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archivxx · 2 years ago

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Note: Any rumour about my love life will spread at a speed which correlates with my desire to keep said rumour a secret.

Brainstorm. One of the biggest up-coming bands in the music industry, an industry that housed many millions of people all fighting for a child on the pedestal. No pressure. You had no idea the exact number of people but the almost of discourse and drama you’ve seen online you could probably hazard a guess; far too many. Therefore, you reasoned that you would probably never have the misfortune of running into Clyde again, considering that in your two years within the industry you’d only ever crossed paths with him once, which was The Night (it had been only a handful of days since the kissing incidents, but you already knew that every time you thought back to last Friday you would call it The night and it would stay that way for the rest of your life), it was highly unlikely that you would ever cross paths with him again. In fact, you were fairly sure that not only did Clyde Donovan have no idea who you were he also had no desire to learn—and had probably already forgotten all about what happened.

Unless, of course, you were incredibly, so unbelievably wrong and he did end up filing a complaint. In which case you would be seeing him again, when you pleaded guilty in court.

You figured you couldn’t wait for time fretting about any of it and focus on the more pressing issues; like how you had to start pitching ideas for upcoming music videos, looking at ideas and making board to show the team. Or the note Kyle had left on the fridge this morning, telling you he had seen a cockroach scurry under the fridge, despite the dozens of traps you’d lay out. Or the most crucial one; the band was getting big and more attention was on you, you were becoming nervous with the amount of pressure. You were bound to crack at any moment, you could feel it coming. On top of that you were getting low on money again and you couldn’t find it in yourself to ask people for help with it, it just felt wrong.

You opened you laptop with half a mind to google, “Organs you can live without” and “How much you can earn for donating them.” but got sidetracked by the twenty new emails you’d received in the time it had taken you to get to the coffee shop, order your coffee, get it and find a seat. They were almost exclusively reminders of subscriptions, Nigerian uncles and a few newsletters you’d signed up for multiple years ago. You quickly marked them as read eager to work on some business things Tolkien had asked you to help with, and then you noticed one message was actually a reply. A reply from…holy shit. Holy shit.

You clicked it so hard you almost broke your pointer finger.

Your heart skipped a beat. Then it started galloping. Then it slowed down to craw. You could feel all your blood pulsating in your ears and eyelids. Surely that wasn’t healthy, but yes. Yes! You had potential business. Only potentially, so maybe. Definitely maybe. He had said great. That had to be a “great” sign, right?

You frowned and scrolled down to re read what you had sent him several weeks earlier.

Well if Pete Thelman, one of the most popular artist at the moment and the lead in the cancer awareness campaign, came to Denver and gave you even 10 minutes off his time you were positive you’d be able to convince him.

Well…maybe.

You were better at actually doing campaigns then pitching yourself for them. Communication was probably your biggest weakness. Okay, definitely your biggest weakness. But you had a chance to show the world how important this cause was to you and the other members. You could practically jump for joy. This was something you’d allayed been passionate about after all.

You sighed and packed everything up and head for your the record company, to discuss the new music video, plus you needed to be out of public or you’d end up screaming.

When you got to the company you made a beeline for the kitchen.

You stood at the kitchen counter and working out ways you’d tell Tolkien, you’d done this as a surprise for him since he’s wanted to do it so bad but was afraid of looking like a fool. You turned around to so someone scowling at you.

You startled you’d almost dropped your coffee.

“Fuc-Jesus!” You clutched your chest and took a deep breath. You held on tight to your coffee cup. “Nichole. You scared the shit out of me.”

“Y/N.”

Thats definitely wasn’t unnerving. Nichole never called you Y/N, not unless you were being reprimanded for biting your nails or damaging your hair.

“Hey! How was your—“

“Friday night.”

Fuck. “—weekend.”

“Donovan.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“I saw the two of you together.”

“Oh, really?” Your surprise sounded painfully playacted even to yourself. Maybe you should of gone into drama in high school instead of band.

“Yeah at the party.”

“Oh, cool! I didn’t see you or a I’d of said hi.”

She frowned at you. “N/N. I saw you. I saw you with Donovan. You know that I saw you, and I know that you know I saw you because you’ve been avoiding me.”

“I have not.”

Nichole have you one of her formidable “get real” looks. It was prolly the on she used when she would argue with other students back in school. She was in the debate team. She knew how to argue, and how to manipulate, that was a fact. She for fearsome and indomitable, one of the things you love about her—but now right now.

“You haven’t answered any of my messages. For the past two days. We usually text like every hour.”

she was right, you did, multiple times. you switch you'd cup to your left hand for no other reason then buying time. "I've been...busy?"

"Busy?" Nicholas eyebrow shot up. "Busy kissing Donovan?"

"Oh. Oh, that. that was just...uhm."

She nodded, as if to encourage you to finish the sentence. When it became apparent to Nichole that you wouldn't, she finished for you.

"No offence, N/N but that was most bizarre kiss I've ever seen."

Stay calm. Stay calm. She doesn't know. She can't know. "I doubt that," you retorted weakly. "Take that upside-down Spider-Man kiss. that was bizarre. More bizarre than—"

“N/N you said you were on a date that night. You’re not dating Donovan are you?” Her face twisted in a grimace.

It really could have been so easy to confess the truth. Since the very start of your friendship you and Nichole had done more moronic things, together and separately; the time you panicked and kissed Clyde Donovan would become one of them. One they would laugh about during “girls night” over some form of alcohol.

Or not. There was a chance that if you admitted to lying now, Nichole would never trust you again. Or she’s never go out with Tolkien. And as much as the idea of your best friend dating your ex made you shrivel up inside, the thought of your best friend being anything but happy made you shrivel up even more.

The situation was depressingly simple; you were alone in the world. You had been for a long time, ever since high school. You trained yourself to not make a big deal of it. You were due many people were alone and found themselves having to write down made-up names and phone numbers on their emergency contact forms. During collage music had been your only way of coping and you were perfectly ready to spend the rest of your life making music for yourself and your own baselines as your faithful companions till you ran into an old acquaintance from when you were younger—Nichole.

In a way, it had been love at first sight. You entered the dorm room, she was the only person there, and also the only woman you’d come across in the little time you’d been at the collage.

When you were in the communal area and all the other people around you, who were only guys and predominantly white, you’d started to regret going to into music production.

That was until the girl with curly dark hair and a pretty, round face plopped into the chair next to you and muttered, “so much for inclusivity, am I right?” That was the exact moment everything changed.

You two could have just been allies, as the only non-males potentially in your entire year. You could have sound solace together when some bitching was needed and ignored each other otherwise. You had lots of friends like that—all of them actually, circumstantial acquaintances who you thought fondly of but not very often. Nichole though, has been very different from the start. Maybe because you found out you both enjoyed spending your Saturday nights eating junk food and falling asleep to rom-coms. Or maybe it was that she had insisted on dragging you to every debate group and wowed everyone with her bullseye comments. Maybe it was her opening up to you and explaining how hard she had worked to be here. The way sometimes her family hadn’t even supported her, truly they didn’t believe she could make it as far as she has. Or when one of her professors for music making asked her if she was in the wrong class and truly, was confused. The fact that people still didn’t trust that, despite the evidence through grades, she was more then capable of being here. They thought she was less than that, much much less.

You, who’s path here had been a struggle but no where near as much of a struggle, was befuddled. Then enraged. Then in absolute awe of her perseverance and ability to harness her doubt and turn it into fierceness.

And for some unimaginable reason, Nichole seemed to like you just as much. And when your budget hadn’t quite made it to the end of the month, Nichole had shared her instant noodles with you. When your computer had crashed without backups, Nichole stayed stayed up all night helping you recreate the baseline that was apart of an assignment due the next morning. When you had no where to go over the holidays, Nichole would being you home with her to Colorado and let her family ply you with delicious food. And when you had felt like you weren’t good enough to be in a band and produce for the world, Nichole had talked you out of it.

The day you had met Nichole’s rolling eyes, a life-changing friendship was born. Slowly, you’d began to include Kyle and become a trio, but Nichole…Nichole was your person. Family. You hadn’t really thought it was even possible for someone to like you.

Nichole never asked for anything herself and in the few years you’d known her, she’d never shown interest in dating anyone—until Tolkien. Pretending that you had been on a date with Clyde was the least you could do to ensure her happiness.

So you bucked up, smiled, and tried to keep your tone reasonably even when you asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean that we talk every minute of every day and you never mentioned Donovan. My best friend is supposedly seeing the superstar singer Clyde Donovan, and somehow I’ve never heard of it? You know his reputation, right? Is it some kind of joke? Do you have a brain tumour? Do I have a brain tumour?”

This is what happened when you lied. You have to tell more lies to cover the original lie, it was like the domino effect, each lie got worse and worse and less and less convincing than the previous. There was no way you could fool Nichole. There was no way you could fool anyone. Nichole was going to get mad, then Tolkien would get mad, and Kyle too. And then you’d find yourself utterly alone. The heart break would make you flunk out of everything, you would lose your visa and your only source of income and move back to Canada where it always snowed and people ate moose and—

“Hey”

The voice was deep but squeaky. It came from behind you and you didn’t even have to turn to know it was Clyde. The fuck was he doing here? Just like you didn’t need to turn to know the warm weight steadying you, a firm but barely there pressure applied to the centre of your lower back, was Clyde’s hand.

About two inches above your ass.

Holy crap.

Masterlist

#south park #bounded smau #clyde donovan x reader #clyde donovan #kyle brovlofski #nichole daniels #reader insert

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somedaylazysomeday · 2 years ago

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Winner Take All - Part Two

Nathan Bateman x fem!reader (no use of y/n)

Almost ten years after graduation, you run into Bateman again. You still aren't impressed.

Rating: Explicit, lemon, etc. Minors DNI!

Word Count: 7,000

Warnings: mentions of alcohol and drunkenness, bad language, references to events at the end of Ex Machina, crassness, oral sex (female receiving), unprotected piv, creampie.

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A little more than a decade after graduation, you were settled comfortably in a chair that cradled you like something precious. You had a drink in your hand and your phone in your lap. Not your business phone, either. Your personal phone. Since you had started Primary, you had refrained from combining the two, and it meant you could leave your work phone at home on your nights off and avoid any distractions.

After all, you couldn’t disturb the haven that was trivia night at the Estuary.

The decision to move back to Cambridge, Massachusetts hadn’t been one you made lightly, but it was also the easiest choice you had made in a long time. When you had left almost a decade before, the move had been accompanied by a sense of poignant loss. You had loved your time here, and coming back held a sense of homecoming that was comforting given everything else that was going on.

You had worked for the same company for almost ten years after graduation. After starting out on the research team for vasculitis, your focus soon shifted from research to drug development for a potential treatment you had helped identify. You were moved to the Celiac disease team after the drug was successful. You were proud of the work you had done there, but when a position opened up on the multiple sclerosis team, you had lobbied for it. Apparently, the reputation you had gained and the papers you had published worked in your favor, since you got the position and made several important connections besides. After years on the multiple sclerosis team, you had been next in line to lead it.

All your work hadn’t gone unnoticed, and the Vice President of Development had asked you to check out the Cambridge market, scope out the potential for a Massachusetts branch. You were a natural choice since not only had you gone to school there and were familiar with the area, but you also knew what to look for in several key departments.

You had reported back favorably. The biotechnology industry was busy, especially in nearby Boston, but there were several key market segments that weren’t being served. You wouldn’t pretend you didn’t harbor hopes of being assigned to that branch, either.

Unfortunately for those hopes, the company had chosen not to open a branch in Massachusetts. And unfortunately for the company, you had decided to do it yourself. Was it an insane thing to do? Yes. But you knew the area, you knew the field, and you had the contacts. You had applied for grants before you even left your old company and, as an alum, you had secured a place in one of MIT’s business incubators. You had filed the paperwork just before you moved here and you were the proud founder of your own biotechnology company, Primary Enterprises.

It had taken off, and you had been steadily growing for the past three years. The work was varied and interesting. Your interests always skewed closer to biotech than business, but you liked to think you were doing fairly well running Primary. You were busy, though, so your limited free time was spent doing things you loved, like going to the Estuary for a round or two of trivia.

Your first time back here, you had felt like a washed-up creep, trying desperately to relive your college glory days. Pushing that mindset away had been a process, but well worth it. You had played trivia in college because you enjoyed it. Why should that change simply because you were older?

With a slow, savoring sip of your drink, you watched the screen. Trivia still wasn’t incredibly popular, but it drew a few people. Usernames trickled in, surrounding your usual Champ until you could hardly pick it out in the crowd.

Though when The Conqueror flashed up onto the screen, you saw it without any trouble.

It felt like your heart stopped as you scanned the familiar interior of the Estuary, comparing your memories of Bateman against theories of what he might look like now. At last, you caught a glimpse of him.

He was sitting at the bar, chatting with Noor, Mira’s husband. They took turns bartending while the other watched their adorable daughter. Bateman turned his head to the side, glancing at a nearby group of students who had gotten noisy. It was tricky to recognize him with the way he had shaved his head and let his neat beard grow into something wild and bushy, but you knew that nose, proud and strong with glasses perched on its bridge.

When you had positively identified Bateman, you relaxed back into your chair. The adrenaline that had flooded your system eased off, but your heartbeat picked up. You hadn’t thought about him in years, so you weren’t about to approach him.

But… you mused, firming your jaw. But maybe you could beat him. You were, after all, older and wiser. You had accumulated more knowledge than you ever had in college.

As the game started and you began rolling through the questions, it seemed that wasn’t going to be the case. Maybe you had learned some things over the past decade, but Bateman apparently had, too. You were never ranked further down than third place on any question, but if you were ranked first, The Conqueror was second. He was beating you again.

You played fervently, your attention rapt on the screen in front of you or the smaller screen of your phone, but it was no use. You lost, a somewhat distant second place to The Conqueror’s first.

After the final scores appeared on the screen, you glanced at the bar only to feel an odd surge of disappointment. Bateman was gone.

The spike of regret was an unwelcome surprise. You took a moment to puzzle that out while you finished your drink. The best theory you came up with was that you were sad to miss an opportunity to catch up with someone from your past, even if you had never particularly cared for the young genius.

Ah, well, you decided, pushing yourself up and out of the comfortable armchair. You had other things to focus on. You had unwound slightly from the pressures of the day, but Primary Enterprises would take up most of your attention for the rest of the night and the entirety of the next day. Maybe you could sneak in some planning when you got back to your apartment. If you were going to continue competing with some of the bigger biotech companies, Primary would need to push for something innovative…

You had waved goodbye to Noor and were within sight of the exit when you felt fingers close around your wrist. You turned sharply, raising your eyebrows in a way that took your resting bitch face to an incredibly active bitch face.

“Whoa, whoa,” the man entreated, releasing you immediately. “Just wanted to say hello.”

Despite having seen Bateman from across the Estuary earlier, you hadn’t recognized him then. It was the glimmer of mischief in his intense eyes that finally made you remember. “Bateman.”

He grinned, looking you up and down while you took the opportunity to do the same to him. Bateman was even more muscular than he had been as a student. Apparently, he had kept up with the workout routine even after he had graduated. That beard was a wild thicket around his jaw, but it made his teeth gleam, turning his familiar smile into something blinding. His glasses were more stylish, the frames thinner and better suited to the shape of his face.

Bateman opened his arms, his plain shirt straining across his chest with the motion. For an unbalanced moment, you thought he was inviting you in for a hug, but it became clear that he was gesturing to the table. “‘Bateman’? Is that seriously all I get after a fuckin’ decade? Sit down, talk for a minute! We gotta catch up.”

You settled into the chair across from him - mostly because he had kicked it out with such force that you were worried it would break your knees if you didn’t sit down in it - but before you could ask why he was in Cambridge, he spoke.

“What have you been up to for the past… how long has it been? I dunno, a decade?”

He knew exactly how long it had been, unless he’d suffered a life-altering concussion at some point that you hadn’t heard about. Still, you humored him, your excitement at catching up with a familiar face outweighing the fact that you didn’t remember liking him very much.

“Well, I’ve started my own biotech company,” you started, the familiar words falling from your lips even as they curved into a polite, professional smile. “We mostly focus on auto-immune diseases, but we’re looking to expand into the hormone therapy field. We’ve been-”

“Yeah, yeah,” he interrupted, cutting your elevator pitch short with the wave of a hand. “I mean, what have you been doing? Outside of the company?”

“Out- I mean, not a lot,” you stammered. “Primary takes up a lot of my time…”

Bateman tsked at you and you started remembering just how much you hadn’t cared for him in college. With your temper sparking, you leaned forward enough to catch his eye. “And what about you? From all reports, you’ve made Blue Book your entire personality.”

“That isn’t true,” he countered. “I also box.”

His expectant look, aimed at you from just over the top frame of his glasses, irked you. You snapped, “I don’t know what you want me to say, Bateman. I started a company, we’re competing against companies with more people and bigger budgets and it’s completely taken over my life. Happy?”

“No,” Bateman denied. “I could have gotten all of that from your LinkedIn profile. You really need to change that fuckin’ picture, by the way. That sweater was doing you no favors.”

You stared at him, wishing you could come up with something scathing to say about his appearance, but other than the bottom-heavy look earned with the combination of his shaved head and full beard, you had nothing. “You’re an asshole.”

“You knew that,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, and I chose to talk to you anyway when I could have been spending my time doing more important things,” you bit out. “Like rearranging my sock drawer by color or cleaning my ice-maker.”

To your displeasure, Bateman seemed to find that hilarious. His head tipped back as he gave a loud laugh. When he returned his gaze to you, he had to wipe a tear from his eye. “I’ve missed this,” he said, gesturing back and forth between himself and you. “Our little will-they/won’t-they back and forth. Too bad you graduated and fled the state before we could get to the resolution last time, huh?”

If brains were capable of creating audible noise, yours would have made the iconic sound of a computer making a dial-up connection. When the screeching finally faded enough to allow you some semblance of thought, you managed, “You need to get out of your mom’s basement and interact with real people more often. There was no back and forth.”

Bateman’s eyebrows rose in sharp skepticism as he tilted his head to peer over his glasses at you once more. “Yeah? What do you call all of this, then?”

“Irritation!” you burst out, standing up. You thought briefly of trying to deliver a parting shot, but it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Instead, you simply turned and left.

To your displeasure, Bateman was at the next trivia night as well. You weren’t proud of it, but you had researched him when you got home. Apparently, Blue Book had a conference scheduled in Cambridge. You couldn’t get too pissy; it had been on the company’s calendar for a full year. But at least it was starting that weekend. Odds were that Bateman would be gone before you ran into him again.

The second time you saw him at the Estuary, you rationalized that the conference may have run longer than expected. After all, you hadn’t researched how long Blue Book conferences lasted. For all you knew, it was a week-long affair. Bateman beat you soundly at trivia that week and you were looking forward to it being the last time that happened.

The next week, Bateman was still there. Maybe he had some administrative stuff to handle before he went back to… wherever it was that he lived. You did manage to beat him in that trivia game, but only because a swarm of college students - most of whom were decked out in Schwarzman sweatshirts - distracted him during a few pivotal questions. He didn’t look happy, but he did salute you with his beer bottle as you left for the night.

When his shaved head still showed up the following week, you’d had enough. “What are you doing here?”

He had turned slowly, rotating on his barstool to face you with his thick brows already raised. “It’s a public place, sweetheart. I’m allowed to exist in those.”

The old endearment rankled just as badly as it had ten years before. “Don’t call me that. Why are you so determined to exist here all of a sudden?”

“Someone told me I need to interact with real people more often,” Bateman said dryly. You rolled your eyes and left.

Nearly another month had passed when Amber sent you a screenshot of an article about how Blue Book was opening a branch in Cambridge. Beneath the image, she wrote, Weird, huh? Guess he’s trying to take advantage of all the interns and graduates from Schwarzman.

The following week, you managed to beat The Conqueror, and it was by such a wide margin that you took a screenshot of the results. Halfway through sending it to your old college friends, a silhouette came between you and the nearest lamp. “What the fuck?”

You glanced up, unsurprised to find that the demand had come from Bateman. You answered the likely-rhetorical question as you finished your message. “It’s called a cell phone, genius. I would have thought a tech guy would know that.”

“First off, that’s hardly a phone. It’s so old, I half-expect it to have a slide-out keyboard… or a rotary dial,” Bateman mocked. “Secondly, you’re cheating.”

“Cheating?” you repeated immediately, lowering your phone. “I am not! If anyone is cheating, it’s you!”

Noor was nearby, gathering up empty glasses and wiping down tabletops. He paused, frowning at both of you. “The system doesn’t really allow-”

“Leave it,” Mira told him, tugging on his elbow to lead him away. “This has been a long time coming.”

“I’m not cheating!” Bateman denied, outraged. “But this is the second time this month that you’ve beaten me. It’s statistically unlikely to the point of near impossibility. You have to be cheating.”

“Well, I’m not,” you replied, crossing your arms childishly. “Maybe you’re getting dumber.”

“I’m not even gonna dignify that with a response,” he told you. “There’s only one way to make sure you’re not Blue-Booking answers: I’m gonna sit by you on trivia nights.”

You were halfway through rolling your eyes - already preparing a reminder that genericization wasn’t a good thing - when the second part hit you. “Fine, then I’ll be able to prove that you’re the one who’s cheating!”

So that’s how trivia nights went from that point on. Over time, you decided that, since you were sitting together, you might as well split a pitcher of beer. Then it turned into beer and an appetizer or two. Then, suddenly, you were hanging out even on non-trivia nights.

One such night found you playing a game of pool at the Estuary. Nathan lined up his shot, calling “Fourteen, corner pocket.”

You scoffed. “Bateman, there are a half-dozen balls between fourteen and the cue. There’s no way you’ll make that shot.”

“Yeah?” he asked, then hit the cue ball with a decisive motion. To your shock (and childish dismay), it avoided all obstacles before cracking into the fourteen ball, which sank neatly in the corner pocket. Nathan turned to you with a cocky grin. “I’m the master of everything around me.”

You were both a little tipsy by this point, which was the only reason you brought up the one subject you had steadfastly avoided up to that point: “So that wasn’t you who got stabbed by your own AI last year?”

Nathan’s face froze for a split second before he recovered. “Nope, not me.”

“Hmm…” You drew out, squinting at him. “For the founder of a major company, you’re a shitty liar.”

Nathan scoffed. “How dare you? I am an extremely gifted liar. It just so happens that I’m telling the truth about this.”

“Mm hmm,” you hummed, carefully broadcasting your skepticism.

“Come on,” he continued, “none of those articles even mention me.”

“That’s exactly my point,” you argued. “The mysterious ‘sources’ mention a tech mogul and every damn news source spent the next month speculating over who it could be… but none of them mentioned you.”

Nathan avoided your eyes, sinking the ten ball instead. You ignored his lack of ability to take turns and continued with your pet conspiracy theory instead. “You’ve spent the last decade making sure you’re linked with any mention of ‘tech’ or ‘genius’ or ‘innovator’. It was suspicious. You’re notable in the blank spaces, Nathan.”

He glanced up at you, dark eyes wide with surprise. You realized too late what you had done. You made a point to call him ‘Bateman’, though he had been ‘Nathan’ in your mind for a while now.

“I-” Nathan paused, the tip of his tongue coming out to sweep over his bottom lip as his brows furrowed. “I… I think that’s a song. Did you just rip off Taylor Swift?”

You paused for a moment. He was uncomfortable and you couldn’t blame him. Instead of pushing this, you decided to give him a momentary reprieve. With a loud snort, you said, “Maybe if I was talking about getting your name tattooed on my body.”

“Great idea! You should,” Nathan agreed, his eyes sweeping down over your form. His gaze was so heavy, you could almost feel its weight. “Do I get to help decide where?”

“To be clear, I’d rather die.”

“Pity. Anything would look good…” He paused, letting the silence stretch for a beat too long. Wildly, you wondered if he was going to compliment you, but he finished, “-with my name on it.”

You rolled your eyes. “That just makes me feel bad for your chauffeur. You must get crazy horny when you drive past the massive Bateman building Blue Book is constructing downtown.”

“Oh, you’ve seen that?” Nathan asked, perking up slightly.

“You’ve made it hard to miss.” You took advantage of the less-crowded pool table to sink three balls in rapid succession.

“It’s gonna be great!” Nathan enthused. “I’ve already started a program with MIT to work with their students, offer internships and stuff. I’m even starting a scholarship program for promising students. I’ll pay their MIT entrance fee and tuition if they sign on to work for Blue Book afterward… Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m not stupid, Bateman,” you told him. “I can recognize a misdirection when I see one. You were the one in the news, weren’t you?”

“No,” he insisted stubbornly.

Your gaze fell to his torso. “You would have to have a scar. You’re vain, but not vain enough to get plastic surgery for something that could be hidden so easily.”

There was something hollow around his eyes despite the salacious grin he sent your way. “If you’re so desperate to get my shirt off, you could just ask.”

You shook your head, recognizing the end of the conversation. “For the record, I’m glad you’re okay.”

His mouth opened, but no sound escaped him. You bent your attention back to the game, sinking the eight ball. “I win, Bateman.”

“Have I ever mentioned how much I hate spending time with you?” Nathan complained. “And, for the record? I liked ‘Nathan’ better.”

Problem was, you did, too.

Trivia nights were lasting longer and longer for you and Nathan, and that wasn’t the only change in the Estuary. Mira had gotten rid of the armchair in your typical section. It had been old and worn-looking, but when you complained about the change, Mira had told you that it was damaged in a drunken fight and couldn’t be repaired. She’d had to throw it away, but she had replaced it with an extremely comfortable couch. Unfortunately, that couch was just barely long enough for two people to share.

…Which was how you had ended up in your current circumstance. You and Nathan had been sitting together during trivia and you simply hadn’t moved apart after the game ended. Now, it was several hours later and you were curled up on the small couch together.

You were leaning into Nathan and his head was resting on your shoulder. Your feet were propped on the small table in front of you. Nathan had mocked you for it, but you didn’t see the harm. The only thing on the table was an empty beer pitcher, two mostly empty glasses, and a plate that had once held an appetizer trio.

He mumbled something that you didn’t quite catch. You hummed absently, the inflection managing to turn the sound into a question. Nathan leaned off of you, resting against the thickly padded back of the couch instead. He repeated his question more distinctly this time: “Did you really never feel anything between us?”

You frowned, pointedly not looking at him. The section where you sat was mostly empty. Hell, the Estuary itself was mostly empty. It was near closing by then, and whatever crowd had existed on the weeknight had long since dissipated.

You probably would have gone on ignoring your companion, but he planted his elbow in your side and nudged you gently over and over until you finally gave in. “Well, I don’t think you’re irritating anymore.”

“That’s it?” Nathan asked with a disbelieving laugh. “Can I get a little more than that?”

With a sigh, you said, “I don’t know what it means - or if it means anything at all - but I have more fun arguing with you than spending time with anyone I actually get along with.”

“Well, if you want to know what I think-”

If you never had to hear another thing that Nathan thought, it would be great. So, to avoid hearing this particular thought, you grabbed his chin and angled his face so that you could deposit a kiss on his lips.

It was supposed to be a light kiss, just a brush of your lips across his. Enough to distract him without crossing any lines. Unfortunately, your body didn’t seem inclined to listen to you. After that first light kiss, you returned for a second, then a third - each touch of your lips on his deeper than the one before.

Part of you wished you could blame your actions on the alcohol you had drank that evening, but it wouldn’t make sense. The beer pitcher had been empty for an hour and Nathan had drank the last glass… and subsequently refused to buy another, but that was only him being his typical asshole self. The point was, you were in full control of your senses. The only thing driving you to act as you had was desire, pure and simple.

When you pulled away, the motion was reluctant. You didn’t want to break that contact, but you also knew you had crossed a line… even if Nathan had been kissing you back. You opened your eyes as you sat back, trying to adjust your vision as quickly as possible so you could see Nathan’s immediate reaction.

He was pouting.

Nathan Bateman, head of the biggest tech company in the world and high-ranking member of the Forbes Billionaires List for the past six years, pouted when you stopped kissing him.

“C’mon,” he complained, though his voice was quiet enough to lack the grating tone normally present in his whining. “Been waiting ten fuckin’ years for that. You can’t stop now.”

Well, that answered that question.

You smiled despite yourself, and watched with amusement as Nathan’s lips quirked into a smile as well. “I guess that was a better answer, then?”

“I’ve always been a slow study,” he told you, trying to kiss you again. When you turned your face to keep your lips out of reach, he contented himself with kissing and nibbling at your jaw. “You might have to expand on it for me.”

“What would your shareholders think?” you asked. Nathan was an incredibly public figure and, while you weren’t a direct competitor, there could be questions about what he was doing with someone like you. There would be accusations that you were trying to scam some funds from him, at the very least.

With dark eyes and a rough tone, Nathan insisted, “I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. Never have, except this one super nerd with a weakness for biotech.”

“Yeah, you’ve really had a weakness for me,” you scoffed.

“Wait, are you serious?” he asked, sounding almost offended. “I wasn’t exactly subtle when we were in college.”

“First, remember that I was pretty sure we hated each other,” you reminded him. “Second, I thought all of the flirty shit was you messing with me.”

“Why did you think I always sat somewhere else until the game was over?” he pressed, exasperated. “I kept getting hard every time you’d beat me.”

“I didn’t beat you that often,” you said inanely. To be fair, you were still trying to process everything he had said up to that point.

“Every question you beat me on, sweetheart,” Nathan amended. “Fuck, nothin’ hotter than someone who’s smart and isn’t afraid to prove it. And then the first game you won, you didn’t even brag about it or rub it in my face. Hot and classy. I barely got back to my dorm.”

You laughed disbelievingly and Nathan held his hands up. “Listen, I’m not trying to talk you into anything you’re not interested in… but if you are interested, I’ve been down for ten years. Just say the fuckin’ word.”

A precious handful of moments were wasted between you as you struggled to come up with a clever word to say, but you tossed it out the window and pressed another kiss to his lips. He responded eagerly, instantly trying to deepen the kiss into something that wouldn’t have been appropriate in public, but you pulled back.

“Was that enough of a confirmation, or do I need to actually say it?” you asked, feeling playful at the heat and eagerness in his eyes.

“Babe, the only thing I want you to say is my name.” His dark brows waggled at you and a smirk gave his full lips an asymmetrical tilt. His hand in yours pulled you steadily toward the door of the Estuary.

When you reached the street, you paused, a thought occurring to you. “Nathan-”

He interrupted before you could finish what you were saying. “Yeah, kinda like that, but sexy.”

“How’s this for sexy?” you challenged, “My apartment is closer.”

He paused, looking torn. “I wanna argue that, but my place is a while away. I also don’t have neighbors, but after we’re done pissing yours off, we can relocate.”

The thought that he was planning some kind of future with you - even just the kind of future that was a handful of hours away - warmed you and you opted to walk to your apartment instead of trying to hail a ride.

When you reached your building, Nathan started to laugh. “You seriously moved a few blocks down from the Estuary? Be honest, you chose this place because it’s close to your trivia hookup.”

You tried to bristle at his theory, but he wasn’t wrong. So you kissed him instead.

As far as you knew, the elevator had been updated to teleport you to your floor, because the trip seemed to take no time at all. You fumbled with your keys while Nathan counted how many times he could make you shiver as he trailed fingertips up and down your back. You pulled him inside, already kissing him again even as you locked your door.

“I would offer you a tour,” you explained between kisses, “but I know you don’t care.”

“I care,” Nathan replied, his words interrupted just as often as yours had been, “just not right now. Wanna get you-”

He broke off with a groan as you grabbed his ass and gave it a healthy squeeze. “Where’s the bedroom?”

You laughed, hardly recognizing the throatiness of it. “Now you care?”

Nathan’s eyes were starting to look a little unhinged. “I’ll fuck you here, but we’d both be more comfortable in a bed. You have ten seconds to decide.”

In a few steps - and exactly eight seconds - you were in your bedroom. Nathan was already peeling away the material of your shirt while you worked at his pants. Fortunately, neither of you had dressed up for a trivia night at the bar, and stripping took very little time… though you would treasure the way Nathan’s face froze when he saw you in nothing but a bra and underwear.

Before long, he was pressing you back into the mattress, kissing you all the while. His body settled between your legs and you gave a subtle wiggle, trying to gauge whether you were wet enough to accommodate him just then. It was close, but you were ready enough to risk it.

It didn’t matter.

Nathan broke away from your lips, planting his hand on your chest when you tried to follow him. “No, no. You just lay there and keep making those pretty fuckin’ sounds for me.”

You shook your head, smiling ruefully. You should have known Nathan would never get straight to things. He liked to take his time, experiment, and - more than anyone knew - torment. Ah, well. At least you would finally get to see if his mouth was good for anything other than pissing you off.

True to form, Nathan started off with a tickling exploration of you, observing every way you reacted to his touches on your outer lips. Then he moved his attention to studying how you moved when he traced your inner folds. Teasing fingertips parted you, tracing every bit of delicate flesh until he ended with a soft brush against your clit.

You tilted your head up, ready to complain about his slow pace. As you parted your lips, he sealed his mouth over you, brushing your clit with his nose even as he thrust his tongue as far inside your core as he could reach. You choked on the breath you had taken, collapsing back onto the mattress even as the muscles of your stomach contracted with pleasure.

Nathan was good at this. Surprisingly good, you admitted to yourself. His mouth was plundering you, but never in a way that felt overwhelming. Not that you were in control of your senses - in fact, the opposite was true - but the pleasure never seemed to melt into an amorphous shape. You could feel every little thing that he was doing to you, and it was always just spaced out enough so that you approached the edge of orgasm, but couldn’t manage to hurl yourself over it. Even the odd scratch of his beard against your sensitive folds had you ready to beg for something a little more.

“Nathan,” you barked. Or, at least, you tried to bite out his name, voice harsh to show your irritation. Instead, it came out in a whine, a plea so desperate that it rose almost out of hearing at the end.

He grinned against your folds. “There it is.”

You grimaced at him, but Nathan thrust two fingers deep inside of you and lavished attention on your clit, pulling your legs up and over his shoulders to circumvent any attempt of squirming away from him… Not that you could even consider it. No, you were too busy imploding around his fingers and trying not to scream.

Instead, you writhed across your mattress, gasping his name as he kept the waves of pleasure crashing over you until you were worried you would drown with it. Eventually, he let you press his head away. Before you could fully recover, you heard something strange. You looked down to find Nathan cleaning the shining remnants of your orgasm from his mouth. His beard was damp with what his tongue couldn’t reach and that distracted you so thoroughly that you almost didn’t notice the way the muscles of his arm were flexing.

And then you did notice and it was all you could concentrate on.

“Bateman,” you said, quickly amending that to, “Nathan.”

He glanced up, face quizzical like he wasn’t jerking off at the foot of your bed. You bit back a growl, turning it into, “Get up here and fuck me.”

The grin that spread over his face seemed even wider with the darkness of his beard and it made you smile back. His kiss pressed you back against the mattress again, but he cut it off to ask, “You wanna be on top or bottom?”

You considered it for a moment. “I don’t think either of us want to wait for me to get my leg strength back. You can be on top.”

He nodded, shifting with pent-up energy. You glanced down between you, catching a glimpse of his cock straining to reach you. He was visibly leaking and so hard that he had to be in pain. Even those mindless movements had turned to helpless little thrusts against the bed.

When you leaned back, spreading your legs for him, the awestruck look on his face erased any shyness you may have felt. (Though there was a limit to how shy you could really be since his face had been buried in your pussy only a few minutes before.) You could feel the wetness of your core, dripping with Nathan’s spit and your own slick.

“Are you-? Shit, I need a condom…” Nathan moved to stand, but you caught at him. He had bragged about his clean bill of health a week before - though you hadn’t thought to tie that to anything more serious than idle conversation at the time - and you were feeling adventurous.

“If you want,” you told him. “But I’m clean and I know you are, too. I’m on the pill. We can-”

You never got the chance to finish your offer. By that point, Nathan was on top of you fully, his cock falling heavily against your folds. He gave a short groan. In half a moment, he was inside you, having thrust inside in a single ill-paced move.

You gasped sharply, your nails digging into his back as you struggled to adjust around him. Nathan wasn’t a small man, and even your well-prepared body could have used a slower entrance.

“Fuck,” he growled. “You good?”

“Yeah, just… just need a minute,” you panted, feeling the way your inner muscles were dancing over his length as you stretched to fit him.

“Sure, sure,” Nathan agreed, eyes half-closing as his jaw flexed. “Feel so good. So good. If I had known… I would never have left you alone. Would have begged you for this.”

“You never left me alone anyway,” you pointed out, a slight tightness in your voice the only thing that betrayed you.

He chuckled, and the low rumble of it ran through you like a pleasant shiver. Your breath caught as your body switched from ‘don’t move’ to ‘please move please-please-please’.

You rolled your hips, working him a fraction of an inch deeper. Nathan’s shoulders flexed with effort as he shook his head. “Don’t do that, sweetheart. Not unless you want me to lose control.”

You did it again, fighting back a grin when he looked down at you with wild eyes. He must have caught whatever mischief was in your face, though, because he nodded intently. “If that’s how you feel…”

His first full thrust drove the breath from your lungs and you never did feel like you got it back. Part of that was from the incredible thickness of him working in and out of you, the way he felt sliding from you and pushing his way back in. It was a gorgeous sensation, and your toes were curling with the pleasure of it even as your brow crinkled.

But the feeling of him inside of you wasn’t the only thing that kept you off-balance. No, the intensity on Nathan’s face had you stumbling. Those dark eyes were burrowing into yours, and you felt like he was studying your very soul even behind the lenses of his glasses.

You closed your eyes as he hit your g-spot, sending shivers running through you.

“Don’t do that, sweetheart,” he pleaded. “Keep those eyes open, okay? Need to- fuck… Need to see you. Want you to see me…”

That command - along with the searching kiss he planted on your lips - left you too close to come back. “Nathan, I- I’m…”

He nodded easily, like he was coolly unaffected by the news of your impending pleasure, but his hips thrusted so sharply that you let out a little cry. “Go ahead, come for me. Shit, come on me. I’m gonna- Won’t last much longer, either.”

You rolled your hips just a little harder, purposefully clamping down around him. Nathan hissed out a breath, his head tilting back with it before he fixed his eyes on you once more. There was a groove between his thick brows, like he was fixing all of his concentration on you alone.

It was the sexiest thing you’d ever seen.

“Come for me, sweetheart,” he urged, fingers tightening on your hips as he managed to spear a tiny bit deeper into you. “Come on, let me feel you…”

You felt your core tighten around him - tighter than you could ever dream of doing normally - and then release, milking him for cum he wasn’t giving up yet. He gritted his teeth and fought to keep going, eyes locked on yours the entire time.

At the peak of your orgasm, your mouth fell open and you could feel that sound was coming out. What that sound was, you didn’t know; there was a roaring in your ears too loud to hear past. But, from the smugness on Nathan’s face, it was safe to assume that it was his name.

Just as you were coming down from your peak, Nathan reached his. Those dark eyes were still locked on yours, but you could see the way they tightened around the corners as he speared himself as deep into you as he could go. Through your own aftershocks, you could feel the way he was pulsing inside of you, painting you with hot streams of cum. When Nathan finally relaxed, he was resting almost his full weight on you.

It should have been unpleasant, you reflected. You were both sticky with cooling sweat, and you could feel cum beginning to gush from around Nathan’s softening cock. Your thighs ached at being forced apart for so long and you could feel the beginnings of beard burn forming in several fascinating places.

Yes, it should have been unpleasant, catching your breath with Nathan Bateman. But even as you struggled to catch your breath, you both found enough air to share a chuckle.

“Guess I should stop crushing you now,” Nathan murmured, pulling out before rolling off you.

You grimaced and squeezed your thighs together in an attempt to fight the flow of cum steadily leaking out of you. Nathan saw the motion and grabbed something off the side of the bed, handing you a piece of fabric in the next moment. You snorted when you realized it was a sock.

“I’d offer to get you a washcloth, but my knees aren’t working yet,” Nathan told you. He squinted around the room. “And I have no idea where your bathroom is.”

You snorted. “Well, there are three doors in this room and we came in through one of them. I like those odds.”

“You think 50/50 is good odds?” Nathan asked, sounding scandalized. “Remind me never to go gambling with you.”

“50/50 would be incredible odds in gambling,” you argued, feeling faintly ridiculous bickering about it with a sock pressed between your legs. “Just admit you’re not a gambler, Bateman.”

Nathan rolled onto his side to face you and your eyes were drawn down to the scars on his chest and stomach. You pulled your gaze away quickly, but the wariness on his face told you that he had seen you. Quietly, he said, “I only gamble when it matters.”

To break the mood, you scoffed. “I’ve seen you bet whether a bird would eat some roadkill.”

“It was a hawk and it was trying to fly away with an entire racoon!” He sounded outraged, but there was a glimmer of good humor growing in his eyes once more. “I made fifty bucks on that bet, too.”

“The true foundation of your fortune,” you replied.

He rolled away and stood up, pausing a moment as if to check whether his knees would hold up. “I’m going on a brave, daring quest to your kitchen. Assuming I make it alive, do you want anything?”

“I’d love a glass of water,” you requested. As he reached the door, you said, “If you reach the piranha moat, you’ve gone too far. And if you run into the dragon, the password is ‘butterscotch’.”

“Ha, ha,” Nathan fake-laughed over his shoulder as he disappeared into the darkened hallway.

You sat smiling like an idiot for longer than you would care to admit.

---

Author's Note - And that's it! Thanks for reading - I would love to know what you thought!

I don't offer a taglist for explicit works, but you can find other works on my masterlist!

#fanfic february #fanfic february 2023 #fanficfebruary #ex machina #ex machina (2015)#nathan bateman #nathan bateman x reader #nathan bateman x you #reader insert #reader insert fic #reader insert smut #lemon #not suitable for minors #minors dni

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five-star-stay · 4 months ago

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Hi!! As a hanji stan I fully agree with you and I bring you at least one more thing to fairly complain about!! Screen time. It happens very very often that when they are performing and it’s HIS PART, the cameras just. Don’t film him. They zoom out, they show the audience, sometimes they even focus on a different member (hyunjin or felix usually). I used to gif him a lot and this got me so angry so many times!!! What else does he have to do to get a tiny bit of attention??? He has shown multiple times (all the time tbh) just how insanely talented and charismatic he is! There’s literally not one single thing he can’t do. All rounder is not just a silly cutesy nickname thing here. He’s the real deal… literally one of my reasons for biasing him is just how amazing his overall performance as an idol is. He can sing, he can rap, he can dance, he sounds even better live, he has stage presence, he’s funny, he’s sweet, he’s cute, he’s good looking, and so much more that I’m forgetting right now…

As far as I know the only thing he deliberately actually stood away from was getting his solo Instagram account when the rest of the members got theirs…

It’s been very frustrating to watch as the other members get amazing solo opportunities and he gets literally nothing…

Hi anon, I completely agree with what you said and yes I completely sympathise with your frustrations. Even in music videos, he's never been made a thumbnail and that makes me so sad like not even on HIS songs. He's not getting the chance to be the face of it. And a lot of times in mvs too like social path, his screen time is literally just what they showed in the teaser even though he has the most beautiful bridge in it the focus isn't on him in mv during that part at all.

I understand that felix and hyunjin are pushed more as the faces of the group and the most popular members, and I have no ill will towards them. But why does pushing them come at the cost of han never even getting the bare minimum?

They also plastered an ot7 Tommy Hilfiger campaign all across their stores and it felt maddening that people were calling han stans rude or childish for asking why han didn't get accommodated and wasn't given a separate solo shoot on a later date so he could've been part of the campaign in at least solo shots. And the way they could've done a billion things to include him but all they did was qrt a skz post and said "❤️❤️ HAN" and getting thanked for it by "stays" while they hid replies about being called out for zionism and not tagging han on insta and tiktok as if he isn't part of the group is SEARED in my brain. And they couldn't even spell skz right... i hate that brand's social media team but also you need two hands to clap, div1 is just as at fault.

Another instance was not promoting lee know and han's instagram on their group instagram stories, they had 29 million followers then and 30 million now. When other 6 made their ig it was big news and shared on the stories so everyone knew. But minsung made it on skz anniversary day which was a day filled with a lot of posts spammed on the group account, making it so nobody knew about the group account tagging them in the caption because it was after the "read more" and most people don't click that button especially on days with so many posts to catch up on. Results: the other 6 hit 3 million in 24 hours and minsung took a couple months and han has just now reached 4 million. It's frustrating because at every step, the company has let Han down and it's always coupled with excuses from so called stays that just don't care about Han individually. I'm honestly so concerned about how jype will handle their solo careers if they don't even realise or care enough to make sure minsung don't get left behind in terms of followers on private instagram (which will affect their engagement and brand deals) just because they took their time and waited for when they felt ready. They're literally being punished for doing what's right for them.

I hate it all!!!

I wish han can negotiate a better deal for himself in a new contract and if he decides to stay on for the group but join some other agency for solo promotion, I would not blame him because jype just tries to bury his individuality and doesn't let him create a brand for himself. Literally the only thing he has is his hanpop and even then it's months of him sometimes asking on live for stays to tell skziji that they want certain songs released. Please God, give Han a management that appreciates him.

Proof:

#skz thoughts #vent #anon is turned off after this for a bit #not because of this anon #but the ones who don't listen when i say i don't want asks arguing with me over this #anonymous #ask answered #anon answered

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dukeofriven · 5 months ago

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Once again thinking about how Windblade and Chromia had the misfortune to be in the half of the IDW Transformers comic line that just consistently, grindingly sucked shit. While John Barber and Carlos Guzman were redefining not only how you could tell a Transformers story but making fairly radical moves in a branded IP space, with queer characters, politics, humour— intentionality!— poor Windblade had to sit in the murk of the warmed-over-third-rate Simon Furman-esque blundering conflicts that was Robots in Disguise. I think in the rear window of MTMTE its interesting to note the degree to which it argued that not only was 'war' played out as plotline for the franchise, it might well be the least interesting mode for Transformers as a whole. Ironic for a franchise built entirely on the toyetic appeal of robots fighting, but anyone's who has slogged through IDW's ups and downs knows that the fighting was always ths story at its weakest, and this hold true across multiple artists and writers. This is not to say that every Transformers storms needs to be a workplace dramedy—rather MTMTE was continuing a tradition present in the early Furman era, which was at its with stories during Infiltration, the disguise and covert operations. Across all incarnations of the comic, whenever things went into 'cinematic scale' mode and everyone had to team up for a big throw-down fight with some combiner or Galvatron , everything just got tedious. IDW's doom was that of a lot of legacy franchise IPs: inevitably, somebody would come along and go 'well this doesn't match our core brand identity' and inevitably try and drag everything back to more closely resemble 'the thing as was popular in its original form,' which in Transformer case means no one being allowed to move on from a forumalic eighties cartoon with its episodic quota of punch-em-ups. Anyways, that's a long way of saying of Windblade and Chromia deserved to be in a comic that had better things to do than faff about setting-up hot garbage like Dark Cybertron and walking back character beats every five minutes so as make sure characters never left franchise stasis.

#idw transformers #windblade #Chromia #MTMTE #comic books

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apphiarothowrites · 1 year ago

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Modern MAS Musician Au ]

this has been poking my brain, will I ever write it who knows?

Ace Punk Rock; Machine gun Kelly- very mainstream and adored for his music

Sabo alternative punk; YUNGBLUD - less mainstream but very popular in the UK and with lgbt/marginalized groups

Now Ace and Sabo have collaborated and have some.. feelings but that ain't gonna be looked at too closely cause both of them are focused on their careers. Anyway they end up getting contacted by Whitebeard records (a huge deal, Edward newgate was known as the father of rock for a reason)

SO they come in and are met by Newgate himself, Basically the deal is they are to collaborate in a album to re-launch Di-Angels Return.

Now for those who don't Know Di-angel or for those who were fans Marci Diangelo was a HUGE deal back in the day. Like Joan Jett mixed with Lady gaga. The woman was the beginning of the punk rock scene, aggressively making out with both genders for paparazzi and generally being an absolute menace. Ace and Sabo of course say yes, (Sabo was inspired to start his own music career by her and Ace just thinks she's neat.)

Anyway the day comes where they are supposed to meet Her, Di- Angel, Marci and of course Sabo is kinda fanboying and Ace may or may not be very jealous cause come on, she was hot back in the day but she's in her 40s now. Instead of the busty blonde who once screamed into the microphone about flying away. They are met with a blonde man in a leather jacket.

"Uhm, excuse me?" Ace wants to be irritated but damn the guy is smokin hot. "We were supposed to be meeting Di-angel here."

The man blinks sleepy blue eyes, "yeah, I know."

Sabo bites his lip eye twitching, "You- Marci, we are meeting with Marci Diangelo, the singer."

The blonde man sticks a cig in his mouth, the corner quirking up. "Just said, I know. But you obviously are a bit behind the times." The man stands towering over both of them, "I go by Marco now, call me Marci again and I'll send you both through the door got it?"

Oh shit, fuck yeah, this is GOOD SHIT right here raccooon.

Ever since Pops suggested relaunching Di-Angel, Marco's been nothing but a roll of anxiety in human skin. While their family was fairly accepting, and the punk-rock community as a whole generaly was too, the larger scene is...well. Not quite the same. With most of the people of Marco's generation reacting across the entire spectrum from acceptance to hard rejection, Marco honestly didn't think it would be a good idea.

Yes, his voice and range dropped by a few octaves. Yes his old favorite dresses didn't fit the same any more (not that he wanted to put on most of them any more, just the shiny leather number but he had to get it tailored for the new dimension of his chest and hips). Yes, he's different now and that difference is something that he's gotten shit for from people he thought were friends and something that people he thought hated him were supportive of. It's been a roller coaster of strangeness and that was before Pops suggested relaunching his music career.

He left music because he knew the reactions would be. Mixed. once things got off the ground for his transition. Music never left him-Pops has multiple videos of him humming melodies and tapping beats from doctors' offices and one in a hospital bed-but the scene? He assumed the scene left him well behind.

Then Pops came to him with this insane idea and told him that these two young pups, rising stars and rough diamonds the both of them, were jumping and chomping at the bit. Marco didn't know what to think. He told Pops he'd reserve judgement until they met, but even then the hotcold churning in his stomach of anxiety was steadily eating his confidence of this whole thing working.

Then he meets them and despite the fact that neither of them knew who he was now, they were adorably eager just as Pops said. And, just as Pops said, they're talented if a bit raw. Unrefined, somehow. Both have a similar feel-rough voices in a slightly high medium range, but what really grabs Marco's attention is that they both actually play. Something that's fallen out of fashion in newer bands, that their lead vocalists know what to do with a guitar in hand, they both pick up an axe during the experimental jam session and they aren't too bad either. They know classic riffs and stings, whole lead lines from classic and punk rock staples.

Then something of a miracle happens. Ace picks up a bass and smacks out a fairly simple beat on 5, jumping octaves, and Sabo picks up Marco's old stage piece and. Oh.

That's the lead and bass of "I Feel Fine" and Marco's nothing if not a perfectionist for the classics. He grabs the mic they rigged up for his studio, coughs to clear his throat, and-

Ace does something to the bass beat, a lick or two to change things juuuuust a little and Sabo slips a few 16th and 32nd notes here and there, little twangs to change the key down a half step and suddenly its not The Beatles any more, it's something a little rougher, a little less refined, it's something from the back alleys of a queer bar that Marco used to dress butch for where he got called a good man for the first time. It's like being in love, if love were a dirty suckerpunch and a cigarette after-if love was two men who might not always be men-if love was a little less straight.

That ends up being the second song on the album a year later, a fucking Beatles cover that rockets them right to the top of the charts in multiple countries and forces Marco back into the spotlight no matter how much he tries pushing the younger stars forward and blames them for the majority of their sound. Three vocalists who trade off is definitely strange, especially since Marco is....well, not 'Marci' any more.

But it works, somehow Pops' insane idea doesn't explode in their faces, and if there's maybe a little charged something that happens in the limo ride home from their first awards show, something that's been building for months and months over heated eye contact and falling asleep on each other in the studio and appreciative whistling during the set and costume set-up of music videos, well.

That's their business and nobody else's. And if that charged something results in Ace stumbling down into Marco's kitchen in the middle of the night only to scream at Thatch who's in the tradition of making Marco breakfast after award shoes (started before Di-Angel and 'Marci' ever got big), who then screams right back at him which draws both Sabo and Marco down to see what the goddamn noise is about. Well.

That's also their business and nobody else's. (yes Thatch even you, get the fuck out of my kitchen, goddamn-yoi)

#AR writes #a modern musician trio #fuck this was fun and I got to shoutout one of my favorite guitar songs thanks raccooon

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junkdyke · 1 year ago

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ok so here's my situation with the twink who will not leave me the fuck alone.

Backstory, I'm in college, I had a gen ed class and this guy sits next to me (call him P) He always wants to talk with me during breaks, waits for me after class, once he got my IG he'd message me during the class as well. Just very clingy off the bat. I saw him at a party, and he asked if I'd ever wanna hang out. Just really wanted to go out, party, whatever, and at the time I was all about it. Like yeah, let's go to the club, go bar hopping, w/e

Flash forward to The Pajama Party. I live-blogged about this during that time and talked about the situation, talking about P in a very affectionate way at the time. Here's the rundown of everything that happened and where the shitshow begins.

P wants to throw a house party. He has never thrown one before, but he wants to throw a party to "annoy his neighbors". I assume the neighbors are old people that he has beef with. A few days before his party I get an invite for a pajama party from E. E is fairly popular, really well liked and extremely sweet, and he throws parties often. He and his roomies are graduating that weekend, so of course people will want to go. It's the same day as P's party, so I KNEW there was no way in hell people would go to P's over E's. So me being nice, I let P know and tell him "I think you should resched to next week!" I get no acknowledgment from P, he just texts back something irrelevant. Ignored warning. Okay!

Day of the party comes. I go out with some friends, we're having dinner before E's party, and my friend 'S' (who was also in that class with me and P and got similar "we should go out" sentiments from him) and I are talking about P's party. It's revealed that the neighbors he wanted to "annoy" with his party are actually 2 girls that also go to our college, are friends of mine and ONE of them is the ex of one of E's roommates (call her D). This becomes very important later LOL.

In that moment, I get a call thru IG from P. And this mf tells me "Everybody is canceling on me, no one is coming to my party, I'm so pissed cause i already bought snacks, can you give me the address to E's party cause I wanna crash it." So I tell him "i tried to warn you!" but of course i'm thinking there's no harm in having him come to E's party! Let me be nice! So, I give him the deets.

I arrive, he's already there and immediately he's chatting me up, I don't even have a drink yet. He's talking about his party flop, how only 3 people came and left, and tells me that one of his best friends flaked on his party because "she went to have dinner with her bf's parents" and said this with SUCH disdain and an eyeroll as if..prioritizing your partner's parents over a house party is a shitty thing to do? Hm. The party goes on, I'm mingling with different people, and multiple times he comes to find me. At one point I'm having a one on one, and he comes up and says "there you are." But it gets to a point where anywhere that he shows up...everyone dissipates and goes into another room, and I'm doing the same. A girl I met says to me "he kept talking about how rich his parents are and it made me uncomfortable so i left". E's roommates are whispering to each other that he's making people uncomfortable and they're not sure what to do.

Party comes to an end, we go home, P posts on his IG about how the whole ordeal fucked with his mental health and he's gonna have a breakdown. I send him a lil check-in message, see if he's okay. Then I get a DM from one of E's roommates. He says it was good to see me, and he's not sure if I'm the one of invited P but just as a heads up, he made people uncomfortable and in the past he was very close with D (this roommates ex gf/P's neighbor) until he really freaked her out. He didn't give details as to what freaked her out. But continued on just to say that P was not invited in the future, and to watch out for my sake as well. I of course apologized, explain about his party being the same day and i wanted to be nice, and he was understanding, everything was cool. But after that night and how weird P had been, I distanced myself more than I already had (P messaged me constantly and I'd rarely answer even from the start)

Time passes, P constantly spams me with tiktoks and messages, i never reply. At some point he asks "is something wrong, you haven't been replying!" I still don't answer. At 1am, I get a message from S saying "P is asking me why you won't answer him back". Mind you, S and I aren't SUPER close, we're not constantly talking back and forth either. So both of us are extremely weirded out at the fact P is trying to find out through her why I'm not answering. So she and I talk about how weird he's been, and this is where the actual floodgates of "what the fuck" come out.

So the day after E's party, P's neighbors had a party as well (D and her roommate). P was not invited, but knew that S was going so he tried to convince her to get him into the party since she's friends with the hosts. S already knew about the weirdness and his history with those girls, so she didn't get him into the party. At fucking 2am, they're out on the balcony and look down to see P stalking outside the building. Weird enough to do this once...but apparently he has done this before. Multiple times. The reason he wanted to "annoy his neighbors" with a party is because they never invite him to theirs, so he wanted to throw one and not invite them back. Now why did P and his neighbors have a falling out to begin with? What freaked D out so badly? Now I'm taking this with the hugest grain of salt. I still don't fully believe this myself, but never put it past a white man. APPARENTLY...D and her roommate both either saw or knew of P killing small animals for entertainment purposes. Again, HUGE grain of salt, that's some real life serial killer shit that baffles me, I really can't just go ahead and say it's fact. But fuck me, if that wasn't enough to really solidify the weirdness that is this fucking kid.

So anyway! Time passes, P continues to spam me with messages, and continues to ask S why I don't answer. S rarely answers him as well. It's been weeks at this point. I post about my friend passing away, he gives condolences, I hit "Like" on the messages because the sentiments were sweet, but didn't actually write back. S sends me a screenshot of P saying "Sam won't answer back and we were supposed to go party. Ugh and now that her friend died, she's definitely not going to be in the mood to." are you fucking kidding me.

Brings us to last night. I go out to a house party annnnd in walks P. The moment he sees me, he cocks his head and his expression is....almost like "Oh. Well look who's here" a little upset, a little like he's finally caught me. I fucking pound my drink, and I am nice! Very nice, like I always fucking am, I chat with him like nothing ever happened and everything is normal. I'm able to break away throughout the party, but he continuously finds me. At one point I'm outside talking to 2 friends, he comes out, and 30 seconds later, my friends go inside. P says "It seems people always vanish when I show up, I swear I'm cursed". Most of the party goes smooth, he made a few comments hinting at me dodging him, saying "Aren't we still gonna go party? We should go out for pride" and I'm like yeah yeah, of course we should, uh huh, I'm just soooo busy with work yanno and traveling! End of the night, he's leaving and says to me "You know we should really stay in contact. Like REALLY stay in contact cause uh...ya kinda ghosted me!" And I say yeah sorry you know just been busy and he says "Yeah but, even at the end of last semester you....kinda ghosted me." and his tone is not sad, it's not hurt. He's bitter, accusatory, like i'm in the wrong. Like I did something bad, something malicious. Edit: in this moment he also said "oh are you faster with texting? Maybe give me your number?" and I said "AHA i actually think IG is faster i don't really text!" bc no way in fucking hell is he getting my phone number.

This whole time, I never had a say in growing a friendship with this guy, there was never an opportunity for some organic growth. It was like he just decided "you" and made me his friend with all the obligations that come with that. What started as just annoying overbearing clinginess now feels kinda dangerous. Like what happens when I continue to not answer and I see him at another party? I don't want to avoid my friend's gatherings on the chance that he might be there. I don't want to have to hide that I'm going out and didn't invite him. I don't want to be part of this forced 'friendship' that's he's decided I need to be a part of. And I also don't want to hurt his feelings by telling him I do not want to be in contact. Even if I told him, he'd find a way to make me the villain, I'd be in the 'wrong' in his eyes, just like every other person he's complained to me about. Where he stated things as if he was the victim when the whole time I'm thinking the other person was in the right.

So anyway, this has been ongoing for ~2 months and I never expecting things to escalate the way they have. I don't know WHY he is so hung up on me in particular, but I just want to shake him off clean.

#personal #mine #i am always in situations #help #school stuff #anti men #dykeposting

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sephyathredon-writing · 10 months ago

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Today is my 10th Anniversary of being on Ao3!

Hello everyone! I have been publishing fics on Ao3 for a whole 10 years! In that time, I have published a whole 67 fics, a number which I'm very proud of (and two of those are longfics with three chapters each).

I plan on ranking almost every fic I've written (I may exclude the ones from the epic and MCSM fandoms even though they're the earliest ones there), because I've noticed that there are some that I felt I could have definitely improved on. That will be in a different post though, hopefully sometime today. I plan to do a breakdown in this one.

First up, statistics.

Almost 200,000 word count, 20k left to go before I hit that, so I think that'll be one of my goals for 2024 (which I should hit easily if I write even half the stuff I have planned)

Almost 45k hits too! I'm surprised that my fics are that popular. I'm grateful to everyone who's ever read my fics!

An interesting lineup for sure. It's no surprise that the Breath of the Wild stuff is popular, but I am surprised to see my quirky Zack time travel fic up there. Also, congrats to "Watch It All Fall" for being so new and still being number four on this chart. That's impressive.

"Break Like Time", "Birdsong", and "Watch It All Fall" are on this one too, but in different positions. Not surprising to see "Kiss of Life" on here too, considering it's another BoTW fic.

I am not at all surprised to see "Watch It All Fall" taking the lead in this category. It surprised me with just how many comments it got in the few days since I put it up. Neither am I surprised to see "The Reason We Rise, We Rise" Since it's a longfic that's fairly new and stars characters from Crisis Core.

Actually, the only one of these that doesn't have multiple chapters is "To Break Like Time". "Through the Storm" is an old fic from when I was in the Epic (BlueSky 2013) fandom. It has two chapters and I'm surprised a fic for such a niche fandom managed to get 7 comments.

I am kind of surprised to see "Rude of the Turks" (10,053 words) standing toe to toe with my three chapter Crisis Core fic (12,557 words). At the same time, though, I am not. Rude of the Turks details Rude's life from when he was young, to when he met Reno, to the moment he joined the Turks, and also shows how his life turn out post meteorfall. You need a lot of words to write something like that.

What I am really surprised by is "The Night that Nibelheim Burned" (9,347 words) being there, higher than "Watch It All Fall" (8,342 words) Which is also three chapters long.

Now time for the Psued breakdown!

With the addition of my new Nimona Psued, I have officially made 10 of them! They are:

Diplomatic Translator (4 fics)

For my Dragon Prince fics, named after my blog of the same name on Tumblr. I shipped Gren and Amaya before another ship with Amaya became canon. All these fics are Gren-centric, except for Silent Songs.

FFVI_Stories (2 fics)

For my Final Fantasy 6 fics. I am no longer interested in this fandom anymore, but there is a story about Shadow and another one about Sabin and Gau on there.

Leafman_Finn (4 fics)

This was originally my name when I started my Ao3 account, but when I realized I really wanted to publish more than just epic fics, I changed my main Ao3 to match my main blog here on Tumblr and this became a Psued.

Lukas_the_Loyal (3 fics)

A Psued for another dead fandom. I really loved MCSM back in the day and shipped Lukesse (Lukas and Jesse, specifically Male Jesse). Despite that, my fics are varied. "Vanish" is the Lukesse one. "Unraveling" is about Jack dealing with Nurm being left behind, and "Aftermath" is my favorite MCSM one about Lukas and Petra.

Luminary_Oleander (6 fics)

For my Dragon Quest XI fics. I played the game a long time ago and really loved shipping the Luminary with Erik. Most of these fics are Luminerik, but there's a good variety of interactions with other party members (I like Hendrik and Sylvando too!).

Misc-SephyAthredon (9 fics)

For fics in fandoms that I don't want to make another Psued for (Though I really should make one for BoTW and ToTK). Fandoms include BoTW/ToTK, Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, Persona 5, and a singular fanfic for Jak and Daxter that I wrote for Whumptober. The BoTW/ToTK fics are all Sidlink (Sidon x Link), the Jak and Daxter one is Jak x Torn, P5 is Akira x Yusuke, and one out of two of the GAA ones are Ryunosuke x Kazuma, both fics also heavily feature Barok Van Zieks.

SephyAthredon (16 fics)

As you can probably tell by the high fic count, this is my main Psued. All fics under this one are Final Fantasy VII fics. It's my main fandom. I have a variety of them too. I mentioned my quirky Zack Time Travel fic before, then there's my long fic which is about Zack and Sephiroth leaving Shinra with a very sick Cloud in tow. There's also a small fic about Hojo experimenting on Cloud and making his party members watch, and another small fic about Cloud defending Denzel from burglers. There are also a couple of fics I find a little embarrassing by now, staring a FFVII version of Terra from KH. I loved that AU for him so much that I wrote fics based on it. Still, they're part of my history on Ao3 and I still love "The Execution" even if it might seem silly to an outsider. I feel like I wrote it believably enough for it not to be a glorified self insert fic. Shoutout to "IvaliceForever" on Ao3 for enjoying this AU too and being the only people to comment on those fics. I started publishing fics in the FFVII fandom when I did my first Whumptober and the rest was history.

Tired-Teacher (6 fics)

Back when I was in the My Hero Academia fandom, I would write a lot of stuff about Aizawa. He was my favorite, still is my favorite from that fandom. I particularly liked the father-like relationship that the fandom gave him with Eri. I also shipped EraserMic and EraserMight. "A Hero on the Brink" is my stand out favorite fic here. While I wish I could re-write some parts, I love the atmosphere overall. "Under the Rubble" and "Held Hostage" are also good fics. Half of the fics here are EraserMic, and the other half focuses on Aizawa as a parent of some sort. "A Hero On the Brink" is about Aizawa's somewhat paternal relationship with the students of Class 1-A. "A Fatherly Touch" Is about his paternal relationship with Eri", and "Broken Engines" Is about a platonic relationship specifically with Iida (since he's my second favorite character).

Whumping Ambrosius (9 fics)

And now we come to my newest Psued for the Nimona fandom! When I watched Nimona, I fell in love and I wanted to write a million things for it. All of Whumptober last year was Nimona themed as a result. This Psued may be called Whumping Ambrosius, but lets be honest, I whump both halves of the Golenheart ship. It's apparently what I do to ships that I really enjoy XD All of these fics are Goldenheart (Ballister x Ambrosius). I fell in love with the ship as much as I fell in love with the movie. There will continue to be more fics in this Psued, I guarantee it.

Willful_Wayfarer (8 fics)

Named after my Blog here on Tumblr, this Psued contains all of my Kingdom Hearts fics. It was originally made for me to publish Terra-centric fics in, but in the last few years, I found myself becoming really interested in the Strifehart ship, thanks to a blog on Tumblr who I'm really good friends with that had a Squall/Leon blog. Naturally, that meant that I started writing Strifehart fics. Two of my favorite ones are "Calming the Beast" (Which I affectionately call my "Domestic werewolf AU") and "Shot in the Dark" (Which has not only Cloud and Leon but Sora in it too, and Sora is the one getting whumped.)

Whew, that was a lot. One more thing before I finish the post. I want to do a round up of all the events I participated in!

So, right of the bat. I've participated in 4 years of Whumptobers, which is very impressive, I think. No matter how much or how little I feel like writing, It's always a tradition for me to set aside a whole month to write every October. You can tell how much energy I have for writing by how many fics I put out.

The fic that kicked off the tradition was a Dragon's Dogma fic that I didn't put on Ao3. It's called "The First Fall of Aiden The Arisen" and it's not hard to find here if you want to read, but since it includes my own personal Arisen and Pawn, I didn't think it had a place on Ao3.

FFVII Secret Spring 2021

Entry: To Break Like Time

Gift: SOLDIER of Hubris

I am not joking when I told you I outlined "To Break Like Time" in a few days and banged out the whole fic in a weekend. It was exhilarating. It was quite a magical thing to be able to do something like that, even if I didn't entirely like the fic that came out at the end. I think I liked it more before I actually published it. "SOLDIER of Hubris" was an amazing fic to get as a gift. As much as I adore shipping Cloud and Zack, I also have a weak spot for polyshipping him with Aerith and Tifa. Not to mention Cloud gets whumped, and back then Cloud whump was my favorite type of whump.

FF7 Fanworks Exchange '21

Entry: Flowers for Zack

Gift: Fragile Peace

I'm not a big fan of the one that I wrote for this exchange, but I like the idea. It was hard to put together and the ending was pretty rushed, but I did like the parts with Cissnei. I think I remember this one being slow to actually plan out and put together. "Fragile Peace" was a cute little fic of Cloud being a dad and was everything that I could have asked for in a fic. Incredibly, tooth rottingly fluffy, which is a little odd, since I usually ask for whump, but this time I wanted something about Cloud being a dad.

2021 FFVII Secret Santa

Entry: The Night That Nibelheim Burned

Gift: Sulphur and Cinders

I really remember liking the challenge of tacking Kunsel in this Exchange. He's a character that everyone brings their own unique characteristics too since up until Crisis Core Reunion came out, he didn't even have his own voice, and we still don't know what he looks like. I also enjoyed messing around with a text message and e-mail format for this fic. "Sulphur and Cinders" is a good little fic fulfilling one of the prompts that I was curious about when I finished the Remake. "What if Hojo got to tell Cloud that he wasn't a real member of SOLDIER?" This fic tackles that idea really well and in such a whumpy way.

FF7 Fanworks Exchange '22

Entry: Rude of the Turks

Gift: A Hollow Chest and Warmth

Rude was an interesting character to tackle for one of the Exchanges. He's so different from any other character I write, being so stoic and all. Before then, the only Turk I had really ever tackled when it comes to writing was Cissnei. However, once I had the idea that Rude was from Corel and his full name was "Rudolph", I took the idea and ran with it. The actual crux of the fic, though, was the decision that the beads that hang off Rude's pants in his character model are prayer beads. Well, Rude didn't strike me as a particularly religious man, so they had to be important to him in some other way. So I decided they were the only thing he had to remind him of his mother. Then the fic took off from there. "A Hollow Chest and Warmth" is a fresh take on a Zack lives AU. It features a significantly weaker Zack that in Crisis Core and has some very very sweet Clack moments (I'm a big Clack shipper).

2022 FF7 Secret Santa

Entry: Shivamas Reflections

Gift: Unpack Your Heart

Shivamas Reflections is one I don't have a lot to say about. The prompt was something Christmas inspired, so I wrote a fic about Cloud remembering past Christmas' and celebrating Denzel's first one with him. (I don't know where I got the idea this was Denzel's "first" one. His family probably celebrated it before with him.) Unpack Your Heart is a nice little polyship fic between Cloud, Zack, and Vincent. Basically the prompt was "What would happen if Zack opened Vincent's coffin and asked him for help when they were breaking out of the labs." It's got a nice sense of humor to it.

FF7 Fanworks Exchange '23

Entry: You Make Me Human

Gift: The Tongue Stuck in My Jaw

When I write Sephiroth, he's always softer than he probably would be in canon. I like the side of Sephiroth that genuinely loved to hang out with his friends and who leaned on them when things went wrong. This is a very short fic but I enjoyed it. I rarely tackle writing Sephiroth and one of my favorite things about Crisis Core is how it shows his human side very well. "The Tongue Stuck in My Jaw" is another very sweet dad Cloud fic about Cloud struggling to figure out what to do after he brings Denzel home. One of my favorite scenes in ACC was the scene where Cloud find Denzel so I based my prompt off of that.

One more thing before I finish this post. I also participate in DoGoodWeirdly. I started in 2022 and have kept doing them every time they come up. My fics for DGW are:

Calming the Beast (January 2022) An Unpublished Yakuza Like a Dragon/Dragon Quest XI Crossover fic (July 2022) Ch 1 of The Reason We Rise, We Rise (January 2023) Ch 3 of The Reason We Rise, We Rise (July 2023)

In conclusion, thank you to anyone who has ever shown any interest in my fics, weather it's one of my old Epic or Dragon Prince fics or one of my new Nimona fics, it means the world to me! I appreciate you even if you didn't comment, even if you just left me a kudo or decided to bookmark the fic. I love that people love my fics.

Oh and for anyone debating on if they should draw art based off my fics, I adore getting art that someone drew of something from my fics! You don't need to ask permission.

Here's to another 10 years of writing fanfiction!

#((Sephy's 10 year Ao3 Anniversary))#((This took longer than I thought so the list is either coming tomorrow or monday!))

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avocado-frog · 1 year ago

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hey this is chance and here’s week 4’s prompt. how do strangers within the world view your protagonists? how would they describe them? and how does this contrast against how the protagonist views themself?

!!week four's prompt!!

Logan- gives kids at lemonade stands 100 usd. bakes cookies for new neighbors. he's well-liked and fairly well-known. he likes to think the rest of the neighborhood likes him, but he gets surprised at how many people Know him

Leo- banned from most public spaces. Makes children cry on purpose. Canonically she broke an old man's knees with a golf club. Rummages through people's trash for stuff. She's aware The other kids think she's a wet cat

Cass- adored by all. she's got the healing magic so people go to her instead of doctors sometimes bc she doesn't charge. Leo steals from them regardless. Makes flower crowns for people at the park probably. Hangs out with Dylan at the garden so the garden people know her. Very modest about this

Kai + Marcy- richest family in the whole goddamn town. Kai is a lot more polite about it than his sister. Marcy is Awful

Lily- That specific brand of hot cheeto girl who tell kids off for being disrespectful to the teachers. I think she's popular at school but because people like her/they like Logan and Jaxon and know they're siblings. She's confident + i think she's aware that the other kids like her. Leo does not believe that she's liked

Jaxon- he's soo friendly actually. Somehow, he's made friends with every kid in the city, and he volunteers at the library, and he also gets into fights a lot. Aside from that Reputation in school, people like him <3 hope nothing happens to him. Jax knows how good he is at making friends and uses his power for good

Dylan- my favorite fact about them is that they do community garden work with the old ladies and so i think the grandma community adores them. Dylan goes to bingo thursdays.

Ryan- very shy. he doesn't like to talk to people he doesn't know, and he hasn't made many friends in school, especially after he left with Leo in dahlia. He thinks he's the most hated child in the whole world

Sam- Nike kid. Sports boy. If a parent has a child who does multiple sports, they Keep Seeing Sam, because he's in karate, basketball, baseball, track, and soccer. No one knows how he does it Middle child syndrome

Elliot- Elliot's favorite hobby is making intense eye contact with strangers to make them uncomfortable and he likes to say just the most obscure shit. He just goes up to people and tells them about the rat in his pocket. Sometimes he hangs out with Dylan, so I bet he goes to bingo thursdays too lol. He also thinks he's the most hated child in the whole world

#writing #isaac says things related to his writing again #original work #writeblr #wip: forget me not #thanks for the ask!#yeah

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kasienda · 2 years ago

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Fanfiction Year in Review 2022

I fill this out every year. It’s become a bit of a tradition for me. Allows me to reflect on everything that I’ve written and kinda think about where I want to go next. And I like it better from the ask games because I don’t have to wait for asks to come in. ^_^

1 List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

Don’t You Know People Care? (Adrino oneshot)

When You Love Someone (Love Square oneshot Reveal)

Rite of Passage (Love Square multichapter)

Meddlesome Friends (Love Square + Meddling Nino oneshot)

I Needed You and You Weren’t There (Love Square onshot)

Restorative Justice (Core Five - Chloé POV - multichapter -features love square and friendship fairly prominently)

2 Number of words written:

Written: 99,297

Published: 64,582

This number irritates me. It’s SO CLOSE to 100k and I just didn’t have time in the last few days to throw myself over the edge. And there’s a one shot that I think only needs about an hour of focused work. But I guess that’ll have to be a 2023 fic! Haha! BUT it’s also way higher than I thought it would be even if it’s less than half I what I wrote last year (and I published about a third of what I what I published last year). And that comparison is probably why it felt like I wasn’t writing much this year. But my 2019 numbers were almost exactly the same and I was SO EXCITED about how much I wrote that year. Which just goes to show comparison is bad! And when it comes to comparing myself to others I think I’ve internalized that years ago, but apparently I shouldn’t compare myself to myself either. Because I KNOW why I wasn’t able to write as much this year, and yet, I still wrote! And that’s amazing!!

Those published numbers include four one shots, two multi chapters. And four multi chapter WIPs saw at least one update.

3 Your most popular fic:

Restorative Justice, which is bizarre. I started writing this one closer to the fandom peak three years ago. And at the time, this fic was my LEAST popular. Chapter 4 took me almost a year to get out. And then Chapter 5 did take more than a year, but when I posted chapter five I got a lot more attention here than on anything else I’ve written this year. It wasn’t a whole lot more than Ch 3 got when it was posted though.

4 Your personal fav:

It’s Still Right Behind You and I imagine it will keep being this one until I finish it. My goal was to finish it this year, but that didn’t even come close to happening. Last year, I managed to update this one pretty consistently each month. If I had maintained that pace THIS year, it would have been almost complete I think, but I don’t think I would have made it. It has about 14-16 updates left. So another year and some change? *crossing my fingers* But Restorative Justice is a close second because it is also deeply personal - just from a different aspect of my life, and I do have a few unpublished WIPs that I’m also super in love with that I hope I will get to share before too much time has passed.

5 Your fav scene:

It’s so hard to pick a favorite!!

Okay, I loved the way Chapter four of Yin and Yang extended the same scene at the end of chapter three. The way Marinette’s and Adrien’s individual revelations dovetailed together at that moment was just so neat!

I’m also really really really proud of the When You Love Someone reveal oneshot (which wasn’t ACTUALLY a oneshot - this scene is from Right Behind You chapters 6 and 9). This oneshot was essentially a love square break up chapter, but what I love about it is how much love there is in it from beginning to end. How much they care for each other shines through every part of it. I made myself cry multiple times writing this scene, and I can sometimes still cry when I reread it.

6 A fic or scene that challenged you:

It’s all challenging right now, but let’s go with Restorative Justice. As mentioned already, it took me more than a year to update chapter five of this fic, but we did it 50 words at a time!

7 A line of writing you’re proud of:

“I’m right here” - from chapter 3 of Rite of Passage. Here it is with a tiny bit of context:

“But that’s not the hard part.”

“What’s the hard part?”

“He was my best friend, and I miss him so much.” Her voice broke on the last word and her face crumpled into wracking sobs.

Adrien or not, he instantly pulled her into his shoulder, and held her while she cried herself out. He didn’t say anything. He knew that if he said anything at all, he’d tell her everything.

And he wasn’t sure how bad that would be. He couldn’t talk to Fu or even to Plagg for all that the kwami was six inches away as evidenced by the fact that the wedge of cheese had disappeared even though he had never laid eyes on the black kwami.

“I just wish I knew what happened to him,” she said, her voice cracking.

The pain in her voice broke him.

“I’m right here,” he said softly, placing a kiss on the side of her head.

This scene also has fanart! - by @botherkupo (I’ve been reading that as brother kupo forever... oops!)

8 A comment that touched you:

Look, I can never answer this question. There are too many. There are my regulars who have literally taken care of me this year as I struggled with moderate depression and then repeated illness (myself and my children). And there are the comments that let me know that something I wrote has an impact on them and that’s really neat.

An example from Rosalind2013 this past week on Restorative Justice:

This is one of my favorite stories now! Thank you so much for sharing!

I feel like I learned a lot. And I really enjoyed Chloe’s characterization here!

Really and truly, I think it’s often hard for us (or at least me) to think of “mean” people as being victims too. The things I learned are things that are going to alter how I interact with people going forward, and I really appreciate you taking the time to explain everything in your notes!

Like woah!! I’m floored and squealing!

9 Something that inspired your writing:

Honestly? Spite. Haha! I keep encountering takes or reading things that irritate me and that often inspires me to write a fic that does it the way I would want it to be in the world to counter that perspective. But most of the spite writing I’ve done this year has yet to come out. So hopefully, ya’ll get to benefit from that in 2023! :)

10 Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

Honestly, the fact that I wrote anything is kinda amazing. 2020 and 2021 were really good writing years for me (like insanely good), and it’s been frustrating to not be able to maintain that flow. I spent the first half of 2022 in a barely functional level of depression and the second half taking care of sick children. People keep telling me that I don’t have to feel pressured to write - that we all need to take breaks, and I don’t disagree. But writing for me has always been one of my biggest coping tools, and this year, it felt like I couldn’t rely on it and it always seemed like a bad sign to me when I wanted to write and had time, but couldn’t do it mentally or emotionally. Every time I think I’m back in my writing groove, my life explodes again. So here’s me wishing and hoping that things actually stay calm for like the whole next 12 months! (It’s likely a pipe dream, but one can hope).

11 Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I want to start making progress on Right Behind You again. I had a setback where I wrote a chapter and found it narratively redundant and scrapped the whole thing which was discouraging and made it hard to start again. And I really want to update each of my current unfinished WIPs at least once (hopefully more than once!), and get out some of these unpublished love square WIPs that I’ve been sitting on. (And maybe an Adrino one as well!!) Basically, I want to do all the writing! Haha!

But my main goal is really just to find my writing groove again to be able to use writing as a more reliable mental health support and creative outlet. Wish me luck!!

Happy New Year Everyone!!

#Year in Review #fanfic year in review #2022 #my own content #life of a writer #reflection #I wrote a lot #I wish I wrote more #maybe next year #still proud of myself #happy new year

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