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star-spangledstud · 4 years ago

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SAVE THE DAY

Pairing: Peter Parker x reader

Summary: Peter wants to quit being Spider-Man, but the reader needs saving.

Word Count: 3600-ish.

Warnings: mentions of violence/alcoholism and abuse/hostage situation. Angst with fluffy ending.

A/N: Let’s just pretend Peter didn’t turn into dust during IW. Also, this has a dark theme? I wrote this a while ago and figured I’d post it. It’s pretty bad, sorry.

Peter Parker is sick and tired of being Spider-Man.

Between hardly getting any sleep and his grades faltering miserably because of his nightly escapades, the fact that half of his friends died just three weeks ago doesn’t exactly help his case. He’s tired of putting on the suit, tired of scouring the streets in the dark of night, tired of waiting for crimes to happen when he really should be studying.

Peter lost some of the people he looked up to the most, and ever since he returned home, he hasn’t been able to stop feeling horrendously guilty over the fact that he wasn’t able to save them. He misses his friends, but mostly, he misses his coworkers, half of whom had disappeared into dust. What’s the point of being Spider-Man when you can’t even save the ones you hold dear to your heart?

Peter is seated behind his desk, black ink pen tightly gripped between his clammy fingers. His left palm is stuck under his chin, and his eyes, droopy and fluttery, shift between the clock hanging above the door towards the back of the classroom. His hazel orbs scan everything from the green linoleum floors to the yellow-stained ceiling with its flickering lights. Empty seats line the back walls, desks and chairs stacked on top of each other in a sick manner.

Desks that were once filled with students now sat empty to collect dust and termites. Most of the kids that vanished didn’t even know who Thanos was or what his intentions were. It isn’t fair, Peter thinks as he grips his pen and clenches his jaw. They didn’t deserve to die.

Several of Peter’s classes have been postponed until further notice due to the sudden lack of staff and student body. Of course, Mr. Brown hadn’t vanished, and so, Peter is sitting in his Tuesday morning math class with barely over a dozen other kids. Each one of them looks just as sad, confused and most of all defeated as Peter does, because most of them have lost multiple family members and friends in the blink of an eye without any hope of bringing them back.

James from physics has lost both his parents. Samantha from biology lost only one, but her grandparents as well. Francis from literature didn’t have parents even before the Snap, but lived with her aunt and uncle who both disappeared. The gist of it is clear; grief, hurt and anger surrounds the school like a thick, impenetrable blanket of fire from which nobody can escape and for a moment, Peter doesn’t know on which side of the Snap he’d rather be.

The seconds on the clock tick by agonizingly slowly. Mr. Brown knows nobody in his class gives a shit about potentially solving mathematical problems anymore, but life must go at the end of the day and until anyone has any better ideas, the only thing the school board knows to do is to keep teaching classes to whoever decides to show up. To be fair, even though it’s nothing like how it used to be, school remains the only constant in most of these kids’ lives.

Doubt continues to plague Peter’s cloudy mind as the day progresses. He’s already stuffed his suit in Ned’s locker - he wouldn’t be needing the space anymore anyway. The mere thought of his best friend vanishing into thin air made his fist curl and his eyebrows twitch in anger and every waking moment of his existence he hates himself for not being able to help him make it through the Snap. Then again, maybe it was for the best.

Being alive suddenly didn’t seem like such a great thing anymore with the world in complete shambles.

After class is over, most of the students slowly drag their feet towards the library or the cafeteria. With so many postponed classes, study hours are given left and right until the board has time to conjure a new schedule. Peter slings his backpack over his shoulder and, while dragging his feet to the library, absentmindedly reaches his phone from his back pocket. The latest iPhone he was given by Tony now feels alien in his hand, especially since half of his contacts don’t exist anymore. The Snap chat streak he used to have with Ned died weeks ago, and the last message Peter sent him still sits in Ned’s inbox marked as ‘unread’. Peter grips the device and bites his lip. He has to stop himself from throwing it out of the window all together. Looking at it has become unbearable.

Just as he’s about to shove it back deep inside his pocket, it vibrates. He thinks it’s just his imagination at first, but when his hand shakes for the second time, he lifts up the phone with the thumping of his heart.

It’s you, your name displayed as the caller ID across the screen, followed by blue and red heart emojis. You picked those out yourself.

“What’s up?” he asks after picking up, “where are you? You have no idea how boring math is without you.”

When the line momentarily remains silent on your end, Peter shrugs. You’ve pocket-dialed him before so it doesn’t immediately strike him as odd, and when he calls your name and doesn’t receive a response, he hangs up, finally able to place the phone in his pocket where he hopes it will remain forever.

But it doesn’t remain there forever, because less than a minute later, it rings again, once more flashing your name across the screen for his eyes to see. His groans, but picks up anyway as he stands in front of the library entrance.

“Y/N?” He asks, holding the device tightly to his ear just in case he can hear you in the distance.

“No,” you whisper finally, “he’s going to kill a bunch of people, P.”

Peter’s blood runs cold when the call is ended once again. He wastes no time sprinting towards Ned’s old locker and holds his breath when he dashes through the empty hallways. Before he gets there, he calls you back. You don’t answer.

Peter sneaks the costume into his backpack and changes into it in the empty bathroom near the physics lab. He stuffs his backpack inside the air vent and dials your number again. With his phone stuck tightly against his ear, he jumps out of the window.

You are one of the only people Peter still has left and vice versa. The two of you have been friends for ages, sharing nearly every class and you, him and Ned always sit together for lunch. The three of you would hang out together after school as well; you saw movies together and played video games on the weekends. You texted each other constantly.

The Snap wiped out nearly your entire family. Your mother, little brother and both of your grandparents and your aunt and uncle on both sides. You were left with nobody but your step-father.

Peter knows the two of you don’t get along. The man drinks too much, stays out too late even during the week and sometimes, he doesn’t even come home for days. Your mother always welcomed him back with open arms and chose to ignore the empty bottles of vodka and whiskey in the trash. She ignored the perfume on his clothes and his behavior towards you and stayed with him, a man so unstable he couldn’t hold jobs longer than a few months at a time. Her blindness to his shenanigans always angered Peter, because the relationship between your mother and step-father affected you in more ways than you cared to admit.

He knows you wish it was him who died instead of your mom and frankly, Peter wishes the same. He never liked the guy.

Peter is extremely worried about you, because he knows the drinking has doubled since your mom died. You’ve been skipping school to take care of the household and you know very well how Peter feels about your step-father’s lack of participation in and around the home. He started taking you away from your house whenever he could find the time and you’d even met Tony Stark the first time Peter took you to the tower. It surprised Peter to see how well the two of you got along, but then again, computer science is your favorite subject in school so it’s something the two of you could bond over. Well, it used to be anyway, because the class got dropped after the teacher and eight of his students got lost in the Snap.

Peter’s heart rams against his rib cage when you finally answer the phone. In the background, he can hear people screaming and shouting.

“Y/N? Where the hell are you?” He asks, using his webs to sling himself from building to building to avoid being seen in broad daylight.

“Central bank,” you whisper under shaky breaths, “gun. Can’t talk.”

The line goes dead once again, and Peter immediately changes direction.

You knew something was wrong when Hank offered to drive you to school this morning, because he’d never volunteered to take you anywhere before and you doubted he would start now. The red rims around his dull, yellow eyes made you decline his proposal at first but he insisted, and in fear of getting hurt by a man nearly twice your size, you finally agreed to have him drive you to school. You weren’t in any kind of mood to argue with him, and you sure as hell didn’t want to provoke him. Besides, the drive would only take ten minutes, while walking took you nearly half an hour, so you couldn’t exactly complain.

It saddened you to see him like this. The two of you never really got along, but at least a small part of you hoped that the shared loss of your mom and little brother would bring you some type of twisted companionship, something dark to bond over. You wanted to ask him if Peter could stay over for dinner, but the dark sweat stains on his creme t-shirt and his iron grip on the wheel made you stay quiet.

Hank never liked talking when he had a hangover. Talking too much always made him angry, and you don’t like seeing him pissed off. Granted, the only times he’d physically hurt you were when he was so drunk he couldn’t even tell you his own name, but you still fear him even now, afraid that one day he might actually do something he can never take back. With this knowledge, you typically stick to avoiding him on mornings after he’s had too much to drink. Nowadays though, it’s all he does.

Even when he deviates from the usual route to your school, you bite your tongue in fear of pissing him off. Perhaps, you think, he’s forgotten the location of your school or maybe he’s too hungover to think straight and the entire time, you expect him to turn around. He doesn’t, but wen he finally does stop, he does so in front of Central Bank.

You finally dare to speak up, asking him quietly what the two of you are doing there and fully expect him to sneer at you, to spit out that he’s only going to withdrawal money from your mother’s account again so he can support his bad habits, but instead of answering, he leaves you in the car and reaches for the trunk.

“What are you doing?!” You ask fearfully when he rips open your door and grabs a fistful of your hair.

“Shut up and don’t make a sound, got it?”

He pulls your head towards the ground when he walks, so the only thing you can see is the beat up sneakers on his feet and the terrifying barrel of a semi-automatic weapon. There’s no security guard near the entrance, but you don’t have enough time to wonder where he might be, because Hank’s already crossed the threshold and he’s shouting like mad when you realize what the hell is going on.

"Everybody sit the fuck down on the ground or I'll kill every last of one you!"

Screams erupt from every corner, and as Hank angrily waves the gun around in an attempt to scare the customers and bank personnel, people left and right begin to duck behind chairs, desks and in booths. You can hear a baby crying somewhere nearby, and your palms are sweating and shaky when you curl them into fists. You’ve always known he’s crazy, but even for him, this is fucking insane.

"Hank, what the fuck are you doing?" You scream, feeling the pressure of his grip on your neck sting like a hot iron.

"Shut up, before I shut you up myself. Don't make a god damn sound, you hear me? That goes for all of you!"

The next hour is a complete blur. Shots are fired into cream-colored walls, demands are made on stolen cellphones and most of all, you and everybody else inside is scared shitless. Hank forces you to sit in of the empty chair behind counter three, the one where people come to apply for loans. He continues to keep the gun pointed mostly at you - the hostage he uses to negotiate his demands. You called Peter when his back was turned to you, but couldn’t speak at first out of pure terror of being seen or heard.

Outside, flashing red and blue lights draw near, and the sound of multiple helicopters rounding the perimeter nearly drowns out the sound of Hank’s screeching voice when one of the clerks makes an unexpected move. You’ve never seen him this angry and doubt you’ll ever see it again. Practically all bank transfers are conducted digitally nowadays, most banks using shares on the stock market to finance their customer’s savings accounts. Sure, there’s physical money inside, but none of the desk clerks have access to the vault where they keep the big bucks. How Hank didn’t realize this is a mystery to you.

You’re starting to realize time is running out when SWAT arrives with a hostage negotiator. Peter can feel his heart nearly exploding inside his chest when he thinks of you as he slings his way across the city. He’s never run faster across rooftops, but he doesn’t take a moment to breathe until he makes it there.

It doesn’t take him very long to sneak inside through one of the top floor’s open windows. Peter ignores the news camera’ that zoom in on him while he climbs inside, swallowing thickly at the knowledge that Tony’ll probably be pissed off later.

He jumps down the staircase, swinging from left to right and balancing on the barricades until he reaches the first floor of the old building. Directly beneath him, he can hear the commotion and when he finally finds an air vent in one of the break rooms, he uses his webs to fling himself up and inside. His phone vibrates again when he’s slowly crawling his way through the dusty vents, but he doesn’t answer, because he can see you sitting in your chair shaking like a leaf when he finally reaches one of the vents that lead to the main entrance.

He notices your step-father walking anxiously in circles, his eyes wildly darting across the entire ground floor to make sure nobody tried to take him down. He needs money now that his source of income has died and the amount of debt he finds himself in leads him to believe this is the only way to do it.

Peter quickly and quietly unscrews the roster that allows fresh air to distribute throughout the ground floor and silently moves it to the side.

Look up.

He quickly texts you, but doesn’t realize your phone might make a sound until he’s already pressed send. He releases a deep breath when you check the message, and begin to search around the ceiling with a worried frown on your face until your finally eyes land on him halfway hidden in the darkness.

You sigh inaudibly but tremble when the gun goes off three times and Hank begins to shout at a mother and her crying baby.

“I'm going to get you out," Peter mouths at you after pushing up his mask you you can see his lips.

He has to get the gun away from Hank, who is now pacing back and forth on the other side of the wall. With one swift motion, Peter drops down from the vent with his finger pushed against his mask to let the people know to keep quiet. He slides behind your chair and gives your hand a tight squeeze before disappearing just in time to see the barrel of the gun followed by Hank.

Sweat drips down the man’s face and back, veins popping angrily in his neck protruding from his temples. Outside, the hostage negotiator uses a megaphone to shout at him, but it’s as if nobody is paying attention to what he’s saying. You only have eyes for Peter, who’s crouched under one of the desks, his arms stretched out in front of him so he can get a good angle on Hank.

Before you get a chance to do as much as blink, silvery webs shoot out from Peter's wrists. They latch onto the cold metal of the firearm and begin to quickly retreat, pulling the weapon out of Hank's sweaty palms. He accidentally pulls the trigger when he struggles to hold on to the only thing that’s currently keeping him alive, firing four shots into the wall before the gun clashes to the ground and drags away from him.

His eyes bulge out of his head when he sees Spider Man, now standing on top of the desk. Peter yanks his arms back, flinging the weapon towards the security guard, who was sitting near the water cooler next to the staff room. The man doesn’t hesitate to pick it up and disarm it, emptying the magazine onto the ground until every last bullet falls to the ground with a clang. They bounce across the floor and roll under desks and at people's feet, away from the man who threatened to kill with them.

Within minutes, the entire place is surrounded by SWAT and cops, their guns aimed at the man who was willing to kill innocent people for his own benefit.

You can hardly get up from your chair when you feel something warm and smooth pressed up against your body. You instantly feel your knees buckling under you, but Peter uses his strength to keep you from falling. Reporters outside try their hardest to catch a glimpse of what’s going on inside the bank, but police officers hold them back as best they can, cutting off their view with all their might while the two of you hug.

Your entire body trembles and your heart feels like it was going to explode as you shivered in Peter's arms, holding onto the boy for what felt like dear life.

"Shh," he whispers in your ear, "It's okay. I got you."

You try to speak, to thank him for coming as quickly as he did, but nothing comes out except throaty stutters and shaky breaths. You’re hurting, even a blind man can see it.

“You came,” you manage, “he just lost it.”

“Of course I did silly,” he replies, “I couldn’t let you get hurt, could I?”

People all around you gasp audibly when Peter pulls off his mask, synapses doing jumping jacks when you come face to face with him in public. He’s never taken off the mask in front of people before, especially not in front of reporters, and out of all of the Avengers, his identity is the only one that up until now remained a secret. Peter isn’t thinking about what Tony might say or what Steve might think. He’s not concerned with the gaping expressions of journalists and cops alike, or with the newspapers that will have his face plastered on the front page tomorrow. He doesn’t care because grown attached to you.

The feeling had crept up on him slowly, and he hadn’t realized it until now, when the possibility of losing you for the second time in such a short amount of time finally managed to get it through his head.

“What are you doing?” You ask, eyes wide and pupils blown out.

“I want you to see me,” he says, “not the mask.”

“But-” you stammer, “your identity. They’ll know. Everyone will know.”

“I don’t care anymore,” Peter uses his thumb to caress your cheek, “let ‘em know that spider man’s just a kid from Queens. I’m sick of hiding.”

The small smile that plays on your rosy lips makes his heart skip a beat. He’s in love with you, has been for a while now, and Peter’s pretty sure the adrenaline surging in his veins is the reason for the sudden realization. He opens his mouth to speak and the words dangle on the tip of his tongue, but he remains silent when a police officer drapes a blanket over your shoulders and asks you if you require medical attention.

He’ll tell you, he reckons. When the time is right.

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agerefandom · 4 years ago

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> Dirk: Regress

Fandom: Homestuck

Characters: Dirk Strider, mentions of Roxy and Jake

Words: 2,750

Summary: Dirk is an age regressor. (It’s a rough day but it’s easier as a four-year-old.)

Warnings: Isolation, body dysmorphia/dysphoria (unspecified), self-sacrificing ideals, one cuss word, mention of storms.

(Note: I’ve had a few people notice that I usually write from caregiver perspectives for agere fanfiction! I struggle with putting my experience of regression into words, in a way that I don’t with my caregiver experiences. I still enjoy writing reader-insert fanfiction that deviates from my personal experience of regression, but this is my best attempt at communicating the way that I regress.)

> Dirk: Regress

Your name is Dirk Strider, and some days it’s not worth claiming that you aren’t lonely.

Filling the hours of a day is routine by this point: there’s reprogramming to be done, and new scripts to be written, and fanfiction that you absolutely don’t post online under miscellaneous pseudonyms. There are fights to win and fights to lose and moments when you just throw yourself into the water and let yourself float there until the sun is too bright against your eyelids.

But some days just refuse to pass. Nothing feels like it’s really happening, and none of your friends answer your messages, and you refuse to message again because that would be desperate. Even with four centuries’ worth of internet videos, it feels like there’s nothing to watch, and the walls are closing in with the endless ocean stretching outside. You should be able to fill this day because it’s only as empty as every other day on this abandoned planet, but somehow time seems incapable of passing.

Today seems to be one of those days, and you’ve retreated to the roof to sit and watch the waves. The sun is too warm, and you’ll probably end up with a painful sunburn, but it’s worth it to be away from the wires and screens that remind you of the work you aren’t doing and the friends who aren’t responding.

For some reason this view always seems to feel new, despite the hundreds of days you’ve spent pacing on this roof, fighting on this roof, bleeding on this roof. Something about the sky’s ever-shifting shades and the way the ocean rolls far beneath you. Something about the seagulls that flutter down from the sky to rest their wings, or maybe the wind in your hair and the way it ruffles your clothes, the closest thing you have to human touch.

You close your eyes and lean your chin on your knees, breathing in ocean air that tastes like salt and smoke. You’ve always assumed that the bad smell is an effect of whatever technology the Batterwitch used to flood the planet, but maybe the air on Earth has always been horrible.

The heat is heavy in the air today, which means there might be a storm brewing. The apartment is always the worst during storms, listening to the rusted supports groaning in the wind and wild waves. Sometimes you wonder if you’ll even make it to the fabled game, or if the ocean will just swallow you one day with none of your friends the wiser.

You feel ready to settle in for an afternoon of grade-A moping, but part of you doesn’t agree. Part of you feels like enjoying the sunlight, or going for a swim. That sounds nice, if you’re being honest, but you doubt that you could enjoy anything today. Part of your mind will always be thinking about the messages you’re waiting for, the hours you have to fill, and the fact that tomorrow will be exactly the same as today, and how will you be able to deal with that when today seems so endless?

That excited part of you is insistent, though. It really wants to run around and play, which is an instinct that seems foreign. You mentally inspect the desire, trying to decide if it’s a sign that you’re finally giving up your tenacious grasp on sanity. The more you pay attention to it, the more tempting it feels. Just let go for a while.

There’s an energy in the desire that moves into your body, replacing the lethargy of moping. Your limbs feel ready for climbing, for swimming, for exploring a ruined world stretching around you that you usually prefer to ignore. Maybe it would be nice, to let whatever off part of you this is take the helm for a while. It feels like it might be already happening, and you’re too tired to fight it off. You let the part of yourself that’s moping curl in on itself, finding a little corner of your mind to continue its lethargic musings.

And then you open your eyes and push yourself to your feet.

---->

Your name is Dirk Strider, you are approximately four years old, and the ocean looks incredibly blue.

You feel silly for all the moping you were doing before, and for wasting such a beautiful day. You really want to take off your clothes and get into the water, but a loud part of your brain won’t stop telling you that jumping from this high up is a really bad idea.

Your brain is stupid. You head down from the roof, slamming the door behind you to show that you’re upset about not getting to jump into the waves. Your shoes are discarded carelessly, shirt and sunglasses and pants dropped along the way. Your body is funny, not quite right and not quite wrong. It stops you for a second, and you poke your stomach, hold up your hands. The fingers are unfamiliar. This is your body, isn’t it? Why doesn’t it feel right?

You shrink away from the thoughts, but the part of your brain that’s enjoying its rest pushes you back into awareness before you can get away. Apparently you’re not allowed to stop being here, so you guess that you might as well enjoy it. Away with the body thoughts! You’re getting distracted from the real goal, which is to be in the nice cool water as soon as possible.

Once you’re free of uncomfortable clothes, you patter down a set of stairs where the walls give way to the rusted internal structure of the apartments that used to be below your home. The stairs stop at a metal platform that you remember constructing, the heat of the blowtorch and the glow of the sparks. The memory fits and it doesn’t fit, so you shrug it away as you swing over the platform onto a ladder that leads down to the water.

Halfway down the ladder you know that you’re close enough to the water that it won’t hurt to jump, so you push yourself away from the ladder and let yourself free-fall.

You hit the water feet-first and it envelops you. You can feel the air bubbles combing through your hair, rippling on the bottoms of your feet, the last bit of the above-water world clinging to you. You let yourself drift until there’s only you and the faint ocean currents pushing around you, peaceful and quiet. You wish you could stay here forever, but you can feel your lungs starting to hurt. You have to kick for a few seconds before you break the surface, sucking in a deep breath as soon as the air touches your face. The sun is too warm, and you stick your tongue out in its direction. Stupid sun.

You swim in the direction of one of the nearest buildings that sticks above the water, enjoying the sound of your legs kicking through the waves. The ocean is mostly calm today, and you can hear the seagulls crying up above you. You navigate your way through the familiar landmarks of rubble and ruin, switching from front crawl to elementary backstroke as your energy rises and falls. Your apartment towers above you, casting a shadow on the water. You think about painting something on the side of it, trying to liven up the plain grey concrete, but that seems like a thought for another day.

It takes a few minutes of swimming to reach the nearest neighboring apartment building, and you pull yourself out of the water onto a shore of concrete. There isn’t much interesting here, mostly crumbling bricks beginning to reveal the girders underneath. The roof has collapsed in on itself in slabs of concrete that you can pick your way across, avoiding the freshest evidence of seagull passerby. A plant has somehow made its home in one of the sections of brick, some kind of weed with jagged leaves and long tendrils seeking more dirt. One of the birds probably brought it from some faraway patch of land, high enough to avoid the flooding.

You stare at the bright green of its leaves, aware that it must be one of the only living things in the surrounding area. In the end, though, it’s impossible to resist picking it out of the wall, the tendrils clinging desperately to the rough bricks as you separate it from its home.

It’s rubbery in your hands, and you dig your fingernails into the leaves to watch the darker green show up in half-crescents where you tore the skin. You wrap the stem around your fingers, admiring the colour. You think about eating it, moving it towards your mouth, but there’s a mental feeling of someone smacking your hand and you drop the plant with a frown. Your brain is too busy and dumb.

You pick up the plant and move it into a patch of sunlight, hoping that it’ll get eaten by another passing bird. Then its seeds can go somewhere else, maybe even on the roof of your house.

You dive back into the water, daydreaming about having a jungle grow on the roof of your house, the roots becoming part of the apartment walls and the leaves changing colour like you’ve seen in TV shows.

---->

The afternoon passes in a delirious blur of sun and splashing, laughing at your own voice and trying to climb one of the supports of your apartment building before finding the metal too hot from the sun.

Eventually, you pull yourself out of the water and climb up the ladder one rung at a time. You take a last look at the rippling water as you open the door and step into the concrete stairwell up to your apartment.

The inside is dark and cool in contrast to the sun-heated world outside, and you begin to shiver as you make your way into your room. An old towel is in the laundry pile, so you scoop it up and use it to dry yourself off. It smells a little musty, but it does the job fine. The feeling of not-right-not-wrong hits you again as you dry off, and you push it aside more easily this time. Not your problem, and you’re starting to have the feeling that you won’t be here for long. It seems silly to worry about it with the little time you have left.

You get dressed in the nicest clothes you can find: there’s a shirt that seems way too big, and you pull it on before looking at what’s on the front. It’s a silly design with wobbly lines that you can’t put together from upside down, and the shirt hangs almost to your knees. It feels cozy, and you add a pair of boxers to the outfit before deciding it’s good enough for lazing around.

The bed is soft and springy and you settle onto it with a sigh, shoving a pillow into the corner to lean on. The day has been fun, but your shoulders are tired from the swimming and your head hurts from all the sunlight. You snag a pair of sunglasses from the table beside your bed, careful with the points as you fit them onto your face. The world gets darker and you relax, grabbing the nearest soft thing to hold. It’s Hella Jeff in his silly coloured onesie and you laugh at his big eyes, widening your own in an attempt to mimic his expression.

Your tablet is difficult to fish out from under the mattress while you’re sitting on it, and once you turn it on it makes a lot of loud noises at you until you exit the window that was open. My Little Pony is easy to find, and you pull up one of the early episodes before propping the tablet against your feet so that you can watch it while hugging your Hella Jeff plushie and maybe resting your eyes a bit.

You can feel the rest of your brain perking up as soon as the theme song comes on, but it’s your episode to enjoy, so you push everything to the back and sing along with Pinkie Pie, and if you fall asleep before the second episode is over, then there’s no one to tell you it’s too early to sleep and who cares about time anyways.

> Dirk: Wake Up.

You wake up in a tangle of blankets, with your shades half-off and poking into the pillow, and Hella Jeff’s ass in your face. You push him off grumpily and sit up in bed. It’s late, and you fell asleep with the light off, so your room is dark aside from the flashing lights from the various panels scattered on the desks.

You’re hungry, and still groggy from the unexpected nap, and the afternoon feels like a distant dream that could have happened to someone else. You try to prompt that same sense of excitement, the eager curiosity that had taken over for the day, but it feels utterly foreign to your mind. You physically poke yourself, as if that will make the mood re-emerge and take over, but it only makes you very aware that you’re wearing one of your old sleep shirts that you stopped wearing when you were about twelve. You pull it off with an irritated sound, and roll out of bed. Your pounding head demands food and water, and you haven’t checked your messages in seven hours.

The glasses you’re wearing don’t have build-in screens, so you swap them out for another pair once you’ve pulled on a t-shirt that actually fits and shoved some jeans over your boxers. Sure enough, Roxy has finally gotten back to you, and fairly recently.

You start responding to her message as you poke around the cupboards for something that you won’t have to cook. She’s messaged something benign, but you know that she knows that you know that she hasn’t been doing well or she would have messaged back sooner. Hopefully she’s feeling better, but you know from experience that she’s more likely messaging you to start an ill-conceived fight that she can use to rationalize her bad mood and self-isolation.

Having friends is exhausting. You find some packaged ramen and head back to your room, planning to just crush it up and eat it while you finish the episode that you fell asleep half-way through. Roxy is talking again, her words a blur of badly-spelled pink across your vision, and you already feel tired from the conversation. You miss Jake, and how easy he is to please. He won’t be back for another two days, out on some sort of island quest that takes him out of network range. You hope that he’s doing okay out there.

You settle into bed again, sparing a frown at your Hella Jeff plushie as if he was to blame for the entire situation. You hook up your tablet remotely to the TV so that you can properly hear it, and settle in to multitask for the night. This is what you wanted, something outside of yourself to focus on, someone else’s problems to solve, something to fill the hours for you.

But even as you start dissecting the things that Roxy isn’t saying, you find yourself craving that effortless enjoyment you’d felt that afternoon, the way your head had tilted up to the sunlight as if it was a second nature. You have a job to do, to keep everyone on track for a future that only you and Roxy know is waiting. But maybe one day, after everything was over and the game was won, you could take a longer break. Maybe there would be a new world for you to explore, and it would be better than the endless ocean of ruins.

For now, you wrap your arms around yourself and do your best to help Roxy communicate how she’s feeling. Your friends come first, and the future comes later.

#agere fanfiction #homestuck agere #homestuck regression #fandom agere #regression writing #sfw agere #my fics #american autocorrect is driving me crazy #let me be canadian in peace #for blacklist:#homestuck #dirk strider

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dawnwave16 · 5 years ago

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Reflections - Project Widow Soldier Part 2

I don’t know if I’ll be posting much of my own content again until after the New year so if you don’t hear from m until then, hope you all have a Merry Christmas (Or whichever holiday you prefer to celebrate!) and I’ll see you in the New Year! Also, I don’t think I’ll be continuing this any further as I have no more headcanons for it but I hope you enjoy this anyway.

Part 1

Anyway on with the story!:

Marinette sat in the lounge of the Avengers tower, eyes closed and for once almost completely relaxed. Friday was playing a mix of Christmas music that had everything from Peter Hollens, Pentatonix and Lindsey Stirling to Frank Sinatra and co. Currently, it was 'Grown-up Christmas List' by Evynne Hollens and its wording was making her reflect on the past few months.

When the Avengers had found out she existed she had been worried that she would be dragged away from the life she had made for herself in Paris completely. She had been extremely when Tony had walked into her class and dealt with Lila, Alya and Ms Bustier as it took all the pressure she had been feeling from dealing with those three herself off of her. The fall out from that had been extremely swift with Ms Bustier being replaced by a Ms Pargeter, who was not only a good teacher but made history much more enjoyable! The class had gone back treating her the way they always had before Lila had taken over and while she didn't care all that much about their opinions it was nice to be able to walk through the halls without people trying to trip her. She was also grateful as she hadn't expected them to support her wish to stay with the Dupain-Cheng's nor had she expected them to stick around long enough to help with the Hawkmoth problem.

That had been interesting to be part of. Not long after they had arrived in France, there had been an Akuma attack that had forced Master Fu to name her as the guardian. Due to this, she knew she wouldn't be able to leave Paris until Hawkmoth was dealt with, and if she was honest with herself, she wanted a true holiday! This led to her asking the Avengers for help, which they were all too willing to provide. When she wasn't working on her hacking skills with Tony to get into the police video archives, she was sparring with Natasha and Bucky to make sure she hadn't lost her skills there. She had gone over her weapons training with Hawkeye too and was pleased to see that despite not actively using her skills she hadn't lost any of them.

They had had their first break when they had noticed that there were no camera's around the Agreste Mansion and gone backtracking to find out why. Seeing the number of bribes the man had paid to various people to make sure the area remained camera free was staggering, to say the least! The next step was to hack all of the computers in the mansion. She knew that Adrian had missed several classes due to photoshoots and she also knew that all the computers in his home were linked so it was simple to slip a program onto a flash drive that would bypass all of Mr Agreste's firewalls and give them unlimited access to all his computers without having to bother about hacking them. Tony had seen the logic in that as it saved time, even if it did require him to have some patience.

Some of the things they had found on those computers, when combined with the police records had been enough to convince everyone that Mr Agreste or Nathalie was Hawkmoth. When Mayura was added to the mix they were almost 100% sure. To be safe, Marinette had lent her mother the fox miraculous to case out the mansion without it being traced back to any of the avengers. Natasha had named herself Kuma Lisa* and her colouring when transformed was a dark red that could easily be mistaken for black. She had almost no white on her and as a result, she tended to vanish into the shadows which was perfect for her spying activities. When she had seen the huge butterfly window and even more damming, the corrupted butterflies that left from it, they knew they had been right. They also knew they would have to be careful as some of the purchases they had seen through the computers had included military-grade hardware and weapons.

With all the evidence they had, Marinette knew she had to bring Adrian in so that he didn't receive a shock during the battle. She had had to think hard about how to break the news to him and eventually decided to slip him a note to meet her at the Grand Paris where she could reveal herself as Ladybug and the Avengers could back up what she was saying. He hadn't taken it well but in the end, he had lowered his head in defeated acceptance. He had then asked what would become of him when his father was arrested and had been shocked when Tony had offered to adopt him. Tony knew of his love of physics and chemistry and had wanted to nurture it though he knew he would need to get Adrian into councilling so that he didn't end up the same way he had. When Adrian had found out about Marinette was adopted her had been more than willing to accept Tony's offer though he was shocked when he found out who her birth parents were.

With the help of her parents and the rest of the Avengers, the battle had gone smoothly. They had Kuma Lisa had waited out of sight near the opening of Hawkmoth's lair and had alerted them as soon as it had opened. With Kaalki's help, the whole team had been on-site within seconds. Hawkmoth had tried to fight back as had Mayura but he just didn't have the skill to go against the Avengers and Ladybug at the same time, especially as for the first time ever, Ladybug had not held back. The fight had been brutally one-sided from the start and within 10min of everyone arriving the fight was over. Chat Noir had been tasked with getting all the hard copies of anything Miraculous related from inside the mansion along with Bruce as they had wanted to spare Adrian from having to fight his father and they hadn't wanted to risk the hulk becoming Akuma bait.

The fallout all over Paris with Hawkmoth gone was interesting, to say the least. The government had to hire extra psychologists to deal with everyone trying to get used to being able to show their emotions again without fear, yet not knowing how due to having to keep everything suppressed for years. It became a common sight to see adults floundering to situations that they should have normally been able to handle. The mayor had been outed as had several police officials for corruption, new people had been brought in to help and the UN had offered to help out the same way they normally would in war-torn countries in order to help Paris recover.

By the time term had ended she had been glad to get away from her classmates and go on tour with Jagged. She had taken the miracle box with her but had sent all the scrolls and books with Tony to be stored in her room at the Avengers tower. They were in one of her lock boxes for now but she knew they needed to get everything away from Paris as a precaution.

The month she spent travelling was liberating in Marinette's opinion. Sure she had checked every new area for any lost miraculi as Tikki had advised her to but she had also taken the chance to observe what worked the best design-wise for stage vs videos and even event situations. This had led to several wardrobe additions for Jagged and Penny as well as for herself when she found herself dragged on stage to either help translate what Jagged was saying or to sing with him after he caught her singing Halestorm's Amen while she was working on his next stage outfit. The first time he had pulled her on stage for a duet, it had been an instant sensation and from then on it became a regular thing for his concerts. She always insisted on a mask though, she had destroyed her Hydra records but she'd rather err on the side of caution, just in case!

Once her month with Jagged was up she'd headed to New York and met up with the Avengers and with Adrian, who had taken to living in the tower like a duck to water. She had been surprised to find that Tony had given her a whole floor, rather than just a room but apparently each of the Avengers had their own floor too so she just shrugged it off. She had jumped back into her normal training routine now that she wasn't travelling and had enjoyed those first few spars against her parents immensely. It was during one of the no-holds-barred all-out two on one spars they held every so often that Adrian had walked in and been stunned by how fast and hard they were fighting. When they had called an end to it he'd asked how much she had been holding back during their time as Ladybug and Chat Noir. His disappointment when she said that she hadn't used 90% of her skills had almost been tangible but he had understood why she'd done it after she'd explained her reasoning.

They had settled into a sort of sibling relationship soon after that as she tried to teach him moves that would work for him and he tried to learn how to cook from her. It had gotten to the stage that they were banned from the main kitchens due to the number of flour fights they'd had. Somehow they had ended up making sure they had a least one day a week set aside for anime and they had worked their way through SAO, Akagami no Shirayukihime, Seiken-Tsukai-no-World-Break and Isekai Cheat Magician within a week before they decided they needed to slow down. The only downside to watching Anime was that Marinette had picked up the language to the point she no longer needed the subtitles and he still needed them much to his disgust. Especially as she hadn't known any Japanese at all when they started.

She had been at the tower for three weeks when she met Peter Parker for the first time. She had just finished her work out and was leaving the gym area when he'd arrived and had been highly annoyed with Tony, thinking he'd adopted her like Tony kept trying to do with him. She'd laughed but hadn't corrected him and simply carried on her way. The second time they met was when she'd made breakfast for everyone as it had been her turn to do so as one of the few who could without burning down the kitchen. They'd spoke for a while this time and found they enjoyed each other's company. By the time her summer had ended they had become close friends and she was looking forward to seeing if any more would happen. She'd had to go back to Paris for the new school year but Adrian had decided to enrol in a school in NY instead of going back to Paris as he had too many bad memories there. Marinette didn't blame him at all for that.

School hadn't changed all that much when she returned for the new term. There were the same faces, the same subjects even though they had new topics within them and for the most part there were the same teachers. She hadn't held back as much as she had in previous years, blaming her time at the tower for her slightly more advanced knowledge. She was still bored though and although she had missed Tom and Sabine when she had been away from them she had looked forward to coming back to America again. Especially as things with Peter seemed to be getting more interesting.

Marinette was startled out of her memories by several of the Avengers walking into the room.

“All good there malen'kaya oshibka?” Bucky asked. (Little bug) “Yeah, I'm alright zhuzhzhaniye.” She replied (buzz kill) “Just thinking about how crazy everything has been since you all dropped into my life.” “You wouldn't change it for the world and you know it Bug,” Adrian said even as he settled on the floor in front of her. “True,” she admitted quietly “I'm just glad I have somewhere I can be me, you know what I mean?” Adrian nodded as did most of the Avengers. “Enough with the heavy thoughts, people. It's Christmas! That means presents and getting drunk and possibly eating too much!” Tony said effectively interrupting her thought process again. Jarvis changed the song to 'December Song' and by seemingly mutual agreement the ones sitting closest to the tree started to pass round the presents that had amassed underneath it. The rest of the day was spent enjoying their time together and living in the present. They knew that should anything threaten any of them, they would face it together.

*(Kuma Lisa is a fox from Bulgarian folklore and Russian folklore who usually plays the role of the trickster. Kuma Lisa is encountered with another character known as Kumcho Vulcho - a wolf which is opposite to her and very often suffers from her tricks.)

@northernbluetongue; @liamnl; @vivilakitty

#au bio dad for marinette #avengers #miraculous ladybug #au bio mom for marinette

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crowkingwrites · 7 years ago

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The Dreadfort

Pairing: Ramsay Bolton x Reader

Summary: Ramsay, a high school outcast, has opened his historical mansion for a Halloween Haunt. Your boyfriend suggests you and your group of friends go, thinking nothing of it. Your best friend invites your frenemy who starts to flirt with your boyfriend. Maybe coming to the haunt was a mistake. Unbeknownst to you, Ramsay sees you’re unhappy and decides to give your unforgivable friends a ‘special’ experience.

Words: 3145

Read on Ao3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12518224

DISCLAIMERS:

1. The radio news audio is directly from the cancelled video game Silent Hills/ P.T. You can find the full script here (http://www.silenthillmemories.net/silent_hills/pt_script_en.htm) You can find the full audio of the radio here but I do warn you this is a walkthrough of the game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-gbWxjzTYg) I do not own any part of Silent Hills. I love the radio news audio, so i wanted to put in this one shot.

2. Historical societies do actually put on real events to invite more people to get involved with local culture. I do urge you all to check out local events this Halloween. They're pretty cool! Some ideas include visiting graveyard tours and going to historical houses for readings of Poe/Shelley/other Halloween-related authors.

Wednesday Morning: Westeros High School, Your Locker, 7:45AM

“13.28.10,” you mumbled to yourself. The lock clicked in your hand. You locker opened to reveal your books, notebooks, and an array of pictures of your friends. You smiled at the picture of you and your boyfriend together. A tap on your shoulder made you turn around.

“Hey babe,” your boyfriend smiled at you. You kissed him hello.

“Good morning to you too,” you smiled.

“Is it cool if I borrow a couple of bucks from you? I forgot my lunch today,” he gave you a puppy-dog face.

“No, it’s not,” you shot him a look. “I just gave you twenty bucks yesterday ‘for lunch’. What happened to that?” Your boyfriend threw his hands up.

“Alright you caught me, I’m smoking a shit ton of pot,” he laughed.

“That’s not funny,” out of the corner of your eye you saw Ramsay Bolton walk up to the both of you.

“What do you want, creep?” your boyfriend said, snatching a paper from Ramsay’s hand. You looked at the orange flyer.

COME ONE, COME ALL TO THE DREADFORT BRING YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILIES BE THERE OR BE SCARED!

“You’re having a haunted house?” you asked Ramsay. “Isn’t your house an old mansion? Like its part of the historical society?” He lit up at your question.

“It is, but my stepmom and other people at the society thought it would good to open it up for guests for a night. Just to spread the word about the historical society, you know?” he smiled at you for a moment and then the smile faded when your boyfriend started to laugh.

“Seriously? A free home haunt? That’s so stupid,” he snorted. Two of your boyfriend’s friends showed up to the scene. “You guys! Check this out, school shooter wants us to come to his house to get scared!”

“That’s rude,” you scoffed at him. “Ramsay, I’m so sorry. We’ll be there, ok?” Ramsay gave you a half-smile and walked away.

“I bet it won’t be even be scary!” one of your boyfriend’s friends shouted after him. The other threw a paper ball aimed at Ramsay’s head. It missed, but you felt bad.

Wednesday Night: Your House, Your Bedroom, 9:05PM

You scrolled through Facebook a second time to see Ramsay’s Home Haunt ad again. Several people had liked it, loved it, and left either angry or excited comments on the picture. Your boyfriend was one of them.

‘First person to get evidence that he worships the devil gets 50 bucks from me! Maybe we should call in a priest huh?’

A lot of people left the ‘haha’ emoji reaction and you rolled your eyes. You heard a ding from your phone to see your friend, Michelle, had texted you.

Michelle: [Pls help me with English homework. Mr. Johnsen is killing me.]

You:[It’s not hard. Isn’t it obvious? Holden Caulfield is a phony.]

Michelle: [Lol! I haaate this guy. Speaking of emo dudes, did you see Ramsay’s ad??]

You: [I did! We should go!]

Michelle: [You’re kidding right? This is Ramsay Bolton we’re talking about.]

You: [Oh come on. He’s not gonna kill us all. Give the guy a break. He has one psychotic episode and everyone thinks he’s going to shoot up the school.]

Michelle:[He’s a creep…but I guess you have a point. It would pretty scary to go to a home of future serial killer lol]

You:[That’s SO mean lol. But we should still go. It’s a really old house. It could be haunted.]

Michelle: [That’s right! Holy shit!!!!! We’re definitely going now. I’ll start the thread. I’m inviting Chelsee.]

You felt your stomach sink. Chelsee was coming. Michelle had been your friend since the 4th grade, but when Chelsee moved in next door to Michelle, everything changed. You wanted to be friends with her so bad, but you could never shake the feeling that Chelsee hated you.

Michelle would always tell you that Chelsee had a funny way of showing her affection for her closest friends. However, when she spread a rumor about your period freshman year, it sure didn’t feel friendly. When you told Michelle, she didn’t believe you. ‘Chelsee says she didn’t do it, I believe her. You’re being paranoid.’

All Hallow’s Eve, The Dreadfort, Front Lawn, 9:56PM

The homes on the northern side of the city were usually a part of the Westerosi Historical Society. Their windows had thick curtains that always seemed to have someone watching you in between them. The dirt and grass sunk in sometimes, and the air always stinged with a chill.

You wore your favorite Halloween sweater that said “I am a Final Girl”. You matched it with a black skirt and tights. You thought you looked particularly adorable.

Your boyfriend held your hand as he and his friends started towards the Dreadfort. They weren’t dressed up in anything particular, but they had Halloween masks with red-stained shirts. That counted right? That’s when you saw her.

She wore a full-on playboy bunny costume. Her ears and corset were a bright-Barbie-classic pink. Her tail was round and fluffy. Her black tights hugged her thighs, and her heels clicked the street. Chelsee.

“Hey guys!” she waved flirtatiously.

“Hello Chels,” your boyfriend said slowly. His mouth almost dropping open like some perverted cartoon wolf. You let go of his hand and crossed your arms.

“Hi,” you greeted both Michelle and Chelsee. Chelsee went to the other side of your boyfriend and grabbed his arm.

“I’m gonna get so scared!” she squealed. “I hope you’ll protect me.”

“You know Max can protect you, right? He benches like 200,” you told her, pointing to one of your boyfriend’s friends behind you.

“It’s cool, babe,” your boyfriend waved you off. “I can protect everybody.” You rolled your eyes and the six of you walked towards the Dreadfort. It was built in the late 1890’s, so the exterior needed no décor. The windows had flashing lights inside, along with some caution tape around the property.

A line of people of all ages lined the front of the house and then some. You watched your classmates take selfies of themselves by the wood and metal ‘Dreadfort’ sign. The line moved steadily, but the wait seemed so long when Chelsee and your boyfriend couldn’t stop laughing with each other.

Soon you reached the front of the haunt, Michelle was taking selfies, Max and your boyfriend’s other friend were pushing each other around, and Chelsee and your boyfriend were flirting right there in front of you. Ramsay’s stepmom greeted your group.

“Hello dears!” Walda said. She wore a 19th century mourning gown. Your jaw nearly dropped.

“Oh my god! Your dress is beautiful!” you said to her excitedly. “Where did you get it?”

“I made it.”

“You made this?!” you exclaimed. You started to hear the snickering behind you. You should’ve known. You already heard the words come from his mouth. ‘She’s so fat! She looks like the fattest witch I’ve ever seen.’ You pretended to not listen.

Walda led your group inside the very first room of the haunt which was the porch. The front door had a hand extending out with a door ring. Chelsee grabbed your boyfriend’s arm again.

“Oh my god, this is so creepy!” she said, making sure to get as close as she could to him.

“We’re not even inside yet, baby,” he responded.

“Baby?” you asked him. “Really? Seriously?”

“Oh come on, I’m just playing. We’re playing right Chels?” he elbowed her back.

“Yeah, don’t get your panties in a twist, Y/N,” she flipped her hair. You turned back and sighed. Your eyes found the porch. You saw the small holes and grooves in the wood. What you didn’t see was the small crack between the curtains with a pair of eyes watching you.

“Come on, we gotta get in position,” Grunt grunted.

“She’s not having a good time,” Ramsay noted. “It’s because of him. What a fucking ass.”

“What?” Grunt asked.

“Nothing,” Ramsay left and Grunt went to the front door for the first scare.

Walda received the sign your group is good to go. She instructed you to knock on the door three times. The door creaked open while classical music filled your ears. The piano seemed to be off, but you took in the same smell of death in the air.

“This is it?” Max says. “This is not—

Grunt comes up behind him and touches his shoulder. Max jumps high in the air and screams. He turns to see Grunt, smiling.

“Greeting guests,” Grunt says in his deep voice, towering over Max.

“You’re not supposed to touch me, dumbass,” Max argued, trying to cover up his fear. “That’s how haunted houses go. The actors can’t touch the guests.”

“Not here. The rules sign outside says we can,” he corrected him.

“The rules sign? What rules?” your boyfriend eyed him down. Grunt pointed to a front window where you saw a group of people reading a sign with rules on it. You put your hand on your mouth, trying to stifle a fit of laughter.

“When you entered your doom, you accepted that we can legally touch you,” Grunt explained. “Now, come, my master has been waiting for you.”

“No way, you can’t be serious!” Max argues.

“Shut up, Max,’ your boyfriend leads the way towards the dining room. A disgusting feast was lain out for you and your friends. Rotting fruit and bloodied meats leaked onto plates. Two maids reached inside their stomachs and presented you with spaghetti screaming, “Eat me! Eat me!”

Chelsee and Michelle shrieked and then laughed it off. Your boyfriend rolled his eyes and kept leading the way through. There was a narrow hallway with old creepy pictures lining the way. A door that said ‘Redrum’ in red caught your eye in particular. You reached for it, only to have a small toddler scream “Redrum! Redrum!” at you with a plastic knife in his hand.

You screamed, but laughed at yourself and the cute toddler who did his best to scare you. The toddler went back inside the closet and you waved goodbye to the little guy.

“This is so stupid,” you boyfriend said aloud. “You call this scary?” Suddenly, your boyfriend shook in place, took his hoodie off, and ran away from the wall.

“Dude the fuck?” Max asked.

“Something touched me! What the fuck?” your boyfriend shifted his eyes around. As you went through more of the rooms, things got creepier. Doors shut on their own. People followed and then unfollowed you.

You were having fun. You screamed and stared off in dark corners. Michelle grabbed you and both of you started to walk through together. Ramsay’s friends and family jumpscared and tricked you all in set ups and traps. Then you noticed your boyfriend and Chelsee holding each other.

“Get off of him,” you said to her. Michelle grabbed you.

“Y/N-

“Get off of him now,” you shouted, going towards Chelsee. She rolled her eyes at you. Michelle gripped you tighter. “Let me go!”

“Come on, it’s not worth it,” Michelle pleaded. You looked back at her to discover the tension in her body. Everyone fell silent.

“It’s happening isn’t it?” you said weakly, turning to your boyfriend. “You’ve been cheating on me. And everyone knows right?”

“Come on, Y/N,” your boyfriend reached out to you. You pushed it away.

“It’s the truth isn’t it?” you turned back to your best friend Michelle. She was looking down. “You knew. You knew all along didn’t you?” Michelle couldn’t meet your eyes. You felt hot tears at the corners of your eyes. Your knees shook as you took your sweater sleeve to wipe the streams away.

Behind the basement door, Ramsay watched the whole thing. You had always been so nice to him. This was wrong. This was painful to watch.

“Ben, remember what I told you if we thought some people weren’t going to enjoy themselves?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” Ben inquired, taking a look at the argument between you and your boyfriend and your friends. “I remember that plan. The Dread Game, right?” Ramsay nodded.

“You know what to do then,” Ramsay took one last look at you. He saw the tears coming down your face. “She deserves better.”

You descended down the stairs and into the dark area. You started to hear some radio audio that sounded a lot like the news.

‘We regret to report the murder of the wife and her two children by their husband and father. The father purchased the rifle used in the crime at his local gunstore two days earlier. This brutal killing took place while the family was gathered at home on a Sunday afternoon.’

You looked around the basement. Flayed bodies hung from the ceiling. One mechanical body shook as it was taking its last breaths. You heard the weak gasping and choking. The news continued.

‘The day of the crime, the father went to the trunk of his car, retrieved the rifle, and shot his wife as she was cleaning up the kitchen after lunch. When his ten-year-old son came to investigate the commotion, the father shot him, too. His six-year-old daughter had the good sense to hide in the bathroom, but reports suggest he lured her out by telling her it was just a game.’

You felt numb, but you had to continue. You were stuck in here with all of them. Chains moved to and fro, and you felt time slowing down. Red ‘x’s were everywhere. You started to hear saw noises. You couldn’t tell what was scarier, this basement or the horrific truth your friends kept from you.

Suddenly, you saw a pair of red converse shoes in front of you. Slowly, your eyes trailed up the body. Ripped jeans with bloodied knees, torn shirt, and a pair of pig eyes staring back into yours. You tried not to scream, but a hand over your mouth took care of that. The pig boy took you inside a hidden closet.

You struggled and moaned until the boy removed his mask. Ramsay put one finger to his mouth. Taking the hint, you nodded your head.

“Watch this,” he whispered. His mischievous smile disappearing as the pig persona took over. Chelsee screamed at the sight of him. Ramsay grabbed her by her hair and pulled her to the wall. He turned on a switch that let out pig squeals in her ear. Chelsee screamed out your now ex-boyfriend’s name. He ran to her, but was tripped by Ben Bones wearing a mask of a distorted smile and sunken eyes.

Ben took your ex and chained him to a cross. You looked to see Michelle screaming at Grunt who cornered her with a working circle saw. Max and your boyfriend’s other friend ran from the basement screaming. Two of Ramsay’s friends ran after them; their faces were falling off their heads. Your eyes went back to Chelsee who screamed and tried to get out of the pair of handcuffs.

“Holy fuck!” your ex screamed. You turned to see Ramsay with a working chainsaw. He ripped it and put it close to your ex’s head. He screamed, but then laughed. “You’re not actually gonna hurt me. You can’t touch me.”

Ramsay ripped off his mask. His sweat-covered hair and forehead shined in the one lightbulb moving to and fro between the boys. He slowly stalked your ex trapped on the cross.

“Or could I?” he taunted.

“No you wouldn’t,” your ex responded. Ramsay placed the chainsaw at your ex’s ankles.

“I don’t think you need to walk anymore,” Ramsay’s threat rolled off his tongue. You secretly enjoyed it. Your ex squirmed in place. Ramsay moved the chainsaw to your ex’s chest. “Or maybe I could cut your heart and keep it in a jar. I could give it away to Y/N.”

“You sick fuck!” Ramsay moved closer to your ex inches from his face.

“Get the girl,” Ramsay commanded. Ben Bones dragged Chelsee in front of your ex. Tears were coming down from her face, her makeup dripped and leaked.

“Leave her alone,” your ex warned.

“What are you going to do?” Ramsay laughed at him. “You’re tied up. I could do anything I wanted. And I do mean anything.” Ramsay took a flaying knife and cut his hand open. Blood trickled out, showing how truly sharp his blades were. He put the blade against your ex’s throat.

“Just let us go, man,” he begged.

“Tell me I’m a sick fuck again,” Ramsay said to him. Your ex mumbled. “Say it again!” Ramsay screamed in his face.

“You’re a sick fuck! Let us go!” your ex screamed. You swore you saw a little pee come out of him. Ramsay laughed and then took his bloody hand and wiped it across your ex’s face, leaving a smear of blood on him. Ben and Grunt untied the girls and let them go. Chelsee struggled to run in her heels.

Ramsay unchained your ex and pushed him against the wall. His right hand on his throat. “Do me a favor, don’t talk to Y/N ever again. If you so much as breathe a word to her, I’ll put your dick in jar.” He dropped your ex to the ground. He made a large thud, and then ran out of the basement, following the girls.

You exited the hidden closet, looking around you. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah?” Ramsay said, smiling. “Was it good enough? Did you like it?” You went to hug Ramsay, wrapping your arms around him.

“Thank you,” you said. You both heard knocking.

“That’s the next group, come here,” Ramsay took your hand and escorted you out of the basement. The air outside was cold and crisp. “Y/N, if you take a left here, there’s a guest house. If you go in there, my stepmom will be in there with my little brother. She has cookies. You know, in case you didn’t want to go home with them.”

“That’s really nice of you to offer,” you looked to the left and started walking. Your feet paused and then turn back to Ramsay. “Can I have your phone?”

Ramsay shrugged and gave it to you. You type in your contact information and hand it back to him. He looked at his new addition to his phone and back to you. “What’s this?”

“My number,” you replied.

“Why would you—

You interrupted him by kissing him on the cheek. Ramsay blinked twice and looked at you for some explanation. “I’m single now, I guess,” you started. “Besides, I think I might like dangerous boys.”

Ramsay smiled at you before going back inside the basement. You could already hear some of your classmates screaming bloody murder. “Well then, you may have found the best one.” Ramsay winked and closed the basement door.

#ramsay bolton #ramsay snow #ramsay x reader #ramsay snow imagine #ramsay bolton imagine #the dreadfort #halloween #halloween one shot #one shot #long one shot #modern au #game of thrones fanfiction

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rougefox97969 · 7 years ago

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House words

I am currently going through a horrendously bad time right now. I found this on my computer and it made me smile so now I’m sharing it all with you in hopes of passing it on.

This was one of two stories written for drgns8r with the prompt “Sandor is more of a pageant parent than Sansa.”

I gave no idea if I even posted this correctly, or if the editing is done, but I hope you all enjoy!

Sandor Clegane used to believe Beauty pageants were boring and kind of stupid. Jon’s super liberated girlfriend (sorry significate other), Ygritte called them heteronormative, exploitative bullshit, but she also protested the idea of fried chicken, so Sandor had written her off long ago.

Sansa had done some local pageant work to win money for college when she was a teenager and described the experience as “kind of fun, but some people get way too into it. Especially the parents”.

Sandor didn’t understand the concept of measurable beauty. In his primal male brain all people fell into three categories of attractiveness; related to (therefore beautiful), would fuck and would not. But he did understand competitions. When the college athletic recruiters came to his high school and just saw his scars and not the lists of sports records he had broken it had been a blow to his ego. But then he found the Strong Man competitions. No one cared what a scary looking bastard you were (sometime it worked to your advantage) when you were dragging a city bus filled with the Qarth Philharmonic, or throwing a boulder or running with a hog under each arm. He met Sansa at the Northern Heritage games, where he beat a thousand year old record in caber tossing while wearing a pleaded skirt.

They married and settled not too far from her parents, (even though they never thought he was good enough for her). He retired from competitions and made a nice chunk of cash investing in a chain of gyms his buddy Bronn opened up around town.

When the children were born he was absolutely beside himself with joy. All three where girls; Catie with her mother’s red hair but his grey eyes, Elinor with his hair and mother’s big blue eyes, then little Sandy who looked like baby doll with his mother’s blonde hair and big baby blue eyes. Their gender never bothered Sandor; girls played sports. In fact his girls would be the ones who would play better than their male counterparts. He would hold them in their little pink blankets and whisper one day, they were going to be the best at everything they did, as long as that was Baseball, Football and Hockey.

But the girls didn’t want to play sports. They played tea-party and watched Pink Pretty Princess videos while singing along. They would get into Sansa’s designer clothes and walk around the house like royalty. Sandor finally admitted defeat and cleared all the kid sized sports equipment he had bought for them when they were born and set up a space for his free weights complete with bench, satellite radio and mirrors.

One day he looked up from his bicep curls and saw Catie standing before the mirrors. She was smiling and waving before she walked in a little circle then waved again.

Sandor muted the Death Metal and asked his little birdling what she was doing.

“I’m practicing for the Little Miss Last Hearth pageant Father,” she replied. “Mother said since Jeyne and Megga are going to compete, I could to. Will you come watch me?”

“Of course little birdling,” he had smiled, and then he pulled her in for a hug making her shriek.

“Ew Father! You’re all sweaty!”

The next Saturday, everyone piled into the car and they drove the two hours to Last Hearth. Sandor had seen the women from Last Hearth and figured his pretty little girl had this in the bag. It was just a pageant, not big deal.

Till it was. He sat in the back watching the other parents lose their shit over the quality of spray tans and hair pieces. They poured energy drinks into their girls and shoved fake teeth into their mouths to cover up missing baby teeth. When it was their little girl’s turn they jumped up and did their routine on the side lines hissing corrections under their breath.

Sandor didn’t go back into the dressing room, a seven foot almost 300 pound man would not be welcome back there, so when Sansa came out white as sheet and shaking he was concerned.

“It’s not like it was back when I did pageants,” she had whispered. “Those women are monsters! And the girls are just as bad!”

“What do you mean?” he hissed.

“Promise to not get mad?”

“No.”

Sansa shook her head. “These women… they have dropped thousands of dollars on these girls! Dresses, hair stylist, makeup artist, designer gowns, theater grade props, coaches…. And they made Catie cry.”

Sandor’s blood began to boil. “How?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“They made fun of her hair and dress! When they asked where she got her gown, and she said a department store they laughed. When they asked who did her hair and she told them her mother, they laughed again! She was a mess and I all I had was the makeup I had in my purse to cover up the blotches she got on her skin!”

Sandor sat back in his seat and growled.

He watched the pageant with competitive eye; the little shits had been right. His beautiful birdling in her department store gown and home done make up looked shabby compared to the professionally styled and coached contestants. Even those little grubs Jeyne and Megga had a hairstylist come in and obviously had taken voice lessons.

In the end, Catie came in last

Fucking last!

She cried all the way to the car and all the way to the nearest fast food joint where she shoved ice cream and french fries in her face with big, blubbery tears still dripping down her chin.

Sansa tried to sooth her, but Sandor waved her and the other children into the play area.

He fixed his daughter with a stare and asked, “Do you still want to compete?”

Catie nodded. “I wanted that big shiny crown Father, but the other girls were better than me!”

Sandor shook his head. “No, they just had better equipment, better coaches, a better support team.”

This problem he knew, this problem he could solve. The best people make the best competitors. He knew this from his Strong Man years; he had hired the best coach, the best agent and secured the best equipment. And he had won. Every. Single. Time.

“If you still want to do these competitions, I will see you have the best of whatever it takes to win, okay birdling?”

Catie looked up at her father with her big blue eyes and smiled like Sansa did right before she did something really clever.

Sandor didn’t waste any time; he commissioned the best dresses from a designer in Kingslanding, hired a voice coach from the opera school in White Harbor, enrolled her in the best dance classes, recruited a pageant coach that declared her students never lost (he had informed the old bitch that if Catie came in second she would be fired on the spot), and even hired a stylist from Highgarden.

The next pageant was Little Miss Riverrun and Sandor flew them out a few days before the show so Catie could get used to the venue.

This time Sandor did go back stage. When a Mom told him to leave, he replied, “And which one of you harpies is going to remove me?”. She had slunk away and even her husband didn’t cross him again.

This time Catie cleaned up. She took the talent completion, the glamor competition, she walked with style and grace, waved when she needed to and no one had to do her routine off to the side.

She walked off stage with a half a dozen trophies, a cash prize, and a big shiny crown that towered nine inches off her head.

That night she crawled up in his lap, kissed him on his burnt cheek and whispered “Thank you Father,” in her sweet little girl voice.

The next year Elinor decided she wanted to compete, then little Sandy got in on the fun.

Before each show, Sandor would take a knee with his girls around him and give the same pep talk;

“What is our words?”

“Second place is the first loser!” they would cry in unison.

“What do we say to failure?”

“NOT TODAY!”

“Now get out there and destroy!”

“YES SIR!”

“Sir?”

They would smile their little baby face smile and replied “YES FATHER!”

Then they would kiss the air around his face as to not ruin their make up and go out on stage and make him proud.

@drgns8er

#sansan fanfiction

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scottymcgeesterwrites · 7 years ago

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Uncharted: A Hollywood Video Game Series

A long time ago, I bought an adventure game called Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune for the PS3. It must have been out for a while by then because it was the Greatest Hits copy. I didn’t really think much of it other than I wanted to spend some money on a cheap new game.

I remember that the first thing that surprised me was the dialogue. Something about it wasn’t particularly cheesy or even over-the-top. Sure, the main character Nathan Drake made quips and bickered with the female lead, Elena Fisher, and his old pal Paul Newman – I mean, er, Victor “Sully” Sullivan.

(Seriously - they look alike.)

Anyway, point is, nothing about the game made me cringe. I actually chuckled – genuinely chuckled. Video game dialogue, for the most part, is awful, especially in RPGs.

(Exhibit A - Fire Emblem Awakening)

After finishing Drake’s Fortune, I realized that the story was essentially a modern day Raiders of the Lost Ark. The hero is a shining physical example of the Anglo-Saxons, every traitor is not white, and the main villain pulling the strings of the non-white villains is a refined gentleman with a foreign accent. Said gentlemanly villain also dies when he opens the mystical object, just like in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Raiders of the Lost Ark in itself hearkened back to the pulp days of yore, and it was intentional in having a gruff American hero fighting Nazis and other villainous foreigners. So in a way, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is a reminiscent of a reminiscent. I didn’t pick up any Uncharted game for years – until last December to be exact. I knew I was getting a PS4 for Christmas, since my mom stumbled upon a Black Friday sale. The PS4 came bundled with the last Uncharted game – A Thief’s End. To prepare for this momentous occasion, I bought Uncharted 2 and 3 and finished them within a couple weeks before Christmas. I meant to write about this experience as fast as I could but I left it on the backburner for a while. It’s still pretty fresh in my head.

I had always heard about Uncharted 2: Among Thieves being one of the best video games ever made. I do remember playing a demo when the PS3 first arrived; I shot through enemies on board a train, which is the most memorable part of game, as many fans would say.

Now I finally played the entire game through – and I have to say it did deliver. The dialogue somehow got better. I laughed out loud at a particular point that I’ll never forget. Nathan and his pal Harry are sneaking around a palace to steal another artifact. Nathan has to hang onto a ledge and shimmy across slowly. Harry speaks to Nathan through his earpiece and warns him, “There’s a guy above you! There’s a guy above you!” A security guard appears above Nathan to glance over the ledge. The game then tells you how to pull enemies down form a ledge (this was an early level). After the security guard falls screaming into the water below, Harry says, “There’s a guy below you! There’s a guy below you!”

Quips like that made the dialogue very real. The characters troll each other all the time. Among Thieves also introduced an ex-lover of Nathan’s, Chloe Frazer, who became a fan favorite. She could be best described as Lara Croft but with a giant helping of Catwoman.

Among Thieves though had many more incredible you-can’t-possibly-survive-that-in-real-life moments than the original. And by the third game, Drake’s Deception, those moments sort of became the series trademark but pushed to the limits. Holy shit – Nathan cries, as he jumps off an exploding plane and manages to survive by grabbing a parachute. Holy shit – Nathan cries, as he jumps from platform to platform in a lost city that’s disintegrating all around him. Holy shit – Nathan cries, as he falls from a tower a million feet in the air but manages to grab a jutting pipe at the last second. Holy fucking shit - Nathan cries, as he dangles from the last car of a train about to fall off a Himalayan cliff.

Uncharted is what you get when you mix Indiana Jones and The Fast and the Furious. Treasure hunting and gratuitous stunts. Besides all that, the plots have typical parlor tricks and twists and turns and gotcha moments. With the exception of the first game, Drake’s Fortune, every Uncharted game also starts of in media res. You begin the action at some crucial point in the story and then the rest of the game is a flashback that leads up to that. It’s a nice break from the linear progression of the story, but doesn’t really have any narrative significance other than to make you wonder how Nathan got to that point.

But the main thing that sets Uncharted apart from most – if not all – adventure series (Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, etc.) is the effort made at creating an entire backstory for Nathan Drake. Usually, an adventure series reflects pulp adventures where you know little about the main character other than their quirks and that they’re awesome and kick ass. Side characters come and go without question. Romantic relationships come and go without question. Continuity gets sloppy halfway through. Uncharted makes it more realistic by reminding us that these are people after all – and people have many on-and-off relationships rather than cutting someone off forever like dropping a supporting actor from a TV show.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End really solidified my positive feelings about the series. In my opinion, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is one of the greatest finales for a video game series. There’s really nothing wrong about it. It’s so rare for me to enjoy an adventure story that I wouldn’t want to change – whether in plot or the minutest detail. By far it felt the longest but I wasn’t tired or bored by it. Pretty much every final act of every previous Uncharted game wears you out by pitting you against an army of opponents. A Thief’s End takes a different approach. The expedition is grand in scope as you traverse tropical islands, all to reach a fabled end point where the final showdown awaits.

It’s strange though how quickly Uncharted finished. The series barely lasted two generations of consoles – PS3 and PS4. But like a life filled with adventure, everything passes in a blink of an eye. Because of the more realistic portrayal of relationships between characters, Nathan couldn’t go on forever. He grew old. He had to think about what to do with the rest of his life.

Thus, Uncharted is like a Hollywood blockbuster extravaganza but by adding more pathos, more sense of continuity. Yes, other video game series have definitely been cinematic but I’m not talking about long cinematic games like from Hideo Kojima. In terms of movies, I’m not talking about that cheap Michael Bay shit either. I’m talking about something in the sweet spot. Playing an Uncharted game is like playing a game that Steven Spielberg made if he grew up today and made video games instead of movies. Steven Spielberg was that movie director who fed the audience what they wanted while at the same time maintaining an artistic talent with the camera. He didn’t insult the audience’s intelligence, but neither was he anywhere near avant-garde. The same applies to the makers of Uncharted.

My final rating of all the games from best to worst would is:

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

Drake’s Deception annoyed me the most – both in actual gameplay and in the plot. There were too many times when the villain could have prevailed but didn’t because – well, then there’d be no story, silly. I wore out near the end of the game with all the shooting and shooting and shooting. I also experienced the most glitches – people got stuck in walls, I somehow missed that guy even though he was clearly at the center of my crosshairs. There was even a cutscene where a desert chase ended and in the distance one guy on his horse glitched the fuck out and started riding in the air. Nathan wanders in the desert and finds the one set of ruins that just so happens to be overrun by the bad guys. Then near the end of the game, they dropped the biggest bomb and I truly believed that they finally drove the story in a darker direction – only to cop out with some Grade A Bullshit. It’s a shame because Drake’s Deception started showing us more about Nathan’s background, which was really the highlight of the game.

Oh, and there was also Uncharted: Golden Abyss for the PSP Vita but honestly – who ever gave a fuck about the PSP or the Vita?

Meanwhile, on a final note, Uncharted as a series isn’t quite done yet. The developers at Naughty Dog have concocted a continuing story for Chloe Frazer. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy will follow a new adventure starring Chloe, but one that is said to be shorter than the typical Uncharted game. Apparently, Chloe is half Indian, which was always discernible through her looks despite hailing from Australia with the accent, although they never went deeper into her backstory. Her adventure will take her to India and concern a Ganesh statue. Will this be a single standalone or could we see a whole new offshoot and completely dive into her? Who knows for sure right now. It’d be fun to explore . . .uncharted territory.

#uncharted #uncharted 2: among thieves #nathan drake #video games #video game reviews #indiana jones #lara croft #tomb raider #onvideogames

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kidsviral-blog · 7 years ago

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Meet Sage The Gemini, The Bay Area Rap Scene's Surprise Breakout Star

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/meet-sage-the-gemini-the-bay-area-rap-scenes-surprise-breakout-star/

Meet Sage The Gemini, The Bay Area Rap Scene's Surprise Breakout Star

The “Gas Pedal” rapper might be the first genuine pop-crossover star to come from this tight-knit, influential community. But if he looks like he’s not enjoying the ride, it’s because he’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of Northern California.

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Photograph by Aylin Zafar for BuzzFeed

“Good luck, put some talcum powder on your nuts, and drink some water.” Sage the Gemini, a 21-year-old rapper from Fairfield, Calif., laughs as he reads aloud a text message from his friend IamSu, a fellow Bay Area rapper and producer named Sudan Ahmeer Williams. Su is only three years older than Sage, but he’s become an encouraging, older-brother-type figure in the past couple of years, and the two have recorded, performed, and traveled together as a part of HBK Gang (short for Heartbreak Gang), a crew of rappers, producers, and video directors that Su co-founded.

It’s late October 2013 and Sage — born Dominic Wynn Woods — is getting his hair cut in a greenroom backstage at BET before making his TV debut on 106 & Park. Standing at 6 feet 5 inches, Sage easily towers over most people, but his presence and movements feel more like that of an overgrown kid than anything intimidating. Toned and fit, he has the look of a heartthrob, and girls on social media coo over the jade-hued eyes that gave Sage his stage name. He’s joined in the room by his four dancers — Dmac, Chonkie, Liyah, and Wani — and his DJ, Lucci. Most of them are a bit younger than Sage, but they all grew up together in Fairfield and have been friends since high school.

Sage is the only member of the HBK crew with his own backup dancers — dance has always been an important part of growing up in the Bay, a crucial element of the area’s culture and energy, even if the best-known recent signature moves have come out of the L.A. hip-hop scene, where the “jerk” and “Cat Daddy” dance fads bloomed. But Sage’s two breakout hits, “Gas Pedal” and “Red Nose,” and their accompanying dances have resurrected dance in the Bay thanks to people uploading videos of their own routines to YouTube and Vine.

Seated around a TV screen in the BET greenroom, Sage’s crew watches his DJ Lucci check lighting and sound onstage. Lucci dances alone, turning side to side, his arms drumming up and down, like Sage does in the “Gas Pedal” video. Lucci’s hair is long, curly, and half-braided, and he’s unaware that his friends are watching him. “He just came out of the womb dancing!” Sage laughs. “The doctor ain’t even cut the umbilical cord, he’s already got it, swinging!” He jumps up and simulates coming out of the womb while dancing.

With his day-one friends, Sage is at ease — but he regularly alludes to a time when he was less comfortable and less accepted. “They used to call me Lil Bow Wow’s little brother when I was younger,” Sage tells his manager, Stretch, referring to the ‘00s kid rapper now known just as Bow Wow, and one of 106 & Park’s hosts. “Because I was light-skinned and my nose didn’t really fit my face. It was hecka funny because now those same people are gonna be watching and be like, ‘What the fuck?’”

Public appearances with famous people will be the norm for him over the next couple of months. He signed a major-label deal with Republic Records last summer, and since, his schedule has been filled with promo appearances at radio stations, tour dates with HBK, and performances at high schools, all pointing toward the March release of his debut album, Remember Me.

After a quick rehearsal, the group performs two songs during the show’s live taping: “Gas Pedal” — the single that caught Republic’s attention and has gone platinum since the label signed Sage, with almost 45 million views on YouTube. Justin Bieber even hopped on the official remix of the song for the album. His second hit, “Red Nose,” has been certified gold.

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Photograph by Aylin Zafar for BuzzFeed

After the performance, Bow Wow interviews Sage. He’s more self-deprecating than you might expect for a budding star, pointing out that he’s not “really rapping” seriously on “Red Nose.” “That’s just catchy stuff,” he says. He’s reluctant to step into the playboy role expected of good-looking, famous twentysomethings, but he’s also a confident romantic, telling Bow Wow that he’s ready to get married. “I been through a whole lot, and I don’t wanna just be runnin’ around on Twitter like, ‘Hey… come backstage,’ you know? I’ve been a loverboy since the seventh grade,” Sage tells Bow Wow.

Later, the crowd goes wild as Dmac teaches Bow Wow the “Gas Pedal” dance — a variation on the J12, a dance made up by a 19-year-old from Oakland, and which was popularized around the Bay Area by dance videos soundtracked by local rapper Clyde Carson’s song “Slow Down.” “Ahh, that was so cool!” one of the dancers, Wani, says as the crew leaves BET’s studio. As everyone else celebrates, Sage walks ahead, scrolling through Twitter on his phone. He says he wishes a few things were slightly different with his performance, but overall he’s happy.

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Photograph by Aylin Zafar for BuzzFeed

In early January, Sage, IamSu, and the rest of the HBK Gang take photos for a magazine feature story in the Berkeley Hills. That evening, after the HBK guys have gone home, Sage is sitting with his younger cousin Jodie and a handful of childhood friends at a Popeyes in Berkeley, everyone giggling as Sage walks back and forth across the restaurant, filling its small space with his long-limbed dancing. He does voices: impressions of friends, a wheezy Donald Duck. Later, pausing their conversation mid-sentence without skipping a beat, they tell an older woman she’s “very pretty” as she’s leaving. She’s flattered. Sage is charismatic, charming, and sweet, without it ever feeling over-the-top or disingenuous. He’s quick to compliment people, and he looks them straight in the eyes, earnestly, while he does it.

By having his first two singles sell really well, securing a nice major-label deal, and quickly recording an album that hasn’t been shelved, Sage flouts prevailing notions about what a rapper from the Bay Area can do. The region has long operated in its own kind of bubble, at the margins of the national hip-hop conversation. In the 1990s, “when people thought of ‘West Coast music,’ they’d think of L.A.,” says Sage’s manager Stretch. The Bay has produced a handful of nationally recognized acts over time, like the imaginative linguistic stylist E-40 and pimp-rap pioneer Too Short. More recently, labels flocked to the Bay in the mid ‘00s, signing acts like The Team and The Federation, who were associated with what was locally known as the hyphy movement.

None of those acts found enduring nationwide success, but you can still regularly hear hyphy-era tracks from Keak Da Sneak and E-40 on the radio in the Bay, where classics never go out of style and local tastes still rule the airwaves. “The Bay just marches to its own drum,” IamSu tells me on the phone in March. And, if uncredited, the influence of the Bay’s minimal, slapping production can be heard in today’s prevailing West Coast sound, the simple keyboard-plink productions of L.A.’s DJ Mustard. “That hyphy movement woke L.A. up,” E-40 tells me in December. But on the national scale it was always hard to get people to care. “We just get looked over [in the Bay].”

“Bay music has a lot more funk in it,” IamSu says. “It’s a lot looser … The whole movement is more expressive.” But if mid-2000s hyphy could sometimes veer goofy in its funkiness, Sage’s music is slick. He delivers his verses in a deadpan drawl and in a soft-spoken near-whisper. “Gas Pedal” is light and fun, but not at the expense of sounding sexy.

Clyde Carson, a former member of The Team whose 2012 Bay hit “Slow Down” inspired “Gas Pedal,” says that he immediately recognized a star quality in Sage — the kind that gives him a shot to break out of the Bay’s insular community. “I’m always hearing songs that kind of emulated our sound,” Carson tells me. “But it was something ‘bout him that I was like, this kid is … [With] this kid it might not just be the ‘Gas Pedal.’” Carson says Sage has a charisma that’s hard to come by for most artists. “His personality is big. I always tell him, ‘You have to go into acting and all that shit, man.’ I’m like, ‘Don’t waste that personality. Get your ass on TV and get all the money you can get.’”

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Courtesy of Sage the Gemini / Via instagram.com

Born in Hunter’s Point, San Francisco, Sage moved with his family to Fairfield in the North Bay when he was 7. “Everybody moved out because either we would’ve been dopeheads, dead, or in jail,” Sage told radio personality Sway last fall. In the suburbs, he found outlets for his showboat personality. In middle and high school, he recorded songs on his computer with a cheap plug-in microphone, acted in school and traveling stage plays, and made comedy videos that he posted to his own YouTube channel. “I would post a funny video, then another funny video, then a song. Then a funny video, then a song,” Sage says.

In high school, Sage and his little brother mowed lawns and cleaned garages to earn money to buy recording equipment, a detail he brings up on “Put Me On,” a song from Remember Me that’s dedicated to the naysayers in his hometown:

“I’m from Fairfield and n****s still mug me the hardest / Just because I can’t help you n****s be artists? / And got the nerve to tell me, ‘Don’t forget where I started’? / I know where I started / N***a, that’s the problem / Tryna buy equipment where money was the problem / I can outsmart ‘em / Me and my brother Cadence / Both 13, tryna clean n****s’ places / Just to buy a first microphone at Gordon’s.”

Fairfield is actually pretty remote; in the northeast corner of the Bay Area, up past Vallejo, it’s far from the center of the Bay’s rap scene. Sage grew up watching young crews of Bay rappers like The Team, whose 2004 single “It’s Gettin Hot” was a regional smash, and The Pack, the Berkeley crew of skater hippies from which enigmatic rapper Lil B emerged. Tucked away in Fairfield, watching other people rap like it was a team sport, he felt isolated and alone.

“People were just rude,” Sage’s cousin Jodie, who grew up acting in school and regional plays with Sage and learning about poetry from him, tells me in Berkeley in January. “They always had nice clothes and always had cars and money. We didn’t always have all of that. [We] couldn’t fit in with everybody.”

Sage was good-looking enough to model, even appearing in underwear campaigns. (He wouldn’t reveal what brands, but when I throw out Calvin Klein and Hanes, he says I’m “not far off.”) He remembers feeling ugly, and it seems he returns to this well of teenage frustration often, to propel himself. “Girls didn’t like me in school,” he says. “I didn’t have nice clothes.”

On Remember Me’s title track, he directs a taunting refrain at anyone who teased him: “Fuck the cool crowd, bitch, I’m a nerd.” And later: “They used to treat a n***a like a stepchild / I felt like that white dude on 8 Mile.” That Sage compares himself to Eminem doesn’t come off like a throwaway joke. Like Em, he dropped out of high school to focus solely on music, and now sees rap as a means to annihilate his opponents and prove doubters wrong. It seems that Sage wants to release a successful album, at least in part, to seek validation from the popular kids who brushed past him and the girls who dismissed him.

In 2012, after “Gas Pedal” started picking up steam in the Bay Area, Sage posted a video of thanks to his supporters on his YouTube channel. Sitting in the same bedroom where he recorded many of his comedy videos, shirtless, he dispensed some advice to young people looking to try to make it in rap. “For those who know me, you know my real name is Dominic Woods. I went to Clearwood, Dover, Fairfield High, and Rodriguez. If you was there with me, you would know a lot of people wasn’t with me,” he says earnestly into the camera. “If you’re out there and you want to rap and a lot of people isn’t with you, let ‘em go. Because take it from me, I got passed up by all the girls, all the n****s laughed at me when I wanted to get a collab and stuff — but we’re not here to talk about that, it’s all positivity.”

Now many of the naysayers who ignored Sage previously have emerged from the woodwork, as often happens at the dawn of someone’s success, asking for favors. On “Put Me On” from Remember Me, Sage raps about the pressure he feels from people who feel entitled to a piece of his success: “I can’t help you if I’m tryna help myself / Get off my chest, I can’t invest with no wealth / Like I said, most of y’all wasn’t there when I started / Might’ve ‘made it’ on paper / But I’m still ‘new artist.’”

Jodie says Sage wants people to work hard for themselves, not even giving Jodie, who’s pursuing an R&B career, a free handout to jump on his songs without first working for it. “They feel a certain type of way because he’s not saying, ‘Oh, yeah, let me put you on my song and help you get up there,’” Jodie explains. “But he did that to me, and I’m his own family. Because nobody gave him what he had,” Jodie says. (Sage later tells me that he’s kicked Jodie out of his house in an effort to motivate him. “He started getting too comfortable,” he says. “Eventually he can come back, but I want him to realize he needs to work for it.”)

Sage has been working at his music for years, and he fits right into HBK’s energetic group dynamic, but he’s still the new guy, and his popularity is a recent phenomenon. “He came up so fast, it’s crazy,” IamSu tells me later. “He was going through hella shit that took me years to find out, [and he went through it] in 10 months.”

“For [Sage] to be higher up than anyone in the Bay Area in such a short amount of time so quickly, it’s just amazing,” Jodie says, while stealing a French fry from Sage at Popeyes.

“I’m not bigger than Su, though,” Sage interrupts, shaking his head. That’s debatable — Su brought together HBK Gang and has landed several songs on the radio, but, on his own, he’s never released a single as successful as “Gas Pedal.�� Still Sage sees him as his idol and biggest influence, even saying later that he still gets nervous around him.

So does Sage just not want to jinx it? He shakes his head again, looking down at the table: “I’m not bigger than Su.”

View this image ›

Photograph by Aylin Zafar for BuzzFeed

Both Sage and Su have set themselves up to be big because they’re producers as well as rappers, according to Stretch, who’s been deeply entrenched in the Bay rap scene for well over a decade, most notably managing the late Bay legend hyphy icon, Mac Dre, in addition to acts like Mistah F.A.B. and Kreayshawn. “Hip-hop is moved by producers, and if you don’t have an identifying producer or an identifying sound, it’s not gonna work,” he says. “The problem you had before with the Bay Area was there were no set producers. Sage is a producer. Su’s a producer. They want to have more input and they helped shape the sound that we have today. It’s coming from a different place than just rapping on someone else’s beats.”

Sage and Su’s sound cherry-picks from mob music (the throbbing, slower sound that preceded hyphy in the Bay), hyphy’s up-tempo joyousness, and jerk music, the dance-driven L.A. sound that came after hyphy. And as Clyde Carson distinguishes it, Sage and Su’s sound has all the fun of hyphy’s original iteration, but none of its ties to violence. Sage seems to live by that philosophy. He doesn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, and he semi-jokingly calls himself a “safe thug.” He frequently talks about making music that will keep kids more interested in dancing than in handling guns. He was raised in the church and around women, he says, and it shows. He doesn’t allow girls backstage and has an almost old-fashioned, courtship-centric approach to relationships. In March, he told DJ Vlad that Kaylin Garcia, a model, dancer, and former cast member of Love and Hip-Hop, was his current love interest, but in subsequent radio interviews he’s revealed that they’ve met in person only recently. He tells me that the most special someone in his life is his daughter, Lai’lah, who’s 3.

Sage is betting that his underdog story and his update on the sounds of the Bay can appeal universally. But that mission comes with its own pressure. On the “Gas Pedal” remix featuring Justin Bieber, Sage hints at the weight placed on his shoulders: “It’s going up / No explaining the escalator / I’m tryna keep this alive / the Bay’s respirator.” And though Sage says that Republic hasn’t put any pressure on how his music is supposed to sound, the major label game still has rules: “It’s numbers. At the end of the day they want hits,” IamSu says. And Sage has a unique sense of just what in the Bay sound will resonate on a larger scale, he adds. He knows hits. “The kind of artist Sage is, he’s a superstar.”

Republic’s West Coast A&R Naim McNair, who signed acts like E-40, Clyde Carson, and The Federation to major labels years ago, signed Sage last year while scouting for new talent in the Bay. He says that the new generation may be laying a more lasting foundation than the prior hyphy movement. “I think other things come and go, but the kids from the Bay have definitely built a foundation in California that will last for a long time,” he says. “And there’s a lot of unity now.”

Yet there’s a natural star quality that his previous signees may not quite have had. “We definitely see him as someone who’s gonna push the needle, at this point he can do anything he wants. If he worked at it, he could play for the 49ers.” All that confidence, McNair says, stems from the years of hard work Sage endured in the isolation of his bedroom, and even still today. “He’s probably one of the most disciplined artists I’ve ever worked with.”

For as playful as he is in person, Sage is also his own harshest critic. With Remember Me, he tries to show he’s got the skill to stay in the game for more than two hits. “I’ll actually be rapping on [the album] instead of saying ‘spoon’ and ‘fork’ and ‘red nose.’ That catchy stuff that caught people’s attention; it’s like one of those things you have to do to break the atmosphere and get out into space.” But as much as he believes in his music, he’s still nervous and hesitant to boast or declare his album a success. He’s hesitant to make any assumptions about how his album will be received — or how he even feels about all of it — before there is a way to quantify its success. “I’ll see how the turnout is and then go from there.”

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Photograph by Macey Foronda for BuzzFeed

It’s Tuesday, March 25, the day of Remember Me’s release, and Sage is hanging out in the BuzzFeed’s New York headquarters — geeking out over seeing Law & Order star Christopher Meloni (who’s dropped by the office for an interview) and joking around with the life-size cutouts of celebrities around the office. He’s tired, though. It’s been a long day of promotional appearances and interviews and there’s more to go — a cycle that even seasoned veterans can struggle through, but is a true test for those new to the big-time. “It’s whatever,” he says. “I’ll be happy when I hit number one or I’m winning awards.” For Sage, there needs to be a clear metric to define just what that success looks like — haters can hate, but numbers can’t lie, and he made this album for the critics back home.

After taping a performance for David Letterman with IamSu, Sage zonks out in his hotel room. The last thing he wants to do is go out to a club, but there’s an album release party at trendy Meatpacking District spot 1 Oak that was arranged and put on his schedule. He’s performing two songs and there’s no way out of it.

1 Oak is bustling with groups of drunk out-of-towners, 19-year-old-looking city kids celebrating birthdays, and fashion models clad in skintight dresses and heels. A quick survey of the room reveals that no one is really there for the release party, nor do they know who Sage the Gemini is (at least not by name — they seem to recognize his songs later in the night). Robin Thicke bounds into the club with some young twentysomethings to join one of the groups near the small DJ stage. Sage shows up to the club around 1:50 a.m. with HBK rapper Kool John, their friend Rex, and Stretch. Kool John’s immediately having a good time, enjoying the drinks and orienting himself in the space, checking out a girl on top of a couch dancing against a wall. The crowd is getting down to a mix of twerk-friendly West Coast hyphy and ratchet songs, and the DJ takes the mic to announce that “Sage the Gemini is IN the buildiiiing!”

Sage, however, is sitting slouched over in the corner, his hoodie pulled over his head, absorbed in his phone. He hasn’t gotten much sleep in the past few days and he’s exhausted, and isn’t interested in talking to anyone. The juxtaposition between the debauchery and fun being had by Robin Thicke and whoever was willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a bottle of vodka and the lone Sage, whom the party was in honor of, is a little puzzling to watch.

Most 21-year-old rappers on the day of their debut would be reveling in all of this — if not the excess, then the spotlight. Sage stands behind the DJ booth on a small stage before he’s about to perform, observing the frenzy in front of him. He’s staring into space, cool and unaffected, and delivers his two hit songs with pitch-perfect tone and agility.

At the end of the set, Robin Thicke grabs a mic and starts chanting Sage’s name to the raucous crowd. Sage bursts into a huge smile, looking bewildered as he pulls out his phone to take a video of one of pop’s biggest stars not only acknowledging him, but giving him props. It’s one of those surreal moments that happen at the beginning of an artist’s career. Sage may not care about the perks and glamour, but he sure as hell cares about who’s paying attention.

View this image ›

Photograph by Aylin Zafar for BuzzFeed

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/azafar/sage-the-gemini-bay-area-interview

#bay area #hip hop #iamsu

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asquishyfish-blog · 8 years ago

Text

I’ll Never Forget My Lego Project

Legos have always been a staple in my life since before I could even form long-term memories; everyone in my family, from my mom, Evangeline Dennison (who was born shortly after the introduction of the Lego brick in the USA in 1958), and her five brothers: Kenny, David, Jerry, Tommy, and Joseph on down the line played with them when they were kids and in turn afforded themselves the luxury of playing Legos with their own children. Those tiny little colored bricks provide such a simple, yet rewarding experience spending hours meticulously crafting an infinite amount of sculptures, contraptions and attractions. My uncle Joseph, the youngest, always tells me about how when I was around two and three years old, he'd always build these cities and giant buildings out of Legos and then pull me out of my crib and unleash "Baby Godzilla" on the innocent Lego men and women in the white and the red-blue buildings he'd built just to watch me destroy them, only for him to joyfully rebuild those skyscrapers for the creature from the deep to strike at over andover, every time he babysat me. From those days back in the early 1990's on Legos have remained a mostly cheerful constant, always holding some varying degree of importance in my daily life, and at times has also served to be a painfully nostalgic reminder of the nature of the world. It was a cold, damp Tuesday; right at the end of a short New York summer, and I was two and a half weeks into my first year at Port Jervis Middle School. It had been getting colder for about a week and a half so all the kids had started wearing pants, long sleeves, and sweaters, and they had just come out with these comic book character inspired hoodies you could zip up over your face like a mask (imagine Venom from Spider-Man), although I had never owned one. Strange, but true, the only homework assignment I'd been given so far was in my sixth period art class; we had to use a less traditional medium to portray any scene related to art history. Immediately, I'd decided to use Lego bricks and paint Lego man heads in a Warholesque manner depicting the Marilyn Diptych paintings--which were really just a bunch of Marilyn Monroe faces that were painted in mostly bright, contrasting colors-- on a Lego frame. I was more than happy to do it; I'd grown up with Legos and I was one hundred percent positive I'd come with at least a decent concept. I could visualize what my project would look like completed--a Lego frame about the size of a wide view photo with that famous"multiple colors of the same face" look decorated on the visages implanted in my creation--and that thought blew my excitement up for an opportunity to display a bit of creativity with the help of that years birthday presents. I'd arrived to school that morning enthusiastically looking forward to my sixth period art class in the basement of the building, hoping the morning flew by so I could show off my award winning project and maybe get it displayed in the hallway for everyone to marvel at. First period english with Mr. Lenardo was always a riot; we would laugh and joke and get off topic and talk about sports and what everyone did over the summer often, as opposed to reading, because what we were really there to learn in English class, at least according to Mr. Lenardo, was life. It was a profound concept to me but it was interrupted by the announcement speaker, and several people were being called to the front office from multiple classes all over the school in droves, and I couldn’t help but hope I wasn't one of those people because Mr. Andre, our Vice Principal, had already become notorious for being the guy "you don't want to piss off," so I usually did my best to avoid him. Twenty-five minutes into class and six students had left the room. The bell rang, and everyone shuffled out of their desks in a hurry to file into the hallway to meet up with their friends. That time in between classes was one of the most rewarding parts of being in middle school for me; it was the first opportunity I'd had as a child to go to school with children who weren't exclusively from inner Port Jervis. Now that I'd gotten to seventh grade, there were a larger pool of kids to befriend because they were coming from all over the area; people were coming from Greenville, Sparrow Bush, Hugenot, Cuddebackville, even Montague, New Jersey and over the Hudson River bridge into Matamoras, Pennsylvania. In between classes I run into my friends Ben and Justin, cousins who had recently moved to Port Jervis from Brooklyn, New York and the three of us walk to our lockers to exchange one heavy textbook for one or two other heavier ones. When I opened my locker, they both couldn't help but notice the golden glow of my eccentric modern art masterpiece emanating through the clutter which was the top shelf of my locker, and were exponentially more powerless to stop themselves from commenting on "how dope that shit is bro." We walk to math class together and sit down, but before we had a chance to finish our discussion and pull out our books, there was another announcement over the loudspeaker. Five more kids, including Ben and Justin, were sent to the office and it wasn't until that point that I'd realized none of the original six kids from my first class had ever returned. They had to have gotten in trouble and I was excited to figure out what they'd all done once school was out later on. I joked with Ben and Justin that we'd never see each other again as they walked out of class to the main office but reminded them to keep me in the loop when we ran back into each other on the bus later. "I bet it's some kind of a prank or something," I remember saying to my two best friends (and also my neighbors), Marcus and Anthony, in study hall. We were supposed to be quiet in that class but not knowing where all of these students were going each class, including this one, was plaguing us. The only other thing we were able to come up with was Kevin saying they must have caught head lice and were being sent home, "so that the rest of us wouldn't get infected." "That's not so bad," we joked, because there were so many good video games out that needed to be beaten (The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask had recently come out, along with Resident Evil: Code Veronica, and Final Fantasy X being hot commodities). It had gone and turned into such a big joke throughout the course of class ending that I'd even forgotten about my Lego project momentarily. We laughed until we were envious, saying it was a lucky day for so many people to get head lice. As soon as I made it to my next class, science with Mr. Cunningham, we got right to it and started trying to figure out who was going to win the jackpot and get sent to the office to go home and play video games (or for the girls, go home and sleep). Three more students gone and science was over in a flash. I was in the hallway headed to lunch when another announcement was made over the loudspeaker: "Students of Port Jervis Middle School, this is an emergency muster. If you are on the first floor, go to the gym. If you are on the second floor, head to the assembly room. If you are on the third floor, go to the cafeteria.""There goes lunch," I thought, as I was eating and watched the cafeteria quickly turn into standing room only. Once everyone from the third floor had shown up, Mr. Cunningham had quieted everyone down so that he could finally share whatever the big secret of what was going on with the collective. Once he had achieved silence though, rather than say anything he and the rest of the other adults in the room had begun turning on all the T.V.'s

and I was immediately horrified;

the Twin Towers in New York City had been hit by two hijacked airplanes and were crumbling before my eyes on television. The blonde female reporter was in the streets of New York City where everything, including the people, were covered in a thick brown-black cloud of dust, soot, and ashes, and she was trying to force the story through a violent, inaudible sob, but the facts were already written there for everyone to read: "HIJACKED PLANES DESTROY TWIN TOWERS AND HIT PENTAGON IN DAY OF TERROR." After about a half hour or so had passed, the teachers and monitors had lowered the volume and instructed us that we would remain in the school until either our parents had come to get us, or the President had given a message that we were safe. I worried about my mother, a teacher in Middletown High School, and if I would ever see her again. We would come to find out more details about that other plane that hit the Pentagon, that they were hijacked by terrorists from the Al Qaida terrorist sect from the middle east, and another plane had been hijacked and flown in the direction of either Camp David, the Presidential retreat, or quite possibly the White House itself but had crashed in western Pennsylvania. There were also reports of a bombing in the Lincoln Tunnel, somewhere I had been just weeks ago to see the Empire State Building. One of the most truly terrifying parts of it all was watching people jumping from the windows of the upper stories of the Towers because they had to make the difficult decision to be burned alive in a building that had already started to collapse, or to test the grim possibility that they would survive the fall to the ground somehow. Everyone, including the teachers and monitors, was crying there together in the cafeteria and one girl, Ashley Gaid, had a panic attack early on and couldn't breathe so she ended up leaving in an ambulance. Perhaps the most petrifying reality of it all was this: if two skyscrapers in the center of the most populous city in the United States of America wasn't safe, along with the Pentagon and four passenger airplanes, how could we (or anyone else, for that matter) be safe from harm? Faculty members had us performing air raid drills underneath the tables in the cafeteria like they might have done when they were children, and I couldn't stop worrying about my friends, family, and all of the people in New York City and anywhere else who were either directly or indirectly affected by this tragedy. In the end, most of us weren't released from school until around 6:30 that night. Seeing parents pick up their kids was bittersweet; I was happy to see them together, but I still hadn't spoken to anyone in my family so I wasn't able to rest assured they were okay.My mother had come to get me right as the last group of students were leaving and when we saw each other we instantly embraced and cried together in the front office of Port Jervis Middle School like so many other families had probably done that morning as they picked up their children from school in the midst on a national emergency. I threw my Lego project away after about a week of it sitting on a desk in my room, unable to bear the constant reminder of the fragility of life that it came to symbolize to me.

#lego #legos #911 #911memorial #memories #school

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