts his age.

“Then how do you wear them? You’ve been walking them for so long without issue?”

“They’re your only shoes?”

“Yeah they are Twi, there’s no issue either wild. They’re comfortable to wear and I’m used to them anyway”

Twi looks as if he’s gearing up for a lecture if the look on his face is anything to go by, the very same one that’s a warning for wild when he’s done something questionable. A short sigh, a shake of his head and it quickly softens up into some sort of lovestruck expression.

“Darlin’ It isn’t that that I’m worried ‘bout. It’s not a good idea to only be travelling with a single pair, what if they get damaged or lost? I’ve got a spare set that should fit you, you can have them.”

“You don’t have to go that for me twi, I’m sure theres somewhere here I could just buy a pair.”

“It really ain’t an issue. It’ll save you breaking in a new pair so it’s for the best really.”

There’s more to what he’s saying I can feel it, but I can’t bring it up around the others like this so answers will have to wait. 

“You don’t wanna eat while you’re, only wearing a pair of socks you? Let’s go and get them for you quickly.”

His hand is so much softer than Wild’s and his touch is more tender and is that? Oh, he’s blushing, there really is something more to this isn’t there; does he like me or something? The walk to his room in the inn isn’t long, shorter than the one to my own. 

“Give me a second darlin’ and I’ll get you them.”

 “Of course, I’m not gonna get mad at you for taking too long to get me a gift. Seriously though, thanks for this link.”

If I thought he was red before he’s downright glowing now, his face from the tips of his ears to the lowest part of his neck that I can see have gone crimson red. Matching how his rummaging through his bag has gotten ever so more frantic, his patience for finding the said boots for me gone like ashes in the wind. Then before I know it a pair of leather boots are being thrust into my arms by someone who can only really be described as a blushy mess at the moment. It’s cute. He’s cute.

“They’re wonderful thank you again Twi, really.”

“You can ah - You can call me link when we’re alone together like this darlin’.”

“If you want me to then link. I’ll just put these on then we can go join the others, hopefully, they’ve saved us some food.”

These are so soft, are they lined with something? They have to be right? It feels like some kind of fur, they should be nice to walk in so I can save my platforms some wear. It makes a lot of sense to try to keep my belongings from home safe, just to have some memories to look back on. 

“Hey link, mind me asking what they’re lined with?”

“Wolf fur darlin’”

“Is it your fur?”

How is it possible he’s gotten even more red? Answers my question though. Why would he give me something lined with his own fur?

“I - That doesn’t bother you does it?”

[agrlsname]

Thank you @therealsaintscully for the tag! I'm soon about to post what might be my very last fic, so it's quite fitting to look back on my journey now.

How many works do you have on ao3?

38 – all Johnlock, except for one GO fic. On New Year's Eve I will post number 39!

What’s your total word count?

371,360 (will soon top it off with another 221 words ;))

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

What Friends Do (by FAR), Who I Really Am (personal fave), The General Idea, Coldness/Heat, Tomorrow's Song

Do you respond to comments? Why/why not?

At first I responded to every single one! And I still try to respond to every single person. But now, I sometimes only respond to the last one if it's a reader who's commented on every chapter and I get all the comments at once. I like staying connected to the readers, that's one of the most fun parts about fandom!

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

It has to be This Is Your Song. I mean, there's another one within a series that end in an angsty cliffhanger, but MCD surely has to take the prize?

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

Oh my, nearly all of them have happy endings – so what would count as happier than happy..? Maybe it's actually the one that isn't posted yet – stay tuned for the resolution of the New Year's Kiss series!

Do you write crossovers?

Nope. I've written a fusion though (Johnlock and Moulin Rouge!).

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yup. Some people get really angry at John in What Friends Do and they take it out on me. It's interesting because many MANY others adore the story with all their hearts! I even wrote a sequel from John's POV just to try to get people to understand, but the haters didn't understand anyway.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Even though at the beginning I said I'd never, half of my works are now rated E or M. What kind? Um, is "emotional, gay sex" a genre?

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I hope not!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Many of them, into five different languages! Coolest thing ever.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, I think I'm too pedantic for that. I've loved working with my beta on some poem translations, though, that The Sky is Full of Fiddles is based on.

What's your all-time favourite ship?

38 fics – you all know it's Johnlock, right? There are others that I love, but nothing can ever compare.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I don't have WIPs! I'm too much of a control freak and perfectionist when it comes to writing – I want to be able to change the beginning when I'm writing the ending. I don't even have unpublished WIPs – I hate the idea of leaving works unfinished. If I was still in those first years of writing frenzy, when I was single and didn't have a child, I'd have expanded on This Time – but as it is, I knew that I wouldn't have the time to do it justice. So I purposely ended on a cliffhanger that would still allow it to stand on its own the way it is.

What are your writing strengths?

Emotions, according to my beta! If you ask me, I'd say describing things – often emotions, I suppose – in new, poetic ways that play on different senses and therefore make them immediate. It's something I love reading myself, anyway, so it's something I've been practicing for... well, decades now. I'd like to think I've gotten at least somewhat good at it.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm weirdly bad at coming up with the small details that aren't important, but needed. A recent example is I needed a character to text another with an invented problem to try to get him to come over. It wasn't at all important what the problem was, but it also couldn't be just anything; it had to be in line with his character. I could not for the life of me come up with this problem myself – eventually my husband did it for me. So those kinds of details in my stories are rarely from my own brain!

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Hmm, well, I've tried not to do that. As a reader I find it annoying to have to look things up, or scroll down to the notes. I have three fics in which characters aren't English; in This Is Your Song I added a couple of "Bonjour"s for flavour, which is about as far as my own French knowledge reaches... In the Fiddles series they're Swedes and speak my mother tongue, but I've written everything in English except for the words that English doesn't have (like for example "polska", a kind of dance), and at the very end, some song lyrics that are then translated into English in the end notes that come immediately after. I did want to add that song for flavour, but I didn't want it to be annoying.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Johnlock! I started in the aftermath of season 4 back in January 2017 and then couldn't stop.

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

I'm wondering whether I will come back to fic writing at a later point, but for another fandom. I've long wanted to write more for GO, although I already have written one fic. It would probably be a lot of fun to write for OFMD too. Doctor Who maybe? I don't know, it intimidates me to write for a new fandom where I don't yet know the characters as well as I know Sherlock and John.

What's your favourite fic you've written?

This question is too cruel! There are so many of them that I love. Maybe I have to say The Sky is Full of Fiddles, after all – it holds such a special place in my heart for many reasons that go beyond the story itself (although that's true for several fics). Other faves are Your Daughter, The Zebra Sheets and of course Who I Really Am, which I'm liking enough to turn it into a novel I'm now trying to get published. See, I couldn't pick one!!

I'm on Tumblr way too sporadically to have any idea of who's already done this and who hasn't, so I don't dare tag anyone... Feel free to take it and tag me if you feel like it!

[the-violet-galaxy]

~Sigh~

I tried to hold off on talking about a negative opinion, but today's episode was kinda a straw that broke the camel's back for me, and I gotta say something.

I hate that the Show is legitimately making New Moon inferior to Old Moon. This isn't even an opinion anymore, it's basically canon -- the way they've written it, Old Moon is genuinely better than New Moon in every single way, from brains to morality.

Old Moon is much smarter, more intelligent and cunning, his technological skills are SO much better than Nexus's. Moon looks at everything Nexus has ever built and LAUGHS at it and mocks him and calls him a bad builder -- there isn't a single thing he's impressed by, or even one kind of technology that New Moon is matched with him in skills at or slightly better at. (And the other characters tacitly agree, especially Sun.) He's also more cunning because in one swoop he snagged Ruin's signature to find his spaceship, and is schooling Ruin in terms of making a deal with him -- something New Moon was not capable of doing.

This is especially egregious because of the episode "A Talk With Past Moon." (This episode has noticeable bad retcons. In recent episodes, Old Moon says he received none of New Moon's memories or information. But during "A Talk With Past Moon" he knew EVERYTHING that had happened during New Moon's life, and referenced a lot of it. In recent episodes they go too hard with the gag of Old Moon not knowing anything that had happened in the past year, which is annoying because in A Talk With Past Moon he KNEW everything that had happened.) So during A Talk With Past Moon, Old Moon knew everything about New Moon's life, and thus knew about the things New Moon had built, his technological capabilities, and how smart New Moon was when dealing with enemies. And in that video, Old Moon says to New Moon: "Oh by the way! You've never been Inferior, you've been holding yourself back out of fear." Old Moon meant that when he said it. Therefor, this shows that Old Moon viewed New Moon is smart -- he considered him as smart as himself, or smarter in his own ways....

...But in recent episodes he's literally using the word "inferior", calling him stupid, a bad builder -- treating New Moon like a limp noodly punching bag.

New Moon isn't stupid. But the Show is now written so that it's canon he was stupid.

AND THEN, all the projects that New Moon was involved in, Old Moon sweeps in and is solving them instantly. New Moon isn't even allowed to keep the wins he DID achieve. OLD MOON is fixing Dazzle's broken body after one glance where New Moon couldn't do it in weeks. He's throwing everything New Moon built into the trash or calling it all badly designed.

They couldn't even let New Moon have an easy win/throw him a bone: When Old Moon looked at New Moon's garage lab, he sees the slot machines and starts mocks them; Sun suggests "maybe he converted them to look inconspicuous, so it'd be hidden...?" and Moon replies "No, I can tell they're just slot machines." Really......??? Why couldn't they have given New Moon this ONE win? Old Moon could have looked around and been like "Ah! All this stuff looks like it's just a normal garage, but there's a TON of hidden tech in here. Not bad, not bad." New Moon couldn't just have that?? It has to be another moment for Old Moon to go "incompetent, incompetent, an incompetent version of me......"

The straw was in today's episode where Moon talked to Nexus. Moon spends the whole time laughing at Nexus. There isn't a single moment where he feels attentive or like he's on alert from a threat. And later when Moon talks to Sun, he's dismissive of Nexus and says "ehhhh I think he's trying to match wits with me. Didn't turn out well for him." My guys, if Nexus IS GOING to be a villain (godIhatethisplot), then why can't Nexus, like... actually HAVE something?? Like why can't Old Moon sound just a little bit concerned with the idea that they have a new threat?? Cuz if no one is intimidated by him, why should we the audience worry about him? (Especially since the Show has made Old Moon the infinitely superior Moon. Since we're shown New Moon was SOOOOOO incompetent, then who is even worried? We know Old Moon is gonna spank Nexus like a toddler when they meet.)

What I'm getting at is I hate that New Moon is written to be stupid. Because he's not stupid. It's like they retconned his brains, his own skills, and his own accomplishments away. It isn't fair that they've written him to be stupid and dumb and laughable in the face of Old Moon's impeccable unbeatable genius.

New Moon shouldn't be put down so much just to prop Old Moon up.

(One idea that scares me is they might do something with this and New Moon's arc of "you DON'T have a legacy and don't need to live up to Old Moon!" and by the end Nexus will use this all as a learning experience where he'll be okay not being as smart as his past self. Now to be clear, New Moon DOESN'T need to compare himself to Old Moon, and he never needed to prove himself, this is true. However, when the arc is set up this way to where New Moon is written to be SO LAUGHABLY WORSE than Old Moon, and Old Moon is laughing in his face, then I have a problem with the idea New Moon could just have to lay down and say "yep that's correct, you're factully smarter than I ever could be! And I'm fine with that" after Old Moon insulted everything about him.)

This arc exhausts me, guys. I tried to find things to keep positive about with this arc but I can't. I'm not even a person who thinks Nexus was treated overly bad by his family (he made choices, he gets consequences, at the same time he was manipulated so if he put in the work he could come back), but the WRITING that paints him as canonically stupid almost feels like reading a hatefic at this point. I genuinely did not want Old Moon to come back, period. I love New Moon more than Old Moon and I don't want New Moon to be permanently lost in his Nexus identity. (I'll cut up a part 2 to explain why Old Moon coming back messed up New Moon's arc.)

[benkyoutobentou]

How to study languages without studying

Whether you're just starting out and have had bad experiences with textbook learning in the past or are getting burnt out from prepping for the next proficiency test, it's never a bad idea to put the textbooks away for a time and just enjoy your target language. If you're new to the world of immersion, here are a few ways to get you started.

Follow along with the lyrics of a song. Spotify's not-so-new-anymore lyrics feature is great for this, especially since it has timed lyrics, but it doesn't have every song.

Expert mode: Write out the lyrics and underline/highlight/make note of all the words and grammar structures you don't know. Learn these unknowns until you can understand the whole song!

Extra challenge: Translate a song from your target language. I usually tend to stay away from translations in my study, but for those of you who aspire to be translators (or already are!), the poetic nature of song lyrics can be a fun challenge.

Watch a show or movie. Netflix has now introduced a feature where you can sort by language! If there's nothing made in your language that you're interested in, it also gives the option to sort by shows and movies that have the audio or subtitles available. Internet Archive also tends to have lots of foreign films that I'm looking for.

Easy mode: Watch with English or your native language subtitles. When doing this, try to still listen to what's being said and pick up on words and phrases that you know, or match new words with their translation in the subtitles. Note: reading one language and listening to another is a skill in and of itself! Don't be discouraged if you can't do both at the same time yet, you're brain is still making the connections in intonation and cadence of the language.

Hard mode: Watch with captions in your target language. This helps you connect listening and reading, especially in languages where the spelling isn't exactly phonetic, or it uses a different alphabet than what you're used to.

Expert mode: No captions or subtitles! But who knows, maybe you're better at listening comprehension than I am. Make sure you're getting comprehensible input here; some shows and movies are much harder than others. But above all else, watch what keeps your interest. A movie where you can catch half the dialogue but is super engaging is better for you than an "easy" movie that you're going to spend your time ignoring.

Polyglot mode?: Watch something in your target language with subtitles in a different target language. This adds just one too many layers of obfuscation for me, but if you're into the challenge, more power to you.

Watch YouTube. You can change your language preference on YouTube, and with that, the Explore section will give you recommendations in your target language. Going into the trending tab with your target language can give you a good idea about what people are interested in in the countries where your target language is spoken.

Read something. It can be a book, it can be a comic. There are plenty of webcomics out there in a number of languages! There's also probably an English language listicle with recommendations of easier to understand webcomics for learners, too.

If you're just getting started in immersion, you can choose whether you focus on intensive reading or extensive reading (this actually goes for all kinds of immersion, but is easiest to control with reading since it happens at your own pace). Intensive reading is reading with the goal of understanding everything 100%. If you don't understand a word, or a grammar point, or the reading of a character, look it up. Extensive reading is reading just to get the gist of things. Look up words and grammar points only if they stop you from understanding the general meaning of the sentence or section. And of course, the more you immerse, the less you'll have to look things up, but remember that difficulty varies between materials, even within books of the same age range, genre, and medium.

A small digression: If you decide that you never want to open a textbook on your language learning journey, more power to you! It can be done and I know people who have gotten to proficient levels of their target language without textbooks. If you want this to be you, extensive immersion is your best friend. You also might want to get comfortable with the flashcard program anki, because, if this is your goal, all those unknown grammar points and words will probably end up there. But at the end of the day, language learning is an intensely personal journey, and what works for others won't necessarily work for you. Finding what works for you is just part of learning a language.

Play a game. Lots of games are region locked (hint: Pokemon Sun/Moon isn't! If you start a new game, you can choose which language you want to play it in), but there are plenty of free online games still lurking in the corners of the internet. With a bit of googling, you can probably find something in your target language. Just the other day, I went out to find one of those hidden item games in Japanese and ended up finding an entire site dedicated to user made browser games.

If you're learning Japanese or Korean, picrew might be fun to look through as well. I noticed that plenty of picrews have basic anatomy vocabulary. I'm not super familiar with picrew myself, but the ones I've seen tend to be in Korean and Japanese

And lastly, don't fully give up on textbooks before trying them out. Don't be discouraged if textbooks truly aren't your thing, but studying a language on your own time can feel much different than studying for school. Don't put too much pressure on yourself and just have fun with your language. Additionally, if you'd rather learn in a video format, many languages have full courses uploaded to YouTube for you to try. Finding these can be difficult for some languages though, so don't hesitate to reach out to other learners and see what they recommend!

Got your materials ready? Great! Now go forth and immerse!

[denaliwrites]

Isn't That Wizard

Tenth Doctor x GN!Reader, Feat. Donna

Summary: Donna's got some choice words for you about your crazy crush on the Doctor.

Requests: Open!

Warnings: Everyone in this fic is a raging dumbass except Donna. Donna knows what's up.

"Big ol'. Space Sized. Massive. Giant. Crush," Donna teased as you stood there, your face so red you thought it might explode.

"How the hell-"

"Oh, honey, he may be an idiot but it is not subtle," she said with a laugh. "Anyone with a normal brain can see it."

"Oh, my God," you whined as your face dropped into your hands. "This is awful. Seriously? Everyone knows?"

"Well, maybe not everyone," she tried to reassure you, though you could tell she didn't mean it. You shot her a look, and she cleared her throat awkwardly. "... Yeah. Everyone."

"Oh, this is so bad. Like, really bad."

"Oh, don't be silly," and this time her voice sounded like she was actually trying to be reassuring. Her hand patted gently at your shoulder and she offered you a smile.

"What are you two chatting about?" the Doctor's voice cut through the moment as he stepped into the room. He saw how red you were, how you seemed to be on the verge of tears -- you could tell, because the moment he saw you, his face immediately filled with concern.

Honestly, it just made you feel worse.

"Oh, nothing," Donna supplied when you said nothing. The Doctor did not look even remotely convinced. "Y'know, just Bestie Stuff."

"What, am I not a bestie?" he asked, sounding mildly offended.

"You know what I mean. Go away," she told him, waving a dismissive hand in his direction.

"Not until I know you're all right," he said, directing his words and attention to you.

You looked up at him, immediately lost all courage, and buried your face back into your hands. "Go away," you whined.

"That's not an 'I'm fine, Doctor, everything's perfect and I've never felt better.'"

You knew it wasn't, but you weren't sure you could manage a lie right now, especially if it meant lying to him.

"Isn't this just wizard," you whimpered into your hands.

Donna laughed beside you. "Honey, you have no idea." She rubbed your shoulder, then patted it before withdrawing from you. "I think you two should have a nice little chat. And I am going to go have a nice bath while you do that."

You hated her.

No, you didn't. You felt like if you were a different person, though, you probably could hate her -- for just right now, at least. You definitely wanted to.

The Doctor watched Donna walk away in confusion, before his attention returned to you. "Okay, what is going on?" he asked as he replaced Donna at your side.

You moaned into your hands in embarrassment. "It's nothing." You were not convincing anyone, especially not the Doctor.

"Tell me," he said softly, and you knew it wasn't meant as a command. Knew he'd never do that. It was a gentle request, a question. A hope.

Oh, fuck it.

"I am madly in love with you," you confessed quietly, finally pulling away from your hands to chance a glance at him.

He had been stunned into silence, eyes staring at you like you'd suddenly grown another head.

"Oh, God, I've ruined everything, haven't I--"

"Oh, none of that," he sighed, his voice so tender it made your heart stop for a moment. "You haven't ruined anything."

"How's that?" you asked despondently.

"Well, as it so happens, I fancy you quite a bit too."

Your head snapped up, and when you looked at him the Doctor gave you a radiant smile. Without thinking, you threw your arms around his neck and pulled him towards you, crashing your lips against his. He was tense in your hold for only a moment -- so quick it was almost like it didn't happen at all -- and then his arms were around you, too, and he was kissing back with enthusiasm.

[mid0khan]

I know it's not what I usually post here, I mostly use Tumblr as a comfy space for friends and fandoms, but there's something that has been itching at my brain for a time and I think it's worth a post, so let's talk about something more serious and less funny than gay ships for once.

Let's talk about transandrophobia. (throwing some TW for transphobia and misandry too while i'm at it)

I am a trans man, and I'm quite often exposed to the "all men should die" and "you're a gender traitor" discourse, which is awful for obvious reasons (the genocidal ideation, the sexism, the hatred, you get the point).

I don't know if the people who believe in those ideas realize they are sexists, or that wishing to kill half the human population is Marvel Bad Guy level of bad? But they seem convinced they are knights in shinning armor for the feminist cause. Which I disagree with (feminism was created to achieve equality, not to reverse the sexist hiearchy). It sucks, but I manage to deal with it most of the time, since it's "only" transandrophobia (they hate me for being a man, not for being trans, and they don't question my identity).

I have been exposed to another... flavor of those ideas. And they are both terrible, I'm not trying to say one is worse than the others. But I struggle a lot more with this other version.

I have a flatmate who wholeheartedly believe in the "all men should die" thing, and they aren't affraid to say it. But when they say this kind of things when I can hear them, they hastily add "except trans men, because obviously they don't count". Which I can't help but understand as "you don't count as a man -> you aren't really a man".

Which sucks twice, because it's misandry with bonus transphobia. Coming from a friend (who will soon be a former friend though if they don't do some self-reflexion) and a fellow trans person (they are enby) it hurts a lot. I often wonder if, since I started my medical transition, maybe one day I'll be too "man" for them and they'll start being openly against my mere existence.

Not only that, but this discourse shows some crazy hypocrisy imo; they seem to think that, by saying "all men deserve to die but trans men get a pass", they get to be violent but since they say they accept that a minority exist they are obviously good, unlike those who want to kill everyone.

And sadly my flatmate isn't the only one saying this kind of things; I am lucky enough to live in a fairly LGBTQIA+ friendly area (which doesn't mean there isn't any queerphobia, but it's a lot less common than where I grew up), and some people seem to think that, as long as they don't direcly attack LGBTQIA+ people, they can be hateful without it being bad.

All of that to say, it's not possible to be a misandrist and be an ally to transmascs. Personally, I'd rather people be honest when they are being hateful and discriminatory, rather than try to do moral gymnastics to be hateful without attacking minorities so they get to think of themselves as allies.