#I’m slowly but surely loosing my sanity because of this game but it’s fUN

[thormanick]

Not me continuously coming back to Kaeya’s remark during the Windblume festival in the tavern about “oh what a group we have today”, because NONE of those who were present were just ordinary characters, you know, like

Diluc has duality to his life (owner of winery/fighter at night)

Venti has duality to his life (bard/anemo archon)

Kaeya has duality to his life (knight/spy)

Traveller is mad sus bc who even ARE we and what WERE we

And then there is Rosaria, who’s a nun and

Well

Something completely different

#kaeya knows stuff but never shares like sir pls #genshin impact #genshin impact theory #just thoughts #genshin impact venti #i’m slowly but surely loosing my sanity because of this game but it’s fun #genshin impact diluc #genshin impact kaeya #genshin impact rosaria #genshin impact traveller #genshin impact aether #genshin impact lumine #genshin windblume

[shurisneakers]

harmless (iv)

Summary: Bucky volunteers to go stop a small time villain, but nothing can prepare him for what exactly he has to deal with. (Bucky x villain!reader, drabble series)

Warnings: cursing, guns, mention of war, frustrated bucky, dramatic reader

Word count: 1.5k

A/N: good evening i’ve never been to any of the places i mention in this series so dont come @ me

if you have any ideas for future inventions/evil plans, lemme know! i might actually end up using them 

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous Part || Series Masterlist

He spends the weekend doing nothing. It’s supposed to be relaxing. He finds it nauseatingly boring.

“No mini mission this week?” Steve asks him from across the couch. 

They’re supposed to be catching up on Star Wars but two prequels in and Bucky could feel himself lose his sanity. Anyone could present him with a random assortment of alphabets, call it a Star Wars species and he would have no reason not to believe them.

It’s not like he doesn’t like space. It’s just that he’s had enough of it and everything and everyone who came from it for the foreseeable future.

“No. Someone else is taking care of it.”

“Didn’t you volunteer for this?”

“I pulled myself out of the case.”

“I thought you were having fun.” 

Bucky’s head slowly turns to look at him. “Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know,” Steve shrugged. “Looked like you were.”

Well, he wasn’t. He likes it here at home, glued to the TV. Popcorn beside him, sweatpants on. Refreshing, calming, slow, mundane, and Jesus Christ, so fucking boring-

His spiralling is interrupted by the dinging of the elevator to the common floor. No one was allowed up there unless it was extremely urgent. Guests were barely allowed into the Tower as it was. 

It reveals the receptionist from downstairs, Marie. She’s always a little reserved, a little shy. But Bucky had seen her chew and spit out trespassers or anyone who dared to get on her nerve. He adores her.

“Hey, Marie,” Steve says while Bucky sends her a friendly wave in greeting. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a hostage situation downtown,” she informs them. 

“Okay...” Steve drawls, waiting for a reason why this was an Avengers level threat.

“They’ve asked for Mr. Barnes by name.” She makes a mention towards him.

Bucky sits up straight. Bits of popcorn fall off his chest. 

“What?”

“They said, and I quote-” she looks down at her notepad. “‘Tell that grumpy motherfucker that I’m waiting for him and that he’s not getting out of this so easily because we have come too far.’ End quote. They’ve also told me to include a kissing emoji. And a skull.”

Steve and he look at each other.

“Well?” Steve prods. 

Bucky sighs and gets up to go get ready.

The entrance of Chuck E. Cheese is more crowded than he’d ever seen. He wasn’t even sure he’d seen people in the store before. If there were, they probably only came up till his waist. 

There are a few journalists, a few policemen standing together outside. Whispers of confusion and curiosity reigned free. 

Bucky gently pushes his way to the front. He gets a nod from a police officer who opens the door for him after a quick briefing. 

The place is darker than it usually would be. A trademark, it seemed. The blinds are drawn shut and most of the light is coming through whatever sneaks in through the crack. 

“Hey, Barnes.” Your voice is muffled by a mask that looks suspiciously like it was made out of classroom craft supplies.

There’s a person in a loose chokehold in your hand with a gun pressed against his head. Once again it looks straight out of a cartoon, purple with round disks lining its barrel. 

“What’s all this now?” He gestures around monotonously. 

“A hostage situation. Didn’t you get the memo?”

“Got that part down, genius,” he bites back. “But why?”

“Fucker kept harassing me when I was walkin’ down the street.” 

The guy’s helpless gaze met Bucky. 

“Catcalling me, stalking me.” You tighten the grip you have on him. “Call me darlin’ one more time, you son of a bitch. I dare you.”

He wasn’t impressed with his pleading eyes. He kinda felt like he deserved it. 

“Why’d you do it here?” The bright colours were starting to give him a heading. “And where are the staff?”

“It’s symbolic, Bucky,” you emphasise, “He deserves to be among other rat bastards.”

Of course.

“The staff?” he asks again. 

“Gave them thirty bucks and told them to leave. I’m not a monster.”

“Right.” He doesn’t bother refuting you. “Why’d you call me here?”

“Dunno.” You shrug. “Thought it’d be fun. You having fun yet?”

You shake the guy you’re holding. He gives a small whimper. 

Bucky doesn’t want to stop you. He had chugged enough Respect Juice in his lifetime to know that this guy probably deserved a threat or two.

Hell, he’d even help but you were more than capable of handling this on your own.

“Listen,” he sighed. “As much as I’m sure he deserves it, this is technically illegal and I’m required to stop you.”

“Sorry sarge, I thought you weren’t interested in playing this stupid game with me,” you mock, voice dropping to imitate him.

“I’m not.” It wasn’t entirely true. One Saturday with Jar Jar Binks had convinced him otherwise.

“Okay, so before you leave, do me a favour and call Hawkeye. I hear he looks mighty fine when he’s annoyed.”

His face involuntarily scrunched up. You were going to replace him with Clint? Clint?

He probably took it more as an insult than he should have.

“I’m not doing that.” Bless his foul mouthed friend, but he was a little shit who was too sarcastic for his own good. At least twice a week he’d say something stupid to Bucky and then take out his hearing aids when he tried to argue back. 

“You’re leavin’ me with no options here,” you groaned, using your thumb to flip a switch. The gun looks like it powered up, lights along the side turning red.

If he let you have this, it’d be a bad look for the Avengers.

New York man dies in Chuck E. Cheese lone hostage situation, unable to be saved by same superhero who tried to fight Thanos with a machine gun.

“Tell ya what,” he says instead, “If you kill him, there won’t even be a slight chance that you’ll see me again.”

Your grip on the gun falters.

“If I let him go...”

“I might consider coming back next week.” He’s trying to spin it, make it look like he’s the one with the upper hand here. “But you gotta let him go.”

You search his face for any signs of dishonesty.

“Let him go or you’ll never see me again.” It sounds too much like Clint’s arguments with his dog who brought a live squirrel into the house. 

“Fine,” you relent, a glint in your eye. “but say goodbye to this fuckface.”

Before Bucky can open his mouth to shout in protest, you pull the trigger. The man clenches his eyes shut, face red.

He expects blood to be splatter across his face.

Nothing happens.

A barrage of bubbles floats into the room.

“I meant it literally,” you say, pushing him off you. “Say goodbye. He’s leaving.”

The man stumbles to the ground and Bucky doesn’t make any attempt to catch him. He scrambles to his knees, picking himself up and scurrying out the door to a hoard of reporters.

The door shuts behind him with the chime of a bell.

“You’re annoying,” Bucky states, giving a small sigh.

“I’m well aware of that.” You pull off the mask, wiping the sweat off your brow.

“Where is the agent assigned to your case?” 

“Dunno. Last I saw he was crying on the driveway of my lair. I just figured he’d pick himself up later so I left him there.”

Bucky’s nose twitches. 

“You weren’t actually going to kill him, were you.” He shrugs with his shoulder towards the door. It wasn’t a question, more a statement. He knew you wouldn’t. 

“I could have.”

“But you weren’t going to,” he repeats. 

“No,” you admit. “I wasn’t. But I’m glad to see you showed up.”

“You held someone hostage as leverage.”

“No, no. I held someone hostage and then asked to see you. They were completely unrelated.”

“You’re evil.”

“You jumped to conclusions,” you point out. “Would you like a trampoline next time? Maybe a pogo stick, you clown?”

He has a very real gun in his holster. His very real metal death arm aches to use it. 

“No one else agreed to come,” he deflects. 

“We both know that’s a lie. You were going to come back anyway.” You stuff the bubble gun back into the bag. “I’m deliciously irresistible.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Then beg.” You give him a smirk and he rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry, you win this round, sarge.”

He doesn’t say anything. He watches you remove your heist gear, revealing normal civilian clothes underneath.

You walk casually to the kitchen, intending to leave through the back door.

“But I can’t say I lost either.” You send him a wink before swiftly pushing open the door and leaving him behind.

He only watches you leave.

It doesn’t hit him until a few seconds later that he let a criminal out of his hands when there were several policemen and journalists outside.

He entertains the idea of chasing you down and handing you over. 

It takes him only a few seconds to decide that if they wanted you, they’d have to try themselves.

Next part 

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #mcu fic #bucky fic #bucky barnes fic #bucky fluff #bucky barnes fluff #bucky angst #bucky barnes angst #harmless fic #winter soldier x reader #Winter Soldier #bucky barnes #bucky

[sanguine-tenshi]

I just finished Inazuma and I have words

TL;DR: Hate the story, mixed on characters, love the design and tired of being treated like a 4-year-old with a learning disability.

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

Let’s start with what I like.

Inazuma is absolutely beautiful. I’ll admit Inazuma hits a lot of aesthetic points for me. All the islands are different enough to feel unique but they still look like they are a part of the same land. There are a lot of secrets to discover through just exploring. Each island has a world quest to help it (make it less hostile towards you) so it very much feels like you are saving Inazuma from itself.

.

The puzzles are alright.

I like the cubes that rotate, I always put in the effort to figure them out properly.

Hate the ones that don’t rotate, they just aren’t engaging enough for me, so I just hit them at random and hope for the best.

The glowing floor tiles were fun, once you actually realized what they wanted you to do. A little bit too easy if I’m honest.

The electro compass isn’t really much of a puzzle, more of a fetch the nearest electrograna quest.

Those little pillars that require an electro connection are kinda boring to me, again not much of a puzzle, the hardest part is finding both pillars.

I love the new electro seelie, kinda hard to follow the jittery thing in certain parts but they make a nice contrast to the regular seelies.

.

I’m very much mixed on characters.

Yoimiya is adorable. She is so bright and bubbly. What little game play we had with her was fun and I love her over the top style of fighting. Kinda disappointed she’s another pyro archer but I do admit it fits her character well. It was also wonderful seeing her just settle down and be quiet, just be a part of that moment that obviously meant a lot to her. It’s always nice to see that bubbly, energetic character have that one quiet thing, ya know. Kinda funny it’s fireworks, of all things, for her.

Gorou I like, from what little we’ve seen of him. My man killed a dude with his thighs so I’m down. I do find it kinda ridiculous that a resistance general has his whole damn belly exposed. There is also something about his voice that just does not fit. I cannot for the life of me put my finger on what exactly it is. Could be the tone itself, could be just voice acting. It sort of feels like the VA is trying to sound deeper than he actually does.

Sangonomiya Kokomi, mixed. I like her design, she looks like some sort of mystical priestess. Again something about the voice is jarring. I expected her to sound sort of airy, like she isn’t 100% present, like she’s seeing something we can’t. TBH she reminds me of Luna from HP for some reason. 

Yae Miko, I was interested because of her design. She sounds very arrogant and up her own ass, which would have been fine...if she hadn’t given us that god-awful line. “...I have high hopes for you, child. Don’t disappoint me.” Dear lord I wanted to punt her off the mountain. Or fucking what! Also she’s some bigshot priestess of the Sacred Sakura and yet she can’t do her damn job properly. Why couldn’t her arrogant ass come down from her high perch and cleanse the stupid roots? Why did the traveler have to do that shit?

Baal looks dead inside. Booba sword is overrated, get a life. I want a remach! And no cutscene shenanigans this time!

Kujou Sara seems like one of those ‘honor above all else’ characters. Those are either hit or miss with me. You have my attention for now. Also what are those shoes woman?! I’d rather you wear those leg-killing, needle point stilettoes instead of those Wish gag shoes. How in the name of all that is holy can you run in those?!

Thoma, I like him. At first I thought we were gonna get another Childe incident, but Thoma is too much of a innocent puppy to pull anything that horrible. To me he fits a fox a lot better than Childe does. Childe is a dingo and I stand behind that.

Kamisato Ayaka...hate her. At first I was neutral on her. Nothing about her design really spoke to me, but I was willing to wait and see. But then miHoYo started to violently push her friendship at us. We are totally friends now, this is the first time you see my face, but we are so totally friends now. And during her story quest everyone was like “Ah, you are so good Ayaka. You are so nice Ayaka. You are so perfect Ayaka. We all love you so much Ayaka. And oh, how could a mere merchant like myself...” Ew, go away. This is the first time I’m actively not pulling on a character banner. Normally I pull even if I’m not particularly interested in a character, because you never know how good their gameplay is until you take them out in the map. But I think I’ll be skipping this one. No thanks.

.

And now, the worst part, the story.

We’ve been hearing about the situation in Inazuma for a long time. There has been also a lot of talk about how hard it is to get there. About the wall of thunderclouds that surround the islands. So to have it cut to black and then voila Inazuma, feel just so cheap.

I was expecting something. An animation. A struggle. A quest. A minigame. At least show us the horrible weather! Something! Anything!

Hell if they wanted to be assholes about it they could have made it so that if the player fails at this point the ship is damaged, you return to Liyue and have to wait until tomorrow for the ship to be repaired. No Inazuma for today. That sure as hell would have raised the stakes.

The next complaint I have is with Yurika, the 2 milion mora processing fee girl. Later on Thoma mentions that the agency people see the fees as easy money, so her attitude doesn’t make much sense. After all someone like her would want to extract as much money as she can, but you still want the people to be able to pay that.

So it would make more sense to me if she was overly friendly and asked way too many questions. She’d need to get a much information as she can and after all the previous hostility people would be very open with her. So she’d be able to quickly find out why someone is here, what they are selling and roughly how much money they’d be able to pay. A merchant selling expensive silk would have more many than a regular ore merchant. So she’d be able to extract as much money as she could.

“I know this is a lot of money, especially for something so simple, but there is nothing I can do about it. I’m so very sorry.” And people wouldn’t say anything bad to her because she’s the first friendly face they see in Inazuma.

The stealth mission was just god-awful and I hope we never have to do that nonsense again.

Getting off of Ritou was a bit janky at the end, Chisato should have had a better reason for coming along. But I’m honestly just glad we didn’t get out the usual way...getting stuffed in a crate and smuggled out.

As a side note, I’m getting really tired of characters overexplaining things to me, especially Paimon. Dear lord, not everything has to be said, you can leave me to come to my own conclusions and solutions. Just please, who cares if a few player struggle for a bit, you don’t have to hold my hand through the whole thing.

Ayaka’s three were...ugh. It was basic emotional manipulation. Oh no this guy forgot about the love of his life and he’s been waiting for decades. And oh how sad this guy was so good and he helped these people so much but now he can’t remember. And oh the tragedy this guy forgot his life goal and is now hunted by the demons of the past. Oh the humanity! 

And it did not work. Know why? Because I have no emotional investment in any of these people, in this land. What is happening to the vision bearers in Inazuma is tragic, true, but that doesn’t make me want to overthrow the government. I don’t live here. I just got here. I wanna ask a question or two and then move on. None of this concerns me.

I was so happy when the traveler just flat out refused to start a revolution. And then we had to go and meet some people and immediately I knew this was going to be some oh noes the tragedy moments and then we would agree to help them.

It’s so forced.

Wanna know what would have been better?

Just as we are leaving the Kamisato estate Thoma catches up with us. And he tells us he gets it. We are an outsider and this doesn’t concern us. He was hopeful but he expected the denial. We shouldn’t hold it against Ayaka.

He joins us as a guide because he knows of the people we have to meet.

And so as we help these three we also get to know Thoma. We find out he was an outsider too. He got in just before the worst of it started and then he was stuck in Inazuma. He lost someone to the Vision Hunt. They slowly lost their mind after loosing their vision, their ambition too closely tied to their personality to continue without it (what is happening to Domon hits a little too close to home and he has to walk away, this is where we hear the story of the one he lost). And the same would have happened to him if the Kamisatos hadn't taken him in. He owes them his vision, his sanity and his life.

So this rebellion is personal for him.

At the end of the three wishes the atmosphere is somber. We tell him we understand why Ayaka fights, why he fights. We know that this is all wrong, that it should be stopped...but not by us. We came here to get a lead on our brother. And rebellion isn’t an overnight affaire and we can’t loose so much time in Inazuma.

And yeah, he expected as much. He just asks that we let Ayaka down gently. It’d be a shame if someone as idealistic and hopeful as her lost their spark.

And so we are gentle but firm with Ayaka. She looks like she wants to argue with us but Thoma shakes his head at her. So she sighs and tells us that a promise is a promise. We should come to the Komore Teahouse in a few days and she’ll have a plan for us to meet with the Shogun.

Now we can still have a character story quest with Yoimiya and we can still somehow get involved with helping Master Masakatsu, but it’s through Yoimiya instead of Ayaka.

And instead of a character story quest with Ayaka we have one with Thoma. Hell, give him a whole damn hangout event even.

You can probably guess why I’m pushing the friendship with Thoma so much.

Because. He. Gets. Kidnapped. For. The. 100th. Vision. Ceremony. 

And that would have been the perfect emotional in to get us involved in the rebellion. After all we just saw what happens to people who have their visions taken away and we are not letting that happen to Thoma, someone we just got close to.

So Baal makes it personal for us as well.

.

I have a few more minor complaints.

Aoi is stupid for asking for compensation after she tells us everything we needed to know because, ya know, we could have just walked away. We should have.

The whole stupid misunderstanding about the value Kurosawa’s sword holds. Kinda obvious he meant emotional value instead of monetary.

The suspicious amount of visionless NPCs and by that I mean this is the first time we have NPCs with vision. This wouldn’t have been a problem if we’ve seen NPCs with visions in Mond and Liyue.

The whole rebellion camp bit feels incredibly rushed. We just sort of lollygag over there and then there is a fight (against Sara and her stupid shoes).

Don’t make us fight Baal just to force us to lose. It would have been better if we were forced to retreat, because Thoma was injured, because there are too many soldiers for us to handle on our own. Hell, you can have a funny scene where we straight up jump off a cliff with Thoma clinging onto us and screaming bloody murder until he realizes we are slowly gliding away and he’s not about to plummet to his death.

The Sakura cleansing quest should have been voice acted.

The Mirror Maiden and Pyro Agent are totally on a date, I will not be told otherwise.

#genshin impact #inazuma #genshin inazuma #genshin 2.0 #Thoughts #opinion #yoimiya #gorou #sangonomiya kokomi #yae miko #baal #kujou sara #thoma #kamisato ayaka

[moonboykeith]

the vld crew in a cook off (ft. lotor & matt)

shiro

doesn't know what he's doing most of the time

if the kitchen isn't on fire after he's done he'll consider this a success

is using a concerning amount of mayonnaise.

he'll probably advise against trying his food

what?? the?? fuck?? is?? a?? zucchini??

keith

cuts vegetables with his dagger

is violating too many hygiene rules

he doesn't care if what he cooks is edible or not as long as he follows all the steps and finishes on time . basically treats it as an exam.

tried to cook instant ramen and serve it but hunk said it would be cheating.

tried to steal hunk's special seasoning (key word: tried)

when the fuck did god invent a purple cabbage?

lance

large proportions. and when i say large i mean he looks ready to feed 30 people.

using all the spices he can find.

his soup is just water with spice.

is practically dying but still manages to find time to make fun of keith.

went all the way to keith’s counter and spilled flour on his head to get his attention, almost got stabbed.

stole meat from shiro's counter when he wasn't looking

taste tested his food and had to take a break to drink milk and calm down the flame on his tongue.

refuses to use any vegetables because they're nasty.

pidge

"cooking is like chemistry. cooking is like chemistry. cooking is li- FUCK THIS SHIT I'M LEAVING."

tried to treat cooking like science ended up with a pie exploding in their face.

treats the cook off like the hunger games.

pushed keith into a wall and choke slammed lance to get to the pantry first.

does not know how to cut meat.

refuses to use tomato because "they're the nature's worst mistake."

wore a lab coat and safety goggles to the cook off, probably a good decision with the goggles but the lab coat is now horribly stained.

their work station looks like a mad scientist's lab, everyone is too scared to go in it's 10 m radius.

allura

slowly loosing her sanity

is trying her best to understand the human ways of cooking but what the fuck is an oven and how the fuck do you preheat it?

got the space mice to eavesdrop on hunk and cheated.

had to take a break to sit down and try not to cry.

got into a fistfight with pidge in the pantry.

trying to copy her friends but they seem to be doing worse.

hunk

is the very concerned judge and is like 90% sure that he's gonna get rushed to the ER by the end of this.

coran

wasn't allowed to participate due to health safety measures

still trying his best to support allura

matt

he's honestly just here to eat

participated due to peer pressure

spent most of his time in the pantry making himself a sandwich and eating it

stuck his foot out and made shiro trip and laughed maniacally for the next twenty minutes

his dish for the day is the leftovers of his sandwich

lotor

crashed the cooking competition for fun

is being pressurized by haggar n zarkon to not stain the name of the galra

has no idea of what the fuck humans eat so he's making a galra dish with whatever human vegetable that looks familiar

pretending to be gordon ramsay but cannot even make coffee

is very intimidated by pidge.

saw keith cutting vegetables with a dagger so he copied with his sword.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

tagging my brother and cooking teacher @cinnamontoastboi-jimothy :")

master, look what ive done.

#this was a rollercoaster #I LOVE IT #also pray for hunk pls #one like = one prayer #vld #keith kogane #lance mcclain #takashi shirogane #pidge holt #princess allura #coran coran the gorgeous man #hunk garret #lotor #matt #gordon ramsay is in pain #vld incorrect quotes #✰ incorrect quotes

[royallyprincesslilly]

Title: Healthy Competition***

Regé-Jean Page x Reader x Trevor Noah

Warning: Cursing. SMUT. Threesome. NSFW AT ALL. DP. Oral.

Words: 5k

Summary: Non-Covid world. End of Summary.

Note: I cannot be stopped. This is my first dip into either of these two on here. I tried to talk myself out of this, but I have no self-control. This is probably an acquired taste, but fuck it, I wrote this for my sanity.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy this.

If you enjoyed this, please, LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG ❤️❤️

 **Loosely Edited/Proofread**

 **Slightly Interactive**

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 “A toast to Regé, our good friend who we’re out celebrating tonight. Every guy should hide their girlfriends tonight because Mr. Steal your girl has arrived,” Trevor teased.

 Regé snorted and dropped his head back, laughing at his friend of almost ten years. He was absolutely ridiculous.

“Mate, you think you’re hilarious, don’t you?”

 Trevor shrugged, “I mean, I am the comedian here, so--.”

 He shook his head. “You’re not a very good one,” he teased back.

 “Well, your tastes are slightly askew than the rest of the world. You are British after all,” Trevor quipped, making him and their shared friends bust out laughing.

 “Oh, shut up. You’re the only one who has a problem with me being British, though we all know my Zimbabwean side would outperform your watered-down South African any day. The ladies prefer full strength over all else,” he slid home.

 Trevor laughed loudly, slinking to the side as he snickered. He knew he had him but knew Trevor would have some comeback. This was their usual banter.

 “Why do I smell a wager coming on? I feel like you’re saying you can get any woman in here to choose you over me.”

 He knocked back his drink with a smile. “Maybe I am saying it.”

 He watched Trevor gulp down his drink as their friends looked at each other with a cautious eye.

 “All right, enough. Y'all remember the last time this happened,” Adam interjected.

 “The last time? How about every time,” Marcus added before he took a sip from his glass.

 “Remember that girl in Brazil, that one we met on Ipanema Beach, she owned the beach shack,” Adam reminded.

 He remembered, and a few seconds after he did, he saw when Trevor did. His snickers returned.

 “There was nothing wrong there,” Trevor pointed out.

 “Yeah, because you won, proceeded to rub it in all night.”

 “You couldn’t even bother to close the door of the shack. You just wanted me to hear her,” he said, shaking his head as the memory washed over him.

 They’d gone back and forth with her all night. Each of them laid their game out, charmed her, put in their best work. He went to grab them all another round of beers and came back, and her small shack was shaking as her moans filled the night sky. Trevor’s laugh brought him out of his thoughts, making him roll his eyes.

 “See, that’s why we’re not doing this,” Marcus finished.

 “You’re not still salty about that, Regé, are you?”

 He shook his head and raised his hands. “Not at all. you win some, and lose some.”

 “One day, the two of you are going to pull this on someone who will make you two the competition,” Adam professed, making he and Trevor laugh.

 “It’s not like we swindle anyone, there is consent, and everyone knows what to expect and not expect,” he threw out as he stood.

 “Where you going?”

 “Refill,” he said, holding his glass up to show its empty state.

He walked out of their section of the VIP area toward the VIP bar slipping through the crowd, making sure to not bump into anyone. When he was mere steps from the bar, someone bumped him from behind, sending him lunging forward, knocking into the back of someone else. He heard a gasp and automatically thought he’d spilled someone’s drink. Sliding beside the stranger, he leaned closer.

 “I’m so sorry.”

 You turned to him, pulling an oversized candy cane from your mouth. Instantly his eyes dropped to your mouth and that candy cane that slowly revealed itself to be several inches long. When he clocked that it was about seven inches or so that you’d pulled out of your mouth, he lost every single thing he was thinking, even his bloody name.

 “Mmm, almost went too far,” you said, with a smile before you put the tip of the candy cane into your mouth. He instantly wanted to put something too far.

 He watched you raise your glass to your lips before you put it back to the bar’s surface, and in went the candy cane. He was speechless, and it was something that rarely happened.

 “Uh—I’m—sorry.”

 You smirked and swiveled the stool to face him again and perched the candy cane to the side of your plump painted lips, and spoke. “You said that already.”

 The way the red, white, and green colors of the candy cane looked with your lipstick made him wonder how other things looked with it. Clearing his throat, he looked away to behind the bar where all the bottles of liquor rested. He wasn’t trying to decide on what he wanted to drink. He was trying to gain some composure.

 He heard your snort beside him. “Cat got your tongue?”

 He looked to you, zeroed in on your eyes, and rose a brow. “What’s got your tongue?”

 You smiled slowly, then pulled out that damned candy cane making your lips make that juicy puckered kiss sound.

 “This candy cane at the moment.”

 You stared at him as if silently daring him to say something to it. He smiled and nodded his head. “You brought a candy cane to a club?”

 “It came with the drink,” you said, bringing the confection to the red-tinted liquid before you.

 He watched you stir the liquid and return the candy cane to its rightful place—against your tongue for you to lick it slowly. He didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him. It was a damn candy cane.

 “What can I get you?”

 Before he could speak, you did.

 “You look like a fun guy no matter what that crisp accent says. May I?”

 He studied you for a few moments, then shrugged before he motioned for you to go ahead. You trailed the candy cane along your bottom lip as you looked over the bottles that lined the wall. You looked like you were in deep thought, and he made a note of how adorable you looked with your perfectly crinkled eyebrows, pursed lips, and fist resting on your jaw.

 “Okay, I just need to know two things,” you began.

 He smirked and sat on the stool next to you. “And what is that?”

 You turned to him again. The crossing of your legs brought his eyes down to see the tempting split in the dress you wore. The luster of your skin raised the temptation he was feeling. He imagined how his hand looked on your body. It was the wrong thought at the wrong time because it made it impossible for him to look into your eyes again. He did, though, and when he did, he saw the mischievous glint in your eyes. He knew then, you were dangerous.

 “Your name and favorite color.”

 “Why my favorite color?”

 “If you tell me red, chances are you like strawberry undertones. If blue, maybe a blueberry or blackberry.”

 “What if it’s orange?”

 “Then we should end this conversation now and go our separate ways because no one can pull off orange anything.”

 He snorted and laughed. He liked you.

 “Safe to say red is yours?” he nodded to your drink as his clue.

 “Wrong, but this is about you. So tell me.”

 “Regé and grey.”

 Your eyes widened. “Regé as in reggae music?”

 He nodded but didn’t speak.

 “Wow, nice. I thought it was something stuffy like Albert.”

 “Just ’cause I’m British?”

 You smiled and shrugged. “And your favorite color, Regé, is grey.” I’m tempted to say grey isn’t a color, but okay. He’ll have that fifty shades of grey cocktail you tried to give me earlier.”

 “Uh-oh, something fruity, huh.”

 “Let’s add an extra shot for Mr. adventurous,” you added.

 Turning his attention to you, he licked his lips and watched you devour that candy cane.

 “What’s your name?”

 You smiled and pulled the candy out of your mouth. “Y/N.”

 He held his hand out for yours and waited for you to take it. Once you did, he shook it, never taking his eyes off of yours.

 “You’re beautiful,” he said.

 You didn’t speak for several moments, and he wondered if he should have kept that to himself.

 “Yes,” you said.

 “Yes? Yes, what?”

 You sucked the candy cane back into your mouth and took a sip of your drink. “Yes, I’ll let you buy me another drink.”

 Ten minutes came and went, then fifteen, and he was in no hurry to go back to his friends. Your conversation was entertaining and titillating. You held his attention easier than any other had. Not to mention everything you did had his heart pounding. Once you’d finished that damn candy cane, your glass was what brought his attention to your mouth. When the drinks were finished, his eyes roamed your exposed shoulders, cleavage, and thigh until his palms itched to touch.

 “I see what’s been holding you hostage, over here.” Trevor’s hand rested on his shoulder as he stood to there to his left.

 “Hostage? Hardly,” you responded with a smile.

 “I’m Trevor,” he said, holding his hand out to you.

 After a few seconds, you took it and let him shake it.

 “Trev here is a good friend of mine,” he began before taking a sip of his third drink. “Meet Y/N.”

 Trevor smiled again. “What a beautiful name for a beautiful woman.”

 He couldn’t help but smile. He knew the game had begun. However, he’d had a twenty-minute head start. He watched Trevor order you another drink before suggesting you moved from the bar to go back to their section. You didn’t answer right away, and he didn’t know what you’d decide.

 “I’ll meet you there. I have to freshen up,” you said, pointing toward where the restrooms were.

 He pointed to where their section was before you walked off.

 “May the best African win,” Trevor said, holding out his hand, making him roll his.

  ~~~~~~~

 -Y/N-

You made sure to reapply your lipstick and rearrange your hair as you inspected your face. Pleased that your products were holding up, you stood there just staring at yourself, making a plan. They thought they were slick, you thought to yourself.

 MSG Fifi: He looked hooked.

 You smirked.

 MSG: He’s hot.

MSG Fifi: So is his friend. What’s the plan?

 You thought for a few moments because you hadn’t decided yet.  

 MSG: I’m going to go have a little fun. I’ll let you know.

 You adjusted your dress then walked out of the bathroom. In the loud club again, you looked around, trying to remember when they’d pointed. You didn’t remember. Suddenly you felt a body behind you and a hand on your hip.

 “Lost?”

 The sexy British accent told you just who it was. Smiling, you bit your bottom lip, deciding you liked how he felt pressed up on you.

 “What if I said I was?”

 You could feel his breath at your ear and smell the hint of grape and vodka.

 “I’ll find anything you want me to,” Regé groaned, making you tilt your head back to look at him over your shoulder.

 “Anything?”

 He smirked then licked his lips. “I’m not if not a gentleman. Anything, Y/N.”

 The look in his eyes had you frozen in place, wishing he’d bring his large hand lower. You scoffed and got yourself under control

 “Good to know,” you said before walking away, leaving him to follow behind you.

 Once Regé led you to the VIP section, Trevor stood holding your drink to you. Having not been born yesterday, you asked a passing waitress for a fresh drink. Neither of them took offense. When you sat, you were in the middle of both men and able to appreciate the beauty that you both were. They could have passed for brothers, and when they assured you that they weren’t, you relaxed a little more.

 After an hour, you’d learned quite a few things about both men. You leaned that while Regé had this overwhelming sensual vibing coming off him, he tended to hang back physically, but his eyes were all intensity, and you could tell he preferred words. When it came to Trevor, he approached things differently. He was a flirt through and through, and you could tell he preferred touch.

 They were both like opposite sides of a coin, and you couldn’t decide which side you preferred. Some days called for heads and others tails. One thing was sure; they were both feeling you, and neither of them could hide it. It was in the way Trevor touched you with sly touches and in the way Regé reacted when you went close to him to whisper something or bit your bottom lip.

 Two hours and countless drinks later, you still sat there with the two men, and you’d all but made up your mind. Regé leaned to you and whispered in your ear before he met your eyes. Nodding, you took his hand and let him lead you to the dance floor. Once you got to a semi-secluded spot, the song changed to Teyana Taylor’s new school version of Tell me what you Want, and you watched him bop to the beat while keeping on point. You were impressed.

Regé spun you around, so your back pressed to his chest and his hands wrapped around you. he smelled incredible, almost as incredible as he felt. That was when your movements synced together and slowed. You were now swaying from side to side. You began circling your hips against him and let him hold your hands in the air as you got into it. Regé came to your ear and whispered.

 “Tell me what you want.”

 Your panties were instantly wet. Fuck, you thought. In front of you, you watched Trevor approach the two of you. Once he was in front of you, the song changed again, and the slowest, sexiest tune came on. The lights in the club changed to a deeper hue of red. Trevor came so close that his face was just inches from yours. His hand wrapped around the small of your back, pulling you against him.

 Goddamn, you thought as he moved your body how he wanted it. Your eyes met, and Trevor’s hand clasped your jaw in his large but soft hand. Slowly he slid his hand across your skin before you felt a hand on your hip spin you around. Your back was now pressed to Trevor’s chest while Regé was the one who was now inches from your lips.

 The two men sandwiched you between them, each focusing on different parts of you. Trevor’s hand was wrapped around your abdomen, searing absentminded circles on the material of the dress you wore, while Regé’s was squeezing your hip, sinking in his fingertips, so they marked you. Trevor’s jaw pressed to your ear, which Regé’s was resting against your cheek on the other side of your face. You doubted anyone could tell where you began and either of them stopped. When you felt a pair of lips press against your right ear, your breath hitched in your throat.

 Pulling back slightly, you gazed into Regé’s sultry almond-shaped eyes, and your hand balled the fabric of his shirt at his waist, hoping to control yourself.

 “Tell me what you want,” Regé repeated.

 Fuck it; you thought as you brought your lips to his kissing him with the scorching energy that was between the three of you. Regé delved his tongue into your mouth, wrapping it around yours, and it was then his hand slid lower on your hip and snaked back to your ass. As he cupped it, you released a moan unable to contain it any longer. When he sucked your tongue, you pulled back and nibbled his bottom lip. His moan caught you off guard and only fueled your steadily uncapping desire.

 You felt Trevor behind you begin to pull away from you, no doubt feeling like the loser of their masculine competition of the night. That was when you pulled from Regé’s lips and pulled him back to close the space he’d created. You had both men’s undivided attention, and the power you felt was unmatched. Bringing your lips to Trevor’s, you kissed him with the same fire you had Regé seconds ago.

 Again, you held control of this kiss. Trevor allowed you to decide just what you wanted to do, and it was probably going to be his downfall for the night. You bit his bottom lip, and his moan swam in your mouth, making you eat it like a succubus taking his life force. The decision was made.

 You pulled away and found their eyes on you. Smirking, you turned with their hands in yours and led them through the crowd. You were thankful you’d decided on the club inside the hotel rather than the other one you and Fifi were thinking of. Once in the hotel’s lobby, you beelined it to the elevator bank and wondered if they were at this hotel too. As the elevator doors opened, you stepped on and waited for either of them to press a button. This was their turn to make a decision.

 You pretended not to notice them give each other a look before Regé stepped forward and pressed nineteen. You smirked and rode up in silence. Interestingly enough, the elevator made no stops until it came to the nineteenth floor. You let them lead you, this time keeping a few feet behind them. You could feel their angst as they exchanged looks every few steps, no doubt trying to formulate a plan. It’s funny they still thought they were in control.

 The two stopped at the door at the end of the hall then opened it. Regé was the one holding the door open, and Trevor stood on the other side, letting you walk in. You glanced at both men, smirked then walked inside. You walked toward the bar you saw in the corner, then took up two bottles before you continued walking through the suite. You knew the layout was similar to yours, so you just walked where you expected the bedroom to be.

 Finding it easily, you walked in and found some music on the bedside table system, another easy feat thanks to apple music coming with every room. You pulled two chairs in front of the large window of the bedroom. You then walked to both of them and led them each to a seat.

 “Are you sure you want to do this?”

 You smiled at Regé’s sweetness and went toward him to sit on his lap.

 “Would you like me to leave?”

 He shook his head.

 “Then tell me what you want.”

 His lip quirked up at the side. He had to remember his words to you a little while ago.

 “Will you give it to me?”

 You kissed him again. as soon as your lips touched, his hands were cupping your ass, pulling you closer onto his lap. You felt the strain of his manhood against his jeans, and the anticipation had your sex quivering. Groaning, you pulled away and walked to the window. You put the bottles you held on the floor and turned to them.

 “Since you like competitions so much, the first one to move loses.”

 Trevor and Regé looked at each other quizzically. They didn’t get it yet. You untied the neck of the dress and slowly brought the straps down, careful not to allow it to fall from your body yet. Though the light in the room was scarce, you could tell the desire in both men’s eyes. You walked to Regé then turned your back to him.

 You swayed your hips from side to side to the rhythm of the music bringing yourself down to the floor before coming back up to bend in front of his face. Peeking behind you, Regé’s jaw was clenched so tightly that you thought it had to hurt. You stood and swayed again to the sounds of Sabrina Claudio. In no time, you were lost in the music bringing your hands to the back of your neck, letting the straps hang around your waist.

 Turning to them, you heard both audibly exclaim.

 “Fuck.”

 The accents were entirely different but sexy nonetheless.

 “Something wrong?”

 You stood between Trevor’s legs, topless, and circled your hips while doing your best snake charmer dance. You deemed it was acceptable because neither of them gave any indication otherwise.

 “You’re gorgeous,” Trevor whispered.

 You could see his hands clenching the arm of the chair and wondered just how much control he had in him. You pushed the dress off your hips and stood there in your thong.

 “Fucking hell,” Regé uttered when you turned your back to them. Using the strong knees you were blessed with, you brought yourself low and popped a baby twerk, not wanting to give either of them a heart attack. Every time you changed the direction of your hips, you looked over a shoulder to watch them watch you. They looked absolutely tortured.

 You walked to Trevor and stood there but stared at Regé. You motioned for him to come to you, and in seconds, he was by your side. You kissed him, taking the time to tease him with each passing second while noting he was a great kisser.

 “Lay right there,” you said, pointing to the spot between your feet. Regé obeyed, then you dipped down to your knees, your sex hovering over Regé’s mouth. You were about to speak, but shock cut you off.

 Regé wrapped his arms around your hips where your thighs met them and buried his face between your legs.

 “Oh fuck!”

 That was not the end of your shock because seconds later, you felt a wet velvety tip brush against your lips. You opened your eyes and came face to face with the impressiveness that was Trevor’s dick. You opened your mouth to speak, but a sharp stab of pleasure between your legs prohibited it. Your mouth fell open, and Trevor pushed himself into your mouth.

 You almost laughed. They were the dream tag team. The room quickly filled with moans and groans as you pleased Trevor and Regé pleased you. The way his tongue flicked against your clit was quickly bringing you closer and closer to your first orgasm of the night. You knew if they had anything to say about it, you’d have more.

 “Shit, your mouth—it’s—incredible,” Trevor panted, rolling his head back.

 Not relenting, you bobbed your head faster on Trevor’s cock, taking him as far as you could. He grabbed your head and held it in place, then fucked your mouth, making you gag every so often.

 “Uuuug!”

 When he released your head you continued the pace and moaned on his flesh from the pleasure Regé was giving you but also the pleasure you got from giving it to Trevor. When you felt gentle nibbles, you pulled back and gasped, then began using your hands.

 “Oh, fuck, yes! Right there, mmmm!”

 Regé sucked your clit into his mouth as he reached up to one of your breasts to pinch your nipple. Following suit, Trevor did the same to the other, and that pushed you over the edge. Your screech was loud as it filled the room and probably the hall outside. Bucking your hips against his mouth, you rode his face as it was meant to be ridden.

 When you rolled off of Regé and collapsed to the floor, the men stood and surrounded you. Regé went to your head while Trevor between your legs. You watched him sheath himself with a condom before he met your eyes.

 “Are you sure?”

 You nodded before you reached to palm Regé’s pulsating and impressive member. As your mouth slid along Regé’s length, Trevor’s slid inside your heated core, stretching you deliciously before filling you perfectly with his thickness.

 “Good god,” Trevor whispered, hovering over you to catch his breath.

 “You’re so tight, Y/N,” Trevor moaned, beginning to circle his hips.

With a full mouth, you were unable to speak and instead used the pleasure you felt to return it tenfold to Regé. His head lulled back while his jaw dropped, and he grunted, sending the last few inches of his need into your throat. You fought your gag the best you could. Trevor then sped his thrusts. Each time he connected your bodies, your breasts swung, and your sex clenched around him, gripping him like a vise.

 Soon your moans and mumbles made it almost impossible to properly enjoy what Regé had to offer, so your hands to make up for the job your mouth couldn’t do. Trevor’s thrusts got rougher, and in seconds you’d come for the second time. Using your feet to push him off, you stood and crawled onto the bed. While lying there, you watched both men slowly approach you. Regé was the one between your legs this time while Trevor was beside you.

 Trevor wrapped his lips around a pert nipple, then sucked, licked, and nibbled it. As your mewls spilled from your lips, Regé still had yet to move an inch. He kneeled there, rubbing the tip of his cock across your soaking slit.

 “You’re so wet. Show me, Y/N.”

 You slinked your fingers between your legs and dipped one inside to show him the evidence of your overwhelming arousal. He smiled, then sucked your finger into his mouth before he thrust forward in one powerful move.

 ��Fuck!”

 The men ravaged you, one with their mouth and the other with their skillful appendage. Where Trevor was girthy and nicely proportioned, Regé had been blessed with girth and an overabundance of length. It didn’t take much for you to come again and again and again. When you rolled onto Regé to take control, you took your time crippling Trevor as he stood in front of you.

 The room was sweltering, and your bodies were slick with sweat, so every move the three of you made, the sound of bodies rubbing together echoed throughout. If it wasn’t the slickness of skin, it was the squelching of your wetness as they plowed into you or you rode them into oblivion.

 “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

 The feel of both men nestled snugly in your tight trove was close to have to see stars. You crashed your lips to Regé, who was underneath you while Trevor was behind. He pumped more vigorously into you, making you pant and whine with each connection. Trevor, not being the one to be outdone, slammed into you, coaxing that spot in you that you knew would soon have you combust into a million specks of dust as you floated the galaxy.

 “I’m coming,” Regé and Trevor both shouted as if competing for who could say it louder. You rocked your hips against Regé while slamming back onto Trevor. You intended to bring both men to their knees, but after a few movements, you realized that you’d come undone just as ferociously.

 “Come for me, Y/N!”

  Shivering, you tried to ignore the command as you repeated your actions over and over. Underneath you, Regé bit your nipple, and behind you, Trevor your shoulder. Either way, these men intended to sear their marks into your flesh. Something about that was so fucking hot. You sped your movements, and that was when your body shook.

 “Fuck!”

 Both men shook with you and released such loud grunts and groans that rivaled your own whining. Your orgasm was expected but what was not expected was how long it continued. After a minute, you were still coming with both men still trying to secure themselves as deeply into you as possible. Both thrust into you once more, and that was all you could handle before stars erupted behind your eyelids, making you clench around both of them.

 Trevor and Regé gasped and hissed before the three of you dropped onto the bed. You were between them as all three of you tried to catch your breaths.

 Your eyelids were heavy, your limbs tense, muscles tight, and between your legs sore. You couldn’t move even if you wanted to. So you didn’t.

 ~~~~~~~

-The Next Morning-

When you opened your eyes, the sun had yet to rise from behind the high rise next to the hotel. It took several moments for your vision to return clearly. When it did, you looked around, recognizing you were not alone. You felt a body nestled to your back and one in front of you. You froze, not wanting to stir anyone awake. You didn’t want a whole morning after thing. This was not what this was. It took you some time to slither from the clutches of the gorgeous men you’d spent the night with.

 Once free you stood there for a few moments and took them in. Trevor was on his side back to the window completely bare assed. It was a nice one too. His arm was thrown over his head leaving only part of his face visible. He looked adorable asleep. Regé was on his back, one arm over his head tucked underneath the pillow he rested his head-on. That was where your head had laid, right on his chest as if it belonged there.

 You shook off any attachment that was trying to creep its way in. You didn’t often do things like this, matter of fact, this was downright as rare as a blue moon. However, you hated the cliché of women who got attached after clear one night stands. You never wanted to be one of them because you knew for a fact men always laughed at them. You wouldn’t be that cliché, you thought to yourself. You gave the men one last look, then turned to gather your things.

 Once dressed and inside the elevator, you smiled to yourself. They really thought they picked you up when in fact, you’d heard their friendly competitive banter and decided a little fun was in order. Seeing how the night went, it was safe to say you were the real winner.

 MSG Fifi: Everything okay?

 You smiled to yourself.

 MSG: Pussy put their ass to sleep. Call me, NyQuil.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TagList:

@chaneajoyyy​ @caramara3​ @night-of-the-living-shred​ @mauvecherie​ @areubeingserved​ @queenoftheworldisdead​ @ramp-it-up​ @i-just-like-fanfics​ @give-me-a-million-dollars-pls​ @wondersofdreaming​ @koko-michelle 

#risk it all fic #regé jean page #rege jean page fanfiction #trevor noah #trevor noah fanfiction #black fanfiction #healthy competition fic

[emsylcatac]

😂🥺😭😗😞 with marichat

Ok I decided to try my hand at a bit of angst here; and make it waaaayyy longer than it should (yes because I’ve decided to completely ignore my own rules from the beginning of this game like the clown I am). I’m sorry in advance for the length (I even had to put a cut aha) and lack of crack writing 😬

[Edit: Now with more parts!]

Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3

* * * * *

Marinette gripped the railing of the balcony tightly, trying to get her breathing under control. She had not been expecting that. Chat Noir. 

Chat Noir, who she had fought Hawkmoth and Mayura with during four long years. Chat Noir, who had sacrificed himself for her more times that she could count. Chat Noir, that she had last seen two years ago. 

Chat Noir, her partner, that she missed oh so very much.

And here he was, still naive and filled with wonder and happy, unaware of everything that had happened and certainly not understanding why Marinette had promptly fled the room at the sight of him to avoid anyone seeing her just loose it and cry for no apparent reason.

She had been having a nice time with her friends at Alya and Nino’s apartment; everything was going great and they had fun until Alix rang and came in with a Chat Noir that looked like he was 15 years old at most. Marinette had forgotten how much of a baby face he still had at that age. Alix explained that she had randomly found him in the streets and that he had been transported into their time by a sort of time travel akuma. Marinette had an inkling idea as to how exactly she really found him but it’s not like she could share the information. 

“All we have to do is keep him company until the Ladybug from his time resets everything!” Alix had informed them. Easy. (Ha! Who was she kidding).

So here she was. 20 years old Marinette, breaking down over seeing a younger version of her partner. She felt pathetic. Adrien, who had been invited as well, had also looked very shook at the sight of Chat Noir and had immediately excused himself; she supposed it had to do with everything that had happened with his Father being Hawkmoth. She couldn’t really blame him.

“Hey. Are you all right?” a soft voice startled her from behind. She didn’t need to turn around to know whose voice it was.

She tried to keep it together and closed her eyes tightly, hoping it would magically work. She felt a hand coming to rest on her shoulder. It didn’t work.

“Hum… I saw you running there and… Uh… You looked like you’d need company.” he finished nervously. 

‘Always so concerned for the others, Kitty’, she thought. She chuckled sadly.

“I…” she sighed. “Yes, I’m fine!” she lied, a waver in her voice. She turned around to face him and– “No.” she started to sob again, “No I am not fine at all!” and she collapsed into his arms, and she was a crying mess, and Oh god he must not understand anything yet she couldn’t find it in herself to loose her grip on him.

He so ever patiently let her cry her eyes out while patting her back softly and whispering what she assumed were words of reassurance.

While she sobbed uncontrollably and hold onto him for the first time in two years, flitting images jostled in her mind from the final fight and the aftermath. A Chat Noir held by Hawkmoth who had stabbed him with a sword hidden in his cane. One that looked completely erased and absent of whatever stories she was retelling him; she had been worried that day but he had shook his head and said it was fine. Another Chat Noir, completely shocked at discovering who was behind Mayura’s mask; one furiously charging towards Hawkmoth. One who was crying on a roof one night; he never told her why. And then… 

…The last one. The one who told her he needed time. That he needed to retreat for a while for his own sanity. That he wasn’t ready for an identity reveal, not yet. How had things come down to that? Ladybug didn’t know. She couldn’t know. And he said he would let her know when the time was right.

‘It seemed that the time had never been right’, she thought bitterly.

“I don’t know what made you sad, Marinette. If it was me, then I am sorry.” he told her once she had calmed down.

She swallowed. “It… Don’t you worry about it.” she told him. “And you will probably be gone in a short time if everything is going fine.” she chuckled.

He smiled softly. “You’re right; but it doesn’t mean that I can’t stay there with you so you can feel better!” he gave her a warm smile. “The others, uh… Were busy and worried for Adrien and went after him, for some reasons.” he frowned. He then looked sadly towards the inside of the apartment, where Adrien probably was, as if worried of something else than simply Adrien’s well-being. “They’re all in Alya and Nino’s room.”

“That is sweet of you.” she told him. He turned his head back towards her.

“I could tell you a joke if you’d like.”

She looked at him with wide eyes. She hadn’t heard him joke since… Well, since.

“How do you call a cat that can support a house?” he asked, taking her silence as a confirmation for him to go on. She continued to stare at him with wide eyes, not knowing how to answer.

A teasing smile appeared on his face. “A caterpillar!” he said sounding way too proud with himself.

Marinette couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing. Blame it on her nerves, or the fact that the joke was so lame that it was what made it funny, or that she had already heard it on patrol and her Chat Noir had assured her that–

“Thanks! I came up with it myself!”

Yeah, that. She slowly calmed down and smiled tiredly with closed eyes. Sweet nostalgia.

“I don’t know what has gotten you so down, Marinette,” Chat Noir spoke again, “but the girl I know is amazing. And she can accomplish anything she sets her eyes on. So no matter what, I am sure that you can summon her because she never left. And she can help you to overcome what is making you sad if you give her the time and chance.” And it was such a naive and a Chat thing to say but also had he always been so wise?

She took a deep breath. “You’re not going to remember anything when you’ll come back, are you?” she asked him.

Chat Noir seemed to ponder her question for a few seconds. “I don’t think so,” he answered, “at least that’s what happened every time an akuma has sowed discord.”

“I thought so too.” Marinette said. She actually already knew that but she felt like she needed some kind of confirmation. Before saying what she was about to say.

She sighed. “I missed you, you know. I still do.” she started. She couldn’t see Chat Noir fixing her with a questioning look since her eyes were closed, but she could feel it. “You disappeared a few months after Hawkmoth and Mayura were defeated. I never knew why… Well… I knew something was wrong. But you never told me.”

She heard Chat Noir gulped. “Why… Why would I have told you, Marinette?” he asked.

She smiled and chuckled quietly but it sounded sad even to her ears. “Because I am – was – still am – your partner.” she let it sink in a few seconds before finally opening her eyes and turning to Chat Noir.

“I am Ladybug, Kitty.” she whispered so low that she was sure he heard her only thanks to his enhanced hearing.

He was staring at her with his mouth agape and eyes impossibly wide. He slowly raised a finger and pointed it at her.

“You are… You are?”

“Yes,” she said smiling while tears were gathering once again in her eyes. “Yes it’s me..”

A smile stretched onto his face and he was suddenly grinning happily.

“I knew it! I knew it had to be you! It makes so much sense! Oh wow – do you know who I am?” he asked excitedly.

Her smile dropped and she looked away.

“O–oh… You said I left didn’t you? But this is so stupid why would I–”

“I don’t know. I don’t know and I miss you and I want to be there for you if you’re in a bad place and…” she sighed and closed her eyes, trying to regain control of her breathing before she would be a sobbing mess once again.

“… I could tell you who I am?” Chat Noir suggested.

She smiled painfully. “No… It wouldn’t be fair, I guess… I guess I need to wait. For the older you to… Give me a sign.” but even she didn’t like the sound of it. She just wanted to beg Chat Noir to tell her who he was.

For some reasons, he looked back towards the inside of the apartment sadly. He then shook his head, sighed, and looked at her again.

“Why are you telling me? Not that I mind, of course, I am ecstatic to know who you are and that you are you but…” he trailed off.

“I guess I just wanted you to know.” she smiled softly. “So you would… Understand and… Because I want to be able to tell you and this is the closest I’ve been to you in two years and… A-and you’re going to disappear any minute now a-and…” she stared to sob again. She really hadn’t thought seeing Chat Noir would put such a wrench in her heart.

“Hey.” Chat Noir said, approaching her and putting his hand on her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. We will find a solution. I understand.” he soothed.

“Thanks, kitty.” she said while wiping a tear. She slowly approached her head of his and dropped a gentle kiss on his cheek. “You’re always there for me.”

“Apparently not so much these days…” he said sadly with rosy cheeks. “I am… Sorry. I don’t know what happened but… I truly am.”

“I know you are. I know you wouldn’t leave me without a good reason. Don’t worry about it.” she replied, wiping more tears out of her face. “I just hope that you are all right, wherever you are…”

They stared at each other for a little while without speaking. Suddenly, a pink light started to surround him.

“Oh no, I guess my time is up! There was something I wanted to do before–” Chat Noir said frantic.

Marinette tried to not let her panic seize her. “Thank you Chaton.. For everything. Goodbye and take care of you and of your Ladybug…” she said and ugh, she couldn’t fight the onslaught of tears that rolled down her cheeks at the idea of seeing him leave once again.

“I am Adrien Agreste!” he said while the last magic ladybug disappeared, making him fade away back into his own time.

I am Adrien Agreste.

I am Adrien Agreste.

Oh. OH. This explained so much and how had she never thought about this before–

Marinette scrambled to her feet and ran faster than she ever thought she had back inside the apartment.

____________

Thanks for the ask ♥ WELL I MAY HAVE OR MAY HAVE NOT COMPLETELY GONE OVERBOARD UH

I honestly have no idea what that is and how it came to my mind oh well, I hope you liked it though…! Again, I’ll try to keep the next ones short but I wanted to try something longer there.

5 emojis and 2 characters game 😊💩😱😻👀 (/!\ I already received a lot to do – thanks by the way – so you don’t feel like you have to send me new ones, I just leave the link here in case someone else want to participate to the game as well; I’m still accepting requests though but they won’t be dealt with too soon).

#ask #anon #ask game #emoji ml story #marichat #marinette #chat noir #there's kind of a reveal or half reveal #well you'll see #time travel shenanigans & angst #lolol i'm the 1st to criticise time travel #yet here i am #this is longer than the others #myshitwriting

[halothenthehorns]

All in the Family

Chapter 149: A Very Frosty Christmas

It looked like a paper chain explosion in here, there was a garden gnome painted solid gold with a tu-tu on top of the tree, and a very annoying song was blasting from a radio, but they all fought back a sob of relief to find themselves in the Burrow's living room. Nothing had nearly tried to kill Harry here!

Most of them landed on the many available couches and chairs, Regulus had smacked against the frost covered window, Remus had nearly landed in the lit fire. Lily was misfortunate enough to nearly have said tree wobble dangerously and nearly crash down on her until Potter was there, supporting its massive weight and getting many decorations in his face as she fell the rest of the way to the floor in exhaustion.

Madam Pomfrey would normally have them all on half a dozen potions to revitalize their energy and doing hourly check ups to make sure there were no ill side effects as well as feeding three square meals a day and making absolutely sure they were getting their rest with zero strenuous activity; getting flung around the universe was the opposite of what all of them needed right now.

Alice rushed over and helped Lily back to her feet as James finished straightening up the tree, trying to guide her towards the kitchen and up the stairs for the rooms, but Lily stubbornly dug in her heels and looked up. The book was resting near the top, it hadn't fallen out of the branches.

"We need to take a break hun," Alice pleaded just as much for her own sanity as her friends.

"I know," she promised, "I don't want to finish, I do not want to leave here yet. Just down to the last few paragraphs...just in case." She visibly exhaled, breathing really was a luxury she didn't indulge in enough.

"Ah," James nodded in understanding, and no one was going to deny her paranoia right now. He jumped without further ado, snatching the silver spine where the little green six was almost invisible amongst the fir needles, but wobbled as he landed and leaned against the tree for support now.

She watched with a heavy heart, had she not managed to heal the rest of his leg?

Shaking it off like nothing had happened, he flipped over the couch and landed next to Sirius, who was still sprawled from his original landing half off as he watched his little brother shake his hair back into place like looking at a photo of himself doing it, one mum and dad would never dream of taking after what he'd just done...Merlin he'd never respected that kid more than right now.

"A Very Frosty Christmas!" Prongs said with all the cheerfulness in the world for the dreary title.

Alice whispered for anyone, "would someone at least like something to eat then? Helps not to sleep on an empty stomach."

"Darling come sit down," Frank pleaded, especially when Lily visibly grimaced and rubbed at her stomach. She still waited until Lily curled up in the warmest chair by the fire and watched maternally as Regulus stumbled to the nearest couch, barely sitting on the edge before going to Frank's arms and listening as Harry recanted to Ron what he'd heard.

At least nothing too memorable in the following bit happened, just some normal Christmas cheer, the Marauders were even too exhausted to react to the fun idea of throwing knives at each other! Even Lupin making another friendly appearance felt like a pleasant thing, at first.

It didn't remain that way when Remus began defending Snape!

James looked up wearily from the book to his Moony sitting on the hearth, his somber look as he gazed into the flickering embers and twiddling with his wand to lower the music from moments ago replaced with one of pure loathing at all Snivilus had done to Harry and Sirius in this future, even Remus himself to some degree. The explanation, that all it had taken was Dumbledore's word and some potion would have sounded pathetic to him if it came from anyone else in the world but one of his best friends, who no longer had anyone in this future.

"Was that all it took to win you over?" Sirius asked, trying very hard not to frown at Moony but instead put in another joke. "All those Animagus years for nothing, just had to get you a bloody potion!"

"Don't say that Padfoot," was all Remus had in him to whisper, clamping his hands so tight in front of him he looked as if he were trying to stop from strangling something, like himself. Sirius and James had always been there for him when it mattered, he must have gone barmy without them!

Sirius finally sat up proper from his wonky position on the couch and kept watching in greater concern as Harry changed the subject by asking what he'd been out doing this whole time.

The answer made said werewolf jump to his feet and watch the book like his pants had been set on fire. "I'm what!" He'd never even met another of his kind, and he was out there living with them! He'd infiltrated and been living with other werewolves?! For how long!? This entire time, away from Sirius and Harry and everyone, all because Dumbledore had told him to?!

Sirius got up uneasily and went to his side, but Remus' angry words from before stopped him from doing anything. 'Privacy' he reminded himself, but it killed him to just stand here and do nothing as Moony watched Prongs read like it was his eulogy in the following deadly silence.

The story proceeded like he was being drowned and set on fire all at once, there was no air in here. He felt more immensely hot and uncomfortable in his skin than any transformation he'd yet suffered. His father had offended the worst of them all and Remus had paid the price. Now he was working under Greyback to try and convince others they had a chance at a decent life when he clearly wasn't even living that.

James couldn't take it anymore, he'd apologize to Evans later. He slammed the book shut and threw it with deadly accuracy, watching it sail out the window into the snow beyond like that would somehow dispel what he was watching his friend go through once more.

"You didn't know?" Alice easily deduced, watching the child in that photo scream as a monster made its minion in real life on his face.

He shook his head slowly in answer and then went outside into the cold December night, slamming the door behind him, the rest of the loose glass fell from the window.

Sirius bolted after him before the first snowflake had even fluttered in, dogging his path and assuring himself when Remus didn't turn around and yell at him to leave he'd done alright this time, he hadn't said or done anything in front of the others so this should be okay, even if it had been just as awful to see Moony like that as it had been Evans. He knew exactly how useless Prongs felt now. It didn't feel right to have done so though, not when Remus had so clearly needed...

He'd barely rounded the low garden wall before he finally whirled around and watched Sirius approach him. The weary look on Padfoot's face peaked his anger at himself, he really was destined to screw up every part of his life from the moment he'd been bitten. He just wanted the noise in his head to stop!

Remus' fingers were already like ice as he reached out and cupped his face, tears of anger or fear Sirius didn't know were frozen in place as he leaned in. He kissed him back with all the warmth in him even as he was pressed into a frozen branch and felt the icicles in his hair.

Moony pulled back still breathing in his face, the wild look only just abated as he spat, "Greyback! I have spent half my life pitying sodding Fenrir Greyback! I'm, what, supposed to be some sort of- no wonder my dad never lets me around anyone! Dumbledore's always kept an eye on me, it's a miracle that mutt hasn't come for me yet! Merlin Sirius, I don't know what to do, I don't want to- I can't-"

It wasn't just a nameless, faceless other like him to feel sorrow for on some accident. He was a pawn in a game he didn't even know was being played!

"You're not going anywhere Remus," Sirius stated, holding his hands in place, despite the fact they still seemed to be getting colder. He was trembling so hard it wouldn't surprise Sirius if he did transform.

"It was bad enough before!" His hot breath on his face was the only alive part of him, the rest of him was still glacially reacting, even he didn't seem to know if he was more afraid of this sudden development or angry at it. "I don't even want to go back anymore Sirius! I know we keep almost dying and shit, but I don't okay! Back there it'll, it'll be-" and he leaned in and kissed him again like he thought it would be his last.

His hands were in that long dark hair he loved so much, if he was hurting Sirius with as feverishly as he pressed into him Padfoot never tried to stop him, only pulled him in closer.

He'd stormed out here with a mad idea of being able to get far enough away he'd travel back in time enough to transform, wishing for it for the first time in his life just to get out of the screams of his youth that echoed in his head. The curse Greyback had set upon him would be the downfall of that monstrosity, he'd never change back until he returned the favor in kind and ripped his throat out!

Not with Sirius along though, he'd never risk having Padfoot in that fight, he would get himself killed. It was a simple fact in his mind then, to keep him pinned like this instead.

Nothing lasts forever.

When the anger was spent and the two watched each other to see what would happen next, Remus begged of him the only thing he could ask in this mess. "Sirius, please- please don't tell James about this," his voice was stuttering, but not from cold. If Padfoot told James, then the dream would be shattered, he couldn't just go back to pretending this would all be okay anymore. If James knew, if anyone else knew, Remus would have to wake up to the reality of this horrible future pressing him from all sides. A secret only worked so long as you didn't have to look at what was being hidden.

Sirius watched him for a long time with such sorrow in his eyes, for him he knew. He just wanted to help. He reached up and touched his neck, but Remus took it in both of his hands.

"I don't understand. Privacy, I know, I really am trying to get it, but- " Sirius sighed, watching Remus crush his hand in both of his and still not pulling away even as miserable as it was clearly making him when he agreed. "I won't tell, but I wish you would Remus, I really do."

The fright stayed at bay, only frozen for now, but he had no delusions that would last this time. Winter came and went like everything, and he'd melt into a puddle without them. He didn't know what to do though, he felt trapped. He never should have indulged this, but it was too late for that! He probably would have exploded long ago if he hadn't had this now.

If he tried pulling back, Sirius noticed and only started asking questions. If he admitted his crush now and Sirius didn't reciprocate in any meaningful way, who knew how awkward and distant he'd get. They'd still be friends, he knew they'd never abandon him for full moons at the very minimum, but like Sirius was only half-heartedly trying with Peter now, and he couldn't live with that!

It might even be better when they got back to school, Sirius would get distracted and maybe Remus could just go back to pretending like this never happened...if he was very, very non observant about where Sirius went with others ever again, and maybe tried seeing other people a bit more...or even kept himself busy hunting down Greyback...the distance would just become natural then. Like all unreciprocated feelings...

Instead he said nothing and just nodded, like he was conveying as much as he could right now he'd get there. He just didn't know where 'there' was. He released Sirius' hand, but Sirius just pulled him back into a hug, not saying a word as Remus buried his face in his neck like he could hide in his hair forever.

Eventually though Moony's shaking got so bad Sirius pleaded in his ear for them to go back inside, which Remus mercifully nodded to. The book had not resumed thankfully, and as Sirius peeked out first he even still saw it sitting right there in the snow. Holding his breath in hope, they crossed back over the threshold in relief to see the others asleep.

There were only three in front of the warm fire. Alice and Frank had gone off to Arthur and Molly's room, Lily to sleep in Percy's, and the other boys to pile around on the many available couches and chairs in here.

James watched Peter and Regulus curl up with many available throw blankets on the couches, but watched Sirius' little brother flip his hair around as he got comfortable and pat down the fluffy arm into a comfortable sort of pillow in mild fascination. It was the opposite of Sirius, who could fall asleep in any position on any surface. James whispered something he knew he'd owed the kid back in the other room. "Thanks, for Evans."

Regulus watched him for a few moments before actually shrugging, like he hadn't started this whole thing wishing them all dead. James couldn't even make the joke he'd done it for his own survival of getting out of here, that had been no self preservation, there had been no mistaking the look on his face. "It's what anyone would have done," he said simply enough as he laid out, like he was pretending he wouldn't be booted from his home for saying such a thing. Was he really that far in denial of how the rest of his lineage was? He was asleep before Peter's soft, self deprecating little noise even registered.

"I know Wormtail," James promised. "I hate myself for not reacting better that time too. What would we have done if we all thought of that though, huh? Started wrestling over the bezoar, maybe accidentally swallowed it ourselves?"

Peter gave a soft little laugh just like he always did, but James could hear how forced it was.

"You ever tell anyone it was you who saved us from the basilisk?" James asked curiously, which was a fat lot more good than he'd ever done.

"Like that's some great thing, being bait," Peter shot back quietly. "About as useful as keeping Moony distracted while you get him off. No, Prongs, I don't think anyone's wanted to remember that giant snake long enough to know or care that detail."

"Don't sell yourself so short mate," he scolded as he kept his eyes on the door but stayed in his own chair upright. "We all need to stay on our toes, and you can get us out of a few scrums the rest of us can't."

Peter didn't entirely agree, getting out wasn't the same as being useful, why Regulus was asking him instead of Sirius about that animagus stuff still boggled his mind. Even as on the outs with his brother as he was, it was unbearably obvious who was still the better at magic, even James had unconsciously known the same even if he was nicer about it. He whispered his thanks to Prongs anyways and fell asleep too.

James removed his glasses but only fought off his itching eyes long enough to see them heading back through the repaired window and slip inside. Sirius grabbed the last few available blankets and whispered something in Remus' ear.

Remus couldn't have protested the offer, not now, as Padfoot cocooned the blanket around them both, while Sirius sat against the warm hearth. His head rested on the inside of Sirius' thigh as he shivered and didn't fight back a sob anymore. Sirius just ran his hand gently up and down his back all night while the snow piled into the repaired windows.

He'd kept telling daddy all week there was a monster looking down through his window, but Lyall would just sleepily give his son a kiss and turn another light on for him as he went back to bed. There were three now plus the one in the hall, but there were still shadowy corners in his room. The darkness moved and crept slowly into a shape. Not quite human, and not quite animal, naked in the bare light of the full moon, skin twitching in anticipation and pleasure as the monster licked his lips, the sores and blood caked into every crease of his hairy face. Remus screamed but the cracking bones drowned him out-

He groaned softly as the arms held him and whispered in his ear before easing off. He didn't know what was said, but he believed it.

The bite did not come, two distinct shapes fought the animal off, back away from him... but there was something wet, dripping on him, blood?

Drip. Drip.

Cracking one blurry eye open, he found himself hugging a pillow on the floor in a cocoon of blankets that still felt warm, but James' smug expression was hovering over him, and his heart thudded in confusion as another warm plop fell on his nose.

"Up and attem Moony! You know I'll sit on you if you don't."

"Why do I put up with you?" He groaned, rolling over and burying his face into the pillow. The next drip hit the back of his neck and he moaned, moving one hand sluggishly to brush at the slightly sticky feeling.

"You mean besides my charms, good looks, and masterful Quidditch skills?" He asked, before continuing said threat and sitting on his back.

Remus groaned louder and muffled a cry for help that went ignored, there was only a slight lull in voices not too far off in the background and a barking laugh. "You're awful at Charms, your hair is a laughing stock, and your humbleness could topple mountains!" He shot back as he tried to wiggle out.

"At least you know not to diss the important details," James nodded in approval as he got up, now offering him a hand.

Remus took it with still scrunched up eyes, finally seeing in his other hand a warm glass of eggnog he was no longer trying to torture him with. His eyes blinked fuzzily for a moment in confusion though as he saw what he had on.

"Got you a present!" James crowed, throwing a partially wrapped gift his face caught.

"Stealing Weasley sweaters now? Have you no shame?" He asked warmly as he unwrapped the maroon one and shrugged it on, it even fit rather well.

"None whatsoever. I told Sirius that would fit," James grinned, "bean pool you two are."

"Unlike yours," he chuckled. The bright pink material was stretched tightly over his shoulders, his arms looked like he'd tapped bits of wood on they were so stiff and wouldn't bend right, the edge would not quite reach his waist as it should. The golden G was stretched comically into something closer to a Q.

"Evans won't be able to keep her eyes off of me!" He said grandly, before wincing a bit and finally dropping some of the enthusiasm. He'd done this as planned, Moony was smiling at the sight of the absurdity. Sirius had certainly been all for it when he'd woken up and seen him still hovering over Remus like he hadn't slept at all. What had come out of his mouth had been pure autopilot and hadn't even occurred to him until now.

"She's alright Prongs," Remus said at once. "I know she'd never hold it against you, nobody saw that coming."

"Yeah," he muttered, watching the door to the noisy kitchen still for several moments before swallowing and making a very painful smile, "first time that woman's ever flirted with me and I get her poisoned. Think that's the cosmic universe telling me to drop it?"

"You did no such thing," Remus said firmly now, sighing in relief when James dragged his eyes back to him. "If Sirius and I had drank that in Slughorn's room, we'd have been dead before anyone even knew what happened. You probably saved all of our lives by being a nosy git Prongs."

He'd winced for the blunt statement, but gave himself a firm shake and a real smile again. "Stop distracting me Moony!" He scolded with a fond clap on the shoulder that made a tear appear under his armpit and steering him towards the others now. "Alice is making a feast in there, and she's threatened if we don't all help, we starve."

"That woman wouldn't let Snape go hungry," he scoffed.

"I wouldn't test her," James chuckled, "she's already at her limit trying to convince Sirius to lift a wand."

"Poor thing has no idea what she's getting herself into," Remus said in genuine pity. Padfoot would eat a meal of grubs before he admitted he had no idea how to do any house-hold spells.

They entered to see she'd found a compromise though. He looked exhausted, but he was utterly delighted to be smashing parsnips the Muggle way and trying not to get any on his blue sweater, also with a golden G imprinted on it that was far too large around the shoulders and bagged under his arms, leaving him having to concentrate with effort. He was doing a remarkably poor job of that and making a great mess.

Peter and Regulus were sitting across from him casually enough with no clear tension in the air as Regulus guided his wand carefully to knead some dough and Peter was cutting up vegetables the Muggle way, stopping occasionally to use a silver sweater as a dishrag, the glint of the golden P on it flashing in and out of focus. Remus' heart twinged why Molly had still bothered for the prat before eagerly jumping in to help, offering to make dessert.

They ate in alternating comfortable quiet and soft mutters. The shock of 'yesterday' still felt heavy in the room, and Sirius cleaned his third plate in record time and could not take any more silence right now. He looked up with every intention of making a joke at Prongs, only for his eyes to land on Evans.

She was running her finger over the rim of her still full drink, a mountain of uneaten food on her plate with barely a bite touched. Alice kept shooting her worried looks and even reached over past Frank at one point to teasingly steal a bit of turkey. Lily had laughed and tried to keep eating, but it was clear her stomach nor heart was really in it.

Sirius slugged back the rest of his own drink, refilled it, and then set it in front of her with a very teasing, "don't worry, I didn't spike it."

She grimaced and felt herself turn a little green around the edges, but sighed when she saw him wince. She knew he'd been trying to make her laugh, but she still felt tender on the inside even looking at the food, let alone anything liquid again.

Frank glowered at him and opened his mouth to say something at her side, even taking his arm off the back of Alice's chair to straighten up, but his girlfriend brushed her nails along his spine in a silent urge to wait. Sirius was trying to help, in his way, and she really hoped it worked as their patient silence hadn't.

Sirius reached over and plucked it away again with a cheerful, "oh I know! You're the Queen of the Slug Club, so you need a royal tester first! How could I forget?" He took a noisy slurp, making sure to let some run down his chin so there's no way he could fake it before setting down the now half empty glass in front of her, and smiled. It softened his features so much it was remarkable.

"As if I want to drink your backwash," she half-heartedly scolded, but Sirius smiled wider to see she'd lost the nauseous look at least as she stared back.

He tipped his feet up on the table and rocked for a few moments as he kept eyeing her, before grinning with that mischievous look she used to loath so much. He let himself fall back to all fours then and leaned in conspiratorially now, "bet you a shot of it I can make Peter laugh with just one word."

Evans pursed up her lips, but he'd guessed right. She could not resist a challenge. Guess she was a bit like Prongs. "Alright," she finally agreed.

Sirius was grinning in triumph already as he turned with maddening timing, Wormtail had just started taking a sip of his own drink as Sirius shouted, "Spoons!"

The poor guy coughed and spluttered half his drink out his nose and down his front, the rest of the glass ruined the sweater. Even as Regulus thumped him on the back and offered him napkins with a disgruntled look, it was clear to all Peter was laughing mirthlessly.

"Padfoot!" He moaned while rubbing at his face. "You swore you'd stop doing that!"

"Eggnog was not in the terms of our agreement!" He happily barked back.

"Add it to the list you arse!" He snickered.

Lily cursed softly, she should have known better, but turned back to him very curiously, "you swear that's not some old hex on him?"

"On my wand," he said at once, crossing his heart. "Marauders swear!"

"Then what's the joke?" She finally asked with a bit of a giggle.

"Uh uh, pay up first," he tapped the drink. "The story's worth another shot."

She sighed, swallowed her sense of disgust for the feeling of anything going down her throat again, and picked up the glass while meeting his eyes. Fighting back a gag, she threw it in her mouth, forced the rich flavor to sit on her tongue for a visible moment, and down the hatch it went. She exhaled and tried not to look at anybody as the tension began easing out of the room, she really hadn't thought the others noticed.

"Atta girl," he beamed. "Round two?"

"Yes, alright," she agreed at once this time.

Sirius threw his shoulders back with pride as he took off, "okay, so Christmas time last year right? We were still working on our Animagus bits, and Prongs here got his antlers stuck on his head, happened all the time, but we had Quidditch practice and he was trying really hard to get them back away. Wormtail though got the bright idea to dare challenge me to try decorating them in the meantime! I couldn't let that stand!"

"He's being literal," James nodded with a resigned sigh. "I think he'd explode otherwise." He paused with an odd look on his face, but Sirius grinned at him as always for the add in, nothing like extra details to make a story!

"So we start running around the room grabbing everything we could to put on him, socks and shit, Pete starts jabbing old homework assignments on him like mock papier-mâché while James is cursing us blue in the face, but I grabbed up," he paused for dramatic effect. They were all smiling in anticipation now. "A spoon! So, couldn't just chuck it, that wouldn't be any fun-"

"Oh the horrors," James interrupted lightly, crossing his arms and making a visible tear line on both sleeves which he didn't even seem to notice.

"And I couldn't magic it on, that would be cheating!"

"Something he's never done on his life," James smirked.

"So I licked it, and it actually stuck to the fuzzy bits!"

He preened in delight as the seven of them all got a laugh at that mental image. Lily obligingly sipped her drink once more, but Sirius wasn't quite done. "Peter laughed hysterically, I can't even describe it right, he pissed himself and it was glorious!"

"Did you have to add that bit," he protested back. "Two shots says I can get them all to laugh at the time you got fleas!"

Sirius spluttered in protest, but Lily shushed him and watched with delight. The game escalated, they started piling the last of the food into one bowl to make a huge mess of turkey and pudding and daring others to eat it if they laughed at the next story. James was so enthusiastic while telling about Moony meeting a centaur he ripped Ginny's sweater entirely and had to shrug on Fred's before they'd let him finish. It fit him even worse than Sirius and seemed to swallow him whole and he did not care. They all failed miserably and ate the concoction, which wasn't arguably that bad.

All full and laughing now, Remus finally gave Sirius a soft kick to get him to stop that and volunteered to go back to the book with only the barest hint of unease still in his voice. Sirius still didn't get up until after he and James did and fought the urge to put his hand on Moony's back as he went after them.

They lounged semi-comfortably once more under blankets in front of the fire, and Remus still made no real protest as he sat under the same blanket with him, backs on the wall right next to the fire while James went outside to fetch the book. Sirius had resisted the urge to throw his arm over the back of the chair half the meal as they got comfortable and been discreet with his hand on his knee, petting gently with only his finger tips. James had noticed no such thing on his other side, eyes still on Evans even as he tried to actively pretend otherwise now.

He let his hand creep gently, the thick blanket made it non-obvious he was sure, aware of every movement, but nobody was purposely looking at them. It was a miracle none of them had asked any further questions, and whether it was lingering awkwardness or pity neither of them were going to ask as Sirius put his hand gently back on his leg.

Remus made a huffy little noise, but it was that indulgent sigh he always used right before he added into their prank as he grabbed Sirius' hand, but held it this time so Sirius couldn't start up again. It had been soothing at first, but then putting ungentlemanly thoughts in his head the longer it went on, and he didn't really buy the others would let them just casually go snog out in the snow again.

Sirius gave a remorseless grin and happily interwove their fingers. Then he saw Alice and Frank doing the same thing and pulled his hand back with a quick apology, earning a bizarre look. Shit, he still had no idea what boundaries Remus was after, and he'd never spent this much time around someone after so much repeated physical intimacy. Remus bunched up the blanket around them and stretched uncomfortably, they only had moments left as Prongs came back in dusting snow off the book and himself as he leaned in and whispered, "alright?" Touching his hand to be clear, though he'd crossed his arms with an aggrieved look so he was probably an idiot for asking. It was the only comfort he could still think to offer him though.

He received a spectacular snort for his efforts and Remus actually smiling as James flipped to the chapter while he said, "yes Padfoot," perfectly normally, turning his palm to meet him with his own curious amusement.

"Just checking," he muttered as Remus shifted again, the blanket barely moving with him as he dropped his arms and held his hand under it again with a delighted smile.

He hadn't protested when Sirius did this at Hermione's place, but he'd been so annoyed back in the apothecary when he'd casually touched him then, and he was starting to get a headache keeping track of when this was and wasn't allowed. Did a door have to be closed? That's when he was most comfortable. He had not liked the way Moony had talked out in that garden, a distance he kept trying to intermittently instill between them or something else altogether, but he couldn't ask now.

Sirius burned to ask if Remus was ashamed to be with him in that way, but feared asking would only make Remus fluently deny it and pull away further, something that felt intolerable to him now.

James had reacted right before his son had spoken up, so the very first thing he read was Harry unintentionally and almost repeating one of their very many werewolf jokes, his son practically saying Moony's furry little problem, and then Professor Lupin getting a good laugh out of it. The Marauders got a particularly cheerfully snicker for that one at least.

"And nobody really questions that?" Frank finally asked in amusement. He admittedly hadn't before everything as well, but they'd been dealing with a lot.

"I know I never thought about them long enough to do so," Lily shrugged. "Far as I know, nobody in the common room thinks twice about it."

"You're not exactly the social butterfly though Evans," Sirius cheerfully reminded. She flipped him the bird, and he laughed so hard the blanket started to fall from his shoulders and he didn't even twitch to put it back up.

"Peter keeps an ear out if anyone does look twice," Remus half heartedly explained the rest.

It still wasn't comfortable to any of the four of them to be explaining this, it had been their secret for too long to feel natural, but sharing so many of their stories had helped ease that away, and nobody asked for more. Thankfully the subject was changed to a horrible dream being the last of the real unpleasantness. Then Harry woke up to presents, with Ron getting a remarkable necklace from Lavender, and what should have been a nice meal before Percy and the Minister showed up.

That did not go well, and they all shifted and grumbled unpleasantly for the Ministry still trying to use Harry as some sort of poster boy after all he'd been through last year. James finished with an ugly twist of his lips even as he cheered for his son getting the final word in.

#Harry Potter #fanfiction #reading the books #HP #HBP #Weasley Chirstmas #Marauders #Wolfstar #Jilly #James Potter #Remus Lupin #Sirius Black #Regulus Black #Peter Pettigrew #Lily Evans #Frank Longbottom #Alice Smith #all in the family

[astrologista]

jason stop dying

ooooook i just watched ditf. it was PRETTY GOOD.... i only wish there was MOOORE! watching this REALLY brought me back to 2011 times to see it and i think they did a good job with most of the character design and animations insofar as matching it to the original. (maybe i’m totally wrong but i thought it looked good for the most part... also i just really love these character designs in particular). obviously the budget is not what it would be on a feature, so there are a LOT of places where animation gets recycled and many still frames. some parts are basically a slideshow lol. but i only sort of came to that realization awhile after watching, so i think they did a fairly good job of masking this... ymmv

so let’s get into it!!! 

SPOILERS a-head! do not read until you’ve watched it because i’ll spoil everything

now obviously the thing to be aware of if you are not is the fact that this adaptation is not a panel-by-panel adaptation of the original death in the family comic. all references to jason’s mother (save one mention of her dying of illness) are completely removed, they go to bosnia instead of africa, and the circumstances around jason leaving are also heavily altered to fit the new narrative. this adaptation does slot perfectly into the universe established by the under the red hood animated movie from 2011 though, without which one would be pretty confused when watching this. it’s kind of a mystery as to why they didn’t just package this with utrh and release the entire thing as a collectors edition. instead they package it with like 4 or 5 unrelated dc showcase shorts which makes absolutely 0 sense but go off i guess. anyway

i liked that they took the time to adapt the scene from the original ditf where bruce is talking to alfred about jason! (i do not like that alfred didn’t get any lines. bad choice). tbh i can’t understand why they bothered showing us alfred, barbara and dick if they weren’t gonna give them any lines..... like come on........??

HOW INTENSE BRUCE LOOKS WHEN HE FINDS JASON IN SARAJEVO and just. grabs him lol. hes smad :)

ok so one two skip a few and we get to the first branch. instead of calling 1-900 we now get to choose whether jason lives or dies. there are 7 possible endings i think i got em all so let’s see what we got here.

“Hush” Route - Robin cheats death

hgrgdggr. i definitely think this is one of the more interesting endings, if not the most interesting one. this is also the only ending in which both bruce and jason survive the bombing. bruce is still too late, but this time jason barely clings to life and survives. as a hurt/comfort fan i was 100% on this shit from the word go but then jason? runs away from home lmao lmao i thought that was SO funny because 1) hes super messed up, how is he able to just literally run out the house that is SO funny to me and 2) implying that bruce would ever not be keeping an eye on him after that is just, lmao. it’s so zany. i call this the “hush” route because of the bandages but there are no other references to hush so ok. that’s fair. so anyway jason is now angsty for loosely explained reasons but the most fun part is yet to come.

when talia showed up, i really thought / was terrified for a second that they were gonna bring up certain “events” regarding damian’s parentage / who damian’s father is but then she mentioned bruce and i was like OH THANK GOD WE CAN STILL GO TO HEAVEN. i am so so grateful to the writers for NOT going there. cuz it was damn close ok. im not sure what the implication of this route is in terms of talia, jason and damian being a family unit but i want to believe talia sees jason as a son and damian’s brother (which is how she refers to him, damian’s brother) and not... yknow. i mean. jason raising a baby is kind of like a baby raising a baby...

no actually the reality of this scene is really dfuckin interesting like. they actually go with the “birth of the demon” (forget if it was birth of the demon or bride of the demon. one of those.) explanation for damian and that is something i’ve NEVER seen adapted so whoever wrote this can have a cookie and i kNOW this is something a certain someone will appreciate :)

not only that but the implications? are interesting? so talia’s claim is she miscarried so bruce won’t have to “choose” between damian and jason and idk if she’s supposed to be all on the-up-and-up in this universe but. i’m sitting here like GIRL YOU DON’T GOTTA DO THIS HE HAS A PRIVATE JET HAVEN’T YOU HEARD OF SHARED CUSTODY and BETTER YET HE HAS A MANSION JUST GO ON MAURY AND GET THIS SORTED OUT RIGHT NOWwwww

i’m also LAUGHING at the implications of jason thinking theres anywhere on earth that he’s going to go and hide damian’s existence from bruce. because you already know he’s just going to be tearing the planet apart looking for jason so this is actually hilarious. imagine he finds jason in one piece and also a baby. his baby. he’d be like (@ talia) “OMG WHY WOULD YOU THINK I WOULDN’T WANT THEM BOTH u are tearing me apart talia......” BUT THEN HE WOULD BE SO FREAKING HAPPY BECAUSE HE HAS TWO ALIVE SONS AND HE THOUGHT THEY WERE BOTH DEAD / (lost to crime)!!!

please lord imagine all of jason’s angst probably just originating from the fact that he has a brain injury that hasn’t fully healed and the trauma of going through all those surgeries probably gave him a lot of fear / paranoia about bruce and associating him with the joker because his neural pathways are all messed up but after he leaves he starts slowly healing back and regaining some of his lost sanity and thats when he realizes he misses bruce so much... but hes also raising his child... and every day it gets more difficult for him not to just take damian and bring him home and i ;v;

anyway i thought this route, while it had a few inconsistencies in it, was really freaking interesting and it gave me feels and plot bunnies and is probably the one i want to write about the MOST despite the fact that baby damian looks like a character from one of those web flash games in this lol

“True” End - Jason Dies

now if you select that jason dies the route basically defaults to the canon of under the red hood and the fact that utrh does not come packaged with this movie is a rather mystifying choice to me as i don’t think this adaptation would stand on its own very well. like you need quite a bit of background to really get anything out of watching this on its own, which is probably why it’s classified as a “short” and not as its own movie.

instead of showing all of utrh, it seems they took the opportunity to give a ~30 minute recap of utrh with basically entirely reused animation but they allow bruce to sort of. give his dvd commentary over it.

the biggest feeling i have on this is that it’s sad that they had to waste 30 minutes like this that could’ve been used to do something new and much more interesting, but honestly i’m not mad. it seems kind of obvious that this choice was probably made for budget and/or runtime reasons because a short does not get the same budget set aside as a full length feature film does. so they basically took the option of recycling 30 minutes of animation from the movie and dubbing new audio over it.

in evangelion they ran out of budget and that’s why the last two episodes consist of nothing more than still pencil drawings and frames while the characters engage in philosophical debates concerning the nature of reality and human connection. and i really enjoyed that. and for the same reasons, i also really enjoyed this.

i enjoyed seeing the clark kent of this universe. i enjoyed that he was basically out on a date with bruce. i enjoyed that bruce was willing to open up for once and tell clark all of what happened with jason. but what really makes this segment shine bright are bruce greenwood’s line reads. there are SO MANY good line reads in here. and i LOVED how many times he said the word “son”. very wholesome. the way he describes how he felt during the final fight with jason? probs my favorite FUCKING part.

and then him and clark joking together about contingency plans and then they’re going to work together to find jason and i ;_; this is probably the closest thing to a “good” ending but as a continuation of utrh i thought it worked really well. i really want to believe that bruce and clark did find jason in this route and that there was some closure in the end even though we didn’t get to see it.

including clark in this was DEFINITELY the right move as well, considering that he played a rather large role in the original ditf so it’s a welcome nod.

The rest of the branches exist under a separate option where Bruce makes it in time to save Jason from the warehouse... but Bruce dies......... :O

let me tell you bout it... bruce’s fucking DEATH SCENE i don’t know WHAT my man bruce greenwood is on, but the freaking LINE READS in this dialogue had me making INHUMAN NOISES. LIKE NOT ONLY WAS THE DIALOGUE GOOD, NOT ONLY DID HE SAY “I LOVE YOU, SON”, but this man is just an amazing actor. not just voice actor, but actor. he really really really really gave it the most i don’t know how else to say it....... it was very very well done and punched me sideways in the heart and i haven’t recovered and i’m not going to recover. and

ok so once we get past that.... scene.... u have to choose whether you’re going to catch the joker or kill the joker. bruce asks jason to promise not to kill the joker but technically jason doesn’t promise so........

Let’s start by choosing to kill the Joker. Jason attends Bruce’s funeral and various members of the Justice League show up to talk with him and just generally hang out. He has Alfred, Dick and Barbara as his support system, but Jason has some other plans.

This leads to a scene in a cafe where Jason meets with a man who... something something Killing Joke, flashlight, more Barbara being used as a plot device when she deserves better, Jason kills the Joker with a butter knife.

Once you do this you can choose to surrender to the police, or retaliate and escape.

Jailbird Ending

basically if you surrender to the police jason ends up in prison where he can actually attack even more criminals so.... ya

If you retaliate and escape instead you go to the Red Robin route where Jason becomes a vigilante who kills people much like the Red Hood and you get a further choice in a fight with Two Face where you can control how Harvey’s coin lands. 

Tim Ending!

If you choose the coin to land clean face up, the thing rewards you by having Tim show up and I forgot what happened (wasn’t really paying attention lol) because i was so focused on TIM!

Prolly they felt sorry for him what with Jason stealing what is essentially his outfit (ok I know it was Jason’s first, but Tim made it cool) so they let a little baby tim have an appearance :) he’s very smol

I guess in this ending Jason gets reintegrated with the family somehow and Tim becomes “Bat-kid” which is hilarious to me but you know what it’s cute. CUTE.

The one ending where the coin lands scarred side up

i honestly forget what happens if you choose to have the coin land scarred side up but let me just say this is a FUCKED route to take, not only have you had jason survive and bruce die, you’ve now chosen to kill the joker against bruce’s dying wish, you’ve chosen to attack the police, and at the end of that you really are gonna choose harvey’s coin to be scarred face up???? choosing this made me feel like a DICK because here i am supporting jason’s whole fall to madness and villainy thing the way it wants me to and now he’s gonna die HERE? i hate it here.

interestingly enough he doesn’t actually die in this route. he ends up at home with barbara and dick while dealing with the fact that he killed the joker but the route ends with jason saying “i promise” so i guess this is supposed to be kinda sad. im so confused lol ok

So that is all the options if you choose to kill the joker, I believe. You can also make the choice to just catch him instead of killing him but amazingly enough, those routes are even more FUCKED up. 

If you do this option Jason goes home, mourns Bruce with Dick, Barbara and Alfred, and becomes Red Hood BUT with a twist, he’s entirely on a bloodless operation in line with Bruce’s wishes. OR.... IS HE?

Things then follow the events of UTRH until the scene on the bridge with the van and the guys. Jason finally confronts Joker, who reveals the truth. 

Apparently in this route Jason has actually been killing and decapitating his victims just like in the original movie, but he’s repressed it so as to not even realize to himself that he’s doing it.

that is FUCKED. also. i wanna cry because jason doing all of that stuff but not even realizing it ;------; jason blocking it out, because he wanted to honor bruce’s wishes for him not to kill anyone ;______; but he’s doing it anyway ;_____; he’s actually hearing voices telling him to kill ;____; like it’s a very cheap twist in a sense and also really quite cruel but.... damn, son.

There is a branch here where you can choose to spare or kill the Joker at this point (UNDERTALE???) but from what I can tell it seems to be totally meaningless what choice you pick because you end up at the exact same point either way, I think there’s a small variation in what happens after you make the choice but after that they just coalesce back together into the following two endings. Which seems incredibly cheap to me, I mean making a choice like that should alter Jason’s path completely but, it doesn’t! So... ooook....

Either way Jason ends up on the Wayne building and Talia shows up with a re-animated Bruce from the pit. Here’s another fun blast from the 2011 past with more gratuitous Grant Morrison dreck, remember that shit? Well, they’re gonna jam it down your throat here, too.

The reanimated Bruce is the Zur En Arrh Bruce and he’s already dead so this is all meaningless but basically Jason fights him and you get to choose whether everybody lives or dies.

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Lives!

if you pick this, jason actually gets the re-animated bruce back to the batcave and they lock him up down there because he’s still pit-mad and the prognosis is not great. but i’m not sure what they expected, he is the zur-en-arrh guy so I don’t think he’s getting better. 

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Dies!

pretty much there’s an explosion and all three of them die and that’s it

I think that should be all the possible endings there are.

By the way the different ways in which black mask dies in this was actually a fairly clever running gag lollll. let that mf burn we don’t need no water.

overall there are a couple of things i would have done to SIGNIFICANTLY improve this adaptation beyond some of the obvious ones.

- the fact that all of the branching options are branched exclusively under the “jason lives and bruce dies” branch is a huge wasted opportunity. imo this is the most egregious problem with this, i was really looking for a more balanced tree / explanation of different things. i am probably super biased though being a fic writer and used to fic, we’re the ones making huge ass trees every day lol.

- the fact that there is no “good” ending here is something i kind of expected but given the context of this is lackluster. i sort of get it though because granted, the original ditf ends in an unresolved manner but it’s distinctly unsatisfying here. i secretly wanted an ending where bruce, like, figures out about the different endings and hacks reality to try to find a good ending where jason lives and everything is fine lmao. like a bat mite ending.

- i was disappointed in a sense that the narrative given in here is so basically simplistic? maybe i’ve been spoiled by games like 999 and undertale where shit gets messy and that’s not what this is supposed to be but when i play something with multiple endings in this day and age, at least play with the concept a little bit and connect some of the branches together narratively. use different devices. i was also hoping some of the choices would be a little bit meatier like you could choose to “forgive bruce” or something cool like that lol. but it looks like the majority of choices have to do with who lives or dies. and i felt like they couldve been a bit more creative with that ya know? being able to control harvey’s coin was a GREAT example of having some more fun with this.

- it is a huge missed opportunity not to have a “secret ending” on something like this. like where. the fuck. is my secret ending for completing everything. come on. and in a similar vein there should’ve been at least something in terms of bruce and jason interacting in a “true ending”. even if very brief. the closest thing to an ending this has is the “jason died” route and then the ending where he’s talking to clark which i feel like was a REALLY nice good optimistic ending as far as this goes, but it comes off as kind of disappointing i guess

there were SO many interesting nuggets locked into this thing though. i can’t deny it bugs me how many wasted opportunities there were with how they chose to structure things but i guess it’s the best you can do with limited runtime. i thought it was really well done though, makes an interesting companion piece to the original utrh, and is definitely something that i will be re-watching again soon!! overall i give it a 7/10 and some parts an 8/10+!

#a death in the family #death in the family #ditf #it was cool to see the different ideas they had to offer finally? #for what it was #it was kind of a collection of shorts and half spun ideas #plus i think about this shit like every day #so i cant help but be interested #someone come and talk to me about this #i really want to know #what ppl thought #spoilers #ditf spoilers #death in the family spoilers

[bgnmagic]

Finding Peace - a/b/o Merlin Fanfic

Crying out in pain as he fell, Merlin could only clutch at his ankle and pray it wasn’t broken. Desperate to escape the group of alpha bandits he’d encountered Merlin had run as fast as his long legs would take him. However, running through the forest was always a dangerous game.  Now he was out of breath, in pain, and about to be found by people that most likely meant to do him harm.

Pushing his tired body up, Merlin positioned his back against a large tree trunk and watched as four men came running over. They were all alphas based off the wretched scent they were emitting.

“Thought you could outrun us omega? Not very smart are ya?” One of the men raged as he stepped closer.

“He’ll get us a good price, just grab him and let’s go!” Another added.

“I want to have some fun first, he made me work harder than necessary,” the first man sneered as he unsheathed a knife and crouched down as if ready to strike. “Jared, hold him down while I see what he’s hiding underneath those ratty clothes.”

Merlin had heard enough, these men were not going to leave him alone. The man with the knife edged closer and Merlin wasted no time in throwing his hand out. The blast of magic he let loose sent the two men closest to him flying a good twenty feet back; they did not get up again. His magic was always more powerful when Merlin felt threatened.

Of the other two men, one went wide eyed and turned running away. Unfortunately, the one remaining alpha didn’t need to run, he had a crossbow. Alphas disliked being belittled by omegas, and it seemed this alpha was very upset at what had just transpired.

“You’ll pay for that!” he hollered as he aimed the crossbow.

With only a second to react Merlin again used his magic and sent the man hurtling backward. It was only when Merlin attempted to curl in on himself that he noticed an odd stinging sensation that was steadily growing in intensity. Already in shock from the brutal encounter Merlin began to panic, he’d been struck. Looking to his right revealed the end of a bolt lodged in the meat of his shoulder.

Flinching at the sight of the wound Merlin cried out in pain, again he tried to move but realized he couldn’t. Dear gods, the bolt had gone straight through his shoulder and gotten stuck fast to the tree trunk. The loose grip Merlin had on his sanity was slipping. A twisted ankle and now this! If the other bandit came back and Merlin was passed out, he’d be a sitting duck.

Unable to think of the best course of action Merlin distantly wondered if he would die here, alone in the forest.

--

The sight of a grown man running through the woods in utter fear should have been enough to make Arthur turn around. The man in question was an alpha and simply changed course to avoid them as he continued on like a bat out of hell.

“Sire, we’d best be on guard,” Leon commented right before he drew his sword.

Arthur was going to grace his first knight with an opinion on the matter when a faint scent hit him. The aroma was unmistakable, a distressed omega. “Right, of course, let’s go investigate.”

“Are you sure that is a wise idea, that man was an alpha and he looked absolutely terrified.”

“There’s an omega nearby, we need to check,” Arthur added while urging his horse forward. “Besides if bandits are in the woods this close to Camelot then we need to gather more information.”

“How do you know there is an omega? I can’t smell anything.” Leon asked quickly.

Arthur furrowed his brow in confusion, how could Leon not smell it? “I smell it plain as day, and it’s getting stronger; they may be hurt we need to check,” replied Arthur while drawing his own sword.

Leon nodded but didn’t say anything more as they rode in the direction the man came from.  The scent only increased as they pushed onward. The subtle hints of something sweet had been harshly covered by a sharp burning smell. The urge to find the omega and offer help was overwhelming. Arthur had never felt a pull like this before. His inner alpha was chomping at the bit to call out to this omega even though they’d seen no sign of them.

The sound of harsh panting reached Arthur’s ears before he noticed the bodies. Then in a rush his world stopped. All Arthur could hear was his blood pumping and his own ragged breath at the discovery of the omega. There in amongst the trees was the most perfect omega Arthur had ever seen. The shock of black hair and vibrant blue eyes staring him down were magnificent. Leon’s frantic calls were the only thing that broke his stupor a moment later.

“Arthur! Careful with that one, he may be a sorcerer,” Leon worried as he dismounted and held out his sword in defense. “These men didn’t die naturally.”

Seeing Leon aim his weapon towards the omega made Arthur’s blood run cold. His father’s view on magic being purely evil was being roughly suppressed by his inner alpha’s need to protect this omega. The scene surrounding them looked more like self-defense versus an unprompted magical attack. Jumping off his own horse Arthur went to stand in between the two when the omega raised his hand and took a shuddering breath.

Having seen enough attacks from magic users Arthur recognized what was about to happen. Rushing to face the omega he threw his sword aside and held his hands up in surrender. “We mean you no harm,” Arthur spit out hoping to avoid a battle. From the looks of it the omega was in a bad way. His shoulder had a bolt sticking out of it, and his breathing was labored.  

The momentary pause the omega made gave Arthur hope. “Leon put down your sword,” he ordered. Leon made some sort of strangled noise behind him, but Arthur could tell from the way the omega’s arm fell slightly that Leon had done as instructed.

“What are you doing?!” Came next from the knight, “Arthur, this is dangerous, he’s a sorcerer.”

Arthur answered right away and was even surprised by his own reply. “I don’t care if he knows magic; he’s my omega I have to help him!”

“What?!” was the resounding shout that echoed through the forest. This time though, both Leon and the omega had said it.

“Ignoring the shocked look from the omega Arthur tried to get closer, “Can I treat your wound?”

The omega shook his head and winced, “You’re an alpha, get away from me.”

“I’m not going to hurt you, let me help.”

“No! Get away.”

Hearing the omega, who clearly needed help, reject the offer made Arthur angry. “Why can’t I help? I’m not going to hurt you, I’ve just said so!” The omega simply shook his head again and glared at Arthur. Deciding to risk his wellbeing Arthur slowly began walking forward. “I’m going to help you whether you like it or not, and then we’re going back to my home so I can take care of you.”

“Do I not – do I not get a say in the matter?” The omega panted, obviously in pain.

“What is there to question?” Arthur exclaimed still moving closer. A few more steps and he’d be close enough to inspect the bolt wound.

“Just because I’m – I’m an omega doesn’t mean – you can order me around!”

“I’m not ordering you I’m only trying to help you!” Arthur was sure with each step he edged closer that this omega was his mate. The thing his father said he would never find because he was too good for such follies. Arthur was to wed for political gains not love. However, the bond he already felt just from the scent alone was driving Arthur mad. How could he ignore this feeling, this utter and complete urge to protect?

The omega was about to say something more but Arthur quickly interrupted, “Just shut up, and let me help.” By now Arthur had gotten close enough that all he had to do was reach out an arm to be able to touch the injured man. Slowly raising his arms he hovered them above the bolt waiting for the omega to protest. When no such words came Arthur gently touched the omega’s shoulder. The skin was hot under the tunic and the sensation left Arthur’s fingertips feeling tingly. “What do I call you?” Arthur asked softly, trying to be as non-threatening as he could.  

The omega swallowed hard and seemed to be considering his options. After a long few minutes he answered, “Merlin.”

Hearing his omega’s name spoken aloud only cemented the idea that Arthur had in fact found his true mate. “I’m Arthur and that’s Leon,” he responded in turn. Merlin simply sighed heavily in response; it appeared his energy was waning fast. “Trust me when I say no harm will come to you,” Arthur added when he caught Merlin eyeing him warily.

“Even if you wish -- to kidnap me and take -- take me to your home?” Merlin rasped in between pained breaths.

“It’s not – you’re twisting my words! Can’t you feel the bond between us?” Arthur asked with a hint of desperation. Merlin went to respond but stopped and slumped down as much as his body would allow. Watching intently Arthur felt a pang of relief when Merlin nodded minutely. “Let’s get to work on bandaging this wound, if we work fast I can get you patched up and have our physician Gaius che--.”

“Gaius?!” Merlin spluttered.  “Are you from Camelot? I know him – of him.”

“Yes, I’m Prince Arthur and this is my first knight Sir Leon.”

Merlin paled at the mention of his full title, “I wasn’t meant – I didn’t mean – shit. My mother told me to be careful there, magic is outlawed and now – now, fuck I’m a dead man,” Merlin whispered, looking that much closer to passing out. “Why are you helping me?” he asked with wide eyes.

“Whoa, whoa I’ve already said I won’t hurt you. Don’t panic, we need to get this wound attended to before we continue,” Arthur pleaded.

“I’m magic – I’m not supposed to let – to let others know,” Merlin gasped. “You’ll only kill me later!” he groaned.

“Merlin you need to shut up, and we need to get this bolt out. I swear on my mother’s honor I will not hurt you.” Arthur suspected that if Merlin hadn’t been literally pinned to the tree he would have already attempted to run away. His immobility was forcing the topic of what happened to magic users in Camelot, which was something Arthur hadn’t wanted to talk about either.

“Listen, I know you don’t want me helping but you have to trust me, ask Leon, I never go back on my word.”

Merlin’s eyes darted from Arthur to Leon who was still standing near his horse. His labored breathing was only getting worse, they needed to act fast. “Leon is going to come over here and we are going to get you patched up,” Arthur paused when Merlin whimpered from the pain. “Will you let us do that?”

The omega nodded and only marginally flinched with Leon approached. After a few minutes of intense conversation about how best to remove the bolt it was decided that Leon and Arthur would quickly pull Merlin away from the tree, leaving the bolt stuck instead. Once the end of had been shortened and removed of any splinters Merlin was freed of the horrid thing. The omega cried out in pain when they pulled him forward, but quickly quieted once he’d been drug away from the tree base.

The first attempt to access the wound to dress it resulted in Merlin pushing Arthur’s hands away. “Don’t -- touch me,” he hissed with a wince.

“I have to in order to staunch the bleeding, you idiot!” Arthur shot back. Merlin made another weak attempt at shoving Arthur away but gave up when an apparent wave of pain swept through his lithe frame. “Now, be still and let us handle this. I swear no harm will come to you.”

“So says – so says the alpha prat,” Merlin gasped as he tried curling into a ball.

Arthur had never felt so conflicted in all his life. This man was an omega with magic, Arthur should have wanted to run the other way, but instead he wanted nothing more than to protect Merlin until his dying breath. They didn’t even know each other! Arthur was trying not to dwell on the magic part too much, that was a whole other bucket of worms he couldn’t process.

Frustrated with the lack of progress Arthur was unable to hold his temper, “Do you want me to leave you here to bleed out?!”

“No!” Merlin yelled equally as angry, “Why can’t you –you understand? I’m scared!”

Hearing the omega admit his fear out loud broke Arthur’s inner alpha. Merlin must have noticed his internal struggles because he calmed almost immediately or maybe it was his pheromones. Arthur wasn’t trying to mask his emotions at all; Merlin had to know how he felt.

Taking a deep breath Arthur very carefully took hold of Merlin’s good shoulder. “I’m going to help you take your shirt off now, so we can dress this wound and then we are riding back to Camelot so Gaius can treat you properly.”

Either Merlin felt light headed or he was finally willing to believe Arthur, but after a second he allowed them to treat his injury. Any longer and Merlin would have lost even more blood, risking his recovery. Once Merlin’s shoulder had been tightly wrapped and his arm put in a sling to minimize movement Arthur went to help the omega stand.

“My ankle got twisted,” Merlin ground out as Arthur tried to right him.

“Shhh, I’ve got you,” Arthur replied hugging Merlin close. The places where Arthur’s bare hand gripped Merlin’s exposed skin nearly burned. Pushing aside the thoughts of what the rest of Merlin would feel like under his touch Arthur hobbled over toward his horse. He had no idea that an alpha omega bond could be so strong. Distantly wondering if Merlin felt the same thing Arthur quickly shoved the thought aside. This was no time to get distracted. Merlin still needed help.

When Arthur was about to get Merlin up into the saddle the omega began pulling away. “I can’t go with you, I’ll get burned alive,” Merlin exclaimed. “Please let me go.”

“You can barely stand up on your own, and you want me to leave you here alone?!” Arthur asked in disbelief. “There is no way I’m doing that; it’s my duty to take care of you.”

“But the laws of Camelot,” Merlin whined pathetically. “I was born with magic; I won’t be able to simply cast it aside if that’s what you think. Maybe we aren’t supposed to be together,” he adds worriedly.

“Damn the laws! I won’t let anyone touch you!” Arthur seethed. “I’m your alpha, I just know it. Why else would I feel this way?!” Stopping to really look at Merlin, Arthur considered what the omega had admitted. No one was born with magic, were they? Maybe Merlin was lying, but Arthur had a sinking feeling there was a lot more to magic then he’d been lead to believe. “Merlin, I’ve been raised to hate magic in all its forms, but I cannot turn away from you now, especially if we are meant to be together. I promise I won’t harm you.” Arthur finished with conviction.

“Yet,” Merlin mumbled.

“Gods save me,” Arthur grumbled. “Leon help me, we are riding out now!” Arthur could tell that Leon was struggling with the current line of events. He’d been subjected to Uther’s teachings on how terrible magic was and here they were aiding a sorcerer. The implications that one could be born with magic, sent bile crawling up Arthur’s throat, how could they have not known? Remembering the raid he’d done when he was younger, against the druids, Arthur realized some of them may not have had a choice in their practice of magic, and he’d slaughtered them by order of his king.

The ride back to the castle was nearly silent aside for a few quiet whimpers from Merlin. Arthur had ended up wrapping his red cloak around the younger man, since his shirt was bloodied and in tatters from the bolt. Arthur had to lean back away from the omega at least twice to keep from rubbing his neck all over Merlin’s scent gland.

Suddenly a thought struck him, and Arthur worried he’d been enchanted, but that was stupid, Merlin had done nothing but try to get away since the moment they met. So no enchantment, this was real. Arthur had found his mate. Next, he had to get his father to accept the truth of the matter. Magic was coming back to Camelot whether he liked it or not.  

--

Merlin awoke to shouting, when had he even fallen asleep? Moving to sit up brought with it a wave of pain that sent him back down on the bed he was currently tucked into. Sucking in a harsh breath Merlin worked to remember what had happened. However, he didn’t have a chance to ruminate for long before Merlin heard footsteps getting closer. The door to the oddly well-appointed room he was in burst open and there was Arthur.

All of his memories came flooding back, the attack, the bolt in his shoulder, meeting Arthur, and finding out he had a mate, a prince no less, that could kill him should he decide to. “Don’t hurt me!” Merlin blurted on instinct.

Arthur looked upset by the very thought, “I’d never do that, I told you remember?” Without waiting for a reply, he continued on. “Your scent is strong, what’s wrong? Are you in pain?”  

Relaxing slightly Merlin tried to figure out what had occurred since they’d gotten on the horses to ride to Camelot. Before he was able to comment another person came into the room behind Arthur, an older gentleman who looked angry enough to spit nails.

“Is this him?!” The man angrily said. “I can see why you’ve seen fit to hide him from me Arthur! If you think I’m going to let you throw your life away on some omega whore you find in the woods then you are sorely mistaken!”

Merlin was not going to let that slide, he didn’t care who this man was no one talked about him that way. “I’m not a whore!” he shouted.

“Don’t talk unless spoken to boy.”

“I’ll do no such thing; you can’t accuse me of such things without any proof. I’m not a whore!”

“Listen, you horrid imp, I can say whatever I wish. Do not speak to me again!”

“Father, don’t address him that way,” Arthur growled.

“Arthur, don’t start with me, this ends now. Cast him out in the streets immediately or I’ll have the guards do it.”

Merlin watched as Arthur took up a fighting stance between them, even though he was unarmed. Perhaps having an alpha wasn’t such a bad thing. The king however, didn’t like that turn of events and in a blink of the eye had drawn his own sword. Only able to react to what Merlin thought was his impending death, he outstretched his hand and prepared to defend himself. His magic came bubbling to the surface and was seconds away from unleashing a strike against Arthur’s father.

Arthur’s body was there a split second later, pressed into his hugging him tightly, the wound from the bolt twinged painfully but Merlin couldn’t seem to care about that in the heat of the moment.

“You’ll have to kill us both father,” Arthur exclaimed. “I will not let you harm him so long as I have breath in my body.”

The king had stopped frozen in place with a look of utter shock. “He’s a damned sorcerer, Arthur you fool, you’ve been enchanted by this whore! He just tried to use magic on me, I saw his eyes glow!”

Arthur only hugged Merlin tighter, the contact was the only thing grounding Merlin so he opted to wrap his good arm around his alpha’s back and pray for a swift death. When Arthur began to pull away a moment later Merlin whined involuntarily. The safety he was promised was slipping away.

“I’ve not been enchanted father, believe me Merlin didn’t want to even come here, I had to convince him,” said Arthur as he looked up at the king. “He’s also not a whore, so please stop calling him that.”

“Merlin, eh, what a lovely little name,” the king spit out sarcastically. “Get him out of here; I will not tolerate this any longer.”

Arthur took a deep breath and growled menacingly at his father, “I will not let you separate us either kill us both now or accept this for what it is. I’ve found my true mate.” The prince was still shielding Merlin from the king and it seemed that he had every intention of dying with him.

“I’ll go!” Merlin exclaimed, “I don’t want to be the reason you can’t live your life. You don’t deserve to die because of me.”

“No! I will not let you go, not after I just found you!” Arthur shouted.  

“Are you telling me that you’d willingly die for this omega?” the king asked in disbelief.

“Didn’t you love my mother once?” Arthur returned with a fiery expression.

That comment seemed to deflate the anger out of the king in an instant. “Arthur I’m warning you, once you make up your mind there is no going back.”

“If you are willing to kill your only son then I think I’d rather not be a part of your legacy.”

The king stumbled back a few paces and let his sword hang limply by his side. “You would cross me for this, this omega?”

“He’s my mate, father. I can feel our bond. Why can’t I have what you and mother did?”

“No, this can’t be happening. After all I’ve done to protect you from the wiles of evil and magic. You go and find a sorcerer for a mate.”

“He was born with it father, he doesn’t have a choice.”

“I cannot accept this, I won’t.”

“Why?!” Arthur all but shouted. “How are you able to do as you please but others cannot have their free will?”

“Magic is evil that is why.”

“Not all of it, I’m sure of it,” Arthur defended. “Why would the gods fate me to be with someone evil?”

“I don’t care, this cannot be so!”

“Well it is, so what are you going to do about it?” Arthur demanded.

The king shook his head and continued to back away. “I must think on these things, I suggest you keep your pet locked up until we’ve reached a decision.”

Merlin wanted to argue that he was no pet, but staying silent had worked better so far. He really didn’t want to get run through and hopefully if things came down to it Arthur could request a quick death for him instead of the pyre.

“The only decision I see in the future is Merlin becoming my bonded mate, father,” Arthur answered vehemently.

The king didn’t respond but simply shook his head again and slowly walked out of the room. Merlin was sure he could hear the older man mumbling something about why magic had corrupted his only son. There was something much deeper about the king’s hatred of magic. Merlin knew a hatred like that wasn’t created over something small. A catastrophe had occurred at some point, one that most likely featured magic.

Arthur sprang up from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the bed and slammed the door shut bolting it securely. Spinning around he rushed back over and fell to his knees beside the bed. “I swear to you I won’t let my father hurt you. I’ll sneak away with you if we have to. Can you magic us out the window if the guards come?”

Merlin was a little surprised by the turn of events. “Um I think I can, but will your father really try and kill us?” he asked worriedly.

Arthur frowned and shrugged. “I hope not but he’s not known for being lenient.”

“Oh,” Merlin managed weakly. “I don’t feel so good,”

“Shit, I’m sorry did I hurt you earlier when I hugged you, what do you need? How can I help?”

“What have you gotten me mixed up with? I’m a lone peasant boy trying to avoid problems and now I might be killed all for finding my mate.”

Arthur’s face softened at the comment, “So you believe we’re meant for each other now?”

“Considering I was about to start crying a second ago when you went to lock the door that might be the case. I thought you were leaving me.”

“I was serious Merlin, now that I’ve found you; I’m not leaving you ever again. I’ve dreamed about finding my mate for years. Now that it’s finally happened I won’t let that opportunity pass by without a fight.”  

Merlin could only sigh in relief at hearing Arthur’s confession. “Um, do you think I could have another hug,” Merlin asked quietly. “I think I might need another one after waking up to that.”  

Arthur offered him a genuine smile for the first time since they’d met and went to move up onto the bed. “Let me know if I hurt you, I was a little bit in a rush the last time, I thought my father was about to run you through.”

“Don’t remind me Arthur, I’ll be reliving that moment in my nightmares for a while.”

Arthur quirked an embarrassed smile at the admission, “Sorry about that, I did mean what I said earlier. I’ll protect you.” Arthur then gently scooped Merlin upright to hold him.

The hug was warm and solid and Merlin felt himself melting into the alpha’s embrace. How could they be so comfortable with each other only after just meeting? The power of their bond must be strong for there to be such emotions. “I can’t believe I’m about to ask this considering what’s happened, but can you hold me while I rest?”

The blinding smile Arthur flashed him made Merlin laugh. “Anything for my omega, I promise Merlin we’ll get through this together, no matter what.”

Merlin had the pleasure of drifting to sleep with Arthur cradling him against his chest. This moment of peace alone was worth it, even if they didn’t survive this ordeal. Merlin had never felt so cherished in his whole life.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33447787

#merlin #fanfic #alpha beta omega dynamics

[kd-holloman]

The Traveler’s Gift Deleted Scene

It’s funny how writing works sometimes. I thought for sure this deleted scene was going to make the final cut. No-so-spoiler alert: it did not. So, have some fun, non-spoilery deleted content in which Louis may or may not be jealous of his roommate’s flirtatious attitude. 

Harmon hills psychiatric Hospital was an ancient, sprawling brick building on the outskirts of Chicago. Ivy clung to the weather-worn brick, the windows were barred, and on the first two floors the majority of the lights had been turned out for the night. 

Louis had been here before, but the last time he had seen the ancient sprawling grounds, he’d been walking away from it instead of toward it. He tapped his fingers on his thigh. Maybe he could talk Slater into waiting a minute so he could have a smoke. 

“Do it now,” Slater said. 

He blinked and looked at the other man. “Do what?” 

“Suck on your cancer stick. You might as well do it now because once we’re inside for the night we’re stuck there.” 

He looked at him for a long moment. He knew he hadn’t said that out loud. “How did you know?” 

“Your fingers twitch when you want to smoke.” 

He didn’t waste time. “So,” he asked, the unlit cigarette between his lips, “how did Rick get his hands on a place like this?” 

The flame of his lighter was winked back at him in Slater’s reflective lenses. “Papa O’Brien’s funds allowed for the hospital to stay afloat a few years back. In exchange for the money, Rick gets to keep some of his assets here without too many people asking questions.”

Of course. Somebody like Rick would have the finances and power to pull something like that off. As long as the doctors who worked at Harmon Hills stayed content and quiet with their hush-money, he had no reason to fear betrayal. 

The scent of lemon floor polish hit him sinus-clearing force as soon as they stepped across the threshold. A massive chandelier reflected light onto the shining floor. Potted plants stood at attention in the corners, a bust of a man—the founder of the hospital—sat next to a large desk. 

A woman in a uniform sat at the desk. “Excuse me,” she said, stopping them. “It’s past visiting hours.” 

“We’re not here to visit.” Slater leaned on the desk and gave her a charming smile. “Peter called, do you know him? He wants us to come and relieve him. His relief is out with an injury and we’re here to save the day.” 

She blushed and flicked a piece of hair that had fallen from her ponytail behind her ear. “Really?” 

“Would I lie to you…” he paused to lean closer so he could read a name tag clipped to her shirt, “Julie?” 

Despite their obvious ten—if not more—year age gap, she gave him a bashful smile. “I suppose not, Mr.…” 

“O’Brien.” 

“Do you know where to find Peter?” 

“Yes, sweetheart.” He pushed easily off the desk and flicked an invisible piece of lint off of the black t-shirt. “Maybe I’ll see you around, Jill?” 

“Julie. I’d like that.” 

He winked; behind his glasses, the gesture was just a twitch of his cheek. 

Julie turned even more red, if it were possible. 

The entire interaction left Louis feeling mildly uncomfortable. He tried to recall a time he’d seen Slater flirting with somebody, aside from someone at the bar, and he was drawing blanks. Sure, he and Virginia sweet-talked to each other, but it was more friendly banter than it was actual “flirting”. 

By the time they got off the elevator, any signs of Slater’s easy and flirtatious demeanor was gone. He seemed more agitated and angry than anything else. He jabbed a button on a box that sat mounted next to a set of double doors. “Open up, Pete!” 

There was a pause before the doors slowly swung open.

Louis remembered Peter. He remembered his thinning gray hair, the way his round glasses sat low on his nose, and the way his face had been creased with aging lines. He knew better than to be fooled by Peter’s age. He remembered how swiftly his old bones had moved to shove a needle in his neck. 

Peter waved a hand and motioned for them to come in. “It’s been one hell of a day, boys.” 

Slater had no patience for small talk ninety percent of the time and he had none to spare for the older man. “How many of them are there?” 

“Four.” 

“What was the last time they were dosed up?” 

He squinted at his watch through his bifocals. “About two hours ago. They’ll need it again around two in the morning. Dottie will be up to take care of that.” 

Louis remembered the old woman, her hair cropped short and her saggy earlobes weighed down by heavy earrings. He left Slater and Peter alone to hash out the details, drawn to the doors of the padded cells. 

He peered through the window in the door.

Whoever was on the other side looked to be asleep. He was wearing the same blue paper-like clothes he’d worn when he’d been held here. He was curled up on the narrow bed, the blanket kicked to the bottom of the bed next to his bare feet. 

“That one,” Peter said as he came up next to him, “can imitate any sound.” 

That one, like they weren’t people. Like he and Slater weren’t people. It was like they were objects, animals, inhuman. 

It was sickening. 

Louis moved to the next door and looked inside. Just like the room before, this cell’s occupant was sprawled out on the narrow mattress, mouth open as he slept. 

“He can make it windy as hell. I thought he was going to cause a twister when we brought him in. He was hiding in the middle of Tornado Alley, that smartass.” 

Louis stopped in front of the third door. He was surprised to see that the cell’s occupant wasn’t asleep. 

A woman was sitting up on the bed, her hair a matted and tangled mess. She had scratches down her cheeks, like she’d clawed herself in the face. She rocked back and forth on the bed, her mouth moving as she muttered something too quietly for him to hear. She looked like she had missed a turn on the road to sanity. 

“What about her?” 

At the sound of his voice, she snapped her gaze to him. Her face lit up, her eyes were feral, and a smile stretched slowly across her face. 

Louis’s eyes widened. 

It wasn’t a smile he’d anticipated to see from someone so thin and frail. It was the smile of a killer, a predator that had tasted blood and was looking to sink her teeth into another kill. Her teeth weren’t normal. Each tooth ended in a savage point. They were completely inhuman. 

“Oh, that one.” Once again, he said it the way a teacher talked about a naughty school child. It was the same way his father had talked about a particular member of his congregation after he’d been arrested for theft. “Keep that bitch drugged. She took half of Deuce’s hand off with those fucking chompers and she’ll take yours off too if she doesn’t get dosed up with Quench every few hours. It’s like she’s part shark or something. I mean, look at her teeth!” 

Louis could see them, alright, and the thought of them biting into his flesh left him feeling uneasy. 

“Dottie is stupid enough to get close to her?” Slater asked from behind Louis. He was close enough that his breath ghosted across the back of Louis’s neck as he spoke. 

“Stupid or brave. I haven’t decided which.” Peter stepped away from the window and grabbed his jacket. “Well,” he said as he tugged it on behind the U-shaped desk in the middle of the wing, “it’s been fun, boys. I’m going home to get some sleep.” 

Louis filed all of this information away for later. He wasn’t ready to make his move against Rick yet, but when he was, this place was a good start if he wanted to make it hurt. He wanted to get his hands on Quench. It seemed as though without the drug to suppress the superhuman abilities of his “assets”, he would have no way of holding them. 

With the scent of Slater’s leather jacket in his nose and the tickle of his breath on the back of his neck, he was hyper aware of the other man’s silence. “What’s your problem?” 

Slater replied with silence. He plopped himself in the chair Peter’s windbreaker had previously been occupying. 

Louis perched on the dusty countertop a few feet away. He kept one eye on the entrance to the wing with in eyesight and didn’t take his attention away from the four cell doors for long. The very thought of the ferocious woman getting loose and ripping out his throat with her shark teeth was enough to make him want another cigarette. 

He was used to his silent companionship with Slater, who seemed content playing a game on his cell phone to occupy his time. However, there was only so much silence Louis could tolerate while he waited for something—or nothing—to happen. “What are your side-effects like?” He asked. “I know what they are, but what is it like experiencing them? I mean, you know how I feel every time I use my gift. You’ve experienced it. What about you?”

Slater’s fingers stopped tapping the screen of his phone. He sat back, seeming to contemplate whether or not he wanted to answer. He paused for so long that Louis thought he wasn’t going to reply until he said, “It’s like popping a zit.” 

He scrunched up his face. That was a gross description. He supposed, Slater’s powers could be equally disgusting if he chose to just blow someone to pieces instead of keeping it contained inside of their skull. 

“When I want to use my powers I feel an insane build up of emotions—anger, mostly—and there’s a rush. Then, after I use them there’s just...nothing. It’s satisfying like popping a zit or lancing a blister. Get it?” 

It was a gross visual, but it made sense. “Do you genuinely not feel anything at all? You can still use your powers after you’re experiencing the side-effects.” 

“I feel things, but they’re dull. It’s like the memory of a wound. The wound doesn’t actively hurt anymore, it’s no longer there, but if I try hard enough I can feel a flicker of something. That is, if I care enough to try.” 

From the sound of it, Slater’s powers were emotionally draining because it took so much emotion for him to be able to use them. It wasn’t that he became apathetic, because he still had feelings. It was more like he’d used the majority of his emotional energy trying to feel things after such a powerful wave of emotion that his emotional “battery” needed time to recharge. 

Louis were impressed that Slater was opening up enough to talk to him about his powers. He decided to push his luck a little further. “How did you learn that you had abilities?” 

“Like most people do, by accident. What about you?” 

“I had a panic attack,” he had admitted with a soft laugh. It seemed silly now, but it certainly hadn’t been funny when the bombs had been raining down on him and the earth had been shaking apart. “During the war,” he added, “we were under attack. I thought I was going to be buried alive.” 

“Such a shame,” he teased dryly. He opened a few drawers next to his leg and produced a deck of cards. “Care to play a few hands?” 

Louis slid from the countertop to sit in an empty chair. “We might as well. We’re going to be here all night.” 

Tag List: @tricksexual, @wildler, @ganseyboii, @surrealirist, @obsessionandstuff, @pertinax--loculos, @pe-ersona, @a-curator-of-nonsense, @angelolytle, @aslanwrites, @aurumni-writes, @andrewminyardd, @lordkingsmith, @gloriafrimpong

(Ask to be added/removed)

#the traveler's gift #Deleted Scenes #Louis Elijah Mahoney #slater michael o'brien

[thormanick]

Look I’m in love with Albether ship so I’m working on little something, but I can not not share this particular image right this instant

~I love my boooooyyyyysssssssss~

#I’m slowly but surely loosing my sanity because of this game but it’s fUN #albedo x aether #genshin impact #albether and kaebedo fighting in my brain and i have no idea what to do #usually my answer is multiship but not this time apparently #genshin impact art #digital art #genshin impact albedo #genshin impact aether #albether #afinna exlpores teyvat

[cyb-by-lang]

Shell Game (16/?)

Kei debates the merit of drawing attention to herself, then decides to do it anyway.

The Sports Festival.

Kei had some serious mixed feelings.

On one hand: Legal freedom to use her “Quirk” to get ahead! As long as her Water ninjutsu could be successfully manipulated with enough flexibility to accomplish the task. And in the middle fiddly bits, Kei could punch people.

On the other: A media circus literally inconceivable in the world she’d spent her life in up until this point. The entire world’s eyes were on a bunch of high schoolers and their superpowers, with all the scrutiny that implied. And Kei was a sleeper agent.

On a third hand, possibly generated from Wood Release and flipping everyone off: There was a non-zero chance someone from home could see the competition. Obito and Kakashi would be off patrolling Hosu to make up for Kei being anchored to the UA event, but that still left people like Hayate, but Sensei’s demands since the USJ clusterfuck had included recordings in formats Konoha could process. So, with that thought in mind, Kei had to make any performance good enough not to embarrass the hell out of her team. She had no doubt whatsoever that Sensei, Kushina, and Naruto would get that chance, not to mention her teammates and all her friends. And the UA teachers had all seen her entrance video, so that was just a bit more pressure to not choke horribly with more cameras in play.

“You’ll have to be more passionate, more fiery, than anybody else there if you want to catch the audience’s eye!” Kayama-sensei had told them all, during announcements the day before. Which, given the general air of immediate deflation that swept across the room—with the only bastions of hope being Kei, Shinsō, and the two overworked class representatives Shingetsu Fukurō (Quirk: Head Rotation) and Homura Yui (Quirk: Fire Hair), didn’t seem to help much.

She tried, though.

It wasn’t until later that Kayama-sensei tracked Kei down and had a chance to chat with her, specifically.

“I know you have your own decisions to make,” Kayama-sensei said, with her flogging whip resting against one hip, “and that you’re possibly one of the least-passionate students I’ve ever had—”

She was hardly wrong.

“—but while I am going to be the chief umpire, I want to see you do your best out there. You and Shinsō-kun have been working hard, haven’t you?”

Kei blinked.

Kayama-sensei had seen Shinsō and Kei leave school together a few times. There was also a real chance the principal had told her about the bank robbers. And Kei had made a point of paying attention for the last week or so, which she was sure the other teachers would have noticed. She’d even asked questions. Such unheard-of developments made news headlines around the world.

“Yeah, I…” Kei scratched the bottom end of her scar, a little embarrassed. “Sort of? It’s been an interesting few weeks.”

“You were a little closed off before, but I understand why.” Nonetheless, Kayama-sensei winked and gave her a thumbs-up. “I’m glad you’re coming out of your shell, though! Kids your age need to live a little.”

“Thanks, Kayama-sensei. I think.”

That was an unfortunate pun.

Considering she’s in on this scheme, I think it’s perfect.

Ugh.

As a result of regulations and support items the Hero course students would otherwise have access to, what with being heroes and having costumes and shit, everyone in the UA Sports Festival was competing in their gym uniforms. Kei changed in the girl’s locker room with the rest and emerged into the waiting area while still picking at her sleeves for loose ends. Using chakra scalpels to cut the threats off was probably a waste of the precision Kei had worked years to gain, but waste not, want not.

She was still fussing with them when Shinsō stepped forward, because it was easier than worrying about what her boys were up to in Hosu. Leaving her phone in the provided locker went against about five different impulses.

“You seem nervous,” Shinsō commented, though he didn’t seem all that worried.

“Not about this,” Kei replied, finally giving up on her shirtsleeves and sighing. “Everyone back home’s gonna see me in this tournament.”

“…Is that a bad thing?”

Kei pinched the bridge of her nose. “Only if I lose badly.”

Shinsō made a noise that might’ve been a laugh, making Kei glance at him. “With an attitude like that…”

“If I lose to the explosion kid, I will never hear the end of it.” Kei sighed. “Ever.”

“Why’s that? He’s supposed to be the top contender out of all the first-years.” Shinsō, she noted, hadn’t tried to redirect her vague challenge to him. Maybe he was being more mature now, but Kei didn’t count on it. “Everyone’s aiming at that punk.”

That was a fairly long explanation. And it involved revealing that the explosion kid wasn’t the only person who’d ever blown something up by touching it with destructive intent. Kei probably hadn’t been making her contact explosives for as long as Bakugō Katsuki had been a hazard to public property, but she knew that kind of attack. That kind of pattern.

And best of all, that kid wasn’t using fūinjutsu.

Kei beckoned Shinsō slightly closer, so the two of them were slightly off in a corner of the room, then decided partial truth was bound to be funnier than an outright lie. She whispered, “I once blew up my teacher when I was thirteen.”

In that moment, Shinsō could have been carved out of granite.

“He shouldn’t have taught me how to make the stuff I used, and anyway he was fine. Teleportation Quirk,” Kei said, before Shinsō could look any more alarmed. “He started making fun of me afterward, and then said I could try again.”

“The more I hear about your school, the less I want to,” Shinsō muttered, while the other 1-C students started edging away from them. Kei just shrugged while Shinsō tried to incorporate possibly the second-most incriminating detail Kei had ever let him know about into his worldview. The first being the…practical training. And how Kei learned it. “Now I have a headache. Thanks for that.”

“You wanted to know why I was focused, and now you do.” Kei rolled her eyes when Shinsō glared slightly down at her. “There is no way Sensei would stop laughing if I lost to someone like that. He’d call it poetic justice or something and I’d hate him forever.”

“I’m starting to think I should be halfway across the stadium for deniability if you do anything,” Shinsō complained, but didn’t seem to mind too much. He hadn’t started running, after all. But that could mean he just didn’t believe her, which was probably safer for his sanity.

“Pff, no one could blame you for anything I do.”

Shinsō raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying this to the person whose Quirk is literally called Brainwashing.”

“Yep.” Kei was aware of the incongruity. She just didn’t care.

Shinsō settled for rolling his eyes. And then it was time to join the other classes in the opening ceremony.

The Sports Festival took place in what would have been an Olympic-sized stadium anywhere else, dwarfing the Chūnin Exam setup Konoha used. When she looked up, Kei could spot a massive dome stretching far overhead, stage lights off for the daylight event but nonetheless present. Thousands of seats lined the stadium walls, each of them filled with a person who wanted to see a bunch of fifteen-year-olds kick the snot out of each other. She liked the jumbotron-style screens, though she probably could have done without the reminder that everything from this moment forward would be broadcasted live.

Present Mic was the announcer. This was, perhaps, the most perfect job ever fucking devised. A guy with the Voice Quirk and endless capacity for hype generation and shouting. If Kei didn’t already know he was a DJ to end all DJs, she would have wondered if he moonlighted as an American football sportscaster.

General Studies entered second out of the department, announced collectively as “Next up, General Studies classes C, D, and E!” where the Hero classes got separate spiels. Made sense, though—flashy Quirks and ambition were concentrated in those forty students.

Kei just kept silent behind Shinsō, listening to their classmates lose heart. She could draw attention to herself later.

Kayama-sensei stood tall on the podium as the classes all gathered. Kei hung near the back, well behind the hero kids and most of her classmates, while Shinsō was closer to the front. Too many of the students had physical Quirks that obscured her view, so Kei settled for closing her eyes and expanding her chakra sense outward like a slowly widening net.

Nothing. Wider, then.

“Silence, everyone!” Kayama-sensei snapped her flogging whip, stepping up to the microphone. “And for the student pledge, we have Katsuki Bakugō!”

Kei could almost feel her classmates rolling their eyes.

The kid made his way to center stage, footsteps echoing in the sudden quiet.

And once he was up there…

“I just wanna say, I’m gonna win.”

Kei stuck her fingers in her ears before the crowd around her erupted in shouting. Off-hand, she could pick out the 1-A kids collectively before Iida got loudest, followed by the steel kid from 1-B. And then there was just more shouting, because nobody had bothered to tell the grade’s other resident delinquent that there was supposed to be a speech, not just a challenge.

Kei opened her eyes once Kayama-sensei got control of everyone again. She didn’t even need her whip this time.

“Without further ado, it’s time for us to get started!” Kayama-sensei called, microphone in hand and a smile on her face. “This is where you begin feeling the pain!”

So, is this—?

Please don’t say it.

“The first fateful game of the festival! What could it be?” Kayama-sensei held her arm up and a screen plunked down behind her, showing a single roulette spinning wildly until it came to a sharp stop. “Ta-dah!”

Obstacle race, huh?

“All eleven classes will participate in this treacherous contest,” Kayama-sensei went on, “The track is four kilometers around the outside of the stadium.”

Kei glanced at Shinsō, who nodded back. They wouldn’t team up, but they full expected to see each other in the next round. In this event, they would simply use every skill they had individually to excel.

It wasn’t like Kei could actually tell him not to use his Quirk and show it off. She certainly planned to do…something interesting.

“I don’t want to restrain anyone, at least in this game.”

Before I was rudely interrupted—

Isobu, no!

Kayama-sensei licked her lips, then grinned widely and said, “As long as you don’t leave the course, you’re free to do whatever your heart desires!”

Kei smacked both palms into her face. Kayama-sensei dresses like that every damn day, and now you’re breaking my acclimatization.

I am saying it.

Do what you want. Kei grimaced under her hands.

That is most definitely a dominatrix.

And now I can’t unthink anything about Kayama-sensei’s sex life that you just brought to mind. Absolutely none of it. Thanks for that.

“Now then, take your places, contestants.”

The entire first-year class gathered at a massive set of double doors. Kei glanced up, made a ballpark guess at the number of students versus the width of the opening, then sighed.

Three.

Two.

“What should we be paying attention to at this stage of the race?” Present Mic asked Aizawa-sensei, up in the media booth.

One.

And when Kayama-sensei screamed, “BEGIN!” Kei watched the inevitable rush that packed the entire place like a canning factory.

“The doorway,” said Aizawa-sensei’s grim voice.

Enthusiasm was rewarded to some degree, but so was planning. And unfortunately, the first years’ energy didn’t work out for the ones in the midst of the crush.

Shinsō was already gone, vanishing into the crowd. It was probably time for Kei to get moving, too.

From a standing start, Kei leapt.

No one in 1-C doubted Kei’s physical prowess, but neither could they explain it. Even as ice flowed toward the outside of the stadium, caused by somebody’s Quirk, Kei bounced off walls inside of the tunnel above the students’ heads. Water droplets splattered here and there, making the chill just that much worse as she ricocheted from contact point to contact point. To her fellows, it probably looked like she was using her control over water to stick herself to the tunnel walls and her athleticism to do the actual grunt work. Something, something, surface tension.

Chakra was pretty funny like that.

Cheating is all in the spirit of shinobi tradition, isn’t it?

Indisputably. Now make sure you place well.

Kei made it back into the light the instant after the ice froze most of the pack leaders of the race to the ground. She landed and rolled, crystals shattering half-formed along her back and snow caught in her hair. All around her, the students struggled in the ice she just brushed away, her gaze focusing forward to the two-toned head of one of the class 1-A students. Some people were frozen, others just slipping on the ice, and they were bound to see more of that as this kid made his way forward.

“Nice try, Todoroki-kun!” yelled one of the girls from class 1-A, as she and several of her compatriots fought their way past multiple waves of sheet ice.

Kei passed Shinsō, who was being carried by three likely-brainwashed students. She waved at him, then darted forward toward the lead position.

Traversing ice wasn’t really any harder than walking on water, no matter how much Todoroki made. It was mainly a matter of sticking to the surface instead of suspending herself above it. Purple spheres falling all over the place was her real concern—Obito had told her how the water villains during the USJ attack got caught, and Kei didn’t plan to repeat their mistakes. And if she passed Midoriya and Uraraka along the way, she at least spared them a friendly wave as well.

The first leg of the race seemed to be pretty tame aside from the other competitors. The obstacles were no-shows so far.

Cue the robots.

#Shell Game #Keisuke Gekko #todoroki shouto #shinsou hitoshi #Isobu

[jinjikook]

Insufferable (M)

🎃 word count: 2k

🎃 genre: smut ; college au

🎃 pairing: male reader/yoongi

🎃 warning(s)/kink(s): dry humping, slight voyuerism, flirting

🎃 summary: you consider yourself a great best friend to yoongi and he does too, so much so that he thinks that as best friends and close roommates, something else should be done to bring the two of you closer

🎃 requested by: anon - “For kinktober can you do a male reader x yoongi thing Where he's your roommate and best friend and you find out he has a dry humping kink after walking in on him jerking it in his room”

🎃 music: tomorrow - bts

🎃 masterlist + kinktober 2017

Classes were hard but dealing with the likes of Min Yoongi were harder.

Sure, you were proud to call him your best friend and he was a decent roommate—he stayed quiet and kept his messes to himself and basically slept most days away.

But it was hard because he was so… Yoongi.

He was all scraggly morning voice (even when it was five in the goddamn afternoon, how was that even possible?) and dark eyes, like a slithering serpent looking for its prey at all hours. You tried time and time again to keep yourself from thinking filthy thoughts about his pretty, veiny hands and his supposedly “talented tongue”—his words, not yours—but it was just so damn hard.

It felt nearly impossible to resist temptation when the entire snake was right there, teeth already sunk deep into a bloody red apple.

“You going out?” He rasped, probably having gotten up no more than an hour ago to work on something for his Music Theory class. You nodded and tried to keep your saliva in your mouth, knowing full and well that there were some things that you couldn’t just say, like how bad you wanted to know how Yoongi’s teeth would feel along the column of your neck as he rutted harder and harder—

“Cool, text me when you’re coming back. Just so I know,” He winked (though it came off as more of a blink if you had to be completely honest) and you sort of didn’t want to know what that was supposed to mean, if you wanted to keep your sanity slightly in check.

The cool early autumn air helped clear your mind and you figured that Yoongi meant nothing by that, just being his usual, not-realizing-that’s-called-fucking-flirting-Min-Yoongi self.

When you returned, the apartment was fairly dark, save for the light that peeked out from under Yoongi’s door. You figured he’d fallen asleep with the lights on, though in the back of your mind you sort of hoped he was up so you could sneak in a little bit of conversation with him before you headed off to your own bed. The library had been fairly boring and you just needed something to lift your spirits before starting the vicious cycle of school all over again.

You creeped down the hall, trying to pick up the sounds of Yoongi’s light snores to know whether or not you could open his door and be sure you wouldn’t be disturbing his slumber. You may be best friends but he sure unleashed hell on anyone who disrupted his beauty sleep.

You’d heard something, but it wasn’t very similar to when he snored. No, it was more breathy and almost… inaudible? You couldn’t quite put your finger on it but it peaked your curiosity and you felt the urge and need to at least sneak a peek inside Yoongi’s bedroom, to at least ease your restless mind.

When the door quietly opened under your hand, you instantly looked over to the moving mass on Yoongi’s bed. A mass that was most definitely your roommate and best friend.

Yoongi was there, which wasn’t unusual. But what had your blood pooling elsewhere and face flushing of all color was actually what he was doing on his bed.

He was clad in bright red briefs—a color now forever etched in your mind with this moment—grinding his palm against his very defined erection. It was swollen and there in all its glory, the tip soaking the fabric of his underwear as he continued to roll his hips into his grip.

Had it not been for his eyes being shut and squeezed so tight, he probably would’ve seen you already; since you were just frozen in place and staring at Yoongi practically jerking himself off through his briefs.

This was probably what he meant by asking to text first before coming home and why he tacked on a cheesy wink with the request.

Yoongi cursed and groaned, his already sleep-ridden voice just making it that much more delicious to your ears. It was low and gravelly and made your cock twitch in the confines of the raggedy sweatpants you deemed good enough to wear out to the usually abandoned school building.

“Y/N? The fuck?” You were torn out of your thoughts and fantasies at the sound of Yoongi calling your name. His hand was stuck on his crotch, half covering the bulge there as he looked at you, equal parts bewildered and irritated.

“O-oh my God, I’m so sorry! I’ll go back to the library—”

“Library’s closed now,” He interrupted, hand refusing to move even though he slid himself up into a sitting position against his headboard.

“Then I’ll go somewhere else—anywhere else!” Your face burned with shame and embarrassment and something else that you refused to put your finger on. You just had to get out of here, for the sake of your sanity if anything else.

“No, no Y/N.  You were enjoying the show, don’t let me ruin it for you.” Yoongi drawled slowly, almost entertained at the sight of you so flustered. It was comical and cute to him, and he sort of wanted to play a little cat and mouse game to see just how much he could make you sweat.

“In fact, how would you like to have an exclusive backstage pass? A little VIP action, hmm?”

At this point, your eyes had to be bugged out of your skull from Yoongi’s words alone.

“What’s that even supposed to mean!?”

He smirked, legs widening and making the crotch of his underwear tighten around his length; you couldn’t deny how tantalizing the sight looked.

“C’mere, take a seat and have a little fun with me. We are best friends after all, Y/N. Might as well make the most of our relationship,” He licked his lips and tugged at the neckline of the loose tee he wore to bed along with his briefs, as if the room was a few degrees hotter than normal—which you could totally agree with because damn when did it get so hot in here?

“Uh,” You stuttered, tripping over your tongue and staying frozen in place. “Isn’t that, I dunno, weird? Like, we’re friends and all and friends don’t do this and—”

“Have you ever heard of the term ‘friends with benefits’? This is where the benefits part fits in.”

“Is that—can we—how would we—?”

“By just doing it, Y/N. Get your perky ass over here and sit on me already, for fuck’s sake.” He sounded downright exasperated, probably aching from how hard he was and no doubt having to prolong his orgasm from having to stop and speak with you.

With shaky legs, you walked over to Yoongi’s creaky bed and sat down on the mattress, pointedly ignoring the unamused expression on his face.

“Over here, dumbass,” He tugged at your arm and made you face him as he pulled you to straddle his thigh,  your sweatpants doing nothing to shield you from the firm hardness of Yoongi’s cock. He hissed at the contact, hips moving on their own accord as they started rolling in small, nearly unnoticeable circles. Well, they would be unnoticeable if it wasn’t for the fact that you were picking up every minute detail with crisp, crystal clear awareness.

“Quit being weird about this, it’ll feel good, I promise.” He reassured you as his hands found your hips and guided them to follow along with his movements, a gentle grind alternating between the two of you.

With your final protests dying on your tongue, you relented and gave into the sweet if not illegal pleasure that was coursing through your cock. The friction was doing wonders and making you harder, if that was even possible since the sight of Yoongi alone made you already rock solid.

“God, why haven’t we thought of this before?” Yoongi groaned and his hips jumped up from the bed to push against you harder. Your own breath hitched as his length ground against yours. As much as you’d like to reveal just how badly you’d wanted this before, you kept your mouth shut and just hummed in agreement with his musings.

It was only a few minutes of you two grinding against each other, dirty and slow, until Yoongi seemed to need something more. This prompted him to push you back by the shoulders so you landed against the mattress on your back with a muffled thump and he climbed over you and in between your legs to situate himself once more.

It was a more compromising position and it gave Yoongi leverage to hold you by the thighs and force himself down on you much harder than before.  You felt the head of Yoongi’s cock with every downward slide of his hips, and pre come soaked even further into your bottoms.

With one palm flat next to your face and the other cradling your clothed thigh, Yoongi’s face was hovering over your own as he began to hump against your body at a faster pace. Clearly he was losing his patience just as quickly as you were with your inhibitions, and you knew that you were too far gone to go back now.

You arched your back and with the sound of Yoongi moaning low in his throat, you figured he liked that and continued to goad him further.

“Fuck, yeah keep doing that,” He rumbled and wrapped your legs around his slender frame to drive into you and get himself off, hoping that it was doing just as many wonders for you as it was for him.

You couldn’t hold back your own moans and Yoongi seemed to enjoy that aspect as he moved faster and dirtier against you, his release coming in tow as he panted heavily.

It happened all at once, Yoongi moaning your name in a way you thought you’d never hear, and you following suit as the two of you came in your clothes; messy and filthy in the best way possible.

It felt like you had blacked out for a few seconds, finding yourself next to Yoongi lying in bed, breathing hard and recuperating from the punch of a particularly strong orgasm. His eyes were closed and you looked over at just how pretty he looked with his dark lashes fanned over his stark skin and his pink lips glossy with his own spit, slightly redder from having bit on them.

“We are so doing that again.” He breathed, eyes still unmoving as his brows furrowed and his hips jumped a little, probably reliving the experience.

It took you a few moments to reply, still in awe that this literally just happened. When your thoughts organized themselves into more than a jumble of vowels and consonants, you spoke up.

“You never told me you had a thing for dry humping,”

‘Smooth Y/N, that’s exactly how one responds when you manage to make your hot roommate/best friend cream their pants.’

He shrugged, as well as he could while lying down, as his head turned and eyes slowly opened to meet yours. The dark chocolate looked the same as it did always, just as intense as they bored into your eyes.

“You never asked. Now that you know, I expect new developments to happen daily with this new information in your hands.” He smirked and you couldn’t help but laugh breathlessly. Yoongi was expecting every day to be like porn now, and you weren’t sure you were as opposed to that as you wanted to let on.  

“Guess we’ll just have to see, I wonder if you’ll learn anything about me to use…”

“Oh trust me, I plan to.”

#btswriters #bangtanwriters-net #kreativewritersnet #suga #bts #yoongi #min yoongi #min suga #yoongi imagines #yoongi scenarios #yoongi smut #yoongi fic #suga imagines #suga scenarios #suga smut #suga fic #bangtan #bangtan sonyeondan #bangtan boys #bts smut #bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts fic #kpop #kpop smut #kpop imagines #kpop scenarios #kpop fic

[ts-akhmim]

Episode 7 “It's a Hot Mess Express “ - Scott

People are so hard to work with. I get they don't like this challenge truly I do but I just wish they wouldn't keep shutting down every idea I had. It's... annoying. I get that I'm also the problem here. Because if an entire room full of people is saying you're wrong then you're probably wrong but still. I dislike being shut down. I've just been feeling kind of isolated since my name was written down. Even in my own alliance it seems like everyone thinks less of me for being paranoid. It doesn't help that I'm not entirely pop culture savvy so a lot of their convos I'm a bit out of the loop on. Part of me wonders if it's cause I'm in a male dominated environment? I don't think they are sexist but I do think that I'm being unintentionally ignored. Like throughout the duration of this confessional I have submitted 6 ideas/comments to the group and they've either been left in the dust or dismissed. That has to mean something right? Is it my personality? Did I come on too strong with my enthusiasm? Do they think I'm bossy? Socializing doesn't exactly come naturally to me. If anyone had met me 4 years ago you'd probably be in the know. You know that ability where you can pick up what people imply, whether through body language or through hidden meanings. I don't. I literally was born with out that ability and it has done whatever the opposite of wonders are for my life. At first I thought it was fine, I thought hey no big, everything is good, people like me eventually. But then I played Malaysia... A lot of great things came out of that game, a lot of good friendships and memories but in a way it sort of haunts me. When the confessionals came out, for the first time ever I saw what people thought about me. Sure they liked me eventually but they also disliked me. Like really really didn't like me at all. It was my first real interaction with people outside of the treatment school I went to, it was my first real interaction with the rest of the world and people hated my guts. Don't get me wrong I always suspected I was disliked but... to see their actual written thoughts on paper was hard. Of course as they got to know me they started to like me but I couldn't forget that it wasn't always like that. That at one point they looked at me or their screen or whatever and saw a pest. And that's my biggest fear, that I'm the problem. That no matter where I go people see me and are filled with dread or disgust. That people are always wishing me some from of ill because I'm bad at conversation or sort of creepy. Well at least they came to their own conclusions now, maybe they pulled their heads out of their asses or because it wasn't me they were actually able to function. God this spiraled, I only wanted to complain about how shitty my tribe was being not go on this full blown existential rant. Fuck me am I right? I'm not sure what this is going to contribute to the game. There is no hashtag big moves or fun comments but like I already typed this up so I'm not going to delete it like a pussy. 

Ok now we can talk whew. UMMMM not Connor fucking up Duncan's perfect record! Now that I'm over the shock, thank you Connor because I'm 95% sure that obsession is the reason Duncan did the most to make sure Devon voted me instead of him back on Thoth https://giphy.com/gifs/mamovie-stalking-octavia-spencer-eavesdropping-j5uEVYERR0ncYlJ36e Really pleased with how the game is shaping up tbh, assuming I don't lose another music video challenge hahaha. I would LOVE a final 3 with me, Ali, and Devon but I know that's a long way off so I'm just focusing on the here and now. My biggest concern is protecting Ali. Essentially Duncan hit me up to work with him, TJ, and Jordan and I was very much like lol not sure about that. Mainly because Jordan and I don't have a strong relationship? And Duncan was like yeah but he wants to get to know you better and I'm like https://giphy.com/gifs/week-wtf-moments-QjIz1AqkGTszK If that's the case, that needs to come from Jordan and then it's between me and Jordan. Why someone else is interceding on Jordan's behalf is very dicey to me but I'm not that surprised because that continues to be a theme with Duncan: getting me to fit into plans that best suit him. Y'all know DAMN well Jordan Pines don't wanna go to the end with me and the feeling is mutual. But I HAVE to make it work with Jordan or Duncan will get pissy. He literally was like ok well who are you close with and I felt a serious feeling in my gut to not mention Ali. So I said oh I talk to Adam a lot but I wouldn't say I trust Adam. So after telling Ali all of this lmao, we decided I needed to go back to Duncan and say yes because it would keep me in the know and keep both of us safe. Also it allows me to keep an eye on Jordan and Duncan at the same time so we truly stan. And the gag is I'm not scared of Jordan Pines and I welcome the challenge of getting him out so love yall for letting me in through the front door hahaha My new issue is just timing. We'll be ok if we win this next challenge but if not, I could see that alliance targeting Ali. Obviously I have a plan and will put the vote on someone else but I really want to prolong turning on that group for as long as I can. I don't wanna spook TJ and I know killing Jordan will leave me with a pissed Duncan and I really don't need that based on how seriously he's playing. So I'm hoping I can finesse somehow? Maybe one of them gets idoled out at merge and then a blindside on the other won't be as messy. But yeah I keep feeling like the walls are closing in, in terms of allies, and I'm working HARD to make sure I have an exit strategy at all times haha cause fuck these men I'm trying to win again. I "love everyone" which means I have no problem voting out anyone

So let me just make sure i got this right, connor tried to get people to vote for me, they all told me, he "planned" with me to go for liam, then....he votes for duncan and he goes home unanimously? little did he realize when he went around and gave a feeble attempt at rallying people to vote for me, i had already rallied everyone to go for him and made sure everyone knew he was a liar and couldnt be trusted, you know im a firm believer in loose lips sink ships and i absolutely used my big mouth as my weapon to sink his ship. Even if there turns out to be some majority alliance that did this all without me then well...i guess that's another story but im still taking my hard earned credit because either way i got what i wanted one way or another so im here for it, sorry gal! i now find myself in a position i hope i can make some moves with, duncan already just made a vague to comment to me about how "it only takes 4 now" which he's right, and he mentioned autumn, himself, me, and ali. Which, that's a 4 I would love to go forward with for the time being, i like to think ive had good genuine talks with them 3 in particular, and now we can start get together maybe lock something in and if we make it to a merge or even another swap we at least have something to work with with each other, but we'll see, we gotta focus on immunity first now, id love to win just to for sure see any of the other people who lied to me go home oop so while i may be feeling ok now i just have to remember to simmer down and play smart and make the right connections with the right people i need and saying the right things to whomever needs to hear it, because that's what i do best in these type of games to stay alive, i feel like my intuition has been leading me ok so far this game so im just gonna keep basing my decisions off that and charging forward PERIOD and ill damn sure do it with or without the help of the tomb because a bitch can not get in ive tried over and OVER at this point im back to pounding on the door of it just hoping if im annoying enough yall will let me in!

i'll do a proper game confessional later but me and dan are both judges for the svalbard music video challenge and its so sad that we cant talk... its like... this could be us working on a music video if things were different kjlsdfa its missing dan and jake hours

Whew! Sorry about that what happened was I ran out of anxiety meds a few days and that rant was the commutation of being with out sanity pills for three days! Everything is fine! I am fine! People are fine! I am sorry to the future Thoth 2.0 tribe, you are all great, I just get very spirally when I am without some sort of stabilizing force! Sorry to the hosts for using this as a diary this is not a diary this is survivor... Anyway this time I have some more constructive things to add! Okay so things are fine. Dan and I continue to bond, though he had to call me out on being bad at communication in order for our relationship to progress. I get it was like a check point or whatever and frankly I appreciated it. Like I said in my rant yesterday I have massive paranoia when comes to interacting with people and whether they like me or not, so constructive feedback while annoying is always helpful. Plus through research I found that he values a good social game so the fact that he's reaching out and telling me what I'm doing wrong is probably a sign that I'm not a lost cause :D. It turns out we have a few mutual friends our lord and savior John Coffey and also Sarah,... Lynn to be specific there are like a shit ton of Sara(h)s so should probably clarify lol. I want to work with him. I know he's in the majority alliance with the brawn tribe, which also contains Jakey and Jordan. Considering the fact that the beauties are slowly but surely getting eliminated, their favor would be helpful to me and mine. However, I know for sure that one of them wrote my name down. Honestly probably both of them. I know I keep harping on this fact but I just really really don't like the idea of looking like an idiot by aligning with someone who wanted me dead or wanted to fuck with me. If we do lose this challenge we are going to have to figure out who to keep or who to eliminate, I feel like it should be between those two. Mostly because I'm not exactly comfortable with a brawn majority. Like I know how people are saying tribe lines don't matter and while they don't, advantages do. And what more advantageous than being in a majority alliance? If we get rid of a brawn that would make it 4 brains- 4 beauty - 5 brawn. Which seems a bit more fair lol. Also RIP Connor remember how I said he was a threat? Welp I guess this is why they don't ask me for cast assessments :/ and also cause I was dead for like several years.

absolutely nothing has happened in fact i was kinda in a ~mood~ today so i feel like my social game took a big L because i didnt feel like talking to anyone and i was busy so i kept being that bitch to responding once an hour ..... but in other news i finally accessed the tomb, and once i started using more than one brain cell at a time i was able to get in and it was actually about 10x easier than i was making it out to be im not sure WHY i was struggling so much but of course, to no surprise i finally get in and the pedestal is empty AGAIN. Now there's not only at least 1 idol from the last time i went in the tomb gone, but there's possibly a second too, if not an advantage that can easily be played against me. At this point all i can do is try and recover a little bit, tomorrow ill have to just try more with my conversations and hopefully one of the people i can somewhat trust is the person who has whatever was in their time time around but probably not, it's never that easy

okay so i have a video confessional from earlier uploading which is kind of a recap of the last two rounds BUTTT!! liam just finished editing our video and i love it!! he did so good and our tribe all tried our best... im just hoping the other tribe didn't go bananas all out, because if they didn't we should hopefully win... i really wanna win immunity because otherwise i feel like adam is gonna be the vote and i dont want that anymore KJASDFA. i would just be sad because idk who the alternative would even be.... so basically we better win immunity KJLSADFA

Me: Alright everyone, make sure you film horizontally!!! Devon: Fuck you

Honestly!!! I take back what i said about Kendall. I feel like we’re making some strides to work together??? Or she’s playing me? I’m hoping to stir a Devon vote this round because I think he threw the vote on Kendall to piss me off, but who knows. I wanna talk to Jakey and see what he thinks about a me/him/augusto/Amir alliance to get through this vote? Idk I trust him but who knows!!!! Maybe everyone is lying to me??? 

okay... i know i said god is a woman and her name is autumn but its time for the remix. god is a woman and her name is alyssa's mum because alyssa's mum just rescued us from defeat in that challenge JKASDF the judges were kinda unnecessarily harsh but we move on. basically for the other tribe's tribal, i hope jake/dan/devon live... hopefully another scary old school person goes but tbh who knows what is going to happen?! im just so happy to have made f13, i said i'd come 14th in my intro so we love surpassing my own expectations

the immunity challenge went well, we won, which is good because i just didnt feel like going to tribal council because im honestly unsure what the hell is going on, i wanted to feel good about the connor vote because obviously that was my plan from the start however he just made it a little too easy by not talking to a lot of people allegedly, up until right before the vote, i dont think there'd be an easy vote next time we go to tribal, unless ... it's me... am i the easy vote?? i wanna really think im not but its just always too quiet to me when we dont go to tribal there's also lots of talk and speculation about a possible merge at 13, but me and my vivid imagination aka paranoia think maybe another swap of some sort could still happen even if for just another round or 2, i never knew with you sneaky hosts!! also i know we won in the challenge but we wouldve won in the challenge by even more if liam used more footage of my video i sent in i feel like i got no screentime!!! but of course i kept my big mouth shut for once because there's no i in team so ill try not to throw too much of a diva fit but listen... i tried to give yall a DEATH DROP, and i pulled a wig ruveal by snatching off my hat, and i was giving you a whole tik tok dance i made myself..... but there was no way i was doing more than beyonce's part so he didnt have much to work with so touche .... the full version i made will just be deleted scenes for myself ill reflect on when im more mature and think to myself "what the fuck was i doing?" 

So not to my surprise, we end up losing the challenge AGAIN!! I've just accepted that I really don't have any luck in this game. I was really hoping that we'd just win every challenge until the merge because I'm over going to tribal and voting people out. I feel like going to the amount of tribal councils that I have has left a huge target on my back. But at the same time, I'm playing the game more than other are. Maybe I have that going for me, who knows. Anyways, the Thots alliance is deciding on either Devon or Dan for this vote. I basically told them I was good with either, even though I would perfer to keep Devon so that I at least have more of an opportunity to rebuild our relationship. I've made it very clear that if the group as a whole wanted to do Devon that I'd write his name down to prove that I trust this group moving forward. So we decide to go with Dan for this vote, and this doesn't really sit well with Jakey. I'm not surprised by that, since I know he's wanted Kendall out for awhile now. But he is really adamant that he doesn't want Dan to go. Which I get, he thinks that Dan would trust him moving forward. When it comes to Dan though, his social game lacks so much that it's like "I don't even know if I can trust him moving forward". And I think the fact that Jakey more so wants to target Kendall this round instead of Dan is a strong sign for me. I'm pretty positive he has an idol since the brain one has been found and he's lied to me about clues before. So this has me thinking, maybe it's a good time to get Jakey out this round? Thinking about it numbers wise for the future, we don't really need Jakey's vote for a majority this round since the four beauties and myself makes 4, and if we bring in Devon that's 5. Plus, I don't even think that Jakey's under the impression that he would... get voted out this round. He seems offly confident that he's staying, just that Dan's going. But I like to think he'd let Dan be a sinking ship and go.. Idk I'm gonna try to pitch this to Amir and see what he thinks. I kind of tried to hint around it to Augusto that Jakey wasn't cool with it, but Augusto kind of turned a blind eye at that. And I don't trust Kendall with my thoughts since she's very blunt... so I wouldn't be surprised if she leaked my plans. Similarly to what Devon did when I voted him out last week. I'm hoping that Amir will see where I'm coming from and that he might be open to that concept. For all I know, I could be voted out this round. And honestly, that'd be the smart move for them to make because my perception in the game so far has been pretty spot on. I think my self awareness this time around has been an asset for me, so I'm hoping that I can get by this vote and hopefully enter the merge soon. 

Coming back into the game, I knew I needed to open up a bit and start to Slither earlier than I would imagine. After throwing a vote onto Kendall, I broke down any chance between the Beauty and Brawn working together to knock out myself and Scott. I haven't told anyone about my vote, and don't plan to. Going into this vote, Dan should be the obvious choice. OG Brawn hasn't suffered any additional losses in numbers, and I'm just too close with Augusto/Amir/Kendall to consider flipping. In preparation of tonight NOT being a swap, I established an alliance with Amir and Augusto. They are a duo in every sense, but attaching myself to them sets up the opportunity to at least CONSIDER voting out Scott next round. It would have to be between him and Scott. 

All I got to say is oof… I genuinely thought I was on vacation after the last round like I’ve been SO bad about talking to people or at least that’s how I felt cause I was operating at 60% instead of the 110% I do when I socialize. That being said, I have my goals that I want to stick to and see happen. Dan needs to leave this tribal so I can get Jakey out next even if Dan leaving makes me really sad. Dan leaving takes a number away from the Brawn and a number away from Jakey, who I am able to get out by keeping Devon and having him/Kendall/myself/Amir vote for him if we happen to lose again. The alliance of me/Kendall/Amir/Jakey/Scott went on call last night and it was deadass an hour and a half long call where everyone was like “idk who should go but I’m fine with whatever” although… that certainly wasn’t the case. I, personally, made points that were pro-Devon such as Devon not having any clear allies to reunite with at merge and things like that and EVENTUALLY at the last 5 minutes of the call, we decided that Dan leaving is the better option. Scott and I even discussed a Brawn having to go before we even did the call so yeah. One thing I could tell though? Jakey was not having it. I understand his frustration but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. I voted out AJ to prove that I am not here to play by tribal lines and you said you would do the same but here we are… Amir called me last night telling me about how Jakey was trying to strong arm him into voting Devon out because Jakey didn’t want to do Dan… like sir, I’m? I’m very happy that Amir came to me and confided in me to kinda spill out his emotions like that makes me <3 but it also made me wanna pop off at Jakey because I don’t like those approaches in games hgfjdks even if I do really like Jakey, I was just ugh gjfdks. That aside, I feel like I am doing good about getting information and building friendships out here like I’m DEADASS is almost every single alliance on the tribes I’ve been a part of and while I don’t get tons of info from direct sources (ie. Jakey), I get the information from close allies (ie. Amir) which in a way can be even better? That being said, I’ve been way too good at forming friendships that every vote makes me feel really bad? With Dan for example, I adore that man like even if he isn’t the most talkative he’s just amazing. But does Dan benefit my game as much as Devon? Not really, even if Dan wanted to align. I’m sticking to my promise of doing what I have to do and be a little bit more cutthroat than I usually am because I do genuinely want to win this game and I’ll do what it takes to get there. Honestly, I’d be SHOOK if we do not merge next round or the round after ghfjdksm but I’m just trying to plan ahead and look at my connections. My Thoth connections are Amir > Kendall > Devon > Scott > Jakey whereas my Hathor connections are Autumn > Duncan > Adam (?) > TJ > Jordan > Liam M > Ali. If we do merge, making a secret thing with Autumn would be KEY just to have another person in my corner but also I need to connect with a Brawn to be good with them yknow? It’ll definitely be interesting and I can see the merge being messier than a taco bell bathroom BUT I’m hyped at the same time?

How is it already Day 16? There seems to be something seriously wrong with that. Anywho, I've let myself take a quick step back on the social game these last few days. I think I've put in the work to cement a couple strong groups here and can put myself in a good spot, but now I can avoid being the person that probably would be seen as a huge threat in the near future. Once merge hits (which I'm hoping is this next round), I'm going to have to go back to bringing that social game to a 9 (10 is where the Alyssa threat level begins), but right now I'm hopefully putting myself in a good place. In the event we don't have a merge and have one more vote on Hathor, I really think I need to make a move on Ali. I realize I keep saying this and I'm going to feel awful when he sees this all, but he is such a HUGE threat, and I can't let him skate by to where there's no room to stop him. I made that mistake last time in letting the person I knew would win get too far without me being able to stop them. Not this time. Ain't no fucking way.

This may very well be my last confessional lmao. I’m just feeling very paranoid about this vote and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone votes for me except for Jakey. Or if he even flips to the majority against me. And honestly! I’ve come to terms with it. I really tried my best in the game and I can’t be mad about how I performed in this game specifically. I understand I’m a threat in these games and if people are worried about me end game, quite frankly they should be. I know that I’ve played Tumblr Survivor one too many times and should have quit while I was ahead. I know I’ve talked about working with Kendall and killing Devon, but honestly idk who is voting where. I think I’m going to try to just go with what I think is majority (against Kendall) and just hope to god I’m not going anywhere. I hate having this defeatist attitude, but if I get voted out I’m going to have zero hard feelings and take it in stride. I guess I’m just not cut out to win tumblr survivor ❤️

Our video was so iconic, SHOUT OUT TO ALYSSA'S MOM!!! I should really be making sure im fortifying the bonds i've made but im really just happy to be on break and not have tribal. I've only been to tribal once within a 7 day time span instead of the 4 times in 7 days the brains endured before. I will say i was positively shook to get the vote from connor, but i never thought i could play a perfect game anyways lol. I'm hoping to god that dan or jakey go, i dont want the brawns over here to have other options than autumn and i come merge. Im surprised at myself because im starting to really want to stick with all these people come a merge, i suppose we'll see how it goes and how my attitude changes moving forward. 

Sooooooo I actually felt kind of bad about voting for Dan until he was throwing my name out :/ I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I'm kind of nervous now. Like Jakey told me this and he did the same thing to AJ. Also I haven't heard anything from Scott yet... that's sketchy right? Ugh I swear if I'm voted out then Alyssa's mom, I will meet you in the Denny's Parking lot for a fight. I'm not afraid to throw hands at the elderly, ask Drew. 

We love when men listen to me an in turn we win immunity! This is now the second time that's happened lmao cause I sure did make everyone commit to a time block so we didn't play ourselves in the endurance challenge and I sure did suggest Telephone as the song choice so wooooo Not a lot has happened and I don't have a lot of time to talk to begin with but I have a strong feeling we are not merging tonight lmao. Tbh I look forward to another day on Hathor it's very chill over here, all things considered. Also I need a couple chill challenges the next two rounds cause ya girl is moving, graduating, and leading an underground movement all at the same time so don't set me up with a crazy time-consuming challenge lol

I feel vindicated. Starting off in this game, I was not doing so well gameplay wise. Flash forward, I've been a big contributor physically, and socially too! I've got big plans, and I will carry this tribe again if I have to!

(may've already submitted this but i'm worried i submitted it for day 18?)

Also...

ok let me just start by saying: im in an emotionally FRAGILE state at the moment writing this right after the winners at war finale.....SPOILERS IF YOU HAVENT SEEN BUT I HAVE TO SAY IT....NATALIE AND WINCHELE ROBBED, as inspired as i am by my aries sistren natalie and think she should've won, im even more upset for my fellow beauty sister michele because lowkey? i absolutely LOVE the way michele plays, because in my own head at least i like to think i at least play slightly similar, i like to lay low and just adapt to where i see i can fit the best, anywho thats all ill say on that, back to THIS game dan being voted out last round, was kinda meh, i had the tiniest conversation with him during one world and he did end up giving me some tea about the brawns, but i couldve easily tried working with him later on against the beauties, PLUS him leaving means that none of those false beauties left, which is bad for me because i want them all gone oop and ive worked hard over here trying to make sure everyone knows they are threats even if theyre not working together, they went against me and lied to me, which means i cant trust them or work with them, which means i need to make sure no one else does either it's very nice though duncan has approached me and asked who i was comfortable with incase we did go to tribal and he said him and jordan pines were pretty close and honestly jordan is the only one ive been on a call with this whole game which is fine because anyone who knows me knows i dont care for calls much in this game and that usually hurts me so im hoping its not hurting me this time but truly, im not sure people are approaching me way more with information and plans then they ever have so im hoping thats a good sign, espcially with duncan saying he basically wanted me to be in the know with him, i think i can trust him as of now going foward and i hope the same about jordan pines, because first of all i love his energy and him as a person my fellow stoner crackhead, and second of all let's be real i definitely want to use him as a shield later on cmon the guy has a season named after him, forget denise being the queen slayer, i want to be the king tamer also in good with ali and autumn i think?? i personally enjoy my short little convos i have with them frequently so i just hope we're on the same page, but idk the little voice in the back of my head is telling me it all seems too good to be true almost like a perfect illusion and maybe duncan is tricking me trying to talk to me about "keeping this tribe strong", so i guess we'll have to wait until the next time we go to a tribal together to find out so yeah in conclusion, sorry to dan, and plot twist of the century im rooting for jakey to not be voted out the other tribe? even though im still convinced he could be making me his number 1 target especially if he gets in kahoots with kendall, but im hoping i played them against each other enough during the one world so that didnt happen 

What do ya know....another tribal council. After only being exempt from one tribal, this has become somewhat of a routine. I am extremely confident in the numbers this round. I'm under the belief that everyone will be writing down Jake's name, and Jake will likely be writing down my/Kendall's name. Still, I believe there is a worry about idols. I would hate to be idoled out by Jake after everything I have worked towards...I can't afford to throw my vote on Kendall or Scott with the merge coming up so soon, because it fractures my game going into a potential merge...Somewhat of a "all or nothing" bet tonight.

Me @ the brawns who have been on this tribe: https://media.giphy.com/media/szPZ2NXIGCMcE/giphy.gif

So a couple new developments: 1. Jordan offered me a final two which I'm sooooo excited to see how that's going to turn out. I've really connected with Jordan this game (which admittedly I didn't think would happen before this game), but he's been the person I've confided in the most out here. So I really think this is going to be the start of something amazing. 2. With this F2 deal, Jordan told me that Amir/Jakey knew each other outside of this game. This is bad for me both because Jakey is supposed to be my other guy with Jordan, but also Amir is the person I'd want to target come merge (which should be next round). I have zero connection to him, he's proven to be good at comps, he's won this game before, and he doesn't add into my plan of having numbers on every side. So now I'm in a spot where I think I'll probably have to make a move against potentially my closest / other closest ally in this game. Being safe right before the potential merge feels amazing and opens a lot of opportunities, but is extremely scary knowing who is going to merge. Hopefully come to merge, I have a chance at the merge idol to avoid anyone else having the chance at getting it, because I need some added knowledge in this game.

I am so fucking pissed at Devon. WHY ARE YOU ON THE BRAINS IF YOU HAVE NO BRAIN CELLS!!!!!!! dsfjkaafkjdaldjfjadksjads Great now I get to die!

I don't know why Jakey wants to kill me. I am not a threat. Like at all? Most of the strategies I come up with are bad and I am barely social? Sure I guess I can win like a challenge or two but not enough to be physical? I mean I'm trying to kill him but like... honestly he started it 2 rounds ago. I am a paper tiger worse I am a paper giraffe. Sure I'm tall but basically harmless and only sort of evil. At least I remember why I hated him so much. I don't hate him NOW, I'm 22 years old I have better things to do then hate some guy for trying to win a game. But I am annoyed and inconvenienced by this. Maybe a little hurt too because the only reason I can think to get voted out is because my personality sucks so much that he doesn't see a future where we can work together. Which is fair I guess? But I can't be that awful right? God this game is a constant existential crisis... Also I think people are annoyed with me for being paranoid and shit. Oh I'm sorry people who's name isn't getting written down, I'm sorry I'm not more pleasant while I'm in fear for my metaphorical life. 

It’s a MESS ITS A FUCKING MESS SCOTTIE WANTS DAN OUT DAN WANTS DEVON JAKEY WANTS DEVON DEFON WANTS DAN AUGUSTO AND KENDALL WANT JAKEY AMIR WANTS NOT JAKEY OR AUGUSTO OR KENDALL I literally don’t have number in this game and I’m going to get fucked on at the merge 

Okay so Augusto basically told him that his name was an option for this vote or the next one and Kendall told him that the brawns are bringing up his name and said that he was the throw away vote So now my gut is telling me dan did it and jakey was in on it But I don’t care, if that’s the case Everyone on this tribe wants a brawn out, EVERYONE I just have to make sure it’s not jakey Because Augusto and Kendall want jakey now and I refuse it Rn it seems they r okay doing dan It seems everyone is cool doing dan So I’m happy with that

Jakey is fucking strong arming me r u joking Ndbdjdjsns Jakey talked to scottie And got scottie to want devon So now they’re gonna try and call the alliance tmmrw and change to vote back to devon over dan And if Augusto and Kendall don’t want to Jakey wants to pull brain and brawn to vote kendall like sir I’m literally getting strong armed, and he can’t see why people want dan out I could make a move rn But should I even I probably shouldn’t If they try to get kendall I will flip it on him 

don’t know what to do I’m pleading so hard with jakey rn like hey it’s not good for me to go into merge with 6 brawn 4 beauty (dysfunctional) and 3 brain (dysfunctional) And I said I want to do dan is that okay like jakey u need to choose a side, brawns, or this tribe And he goes If u decide to do dan Then I’m gonna unite dan and Scott and Devon and vote kendall So if that’s the case, I’m sending u home theres no way around it then

Throw back to last night when I hung up on jakey to call Augusto and told jakey that I was taking a shower but literally I was gone for an hour and needed an excuse fast so I told him i shaved my ass call that strategic ass shaking 

Okay so this tribal. Everyone on my tribe thinks jakey is evil and he’s just going to go back to the brawn tribe, which is like, wtf, he literally voted in minority on purpose and gave us leverage on him. Like he literally has put himself on the line multiple times. He ratted out the brawn majority over and over. Like jakey is not loyal to the brawns on the other side at all. The people on this tribe don’t give a shit and my opinion isn’t being heard at all, Kendall won’t budge and Augusto won’t budge, and Scott wants to keep devon. Can I just say scott is a rat, he is playing every single person. Jakey trusted him soooo much . Anyway, everyone wants jakey out for literallt no reason and jakey trusts me 100% and jakey is the best way to get info from the brawns on the other side. Anyway, KDJDKSN KDNDKD we are getting dirty. Jakey has an idol. And I told him he was the vote and I made it sound like it’s all Scott’s decision cuz I’m really tight with Kendall and Augusto, so now, jakey wants to idol out Scott Basically, it’s time for a cluster fuck and it’s time for chaos So at merge jakey and I will play from Opposite sides

so jakey fking tried to flip the vote and he blew up the 5 person alliance to devon and hes fucking up my game so much nkwejfnkew god maybe i will try and get him out at merge even tho i love him, i basically had to ccreate this narrative that jakey thinks that me jakey scott and devon are voting kendall but jakey is actually voting out scott jesus christ thi round gave me a migraine i have a case of the lie-abetes

I- there's nothing else to say hahaha the boys don't even talk game. So when I know something y'all will know something

People are paranoid as hell about a merge. What is there to be paranoid about, honestly? I've just tried to come into this game and have a good time and I think I've achieved that. No one is really looking at me as a threat right now, and there's still plenty of time left to play.

okay so i filmed a video confessional earlier which i will upload but adam just woke me up to the fact that we might be merging tonight?! which is so exciting and kinda crazy.... and the days line up with montenegro for us to be merging... at merge i think all my "laying low" can finally be for something and i can transition the bonds i've been making into making stuff happen. i've also been hosting a game during these quarantine times and i've realised people that do too much making SUCH deep bonds during the early stages become the people the jury is mad at in the endgame. i feel like im the middle ground, people feel close to me (and I would like to think I've come across as likable) without everyone thinking im their soul sister closest ally. at merge i think my "close" people who i can somewhat rely on are: autumn, jake, dan(?), jordan(?) and adam? like i have a core of people with various connections, which gives me some cover. its just about then feeling out the rest and seeing who i can trust amongst the rest... particularly the unknowns of augusto/kendall/scott/amir (assuming they are all at merge). like that is going to be the most important part of the merge stage for me, is figuring out which of them i can trust (and i do think dan and/or jake's opinions can help with this, because brainstorming with autumn helped me figuring out this hathor swap tribe).

i'm excited for merge... i do think i have early juror written all over me but i am also very excited. its time to emerge from the shadows and stumble my way into the light

live fast die young merge boots do it well. i literally am a clown, i got excited by my guess going so well and now i literally am a target the size of the sun exclusively because of my own actions what was i thinking KJASDFA honestly at this point? i embrace it, i push the 'im a shield' narrative and i trot on my little trotters to being mayor of ponderosa. this season i chopped of my own head so will not be the winner and the king, but hopefully i can be a kingmaker? also if me winning the tiebreak sends jake home i literally will be so unspeakably frustrated with myself i will literally... scream. HE PROBS HATES ME. i'm praying he lives i will feel so bad if he doesnt KLASDF

i literally... can not believe i am so stupid my lack of braincells really boggles my mind

So I was really hoping that we would win this challenge today because I like everyone on this tribe. But of course with my luck in this game, we lose AGAIN. And it's a shame because I like the Thots Alliance and i feel bad voting out Devon. I know he's someone who trusts me and although I don't 100% trust him, I know that he's someone I can depend on. Plus he makes a really good goat at the end, so it'll make winning more of an obstacle for me without him there. To my surprise however, Kendall and Augusto approach me with the idea of voting out Jakey. I really like Jakey and I practically see him as my #1 here, so voting him out would be difficult for me to do as well. We've discussed the idol together, he gave me his CBS all access account info to watch the finale, and hes one of the very few smart people in this game. So on a personal level, this is a hard decision to make. However, from a game perspective, it might be the right call. Jakey's setting himself up to be a swing vote at the merge, and the fact that he campaigned for Dan to stay and was adamant on not voting him out shows that. When it comes to Devon and I, I would prefer to not vote Devon out but if I needed to in order to show that I trust an alliance moving forward I would. So the fact that Jakey doesn't see it like that is alarming to me. In addition to that, I know that Jakey has lied to me multiple times in this game. He purposefully gave me the wrong idol clue for one of the matches, and when I called him out on it he bluffed it up. On top of that, I know for a fact that he voted for Kendall during the AJ vote. And the fact that he's trying to play it off on Devon goes to show the lengths he would go to make sure he controls everything. And on top of that, he wants us all to tell Devon straight up that he's going. Like... did he not learn from my story when I tried to do that? It can't happen. From a game perspective, voting out Jakey is the more logical choice to make. He can navigate better in a group of people and is aware of whats going on. Devon on the other hand, doesn't even know where the idol is or how to look for it. Devon is someone who you can take into a merge and know what he's going to do. Jakey is more unpredictable. And I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to rally up troops to blindside me when that time came. From a personal perspective, I prefer that Devon goes just because of the lack of trust between us and the fact that I don't ever see myself fully trusting him. Sadly I have to lose this battle in order to win the war at the end. So I'm going to vote Jakey out tonight and really hope that it doesn't come to bite me in the but or that he doesn't play his idol (i know he has one, its obvious with how paranoid he's been)

Guess I’m gonna cry because we lost… by a tiebreaker… it was sad. I feel especially awful because had I not made the mistake of repeating a name on my list during my 8th guess, we could’ve very well have won… but no one needs to know that! It just blows because going into a potential merge in a 7-5 scenario is NOT it. Plus like, their only vote was a unanimous vote for Connor which like… love Connor, but a rock could vote Connor out. I wanted to see tension, I wanted to see idols played, I wanted to see hands thrown, I wanted to see lines drawn, and I wanted to see messiness but all I ended up seeing? Disappointment. I hate it here deadass (‘:

Aside from being kinda sad we lost, I do feel super secure. Last round, I wanted Dan to leave to get rid of Brawn numbers and have the best chance to get Jakey out and now I have that! I know Amir is on the fence but I know Kendall and Devon would be all for it (Scott is as well, but I didn’t really know how much he’d be about it until this round) so it needs to happen. While I adore Jakey as a person and we’ve connected a lot, our strategic games don’t align at all since he doesn’t tell me much of anything? Most of his info goes to Amir or Scott and I’m being selfish here but I want all the tea (‘: plus him playing double agent with the Brawns at merge is not what I need if we’re going into the merge with not enough numbers. Not only that but Adam is a wildcard in terms of if he’ll work with me or not but Jakey being there with us makes it so Adam wouldn’t want to so there’s that. Girl… i sound like a whole ass gamebot wtf ghfdjnms

It’s so weird like I am extremely proud of the game I am playing but I still feel inadequate as a player? I know I shouldn’t compare myself to others because I’m ME but my two closest allies (Kendall, Amir) are playing so much better? Amir is able to get all the tea in the world and form those important game connections which I don’t feel like I can yknow? With Kendall, she is just so bold (and beautiful) with her gameplay in a way I could never like she doesn’t mind being the secondary target, she talks to everyone and talks game with everyone, and stuff like that. So in a way, I’m probably not a major threat to people because those two icons are here BUT I also don’t know if that’ll make me seen like a non-factor… that’s just how I feel going into merge and it’s kinda mehhh idk ;-;

MERGE IS COMING. TOnight actually, people are speculating, but im the only one with the certainty that its tonight and im feeling wonderful. I think if I play my cards right Im gonna have a lot of options come merge. God pending Kendall does not die tonight (hopefully her beauties keep her alive) im gonna suggest we secret pair beware this shit and tsart working from opposite sides to keep each other safe. That will allow me to pick of people Im not working with, while hopefully ensure that people im not with who are with her will be detered from targeting me. Thats my plan but who knows what the true dynamics of merge will be. Ive been playing quiet so far but im about to become the star of teh show, my ego just cant take it.

i really feel like by getting a five i got jake voted out and i want to scream i literally am gonna be out for blood if he goes

#BackWithVengeance

[prompt-master]

Relaxation and Experience

Anon asked: Can??? I??? Just??? I just wanna see keith and lance cuddling on the couch lead to something a bit more but then their fun is spoiled by the entire team walking in on them being so damn shocked because they had no idea and hunk just screams “IM GONNA BE THE FLOWER GIRL AT YOUR WEDDING”

Ay happy birthday Jon Arbuckle

Whenever things were peaceful in the Castle of Lions, everyone took advantage. Even Keith and Allura, who were known for their strict devotation to training and ending the war. So when the ship was tunneled into a peaceful dead zone of space and had seen no sign of any distress signals or Zarkon? Instant relaxation.

Shiro walked around the Castle by himself, getting lost in the winding rooms helped clear his head and it made him feel as though he was doing something. Later he’d find the others and have quick conversations with them before sitting with Allura in the projection room. Allura would at first try to work until Coran and her discuss the importance of the occasional break, and she’d enjoy a few good meals and the projection room. Hunk would cook and try to find a few good movies, even though they were all in altean. And who knew what Pidge was doing.

Lance looked down at the weird film in his hand, it was triangular shaped with text he didn’t understand. He’d ask Pidge what it meant but he’s pretty sure she’s deep in the air vents by now, and he defiently didn’t want to bother Allura when she was actually winding down. Hunk told him that this movie was funny to watch even though they couldn’t understand it, and well Lance had nothing else to do so. He placed his hand down onto the wall panel, lifting the door and revealing a couch with red and white boots propped up on the back cushions.

Lance sighed but instead of commenting he walked over began to set up the movie, taking a while with the unfamiliar technology. Keith’s eyes followed him in a lazy interest, his head propped up on the arm rest which left his body twisting in an awkward way since he still had his feet up in the air. Once the movie began to play Lance sat on the opposite side of the couch and propped his feet up over Keith’s stomach.

Keith looked at Lance’s sneakers, and then rested his arms over his legs, “Hey Lance”

Lance’s eyes didn’t move from the screen, “Hey Keith.”

A few months ago Keith would have ended the conversation there, or even shoved Lance off of him. Lately though they’d been getting along really well. He’d had a few moments in Lance’s bedroom. They two of them sat in close proximity and let loose as teenagers should. And in the heat of battle they’d share an intimate hug, and even once a kiss after an intense reuniting.

Keith blushed and shook the thought away, eyes following to look at the screen, “what are..uh what are we watching?”

“Honestly? I have no idea.” Lance’s voice was a bit flat, his left ankle rolled in slow circles.

“You sound pretty bored man”

Lance sighed, hand reaching to scratch at the back of his neck, “I mean yeah?” His eyes met Keith’s finally, “I am pretty bored so…”

Keith hummed, trying to focus on the horrifying monster on screen that seemed to be sobbing over a bowl of some strange alien food, “you wanna make up subtitles?” Lance had told him that was one of his favorite things to do as a kid.

“No…uh…actually could we just…you know?” Lance’s head gestured towards Keith before himself, and he looked back at the screen nervously.

“Yeah, sure.” He slowly lifted up Lance’s legs, then shifted himself around the couch until his head was laying on Lance’s chest. Eyes on the screen again, he focused on the sound of his heartbeat.

“This ok?”

Lance’s hand ran down his back, sending shudders through him, “yeah…this is perfect.”

They watched the movie in a comfortable silence after that, enjoying the feeling of each other with their legs tangled. Keith smiled whenever Lance laughed, his head bouncing with the rhythm of his chest. At some point the movie had hit a slump, becoming one of those scenes where dramatics hit. Ah plot, normally plot’ s great but neither understood what the drama was. In the confusion, Lance placed a kiss down on Keith’s forehead.

Keith rolled over so that they were chest to chest, he placed a kiss on Lance’s chin, “two can play that game”

Lance smiled, hands up and down Keith’s back, “you know, I like it when you get all affectionate”

Keith stared down at Lance’s lips, noticing how they were chapped, “oh do you now?” He placed a quick kiss to them

One of Lance’s hands reached up and tucked some of Keith’s hair behind his ear, “yeah. I like it a lot.”

The way his voice went deep and quiet left Keith red in the face. “Oh?” He kissed him again, this time lingering a little longer, “why’s that?”

“Cuz” his hands slid down the back of his neck, the line of his spine, and went back up the under of his shirt. Stopping to hold his waist at bare skin, “you’re not like this with the others, it’s like I’ve got a side of Keith all to myself”

Keith had to admit he felt the same way about Lance, he liked how there was a certain glint in his eyes that he only had when looking at him. Only him. He loved that look, the one that was scanning his collarbone. Lance gently grabbed his chin and pulled him in for another kiss. Lance tugged at his bottom lip, and after a shuddering breath from Keith they both pulled away.

Keith swallowed, looking down at Lance, “hey is it ok if I uh-”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t even tell you what I was gonna do?”

Lance shrugged, “I trust you.”

Keith rolled his eyes, placing a few kisses to Lance’s neck. As he reached down to his collarbone he mumbled against tan skin, “I love you”

“Shit man,” Lance said, eyes shut in bliss. “You too”

Keith brought his lips back down to the others quickly, “I really love you”

“Can’t say I blame you”

A tug at Keith’s hair and they were finally at a more heated kiss. They felt stuck, melted together in their own little world. The movie long forgotten, they allowed each other to relish in the feeling of what they should be able to enjoy more often. Like how the rest of the team took advantage of being able to relax, Keith and Lance took advantage of being able to express. Their kiss was slow rather than hungry or desperate, the two of them just wanting to savor the moment. They were so caught up in the moment they didn’t hear the whoosh of the door sliding open until a voice spoke up.

“Ew. They’re eating each other.”

The two on the couch felt their whole body get a rush of unpleasant shock before going straight red. They pulled away, Keith diving to the other side of the couch, and mumbled complete garbage of excuses. They looked at Pidge, who had spoken, in shame.

Shiro then covered Pidge’s eyes “what the- I thought you two knew better than this! On the couch no less. I’m happy for you but-”

Keith groaned, wanting to die “Shiro please..”

Allura tilted her head, “is this some sort of strange Earth custom…why were you eating each other like that.”

Clean shook his head “no princess I believe that was the kissing thing Lance attempted to explain to me”

“Oh yes! Kissing…so are you two mates then?”

Pidge groaned, “for my sanity I hope not”

Lance was frozen in an embarassed shock, “g-guys what- shut up!!”

“I can’t believe we got caught fully making out we’re so stupid”

Lance looked over to Hunk, who was staring at him with these…starry eyes. Like the kind he got when they’d found rare collectors cards as kids. Hunk who had been covering his mouth, moved them to show the wide exaggerated smile on his face.

“Oh no..”

“Oh my God. Lance, buddy- I totally knew it! Didn’t I Pidge?!”

“Yes Hunk, you called it-”

“I’m so happy for you guys! We need to celebrate! Oh wait for your wedding-” Keith choked on his spit"-can I be the flower girl?! I gotta be the flower girl ok Lance? Heck I’ll plan your whole wedding i just…I’m telling you I would plan such a good wedding, I’ve watched so much HGTV with my moms I’ve got an eye for decor.“

"What?” Lance raised an eyebrow, “don’t you wanna be my best man?”

“That doesn’t matter there isn’t going to be a wedding!”

Shiro sighed, rubbing the bridge of his noise, “you two can’t let your relationship get in the way of voltron Ok? I’m happy for you but-”

“I know Shiro..i know just…can Lance and I have a moment?”

There was a beat of silence.

“Alone?”

“…you two aren’t going to make out on the couch again are you?”

“Shiro!”

“Just making sure, ok come on everyone. Pidge stop gagging.”

With everyone out the two boys slumped over and let out a heavy breath of air. Lance looked over to Keith, “you just said that so everyone could leave didn’t you?”

Keith smirked and nodded, “now we have a chance to go to my room, I got a nice knife collection”

Lance rolled his eyes and stood up, placing a kiss to Keith’s cheek before offering a hand to help him up, “you’re lucky I love you”

#voltron #vld #klance #fanfic #yo sorry this ain't so good whoops #happy birthday lance #syke happy birthday emoji

[gamedadmatt]

I’ve Left Stirfire, so What’s Next?

After working with Stirfire Studios for 4 years, I announced my resignation last week. 2018 has been massively challenging for numerous reasons, and it had a huge impact on my physical and emotional wellbeing. My self confidence took a hit, and my desire to work in games was shot. There was a time that I honestly considered whether I even wanted to work in games anymore, and went and started looking at maybe studying psychology or counselling (my career of choice before I’d got into game development).

That’s why I made the decision to move on, and try something new for a while. Working in games, I’ve been putting money away every pay so that I have something to fall back on while I work by myself (and pay other people from - more on that later). You never know when things might fall apart and you need that safety net to break your fall. For me, it was more a matter of needing to rebuild myself and fashion a future for myself out of this industry, and I couldn’t do that while working for another company that I had little power to change from within.

So I decided 2019 is going to be a fresh start with a clean slate. I’m not leaving the games industry. I’m sticking around, and have a goal: be the change I want to see. And that takes a few forms. Be the sort of developer I’d want to work with. Run the kind of company I’d want to be a part of. Provide the kind of help I wish I had

This year has been an incredibly bad year for game developers, with stories of crunch, studio closures that nobody was prepared for, unpaid hours, and the news that Australian studios were seeing people paid below minimum wage. I can’t change these things for my community (especially not that last point), but I can work and operate in such a way to try and better things for myself and those I work with. And there’s a few ways I want to tackle that.

I’M MAKING A GAME

There’s nothing groundbreaking about going off to make a game, except for the fact that despite everything I’m still making games.

Leaving a games studio to go out and make a game by yourself is kinda like deciding to leave a well armed group of Zombie Apocalypse survivors to make a go of it on your own instead. The outlook isn’t great, really. Games are highly competitive and hit-based and I’m not willing to bank everything on making some groundbreaking title with my first effort straight out of 4 years of employment.

The game idea that I’ve had rattling around in my head for ages now is like this itch that I know I won’t be able to ignore. I really want to get it out and make it a reality. I’m fairly confident it’s a unique concept that should be fun for people to play, and it’s the sort of thing I feel pretty good about being able to make from start to finish mostly by myself.

I’ve already got plans for taking the idea to kickstarter once I have it more fleshed out, and I’m crossing my fingers in the meantime that Western Australia gets some state funding for videogames that I can take advantage of. And then at that point, I will start looking about dragging in other people to work with me on it on a more consistent basis.

As for what the idea is, there’s not much I want to say about it just yet except that once I have something in a prototype form, I’ll start talking about it openly. It is a narrative driven game though - something that I can build on my own, without much emphasis on the art or programming. And no, it’s not going to just be a Twine game. It’s a bit more involved mechanically.

It’s a story about an artificial intelligence that is the only sentient life left on earth. I’ll leave it at that for now!

BUT A GAME NEEDS A STUDIO?

Now, “studio” I use as a loose term here. Right now, it’s only me working on this game, and I intend on keeping it that way until I have some plan on how I am going to reimburse other people for their time. I have savings I can draw from and intend on using to pay people occasionally for very brief stints as contractors or consultants on my project, because that money also needs to be used to pay myself. So that means it’s a limited scope that I have to try and achieve on my own.

Sure, I could go out and start pulling in people and saying “here’s this really cool game idea I have, come work on it with me!” But when I am unable to pay them, what sort of message does that send? It’s massively important to me that skilled people be reimbursed for their time. And as much as I might like the idea, I can’t expect people to live off of a good idea. Even if it might feel good having equal ownership of it.

That’s why I’ve been working on some studio values. I want to from day one be projecting forward the kind of studio I want to be running in future. If I were to somehow find success or the money tomorrow to pay a bunch of staff members, I’d be scrambling to establish these things. So even if I am only working on my own, it’s massively important to make these values known and hold myself to them.

After all, if I can’t hold myself to my values while I am working on my own, why should I ever be able to establish a studio caring for other people? This is one way I can improve things for those directly around me, should I start working with others (and I will, at some stage, even if only temporarily).

And speaking of caring for people…

PRODUCTION CONSULTING

The idea to do Production consulting is something I’ve been building on slowly for quite a while. When I started off with Stirfire, I’d already had some experience in managing a small team when I interned with Scitech WA. In the past 5 years I’ve seen a variety of issues that small game development teams (as in, less than 20 people) can experience. And this is only first hand. Second hand, I’ve seen so many Aussie teams suffer from a lack of production insight in a variety of horrible ways.

Even when they have money, smaller studios often struggle to balance the need for a Producer with operating the way they’ve always operated. It can be difficult for them to justify the cost of getting on a dedicated Producer when they may only be a team of 3-4. But this doesn’t mean that the Production insight isn’t valuable to them at all. They might just not be able to afford it all the time.

That’s where the idea for production consulting comes in. What I love most about being a producer is seeing teams grow and excel together, and working to their strengths as a cooperative. But sometimes all you need to do to get a team even slightly more functional is to show them what they are doing wrong, and teach them how to account for their weaknesses.

So the intent would be to embed into a team for a short period of time, and focus on whatever their goals were. Maybe they want to make sure they aren’t setting unreasonable expectations in a schedule they created. Maybe they are going to Kickstarter and want to sanity check the budget they have created to ensure that it is reasonable from and outside perspective. Or maybe it’s as simple as just ensuring they have a good methodology in place.

This idea is still in the early stages and I’m putting together the materials for it, but you can read the beginnings of my plans here. Right now my working title for the idea is “Burndowns, Not Burnouts” since that’s cute and gets across the idea. But if you or your studio are interested in having a chat, or have a problem you want to see if I can help with, please get in touch with me!

ANYTHING ELSE?

Stuff I hope I get the opportunity to do, but I’m not about to go announcing anything until I know for sure whether or not I’ll get the opportunity. But I am at least intending to get more involved in the Perth game development scene than I have been these past few years while I’ve been entrenched with Stirfire.

I’ve also not forgotten about the card game I was talking about before! But at this stage, it’s more of a side project that I’ll be doing with my partner in our free time. I’d considered making it my big focus, but for as much as I know about game development, there’s a lot I don’t know about making physical card games. There’s the potential of taking it to kickstarter, but I think it’s better placed as a fun little hobby project while I focus on the stuff I’m stronger at.

So there you have it, that’s my plans for the coming year! There’s the potential of picking up some work lecturing or such on the side to make ends meet, but my major priority is working on myself and trying to build something I can be proud of. Expect to hear from me much more often on this blog over the next 12 months!

-Matt

#production #consulting #game development #game dev #videogames