#the way they use it to tell a story and build a character without it being obvious

[crooked-wasteland]

I think what annoys me so much about the way the show blasts Blitzo for being a cold and unromantic partner is that it’s a perfect example of ignoring worldbuilding to make a character look worse.

By human standards, Blitzo abandoning someone when they tell them that they love him is pretty cowardly and understandably upsetting. But in Hell standards? Verosika should’ve fucking known he’d run away because Hell seems to look down heavily at the concept of love. This is like knowing that it’s taboo to kiss and then getting mad at a character for not kissing you. You can’t blame someone for being adjusted to what society expects of you. Verosika can still be hurt but it’s genuinely insane how much she clings on to this hate like he did a crime.

And the fact that we just skip over seeing their relationship is also infuriating because I get the feeling that Viv was both not interested in actually showing us what Verosika was like and also afraid to make her do anything that feels more in line with her character which is act angsty and spiteful

I've had a thought about Verosika. From the we've seen this season, the writers have actually listened to and addressed criticism for the show. The Ghostfuckers leaks show an overhaul of the original story, the fact that episodes got shifted around at the start of the series, the blatant un-writing of the assassination plot, and the fact that Unhappy Campers was the only pre-special episode to not be in the season 2 trailer (most likely because it was still in the early stages of animation due to massive rewrites to incorporate more Millie) are all evidence to this. It's obvious the crew is not happy about it, but they are listening.

With that in mind, the show has repeatedly been accused of extremely sexist writing in favor of the male cast. As such, it's not surprising to see the pivot more towards "humanizing" the female characters in specific. I remember seeing a lot of comments about how they wouldn't forgive the show if they made another female character irredeemably cruel and brainless following The Circus, and even louder after Western Energy.

What fans had wanted was a complicated or even toxic dynamic where both characters weren't perfect, but still held Blitz accountable for his actions, fairly. What they got was the cheapest, laziest writing I've ever seen. Not only does it not make sense in regards to the established world building of Hell's attitude towards love, it still makes no sense for Blitz to run away just because Verosika said she loved him, only to then adopt a child. He explicitly goes to the pound looking for a pup, pivoting to taking in Loona out of pity. It's like saying marriage is too much of a commitment, but still having kids.

Instead, Medrano overcorrected to pander to critics the same way she panders to her fans. Verosika is not an irredeemably cruel and stupid, spiteful woman. She's a perfect victim actually. Not only is her only crime falling in love, but the relationship ended so fast and sudden that she didn't have any time to do anything.

All these choices feel not only deliberate, but resentful in how little care went into the writing. The most drastic overhaul being to Ghostfuckers where the entire narrative trimmed down and immensely reworked already existing elements into the script. It goes to show the level of improvement possible to an idea when given better direction, but it also shows the limitations of not having actual writers on the team.

Ghostfuckers does an amateur's best and comes out generally okay, but still suffers from over reliance on tropes without narrative substance. It's the genuine best that can be done with this team. And unfortunately that's still not good enough.

[anim-ttrpgs]

I’m gonna add onto this post by talking about my favorite woo roll moment I’ve experienced in gameplay, and one that I feel very cleanly demonstrates how good it is as a gameplay mechanic.

For context, this was in a campaign about a year ago now with two investigators: Yvette and Benadetta. Despite being an awesome Eureka character, Benadetta isn’t really relevant to this story.

Yvette, however, is an 806-year-old vampire. That’s relevant.

[imsge of yvette]

(art by team artist @chaospyromancy)

Yvette and Benedetta, several days into an investigation of a mysterious explosion and multiple disappearances, which that had already uncovered weapon snuggling and involvement of organized crime, and by this point had a pretty good idea of where the kidnapping victims were being held.

However, they could not just tell the cops to search the place, because they had also uncovered that the perpetrators at best had a mole in the police force that could warn about the search, and at worst was controlling the whole police force. So, they would have to break in themselves and either free the captives or at least capture video evidence.

For the best chance of success, they attempted to acquire blueprints of the building, but found none on public record. So, they paid a visit to the architect who designed the building in his large suburban home.

He was a very elderly man with two nurse aides taking care of him.

Yvette and Benedetta lied, saying that they were journalists doing a story on historic architecture and that’s why they needed the blueprints. The architect said that he did have the blueprints and was happy to share them, and asked one of his nurse aides to go and get them from upstairs.

The nurse goes upstairs and, after what seems like a bit too long without coming back, all of them hear a violent scream from above. Yvette run upstairs while Benedetta stays with the architect and the other nurse aide.

Yvette throws open the door to the upstairs office and finds it undisturbed. It’s just a normal, orderly room with a desk and a large window with powered curtains, another door leading to what might be a bathroom, and not much else. Sunlight is pouring in. Vampires in Eureka are folkloric vampires, so sunlight doesn’t kill them, but it does weaken them and render them unable to use any of their powers.

As a vampire, Yvette can smell that the nurse aide has been here, and that she is probably in the bathroom. She crosses the room and opens the door to the bathroom.

The nurse jabs the barrel of a shotgun into Yvette’s chest before she even has the door all the way open and fires. Yvette stumbles back, hole in her chest, and falls backwards over the nearby desk. If Yvette were a mortal, she would be on death’s door with 1/5 HP, but vampires take half-damage from everything, leaving her functional at 3/5 HP. However, she’s rendered powerless by the sun, and unarmed, so she decides her best chance is just to play dead. She can do a really convincing corpse. Despite this, the nurse walks around the desk and examines her, and decides to shoot her one more time just to be safe, then goes to leave the room, probably to go do the same thing to Benedetta.

Now, Yvette is at 1/5 HP and has to make an Injury roll which she just barely succeeds, leaving her badly injured but not completely incapacitated. With the nurse’s back turned, she slowly pulls herself up, trying to be as quiet as possible, her goal now to get to the powered curtains and close them, shrouding the room in darkness and evening the playing field. This is a Stealth check, which she also partially succeeds due to her injury. With a Partial Success, she does get to the button, but not quietly enough to go unheard. The nurse turns around and gasps, bewildered to see the woman she just blasted apart moving at all, but the curtain is closing, and Yvette, shielded from the sun, will be able to employ all manner of terrifying powers.

Before Yvette can act, however, the nurse raises the gun to fire again. In her panic, she misses with a Partial Success, and that means a Woo Roll. The Woo Roll is positive, meaning the shot won’t hit Yvette, but it will hit something that results in an advantage for the nurse. Like the rules above say, the result of the Woo Roll is first and foremost the “most obvious” result, and i think you can probably guess what that result was already.

The blast missed Yvette by a hair, but blew out the window behind her, the hole allowing a beam of unfiltered sunlight to perfectly bisect the room between them.

The sunlight isn’t on Yvette, but if she tries to rush the nurse, she’ll have to pass through it, and at the same time running straight at a person pointing a gun gives them a free shot regardless of turn-order. What does Yvette do now?

Exerpt from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. The Woo Roll is one of my favorite mechanics in a game full of my favorite mechanics.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

The Sun and The Void

Venezuelan inspired high fantasy

follows a young outcast swordswoman taken in by her grandmother, the dark sorceress for a noble family, who relies on the magic to keep her alive after being attacked by monstrous creatures

and a young noblewoman who’s the shame of her family because of her mixed heritage and desire to use magic

both are manipulated by those with more power than them into a plot to free an ancient evil god

mineral based magic, politics, nonhuman MCs

[dollgxtz]

Ok a fic where reader and sylus are at a business meeting, she “offers” herself as payment (maybe as a joke or just to rile sylus idk) and he makes sure to remind her who she belongs to? Please???

Kindred Spirits

Word Count: 5.1k

Tags: sylus x fem!reader, possessiveness, ownership, spanking, hitting, slight blood mention, pet names like kitten & sweetie, creampie, rough sex, crying, slight fluff at the end :3

AN: Anon ur a literal genius. This has Sylus written all over it. Im so happy to be back posting another story for you all! Also happy to announce my masterlist is now complete and can be found in my pinned! Ty all! Enjoy and remember, my asks are open for any character, Sylus is just my husband LOL. Remember to read my pinned before requesting please! This is a bit tamer than my other stories but trust I am cooking up some deviant content as soon as I publish this one :33

“Finally…”

You nearly collapse near your front door. A whole week of your life. Gone. To what you ask? Dealing with wanderers on a special aid mission. Sure sure, the job paid well but it had been weeks since your last off day. Every time it seemed like one was around the corner here they go with some emergency call and a spill about how some rich politician needed help or something.

You were starting to get tired of cleaning up other people’s mistakes.

You fumbled with your keys, fingers numb from the biting cold. The wind whipped around you, making you shiver as you tried to fit the right key into the lock. Your breath came out in visible puffs, and you could feel the frustration building with each failed attempt. Finally, with a relieved sigh, you heard the click of the lock turning.

The still warm air is such a welcoming contrast to the wind and biting cold outside. You quickly shut your door and melt to the floor, your feet aching with relief as the pressure you had been putting on them subsided. Peace at last. Time for a hot shower an-

Your peace was cut short with the distinct tone of your phone ringing. And not just any ring tone. The one you had set specifically for a certain white haired man that only ever brought trouble. Wondering if you should even pick up, you bring the phone to your face, knowing that you were going to answer regardless.

“Sylus…I’m really tired. Can we talk lat-"

“Long time no see kitten. You should stop by for a bit, hm?”

You roll your eyes, suppressing the urge to scoff out loud. Arrogant prick, you think, irritated by his inability to let you finish a sentence without interrupting. How did he even know you were home now?

You sigh deeply, feeling the tension building, and rub your temples to alleviate the mounting frustration. No, you tell yourself firmly. You wouldn’t put up with this today. Maybe another day, but definitely not today.

"Actually, no. I just returned from a week-long aid mission. Not today," you say firmly, aiming to be clear and resolute in your decision to stay put. Sylus however, seems to sense the cracks in your resolve and only responds with a chuckle.

“I want to see you. I’ll have Luke and Kieran come get you since you’re so tired”.

“Hu-”

“See you soon. They’re en route. Ciao”

The phone clicks, signaling the end of the call. For whatever reason, your ever growing frustration simply dissipates, defeat taking its place. You should be used to this by now. Sylus always gets what he wants. And you always let him. It goes without saying that it’s the same way for you as well. At least, Sylus always gives you what you want if it doesn’t interfere with his need to lay his eyes on you at least once in awhile. He knew that you wouldn’t push this though. You both knew.

Deep down, you wanted to see him too.

You asked Luke and Kieran to wait outside for a bit while you took a brisk shower and freshened up. Those two had always been very patient and understanding. You felt bad “bossing” them around, and yet they always insisted that you could. Though Luke had admitted on one occasion that he never expected to be helping a girl find hair ties or carrying shopping bags while working for Onychinus.

The statement had made you laugh a bit. You finally finish dressing in some plain sweats and rush to the car. Luke and Kieran are waiting outside of a dark colored jeep. Not too flashy as to not draw attention, but it was still clearly very expensive.

“Actually miss, Boss wanted you to wear these” Luke says, holding out an expensive looking dress. Clearly designed by hand and tailored to your measurements. Kieran follows his lead, holding out a box containing a pair of earrings and a lavish looking necklace.

“Huh? What’s this for? A date?”

“Business. That’s all he said” Kieran chimed in. Although you couldn’t see their faces, you knew they had no reason to lie to you about this.

“Ah. Dragging me into more trouble. Got it”.

When the three of you finally arrived to the location, the sun had already set for the day. You darted your eyes back and forth, squinting above at the bright neon sign of the establishment.

“We’re not going to the N109 Zone? This is a nightclub…” you mutter, taken aback by the unfamiliar surroundings. When did this even get here? There were plenty of clubs in Linkon of course, but you never seemed to notice this one. Not that you knew much about the night life to begin with. People were lined up at the entrance, chatting, fixing makeup, or texting.

“Boss wants you here. He’s waiting inside. Enjoy your time miss” Luke said, amusement written all over his tone. He gets out of the passenger seat to open the door and lend you a hand. You rolled your eyes, not wanting to appear shaken up by the situation. Sylus was always full of surprises. This was no different, act confident.

At least, that’s what you tried to tell yourself. After getting almost immediate entrance into the club with just a simple nod from the guard, you enter. As you walk inside the club, Luke and Kieran not far behind you, you can tell this was no ordinary night club. Everyone here was dressed lavishly and sharp, clearly possessing power and ulterior motives. A few eyes lay on you as you walk in, and you feel your hands start to sweat.

Keep cool. This isn’t the first time you’ve been around high ranking individuals. This is probably some test he set up…right? Or some kind of joke to get a laugh?

Clenching your fists, your eyes dart and search for a tall figure with white hair, feeling more nervous by the second that you don’t see him. You’re about to turn around and ask one of the twins, but at last your gaze settles on him, sipping on a glass of Gin Fizz. He’s sitting in a velvety booth by himself, people watching. He’s wearing his black button up with red streaks across it, coat hanging on his shoulders per usual. As if he felt you staring, his eyes shift to meet yours. He sets down his glass, giving you you a small smirk. His eyes narrow, sending a very clear message.

Come here.

As if you were suddenly possessed, your feet seem to start moving on their own. You weren’t sure if you were relieved to see him or if it was just the relief of seeing a familiar face in an unfamiliar place. You take a few deep breaths as you approach, readying your witful replies to any of his attempts to make fun of you. Without making any sound or looking at him, you quietly slide in next to him.

“You look nice. Seems I was right about this look on you” Sylus says, taking another sip of his drink. His eyes wander up and down behind the glass, seemingly devouring you. You squirm under his gaze.

“Hm. Thanks. This gift is the least you can do after dragging me to do whatever you want on a whim once again” you scoff, eyeing the full glass that sits on the table. It’s another glass of Gin Fizz, probably for Sylus. There’s three other very empty glasses on the table.

This man can definitely hold his alcohol.

He chuckles, taking a finger and pushing the glass of Gin closer to you.

“Don’t be like that sweetie. Loosen up a bit, you’ll need it”

“For what exactly? Business?” you mock, picking up the Gin. You didn’t exactly like the taste of this particular alcohol of choice but Sylus was right about one thing. Some liquid courage was definitely needed for whatever shenanigans he was dragging you into tonight.

“Yeah. Figured I could use Linkon’s darling Miss Hunter as backup” Sylus chuckles, watching you nearly choke as you take three big gulps of the drink. You squeeze your eyes in disgust as you finish the rest of the glass, shooting a death glare in his direction as you set it down.

“You’re perfectly capable. Don’t mock me Sylus”. You grit your teeth in irritation, almost ready to rip him to shreds with your words. Clearly your tone has no effect on him though, as all you get in return is a soft smile. Sylus places a hand on your upper leg, slowing sliding his fingers under your dress. You gasp, the coldness of his fingers making you twitch a bit. The warmness of your skin mixed with his cold touch makes the sensation feel like icy fire.

“Or what? You’ll use this on me?” he smirks, tugging on the concealed gun strapped under your dress. “I’m all for it honestly”

You slap his hand away, the woozy feeling from the Gin Fizz starting to kick in. What was in this drink? It was strong. Too strong.

“Pervert. Always touching me, making fun of me. Maybe I will shoot you. Again.” you growl, turning your head away from him. You attempt to scoot away as well, but are met with a strong grip around your waist as you’re pulled into closer proximity with him. Sylus grabs your chin and lifts it towards his face. He leans down a bit, the smell of alcohol and his bourbon vanilla cologne making you feel even more dizzy.

“You can put your claws away now kitten. Don’t make me have to melt your little tantrum away” he coos, gently caressing your face with his thumb.

You stare at him, dumbfounded, desperately searching your sluggish brain for a comeback but finding yourself too flustered to form any words. The look in Sylus’s eyes shifts from a smug expression to a much softer, almost tender gaze, and you wonder what his next move will be. Your face starts to burn as you feel heat rising in your core, your heart pounding in your chest. Panic sets in as you consider the possibilities, your mind racing with the fear of what might come next.

Don’t tell me he’s going to…?!

"You're so...confusing" you mutter.

You’re just about to try and squirm from his grip, when Luke and Kieran tap on the table, catching yalls attention.

“Boss man, Val says he’s ready for ya” Luke says, nonchalantly ignoring the scene that’s displayed in front of him. Sylus releases your face, his face going serious again. He gets up, reaching out a hand to help you out of the booth.

“Time for business, sweetie”

You’re guided by the twins and Sylus past the sweaty bodies on the dance floor to a somewhat hidden room located downstairs. The area the stairs led to was blocked off by a singular rope, clearly only meant for a select crowd.

In the room there’s a long black table, cards and chips all over it. There’s a few prominent figures already seated, along with a few bodyguards standing near the door. Sylus pulls a seat out for you, before taking his own. You study the figure that’s sitting at the head of the table as you sit. He’s short, a bit chubby, dark hair, smoking a cigar. A scar sits angrily on his forehead and you wonder what kinda grudges led to such an injury. He notices you looking at him, and gives you a devilish grin. Some of his teeth are crooked or missing.

All that money and he can't fix his smile?

You shudder. Sylus looks over at you, and back to the man at the head of the table. He’s reading you, clearly sensing your nervousness. He says nothing, simply reaching a hand over to rest on your thigh.

“Was starting to think you were going to keep me waiting Sylus. Seems you didn’t run after all” he laughs, wheezing a bit as he takes another puff of his cigar. You wrinkle your nose a bit as the potent smell hits your senses.

“I couldn’t turn down a game of cards with my dear old friend” Sylus says, irritation coating the last word. “Let’s keep things civil this time, hm Valentino?”

Valentino bursts into laughter, clearly amused. Despite his laughter, you couldn’t ignore the murderous tension in the air. Something tells you this isn’t any regular game of cards. You gulp, trying to force yourself to look at everyone at the table and smile.

“Well hello little lady. Sylus, you didn’t tell me you kept such gorgeous company…” Val says, his eyes snaking all over your body. You feel Sylus squeeze your thigh, clearly irritated. He pulls out a coin from his coat pocket, seemingly trying to channel his frustrations into something else.

“You know I’m not really the type to share, Val. She’s all mine. Down to every single strand of hair”. Sylus ends, catching the coin and shooting a glare in the man’s direction. It was plain, but conveyed a message very well.

You feel your palms start to sweat. Was he being serious right now?? You side eye him, trying to piece out whether or not this was some kind of facade you’re supposed to play into. Valentino clearly takes Sylus’s words as a challenge.

“I’ll give you twenty million for her. Maybe fifty million if you make her give us a little strip show. What do ya say? She looks so soft. Probably makes cute noises too…~” he chuckles, likely enjoying the look of surprise that washes across your face.

Sylus remains quiet, his face unmoving, frozen in a pissed glare. You don’t know if it was the alcohol you drank earlier, or if it was some inkling of an attempt to dissipate the tension, but you clear your throat and begin to speak.

“Well Sylus? You can share can’t you? It’s quite the generous offer Mr. Valentino. I’m quite flattered actually.” you express, putting on your best smug look. Sylus stiffens, a somewhat shocked expression washing over him. Valentino erupts into yet another fit of laughter, seemingly unable to contain himself. Turning to look back at Sylus, you see it in his face briefly. An uncaged look of rage before it quickly dissipates.

Shit. Shouldn’t have said that.

Far too late to stop now though.

“You heard the lady Sylus. Why don’t you try sharing just this once? What I would give to taste that sweet little body of he-”

Sylus slams a revolver on the table, then calmly starts picking up cards from the deck.

"I'd suggest you stop talking and start playing the game, Mr. Valentino," Sylus snarls, his words dripping with venom. The fury in his voice is palpable, and it's clear he's reached the end of his patience.

You give Val a sly look, feigning pity. “Ah, sorry Valentino. Seems this one can’t quite let me go yet”. You don’t know what you were trying to achieve, but it’s certainly not working to dissipate any tension. Val doesn’t respond to you though, all his focus on Sylus now.

“My dear friend. You should know me by now. There’s something I’m much more interested in now than some money. Now I want the girl, or nothing”.

Valentino wears a shit eating grin on his face, soaking in the fact that he thinks he’s gained some control of the situation, unaffected by the gun on the table. Sylus simply sighs, rubbing his fingers against the temple of his forehead.

“I see where this is going then”.

You barely process what’s happening before everything and everyone starts moving. As soon as Sylus begins to stand, Valentinos guards start shooting. Sylus wastes no time flipping the large table, sending the cards and game chips flying everywhere. You yelp as he yanks you towards him using his body and the table to shield the oncoming attack of bullets. You hear Luke and Kieran joining in the frenzy, yelling obscenities as they begin shooting their own hidden weapons.

You swiftly reach for the weapon concealed beneath your dress, your fingers brushing against the cool metal as you draw it out. Turning to face Sylus, you ready yourself for his instructions, your body tense with anticipation. Instead of giving you orders, he locks eyes with you, his gaze piercing through you with an intensity that feels like it's reaching into your very soul. The silence is heavy, charged with unspoken tension as bullets whip past the both of you, and you can feel your heartbeat quicken in response.

“I need you alive for what’s coming sweetie. Pay attention, stay close”

You blink. Twice. Unable to process his words before he yanks you both up, one hand using his evol to send the table crashing into several bodyguards. The four of you fight your way through the onslaught of people coming into the door, before eventually dashing up the stairs. People are running in all directions, seemingly caught up in the chaos of everything. You all manage to make it out the door and into the brisk cold air, the twins quickly hopping into the car to whisk you away.

“Go on, I’ll catch up soon” Sylus states, hurriedly pushing you into the car and slamming the door before you could protest. He signals Kieran to drive off, and that he does.

“He’s…going to level the building. Isn’t he?” you sigh, sighing at the fact that Sylus seemed to conveniently forget that this was in fact not the lawless land of the N109 Zone. No doubt the Hunter’s Association would have to investigate for potential wanderer activity, and that would be a lot of paperwork.

"It's fine. He owned that place anyway. He'll just build another," Luke says, his voice calm and unbothered. Just as the words leave his mouth, a deafening boom erupts behind the car, shaking the ground beneath yall. The explosion's shockwave rattles the windows, and the sky lights up with a fiery glow, cutting off Luke's next sentence mid-breath.

You groan.

The twins did drive you to the N109 this time, swiftly helping you out the car and into Sylus’s private villa. When you entered the front door, a nightgown and lacy underwear were laid neatly out for you in his room, your arrival clearly anticipated.

It wasn’t more than an hour before Sylus waltzed in the front door, eyeing your slouching figure on the couch. You sit up as soon as you see him, still somewhat annoyed.

“What took you so damn long? Also do you have to level every building you come across?” you spat, glaring at him. He says nothing though, walking straight past you and into his room.

“Huh? Sylus?? What the hell…”

Not liking the feeling of being ignored, you hurriedly chased after him. You had never really been uncomfortable barging into his room. You had done it plenty of times at this point, the first time being when he had challenged you to steal the brooch from him. No point in being shy now. He’s fumbling with something in his drawer when you reach up to tap his shoulder.

“Sylus! Don’t ignore me, I know you ca-”

He swiftly turns around, grabbing your wrist before you can touch him. His gaze is unreadable, cold even. You start to sweat, trying to take your arm back. But he only squeezes tighter.

"I was hoping you'd leave me be so I could calm down. But of course you're as petulant as ever" he says.

"Let go! What's wrong with you!?" You attempt to remove his hand from your wrist but he doesn't budge.

“Go to the bed. Place your hands on it” he says, face unchanging.

“Huh??”

“I don’t like to repeat myself”.

You freeze for only a moment before quickly moving to the bed. You meticulously put your hands where instructed, something deep in your core telling you that it’s likely best to listen for now. However, you can’t help to look over your should to quip at Sylus. You’re slightly bent at an angle, trying your best to keep your balance.

“What’s this about? I’m not that upset that you reduced the building to rubble”

Sylus snakes his way behind you, quietly, as if thinking of what to say. He reaches out a hand, grabbing the ends of your nightgown and moving the soft fabric around in his fingers. You feel the heat rise to your face, the skin of your ass feeling a slight gush of cold air.

“You like playing games with me, don’t you? Testing me” he says coldly, fingers trailing up the back of your legs slowly. You shiver, attempting to squirm away. His evol appears around you, its tight grip making you cry out.

Oh. This was about that.

“Huh?? No, I was just playing along. Just friendly banter yknow?” you say, voice wavering. You’ve clearly pissed him off. A part of you knows it’s a slight lie. You didn’t want to admit it out loud but it was kind of amusing to see Sylus get so riled up over something. Over you especially. But you hadn’t exactly done it fully on purpose. It was the alcohol.

But you knew he wasn’t buying it, as observant as he was.

“Sure. You were just pretending to act like a stray kitten trying to find a new owner?” he smirks, his fingers beginning to trace circles over the cloth of your panties. You let out a small whine, his touch just barely grazing your already wet cunt.

“Owner? I don’t belong to you. Or anyone” you scoff, the resolve in your voice wavering with every little circle he completes on your skin. You almost whine in disappointment when he pulls away.

“And yet…” Sylus trails off, leaving you with aching curiosity before you’re met with stinging pain on your ass. You cry out, unable to move with his evol still snaked around you. “You did exactly what I told you to do just now, wear the clothes I leave out for you, and practically melt everytime I even barely touch you”.

“Sylus?! What the hell was that…?!” you exclaim, trying your hardest to process his words and the situation at hand. He doesn’t respond, proceeding to gently caress the spot where he smacked you. The stinging pain gently eases away, and you feel yourself relaxing with his touch once again. He once again trails his fingers down to your clothed pussy, rubbing slow and meticulous circles around it. You start to whine, attempting to push yourself into his fingers for more friction. He pulls his hand away, making a disapproving sigh.

“Acting like you’re in heat per usual” he chuckles, watching as you wiggle around under the grip of his evol. “This is a punishment”.

“For what? Cause I let some sick and ugly looking crime boss think he had a chance with me?”

Sylus wastes no time bringing his hand to your ass again, earning another painful whine out of you. You feel tears forming in your eyes that you can’t wipe away. He’s certainly not holding back his strength, and yet you know this isn’t even a third of the force he could use on you.

“For entertaining him” he says plainly.

Another smack.

“Another for stupidly handing over your life, body and soul for a measly twenty million”

An even harder hit, this one fueled by rage.

“And lastly…”

You nearly choke as he delivers the final blow, your ass definitely bruising by now. Sylus offers no comfort this time, instead leaning down next to your crying face, breath hot against your ear.

“For forgetting that you belong to me, just as much as I belong to you. Kindred spirits remember?”

You have no chance to respond before he’s flipping you on your back, your nightgown flying up to reveal your wet panties.

“I-im sorry, Sy” you choke, tears blurring your vision.

“Show me then, sweetie. Spread your legs. Wide” he instructs, reaching up to brush your tears away. This isn’t done lovingly, more like calculated and cold.

This is far from over.

You silently but shakingly open your legs, your ass still painfully aching from his assault. You’re surprised when he doesn’t rip your underwear in two, choosing to rather peel them off your legs slowly. You notice the hunger in his eyes as he does so, as if savoring the view of your cunt at his fingertips. A small drop of arousal pools down your ass, and Sylus scoops it up with one finger.

You watch as he puts his finger in his mouth, savoring the drop of you with swiftness. His piercing gaze never leaves yours though, and you want to suddenly run away and hide. This is beyond thrilling, but you try your best to remain as still as possible, scared that he’ll think you’re enjoying it too much and punish you accordingly.

You suddenly can’t take the tension anymore, and close your eyes. You hear the sound of Sylus removing his belt from its loops, then the loud clang as it hits the floor. You feel the bed shift as he lowers himself over you, his face stopping just inches over yours, indicated by the sudden feel and warmth of his breath. He grabs your face in his hand and squeezes your jaw. Hard.

“Look at me kitten” he commands, his tone filled with unkempt rage and anger. Your eyes fly open, terrified.

“I’m the only one that will ever taste you. Repeat it” he says. Before you can get a word out, he’s pushing the fat tip of his cock in your entrance. You cry out in agony, nowhere near ready to have been penetrated. But he doesn’t stop filling you.

“Repeat it. Or I’ll hit you again. Do you want that?”

“You’re t-the…ah!” you whine, his cock halfway inside you at this point. Your poor cunt feels like it’s being impaled, splitting pain soaring through your core.

“Try again”

You let out a whimper, trying your best to push through the pain and put thoughts into words.

“You’re the oh-only one that gets to taste me” you choke out, voice wavering and your eyes teary. Sylus gives a hard thrust, pushing the rest of his length inside you. You cry out again, feeling like you’re on the verge of passing out. Sylus seems unmoved by your outbursts though.

“And?”

You stare at him, barely able to see his face through the tears. What? What does he mean and? He didn’t say anything else did he?

“Hu-what?”

You hear him sigh with disapproval, giving you yet another hard thrust. And another. And another. You’re clinging onto his back now, nails digging into his skin as the sound of the bed creaking and your pants fill the room. Blood has probably been drawn on his back, not that he’d even notice. You can hear him grunting in your ear, clearly enjoying the feeling of you tightening around him when you tense from the pain. Although it still hurts, you can feel yourself accumulating to the shape and size of his length, and the pain lessons a bit more with each thrust. He stops once again, tilting your face in his grip.

“What did I say you forgot? Or is this kitten filled with too much cock to think straight now?” he mocks. You can hear the smile on his face despite not being able to see him clearly. Heat creeps up on your cheeks as you wrack your brain for answers.

“I-you…we’re kindred spirits?”

“Before that sweetie”

You blink the tears on your face away, your vision becoming a bit more clear. Although he’s still gazing down at you, his expression is not as angry as before. Seems he’s gotten a bit of his pent up anger out now.

“I belong to you, Sylus” you say, voice small and whiny from crying. That’s definitely what he wanted to hear, as he began to pepper kisses on your neck, on your cheek, and eventually resting on your lips. You greedily return his affection, leaning into this feverish kiss, the both of you only periodically stopping to pant for air between kisses. He stops, resting his forehead with yours, gazing into your eyes once more.

“And I belong to you. What’s mine is yours. All of it”

You don’t get a chance to respond before he’s thrusting again, this time with a continuous and steady pace. You cling onto him, the exchange of flowery words and rigorous thrusting already bringing you on the verge of ecstasy. Sylus already noticed long before you did though, as he brought his hand between the two of you, circling your clit further your stimulation.

“Go ahead, come undone for me” he whispers, voice strained for nearly being at his end too. Your body obeys, unraveling and writhing with pleasure as Sylus continues to pound into you. You ride your orgasm to its end, till the touching of your clit becomes too much and you whine from overstimulation.

“Sylus…!” you moan, and he stops, already at the start of his own climax. You shudder as you feel him spill into you, his seed immediately beginning to pool down your cunt and to your ass. He pulls his heavy cock out of you, a feeling of emptiness taking its place. For a moment nothing is said, just the sound of the both of you catching your breath.

You decide to break the silence.

“Sylus…I’m really sorry” you start, looking up at him. He simply chuckles, placing a kiss on your cheek before getting up to grab a rag from the bathroom.

“You’ve taken your punishment quite well, why are you apologizing again sweetie?” he says from the bathroom, coming back to wipe you clean. You scoff, slightly tensing from the coldness of the cloth.

“Hmph. Fine, I take it back then. I’m holding a grudge anyways for how hard you hit me”

He simply sighs as he finishes wiping you up. “Back with the infamous wit already? Can’t a man catch a break?”

You sit up, feeling emboldened once more.

“Nope. Maybe don’t hit me with the strength of a thousand suns next time and we’ll see”

Sylus tosses the rag in a laundry basket, making his way back to your side. He pulls you into his arms, embracing you in his warmth. You can’t help but smile against his chest.

“Well, good thing I have all night to make it up to you”

You lightly pinch his side, giggling into his embrace. A question crosses your mind.

"Did you mean it Sylus? We belong to each other?"

Sylus took your face in his hand, giving you a slight smile.

"I don't say stuff I don't mean. You know this"

That's the furthest he was willing to explain it. At least for now. Who knows what kind of power trip would ensue if you truly knew how much you had the big bad leader of Onychinus wrapped around your finger.

[idle-flower]

Amy Madison is one of those things which, like some of the subplots of DS9, I assumed that I'd missed something the first time around and that there was a lot more to it, and was disappointed on a rewatch to find that... no, not really.

Like, I thought it was super-cool that there was this tiny minor character with stuff going on in the background who would resurface seasons later instead of a "remember the new guy" plot! And obviously Willow cared about this girl and there was a whole story there, right? I wasn't religiously watching the show when it first aired so I'd probably just missed whatever her story was!

So then I did a big rewatch with a friend who'd never seen Buffy before and... ehh.

(Now, I never watched season 7 and have stricken it from my personal canon, so that already limits me.) I want Amy to make more sense and to have more story. In those few appearances there are just enough threads of a story that I can totally build a bunch of ideas, but they rapidly diverge from canon.

Because yeah, there's the "Amy decides to delve into witchcraft". Many good reasons why she might, protection from someone messing with her again being an obvious one, dark fascination and love/hate with her mother being another, but she's never given the chance to tell that story.

There's the "Amy back from the dead" which was HORRIBLY disappointing how glossed-over it was. Amy's real-world situation is more fucked-up than Buffy's was! Was she declared legally dead? How many people had any idea what had happened to her? (What happened to that Michael kid who was also in their witch circle? He knew, right? Did he used to visit Rat-Amy?) When she finally went to find her father how did she explain this to him, or did she panic and mind-whammy him because she *couldn't* explain? There could have been more detailed connections here with both Buffy's problems and Willow's problems, without having to go the ridiculous route of...

"Amy's magic druggie problem" Even leaving aside that this entire plotline is horrible, stupid, and horribly stupid, I don't for a second believe that a girl who's been stuck as a rat for years could instantly find the super-secret floating lair of the local druglord. She clearly didn't have that sort of hookup before and it wouldn't be that easy for her to find it now. She's years out of touch! And she should be struggling with magic now. She was not as powerful as fully-juiced Willow to begin with and the trauma of being ratted ought to be giving her the yips. Even if she knew this guy existed and never told Willow about it in high school for some reason, it ought to be a difficult quest on her part to find a way in.

"Amy wants revenge on Willow" A perfectly good plotline idea if they'd actually worked with it in the show, which would require making her more of a major character for a while. Because yeah, getting mad at Willow for 'ruining' her life is plausible, but we need to see Amy's life falling apart first. Even if it's almost-all offscreen because she's not a Real Scooby, it should take time for her to develop this hate-on for Willow. Because at first she'd be grateful for being saved, and then as she slowly realised how screwed she was, then she becomes resentful. Sort of an inverse of Buffy who wasn't happy about being saved and then comes to terms with it, Amy slowly gives up on trying to have her life back and decides to throw in with the dark side.

Just spitballing here. Willow, desperate to prove that she can do good things with her magic powers, de-rats Amy. Amy is thrilled at first but becomes more and more distressed as she realises that life has left her behind. How's she going to fix things with her dad? And Willow suggests magic. Willow takes her home, makes her dad accept everything with a mind-whammy, zap-zap-zap's Amy's long-turned-into-storage bedroom into something cool and modern and witchy, and leaves Amy there, feeling super proud of herself. See, it's easy! Magic really can fix everything! Cut back to Amy, alone in the dark, twitching in terror at the sounds of cats, trying to cast little spells and having them go wrong...

Reverse Unpopular Opinion: Amy Madison

[Reverse unpopular opinion meme.]

This is an interesting one because I think there’s a solid argument to be made that the character of “Amy Madison” does not, in fact, actually exist on the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

By which I mean … look, okay, yes, obviously, there is a character in an early Season 1 episode called Amy Madison, played by Elizabeth Anne Allen.  And there’s a character with the same name in a Season 2 episode, and [in an admittedly weird coincidence] she’s also played by Elizabeth Anne Allen.  And there’s one in Season 3, and a one in a few episodes of Season 6, and one in an episode of Season 7, and all of them are played by the same actor.

But … I mean, come on.  There’s no way these can all be the same character, right?  They don’t have the same basic back story or the same relationship to magic or to Willow; they certainly don’t have anything resembling a definite personality or set of motivations or a consistent character arc.  No, surely what’s going on here is that there are several different “Amy Madisons” in Sunnydale – just like there are several different characters called Anne or Nancy on the show – and in a bizarre in-joke the writers simply decided to cast the same woman to play all of them.

Now, ordinarily, simply being written inconsistently over a handful of episodes and not having anything resembling the same personality from week to week would be no obstacle to having a few die-hard fans.  But – as far as I can tell, anyway? – there’s no “fandom Amy” either.  She never really gets mentioned when people want to talk about how all the Scooby Gang had awful mothers [even though Amy actually did, explicitly and inarguably, have a very, very awful and openly abusive mother!].  There’s very little in the way of Amy/Willow shipping going on here or on AO3 [even though witchcraft is heavily coded as a metaphor for being a lesbian and Amy, one of the first witches we meet on the show, is repeatedly linked to Willow throughout the show’s run].  There are no adorable drawings of Amy as a rat staring out of her cage at Willow and Tara (or if there are, they aren’t getting as many notes as they should be getting).  

No, it looks like most people who are still watching and talking about the show twenty-five years later have about as much interest in poor Amy Madison as the writers did.  She’s a plot device.  A punchline.  A cipher.  A blank slate.  She’s whatever the plot requires her to be to further the stories of the actual characters on the show, and she’ll never ever be anything else.  Which is a little sad, if you think about it.  I think Amy – or, well, most of the different Amys: The Killer In Me’s smirking evil-for-evil’s-sake Amy I’m not so sure about – deserved better.

[As I write this the thought occurs to me, belatedly, that I might be one of Amy Madison’s biggest fans.  Pretty grim news for her if so.]

OK. Enough stalling.  Five positive things about Amy Madison [with, as ever, the usual caveat about the comics, which I’ve still not read anything about and still don’t exist].

Witch, Amy’s debut appearance, is a solid episode!  One of that season’s best, I think (though not, of course, one of its very best).  And I think the duo of Elizabeth Anne Allen's Amy Madison (and Robin Riker as her mom Catherine) is a big part of why that episode works: no, they haven’t got a huge amount to work with, but I think they both do a pretty good job switching between evil witch Catherine and innocent victim Amy.  Catherine’s bodyswap spell foreshadows (albeit unintentionally) the bodyswap artifact that the Mayor gifts Faith in This Year’s Girl / Who Are You? and I’ll always have a soft sport for it because of that.  And I really like that the episode ends with Amy alive and hanging out with Buffy in a way that suggests that they are going to stay friends, even if we don’t see any evidence on screen that that happened.

Sarcasm aside, I’m really glad the writers brought Amy back in the second season.  To me, part of the appeal of the high school years are the recurring minor characters – I talked about Principal Snyder before, but also Jonathan and Devon and Percy and Harmony and … yes, Amy too.  The show obviously doesn’t care about her very much, and you have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to fill in the missing pieces of her story and make her arc make sense (why is she starting to do magic in Season 2?  When does she start hanging out with Willow?), but … well, I do care and I have done those gymnastics.  At least Amy didn’t end up like Marcie Ross or Buffy’s old flame Owen or any of those poor kids who must remember eating Principal Flutie. 

I’ve been reading a few old interviews Elizabeth Anne Allen gave recently (here and here, for example) which I think have some pretty interesting insights into how the character of Amy developed.  Had you ever heard there were persistent rumors at one point that Amy was going to be one of the starting regulars on Angel?  It’s mind-boggling to think about a world where that happened.  Allen seems to have put a huge amount of thought into her character, too, at least for her first few appearances, which … uh, I guess makes me feel a bit shitty about those opening paragraphs. [Not enough to delete them though…]  Also in one of the linked interviews she says that she “hopes she won’t be a rat much longer” – and that’s an interview she gave before the Season 3 finale had even made it to air, which made me pretty sad to read.  Forget appearing on Angel, imagine if Amy had been de-ratted in Season 4.  Imagine if Superstar was about Amy instead of Jonathan.

There is a second or two in Season 6’s Smashed – no more than that – when Buffy and Amy are catching up again (“How have you been?”  “Rat.  You?”  “Dead.”  “Oh.”) and you can, if you’re quick, delude yourself into thinking that the show is going to do something interesting with the obvious parallel it’s just set up. Willow has now not only brought Buffy back into the regular human world [and left her struggling to live and find meaning as a college drop out with a dead mother and an absent father last seen on screen about five years ago], she’s also brought Amy back into the regular human world [and left her struggling to live and find meaning as a de facto high school drop out with a presumed-dead mother and a presumably-now-absent father last mentioned about five years ago].  Surely this must be deliberate?  Well, no: the show doesn’t do anything with this idea ever again, because Marti Noxon had very different [worse] ideas for Amy’s character this season, but if you pretend it might be about do something like that it’s a pretty exciting couple of seconds.

The fact that “Amy Madison” exists as a (technically!) canon character means that I can write (or daydream about writing) fanfiction in which Willow has a friend in high school who is also a practising witch. One with a vague but miserable home life, who is secretly in love with Willow but too afraid to admit it (and so she keeps professing to be interested in men who she can’t possibly ever expect to date, either because they’re unpleasantly vile toward women or openly gay or both). And I can do that while, just about, pretending that I have not created the most embarrasingly psychologically revealing OC you ever heard about in your life.  Thanks Amy!

[kikyoupdates]

Girlfriend-For-Hire ⭑˚🦋⭑ 𝟶𝟷

yandere!ocs x f!reader

yandere, reverse harem, yandere reverse harem, original characters x fem!reader, slowburn, slowburn yandere

Hoping to try something new and earn a bit of money on the side, you join an app that lets people hire you for your dating services. The idea is pretty straightforward — you pose as the client's girlfriend for a brief period of time, and in turn, you receive payment. But you didn't foresee everyone getting so attached to you, and suddenly, they're no longer satisfied with a fabricated relationship.

story masterlist | next

“...you can do what now?”

“Hire someone to date you,” your friend, Ava, repeats. She chuckles and waves you off dismissively. “Come on, [Name]. It’s the modern age. People are always coming up with new things these days. I’m willing to bet there’s an app or website out there for practically anything.”

You blink in disbelief. Granted, there is all kinds of crazy shit going on in the world, and you’ve heard of companionship services before—like escorts or sugar baby arrangements—but to hear that something like this is trending nowadays is still undeniably a shock. 

“Here, look,” Ava gestures, pulling out her phone. “I was curious, so I downloaded the app the other day just to check out.” 

“Uh, don’t you already have a boyfriend?”

“He knows I was just browsing. I showed him too, and we scrolled through some stuff together. A lot of the profiles on here are wild,” she laughs. “It’s crazy what people advertise they’re willing to do. Get a load of this guy. He says he’s down to meet your family and make a total ass out of himself just so that he lowers your parents’ standards and the next real boyfriend you get will look way better by comparison.”

“Fucking hell,” you mutter. “I can’t tell if this is actually real, or just some new meme template.” 

“Of course it’s real! I think you’re underestimating how lonely people these days are. There’s definitely a lot of money to be made in this industry. Just look at how much people are willing to blow on their favorite streamer, even though they’ve never met them a day in their life. Dating’s gotten a lot more complicated lately, so I guess some people just want to skip past the troublesome parts and experience what it’s like to be with someone.” 

You furrow your brows. The whole thing sounds incredibly sad when you think of it that way. People would rather pay for a fabricated relationship than put in the time and effort towards building something real? Loneliness is starting to sound like an actual epidemic nowadays. 

“Well, I guess I shouldn’t judge people without understanding where they’re coming from,” you acknowledge. “It’s not like I know what they’ve been through. Times are changing and all. It sounds like this is actually starting to become pretty mainstream.” 

Ava nods chipperly. “Yep! I mean, I love my boyfriend, so I’m definitely not the target audience, but maybe it’s what some people need to gain a little boost of confidence and get back into the dating scene. I doubt everyone uses it in a romantic sense too. There are people out there that just want a bit of company every now and then. Isn’t it nice that they have someone to spend time with this way?” 

“Yeah… I guess that’s true.” 

Honestly, you’re still struggling to fully wrap your head around this. You understand the premise well enough, but you can’t really get past the part about accepting payment just to provide someone with a fabricated experience. Then again, you suppose that’s the case for most things nowadays. People are willing to spend the brunt of their earnings on in-game purchases for video games and other things that aren’t tangible in the real world, because even though they aren’t necessarily organic, it still provides them with some satisfaction. 

Long story short, it’s not up to you to decide what does or doesn’t make someone else happy, and you suppose as long as it’s executed in a professional manner, there’s nothing wrong with meeting new people this way. 

“Hey, I’ve got a great idea,” Ava suddenly perks up. “You should join this app! You’re super pretty, smart, and nice. I bet you’d have loads of guys lining up to hire you as their girlfriend!”

“Me?” You blink repeatedly, shuffling backwards the closer she leans in. “I mean, I just don’t think I’m the right person for the job. If it makes people happy, then I support it, but deep down, I worry I’d feel like I’m exploiting someone’s feelings just for a few extra bucks. Morally speaking, I’m not so sure I like the idea…” 

“It’s not exploitation,” she insists. “People know what they’re signing up for. At the end of the day, it’s a buyer-seller relationship. Someone pays for the service being advertised, and they receive it. As long as you’re not ambiguous about what you’re willing to do for the amount that you’re charging, people know what to expect. Of course, I’m sure there might be the occasional asshole here and there, but if they do anything inappropriate or violate the terms, you can report them through the app and they’ll be banned from using it.” 

You’re not quite sure how to respond to that. Some extra money would be nice. You’re a university student with all sorts of loans, so it’s not like you’ve got excess cash lying around. And it’s also true that you’ve been looking to apply for a new job lately, since your old manager was a total ass and you ended up quitting. 

Still. A girlfriend-for-hire? Someone like you? It’s just really difficult to imagine. 

“I actually think it’d be a good experience,” Ava goes on. “You’ve never really put yourself out there before. I know everyone dates at their own pace and stuff, but you shouldn’t have to be afraid. Who knows? Maybe you’ll meet some cool people and want to date them for real. And even if you don’t end up going for them, you still make some money, so either way, you’ve got nothing to lose.”

You chuckle weakly. “Yeah, I just don’t know. I feel like I’m better suited for traditional jobs. But thanks for the vote of confidence. I’m glad you think people would actually be willing to pay to date me.” 

“Girl, you seriously need to believe in yourself more,” Ava sighs. “I’m telling you, you’re a catch. But at the end of the day, it’s your call. You shouldn’t force yourself into anything if you feel uncomfortable.”

You smile and nod in agreement, and sensing your discomfort, Ava decides to change the topic.

But for some reason, you feel a twinge in your chest, and it’s hard to keep your mind from wandering.

Later that same day, you’re lounging on the couch, mouth agape, having just downloaded the app on your own phone. 

“What the hell am I doing…?” 

You tell yourself that it’s just simple curiosity. Yeah. That’s all it is. Ava piqued your interest earlier, and now you just want to scroll through in more detail to get a better sense of what kind of people use this platform. 

The app is called ‘Partner For Hire’. The name isn’t particularly inspired, you have to admit, but you suppose it communicates its point rather effectively and leaves no room for ambiguity. Ultimately, this is a transactional relationship, and it’s probably for the best that clients know what to expect. 

You can use the app as either a buyer or seller. Meaning that you can create your profile and advertise your services, or simply list yourself as a prospective client and what your hobbies and interests are. In that sense, it’s kind of similar to most dating apps, since you have to take a flattering photo to go along with whatever blurb you’re providing. Of course, just because you try to solicit someone’s services doesn’t mean there’s any guarantee they’ll accept. This is an app where you can run everything yourself, and of course the company takes a cut of your profits, rather than an agency that matches you with a client regardless of whether you want to accept the job or not. 

There’s definitely a lot of flexibility, and you can easily choose who you want to pretend to date. If someone is interested in hiring you, they submit a request to be able to contact you, and once you accept, you can message them directly and establish the terms of the dating contract, such as the length and what particular services will be provided. 

You scroll through the list of boyfriends/girlfriends being advertised on the app, and honestly, it seems like there’s a decent amount of money to be made. Of course, a lot of that comes with building a good reputation and improving your ratings and visibility so more people will want to hire you, but it actually seems like a decent amount of people are able to make a living off this sort of thing. 

You bite down on your lower lip. Should you really go ahead and just do it? Like Ava said, there’s probably not much to lose. All the transactions are managed on the app, so you can easily report people who try to skip out on paying. Clients have to link their banking and personal info, so they’d be taking on a big risk by trying to scam people. You’re sure it might happen from time to time, but based on the reviews you’ve read, the company is really good at enforcing their policies and making sure everyone gets paid.

The money seems good, and it would definitely help take some pressure off your student loans, but ultimately, the biggest thing you’re struggling with is your moral compass.

People are willing to spend money for this kind of thing, and that’s entirely their choice to make, so it’s not like you’re extorting them or anything. Still… you wonder if it’s actually okay to profit off of someone else’s loneliness. You’ve never worked the kind of job that requires you to cater directly to another person’s emotions, and it kind of freaks you out.

But maybe Ava is right. There are all sorts of people in this world. Maybe some of them are just curious to try the app out. Maybe others just want to get their families off their back by pretending like they’re dating someone for a little while. There’s no way to discern everyone’s motivations, so perhaps there’s really no point in thinking about it at all. 

Most importantly, this could be a good thing for you. Life has been stagnant recently, and it’s true that you usually hesitate to put yourself out there. You’ll never learn what you do or don’t like if you keep on avoiding everything. This could be a chance to learn a lot about other people, but also, to learn more about yourself. 

Yeah. It’s time to stop overthinking for a change and just try something new. 

Thus, feeling unusually determined, you spend the rest of the day setting up your profile (finding nice selfies was the longest part of the whole ordeal), and with a resolved huff, you post it and officially go live on the app. 

You’re not really sure what you were expecting, but needless to say, there isn’t any immediate feedback. It probably takes a while for people to stumble across your profile, and even then, there’s no guarantee they’ll want to go out with you. 

I guess I was getting worked up for no reason. Certain people might find success with this kind of thing, but it’s probably not as easy as it looks. 

You scratch your cheek, suddenly sheepish over how needlessly excited you got earlier. You’re not used to stepping out of your comfort zone, so you must have gotten a bit carried away. 

For the rest of the evening, you set your phone aside and come back to reality. You get some homework done, make dinner, and by the time you’re ready for bed, you’ve pretty much forgotten about the whole thing altogether. 

That is, until you check and see that you’ve missed a notification.

“Huh? Someone viewed my profile and wants to message me?”

You’re undeniably taken aback. Not just because it’s happening a lot sooner than you expected, but also because it means that contrary to what you first thought, people are interested in you. 

Having minimal experience when it comes to dating and romance in general, you have to admit, the thought of being viewed as desirable is immensely flattering. 

Curious to see who wants to hire your services, you click on the user’s profile.

His name is Isaac, and he’s twenty-one years old, set to complete his undergraduate studies at the end of the year. He goes to a different university than yours, thankfully, because you can’t help but feel like it would be incredibly awkward to bump into him on campus after pretending to be his girlfriend. He’s studying to become a doctor, which means he’s still got a lot of school ahead of him, but you’ve always had a lot of admiration for people who are willing to commit to their goals and work hard. 

Also, even though you don’t want to sound shallow or anything… he’s really, really attractive. 

You frown. Granted, there’s more to a person than their appearance, but based on how he comes across in his profile and what his future career is, he doesn’t strike you as the type of person who would struggle to date someone.

But again, you can never know what’s going on in a stranger’s life. And there’s no real way to find out why he decided to join the app.

Apart from speaking to him directly, of course. 

[𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐫’𝐬 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬?]

>>[𝐘𝐄𝐒]

After a momentary delay, the screen loads into a messaging interface, allowing you to see what Isaac sent you and respond to him directly.  

You stare at the messages without blinking, just taking it all in. So, there really are people like him out there, who use these apps for reasons other than seeking companionship. It sounds like he’s not too interested in dating for real, but his parents are putting a lot of pressure on him, so he just wants an escape. Honestly, you can’t blame him for it. Your parents were overbearing for the better portion of your life—even now, as an adult—so you can understand just how suffocating it gets at times.

All of a sudden, you don’t feel too bad about accepting the job. It doesn’t feel like exploitation in the slightest. In fact, you’d be helping someone resolve a frustration situation, while getting paid in the process. It actually sounds like it could be rather fulfilling. 

More importantly, you decided to be more confident and try something new. You refuse to back out now. 

You stare at the messages without blinking, just taking it all in. So, there really are people like him out there, who use these apps for reasons other than seeking companionship. It sounds like he’s not too interested in dating for real, but his parents are putting a lot of pressure on him, so he just wants an escape. Honestly, you can’t blame him for it. Your parents were overbearing for the better portion of your life—even now, as an adult—so you can understand just how suffocating it gets at times. 

All of a sudden, you don’t feel too bad about accepting the job. It doesn’t feel like exploitation in the slightest. In fact, you’d be helping someone resolve a frustration situation, while getting paid in the process. It actually sounds like it could be rather fulfilling. 

More importantly, you decided to be more confident and try something new. You refuse to back out now. 

[𝐍𝐚𝐦𝐞]:

You’re admittedly a bit nervous, especially since you want to do a good job and avoid letting him down, but mostly, you’re feeling excited. All of this is uncharted territory for you, after all. Never in a million years would you have imagined taking on a job like this. 

And you really shouldn’t have.

You don’t know it yet, but this will be the cause of many, many regrets. 

Shit. I’m starting to have second thoughts. 

Even now, you still can’t believe you’re really going through with this. After talking to Isaac and ironing out the finer details, you agreed to join him for a family gathering and pose as his girlfriend. You expected for him to have quite a few requests, but luckily, he seems pretty laid back about the whole thing. The better portion of your conversation was spent on getting your stories straight so as not to incur any suspicion, and since you’ve always been a good student and a hard worker, you promptly memorized everything there was to know. 

And now, it’s finally time to put this plan in motion. 

“Hey,” Isaac greets. “[Name], right?”

It’s the evening, since his parents are hosting a dinner party. The event is supposed to be pretty casual, but you still dressed up semi-formal in the hopes of making a good impression. He never explicitly mentioned how strict his parents are, but since they’ve been on his case about getting a girlfriend, it never hurts to go the extra mile. 

"Hi, Isaac,” you smile. “It’s so nice to meet you.” 

“You, too,” he nods. He’s considerably taller than you, and every bit as handsome as his picture suggested. Unless his personality is god-awful (which you probably would’ve picked up on after messaging him for so long), you’ve got a good feeling that most girls would be interested in him.

Still, everyone is different. He might have really high standards, or maybe he wants to focus on his studies, or perhaps it’s just a case of having never met the right person. Whatever the reason may be, his parents shouldn’t be pressuring him to date someone, and if you have the means to help him out, you’ll happily do it. 

“You look really nice,” Isaac says. He tilts his head to the side. “I hope you didn’t feel like you had to dress up to impress anyone. The most important part is that they believe I’m seeing someone so that they finally ease up a bit.” 

“Oh, I just did this for my own peace of mind,” you reassure. “I made sure to memorize everything you told me in advance, so I’m confident I can convince them that we’re the real deal. Even though this is technically my first day on the job… I promise not to let you down.” 

You blush, feeling rather flustered. The idea of being someone’s hired girlfriend is still a lot to wrap your head around, and you certainly don’t want to make empty promises, but you have every intention of giving it your best shot. Isaac is in a stressful situation, and you’re resolved to do whatever you can to fix it. 

“Can’t wait to get this over with,” Isaac sighs. He opens the passenger door and gestures for you to step inside the car. “Don’t worry. I know you might be feeling a bit uneasy, but I promise I’m not a serial killer or anything like that. I won’t hold it against you if you have 911 ready on speed dial until we get to my parents’ house.” 

“I trust you,” you insist. “I’ve heard good things about this app, and it sounds like they take safety seriously. They’ve got your information in their system, after all. Plus, I can tell that you’re a nice guy. It’s just a gut feeling.”

“I appreciate it,” he smiles. “Anyways… I guess I’ve stalled for long enough. You can probably tell that I really don’t feel like going. But the sooner I get them off my back, the better.” 

“I’ll be the best girlfriend you can ask for,” you beam. 

It’s a promise to him, but also to yourself. You are committed to taking this new job seriously, and for the rest of the evening, you will do whatever it takes to blend into the role that’s been thrust upon you. There’s no reason to get worked up. At the end of the day, all of this is pretend. It won’t be anywhere near as complicated as a real relationship.

Right?

story masterlist | next

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[krossan]

A Brief AU Explanation

I noticed that there are a lot of new followers that do know Danny Phantom, and others that the know very little. I am also aware that I haven't fully explained - maybe NOT in too much detail - the "story" and plots of my AU. You only have the ideas that I've been telling of this story through illustrations.

This AU is all about reconnecting with one self, with Jazz and Dan as the main two of this particular game.

Jazz remains as the same character that is portrayed through the OG show. She has always been the psychology enthusiast of the group, the one that cares for others and help with whatever she can. For her, others come first. First being her family.

On the other hand, we have Dan, an alternate entity of Danny’s ghost half and Vlad’s. A new form of entity that lost his humanity. For him to show any form of emotion is null.

Jazz involvement in this has to do with her putting everyone else first and then herself, and being keen to the study of the human-psyche, and now ghost-psyche, she secretly partakes to the role of Dan’s therapist. This was kept in secret from the rest of her friends and Danny until she can gain more control over Dan.

This, of course, prove to be a VERY difficult task. With her having to hide her constant fears when facing that “particular someone”: he could go on a rampage, have uncontrollable outbursts, cause havoc, and that he could turn against her any day/time without any remorse. She knows this, but she also knows that deep down, her little brother is still there. She’s looking to rekindle that part of him again. Of course, never knowing at what extent this could go.

And this, apparently started to bear fruit, although at a slow pace. As Jazz stood closer and closer to him, she understood that he stayed alone his entire life, and after losing everyone he cared, his violent actions were his significance of showing the world "hurting". The hurt he have been caring so many years. Now he has that second chance. To “live” a new life and Jazz wants to help him out.

With this new information, each time Jazz got close to him, Dan, instead of seeing her as an obnoxious-human-parasite, he slowly starts bonding with her. His interest increasing each day he is with her and grows more comfortable being around her (something Dan originally despised).

***

Part of this AU, enrolls on a particular context that the ghost of a halfa is sentient. The original show as proven this*. When Danny’s ghost has been separated, his ghost has a mind of his own, but when staying together, human-ghost, the consciousness of the halfa acts as one. *Episodes in question: What You Want, Identity Crisis, The Ultimate Enemy

This part that the ghost plays on the known halfas is a mayor plot point from this AU. Let me explain my concept briefly:

This roll that the ghost is part of the halfa is the one that caries the power of the wielder (human). The human can transform into the ghost and vice versa. The ghost powers remain within the ghost half. The human half acts as a vessel/host to the ghost half.

All living things have the instinct of survival. And on this case, the ghosts would do ANYTHING to keep their host safe as they are the means of a linked connection human-ghost. Not unlike the rest of non-halfa- ghosts that their link/host relies on the Ghost Zone -since they no longer have a corporeal body, the vessel for their survival is ectoplasmic energy, the one that emanates from the GZ.

***

Since Dan is no longer connected to a human, he became a full-ghost. An entity that merged from two ghost halfas. He can sustain himself alone, but strangely enough, he building a bond with Jazz, it rekindled what Jazz intended, but in an unusual way. Jazz intention was to try and reconnect Dan with his long-lost humanity. Even if he didn’t have a human half, both his ghosts may have some little information stored deep within of what that used to feel like. And even though that started to give results, the ghost also retained that of his original purpose: Protect the host.

And as the bond Dan and Jazz grew more and more, unknown to them, it caused a physical manifestation: a white streak formed in Jazz’s hair. And even if this came up as a surprise to Jazz, she later discovered that this manifestation was much more than just physical.

Dan rekindled his humanity but he, unknowingly, intertwined Jasmine’s humanity to his. Her humanity is part of him. Jasmine’s emotions have an impact on him. Whatever she feels, he can sense it, let them be good or bad ones.

They both are this new form of halfa, both human and ghost are separate life forms, but from the ghost side -Dan’s perspective- Jazz is acting as his human half. His host. That’s is why his instincts respond to protect her at all costs.

No. This new form of a halfa representation doesn't mean Jazz has ghost powers. The one with that power is Dan. This bond is more of a psychic link.

 (i.e. In European folklore, you “could” say Dan is Jasmine’s "familiar", although Jazz is not considered to be a witch, but imagine the possibilities of this small plot causing people or ghosts to think Jazz is a witch… idk… random ideas)

This is why Dan is more sympathetic towards Jazz and why their bond is very important.

______________

It's worth pointing out that I don't have a specific name for this AU, like many people do when they create these stories. And NO. Please refrain from saying this is a romantic relationship. It is a sibling/platonic relationship.

[novantinuum]

Steven's Breakdown Was Inevitable From the Very Beginning

I feel like the thing that fucks me up the most about Steven Q. Universe and how well conceived he is as a character is that the fundamental building blocks of why he reached his breaking point in SU: Future were laid out as clear as day in the span of legit only the first four episodes of the original show. The writing was literally always on the wall that future him would struggle with matters of self worth and identity in relationship to the others around him.

Let's take a look:

Gem Glow

"Awesome! What are these things?"

Foundational Trauma #1: Steven's home is always either under threat or actively being wrecked by antagonistic forces/beings, and he constantly copes with this by pushing down his fear in favor of a curiosity and silver linings based mindset.

Look at his initial shock when he opens the door and gets tackled by one of these things, and then his response when one of them spits acid:

The kid's freaked the hell out about all this, and while I do think there's a part of Steven that genuinely IS curious about what these lil critters are, I think he's subconsciously using that curiosity as a way to distract himself from his own fears and anxieties. This is Steven actively learning how to ignore the deeper problems in favor of emoting a facade to the others in his life that he can totally handle himself in scary situations like these.

The underlying reason why is incredibly apparent, when you look at the example from the next episode-

Laser Light Canon

"I don't know what a magic lady like her ever saw in a plain old dope like me..."

Genuinely- from the bottom of my heart- I think the above quote from Greg is a moment where his own insecurities around the Gems actually rubbed off on Steven.

At this point in time, Steven may be living with the Gems... but he hasn't started to harness any of his powers at all, so in his own head he might as well be the same as his dad- another human, just one who happens to have a gem! But the way Greg talks about himself... given Steven was living with him in the van for years before moving in to the beach house, he had to have heard negative self-talk from his dad like this before.

And then there's the rest of the Crystal Gems... always speaking of Rose with such reverence as if she were an all-powerful goddess... and Steven can't help but look back at himself, and his gem that won't work... the gem that the others still identify as Rose's...

"Your gem-! You have Rose's gem!"

And maybe he starts to wonder if- without any working powers- he's just a plain ol' dope like his Dad, too.

"Please work... Unlock! Activate! Go! Please-!! Everyone's counting on you, you can't just be useless!"

Foundational Trauma #2: Steven has Rose's gem, and as such, is constantly living under the silent expectation to live up to a standard that he simply cannot ever hope to achieve, because he doesn't KNOW her and he never will.

I want to highlight one of Steven's expressions while his dad is talking about Rose- look at that sad look. My god, I just wanna hug him. This is the expression of a child who has already come to terms with the fact that his only relationship with his mom is through the rose tinted stories that other people tell him about her.

Cheeseburger Backpack

So. Steven has learned so far that he needs to push down his feelings and emote a false veneer of cheer and bravery even when he's afraid, because the rest of the people in his life have expectations and hopes for him due to the legacy of his parentage and he can't bear the thought of letting them down. (And in a sad way, at this point "letting them down" literally just means... being an ordinary human boy. I believe Steven at this stage of the show is flat out scared to be human, because to be human is to fail at being a Gem, and no amount of love and sacrifice in the name of humanity in the seasons to come could've ever saved him from the fundamental fact that the wedge between him and this whole half of his being was already drawn long before the events of season 1 even started. But I digress.)

Let's see where we go from there. Let's check out Steven's first "mission." Or as Pearl puts it about 35 episodes later, his first "test."

"Yeah... they can't all be winners."

This episode is tinted with a little bit of tragedy for me on rewatch, because I genuinely do think the Gems handled the situation as well as they could've. They were supportive of Steven's successful ploys, and (for the most part) responded with grace when he majorly blundered and left the Goddess Statue at home. The main problem, however, is that Steven has already developed a bit of a complex about impressing the three of them-

Foundational Trauma #3: Even when they claim otherwise, Steven has convinced himself that affection from the Gems is transactional, and that when he messes up he's not truly a part of the Crystal Gems.

Of course we the audience know this isn't true- I mean, hell, Amethyst even said as much in episode one after her slip-up ("and you're fun to have around, even if your gem IS useless!")... that the Crystal Gems wouldn't be the same without him. But Steven... the poor kid is a complicated little guy living a complicated life, and whether they intended it or not, the language used they've used around him thus far has not backed up their attempts at fully embracing him, human parentage and all.

Thus, Steven just spends the entire episode wracked with anxiety trying to find creative non-power using ways to make the mission easier so he can convince them he's useful to have around.

Look how nervous he gets even when all three of them are visibly and vocally supportive of his presence here:

This is the face of a boy who feels like he's under constant judgement and scrutiny from those around him.

Blessedly, viewing this episode in isolation, he experiences a brief moment of mental respite where he finally accepts the Gems' encouragement and agrees that his ideas 'can't all be winners,' but this lesson does not stick for him moving forward. A shame, really.

Together Breakfast

"What's the matter, Steven?" "I wanted us all to have breakfast together, so I made Together Breakfast! But everyone keeps leaving..." "Oh, that's nice..."

Taken in context with what we've learned already in the last three episodes, Steven's desperation to spend quality time with the Gems here and his sadness that they keep leaving him alone doesn't just exist within a vacuum. He spends the whole morning watching them shuffle in and out of the temple, or come back from missions he wasn't invited on, and with the disastrous result of the LAST mission he went on probably fresh in his mind it's not hard to understand why this bothers him.

Foundational Trauma #4: Steven internalizes that the price of "not being useful" is that the Gems actively ignore him, meaning that the only way to guarantee their attention is to work as hard as he can to become a stronger member of the team.

I know this screenshot is usually used as a lighthearted meme, but I wanted to include it because I think it's a good example of how Steven's intense desire to impress permeates every facet of his personality at times. Just LOOK at how desperate he is to make Garnet laugh at his joke, to be the one that's at very least "fun to have around," as Amethyst put it in episode one.

The Gems do eventually drop what they're doing to spend time with Steven by the conclusion of this episode, but this only comes after Steven shows his growing strength and "proves" himself by saving their butts from the breakfast monster.

If he successfully gained their attention in literally any other way he might've come away from this episode with a different lesson, but no. Instead, his fears were proven true- the Gems value strength and utility, and if he's not exhibiting that, then what use is he to them?

These fears of his can be seen weaving throughout the foundational fabric of the entire show, but I think Steven lays out what he sees as his "stakes" in the clearest way possible in the episode 'An Indirect Kiss.'

"But- if I don't have powers, then I can't hang out with Amethyst, or Garnet, o-or Pearl, and- I-I can't go on missions!"

And these same insecurities even rear their ugly head as late as the movie.

"I can't believe this... for the first time in years, everyone's in danger, everybody needs me, and- I'm useless!"

Powers = Utility = Worth = Other's love, for Steven. Everything is transactional to the end, which is a hilarious double standard he's set for himself when he's made his reputation as the kid who always listens and encourages and gives others a chance to change, no matter their messy history with him.

__

So let's recap and restate those foundational traumas from Steven's perspective.

One: The only way to cope when your life is constantly under threat is to bury the damage and pretend to be fine.

Two: Everyone expects you to live up to the standards of someone you're not.

Three: The Gems only love you when you're of use to them.

Four: If you ever stop being useful, the Gems won't want anything more to do with you.

In sum, Steven's habit of burying his feelings for the benefit of others was there from the very beginning, not just since 'The Test.'

Those unreachable standards he felt so daunted and intimidated by all his life were the ones set by Rose, at first... but over the course of the series, the dynamic of this shifted. As Rose's influence fell into the background, Steven's rose into the front. And so it's with great irony that- by the time of Steven Universe: Future, the expectations this exhausted, worn down teenager is fighting to once again achieve are the ones HE set for himself. Many of young Steven's selfless actions during the war are quite admirable when analyzed in isolation, but almost none of them are sustainable. He set himself on fire just to save the world, but teen Steven is genuinely unable to see this for what it is yet- as a tragic sacrifice of his own childhood. You can't burn your own ends for others forever, not at all. His breakdown was simply inevitable.

When it comes to the interconnected beliefs three and four, these are exactly why the ultimate confrontation at the end of I Am My Monster HAD to be one fueled by selfless love. Steven is at his absolute lowest at this point- he's everything he fears he's become, trapped in a form that's nearly incapable of reason. He's big and angry and spiky because that's a part of the facade- because a part of him WANTS to scare the Gems away, wants to be left alone forever, believing this the fate he deserves as price for his misdeeds.

In this form, by his own definitions he is NOT useful to the Crystal Gems at all.

But they don't care.

Because it never WAS about Steven's 'usefulness' to them, they simply love him for being Steven.

With this in mind, the conclusion of Steven Universe: Future wasn't just a salve to teen Steven's immediate struggles, it was a salve to the foundational insecurities that have been plaguing him his entire life.

And hopefully... from this point on... his family's shows of love and encouragement will be enough to finally convince Steven that he's more than worth their time...

No matter what path the future leads him on, and no matter what form he takes.

[felassan]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard info compilation Post 4

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [another post]

Post is under a cut due to length.

There is a lot of information coming out right now about DA:TV from many different sources. This post is just an effort to compile as much as I can in one place, in case that helps anyone. Sources for where the information came from have been included. Where I am linking to a social media user’s post, the person is either a dev, a Dragon Age community council member or other person who has had a sneak peek at and played the game. nb, this post is more of a ‘info that came out in snippets from articles and social media posts’ collection rather than a ‘regurgitating the information on the official website or writing out what happened in the trailer/gameplay reveal’ post. The post is broken down into headings on various topics. A few points are repeated under multiple headings where relevant. Where I am speculating without a source, I have clearly demarcated this. if you notice any mistakes in this post, please tell me.

Character Creation

BioWare confirmed that even if you make your Rook a short king, the team has done work to ensure animations fit any character build [source]

"Dragon Age's character creator has seen a massive glow-up" [source]. "The volume of choices you get here are frankly insane. As Epler noted, “you could spend forever here,” and he’s not kidding." [source] The art and graphics teams spent a lot of time trying to make hair look amazing [source: the Discord]

In CC we can customise our "bulge size" [source]

Some more detail on the new lighting options to see how Rook looks like in CC when you make them: you can view them in "blazing forest sunshine versus the glare of an underground temple" [source]

"newly mobile, extra-hairy hair" [source]

Faction choice has statistical boons. For example, Shadow Dragon Rook deals extra damage to Venatori blood cultists [source]

Faction choice basically determines why Rook has been called to help in the fight against Solas [source]

All pre-determined character models in CC can be adjusted [source]

You can make a really tall dwarf if you want [source]

"Setting your previous world state is fully integrated into the character creator for Veilguard" [source: the Discord]

Inquisitor appearance will be re-created, there is no way to carry their appearance from DA:I into the game [source: the Discord]

Classes for Rook are not restricted in the sense that you can play any almost class, lineage and faction combination that you want. For example, a mage Rook can be a Crow [source: the Discord] (Fel note: it sounded like Rook cannot be a magic-wielding dwarf, even though the exception of Harding now exists) (Fel note: there is a mage Crow in one of the books)

Story and lore

Here is another article which refers to Rook as "the Rook" [source]

The story is set "9-10 years from DA:I and about 8 years from Trespasser" [source: the Discord]

They have been tracking Solas for "a while. Something else you’re gonna learn about…" [source]

The game does not use the Keep [source]

Shadow Dragon is the faction background with the most in-game reactivity (e.g. from other characters' dialogue) during the prologue section of the game, due to the fact that the prologue is in Minrathous and the Shadow Dragons are a Tevinter-based faction [source]

"I also saw a big moment after the gameplay trailer ends that I can't talk about" [source]

During the more narrative-heavy dialogue choices, "the game will also give a bit of context on what you're about to choose, but doesn't go as far as explaining the exact consequences or precisely what will happen thereafter" [source] "the game shows you how you’ll go about the choice, but it doesn’t tell you the consequence of that choice". [source]

"The game is bringing back Dragon Age 2s dialogue system, which was tone-based and resulted in its protagonist Hawke falling into one of three different personality states. You have three general tones in a conversation: kind, humorous, or aggressive, with slight variations depending on the situation" [source]

"Venatori blood cultists" [source]

"The whole game has the makings of another Suicide Mission [ME2], given that you are up against a god with the ability to collapse dimensions" [source]

"Choices and consequences". "Now, it seems you can see the effects of your choices like never before, and this time, they marry that choice with incredible visuals" [source]

In the bar when you're trying to get information in the opening, if you choose to fight it out and the barbrawl ensues, you then have to run from the pursuers in the bar [source]

A key concern of the developers when creating the environments was to make “a world worth saving" [source]

The prologue is quite linear but there are additional paths you can follow to find additional loot [source]

In the opening section of the game there is a dock which has been attacked and the soldiers that were there have been killed, "but rather than seeing this passively, we walked through the aftermath and had to interact with the scene to piece it all together" [source]

The tone of the gameplay video is a good indicator of the tone of the rest of the game [source]. On the tone: "dark fantasy" [source]. horror & gore is back along with DA's classic dark elements [source]

Tevinter Nights is a better tone indicator for the game than the original reveal/character trailer. Ghil Dirthalen: "Tevinter Nights has felt the most 'DAV' to me" [source]. The gameplay reveal video is the best indicator for the tone of the game (vs the character one) [source]. there is still messy dark shit in the game [source]

Tonally the game is closest to Tevinter Nights and DA:O [source]

Ghil Dirthalen: "[as] one of those unfortunate souls who has latched onto a media world so hard: This game is for me. For the hardcore DA lore nerds, I've been secretly screaming about things I saw for MONTHS now" [source]

The game is true to the DA stories we know and love [source]

Characters, companions, romance

You can choose to engage in companions' own storylines as you progress or ignore them entirely [source]

You will often have to make dialogue choices that will affect how your various companions treat you [source]

Neve is quick-witted [source], measured and elegant [source]

In the opening, you interact with the companions as you move through Minrathous. "your choices during these interactions will determine who goes on portions of the mission with you, along with how “pleased” they are with the answers." [source]

On Varric and Harding: "Instantly the two felt like they’d never been away and avoided the trap of being parodies or fanfiction versions of themselves" [source]

Solas' eyes were always purple hh [source] (yes!)

Gameplay, presentation, performance etc

Some enemies have additional shields that are weak to ranged attacks [source]

When asked about if the war table from DA:I returned, John Epler said "There is a table. Now, whether it works the same way as the table in the previous game..." [source]

Once you get passed a certain point in the game, it opens up dramatically, however it is not an openworld game and they wanted to make sure that all the content mattered and was a more structured, sculpted experience for the player. There is some exploration, some opportunities to get off the beaten path, and some spaces that are fairly wide [source]

The button to press to bring up the skill wheel is RB or R1 (depending on what controller you're using) [source]

"You'll also have access to two skills or spells for each of your two companions that you can command. For a more seamless, uninterrupted combat experience, you can also assign these skills to shortcuts (such as holding the left trigger and hitting the X button) to quickly use them" [source]

"The game is bringing back Dragon Age 2s dialogue system, which was tone-based and resulted in its protagonist Hawke falling into one of three different personality states. You have three general tones in a conversation: kind, humorous, or aggressive, with slight variations depending on the situation" [source]

"booting Fade demons into pits" [source]

"BioWare have revised Dragon Age's art direction to make character models a little more consistent with the series' lovely Tarot-inspired menu art. Flesh is ruddy to the point of painterly; facial features and bodily proportions are thicker and more striking, as though the characters had been cut from clay" [source]

The 3 specs for Warrior are Reaper (has lifesteal/stealing health from enemies, and other freaky powers, does big damage), Slayer (can wield the biggest blade, big swords, big damage) or Champion, which is tanky, shield-using and Paladin like [source] [source]

There are quick-recover prompts [source]

You can roll through puddles of incoming AOE [source]

There are ziplines between some levels levels [source] (Fel note: just like in As We Fly... )

There are also slidey hills to slide down between some sections [source]

There are still some Hinterland-type areas designed for exploration [source]

We can do some home base management to our home base [source] (Fel note: this refers to The Lighthouse, detail in a previous post)

Camera placement is quite zoomed out [source]

Where Rogues have 'momentum', Warriors have 'rage' and Mages 'mana'. When a warrior spends rage in the ability wheel it triggers more powerful attacks. this has been referred to as a build-and-spend mechanic. this system resource gates your use of more powerful skills and is built by getting stuck in [source]. Momentum for Rogues is built by landing hits without taking any [source]

There are big glowing environmental cues for picking up loot or replenishing health potions [source]

"Epler noted that The Veilguard will not be an open-world experience like Inquisition, and instead will have large spaces to explore with quests littered throughout. This allayed my early concerns that they would course correct too hard from the oft-maligned open areas of Inquisition" [source]

Melee and ranged attacks can be charged up [source]

It sounds like there is an option to have greater guidance on when enemies are attacking [source]

The community council gave a lot of notes on the game's art direction to BioWare (gave feedback to the devs) that they were told and shown were changed from the first reveal/character trailer, these made it into the gameplay trailer [source]

The community council asked about having an arachnophobia mode, though they can't guarantee this was implemented [source]

"You’re encouraged to explore and grind for stronger weapons and gear, so your stats and cosmetics improve the further you get into the game" (in the sense that you’ll be rewarded for hard work) [source, two]

Follower information such as cooldowns and health will be visible on the HUD [source: the Discord]

There is a "quick cast" option if you prefer not to use the wheel, should be a chorded action using a controller [source: the Discord]

On PC you can play with keyboard and mouse or controller [source: the Discord]

An accessibility option is the ability to make auto-targeting stronger or weaker depending on your preference [source: the Discord]

The game will have DLSS support at launch [source: the Discord]

Re: hard drives, the game can be played using an HDD, they would recommend an SSD though for the optimal experience [source: the Discord]

There are lots of different interface options you can play with, e.g. combat text size, opacity, when to display health bars [source: the Discord]

Other

The leak from last year or whenever it was (the one that leaked screenshots and a gif from the game) was mainly a lot of outdated stuff and didn't really represent even the early version some community council members had played [source, two]. It was not leaked by a member of the community council, but by a member of another focus group [source]

The community council were given the chance to play the game twice, once in Fall 2022 and a year later in 2023 [source]

There is no information as yet regarding when pre-orders will be open [source: the Discord]

BioWare are hoping to at the very least have the very "best of" the Discord dev Q&A featured on social media and potentially in a blog [source: the Discord]

[☕ found this post or blog interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[legendaryvermin]

So my home ttrpg group is between longform games right now, and I have been planning to bring a bunch of games to them this weekend as options for what we might play next. However, I have been trying to figure out how to talk about the games in a way that doesn't rely as much on me explaining the vibes to them.

I know that people have a bunch of qualitative categories for how they explain games, but I find the idea of saying things like Dark Fantasy OSR, or Lesbian Goofball PBTA less helpful when talking about how games actually play, especially when two games in the same category are like, wildly different in the way they use their frameworks.

So I invented a 6 axis, 1 to 5 star rating scale for TTRPGs that you are free to borrow when talking to groups, or whatever.

TTRPG 5 Star Rating Matrix

Width

What is the scope of this game? Is it narrowly about one thing or does it encompass many types of play? (Credit to friend of the blog @ostermad-blog for this one, they came up with it from my draft)

Weight

How much cognitive load does the player need to bear? Do rules often need to be referenced verbatim? Can those rules fit on a handout?

Wargame

Is the player expected to apply tactical acumen? Is movement tracked tightly or loosely? Does a bad build punish a player?

Writers Room

How much are players expected to make narrative choices and drive the story without the rules scaffolding them? Does this game fall apart without excellent improvisational storytellers?

(Prep)Work

Does this game require a lot of pre-planning by the facilitator? Are there intricate systems to attend to outside of table play? Can I put in the same amount of time as other players and still have everyone leave happy? 

Whimsy

Expected tone of the game. Does this game have difficult thematic elements baked in? Is the core subject or role in the game high or low risk?

Here are some games I know well and how I calibrated them:

I have breakdowns of what each star rating means below the cut if you're curious. Happy Gaming!

Width

⭐ - As written, the game has basically one mode of play, or one thematic core that it meditates on. May have phases, but textural difference is minimal.

⭐⭐ - As written, there are at least two modes of play, but the scope of that play is highly thematically focused or highly dependent on using the game’s own lore. Might have only one kind of character (e.g. Mech Pilot) that it supports. Has limited tools outside of the primary mode of play.

⭐⭐⭐ - Has a variety of modes of play, but may be rigid in their execution. Might encompass multiple kinds of characters (e.g. Doctor, Lawyer, fighter) or character options. The narratives that this game tells within its setting are narrowed, a three word description tells you what kind of stories it can tell with consistency.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Loose framework, but with some kind of thematic grounding. Describing the framework in 3 words doesn’t tell you the kind of stories that the game tells (e.g. Dark Fantasy, Star Wars Romp). 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- As written, this game is designed in such a way that it doesn’t put specific limits on what sorts of stories that it is meant to tell. It might ask players to define abilities or stats for themselves. The Facilitator is going to pitch a thematic grounding on top of the rules set.

One Star Examples: For the Queen, Dialect, Honey Heist Five Star Examples: Fate Core, Savage Worlds, GURPS

Weight

⭐ - It is reasonable for a player to be able to recite the rules from memory. The game may be prompt based, or driven by a flow of rules that are read aloud as played.

⭐⭐ - Players can hold most of the most important information about the game in their heads, with a page or less of rules reference needed to play smoothly. This reference could all fit neatly on the character sheet if one is present.

⭐⭐⭐ - Everything a player needs to know about the game is visible on less than 3 sheets of reference. Players are more or less expected to know exactly how their own abilities work in precise detail, and are unlikely to make a mistake in executing them.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Players make extensive use of multiple reference sheets to keep rules moving smoothly. No external tools are needed, but players memorizing the details of all of their abilities is taxing. 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Players and facilitators will prefer to make extensive use of external tools or reference to keep play moving smoothly. Expecting a player to have the exact details of their abilities memorized is not reasonable.

One Star Examples: For the Queen, Stewpot, Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands Five Star Examples: Dungeons and Dragons 3-5e, Lancer, Edge of the Empire

Wargame

⭐ - As written, this game does not treat combat as mechanically different from any other aspect of play, or does not include narrative violence at all.

⭐⭐ - While players may engage in combat, it is minimally different from regular play. There may be tools or abilities for players to use to conduct a fight, but the texture of those fights is thematic, not mechanical. Narrative and consequence drive the action, not hit points.

⭐⭐⭐ - As written, combat has its own set of rules. This game may have some elements of buildcrafting, but either it is difficult to build something that doesn’t work, or the player may meaningfully invest in other modes of play and still find a commensurate level of satisfaction. If combat occurs, spacing is kept in mind, but is tracked in relative terms (range bands) or highly simplified (zone based combat).

⭐⭐⭐⭐ - This game has buildcrafting that is somewhat mandatory if players wish to survive a fight, but there is still a meaningful choice in choosing a non-combat role. It may use a grid or a spacing system to help players visualize the combat. Fights are driven by mechanics, not by narrative.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- To enjoy this game, players must spend time buildcrafting. If a player’s build is suboptimal, there may be significant parts of the intended experience that will either feel tedious, or that the player will not have meaningful access to. This game is played on a grid.

One Star Examples: Wanderhome, Dialect, Belonging Outside Belonging Five Star Examples: Lancer, Dungeons and Dragons 3-5e, Valor

Writers Room

⭐ - Players in this game are not expected to provide much in the way of narrative substance. Story is something that is driven by external input or tools, and players are there to imagine and react. The player need not separate the self from the character they play in any meaningful way.

⭐⭐ - The mechanics of this game drive most of the narrative, or else the narrative is set for the players by an external source or player. Players are encouraged to play optimally rather than dramatically, but do have room for expressing the identity of their character within the game’s mechanical frameworks.

⭐⭐⭐ - While the game does provide strong scaffolding to tell a story, the players present are expected to drive the story within those frameworks. The game’s systems create and resolve conflict on their own, but works best when the players are willing to choose the dramatically interesting option even if it mechanically non-optimal.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ - The game provides some mechanical tools that create and resolve drama, but there is a significant expectation that the players are buying into and driving the game’s thematic concepts. Players are the ones deciding what the scenes should be and when to end them, but mechanics still help determine outcomes.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- The players are expected to drive the narrative at all times. Tools for deciding what scenes to do and when to end them are limited, optional, or vague. There is no meaningful scaffolding that creates conflict or resolution, it is incumbent on those present to manifest those things.

One Star Examples: Alice is Missing, Ribbon Drive, For the Queen Five Star Examples: Wanderhome, Systemless RP

(Prep)Work

⭐ - Facilitators are not expected to do work outside the time at the table. All rules can be read while the game is played. No memorization is needed.

⭐⭐ - This game expects the facilitator to have read the rules in advance, but the rules are so few that they can be run from a single reference sheet. At times, the facilitator must think about and potentially advance and adjust the narrative of the game behind the scenes. Prep is qualitative; answering questions about where the narrative is going to go, who will be there etc. The game can be run smoothly predominantly as improv.

⭐⭐⭐ - This game expects the facilitator to not only know the rules, but to imagine scenarios where the group must play. However, the scope of the scenario design is limited and qualitative. It takes a bit of pondering and perhaps a sketch and a few words of notes. Alternatively, the facilitator must design simple foes or track a simple background system. The work is trivial, and can be done with a bit of time before session.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ - The facilitator of this game is expected to have run systems between games, or created usable maps or scenarios. Generally, games at this level have some reduced wargaming component. The facilitator might need to engage in enemy design, but the work is limited or imminently reusable. The work is non-trivial, and failing to do it will somewhat impact the quality of play.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- The facilitator of this game puts in significant time between sessions engaging in game design activities. They are expected to plan narratives, write NPCs, draw maps, run significant background systems, and design enemies and combat encounters. The work is significant outside of play, and failing to do it beforehand will result in a worse table experience.

One Star Examples: For the Queen, Alley-Oop, Lasers and Feelings Five Star Examples: Lancer, D&D 3-5e, Stars Without Number, Edge of the Empire

Whimsy

⭐ - This game’s thematic core is considered dark, taboo, or difficult, and separating the game’s mechanical features from this subject matter is next to impossible. Games with horror elements almost certainly fit within this category. These games encourage extensive pre-play safety talks.

⭐⭐ - This game is designed to look at dark subject matter, but doesn’t expect the player to spend all of their time there. Players explore difficult topics, but may get to choose what topics to explore, or when to explore them. Games with political messaging/commentary tend to fit this category. These games encourage pre-play safety talks.

⭐⭐⭐ - This game may have dark aesthetics, but doesn’t enforce them mechanically. Alternatively, there are mechanics that address difficult topics in broad strokes, but players are given leeway in the rules with how any difficult topics are approached. These games may encourage safety talks. 

⭐⭐⭐⭐ - This game may have the option to explore dark topics, but none of the mechanics are tied to such topics. This game may have violence in its aesthetics, but players may choose to adjust the aesthetics at the table to suit their comfort. These games tend not to talk about safety in their text.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- This game is designed to focus on thematic material that is considered to be relatively safe. The game is unlikely to tread into violence or trauma without effort.

One Star Examples: Trophy Dark, Dungeon Bitches, Vampire the Masquerade Five Star Examples: Honey Heist, Princess World, Beach Episode

The system here isn't about what's good or bad, to be clear. I think there are good and bad games at every level of these categories, but when I think about what my game group is good at and comfy with, I don't think we go in for things at like the 5 end of the Writers Room scale. It's too much work, and most of them aren't pro improvisers.

Similarly, if we play another game that is a 4 or 5 on the PrepWork category, I don't have time to run it these days. So this helps me make practical choices about our next game.

[mx-pastelwriting]

RDR2 HC - Running away together & what would it take

RDR2 x GN! Reader

Summary: Running away together & what would it take for them to.

Warnings: Angst, Fluff, Established Relationship, Running away, Some Happy Endings

Characters: Dutch van der Linde, Arthur Morgan, Javier Escuella, Charles Smith, Bill Williamson, Hosea Matthews, John Marston, Josiah Trelawny

Dutch van der Linde

- A hard task in itself, prying Dutch away from his power over the gang, it's an almost impossible task. Though echoing Hosea's words to lie low would earn you some time in having a voice over Micah's, he would consider it.

- Nightly talks cuddled up in his arms, imagining life away from the one you have aloud; he entertains it, but not without saying some doubtful scenarios. Having to change your ways, almost manipulating him into taking that life as a real thing.

- Never leaving his side, hearing every thought, not giving Micah a chance to talk to him in private, in turn driving you crazy. Doing anything for that good life, leaving your intentions to change just to get your Dutch safe.

- Every day drained you; all that work had finally caught up to you. Slowly, you lost faith as the gang came into more trouble, making you come to a realization. You made your choice.

- A night of loving Dutch one more time, cuddled up into his arms, then having to leave them. Leaving him in a deep sleep with a final kiss. Taking your horse he had gotten for you a long time ago and what little clothes you had left from all the years of running. Finally leaving in the cold night, not daring to look back.

A year had gone by, and still you dreamt about that day and its many outcomes, but all you could do was smile at the memory of his messed hair loving him for that final night. Telling yourself over and over that it spared the both of you, there was no use to keep trying. Leaving to build your own life, living out your dream that you tried so hard to convince Dutch of so many times.

He would have loved it, just the two of you; he just couldn't see it. Getting up from your bed, dressing up for the day, and having to live off of the small land you fought to get months after. Making your way to the kitchen, readying breakfast before your day of work, but a knock interrupts you from the task.

Grabbing your old weapon, hoping it still worked, then walking slowly to the door, pointing the weapon from your hip. Upon opening the door, your mind and body went blank. Dutch was standing at your front door, looking like shit. "Dear," he says, voice cracking. Even after all this time, he charmed his way into your heart, igniting your love again.

-

Arthur Morgan

- You both have always talked about that kind of life and what it would be like, but it always ended as a joke and never as something to look forward to. Until you really thought about it, hearing Hosea's story of him and his wife fed into your dream.

- Bring it up to Arthur one night, making sure he took it seriously, not knowing what to say, only he couldn't leave the gang just like that. Over time, you pushed the matter, and he always listened but never said anything.

- Being with the gang for a long time, you watched it change as Dutch came into more trouble. Finally, it hit a breaking point when Arthur went missing from the meeting with Colm O'Driscoll. The camp had to calm you down, but it didn't stop the tears every night, fighting your mind to just leave, but it turned to worry that if he'd come back, you needed to be there for him.

- After days of the gang searching, you finally spotted Arthur's house with him on top, thinking you had just gone crazy. Hearing his groans of pain, you ran to him, crying aloud, causing the camp to spring into action, with some having to hold you back so the rest could work.

- After an hour of working on him finally letting you see him, never leaving his side as you waited for him to wake. Hosea brought you something to eat every day, knowing what you had been going through.

Snapping from your exhausted state as a groan came from Arthur, watching as he stirred from his rest. Tears once again spilled from your eyes while grabbing his hand and placing it to your cheek. Waking fully, he whispered your name, running a hand through his hair earning a hum from him as he rested his eyes once again.

"I thought you were dead," you whispered, kissing his hand earning another hum. "Okay," he whispered weakly, making you look at him meeting his blue-green eyes. Taking a minute for you to understand, you nodded, "Tonight." You responded, getting only a weak nod back. Quickly getting up to then plant a kiss on his lips before preparing your leave.

-

Javier Escuella

- Being so loyal to Dutch, as soon as you'd bring that idea of life up, he'd tell you of the time he tried to find that kind of life, with it ending with Dutch saving him, in turn needing to repay Dutch with his life. A life for a life.

- Still, of course, you stayed with him, but it didn't stop you from trying. From mentioning small things, such as telling him to look at the homesteads as you passed them or talking to couples who owned their land, hearing the stories of home life making sure Javier was near you to hear.

- Wishing aloud to love him behind closed doors, but he brought up the suggestion of a hotel quickly you shot it down with wishes of loving him in your own home. Unknown to you, it wasn't till the end that he would change his mind.

- Seeing as he buddied up with Micah breaking your heart, seeing what Micah did to Dutch, there would be no way he would sink his claws into your Javier. Realizing it even more after hearing Arthur's words confirming your Javiers changed, solidifying your thoughts. Having to do the only thing that was left.

- Grabbing a bag, you started to stuff your things into it. Hearing footsteps come closer, you didn't look up, knowing who it was. When asking what you were doing, you told him you were leaving him. Shocked, he begged, but you gave it to him in the end, giving him an ultimatum. You or Dutch.

Pain washed over his face. He looked to the floor, hoping it would have the answer, but you continued packing. "Amor," he begged, but you kept your back to him as much as it pained you. "I can't do this, Javi," you say, tears stinging the brim of your eyes. "Tell me," he says, putting a hand on yours.

"All of this, you hate Micah. What changed?" You asked, making him look away, but you brought his face back softly with your hand. Cupping his face, "I know you see it. He's not well. I'm not going to stick around anymore, Javi," you say, turning to zip up your bag.

"It's your choice," you say before grabbing a few more things. "I can't," he says weakly. "Okay," saying your final words before walking to the horses, putting your things onto yours before hopping onto your horse.

Taking a last look at the camp, not caring who chose to look. Hearing as the horse next to you stirred, looking to see Javier hop on his with his belongings behind him. Smiling at each other, you turned away from camp, taking off quickly to start your new life.

-

Charles Smith

- Having been in the gang for a small amount of time, he had never shut down the idea, though never did he start to make plans on it. Figuring it was from his friendships with Arthur and John or him just settling in having run with him before the gang, you were of course thankful for them taking you both in, but shaking off the idea was never going to happen.

- Taking long rides on the days he got off, hugging his waist while resting your head on his back, talking about many things: camp gossip, your past travels, the future. Sometimes passing by a homestead watching as the people worked away at their land, imagining out loud how that would be, it would be better than always running.

- He loved you dearly; it pained him whenever leaving you to do a job with the gang, but you hated it more when he came to you from a watch stumbling on his tired feet to then crashing into your arms falling asleep before he could even mumble, "I love you.".

- Making his choice after the bank job that had gone wrong, having to bury Hosea and Lenny's bodies, the both of you talked about the decision ending with a kiss and the start of packing your things. Though quickly interrupted by the law, causing you to run once again, making you both stick around the gang a little longer.

- Knowing it put the both of you in more danger, he tried to make it quick by using the gang to help the tribe, only meeting them once by going with him, you understood. Finally, the day came telling only Arthur and John and those closest to you, getting hugs and wishes of luck to your new life.

Waking to the cooing of birds wrapped in the warmth of Charles's arms, hearing him snore softly, kissing his scared cheek, waking him from his slumber earning a smile. Looking at you with tired brown eyes, taking a moment to admire your well-rested faces.

Wiggling out of his arms with an objection as he tightened them, making you both laugh before you headed off to the kitchen in your homestead, but not without getting dressed first from the night before. Having been years since that day, leading to a new life, though the past caught up a year later, causing Charles to go with John just to make Dutch and Micah pay for all those years ago.

Of course, coming back to you with a bullet in the shoulder and a promise to never leave you again, from John's home, you both made it up to Canada, living out your dream of a homestead. Ending your reminisce on the past as Charles wraps his arms around you once more, kissing your neck softly while you readied the morning drinks.

-

Bill Williamson

- It had never been an idea to the both of you from all the years you ran with the gang until going into town. Seeing how a couple talked about their lives after getting that first taste of that kind of life, you never looked back.

- Not telling Bill at first, wanting him away from Dutch a bit before springing it upon him after one of your hotel nights away, he entertained your thoughts, though laughing at some parts until he realized you were serious.

- His first feeling was anger at how he could never do that to Dutch, but you argued that Dutch doesn't control your lives. Finally, he calmed down, telling you he looked up to Dutch. Knowing how he wanted the limelight that Arthur and John had, you convinced him that even if it was painful to say and hear, he would never be them. His obsession can't control him.

- Even though he listened with understanding, even agreeing, he told you the time wasn't right. Giving your understanding back to his reasoning, you stayed with him. But things didn't stay still for forever.

- The bank job had gone wrong with the law running you out of Shady Bell, feeling as if it was years before you got Bill back in your arms after hearing tales of him on Guarma. Having enough, you started to pack your things, causing Bill to freak. Hearing none of it, you gave him a choice. Hoping he would pick the right one.

Standing in front of your horse, holding your bag tightly, "I've hit the end, Bill; I-I can't. I can't stay up every night hoping you're alive; it's not fair to me or you." You choked through your words, causing a scene for the whole camp to see, but you didn't care; you were done.

Seeing his hesitant look back at Dutch, who watched on calmly, you had your answer. His continuous seek for approval from Dutch would never stop, and you weren't going to be around to watch it kill him or you.

-

Hosea Matthews

- Having left before he would hear the idea once again, not shooting it down immediately though ending your talk with how his story ended, right back where he started.

- As time went on, his coughs had gotten worse, as well as his attitude towards it, helping with his cough fits earned a hand wave and a choked-out "I'm fine." But you kept pushing, knowing if it was the end for him, it should be anywhere but running with the gang.

- Bringing it up more, he entertained it a bit more, but other reasons would always pop up after, trying to understand you let it go after every talk. As the gang settled into Shady Bell slowly, you noticed that he became even worse; he barely came to bed, but when he did stumble in, smelling of booze, giving you a slurred "I love you" before snoring away.

- Not waiting for his final say any longer, you slowly packed your things over the days, making sure both of your horses were ready to go in the night. Thankfully, you met a couple who knew of a cabin not too far away at a cheap price. Saving up quickly, you bought the cabin, leaving it to wait for you. Taking note of when the watch shifts change and when the camp dies down for the night.

- Finally, you made your move. As Hosea stumbled into being his familiar drunk self, you went into action, calling his horse over by the back door quietly loading on what little you had left. Then, waking Hosea leading him to the horse with false words, finally, you were ready with Hosea in a drunken sleep on your back, fleeing into the dark swamp.

Riding through the night, keeping Hosea on the horse, with luck, you made it through the swamp and into the forest on your way to the cabin. Not knowing how long this would last not even sure if this was a new life. "Just enough for you to rest," you whispered into the cold night air.

Making it to the cabin, using all your strength to get him in the cabin, laying him on the bed, tucking him. Going back out, taking your things from his and your horses, then letting them rest in the small stable for the next few days.

Waking into the morning still hearing Hosea's snores with his warm arms around you. Slowly, you get up, readying his medicine, hoping he'll understand your actions. Being all for him in the end.

-

John Marston

- Having entertained the idea only came up two times. The first was for one of Hosea's cons, having you and John play as a married couple that lived on a farm just for another couple who actually lived on a farm to come along to buy into Hosea's con.

- As years went on, seeing how the gang dwindled, thankful for not taking your John, but not without a scare and a promise to stay with you. Getting out of the snow, helping John to Horseshoe Overlook, fighting to keep him down, and resting. John made a joke about you being his spouse and having a little farm. That was the second time.

- John wasn't the only one with that joke; being protective over him, Hosea started to joke about how the con act ended long ago, but you were still acting the part.

- Finally, John was ready for jobs again, so you loosened your protection, though you weren't afraid to give it to Dutch if he came back with so much as a small scratch. Furthering that joke in the camp led you two to talk. John agreed to the possibility, but it was different in his mind. You saw it coming sooner than him.

- Sadly, it wasn't until the very end you could live out that idea. The gang fell apart, pushing you both towards Strawberry, but not without making a rule for yourself. Never to live that life again. It was easier said than done. John helped the framer, and you fled, leaving your John behind.

Reading the letter over again as the carriage hit every bump on the road, making your impatience worse. Finally stopping, not wanting to look out the window, needing to see him up close, you hurried out.

Standing there face-to-face with your John, having been gone for so many months, your eyes stinging as you wrapped your arms tightly around him. "It's over," he whispered into your ear, making the threatening tears spill, tightening your hold, not wanting to let him go again.

-

Josiah Trelawny

- Living that dream already in Saint Denis, but unbeknownst to you, Josiah had dealings with a gang. Hearing the name of the gang from officers around town yet not thinking anything of them. Not even questioning his absence at home as his "office work" makes him travel a lot.

- Loving the stories of his travels made you susceptible to listening for things, but never did you think you'd hear about your husband from an officer's mouth on the street. Then the next day, another questioned you on your doorstep, being very hostile and pushing past you just to find nothing, but before leaving, accusing you of dealing with the "Van Der Linde Gang.".

- Hearing nothing from your Josiah in the few passing days got you worried—maybe you didn't know the man you married. Though finally, you saw him as he crawled up the stairs of your Saint Denis home, the sight brought you to tears.

- The damage to him was heartbreaking. He groaned and hissed through his teeth as you cleaned up his bloody wounds, then bandaged them up. Saying nothing, you let the silence fall with his story quickly following, but you didn't let him finish.

- Saying the name of the gang, seeing how his face turned pale. Telling him of what transpired days before, hit you hard speaking of what you knew out loud to him. Starting with a sigh, he told you everything with a voice filled with shame.

"Stop," you said, interrupting his explanation, doing as you said, looking to you. Not being able to handle the sight of him knowing every cut or possible broken bone was because of his deals with the gang. You started to question whether the life you built was even real; was the love you got from him even real?

"Love," he pleaded, placing a hand on yours looking into the eyes you fell in love with so many times. Still, you held your ground. "No more J," you say, making him look down watching as he nodded. Slowly, you wrapped your arms around his upper back and shoulders, hugging him as he sat in your home, where he belonged.

Hello, I hope you enjoyed if there is any grammar mistakes or misspellings sorry about that feel free to let me know in the comments, have a great day/afternoon/night!

[codenamesazanka]

last words

Spinner's name means "someone/something who spins". In the original Japanese, his name is just the romanization of the English word 'spinner' - 「スピナー」 (supinaa).

When characters in the manga define it, they often use 「紡ぐ者」 (tsumugumono) lit. 'a person who spins'. 「紡」 is the key character here, meaning spin, in the way one spins yarn, or spins a story.

Spinner deliberately choose this name because he wanted to 'spin' Stain's dream into reality.

Later, when he abandons following Stain to follow Shigaraki, All For One takes notes of his meaning of his name, to tell him that he'll be helping Shigaraki to 'spin' his goal [into reality]. (Viz translates this as "support Shigaraki Tomura in his crusade and do justice to your name... as one who spins this tale.")

This is appropriate, because during and since the MVA arc, Spinner has been doing everything he can to support Shigaraki's dream of destruction - to achieve their goal of 'that beautiful horizon'. Throughout the third act, Spinner's still trying to spin that dream into being.

And it is their goal - it was Shigaraki who first talked about the 'horizon' in his speech to Ujiko, the speech that affected Spinner so much he started down the path of devotion to Shigaraki; so that Spinner would be the only one out of everyone in the League to see Shigaraki's horizon in Deika (the prettiest thing he has ever seen). Somehow, Shigaraki figures this out, so that much later, when Shigaraki is preparing to decay Mt. Fuji, he dedicates this destruction to Spinner - to "build the horizon... that Spinner's been looking forward to."

But-- Shigaraki fails. Deku stops him, and Shigaraki seemingly dies. He dies without having built that horizon, without having destroying anything.

In Shigaraki's final moments, Deku tells him, "I wanted to stop you. I wanted you to stop yourself. To keep that grief and misery from spreading any further."

In Japanese, when Deku talks about this 'cycle of sadness', he says he wants it to 'stop spinning' - 「紡がれない」 (tsumugarenai). His line uses the same character meaning 'spin' as the one I talked about above - 「紡」

lit. 'so the sadness won't spin'

Shigaraki listens to Deku's words, and after a moment, says to him:

"If Spinner is alive... tell him Shigaraki Tomura fought to destroy to the bitter end."

I thought before and still think it's Shigaraki leaving some words of comfort for Spinner. He failed to destroy everything, failed to succeed in reaching his goal (which is Spinner's goal, because it's Shigaraki's goal, because it's the goal Shigaraki made for the League); but he did try his hardest. He died trying to achieve their horizon, because until the very end, he was keeping their promise as best as he could.

Maybe, it's also: don't worry about the failure; all the way until the end of his life, Shigaraki Tomura got to chase after his dream, their dream.

Maybe even, when taking all of the context from above and putting it into these last words of Shigaraki's: but it's stopped. Thus, Spinner doesn't have to spin for him anymore. The sadness has stopped spinning. Maybe: If Spinner stops on his own, Heroes won't have to stop him. If he's still alive, he can stay alive.

And see, the Shigaraki that says these words is the 'same' Shigaraki as the one in Spinner's memories of the two of them talking about games together. You can tell by the visuals:

In the panel right before Shigaraki tells Deku to deliver a message, the lock of hair on Shigaraki's face falls below his nose; and the locks of hair that frames his face falls below his chin.

But in the panel where he gives those very last words, he's wearing a black shirt. His lock of hair on his face does not reach past his nose. The locks of hair framing his face ends at the level of his mouth.

So this is the Shigaraki from Spinner's memories of them being just two gamers. This is the moment they weren't Villains or boss and subordinate; they were just two guys, close in age, (getting along better than Spinner thought, bonding over games and stuff), being friends.

Shigaraki is giving his last words as Spinner's friend; and they are to tell him, i kept our promise. i chased our dream.

[innerfare]

Ace Fluff // Angst Compilation 

Summary: A compilation of Ace angst and fluff from my multi character posts (You're Wounded, Brushing Your Teeth Together, Flowers, Type of Date, You See His Cabin, Fighting and Making Up, Paradise, Nightmares, I Love You, You're Jealous, Wearing His Hat).

Genre: Fluff // Angst

CW: None // SFW

———

You’re Wounded: 

Makes a light joke, inspects the wound himself even if there’s a doctor present, will help bandage you up if you need it. Pretends to be nonchalant about the entire thing, is panicking inside. Fully realizes the depths of his affection for you, is terrified to realize it’s love.  

Brushing Your Teeth Together: 

Never washes the sink out after he spits toothpaste in it. Always manages to get toothpaste on the mirror, too. And though he doesn’t consistently steal your toothbrush the way Zoro does, he has no qualms about using yours. 

Flowers: 

He’ll bring you bouquets with a lot of variety that the nice lady at the flower shop helped him put together. He usually builds these bouquets around sunflowers or orange lilies, and he gets very smug when his flowers brighten your day. He’ll also pick flowers for you, but he’s very conscious to only pick the ones that are not weeds. If he finds a field of sunflowers, you will be getting as many as he can carry. Never, ever visits you empty-handed, always brings at least a bouquet of flowers with him. Treats securing flowers for you like hunting for dinner and is always so proud of his bounty. 

Type of Date: 

Ace will take you either go karting or rock climbing, probably the former. He won’t admit it to you, not even to himself, but he is the sort to let you win, though he pouts when he loses. Like he’ll plan to beat you, but he just can’t stop himself from taking his foot off the gas just before he reaches the finish line. After you’re tuckered out, he’ll take you to a ramen place, where you end up starting several inside jokes. Once you’ve been dating for a little while, he’ll take you on longer dates to parks and even camping on the beach; anything outdoors. 

You See His Cabin For The First Time: 

His cabin is pretty sparse because he tends to travel light. He has a collection of animal teeth secured from a menagerie of wild beasts he’s taken down over the years, and he’s very proud of those teeth. He'll tell you about each one if you ask, is practically bursting at the seems with stories. He has way more animal teeth than he does clothing or books. Also has a pretty sick tiger pelt for a rug (he had intended it as a blanket, but he runs so hot he can’t actually sleep with it). He has Luffy’s wanted poster on his wall, and beside it, a note reminding himself to send money back to Dadan on the first of every month. Buried in the chest at the foot of his bed, he has the original ASL flag. 

Fighting and Making Up: 

His low self worth causes a lot of fights between the two of you. Sometimes, it’s you getting mad because his self doubt led him to, in turn, doubt you without realizing it. Other times, it’s him getting angry because you were a little too nice to another man and triggered his fear of you leaving, causing him to lash out. No matter who was in the wrong, Ace is consumed by the desire to apologize right away but ends up getting wrapped up in the fear of you rejecting his apology; thus, he acts all tsundere instead. But as soon as you approach him, usually with a piece of candy in hand as a sort of white flag, he melts, dragging you into his arms and holding you extra tight, saying in your ear how much he missed you even if you were only ignoring each other for an hour. He also has a habit of leaving candy for you as his own way of making up, but he won’t actually confront you with it, will just leave it somewhere you’ll find it as a way of reaching out and hope you start the conversation, much like a cat leaving a dead lizard on your porch. You two usually end up splitting the candy and talking about whatever happened, but only after you've finished kissing it better.   

Paradise 1: 

Meandering through the woods in search of the tallest, most impressive tree, him giving you a boost up to the first branch to get you started before climbing up himself, staying behind you the entire time so he can catch you in case you fall. Finally piercing the canopy and poking your heads up above the forest, his hand on your leg to keep you steady, the two of you grinning as birds fly by, basking in the afternoon sun. 

Paradise 2: 

Sitting out on the deck of the ship long after everyone else has fallen asleep, climbing into their lap once the two of you are alone, both of you staring up at the sky and picking out constellations in the night sky. The conversation eventually shifting from actual constellations to the ones you two invent on the spot, with wild fables to go along with them. 

Nightmares: 

It starts off normal, him approaching you on deck and wrapping his arms around you, intending to say a joke in your ear that will have you giggling and him grinning proudly. But then you shove him off and sneer at him. He doesn’t recognize you, doesn’t recognize the look on your face as you look up at him. You look disgusted, completely and utterly grossed out by the mere idea of his arms around you. You begin taunting him, saying all the things he’s used to others saying but never you. “You’re a monster. You were never supposed to be born. How could I possibly love someone like you?” When he finally wakes up, he doesn’t thrash around or cry. He’s completely paralyzed by the nightmare, by the fear, and accustomed to the feeling of rejection, even if it hurts more coming from you. Even when he wakes up, the nightmare isn’t really over.  

I Love You: 

Your first, more implicit confession came one night before you two were ever in a relationship. You noticed he was a little off and saw him slip away from the crew as they were drinking the night away. You found him sulking by the water and sensed he was hurting, especially when you asked to say and he told you he’d rather be alone. Before you leave, you tell him, “I just wanted you to know that I’m happy you’re alive.” You had no idea that it would strike a nerve, just got the feeling he needed to hear it, and this was confirmed by him grabbing you by the wrist as you walk away and pulling you into his arms. You continue finding implicit ways to tell him you love him such as, “I think the world is a better place with you in it,” and, “I’m so glad you were born,” and Ace is never really sure how to respond, but he soaks your words up like they’re sunlight and he’s a plant. This culminates in him blurting those three words out one day when you’re sitting in a tree together, Ace avoiding your eyes for fear you’ll reject him. When you lean in and kiss his cheek, instead, he almost cries (and he does when he’s alone later on, your love the purest thing he’s ever known). 

You’re Jealous: 

He collects people without trying, and often times, without realizing, either. Ace thinks he’s just making friends, but you see the way the women he laughs and shares drinks with are drawn to him like plants to the sun. He promises them freedom and adventure (and he has a very nice laugh), and you can see how it excites them. You don’t really mind it, knowing Ace well enough to see the way he holds those women at arm’s length, even if he seems close with them (such is the magic of Fire First Ace). But Yamato makes you jealous. It’s not hearing the way they laughed together but hearing the way they fought that gets to you. You know how Ace lives to fight and even just roughhouse, you know how he’s a rough and tumble guy, and you worry you’re not tough enough. Should you be punching his arm when he makes a joke? Should you be trying to trip him out on deck? What should you be doing? When you finally come clean with Ace about what’s been bothering you, he actually laughs. “If I wanted to be with someone who gives me hell, I’d be sleeping in Marco’s cabin every night. Besides,” he says, scooping you up in his arms, “I like being able to manhandle you.”

———

Hope you enjoyed it! If you want more, you can check out my masterlist here!

[zara-renata]

Even the rocks on the roadside - Sylus's POV | ao3 | part 1 | the Sylus series

Summary:

Sylus tries to get some paperwork done in his office while you sleep. He receives a call that turns his night upside down and makes him regret some strategic choices he's made up until this point in conquering your heart. This is Sylus's POV on 'Even the rocks on the roadside in the N109 Zone could tell'. This part is most understandable if you read mc's POV first.

Notes:

Sylus x gn reader, Sylus x mc, Sylus's POV, second person POV Enemies-to-friends-to-lovers This story contains: pining, self-recrimination, angst, canon character death, grief, hurt/comfort from Sylus's POV, allusions to Sylus's lore that is just me taking shots in the dark because Infold is taking its sweet ass time providing us with his next myth memories. It could end up being completely wrong. Mentions of: fear of (domestic) violence, violence that occurs in game, mc with self-esteem issues, injury, boundary crossing typical of Sylus in game.

There was a time when Sylus wondered if he would ever have this again. A settled satisfaction, threaded through with an anticipatory challenge—a foundation that serves as a defensive bulwark against all of the enemies gathered against him, along with the challenging thrill of hanging over the edge of the ramparts, precision sniping to pick them off efficiently at the gates.

He’s waiting for you to wake up—you, the cornerstone in his foundation, you, the thrilling challenge dangling like a priceless jewel just out of his scope's reach. He has been adrift for years, amongst the stars. Behind enemy lines. Behind bars. Waiting to be called home again—to come in from the cold.

But now he’s finally home, and you’re in his bed, just down the hall. He has wanted you here again from the moment you sped away on your motorcycle after the auction, tires squealing under a spray of gravel, clearly relieved to be rid of him. But he knew he had to let you go, despite how it felt like you were pulling the marrow from his bones, the skin from his muscles as you went. Taking with you all of the parts of him that he needed to remain strong as he carved his way through the night between stars without you. He has felt… restless through the long hours and days and weeks ever since. Reports from the twins and Mephisto are never quite enough to calm him as you exist out there, away from him—his heart, walking around unprotected in a world full of horrors who are not him.

He knows you’re capable. He knows you’re smart, and can take care of yourself. But he has also collected enough puzzle pieces of the current you to know the cost of your strength now—and now, the compulsion to shelter you, to shield you from anything that could possibly hurt you, is a constant thrum under his skin. 

He leans back in the leather chair as he sits behind his desk, shaking his head a little to rid himself of the memory of all those years without you, and the long stretches of worry when he’s not with you now that he’s found you again. Because his heart is here now. Just down the hall.

He is tempted to return to his bedroom right now. To slip into bed next to you and pull you close. But he wants to exploit this time to get through some work that needs to be settled sooner rather than later, so he can focus solely on you once you wake up. He’s having a hard time focusing right now though, with you finally, finally, right here. He hasn’t asked, before now, for you to come to him in his home. He has been trying to show you that he’s willing to go to any length to meet you where you are, emotionally, physically—exposing himself, time after time, to the harsh sunlight of Linkon City, to the risk of being recognized as he pulls up to your building, of running into your partner who despite his sleepy facade, helped you get into the N109 zone in the first place, and could possibly be aware of Sylus’s true identity. He will continue taking these risks, for as long as it takes, until you’re ready to come to him, to meet him in his world, and stay in the free moments you get from your calling. 

Because it is clear to him now that your work as a hunter is a calling, and not just a job for you. He can’t think of your work as a hunter as simply work, because he now sees how intrinsically you have bound your work to your sense of self, thus creating an identity that justifies, in your mind, why anyone would value you. As if you, all by yourself, are insufficient.

A notion that he would like to disabuse you of sooner, rather than later. But for now, he must focus on his immediate work. He flicks his gaze to the open contract on his tablet, to the papers that need final checking and then signature. All of the things Aidan, his legal counsel, could and should be doing for him. But they were friends before Sylus hired him. And as a friend, Aidan insists that Sylus is aware of the details of everything he signs, that he makes a deliberate choice regarding his business and the risks he’s willing to take, in the event that Aidan isn’t there to advise him. Their world is dark, and dangerous, and people die so easily. Despite all of Aidan’s foppish vanity, he’s a good friend, and a good lawyer. Forcing Sylus to be aware of why Aidan gives the advice that he does is part of Aidan’s … care, as a friend. Sylus snorts and thinks that his retainer fee should be reduced proportionally for every minute he has to spend away from you because of legal paperwork.

With a snap of his fingers, the stack of papers twirls up into the air, caught in the tornado of his evol. He lets it swirl, enjoying the sound of paper fluttering. He considers letting the sheets spin fast enough for the paper to shred itself, which in his opinion is the only proper response to the insulting clauses that he will not be accepting contained on the pages. But Aidan will grumble about having to reprint the damn things, since the man inexplicably prefers redlining the drafts with a physical, old-fashioned fountain pen instead of doing everything digitally. Sylus sniffs. He and Aidan are friends, after all. The appreciation for fine, tangible things is something they share, in an era where everything comes and goes with the impermanence of data drifting through the air, lost when the cloud’s servers explode along with Sylus’s casually planted explosives. Speaking of fountain pens… he lifts one such sharp little writing utensil with his evol, and sends it sailing like a throwing knife through the paper tornado. It hits the wall opposite his desk with a satisfying thunk, and he lets the papers drift back to his desk, now with some of the pages neatly punctured. That will have to satisfy him, for now. He’s so bored, trying to focus on his work instead of you, when you’re lying warm and safe in his bed. 

Instead of going to you like he wants, he exerts some measure of self control and glances down at your phone, fiddles with the little charm on a sturdy ribbon he added to it tonight. A kitty’s paw, for his kitten’s phone. It was silly, and cute, and when he saw it dangling in a boutique window one night on his way to a meeting in the N109 zone, he had gotten it for you on a whim. Adding the charm is not the only thing he has done with your phone, however, while you have been asleep tonight. Sylus is looking forward to seeing the look on your face, once you realize what he has orchestrated for you, because you refuse to do it for yourself. It’s always entertaining to watch you go through a whole spectrum of emotions when you discover one of his little plots—shock, disbelief, anger, frustration. Sometimes, when he’s very lucky, you’re amused. But in the end, always, acceptance. Sometimes the acceptance is resigned—at other times, it’s with a side of relief that he thinks you don’t even realize you feel, once he has removed all obstacles and objections for you, gently funneling you down the path he wants you to take. Because everything he does, he does for you. For your benefit. For your health. For your pleasure. He rather likes this win-win situation, because when you’re benefited, and healthy, and pleased, so is he. He has accepted much worse deals, in his long years of wheeling and dealing. But with all things involving you, he never has to settle, because you are the reward, in the end.

He doesn’t read back through the texts “you” have sent to your doctor, or your boss. He simply basks in the satisfaction of a successful ruse, and the anticipation of being able to help you heal from the open wound you’ve been curled around for months, and probably years. If that means he also gets to have more time with you, well. Who is he to not enjoy a perk of the task at hand?

He sets your phone back down, and gazes past the large snake’s tongue plant in a dark pot next to the window in his office. The night is cold, and dark. The skyscrapers in the distance glitter in the distance, malignant growths in the corrupted valley below his base. He can see the wind gusting by the periodic swirls of dust and pebbles that drift across the N109 zone’s bleak landscape. He’s glad he’s in here, warm in his office, and that you’re in there, warm in his bed, instead of either of you having to be out on this bleak autumn night. He hates this place. He has done his best to create a base and a home as a refuge within this tainted region, but it never quite blots out the desolation beyond its walls. Despite his distaste, it’s best this way. The view serves as a constant reminder of everything he has yet to accomplish. Everything he has yet to avenge. All the work that he must unwaveringly do, even as he tries to lure you deeper and deeper into his world before he breaks both of you out of it again.

He sighs, and is about to give up and check on you, just for a moment, to soothe this ache of distance, distance that is actually so short compared to how far he has been from you for years. But now that you’re here, so close, he has only a diminishing ability to bear even the shortest of space between you. He pauses when his own phone vibrates on his desk.

He considers not picking up so that he can see you faster, but sees that it’s Luke calling. He hits the speaker icon.

“Speak.”

“Uh, boss?” Luke’s voice comes through the speakers, and Sylus recognizes that tone of voice. The tone of voice that says, You’re not going to like what I have to say, but I promise it’s not my fault this time… Sylus pinches the bridge of his nose, preparing to tell Luke and Kieran to handle whatever it is, because he will not be taking one step further away from you tonight, even if his empire is on the verge of collapse.

“Who else, Luke?” he says. “Speak.”

“Do you know where your hunter is?”

Luke and Kieran may be many things, but they aren’t cruel. They like pranks, but the harmless kind. They have gone through too much, survived too much, having only each other to rely on, to turn Sylus’s feelings for you into fodder for a joke. Sylus stands, turning speaker mode off and bringing the phone to his ear. He strides towards the door as he speaks. “I left my kitten in my bed, asleep, while I went to take care of some paperwork in my office.” He pauses. “Is there a reason you’re asking me this?”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure we just passed someone on the hillside road to base who looks, like, a scary amount like your hunter. With no shoes on. Or coat.” 

Sylus doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t think. He ends the call, shoves the phone into his trousers, and begins to jog. He flings open the door to his bedroom, slamming his hand on the sensor next to the door. The room is immediately bathed in a soft, warm glow from the recessed lighting. He can see, even from here, that his bed, the bed he left you sleeping peacefully in, is empty.

Sylus doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t think. He turns, and begins to run.

***

Sylus has a sword in his chest, and this time he is the one who put it there.

He doesn’t know why you left without saying a word. He doesn’t know why you didn’t come find him when you woke up. He doesn’t know why you didn’t take your clothes, or your shoes, before you went. This not knowing is driving him insane. As he steers through the dark night in the Phantom MPV— not a tank, and not the cybertruck, he thinks with disdain, one of his assassin friends, Taé, accused it of being when she saw him roll up in it to a meeting right after it was delivered—the vehicle he had customized for you and for Noah to drive when you were visiting him in the N109 zone and he couldn’t be with you—his mind races, trying to identify what would have motivated you to flee his house in nothing more than a thin sweater and a pair of shorts. 

He is not surprised that he didn’t hear you. You could be stealthy, and fast, especially on your bare feet. And the base’s security system is programmed to unlock every door and vault, every safe room and vehicle, for you through facial recognition. It is not programmed to keep you in or out. Not since those first three days, when he couldn’t bear for you to leave yet. When he needed you to expend all of your hate and fury on him, long enough for him to maneuver you into working with him in the future. As a result, he wasn’t alerted when you left tonight.

He is surprised, however, as his headlights carve through the dark night and suddenly illuminate Luke and Kieran’s Ferrari SF90 XX Stradale and broken glass glitters in the sudden illumination on the driver’s side of the car. He’s surprised at the look on your face, as you drop a large rock from your limp hand and it lands heavily on the roadside next to your feet. The look on your face that can only be described as pure, anguished fear.

Sylus feels the expression on your face like a sword through his heart. You’re looking at him through the windshield of the Phantom like he is the culmination of all of your nightmares, personified.

You didn’t even look this scared as he was strangling you, which feels like a whole lifetime ago now for him. You’ve come so far since then. You let him so near, since then. You’ve allowed him in your home, in your bed, in your arms, sharing the same breath. But now you’re looking at him like the monster he knows himself to be, but you can’t know. Not yet.

He yanks the emergency brake on the SUV and gets out, leaving the engine running. He strides over to the driver’s side of the Ferrari and leans down to see Kieran’s wide, dark eyes, and a bruise already forming around his neck, sharply contrasting against his light brown skin.

“You good?” Sylus asks.

“Yeah, boss. But I think your hunter is rather distressed,” he answers, his voice unusually gravelly, probably from how hard it looks like you had gripped his throat.

Sylus straightens, and takes a long look at Luke. He trusts that Kieran is okay when he says so. But Luke… having to stay still, while someone hurt his brother, even if it was unintentional—Sylus knows that it would have taken a monumental amount of self control on his part not to react to protect Kieran. Luke looks back at Sylus, mouth set in an uncharacteristically grim line. But he nods, almost imperceptibly. So Sylus gestures for him to get in the car, and he goes.

Sylus doesn’t look back as Kieran begins to pull away, turning all of his focus on you now. He watches as you close your eyes, and he watches the way you’re clenching your fists, the furrow of your brows, the way you’ve holding yourself just a little bit hunched, shoulders drawn up. As if you’re waiting for… He wants to shake his head, to rid himself of the thought. But you look like you’re ready to take a fist to the stomach, and in a rush—the kind of intuitive flood that has saved his life more than once, where all the contextual clues of a situation coalesce into utter certainty without him even being able to retrace how he came to the correct reading of the situation—Sylus realizes what you’re doing. What you’re waiting for. 

There is a sword in his heart, and he is the one who put it there, this time.

Sylus bitterly hates to disappoint you, and he bitterly hates to keep you waiting, but what you’re expecting right now is not something he can ever give you in this life—not again. You will have to make do with his coat, and not the fist you’re expecting. He shrugs out of it and in a flourish has it wrapped around your shoulders. You’re shaking so hard. He wants to sweep you into his arms and carry you to the SUV, but he knows, just as he knows that you were waiting for violence from him, that if he touches you now, without asking, he may break whatever tenuous thread is keeping you in place right now before him instead of careening away from him again.

He waits for you. He’s waited for you for lifetimes. He can wait a little longer for you to open your eyes and look at him.

Finally, you do. Sylus takes in the look of terror bleeding into confusion, your eyes so big, so bright under the red moon. He sees himself in them. He never wants to see anything else in them. But along with himself, he sees your confusion. How tired you are. How scared you are. He sees regret. None of these things are acceptable to him.

“If you wanted to go for a run, sweetheart, you could have just told me. We have a perfectly functional home gym, equipped with treadmills with big screens that make you feel like you’re running on a serene mountain path or along the beach. There’s no need to endure the desolation of the N109 zone’s ‘scenery’ when you’re here with me but want to work out.”

You don’t respond to him. Not even the ghost of a smile. “What’s wrong? Crow’s got your tongue?” He tries to lift the corner of his mouth into a smile that he does not feel, in an attempt to draw you out of the shell you’ve retreated into. He can’t help himself—he lifts his hand, and touches the corner of your mouth. He’s immensely relieved when you don’t flinch.

But your face. Your eyes. You watch him with the wariness of prey resigned to being torn apart, instead of killed cleanly. You watch him with the resignation of the condemned who knows that before the headsman’s axe, it will be the rack, who expects the laziness of the four horses when their flanks are slapped before the quartering.

Sylus hates it. There isn’t a word for it in the human tongue for how much he loathes the look on your face, in your eyes. He’d rather you put a sword through him again, than ever see that look on your face again.

You ask if he’s angry with you. 

As if you could ever be capable of doing anything that truly makes him angry. He’ll carry this sword in his heart until the end of time and never be truly angry with the choices you made that led to it being lodged in his chest.

He needs to touch you. He needs to hold you. He asks you, again and again, but you won’t release him from the torture of this unmet need. It was easier to bear, when you weren’t right in front of him. Before, he could survive through endless years without you in his arms. But his tolerance for the feeling of being bereft, the emptiness of his hands and his arms, is approaching a breaking point, the closer he is to you. You’re so close, he can almost taste you. He just needs you to say yes.

You ask if he’s demanding your consent to hit you. To hurt you. To cause you pain.

He takes a deep, slow breath. He can scent you, even in the wind, even from this distance. Your smell, the loveliness of the sweat drying on your skin, the faint aroma of your shampoo still lingering in your hair. It helps. He is able to calm himself, a little, instead of tearing out his own heart and throwing it at your feet, which is what he wants to do as he realizes that you actually think he’d be cruel enough to demand that you give him permission to hurt you.

He tells you to ask your questions. But you don’t. He asks you why you don’t want to return to his home. You let out that same terrible laugh, the laugh from outside the arcade, when you were asking him why he wasn’t already used to being disappointed by you. The laugh he never wanted to hear from you, ever again.

And when you finally answer him, through chattering teeth, as your body shakes so hard it looks painful, that same realization floods through him again, along with the despair—the despair that he hasn’t felt since he realized that you had blamed him for your family’s death, the despair that he had pressed like a bruise and then resolved to discard because he was not giving up on you, not in any past life, and certainly not in this one—the despair courses through him like slow poison now. 

He has been so arrogant. Congratulating himself on how swiftly he has been able to win you over. He interpreted your willingness to let him touch you, to come to your home, to sleep in your bed, as progress in building toward what he ultimately wants from you. You, in his arms. Your trusting heart, in his hands. Your soul, entwined with his until they’re indistinguishable. He had thought that because someone as closed off as you—someone who engages in so much self-protection—allowed him so close, that you were steadily coming to accept him, all of him, from the beginning through to tonight, as he laid you as carefully as possible in his big bed, as he ran his fingers along what he thought was your trusting face, peaceful in sleep before he left the room.

He’s made so many mistakes, from the very first moment he lifted you in the air with his evol and wrapped his hand around your throat.

He wills himself to stay still. He wills himself to refrain from using his evol to fling the SUV across the desolate landscape. He wills himself to keep his mouth shut, to keep the roar of self-recrimination and grief and rage at this life that has been so cruel to you, at all of his missteps as a result of not understanding how hurt you were before he ever found you again, from clawing its way out of his throat because you might think he’s furious with you, when it’s he and not you who put the sword in his heart this time.

As he stills, he studies you. Your bare, bloody feet. Your legs, goosebumps drifting up your skin to the flimsy shorts fluttering a little in the wind. Your arms, still hanging stiffly at your sides, as if you’re forcing yourself not to wrap them around yourself, forcing yourself to remain unprotected in the face of his rage. Your lovely face, with your teeth clicking so loudly it drowns out his own need to bellow into the night of this awful place.

It doesn’t matter what he wants, right now. He will do as he has always done in the face of setbacks. In the face of bad luck. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong play. He will re-calibrate, and he will fucking try again. He will tuck every puzzle piece he has collected of you in this life, and he will use it to do what matters. And what matters is what you need. 

“Can I, please, touch you,” he begs. He will drop to his knees, if that’s what it takes.

But unlike all the other versions of you he has known, you don’t ask him to debase himself until you’re satisfied in the wake of his missteps. You just nod, a tiny little movement, and the relief flooding through him has him wanting to get on his knees simply out of gratitude for the benevolence of your heart in this life, a life that should have hardened you instead of leaving you with all of your tenderness exposed.

Finally, finally, he lifts your shivering body in his arms, and he carries you back to warmth. He convinces you to let him take you back to his home. The quiet resignation that he interpreted as acceptance, less than what? An hour ago? soaks your answer, which is just a nod against his chest. He hates it, now. But the nod of assent has to be enough for him, for now.

He takes you home. He carries you to his bedroom, the place where you woke up alone, in the dark, probably disoriented and afraid. The answers to the questions he had while driving to find you slam into him, each so much more obvious than the last. How could he have been so careless? Oh yes, Sylus the plans within plans man, the master strategist. He let the person dearest to him wake up alone, in the dark, in the place where he had imprisoned and tortured you.

You shake in his arms, the whole way. Wave after wave sweeping under your skin, no matter how tightly he holds you against himself.

Finally, he sets you on one of the vintage scroll benches in the bathroom. He gets the shower going, determined to warm you up as soon as possible. He’s going to punch through the wall if he has to feel you shiver for much longer. And then, because you have not asked it of him, he kneels before you, and looks up into your exhausted, drawn face. 

“Your clothes need to come off,” he says, a fact and a question. Will you let him remain near you as you peel back the last layers of your armor, after everything he has done to you?

You just nod. It’s enough for him, for now. He tries to remove your clothing as gently as possible, to treat you with the care due to spun glass, although he knows you’re more resilient than titanium. Your skin is soft underneath his knuckles as he lifts your sweater, as he slips the silk sleep shorts from your strong legs. He settles you in the shower, and the warmth of the water is welcome after the chill autumn wind. He peels his own clothes off, and finally, finally, pulls you into his arms, letting the spray of the shower hit you full on, hoping that this will be enough to warm you through, with the warm water streaming down your chest and his warm skin at your back.

Ever since you burst back into his life, Sylus has had an ache in his chest, even when you’re right there, as if he can never get close enough, no matter how tightly he holds you. He needs to be inside you. He needs you to be inside him. He would carve himself open and pull you in, carry you in his chest where his heart should be, where you belong. If he could. If you would let him. He knows you’re not ready yet. He knows that this strange compulsion isn’t necessarily healthy, and not possible. So sitting here, holding you in the shower, so tightly against him as the steam and water envelop you both—it will have to do. Satisfaction courses through him as the shivers racking your body begin to slow, the waves of goosebumps having already disappeared. He could sit here with you until the sun collapses in on itself, and all the stars blink out, one by one, at the end of all things, without boredom and without regret.

But you have other ideas, as usual. You grow still in his arms, your body melting into him, but then he hears the first strangled sob catch in your throat, and he realizes that you’re weeping. The sword through his heart is nothing compared to the lance of pain he feels as you begin to howl, your keening filling the bathroom and echoing. At first he’s afraid that you’ll try to tear away from him as you start to shift in his lap, but as you turn and collapse back against him, your chest heaving against his, your arms wrapped so tightly around his neck, that insatiable ache inside him pulses. You’re here. As close as you can get, without peeling back his skin and slipping inside. You seem to be drawing comfort from his body as it holds you. He’s glad for it, because what is the point of having a big, strong body if not to shelter you? He has no words to give you—what can he say to someone who has lost everyone you held dear? Who has been treated so cruelly by fate and by the people who should have cared for you the most? Himself included.

He has no words of comfort, because the one person he has to lose, that he has already lost, again and again, is now weeping in his arms, and it’s entirely his own fault this time. The only thing he has to offer you right now is the strength in his body. So he simply holds you tighter, tries to hum you a little lullaby, rocks you gently. He hopes it is enough, for now. He holds you, and he hopes he can try again, and again, and again, until he gets it right. Before you tell him to go and mean it.

[thesiltverses]

Hello! Writing first to thank you for such an extraordinary creation - as a piece of writing and even more so in performance. Every episode manages to somehow build on and outdo the last; you navigated that transition from a smaller scale story of grisly mysteries and personal crises of faith to a grand scale of war, revolution and political satire with absolute aplomb, and never lost that throughline of exceptional characterisation and sharp writing, always steering to the most interesting conflicts. You are always very humble in your public comments, but I hope you allow yourself a little pride, because this is absolutely top notch stuff.

I was struck by Paige's final words, that she hopes what they left would be found 'flawed, inadequate, yearning'. As the show went on, I was surprised - in a good way - that the show's politics gradually crystalised into a full-on nihilist anarchism, something perhaps even along the lines of Monsieur Dupont. (Muna used the 'a' word in one of the Q&As but it was pretty evident even before that). Taking these gods as a metaphor for ideologies and social systems, the scope of it becomes pretty universal - and unsparing. And, equally, hard to answer.

I wondered when the Many Below/Wound Tree was introduced what answers they would find: what political movement could truly resist cooption or becoming its own horrible self-sustaining egregore. And in the end the answer you express I suppose is a negative one: that even Paige's god of victims is a tool, one that must eventually be discarded to go into some unknown place beyond it all (to walk away from Omelas), towards something that narrative fiction - as a form of the 'endless words' that are derided so much in the third season - can no longer address. Which I respect - to pose the question is vital, even if the tools can't reach any answers if they even exist.

I think this struggle exists in many stories that address themes of making a break from the rapacious society that created them (and take it seriously) - your Baru Cormorants and Mononoke-himes. We can describe the problem vividly, but since we do not have a counterexample to hand, any story we tell about ~what is to be done~ and what it will look like when it is feels like it will be just as hollow as the spins and angles and parasitic fantasies that so many characters advance in the Silt Verses. (How could there possibly be a time where it finally works out, after we have seen all this? But then, what are we living for?)

To try to make this a question and not a ramble, I wanted to ask - what do you see as the role of fiction in addressing the horrible machinery of this world? Is it enough to pose the question particularly sharply, skewer the bad and inadequate answers, and leave the readers/listeners to figure out how to make the killing of gods concrete? How do we punch through the bounds of it all being Content, another product to be bought and sold? What does it mean to sit here and fantasise about people making that revolutionary break when there is no revolution to be had?

I don't know what answer I'm hoping for here, but given the themes of the show, I feel like this must be a kind of thing you've thought about, and probably have a far more developed line of thought than I do. And if this is a bit too much to drop in your inbox on a Saturday morning, I will say again thank you for writing this story and all the actors for making it so strikingly concrete - it truly means a lot, and I will treasure it.

Hi, and thank you for listening and for a beautifully written and thoughtful ask! ('Horrible machinery of the world' stopped me dead in my tracks.) And I am very proud, genuinely.

I don't have a good enough answer to your questions, and for me a lot of TSV is very much about trying to figure those answers out, but let me try and sum up my perspective bit by bit.

Is it enough for fiction to pose the question, without also proposing the answer?

I don't think it's enough for fiction as a collective body of work.

I'd argue there's probably a tendency towards open-endedness and irresolution in these individual narratives simply because it feels like a more honest acknowledgement that in real life, the foe has yet to take a real body blow and will not go down easy; that the foe, in fact, is the marketplace for the work itself and ironically profits from the popularity of stories with easy heroic victories over villains who represent capitalism. That these stories inevitably become a pleasant consumable that serves our complacency within the belly of the beast, a kind of daily tonic to reassure us that good always triumphs and regular people always come out on top.

I also think that the sheer scale and scope of the topic creates its own challenges; you probably can't engage thoroughly enough with both the dystopian question and your ideas for a utopian answer all in a single story, without ultimately turning the latter into that false reassurance, a quick handwave of a happy ending.

You mention Omelas, and I think we could illustrate the problem by looking at how LeGuin handles her two successive masterpieces:

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, which gives us the titular resource-rich u(dys)topia built on invisible suffering, and the dissidents who turn their backs on that world and walk out into the inhospitable wilderness in search of something better.

The Dispossessed, which as its premise gives us Anarres, an imperfect but sympathetic anarchist society whose adherents turned their backs on a neighbouring world of capitalist plenty to live out in the inhospitable wilderness in search of something better.

Anarres can very reasonably be viewed as LeGuin's direct answer to the question posed by Omelas, and she would have likely had it in her mind already as she wrote Omelas. But if the short story had ended with 'I hear that against all odds, the ones who walk away have successfully founded an anarchist utopia where hardship is everywhere but it's shared as equitably as possible. THE END', the amount of lazy shorthand and empty comfort involved in that happier ending would inevitably make it a dishonest and unserious offering.

Instead, Anarres is a starting premise to be interrogated at length over the course of a separate story, rather than a happy ending to simply reassure the reader that better things are possible - and even at the end of the novel LeGuin's unresolved questions are still very similar to the ones that we're left with in Omelas (and the same questions that I feel like we were knocking about in The Silt Verses, and which I guess you could argue are all lingering concerns at the end of Mononoke, as well): how and where can we find space to create and sustain a genuine alternative when the narrative environment of capitalism is so powerfully all-subsuming and constantly growing to fill the space? Do we need to disconnect entirely, vanishing as if dead? If we disconnect, how can we possibly survive and what inhumanities or ethical compromises will be required of us? If we do survive, is our isolationism a dereliction of human responsibility to those left behind?

All of which is to say that I think present-day fiction absolutely can make the attempt to meaningfully explore potential alternative-utopian solutions in more depth and with far more tangibility than we attempted with TSV - but that dystopian fiction like ours which concludes with the unexplored promise of a revolutionary utopia and the vague reassurance that the irrepressible human spirit will figure things out from here on out (Chewbacca gets a medal, everyone's in the streets wearing a Guy Fawkes mask) doesn't do much more than dramatically undermine its own goal of disrupting the audience's comfort.

That said, one of my big regrets this season was that we didn't succeed in more engagingly exploring and articulating the Woundtree camp's development into a flawed but functioning society in Dispossessed fashion ahead of the ending. That was my intention, but what quickly became clear was that in a dramatic format, with a limited cast, it was just endless static meeting-room scenes with Paige and Elgin discussing difficult responses to impossible challenges, while everyone else was out having dynamic and exciting adventures with lots of fun and exciting gods. Dystopias remain too entertaining for utopias' own good.

What do you see as the role of fiction in addressing the horrible machinery of this world?

I believe that absurdist horror fiction specifically, founded on the principle of 'people in a world that makes no sense, deluding themselves that it definitely does make sense' can play a very powerful role in that stated purpose.

Many horror traditions carry the baggage of inbuilt or inadvertent conservatism - the concept of a peaceable, passive, safe, middle-class Normality which is then disrupted by a terrifying outside threat (alien, ultra-foreign, ultra-low-class, underworldly, wild, etc). But absurdist horror very directly identifies Normality as the true source of our terror and very directly confronts our human response to it. It creates the right environment for us to ask all of the good questions. Isn't this an unsustainable nightmare we're living in? Why are we expending so much energy pretending it isn't? How do we get out and what do we do if we can't?

Probably the only listener reaction that's genuinely frustrated me about both of our shows is the folks who come away turning their noses up at the bluntness of that approach and acting like they've Solved The Art simply for figuring out where our broad sympathies lie. "Hm, just listened to The Silt Verses and I understood it at once; it's clearly trying to say that capitalism is bad. A little heavy-handed in its messaging for my liking, hm-hm!"

Not to go full Garth Marenghi, but for me the directness of the provocation and the obvious outrageousness of the nightmare is the point; it then allows us to go to places that other genres (or more understated critiques) generally can't.

How do we punch through the bounds of it all being Content, another product to be bought and sold? What does it mean to sit here and fantasise about people making that revolutionary break when there is no revolution to be had?

God, I don't know.

Maybe it means nothing; maybe we can't punch through; maybe there is no story unruly enough to be truly unco-optable, and therefore even the most radical fiction ultimately serves as a distraction, a placebo, a reassurance (that we are not alone, that better things are possible) which will impact the wider world more by keeping us subscribed to the Kindle app than by any action we might feel inspired to take.

Amazon is paying Boots Riley to make TV shows. Disney won much praise for delivering a revolutionary fantasy in a Star Wars shell. Apple is funding excellent, discomfiting and furious corporate satires about how we happily ignore invisible worker abuses for the sake of our own lifestyles, but they also cannot be considered accountable for the deaths of Congolese child-labourers in the global cobalt supply chain. The Dispossessed is in development as a limited series and the LeGuin estate are closely involved.

The master doesn't just own the tools, he's been buying up the guillotines as well.

What if, as with the unknowable nothingness outside of Omelas, the only art that cannot be reduced to product in net service of the status quo is the art that's so invisible and inaccessible and disconnected as to not exist at all? Does being relatively small and ramshackle really lend us any ideological purity, any genuine detachment? You can listen to The Silt Verses on Apple and Spotify and Amazon Music. Brought to you by Acast.

Chapter 36 with Dev and Seb was to a large extent intended as an articulation of that worry. To what extent can we still trust in the integrity of a sincere love story (one that we want to believe in) it if takes place in an insincere and predatory environment? Can any meaningful story be told honestly within such a space?

This stuff really worries me. I think it's probably right to worry. I don't know the answer. I do know that there are some folks for whom the show has made a tangible difference in terms of their life's direction, and that's a huge comfort to me.

There was someone who said it helped them find their faith, strangely and wonderfully. Someone else who said it contributed to their decision not to go down a more lucrative career path within what they view as an exploitative industry. (I hope they don't regret that decision; I hope it makes them happy.)

So there's something there. Maybe.

[milfhunter6698]

Under pressure

synopsis: Upon joining the NYC firm as a new associate, you quickly find yourself facing the pressure of working under the firm’s star senior partner, Victoria neuman. With a reputation for excellence and an eye for potential, she was searching for a junior partner who can meet her exacting standards. You, with your impressive credentials and unwavering ambition, seemed like a perfect fit…until the pressure of meeting those high expectations started taking their toll. 

Warnings: 18+ eventual smut, no use of (y/n), cursing, no describing reader’s appearance, explicit language, fluff, angst, teasing, hurt & comfort, power imbalance, slight AU, some similarities to cannon, mentions of the boys characters (Hughie), slight age gap, rival associates, young!reader, older!Victoria, slow-burn. 

notes: Woah thank you guys for the support on my recent posts, so sorry I haven’t been more active on here just been busy with life! But finally I had enough time to finish this story. Like I said before I’ve been cooking up a little something that’s a bit slightly different than usual and well here it is, this is kind of inspired by suits if you couldn’t already tell I love that show so much Anyway a little reminder that it’s an AU so Vic isn’t a supe she isn’t married and she doesn’t have a daughter, reader has a conflicted love interest, only in the beginning. Also just a small age gap (reader’s like 2 years younger). And well that’s it!! I will be posting a new chapter every week really anytime I can but until now I don’t have a specific posting schedule yet, now enjoy.

chapter 1

wc: 2k

The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, revealing the gleaming glass and steel interior of the building, one of the most prestigious law firms in New York City. You took a deep breath, smoothing out the front of your suit jacket. You had literally dreamed of this moment walking into a top firm as a freshly minted Harvard Law graduate—but the reality of it felt far more overwhelming than you had anticipated.

An assistant greeted you the moment you stepped into the bustling reception area. “Welcome, I’m Claire, and I’l be showing you around.”

Before you could respond, a commanding voice cut through the ambient noise of ringing phones and low murmurs of legal conversations. “Claire, I’ll take it from here.”

Turning, You saw Victoria neuman standing near the glass partition of her corner office. She was even more striking in person than she had been in the firm’s profile you had studied religiously. Sharp cheekbones, sleek long dark hair, and an air of complete control. Her expression, unreadable but undeniably powerful, was enough to make even the seasoned attorneys in the firm glance her way with deference. She strode toward you with an assured grace.

“I was expecting you,” she said, offering a firm handshake. “Welcome, I’ll be conducting your orientation personally.”

Claire gave a polite nod and retreated, leaving You alone with Victoria. You tried to keep your cool, even though standing in front of the firm’s most formidable senior partner sent a surge of adrenaline through you. Holy shit this  is it, you thought. This is where it all begins.

Victoria’s gaze was intense, eyes scanned your figure appraising you without a word for a few beats longer than comfortable. You could feel your own heartbeat quicken in response. Then, with a subtle nod of approval, she motioned for you to follow.

“Come. I’ll show you around,” she said. “I want to ensure you understand exactly what’s expected of you.”

As you walked, Victoria didn’t bother with the typical pleasantries. Instead, she dove straight into the firm’s culture and expectations. “At this firm, we pride ourselves on delivering results. Clients expect nothing less than perfection. You’ll be expected to hit the ground running, and I don’t tolerate mistakes. Learn fast, think faster.”

She led you past rows of open offices, filled with sharp-suited attorneys hunched over laptops or on hurried phone calls. The energy in the room was palpable, like a live wire buzzing beneath the surface.

“You came highly recommended,” she continued, glancing at you sideways, “so I assume you’re ready for what this job demands. Your education is impressive, but that won’t matter much if you can’t perform here. I don’t give second chances.”

You arrived at a glass-walled conference room. Victoria paused in front of it, turning to face you fully. “This is where deals are won and lost. Every conversation in this room has the power to change the course of someone’s life—or their career. You’ll need to be as sharp as a blade if you want to survive here.”

You swallowed, nodding, the weight of her words settling heavily on your shoulders. hmm no pressure, you thought wryly.

Victoria’s expression softened for a fraction of a second. “You’ll be working closely with me. I expect dedication and loyalty above all else. You deliver, and you’ll go far. Fail, and—well, let’s just say you won’t have time to pack your desk.”

The edge in her tone sent a chill through you, but it also lit a spark. This was exactly what you wanted—the chance to prove yourself, to become someone worthy of standing in such a firm like this. The stakes were high, but so was the reward.

“Any questions?” Victoria asked, crossing her arms, waiting.

You shook your head. “No, I’m ready.”

Victoria’s lips curved slightly, just shy of a smile. “Good. We’ll see about that.”

You returned the smile and watched as she trailed down the hallway, your eyes fixated on the way her curls danced with her every movement. The sway of her hips hypnotized you, a vision you couldn't tear your gaze away from. Her delicate blossom pink skirt hugged her body, outlining her curves that made your heart skip a beat.

You spent the rest of the morning buried in a flood of emails, client files, and case briefings that had been stacked neatly on your desk. It was a lot to take in more than you had imagined—but you welcomed the challenge. 

The buzz of the office continued around you phones ringing, associates pacing with urgent phone calls, and the distant hum of printers churning out documents by the dozen.

As you settled into your cubicle, you felt a presence lingering nearby. Glancing up, you saw a guy, another associate—tall, sharp-dressed, and carrying the kind of swagger that suggested he had something to prove. You had seen him briefly during your orientation but hadn’t yet exchanged words.

“It’s you, right?” He leaned against the edge of your cubicle, arms folded across his chest. “Heard you’re the new associate.” His tone was casual, but there was something in his eyes that felt like a challenge.

You nodded, unsure of where this was going. “Yeah, just started today.”

“Harvard, huh?” He scoffed slightly, shaking his head. “Well, let me give you some advice. This place doesn’t care where you went to school. All that matters is how fast you can keep up, and—” He paused, leaning in slightly, lowering his voice. “—how well you play the game.”

You raised an eyebrow, What the?- not entirely sure what this guy was getting at, but before you could even respond, a sharp voice sliced through the conversation.

“Hughie,” came Victoria’s voice, cutting through the air with a tone that brooked no argument. She was striding down the hall, her eyes fixed on him. “Quit wasting time, and get back to work. I need you in my office now.”

Hughie stiffened, his cocky expression dropping in an instant. Without another word, he pushed himself off your desk and muttered, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” before turning and following Victoria down the hall.

You watched them go, Victoria not bothering to glance back as Hughie trailed after her like a scolded schoolboy. You turned back to your desk. 

Shaking it off, you focused back on the files in front of you. You didn’t have time for distractions. And Victoria had made it pretty clear that there was no room for error here, and you were determined to prove that you were more than just another Harvard graduate with a shiny diploma.

The office was quieter now, the once-bustling space reduced to a few late-night workers finishing up their tasks. You, exhausted but resolute, packed up the last of your paperwork and headed for the exit. The dim lighting cast long shadows across the hallway as you made your way towards the elevators.

Passing by Victoria’s office, you glanced in through the glass panels to see her still working, her silhouette illuminated by the glow of her desk lamp. You were about to step into the elevator when you noticed her approaching.

“Late night?” She asked as she arrived beside you, her tone softer than it had been during the day.

“Just trying to get up to speed,” You replied, pressing the button for the elevator.

She nodded, her gaze thoughtful. “Hey um, listen about earlier. Hughie can be a bit… intense. I’m sorry if his behavior was off-putting. He’s known for his competitive nature and his, well, cocky personality. It’s not personal.”

You raised an eyebrow, nodding appreciating the gesture. “Thanks for letting me know. It’s been a bit… overwhelming.”

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. You both stepped inside, the small space cocooning you in an unexpected moment of quiet. Victoria glanced at you, her professional demeanor giving way to something more genuine.

“Just keep your head up and stay focused. You’ve got potential, and that’s why you’re here,” she said, offering a small smile.

You nodded, feeling a flicker of reassurance from her words. “I will. Thank you.”

The elevator came to a gentle halt on the ground floor. As the doors opened, Victoria stepped out, pausing to give you one last look.

“Good night,” she said, her voice carrying a note of warmth. “See you tomorrow.”

“Night,” You replied, watching as she walked away down the corridor to the lobby.

You trudged up the stairs to your apartment, exhausted after the demanding day at the office. You fumbled with your keys and finally managed to unlock the door. Pushing it open, the dim light from the hallway barely illuminated the space as you stepped inside.

Your hand instinctively reached for the light switch, only to find the room already bathed in a soft glow. Your eyes were drawn to the figure sitting on the couch, arms crossed, a silhouette against the light. Your heart skipped a beat.

“Oh hey, you scared me,” You said, letting out a sigh of relief as you recognized the figure. You jingled the keys nervously and held a hand to your chest. “What are you doing here?”

Her eyes were fixed on the floor, her expression a mix of frustration and sadness. She didn’t respond immediately, letting the silence stretch.

“What’s going on?” You asked, stepping closer. You reached out to lift her chin to meet your gaze, but she turned her head away, brushing your hand aside.

“We need to talk,” She finally said, her voice trembling slightly.

Your brow furrowed. “What’s wrong? You’re acting like something’s terribly wrong.”

Her frustration boiled over. “It’s not just ‘something’—it’s everything! You’re always working. When you’re home, you’re so distant. It’s like you’re not even here.”

Your face hardened. “I’m working hard to build my career, This job is important. I thought you understood that.”

She stood up abruptly, her face flushed with emotion. “I understand that you’re working hard, but at what cost? You’re neglecting us. You’re never around, and when you are, it’s like you’re so preoccupied that you don’t even notice how this is affecting me!”

Your frustration matched hers. “Are you saying that my career is more important than our relationship? I’m doing this for us, to secure a future. What more do you want from me?”

Her voice cracked with anger. “I want you to be present! I want you to be here, with me. I want us to have a future together, but not if it means you’re absent from it!”

Your jaw clenched, your anger and guilt conflicting inside you. “You think it’s easy for me? I’m doing the best I can, and it feels like no matter what I do, it’s never enough. You’re not making this any easier by attacking me like this!”

Her eyes filled with tears as her anger reached its peak. “I’m not attacking you. I’m telling you how I feel. I need to know that you’re committed to us, not just your job. But it seems like that’s not something you’re willing to do.”

She turned towards the door, her movements sharp and decisive. “I can’t keep doing this anymore, I need someone who’s truly here for me, not just physically but emotionally. And right now, that’s not you.”

Your voice faltered. “Hey, wait. please I’m sorry. I’ll try to make things right.”

She paused at the door, her back still turned to you. “Words aren’t enough anymore,” she said quietly. “I need actions. Until you can show me that, I need some time.”

With that, she opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. The door closed behind her with a definitive click, leaving you standing alone in the dim light of your apartment.

You knew the decisions and the sacrifices you had to make balancing your personal and professional life, when you applied for this position, but the choice was becoming increasingly unbearable. 

The job was intense sure, but your relationship with your girlfriend was just as crucial to you. The thought of losing her was eating you alive, gnawing at your concentration and filling you with a deep sense of anxiety.

With a deep sigh you sank down onto the couch, your heart ached at the emptiness of the place that now felt suffocating.