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therhythmafterthesummer · 1 year

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Alone Together (M) ~Lee Know

Pairing: SpacePirate!Minho x Smuggler!F.Reader Themes: Sci-Fi AU (barely) | Smut | Established Relationship (kind of) | Lovers (idiots) to Even More Lovers (affectionate) Word Count: ~8k | AO3 Synopsis: Minho was a man on the run, an outlaw. He was always getting himself into trouble, thieving and fighting against the people that perpetuated an unfair system that did nothing but bring pain to those the system considered lowly and unworthy. For his next mission, he decided to ask for help from the person he trusted most in this world, you. Warnings: star wars concepts used very loosely and probably very poorly · made up locations · mentions of slavery and morally questionable situations · the term suicide mission is used once · your honour they’re sickly in love · graphic depictions of intercourse (smut warnings under the cut).

Due to all the abovementioned warnings, this story is intended for an adult audience only. Minors please do not interact.

Author’s Note: i started watching the book of boba fett, and it seems like it’s impossible for me to watch anything star wars related without wanting to write about people boning in space. so this piece was born ! it’s incredibly self-indulgent, but i hope someone else out there gets to enjoy it too~

this was barely proof-read, so if anything sounds weird don’t hesitate to let me know lol

Smut Warnings: this is very vanilla tbh · praise · fingering [F.Rec] · protected penetration [piv].

Disclaimer: the story represented in this work does not represent Stray Kids in any way; anything described in this story and all actions performed by the characters are purely fictional, this was created just for good fun.

As an outlaw, Minho’s entire livelihood depended on him not attracting too much attention to himself, on laying low and being as stealthy as possible. Which was why it almost felt counterintuitive to be here right now, trying to get his ship caught on the radars of a cargo ship. Although, to be fair, it wouldn’t have been the first time he tried to get into this cargo ship in this exact same way, but usually he’d have a bit more preparation than this.

“Shit… Here we go. Buckle up, boys”, Minho informed his crewmates.

Their entire starcraft shook violently as the gravitational beam of the much bigger starship pulled them towards it. They were discovered almost as soon as they came close to the vessel, and Minho had honestly taken a leap of faith with this move, because this could’ve gone two ways: like it was going right now, them being pulled towards the hangar within the starship, or they could’ve been shot down on sight.

Getting within the perimeter of a smuggler ship was always dangerous, especially when done unannounced, but Minho was desperate, so he did what he had to do.

As soon as his ship was parked within the hangar, he unbuckled his safety belt, standing up and stretching his limbs. “Guys, get ready. Remember what I said, no sudden movements, no arguing, just follow my lead, okay?”

Hyunjin and Felix nodded in understanding, getting out of their seats and stretching as well, just as loud thuds started to resonate within the crammed space they called their ‘navigation room’. That was a bold claim, this ship consisted only of that navigation room, small enough to go undetected when needed, but not that good for long periods of time travelling, he’d admit.

“Open up, hands in the air!”

Minho nodded to his crewmates, and once they both lifted their arms he hit the door’s button on his console.

Four super battle droids stood right outside, with their blasters pointed right at them. Minho hadn’t seen this model of droid before, they must’ve been one of your latest acquisitions, and somehow, that thought brought a smile to his face. However, new droids meant that they wouldn’t know who he was, which also meant things could get out of hand really quickly.

“Step out!”

Minho got off the ship first, with his hands in the air as instructed, followed by Hyunjin and Felix. The droids immediately took a hold of their wrists, rather forcefully, and it made him wince.

“Hey! We’re cooperating, don’t be so harsh, jeez…” The droids completely ignored Minho, simply continuing their task of holding their wrists behind their backs and binding them together.

“Names, and what were you doing fluttering around this ship?”

“I’m Minho. These are Hyunjin and Felix”, Minho replied simply, gesturing with his head as he named his two crewmates. “We came to speak with your captain”.

“Our captain has no time to deal with stowaways”, one of the droids scoffed, pointing their blaster right to Minho’s forehead.

He couldn’t help but smirk, the words flying past his mouth before he could even think twice about them. “How can you call us stowaways when you were the ones to pull us in here?”

The droid went silent. Minho figured that if it could make facial expressions, it would’ve looked annoyed.

“It’s really important”, Minho urged. “I’m sure she’ll understand. If you’re planning on throwing us to the trash chute, don’t you think she’d like to make the call herself?”

The droid in front of him went silent again, the other three were just surrounding them, pointing their blasters at them. It was taking the droid so long to say something, Minho started to really worry that he had miscalculated how this part of the plan would go.

Ultimately, the droid lowered its weapon, and the three of them heaved a sigh of relief. “Follow me”.

The insides of the ship looked almost the same as they had last time Minho was here, save for a few changes to the corridor’s decor. How long had it been? Three months? Six? It was hard to tell these days when he was running for his life half the time.

The group of droids guided the three of them towards where Minho knew the main control room would be, where you probably would be. He should’ve been unfazed, Minho had seen you thousands of times, but somehow every single time without fail his heart would flutter, especially when so much time had passed since he last saw you.

As soon as the doors of the main control room slid open they were engulfed by the sound of clicks and clacks from the amount of droids sitting at their stations just pressing buttons. It was impressive, how you had put together this entire operation almost on your own, he couldn’t help but smile at the sight.

“Captain”, the droid spoke finally, snapping Minho out of his daze.

Ah, there you were, hunched over your desk, with your fingers flying on the touchscreen that was embedded in it. What were you doing? Planning your next course? Ensuring the safety of your routes? Checking for imperial ports in the vicinity? Minho was always curious, mostly because he was nosy. He wanted to have as much knowledge as possible at any given time, but he also just liked to hear you talk about things. He quite enjoyed hearing you speak, he’d admit.

“What is it, B2-49?” Shit, just your voice could kickstart Minho’s heartbeat. He should visit more often, the longer he spent away the more your mere existence affected him, and it was, quite honestly, inconvenient.

“The stowaways wish to speak with you”, the droid, B2-49, informed you, and you scoffed, not lifting your eyes from the screen under your fingertips for a second.

“How can you call them stowaways when we pulled them in here in the first place?”

“Took the words right out of my mouth”, Minho couldn’t help but say, grinning at you once the sound of his voice finally pulled you from your task.

Your eyes went wide as soon as you spotted him, you clearly weren’t expecting him, and Minho would lie if he said he didn’t enjoy catching you off guard, that he didn’t enjoy your attention.

Your gaze jumped from him to his two companions, and your brows furrowed. You looked at him again, right in the eyes, confusion written all over your face. “What’re you doing here?”

“Can’t I just drop by anymore?”

“You can”, you leaned back in your chair, crossing your arms over your chest. “But something tells me you’re here with a purpose”.

‘So when I come here to fuck you isn’t a purpose?’ was what Minho would’ve liked to say, because that was often why he came to your ship, but he’d always come alone. Hyunjin and Felix didn’t have to know any of that, so he kept his mouth shut. Instead, he chose to take a direct approach.

“We need a safe route to infiltrate the Antrilian quadrant”.

You scoffed, incredulousness painted all over your face. “Have you gone mad? Antrilia? Want me to get you right to the intergalactic council as well?”

Antrilia was known for hosting the biggest slave ring in the galaxy, it was heavily guarded by imperial forces, and it was Minho’s goal to bring it all down, to free every single slave in the quadrant, stealing a few prized possessions in the process–he had to get his money’s worth, of course.

It was a very personal task, considering two of his crewmates had been taken by the empire recently. Saving his friends and taking it all down wouldn’t be easy, the entire quadrant was heavily guarded, which was why he had come to you, the best, most discreet smuggler he’d ever known.

“I’m being serious”, and he was.

Minho’s entire purpose was to rid the galaxy of every single slave camp he could, that was how he met his crewmates, they formed their own guild and were now some of the most wanted men in the galaxy. Ever since he himself escaped from one of those places when he was just a kid, he made it his purpose to wreak as much havoc as possible, to bring down the system. It was dangerous, and he’d been close to dying more times than he could count, but he just couldn’t turn a blind eye to it.

You looked at him for a moment, your eyes jumping all over his face. After a while, you finally unfolded your arms to place your hands flat on the table. “Oh my Gods, you are serious. Do you have a death wish?”

Minho gave you a smile, a smug one, and you immediately brought your fingers to your temples, rubbing circles there.

“I can’t do that, Minho”, you said as soon as you seemed to realise he wasn’t going to back down.

“If there’s anyone in this galaxy that can get us there is you. I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t truly believe that”, and Minho really meant it. Regardless of his personal connection to you, he knew you were incredibly good at your craft.

You looked at him for a few moments, quiet, pondering, he could almost see the cogs turning inside your head, and for a brief moment he wondered if you would just shoot him down completely. That was, until you spoke again.

“What’s in it for me?”

"My gratitude", Minho said in a mock tone, and you quirked a brow, almost as if you were telling him ‘be fucking serious right now’.

So he clicked his tongue, slightly annoyed that you didn’t want to play along. “The receptor of an imperial cruise with a valid code”.

Immediately, a glint of excitement appeared in your eyes,

“How did you… Get your hands on that?”

Minho shrugged. “I have my ways”.

You were silent for a while, just looking into his eyes and tapping your fingers on your desk. Minho looked right back at you, waiting for you to make your decision. This wasn’t the first time he was asking for a favour, but it was certainly the first time he was asking for something so dangerous, so he could completely understand if you didn’t want to help him. He wouldn’t have taken it to heart either way.

With a deep intake of breath, you finally stood up from your desk and walked a bit closer to the group, to stand right in front of Minho. “This is not something I can decide just now. I need some time to think about it”.

“There’s not much time, I’m afraid”, Minho gave you a genuinely apologetic smile, and you sighed, somehow sounding both defeated and annoyed.

“Quit being dramatic. I’m sure you can give me at least twenty four hours”.

“Twenty four hours sounds reasonable”.

You looked at Minho for a moment, and then looked at his crewmates. “Who are you guys?”

“Hyunjin”.

“Felix”.

Both of his crewmates introduced themselves at the same time, but you seemed to pick up their names anyway. You signalled your droids to remove their restraints, giving them both a welcoming smile. “Welcome aboard, Hyunjin and Felix”.

They simply returned your greetings, sounding immensely grateful now that they were no longer bound. You were just about to walk away when Minho cleared his throat with a frown on his face.

“Aren’t you going to untie me, too?”

You looked him up and down, and a devilish smile made its way to your lips, making the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “Why should I?”

“So you untie my friends and not me? Seems a bit biassed on your part, doesn’t it?”

You walked closer, standing so close he almost felt as if you were going to kiss him. Right there. In front of his friends. And that realisation had his heart pounding in his chest, and, even more annoyingly, it brought heat to his ears. He tried his best to not show how affected he was, though. He stood his ground, with the self-assured smile he could pull off.

Bringing your hand behind him, you took a hold of the device binding his wrists. “Say please”.

His smug façade crumbled immediately, replaced by a look of incredulousness. Minho scoffed, tilting his head to the side and looking you right in the eyes. “You can’t be serious right now…”

The corners of your mouth quirked up, and the mirth in your eyes made him both feel giddy and incredibly annoyed.

“I’m dead serious, Lee Minho”, you told him, and Minho realised then that if he leaned in just the tiniest bit, he could definitely press his lips to yours, and for a second, he genuinely considered it.

If it had been just you and your droids, he certainly would’ve kissed you right then and there, but the presence of his friends behind him gave him pause. It wasn’t like Minho minded if they knew, it was that he wasn’t sure whether you would mind or not. But based on how things had gone between you two so far, he figured you would, so he took a deep breath, closing his eyes to avoid looking at your triumphant face.

“Please”.

“Please, what?”

His eyes snapped open, and there was nothing he wanted more in that moment than to wipe that glint of victory in your eyes. Regardless, Minho swallowed his pride, he was in no position to try his luck.

“Please, captain”.

You smiled, clearly satisfied. With what Minho figured was a press of a button on his cuffs, the thing unravelled from his wrists, finally letting him move freely.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” You tapped his chest, and Minho had to bite his tongue. Oh, he was so getting his payback for this.

Before he could say anything, you spoke again. “You guys can stay here today if you want. There’s plenty of rations for all of us, including the few other living people on this ship, but I’m afraid there’s only one spare room conditioned for people to stay in besides the crew’s”.

“We’ll stay”, Minho rubbed his wrists, trying to ease some of the ache caused by his restraints.

The room provided to them was big enough, with a bunk bed embedded on one of the walls, and another on the other. Very sterile looking, nothing in particular stood out, it was just like any other room Minho had seen on a spaceship of this size. The biggest add-on was the adjacent washroom, which the three of them immediately rejoiced at when they noticed it.

No one ever spoke about it, but depending on the ships you travelled in throughout the galaxy, a washroom could be considered a luxury, so the prospect of a good shower and a fresh change of clothes was certainly appealing. Minho let his younger crewmates take the spot first, since he was sure both Hyunjin and Felix were dying to feel clean again.

As he waited for them to come out, slouching on one of the chairs in the room, Minho’s mind couldn’t help but wander. He’d never imagined he’d be here, in your ship, with any of his friends. He’d hoped that maybe one day, if things worked out, he could introduce you to them in a less… Contained fashion. But things never seemed to go as he expected whenever it came to whatever it was that was lingering between you two.

As soon as his friends were ready, Minho immediately rushed to the washroom. He took his time just washing off all the grime and gunk that had stuck to him during their almost never-ending travels the past handful of days, so truly, he was immensely grateful for that shower.

“Do you think she’ll help?” Felix asked from where he was laying on the top bunk as soon as Minho came out of the washroom.

“Honestly?” Minho rubbed a towel on his head, trying to get his hair as dry as possible. “I really have no idea”.

Hyunjin eyed him for a moment, leaning back on his hands from where he sat on the bottom bunk. “You sure? You seem to be awfully close with the captain of this ship”.

“I mean, I wouldn’t say awfully close”, Minho was great at lying and deception, but even to him that statement sounded incredibly disingenuous. “We… Know each other”.

“You know each other? Or you know each other?” Felix wiggled his eyebrows at Minho, just as the older man was sitting on the bottom bunk of the other bunk bed.

“If you ask me, I’d like to think she’d do it. But this is very different from any favour I’ve ever asked. More dangerous… So who knows”, Minho decided to completely brush off the curious eyes, and even more curious questions of his crewmates. Explaining his connection to you was something he’d rather not speak about, not now at least.

Felix looked like he was going to say something, something incredibly annoying. So Minho decided to abruptly stand up from his bed and intercept him. “Anyway, I’m going for a snack”.

“A snack?” Hyunjin asked once Minho walked past him. “Is that how we’re calling the cap–”

Before he could even attempt to finish his sentence, Minho took the towel he had draped over his shoulders and swiftly snapped it in Hyunjin’s direction, hitting him in the arm.

“Ow! Unnecessary!” Hyunjin rubbed his upper arm, pouting.

Minho simply offered him a ‘deserved’ before he walked out the door.

Minho did intend on finding something to snack on before bed, but he would lie if he said he wasn’t keeping his eyes open in case he spotted you. All he’d seen so far was the odd droid going about their business, and a couple of crew members who greeted him as usual.

“Who gave you permission to wander the corridors of my ship?”

Minho’s skeleton almost jumped out of skin at the sudden voice speaking to him. As soon as that initial shock passed he knew it was you, how could he not know when the sound of your voice was already ingrained in every crevice of his brain? So he decided to put up his best smug façade once again, ignoring the way his heart started to thump in his chest just at the sound of your voice.

“You did, captain. If my memory serves me right”.

You just scoffed in response, and started to walk towards him. Once you stood in front of him, you crossed your arms over your chest, and simply looked at him with a frown on your face.

For a moment, Minho didn’t say anything, just like you didn’t either. Your gaze was stern, guarded, just like it usually was whenever you were into your Captain Mode. After all, you spent most of your time around your crew, leading them, planning morally questionable arrangements to get work going, so it was no surprise to him that you looked at him like this.

However, after a few more moments of silence, the frown on your face turned to one of concern, and, honestly, Minho would lie if he said he didn’t like it when you worried about him. Because he knew that was what was going through your mind right now, worry.

“Is there anything I can say or do to get you to not do this?”

Minho gave you a smile, a genuine one, the ones he reserved mostly for you, and for moments like these. “No”.

You sighed. “For a pirate, you sure have a lot of morals, don’t you?”

“Being a contradiction is my favourite pastime, baby, you know that”, he registered the pet name falling from his lips a second too late. There was nothing he could do about it, it was like his brain would automatically shift into Smitten Mode whenever you two were on your own. If you were displeased by it, you didn’t show it or say anything about it. “I must say, I find it rather cute that you’re worrying about me that much”.

You scoffed at that, rolling your eyes. “Of course I worry about you. Unfortunately, you’ve got this horrible habit of risking your life, and since I’ve got the horrible habit of caring about you, it’s only natural that I worry”.

Had you no regard for his weak heart? How could you tell him you cared about him so nonchalantly? And while you were scolding him at that? He wanted to say something back, to bicker a bit more, but his body seemed to not agree with that logic, because it decided that the best reaction would be to rush blood to his ears and his chest, making him flush.

So, to counterattack, Minho simply did what he did best, to display his affection through his actions instead of his words. Cradling your face in his hands, he dragged his thumbs over your cheeks, and as he stared into your eyes he could see all your walls crumble, just like they always did in situations like these. ‘Cute’, was the last word to leave his mouth before he pressed his lips to yours.

Warmth spread quickly inside of him, the tiny whine that escaped your mouth as soon as your lips connected ignited in him all those feelings he usually tried to ignore, and the way you kissed him, with as much desperation as he felt, had blood rushing to his length immediately. Minho couldn’t help it, it was instinctual at this point, to get hard when you so much as touched him–even if that touch was only your lips on his, your hands grabbing his top, and your tongue inside his mouth.

Before he knew it, he had moved, walking forward and pressing you against the cold metal walls of your ship. His hands finally left your face to hold your waist instead, and you took it as an opportunity to loop your arms around his neck, burying one of your hands in his hair and tugging gently.

“Missed you”, Minho mumbled against your lips as he slotted one of his legs between your own, pressing his thigh right against your core. He wasn’t ashamed or bashful of the words that came out of his mouth, he was way past that point, he’d decided long ago that sometimes–especially after long periods of time apart–telling you how he felt was better than having to bottle it all up.

“Missed you, too”, you mumbled back, bringing one of your legs to wrap around his hip, pulling him close, kissing him deeply right after. You, clearly, had also decided to let go of those inhibitions as well.

Moving his hand from your waist to your bum, he groped the flesh over your bottoms, just as he detached himself from your mouth to sparsely press kisses on your neck, right in the areas he knew you were the most sensitive, making you whimper. “Can’t believe you made me fucking beg to get me out of the handcuffs”.

“Wouldn’t have been the first time”, you replied with a strained chuckle, digging your heel on the back of his thigh, enticing him. It was certainly working. “Probably won’t be the last, either”.

“You minx”, Minho chuckled, returning his lips to yours, pushing his tongue inside your mouth, taking a hold of your thigh and squeezing it.

Your heavy breathing, the warmth emanating from your body that immediately seeped into him, kindling the fire that burnt bright inside of him, that fire that didn’t seem to die regardless of how much time passed, all combined had Minho’s head spinning, had him growing impossibly hard. He needed you just as much as he needed oxygen in his lungs, and for a brief second he considered taking you right there, right in the middle of the corridor, uncaring of who could walk by and see you two.

As usual, though, you brought some sense into him, tugging hard on his hair to get him to detach his mouth from yours, mumbling a breathless ‘wanna head to my cabin?’ to which Minho simply replied an overly confident ‘thought you’d never ask’. So, as soon as he separated himself from your body you took his hand in yours, pulling him along the corridor, following the familiar path to your sleeping quarters.

There had always been this thing about your room that gave Minho an immense amount of peace. He wasn’t sure if it was the infuser you seemed to have on at all times, the one that filled your room with whichever relaxing essential oil you’d gotten your hands on during your travels, or if it was the clear signs that this was your living space–the seemingly permanent heap of clothes on the chair next to your bed, the journal you kept on your desk, the huge, old-fashioned map of the galaxy taped to the wall… It was all so incredibly you, it made him feel completely enveloped by your presence, it comforted him, really.

His favourite part of your room, though, was your bed. Incredibly comfortable, with just the right amount of firmness to it, saturated in the smell of you. And maybe later, Minho would be able to bury his face in your pillow, to try and etch your essence into his memory to get him through the hard days to come.

Right now, as your clothes and his landed on the already existing pile of clothes on your chair, he could hardly think about any of that. The feeling of your bare skin against his was more than enough to drown him in the moment. Every sigh, moan, whine that came out of your mouth whenever his lips touched your skin, the warmth of your body under him, it all let him ignore the world out of this room, out of this ship, let him focus on only you and him and the deep desire that was burning bright inside of him.

Between your hands roaming his back, the desperate way you clung to him, kissing him so hungrily he could barely breathe, Minho knew it was only a matter of time until you talked, or until he talked. He always wondered who would be the first one to ask that burning question that always hung in the air, most of the time it was him, but on odd occasions, you’d cave, and he was always ready to answer when you did.

“Have you been with other people since the last time we saw each other?”

There it was. You beat him to it this time, but, honestly, it really didn’t matter who asked it. To him, regardless of who broke the question first, it never made the entire thing any less absurd.

“Other people?” He propped himself on one hand to get a better view of you, dragging the other hand all the way from your shoulder to your centre, feeling your heated skin under his palm. His fingers teased your folds, spreading your essence all over, getting his fingers drenched. Gods, you were so wet for him already, and you’d barely even started.

Minho was impatient. He always was the first time he got you under him like this after a long time. He wanted you, he wanted to see you squirming and writhing under his touch, so he wasted no more time, easing his ring and middle finger into your dripping heat. A quiet moan flew past your lips as soon as he was buried to the knuckle, gripping the bed sheets near your head once he started slowly thrusting his fingers in and out, letting you get used to the intrusion.

“There’s been no one else. No one could ever remotely compare”, he emphasised his words with a hard nudge on your sweet spot, and a tug on your nipple, eliciting a moan from your lips. “There’s been flirting, I’ll give you that. Knowingly and unknowingly. More often than not to get ourselves out of tricky situations, you know how it is… But physically? Emotionally? I haven’t wanted anyone else since the first time I buried my head between your legs and got you to moan so sweetly for me, sweetheart”.

“Minho, my darling…” Your voice was airy, your face flushed, and quiet moans continued to spill from your lips as he picked up his rhythm, prepping you, moving his fingers against all those areas inside of you he seemed to have committed to memory throughout the years, the ones that would labour your breath and get you to moan a bit louder the longer he worked you up.

Minho dipped, finding your mouth and kissing you with force, with need. Because all this time, all he’d ever needed was you, he always did. Every day, even when he decided to ignore it.

You held onto his forearm, lightly digging your nails on his flesh, but he didn’t mind. If anything, it reminded him of the fact that he was here, with you, making you feel good, getting to enjoy you once more.

“What about you?” Minho said once he disconnected his mouth from yours for air, leaving a trail of kisses from your cheek to your neck.

He wanted to know. He wouldn’t judge you, you were free to do as you pleased, after all. That was how it worked between you two, although ‘worked’ could be considered a very loose term here. “Has anyone taken care of you these past handful of months?”

You shook your head, inhaling sharply when Minho continued his descent down your torso, attaching his mouth to your chest as his fingers kept going in and out of you, as he kept stimulating that area within your walls that he knew would get you to lose your train of thought.

Of course you hadn’t had sex with anyone else. You never did. You hadn’t in years, just like Minho hadn’t, either.

“I only–Oh!” Your words cut off, replaced by a breathy moan once Minho’s lips found one of your nipples and sucked it into his mouth to flick it with his tongue. He could feel you clenching hard around his fingers, and it almost made him dizzy with how hard it was getting him.

You swallowed, audibly. Your fingers tangled in Minho’s hair, tugging at it as he kept working you up. With his fingers, with his mouth, with his tongue… He loved to coax the most delicious sounds out of your lip, but he wanted to know. He needed to know. So he let go of your nipple, finding your burning gaze as soon as he looked at your face.

“I haven’t”, you whined, just as you sneaked a hand down your body, finding your clit to draw circles on it. “You are the only person I ever want. I’ve been cursed since the very first day I met you…”

The bead of precum that had been slowly growing on the tip of his cock fell onto the bed once your words registered in his brain. And Minho realised then that he, too, had been cursed since the very first day he met you. Cursed to be in love with you for the rest of his days, cursed to have to ignore that fact and live in this arrangement you two had conjured.

Leaning in, he captured your lips again, and the whimper that came out of your mouth as soon as he started to kiss you was enough for him to know just how true it all was.

“Go faster”, Minho mumbled against your lips between kisses, picking up the pace of his fingers. “C’mon, baby, I know you’re close. Rub your precious little clit faster. I need you to come on my fingers”.

“But…” You started to protest, but you sped up your motions anyway, squirming, whining. “It’s too soon”.

“Doesn’t matter”, Minho kept flicking his fingers against your sweet spot, just as you kept pleasuring yourself. “I’ll get you to come again later. We’ve got all night. Please, love…”

He returned his mouth to your nipple, suckling and licking the hardened bud. You were swearing a lot, writhing a lot, and as soon as the most desperate ‘close…’ fell from your lips, he trapped your nipple between his teeth, nibbling softly on the sensitive flesh. Your whole body shook with your release, and your moans mingled with his own groans of satisfaction. He revelled in the way your walls clamped around his fingers, in the squelching sounds produced by the movement of his fingers going in and out of your heat.

Minho let go of your nipple, already knowing it’d be too much for you after your high. Your hand on your clit stopped, but you kept your fingers there, applying pressure to prolong your release just as he kept slowly stimulating your walls.

“Fuck…” You finally moved your hand away from between your legs, and your body slumped on the bed, a clear signal that your high was over.

Pulling his fingers from your core, he slid them up to tease your sensitive clit for a second, chuckling at the jolt of your body with the contact. You looked so absolutely stunning like this. Flushed, panting, almost glowing.

Holding your gaze, he brought his fingers to his mouth, savouring your taste as he licked them clean. You swallowed, and Minho removed his fingers from his mouth, only to bring them to yours. “Open up, sweetheart”.

And you did. Letting him ease his fingers inside your mouth. Your lips wrapped around his digits oh, so perfectly, and your tongue lapped him up just as your eyes closed and your brows pulled together with a muffled moan. “Look at you… Always eager to give a good suck”.

You hummed, nodding.

“Most beautiful girl in the galaxy”, he couldn’t help but say as he looked at you eagerly sucking on his fingers, as he felt your tongue lick his digits.

When he removed his fingers from your mouth, he finally leaned in, pressing a brief kiss to your forehead, and moving to connect your mouths once again right after. He hugged you close, laying on top of you and covering you with as much of his body as he could, enjoying your warmth.

Minho finally let you take a breather, removing his mouth from yours to instead press kisses on your collarbone. You sighed, content, and the way you massaged his scalp as you held him close had heat spreading in his chest and face, probably making him blush like a fool.

“Fuck, I haven’t come that hard in months…” you mumbled, still slightly breathless. Minho chuckled, resting his weight on one elbow to look at your face, smiling softly at you.

“And we’re only just getting started, hm?” Minho kissed you briefly, pulling away from you when he felt your hand wrap around his length, stroking him leisurely. “Nuh-uh. None of that”, he tugged your hand away from his cock, eliciting a pout in response.

“You don’t want me to touch you?”

“Oh, baby…” Minho stretched his arm, blindly reaching for the knob of the drawer of your nightstand. “Want you to touch me so much”, he blindly rummaged through it, quickly finding the box of condoms he knew you kept there. “But I want you so fucking bad right now. Need to be inside you now or I’ll combust”.

You chuckled against his lips when he leaned in to press a quick peck on your lips. Pulling himself from you for a moment, he focused on the box in his hand, dumping the contents on the bed by your head and grabbing a single packet.

There were still as many as he had seen last time he was here with you.

Minho quickly tore the foil packet open and slid the condom on his length, giving himself a couple of tentative pumps to make sure it was all secure. Lining himself with your entrance, he teased you for a moment, lost in your lustful gaze and the way you bit your lip in anticipation, lost in the burning desire inside of him.

He couldn’t help but kiss you again, right as he started to ease his cock between your walls. You moaned, holding him tightly, kissing him desperately. Minho simply grunted, and he started to feel lightheaded just by your warmth around him. You were so intoxicating, and the feeling of you around him was so familiar, and even a bit comforting. As he slid centimetre after centimetre within your core, he was reminded of why he was here.

Because you were warm.

Because you were home.

Once he bottomed out, he propped himself up to look at your face. One of your hands came to rest on his cheek, and your thumb softly caressed his skin. Minho turned his head a bit, just enough to kiss your palm as he started to move. The feel of you around him, warm, tight, wet, made him close his eyes, made him quietly moan as he enjoyed the onslaught of sensations coursing through him.

Your legs wrapped around his waist, and your heel dug on his ass, trying to get him closer to you.

“Harder”, was all you mumbled, and it made him chuckle and open his eyes.

“I’m trying to be careful and you want me to go harder?” Minho kept his rhythm slow, almost teasing you.

“Who’s asking you to be careful?” You pressed your lips to his neck, once again making him flush–although at this point he wasn’t sure if the flush had diminished at all since he came into this room. “It’s been too long, darling. Six months, three weeks, and two days, to be exact. I missed you, and all I want is for you to fucking ruin me, Minho”.

“Shit, what am I gonna do with you…”

Pulling himself away from your embrace, he sat straighter, throwing one of your legs over his shoulder and starting a brutal pace right then and there. The moan of surprise that came out of your mouth as soon as he started moving fueled him, it almost made him lightheaded, making him completely forget where you two were, not caring if people heard you at all.

Minho wasn’t sure where to focus; on your tits bouncing with every single one of his thrusts, on the way your face scrunched up in bliss, on the absolutely divine feeling of you wrapped so snugly around him… All combined had sparks of pleasure racing up and down his spine, had his head spinning.

“Is this what you wanted?” With a tight grip on your thigh, keeping your leg flush to him, making sure to hit that area within your walls that would make you produce all those sounds he wanted to hear.

You nodded, swallowing as you brought a hand to his abdomen, sinking your nails into his flesh. The sting made him grunt, made him throw his head back and snap his hips just a tad faster.

“Look at me”, you mumbled, somehow both commanding and breathless, dragging your nails down his abdomen. As soon as Minho complied, your lascivious gaze almost made him burst. Eye contact was a thing that you always enjoyed, but he wasn’t too sure he’d be able to stand it for long, not at this moment at least. The way you looked at him always made him want to blow, especially so after months of no physical contact.

Minho just chuckled, finding your breast with his free hand to knead the flesh and pinch and roll your nipple between his fingers, eliciting a strained moan from you, making you bite your lip to keep your volume in check. “Are you trying to make me blow?”

As soon as the question came out of his mouth, he felt you clench around him, and he couldn’t help but groan at the sensation. He knew you were doing it on purpose, you always liked to work him up, get him to lose his sanity with the simplest things, and he always fell for it, because it was just so good. “What if I am?”

“You sound… Way too self-assured for someone who’s… Borderline gasping for air, you know?”

The laugh that had started to bubble over from you got caught in your throat, replaced by a string of swear words as Minho moved his hand from your breast to your mound and pressed his thumb on your clit. He might’ve been struggling, but he was determined to get you to struggle as well.

You swallowed, licking your lips as you clearly tried to pull yourself together enough to bicker with him. “But you like it, huh?”

“I fucking do, shit…” He just sped up his fingers, trying to get you to your peak as fast as possible.

Minho really couldn’t tell how much time passed of him pounding into you, rubbing your clit and tugging on your nipples, and he honestly didn’t care, either. This was always the best part, getting to lose himself in the moment, pleasuring you and getting pleasure of his own just by the feel of you there, under him, around him.

Every time you spoke, it brought him increasingly closer to the edge, your ‘just like that, baby’, and your frequent and almost incomprehensible ‘so fucking good’ simultaneously going to his head and his cock, fueling him even further. When you finally came, he couldn’t hold back the groans that came out of his mouth in tandem with your moans. The feeling of you clenching so tightly around him sent a shiver down his spine, and before he knew it, he was leaning into you, kissing you deeply, messily as he chased his own release.

You held him tightly, tiny squeals muffling against his lips as he kept his relentless pace. The sudden sting of your nails trailing down his back was the final push he needed. Minho saw white for a brief moment, groaning and grunting and maybe even moaning at the feel of your teeth sinking on his bottom lip, at the feel of your hands on his back, and your hips flush to his as he filled the condom inside of you–the only physical barrier between his body and yours.

All that pent up tension he’d been harbouring for months and months seemed to quickly evaporate from his muscles as he melted into you, into your kiss and your tight hug. His ears were ringing a bit, but he didn’t mind. All he could care about was the fact that you were right there, pressed completely against him.

After he left one more kiss on your lips, he pulled back just enough to look at you. You smiled at him, a genuine smile that had his heart skipping every other beat inside his ribcage. He returned the gesture, just as you brought your hand to push his now soaked fringe away from his forehead, pulling him down to press a kiss right there, making him chuckle in disbelief.

Once he pulled himself away from you completely, he carefully slid the condom off of his length, tying a knot to make sure nothing spilled out. Taking the discarded foil packed, he placed it on your nightstand and laid the condom on top of it to dispose of later.

As he laid back down, he simply looked at you. You had that look in your eyes, the one you hardly ever showed to the people around you… Vulnerability. Minho always saw it after you two had sex, and he knew that under that vulnerability there was something, many unsaid words that you wouldn’t dare say out loud to him.

“Marry me”, Minho broke the silence, and you huffed an incredulous chuckle.

“Aren’t you tired of asking me to marry you?”

“Are you tired of me asking you to marry me?”

You went silent for a moment, just looking into his eyes. Minho didn’t really need you to respond, he knew what the answer was.

“No, I’m not”, you replied simply, exactly what he knew you would say. “How would we even make a marriage work? We can’t even make a relationship work, Lee Minho”.

“We’ve never tried”.

It was true. Although the connection he shared with you was laps more than physical, you’d never entertained the possibility of a relationship. You hadn’t let him try, and he hadn’t been persistent–sure, he asked you to marry him every other encounter you had, but he never really pushed it. Because he knew it was a complex situation, him being an outlaw, a pirate, a rebel, and you being a smuggler, both probably with hefty bounties on your heads.

“Do you want to try?” you sounded genuinely incredulous, almost as if you had just realised that he was being genuine about it.

Minho propped his head on his elbow, just looking at you. And then it dawned on him. “You’ve never thought I was being serious when I asked you to marry me before, have you?”

You opened and closed your mouth a few times, but ultimately, you shook your head, and he couldn’t help but scoff, dropping his head back on the bed to stare at the ceiling.

“Well, I have been. Every time”.

“But why?” Your voice was barely a whisper, and when he turned to look at you his heart clenched just by seeing tears collect in your eyes. You didn’t let them fall, though.

“Because I love you”, Minho replied simply. “You’re clever, fun, one of the bravest people I’ve ever met, you’ve saved my life numerous times. Whenever I’m with you I feel at peace, and when I’m not, I worry about you, about your health, or I wonder if you’re out there getting yourself in trouble and I’m not there to help… I’ve just… Been in love with you for years, and I can’t keep on going pretending that I’m not. That I’m okay leaving your bed or an inn or you leaving my ship as if I don’t want you to stay”.

Minho could feel the lump in his throat, the way his voice shook slightly, but he didn’t care. He needed to let those thoughts out now, otherwise he wasn’t sure how long it would be until he got this boost of courage again. He honestly hadn’t even realised how much he’d been hurting with this until the words came out of his mouth. He’d spent years pretending this arrangement was fine. It clearly wasn’t. At least not anymore.

You went quiet for a while. A long while. Minho was honestly starting to second-guess ever opening his mouth, and it was just as he was about to stand up from that bed that you finally moved, wrapping one of your arms around his waist and burying your face in his chest.

“I hadn’t thought… I didn’t think…” You were rambling, your voice was muffling against his skin, it was hard to understand anything you were saying with the verbiage that was coming out of your mouth

“Hey… It’s okay”, Minho dragged his hands up and down your spine, hugging you even tighter against him, effectively stopping your ramble. “Breathe…”

You took a deep breath, draping your leg over his hips and pulling him even closer to you, which did ease his worries a bit–at least you weren’t kicking him out of your bed just yet.

“You smell nice…” You mumbled suddenly, rubbing your face on his chest. It immediately made his heart race and his chest flush. Minho wanted to say something, but honestly, the words were stuck in his throat, suddenly feeling bashful, as if he wasn’t naked on your bed after having sex with you.

When you finally pulled away from his chest, you looked him in the eyes, looking incredibly vulnerable. Minho simply brought a hand to your cheek, feeling your heated skin under his palm as his thumb moved back and forth.

“Minho… Every time you go, every time I leave, my heart just hurts so much. And I honestly don’t know how to deal with it. With my feelings, or how we could even make this work”.

“I’m sure we can figure something out… Maybe not today, maybe not even this week, but I’m sure we can”.

You closed your eyes then, heaving a sigh. “You know this isn’t gonna be easy, right?”

“I’m aware”, Minho’s lips quirked up a bit, suddenly amused by your choice of words, and he couldn’t help but bring even more clarity to it. “It hasn’t been easy until now, either, has it?” You gave him a smile as well, opening your eyes again. “I’m willing to take my chances. I… Really want to try”.

Your gaze flickered between his eyes for a bit, and then you were leaning in, pressing a tender, brief kiss on his lips.

“I want that, too”, you whispered, pecking his lips once again, murmuring the most tender ‘I love you’ as you hugged him even tighter, making Minho go impossibly redder, making his heart beat so fast he thought it would leap out of his chest. “If you don’t come back alive from your insane borderline suicide mission, I’ll personally go to the afterlife and kill you again”.

Minho chuckled, pecking your lips. “If you help me then you can make sure I don’t die at all, sweetheart”.

“Huh, so that’s why you’re here now professing your love to me? Trying to seduce me into helping you fulfil your pirate affairs?” Pushing him to lay on his back, you got on top of him, kissing him time and time again. His heart felt as if it was ready to burst, and for a brief moment, it was almost as if everything was okay. As if everything would be fine.

“Need I remind you you brought me into this room yourself?” With a hand on your bum and the other on the back of your neck, Minho simply kept kissing you, uncaring of anything happening outside of these walls.

“Don’t change the topic”.

“Is it working, though? Am I successfully seducing you?”

You scoffed at that, pressing one loud, final kiss on his lips before you shuffled around, sitting on him, straddling his hips, and placing your hands on his chest. “Of course I’m gonna fucking help you, Lee Minho. But not because you’ve got the best stroke game I’ve ever experienced, but because I stupidly believe in your cause”.

“Gods… Keep inflating my ego, please”, Minho couldn’t help but groan. His hands immediately found your hips, kneading the soft flesh there. “I just love it when you do”.

“I know you do”, you grinned, dragging one of your hands all over his flushed chest, up his neck, finally settling it on his cheek.

Minho caught your hand in his, keeping it in place as he turned to press a kiss to your palm. Your gaze shifted then, that playful glint you usually had when you teased him replaced by something else, something akin to love, maybe even hope. And in that moment, he seriously believed everything would be okay. That he’d be able to save his friends, free the slaves, and make it out alive. That he’d finally get to truly be by your side.

Tagging: @raspbinniecreme · @staaa96 · @oiminho · @tasteleeknow · @biribarabiribbaem · @dearalice · @alexis-reads-fics · @xcookiemonsteer · @knowleeknow · @chanlovesme · @liminaldaydream · @sstarryreads · @svngiem · @notastraykid · @princelingperfect · @aestheticsluut · @skzhomiehopper users in purple can’t be tagged. If you want to be removed (or if i tagged you incorrectly) from the list just PM me. If you want to be added fill in this form~

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#lee know smut #lee know fanfiction #lee know fic #lee know x reader #minho x reader #minho smut #minho fanfiction #stray kids smut #stray kids x reader #stray kids fanfiction #skz x reader #skz fanfic #skz fanfiction #stray kids fanfic #stray kids au #✨🌙✏

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asksythe · 10 months

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We know Nie Mingjue died of qi deviation, but i quite often saw the fandom also called what happened to Lan Qiren inside mingshi and Wei Wuxian in the lotus pier's ancestral shrine was qi deviation as well.

Can you explain what qi deviation actually is?

Thank you 🙏

It's "magical psychosis".... caused by improper cultivation practice or a detrimental state of mind.

Psychosis in a regular person is scary enough. But what about when someone who has superhuman strength and an unthinkable degree of control over their own body starts undergoing violent psychosis? What about when this person can warp reality itself (as is often the case in high xianxia genre)?

That's the simple way to explain a qi deviation (or as Nie Huaissang refers to them in the book 走火入魔, this term can be understood as "to be so consumed by an obsession that one succumbs to madness"). To understand Qi deviation, you have to understand cultivation, though. And that's a fair bit harder to describe in simple terms without being stymied by the cultural barrier.

A simple way to describe cultivation is that it's the process where people slowly turn themselves into biological magic (qi) reactors (like a Mako reactor from FF7 + the Zerg Hive from Starcraft). This process takes years, decades, or even centuries, depending on the specific story. This process requires very careful conditioning of both the body and mind over the years (i.e. building the reactor).

Just like with building a reactor, if you use shoddy materials or if the blueprints are lacking, or if the reactor starts taking in questionable supplies, or if the environments are stressful, problems can happen. And problems can be anything from a minor hiccup, a pause in operation, the reactor failing to expand further and stagnating, or the reactor going kaboom (i.e. the Nie's terminal problem).

I can see why people call what Wei Wuxian experienced in Lotus Pier's ancestral shrine a qi deviation. He was in a heightened state of emotion. They just came back from the second Siege, so he was already exhausted both physically and mentally. Then he had that fairly onesided altercation with Jiang Cheng. He exhibited the classic symptom of bleeding from facial orifices. It does line up, doesn't it?

In the case of Lan Qiren, uh... I guess? So this is the passage concerning Lan Qiren in the book (Wuji, the first volume of MDZS simplified Mandarin):

Lit (It's my translation. I never read any English translation, so it may be rough, but it should carry the meaning):

…Lan Qiren, who originally had lost consciousness, sat up straight. He was bleeding and smoking from the seven orifices on his face. His beard pointed up straight. His finger pointing at Wei Wuxian trembled. (He) hoarsely said: "Stop blowing! Scram! Scram right away! You can't--"

Before he could finish saying "can't" what, he spewed up blood and fell back down, once more deep in unconsciousness.

So it's the same physical symptom: bleeding (and smoking!) from the seven orifices. The prior stressor is the Lan failing the invoking ritual on Nie Mingjue's hand and were injured when the hand retaliated. So that's on par with Wei Wuxian after the second siege. It's not just Lan Qiren, but every other Lan in the chamber other than Lan Wangji and the Lan disciple who managed to escape. Lan Qiren also sat at one of the key positions in the array used to suppress the hand, so he would suffer a worse bounce-back attack.

And then Wei Wuxian entered the picture....

Are we to understand being in Wei Wuxian's presence and hearing his "atrocious" flute blowing to be such mental stress that it pushed Lan Qiren from 'wounded and unconscious' straight into 'qi deviation' territory (which is capital S serious for a cultivator) ??!! Is Lan Qiren that fragile, or does Wei Wuxian just have that much of an impact on him? 😦

I guess it is.... 😅 if we are meant to take it humorously.

In any case, there are actually resources in English if you want to dig deeper into this phenomenon/concept:

Although if you want to completely grasp qi deviation and such cultivation-related topics, I recommend you read mainstream xianxia books (as while they are amazing, MXTX's books are oft-criticized for being threadbare in regards to the cultivation aspect.) or play cultivation games (I play Overmortal. It's fairly easy and free to get into. It's pay to win though. If you only want to get a better idea on cultivation, it's a good option).

#ask sythe #mo dao zu shi #mdzs

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dykeyangel · 11 months

Note

personally as cute as I think all the shipping stuff is im a little more preoccupied with the glimpse at pre-fall crowley because of a couple things. first it's made explicitly clear that crowley heavily outranked aziraphale; to the extent that at their first meeting aziraphale is just a random angel he thoughtlessly summons to assist him with starcrafting. aziraphale is infatuated with angel crowley on sight but crowley barely registers him. secondly we don't actually get angel crowley's name- aziraphale introduced himself, and crowley never bothers to reply, either too focused on his work or just being completely dismissive of someone he views as a subordinate. either way. he never says it and aziraphale never learned it.

nooo i know right, that's such an interesting idea that i'm excited to see explored. crowley and aziraphale had met before eden but crowley must have been such a different person back then.

i'd love to see that different side of crowley when he was an angel, maybe he's a little pretentious and stuck-up about his work so he doesn't pay attention to others. of course he wouldn't really care about aziraphale that much, what initially drew them together in the garden was the fact that they are both obviously not a typical angel and demon. when they meet on the wall, crowley perks up at aziraphale telling him he gave his sword away, disobeyed god, and was questioning whether or not he had done the right thing, behavior obviously not exhibited by many angels. this is where crowley starts to develop feelings for him. aziraphale is different and crowley recognizes this when they meet for the first time as angel and demon, not only because he's fallen and knows that only fallen angels are supposed to have doubts but also because he used to be an angel himself and he knows first hand how angels are supposed to act and think and aziraphale is the complete opposite.

but where they actually first meet crowley wouldn't have much of a reason to pay attention to aziraphale. before crowley fell, he was just an angel, one who is only just about to find out how different he is not only to the other angels but also the other demons. a perspective he didn't have pre-fall.

i think that information does re-frame that first interaction after crowley had fallen. he's a new person with a new name and a new perspective on heaven and hell and really sees aziraphale for the first time under this new identity. who he was before, his rank, it didn't matter because he still fell and i truly believe that crowley feels there is something fundamentally wrong with him because of it. that's part of why hozier's take me to church feels so impactful in reference to crowley's character because, disregarding the romantic themes there, it also conveys that in the eyes of the church, if you can't conform, there is something fundamentally wrong with you. crowley feels like he was born sick and there is no forgiveness for that. he asked questions, he got it wrong, it wasn't on purpose, he didn't think any of it was serious, until suddenly he was free falling into oblivion. he seems to just enjoy pushing the boundaries until one day he pushed too far and fell out of line. i don't believe he was aware there would be actual permanent repercussions for that pre-fall, possibly because of his rank in the heaven hierarchy at the time. he didn't have the full picture, he was stuck in his work, in the hierarchy, and possibly didn't realize those rules applied to him.

and it's not that aziraphale was a perfect angel, he had doubts and questions, it just seems that his cognitive dissonance and genuine fear of repercussions (again repercussions that crowley may not have been aware of pre-fall) prevents him from fully committing to them. part of what probably worries him about crowley so early on is that he does see how crowley likes to test things, how curious he is and ultimately how similar they really are even if aziraphale is better at ignoring those urges then crowley. one of the main differences between them is that crowley got punished while aziraphale slid under the radar.

what i'm saying here is that crowley pre-fall seems like an entirely separate person from the crowley we know now, for better or for worse, because obviously falling was a traumatic experience that gave crowley a lot of issues with self-hatred and a distorted way of viewing himself but it also gave him a broader perspective that frames crowley's character and contributes to the growth of his relationship with aziraphale.

#i love starting one sentence and finding 10 more sentence before i reach the end of the 1st one #everytime i try to be concise i end up word vomiting whatever this is i barely even said anything that means smth i just love him so so muc #good omens spoilers #gos2 spoilers #crowley tag

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salora-rainriver · 7 months

Text

The Sympathy Problem, or "Why I'm Too Much of a Monsterfucker to Get Into Horror"

I don't know what the fuck this is, but I'm writing an essay about a problem that, as far as I know, only applies to me (but i might be totally wrong, who knows).

I think the title speaks for itself, but lemme just elaborate on what the fuck happens inside my brain, and how that fundamentally affects the way I handle horror media, to the point where I cannot truly appreciate it as horror on the same level as everyone else.

now lemme post a cute bat here so that there'll be an appropriate image to represent the whole essay when its link is shared on stuff like Discord:

trust me this was important. Okay, let's keep going.

Part 1: Why I'm a Monsterfucker

Let's start at age 4. I'm a dinosaur kid, like roughly 1/3rd of all autistic bitches. I'm a dinosaur kid to the point of owning multiple Land Before Time movies, and tie-in games, and I think I even had like two plushies at one point.

you know it's serious when this is your childhood.

I also had miscellaneous dinosaur plushies, and dinosaur toys, and a dinosaur book I frequently read front-to-back, and you get the idea.

dinosaur love evolves into dragon love, evolves into "funky monster creatures and animals of all kinds" love. I become a freakish savant of the wonderful world of the animal kingdom really quickly, to the point where my child-brain career prospects include "vet" as a pretty high finalist.

And then I find Starcraft, a game in a genre I otherwise wouldn't have given a shit about... but guess what? it has bug dinos.

it's all over for me.

But like, why? why do I like dinosaur so much?

... because I am dinosaur.

Look. LOOK. I can't give a good comprehensive list on the connections between my particular strand of autism and the state of Being A Dinosaur, because by this point, me being autistic and me being a dinosaur are so completely intertwined that it's often a chicken-egg situation. But the point is,

I make weird noises instead of using my words. I toe-walk. I don't like shoes. Sometimes I like to not wear clothes at all, even. I like to hide in small crevices when spooked. When I'm in a meltdown, I scare people.

Me dinosaur. Or at least, me some type of feral.

So is it any fucken surprise that when I go into an RPG, I latch onto the animal shapeshifter, the furry species, or the person who fights unarmed and/or uses a claw weapon?

Is it any fucking surprise that I am the opposite of spooked by snakes and spiders and other such creepy crawlies?

is it any fucking surprise that I have a fursona?????

is it any fucking surprise that I picked Pokemon Scarlet without the slightest HINT of remorse?!

Part 2: Wait, That's not the Intended Response

now let's talk about horror. Let's talk about the elements that make horror into horror: the fear part.

So what scares people? Well... people scare us. A serial killer, a mad scientist, a cult leader, a corrupt government entity, maybe? or maybe even society itself, its darker side full of atrocities and danger and problems where there's no easy solution and things can often seem hopeless?

... lmao who are we kidding that's not the vast majority of what scares people in horror. IT'S MONSTERS! Monsters scare people!

From Xenomorphs to Jean Jacket to The Babadook, it's monsters! Shit that ain't human and never could be human, and maybe it's pretending to be human, maybe it used to be human, but now it ain't, and it's gonna getcha!

And it just.

I'm a monsterfucker.

I'm not scared of ghosts. Sure he's fucked up and wailing in endless pain and lashing out at everything, but that just makes me feel sad. Like, poor ghost dude. We should help him.

I'm not scared of vampires or werewolves. They're people like anyone else, and sure, there's an inherent danger from being around them, but there's also an inherent danger from being close to an alligator, and I'm sure as fuck not scared of an alligator chilling on the side of the road. Cautious, maybe, but not scared.

I'm not scared of zombies. I mean, if they were real, I'd be a bit spooked, cause I have no combat expertise and would definitely be Fucked. But the same would apply if my hometown became a war zone. And... a war movie won't scare me. So a zombie movie wouldn't, either.

I'm not scared of xenomorphs. I mean I don't want to die, but that just means I should be entering alien environments with all proper safety procedures. TBH I'm more pissed at Weyland-Yutani than anything else.

I'm not scared of the Babadook. I'm worried for the well-being of the family as they try to come to terms with grief, and the monstrous shape that grief has taken. But it seems like they're coping in the end, so that's good.

I'm not scared of Jean Jacket - okay no. I'll be honest. It makes me uncomfortable. I will not be going into detail on the difference between this discomfort and actual fear. That is not a Salora Lore I want to disclose here. If you Know, you Know.

Part 3: Horror ceases to be a genre for me

So the monsters in horror movies don't scare me. And yet... I've watched some horror movies. And I've liked them. From this one list I've been using as quick reference to remind myself of What Horror Movies Exist out there, I've watched a few of these, or am at least familiar with them. You know, I've seen some classic horrors like "The Shining" because I went to film class in high school, and I've watched some installments of classic franchises like "Scream", or oddball picks like "Warm Bodies" and "The Relic", because I was having watch parties with friends.

Even beyond film, I read some Lovecraft once, and I've played plenty of spookier-themed videogames, like... well, like Silent Hill 2. Didn't finish that one. Bcs I'm bad at puzzles. But I loved the atmosphere.

And even when I'm not directly experiencing the horror media, I often look it up, read the synopsis, and watch video essays about it.

I know way too much about Hereditary, Midsommar, Get Out, the Slasher Genre in general, Creepypasta, Resident Evil, and mascot horror, for someone who's supposedly not able to properly engage with horror as a medium.

And I like some of that shit! But uh...

... not. as horror.

I just. Don't engage with them as horror films. I engage with them as whatever other genre you could slot them into. Hereditary is a tragedy. Get Out is political allegory. The Babadook is psychological allegory. Ghost stories are dark fantasy. Alien is sci fi. Slasher films go back and forth between mystery, action, and dark comedy. Warm Bodies is a rom-com. (like. that's not even a weird hot take. I don't know why this Rotten Tomatoes editorial decided it was horror, but I'm not gonna dispute their assertion, Bcs like. this entire essay is about why I'm not a good judge on that sort of thing) Silent Hill is a puzzle-adventure game with light action. Five Nights at Freddys is a time-management simulation game that would stress me the fuck out if I ever played it. Amnesia: the Dark Descent is a stealth game.

You get the idea.

So I'm just... in this really weird position. I'm a huge fan of spooky monsters, strange happenings, stories that engage seriously with the anxieties of mankind through allegory,

but I can't. truly enter the horror genre community as an insider.

Cause I ain't scared.

And honestly, it gets even worse when I start to imagine myself maybe, idk, *writing* a horror story of my own. Because... since I don't get scared by them, how am I supposed to know what scares others? Apologies to my fellow disabled folk for this clumsy analogy, but... it feels like trying to paint while visually impaired. I mean... you can do it. You can do it super well if you push yourself. but it's a strong disadvantage, and it might result in an artwork that could baffle the seeing people in your audience.

And maybe there could be merit in that. In writing my attempt at a horror story from the perspective of someone who doesn't find any of it scary. Maybe it's be intriguing, even surreal or dreamlike or alien to the audience who doesn't engage with this subject matter in the same way I do.

Or maybe it'd just end up similar to that one phase of the creepypasta fad where folks were going "wooo! hyperrealistic blood! isn't it spoopy n fuked up????" and it'll be garbage idfk

Bonus Round: ...Okay I Might've Lied a Bit

There is one movie that for me, truly could be considered "horror".

It genuinely terrified me as I watched it. It shook me to my core and opened my eyes to how other people feel when they see some shadowy monster figure with too many teeth reach out and eviscerate a poor bitch. I fucking get it now, to some extent. I don't know *how* the spiky boy elicits that response in you, but now I understand how it feels.

Because I watched FUCKING M3GAN

[SPOILER WARNING: I'm not saying the exact plot beats of the movie but I AM going into detail about its themes and the character development of the protagonist. It's massive spoilers but they're all vague spoilers.]

Me and my friends didn't pick this movie thinking we'd get spooked. this is the movie where the doll does some sort of modern dance routine while carrying a katana. It's goofy shit! We figured this was goofy ass modern trash and we were gonna laugh.

MOTHERFUCKERS I WASN'T LAUGHING????

Is the premise unrealistic and goofy? yeah. are the characters exaggerated and cartoonish? yes. are there like, numerous jokes throughout this film, that are portrayed as jokes? yes. was the dancing robot doll chase sequence goofy as shit? yes*

*ok but the context of That Scene made my brain gloss right the fuck over how goofy it was bcs I was too fucked up over everything else that already happened!

So like. What? How? How is goofy robot doll horrifying? Salora, you know how many stories about rogue AIs and killer robots there are? Why doesn't skynet scare you?

It's not about the doll. It's about the humans who created her.

This film is as subtle as a fucking anvil when it comes to it's social commentary. Like, "opening sequence is a kids commercial for Deranged Knockoff Furby" and "a therapist character explains attachment theory for a whole scene" levels of unsubtle. and honestly that makes the horror fucking worse. in this bizarre cartoonish parody of society, we're seeing a laid-bare and raw allegory for the real harm we are inadvertently delivering upon real fucking people. Weirdly enough, the exaggeration just makes it feel more real.

and what's "It"? Not the uncanny valley of a too-perfect silicon face, the gruesome deaths, the murderous AI,

No, "it" is the commodification of childhood, the degradation of familial ties and human connection through overwork, the way we try to patch these broken ties with product, the outsourcing of parenting to toys and machines, the disastrous consequences of allowing an orphan to vanish into wish fulfillment fantasy instead of being given space to work through her grief,

the exploitation of her grief in order to market the very thing that's spiraling her further into an unhealthy dependency, to do the exact same thing to children worldwide, all because of profit.

Look. Monsters, ghosts, demons, serial killers, zombies, predatory animals, rogue AI, they're not scary to me, because I know them. and if I don't know them, I want to know them. The solution to the threats things like that pose are simple. Keep your distance from the crocodile. Punch the shark's sensitive nose to make it back off. Invest in security measures so your house doesn't get broken into. Don't anger the ghost. Exorcise the demon. Shoot the zombie's head.

How do you, an overworked engineer for a toy company, find the time to connect with your orphaned niece on a human level?

How do you take away said niece's beloved doll when you slowly come to realize that her attachment to it has become unhealthy?

What the fuck are you supposed to even do when you realize that you might have created a murderous monster and marketed it to hundreds of kids, and your overzealous boss is in your ear pressuring you to get it ready for launch?

WHAT A FUCKING NIGHTMARE.

Conclusion: But fr am I like the Only One

so uh. yeah.

My fear response is mucked around by an unusually high level of sympathy for the monsters that tend to populate horror media. I'm Too Kinky To be Tortured, and it puts me in an awkward relationship with the horror genre, where the only things that can well and truly terrify me are unhealthy relationships and capitalism, and even then, only if those topics are presented in just the right way to make me feel like this shit is Real.

And like you know how there's a whole language of like, scares and signifiers and shit that's been well-researched, all these tiny tips and tricks to exploit primal fears in humans? (I dont know if language is the right word but im just gonna call it that until further notice)

well, a lot of that Language of Horror doesn't quite work on me, because it's all related to monsters and physical threats, and I love the monsters too much,

and I imagine there is a whole different Language out there of the shit that can be exploited to scare me,

but fuck if i know what it is. I only got a single movie as my frame of reference. How the fuck would you even find a movie that handles social anxiety like that?

Like idk, do y'all think Carrie would spook me? Carrie's about societal ills, right?

#horror #horror movies #the following tag will spoil the plot twist of the essay oops #m3gan

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dndhistory · 7 months

Text

215. Jeff Grubb - M2: Maze of the Riddling Minotaur (1983)

The second of the solo adventure modules for AD&D and also an occasion to welcome Jeff Grubb, who would be instrumental in the creation of lore for D&D, both for the Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms settings, as well as writing novels for those settings and later on Blizzard's Warcraft and Starcraft universes, among many other stellar contributions to nerddom. He had already been working for TSR for about a year, in the background, contributing to upcoming volumes such as Monster Manual II, which would come out soon.

Again, as in M1, these solo modules have kind of aged badly. This is no fault of the writer or the story but just because mechanically, the reliance on invisible ink and so forth didn't survive well to our days. Today if you want a copy of this it's either blank, just has an unreadable yellow smudge over the boxes where once the invisible ink could be seen, is written out (which loses the effect of surprise), or if it is a digital copy it's pretty much useless.

However, there is still fun to be had here. Grubb wrote out a pretty compelling introduction, very much based on the classical myth of the minotaur, and the idea is that the player has to traverse a labyrinth full of quizzing Minotaur statues who block the path. The player moves on by getting the answers righ, answers which are hidden in the invisible ink bits. The game also innovates by having a diceless combat system, with a kind of scratch card system of combat, where you reveal the ink to see combat results. Fun, but again, 40 years later, mechanically impracticable. Still, great writing by Grubb and great interior illustrations by another newbie, who we will see again often: the great, unfortunately late, Keith Parkinson.

#adnd #dnd #ttrpg #ad&d #d&d #dnd art #dungeons and dragons #dungeons & dragons #jeff grubb

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wildissylupus · 8 months

Note

Hi its me again! I'm back :3 Lets talk ASAP.......about D.va headcanons and fanmade interactions!!

hehehe-

Fan interaction time!!

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

Cassidy: You doin' alright? I know it's not easy to be so far from home, from your friends. D.Va: I'm fine! Me and Dae-hyun message each other after every mission, and Yuna always pesters me to get on Starcraft when ever she's free. Cassidy: Huh, good to know your still in contact with them, let me know if you need anything though.

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

D.Va: Listen, I understand why the others are banned from the kitchen but why am I banned? Soldier 76: Because you set the microwave on fire. D.Va: It was one time- Soldier 76: Once was enough!

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D.Va: What was Blackwatch like? Cole won't tell me anything about it. Genji: He has his reasons, we went through a lot during that time. There where a lot of good times but... Cole lost a lot at the end of it. D.Va: Oh... well... I bet he's glad he had a friend like you to help him though it. Genji: (somber laugh) I wish I could say I was there but I left before the worst was yet to come. Still now we can be here for him when he needs.

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(When the New Bloods are on the same team) Baptiste: Looks like the team is all together again! Can't wait to fight along side you all again. Zarya: Yes let's hope it goes as well as last time! Pharah: Well that depends, we are fully under Cassidy's command now, most of his missions did go sideways. Cassidy: Hey! I'll have you know that most of those botched missions where not my fault. D.Va: Then whose fault was it? Cassidy: I would tell you but I'd probably end up dead by the end of the week if I did.

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

Reaper: I didn't sign up for babysitting. D.Va: And I didn't sign up to deal with cranky old man with a revenge complex, yet here we are!

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

Cassidy: Your shooting is pretty good in that Mech but how is it outside? D.Va: It's pretty average, I don't really fight without Tokki though, so it could probably some work. Cassidy: If you want I could give some pointers? I could help with your hand-to-hand too.

#overwatch #overwatch 2 #overwatch lore #overwatch headcanons #analysis #overwatch dva #dva ow #dva overwatch #dva #hana song

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stormblessed95 · 10 months

Note

Hi storm,

Do you know about the time when Jimin was eating one meal a day for 10 days and how he wouldn’t stop and everyone (the members) were really worried about him so to get him to stop jungkook followed the same diet as him and then jimin became worried about him and ended his diet? I think Jin was the one who mentioned it, I always thought this was what the ‘Manila fight’ was about but I’m not sure. Do you have sources for it please? I’m not sure if it’s even real😭😭 thanks tho

Hi! It's from a Korean Magazine interview from 2014. 141006 Hankyung Interview in full here:

Here is the part of the interview that it gets mentioned. I'm just going to copy/paste the trans here:

Q. By the way, everyone has lost a lot of weight, including Jimin sitting in front.

Jimin: I wanted to show a manly image.

Rap Monster: (Jimin) Self-management is the most thorough.

Jin: (Jiminie) eats one meal a day!

Jimin: I used to be like that, but now I've adjusted it well and I'm doing it a little bit.

Jin: Since Jimin only eats one meal a day, he worries that doing so will damage his body, so he says that he doesn't have to worry about it because he controls himself and eats on his own. After that, Jungkook followed suit and started eating one meal a day. This time, Jiminie told Jungkook that if you go on a diet like that, your body will hurt. haha.

Q. One meal a day!

Jungkook: I'm at lunch.

Jimin: I ate between breakfast and lunch.

Jin: 10 months before debut, I ate only two chicken breasts a day and endured. I'll never starve after doing that. So I tried to stop my younger siblings, but they didn't listen. I guess you have to experience it to know.

V: Before debuting, all the members had a diet. We made tuna into a sandwich after draining all the oil and ate it, (Rap Monster: It really didn't taste good...) Me and Rapmon hyung thought how to get out of here and eat something else.

Rap Monster: How can I go to the convenience store without being caught! ha ha ha. However, Jimin did not cheat. When Jimin was caught on camera, he was more concerned about his appearing chubby than anything else. Doesn't he have different priorities for each person? V and I also adjust, but these friends are so thorough that we're like, 'Ah... I'm still saying let's eat and live, but let's eat some!' It's a bit like this. In fact, even if we just do the choreography, the amount of exercise is no joke, so there are some things that basically don't gain weight even if you eat a little.

Q. Jimin seems to be harsh on himself.

Rap Monster: He is strict with himself.

Jimin: Jungkook rather than me... haha.

Rap Monster: Jungkook is an alien!

Jimin: I adjust to a certain extent, but Jungkook said, 'Ah, should I lose weight today?' If so, you won't eat a single meal.

Rapmonster :Even then, if the other hyungs eat, I'll eat too, and I'll just eat again. Have you tried StarCraft? (Q. No. I only know what races there are.) If you look there, there is something that Marin uses a stimpak, and Jungkook is exactly that. If you use a stimpak, your HP (Hit Point, Stamina) is all reduced, so you die with just one hit, but while using it, you become very strong and fast. When Jungkook uses it, “(as if it explodes) Wow!” Then the next day, “(as if tired) Ah… .” It goes like this. (Jimin: Look at the metaphor. Really funny. Haha.) When Jungkook is wearing a steam pack, no one can touch him. scary.

Hope that helps!! (Also the "Manila fight" theories were from 2016, so a few years later!)

#jikook #kookmin #141006 jikook #jikook in 2014 #jikook diets #jikook interviews

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tropes-and-tales · 2 years

Text

Black Sun Squadron

Characters: Poe Dameron and F!Reader (plus-sized)

WC: 10,617

Other Pieces: This is a one-off piece.

CW: Angst (oblique jokes about weight); smut (PiV, unprotected). 18+ only.

AN: Requested by the lovely and patient @winchestershiresauce 🌻

Everyone wants to be a pilot.

In the social hierarchy of the Resistance, pilots rank the highest. There’s a certain swagger about them, a magnetism that draws others into their orbit. Perhaps it’s the fascination with being so close to death. Each mission may be the last: if a pilot dies in battle, they become immortalized as a hero. If they return from battle victorious, they are toasted and feted as heroes.

Win-win, in Poe Dameron’s book. Die a hero or live as a hero, and it’s the most he can hope for in such desperate times. Maybe it’s a selfish hope, but he grants himself this small bit of innocent greediness. He’s given up entire years of his life to the Resistance, and proudly so, but if he had kept his head down and accepted the First Order’s rule, he could perhaps further along in his life. Have more to his name beyond a few personal belongings, a starcraft that can generously be described as “vintage,” and a custom BB-8 unit.

Everyone wants to be a pilot, but the Resistance lives on the support roles. The less glamorous, less magnetic roles that are the beating heart of the scrappy revolution. The mechanics and engineers and intelligence officers. The people who cobble together weapons and supplies. The people who operate lonely, hidden outposts. The spies and diplomats. The people who manage to keep them fed and clothed and housed, sometimes at a moment’s notice.

More practically, though, not everyone can be a pilot because there just aren’t enough starfighters to go around. The Resistance lives on hope and very little credits, and they’d happily put more pilots in the skies….if they just had more ships.

Which is the point that General Leia Organa tries to impress upon you, while Poe stands nearby and smirks. You had been in intelligence, a ghost twisting in the wind for the Resistance for as long as there’s been a Resistance. You’ve been gathering intel, spreading misinformation about the First Order. Quietly arming citizens. Teaching civil disobedience. Poe had never met you until now, but he knew your code name—Black Sun—and had heard the whispered stories, the awe-laced voices as they told some tall tale about your exploits across the galaxy.

Your spy-cell had been ratted out, though. Half of your team had been captured or killed, and only half of you escaped. Those of you that remained had made your way carefully back to D’Qar, one by one. You were the last to return: you had carefully tracked your remaining team members’ progress home, covered their tracks, threw First Order operatives off of their scent.

When you return to D’Qar, you promptly go to Leia and demand to be reassigned as a pilot.

“We just don’t have enough ships,” Leia tells you gently. “I’d love to put more up there, but we don’t—”

“I’m one of the best,” you interrupt, and Poe frowns at you. You catch his expression and narrow your eyes at him before turning back to Leia.

“I grew up in the Outer Rim,” you continue. “I ran the supply routes for my father’s company. I’ve been dodging pirates and scrappers since I was thirteen—”

“Pirates and scrappers?” Poe scoffs and crosses his arms. “Not the same thing as a First Order fighter, sweetheart.”

You turn and glare at him this time. You cross your arms, mirroring his own stance.

“They aren’t the same,” you agree. “Pirates and scrappers, once they engage you, fight to the death. They want their payday. They are greedy beyond all else. First Order, though? Half of their army is conscripts or flat-out slaves.”

“So?”

“So I’ve been out in the field. Do you know how many of their soldiers just abandon their posts? The average First Order soldier—I’m talking the grunts, here—just want to escape with their lives. They aren’t going to fight the way a pirate or a scrapper does.”

Poe rolls his eyes again. How many times has he heard some variation of this story? Some bright, eager thing from a nowhere planet joins them, is convinced that they are the best pilot in the galaxy because they used to shoot around their planet’s canyons in a beat-to-shit tin can. Pirates in the Outer Rim? It wasn’t the same thing at all.

Leia clears her throat. “Either way, we just don’t have the ships available,” she says. She offers you a sympathetic smile. “But if you don’t want to return to your intelligence assignment, we can find something here for you.”

You gaze back at her, and your glare softens. “What if I found a ship?”

Another sympathetic smile, while Poe scoffs.

“If you found a ship, then yes, you could be a pilot. We could find a squadron to add you to,” Leia tells you.

“Is that true? If I found a ship, I could fly it?”

Leia’s smile widens, and it becomes indulgent. Like a mother humoring her fanciful child. As if spare starfighters are just lying around for the asking.

“If you can find a ship, then yes. You could be a pilot.”

You uncross your arms with a grin that lights up your entire face, and Poe’s glare loses some of its heat. He can guess the love you have for flying: he has the same love, bordering on madness.

“Do I have your word?” you ask Leia, and the General nods. You stick your hand out and shake on it, and you turn on your heel and leave.

Poe Dameron doesn’t see you again for a month.

-----

It’s serendipity that Poe is in the flight control room when a TIE fighter appears out of hyperdrive in the airspace above D’Qar. He’s already halfway out of the room, his hackles up and his adrenaline pumping, when a voice comes through the comms.

Your voice.

“Permission to land,” you say. You give your name, rank, and the latest access codes. It makes the flight controllers and security team nervous, though, seeing a First Order-type ship in their airspace. So they make you wait until they can get Leia, and it’s finally decided that yes, you can land, but they’ll have cannons trained on you just to be safe. Just in case it’s a trap.

It’s not a trap. Poe and Leia make it to the hangar in time to see you land. Poe realizes once he’s close enough that it’s not just any TIE fighter. It looks sleeker. It looks like it has state-of-the-art weaponry and technology.

It’s a prototype, he realizes.

“How’d you get this?” he asks, openly bewildered. He glances at you, but his eyes keep getting pulled back to the ship. It looks fast. Deadly. It looks like a dark blade that could cut through the sky.

“I’d say I stole it, but stealing has such negative connotations,” you tell him with a grin. “So let’s just say I liberated it from the Sienar-Jaemus facility.”

“How?” He’s flabbergasted. SJFS builds state-of-the-art ships and has state-of-the-art security out of necessity. You shouldn’t have even been able to get into their airspace, let alone into their facility, let alone into whatever secured hangar where they kept their prototype tech.

If nothing else, you shouldn’t have been able to escape with it.

You shrug, a modest little lift of your shoulders.

“Been in the field a long time,” you simply say. “Picked up stuff.”

Picked up stuff. Stuff being the ability to steal a starfighter more powerful than anything in their fleet. Poe is so impressed that he forgets to question your supposed piloting abilities for a moment.

He’s so impressed that when he can finally tear his eyes away from the TIE fighter to really look at you, it’s the moment it starts for him. It’s like a virus, though: Poe doesn’t realize it at the moment, doesn’t feel anything discernably different beyond his open admiration for your thieving—liberating—skills. There’s no sped-up heart rate, no fluttery feeling in his stomach, but he’s infected all the same.

Like with many illnesses, by the time he actually starts to feel symptoms, he’s already incurably in love with you.

-----

When does Poe start to actually feel his burgeoning love?

Mere days later: that prototype TIE fighter is a lot of ship, and there’s an entire squadron of pilots clamoring for Leia to override her handshake agreement with you. Everyone wants that damned ship, to the point where you sleep in it a few nights to keep its admirers and their grasping hands away from it.

Leia splits the difference, and Poe thought you might be outraged, but you only stand with your arms crossed and a small smile on your face.

“It is the most advanced ship we have,” Leia says apologetically. “And we don’t know your abilities as a pilot.”

“You’re gonna make me try out for it?”

Leia nods. “We have a training protocol. You’ll take the TIE fighter up with one of our other established pilots, and if you pass, the ship is yours.”

Your smile twists a little at one corner, somewhere between teasing and smirking. “I stole the ship outright. Maybe I’ll just take it and go off on my own.”

Leia matches your smile with her own, equally mischievous. “You know, the Yellow Squadron recently lost its leader. How about if you pass the training protocol, you not only get to keep the ship, but you get your own squadron too?”

-----

Of course Poe is your established pilot. Leia trusts him, and moreover, she likes him. Likes his spirit, likes his passion. She probably sees a lot of herself in him, he realizes.

The other pilots try to convince him to rig the test. There’s offers of credits, of good spotchka, of never having to pay for another drink as long as he lives.

Poe wouldn’t dream of it, though. That first symptom of love: the little half-smirk, half-teasing smile when you and Leia negotiated. It had made Poe smile too, involuntary. Made him watch you a little closer, pay closer attention to your expressions and body language.

Like now, when the two of you climb into the TIE fighter—you at the controls, him behind in the gunner’s turret which isn’t a turret, since the ship is sleek and streamlined. The gunner’s seat is just a console where every button lights up, where no button sticks from being old, where every screen is crisp, and where a ridiculous amount of firepower is at his fingertips.

He tugs his helmet on, and he sees you do the same. His is beat-up, scored and dirty. Yours is new, and he studies the stylized sigil on the side when you turn to do a systems check. It’s a black sun. Your code name from your spying days.

“I like your helmet,” he says.

“Thanks.” You check the screen in front of you, then half turn to look back at him. “It’s a black sun.”

“I can see that.”

You turn more in your seat and make eye contact with him, and the smile on your face is that same teasing, smirking one from before.

“Think I’ll name my squadron Black Sun too,” you tell him. “Something with a little more élan than just a color.”

He scoffs. “I’m the leader of the Black Squadron.”

“Exactly, Dameron.”

You turn around and miss his answering smile. He likes the way you say his name, with just a little lilt of challenge to it.

-----

Of course you pass the testing protocols. The TIE fighter is a lot of ship, but you navigate it like it’s some dinky speed-racer. You are confident with the controls, not oversteering, not letting the ship get away from you. You’re assured but not cocky, assertive but not domineering. The ships rolls and dips and drifts through the canyons of D’Qar’s fourth moon, and you hit every target with ease.

The last stage is to take the ship in open space, to travel via hyperspace from D’Qar to a safe second location. The ship’s computers are appallingly fast, and one second you and Poe are in the airspace above D’Qar, and in the next, you’re in another system altogether.

There’s a blue star nearby, and you throttle the power way down. You let the ship drift, and Poe wonders for a moment if you’ve forgotten that he’s there. It happens to him all the time, the way the world narrows down to just him and his ship, to just being in the vastness of space.

You haven’t forgotten him. After a moment of quiet, the two of you watching the cold fire of the blue star, you ask, “do you ever just get furious that we live with such wonders and have to waste our time fighting against the First Order?”

Your voice is quiet; Poe can’t hear an ounce of humor in it. He thinks he might hear a hint of fury, actually, and he looks at the back of your head. He sees the way your shoulders draw up a little, tensing.

“You asking if I have things I’d rather be doing than fighting a war?”

“I suppose.”

He waits a beat before answering. “Maybe.”

It’s not a real answer, but it’s honest: the Resistance gives him a purpose, gives him pride after the shame of his spice-running days. And sure, he had dreamt of fighting against oppression when he was a boy, especially since both of his parents had been in the Rebellion.

But now that he’s been in it for years, there’s a part of him that is tired. A part that yearns for a gentler life of adventure. A life with space for more of the good things, instead of just grasping at the crumbs when he can.

“I’d travel,” you tell him decisively, that bit of fury still in your voice. “I’d travel and explore all the unmapped regions of the galaxy. The space beyond the Outer Rim and even further.”

He doesn’t have a good reply for that, and it doesn’t seem like you were expecting one. The two of you are silent for another moment, then you ask him—your voice steady now—if there’s anything else he’d like for you to do to prove your mettle as a pilot.

-----

By all accounts, you and Poe should have a rivalry: he’s the Resistance’s poster boy for pilots, the cocky Fly Boy with the nervy pluck to be general one day. You’re new to the scene, just as nervy to steal a ship and steal a squadron and rename it as your own. You should be rivals, and while there is a playful competition between you, you and Poe become fast friends.

If he’s the Fly Boy, then you’re the Fly Girl, and when there’s downtime and you’re at the small cantina, others flock to where the two of you hold court and compare your exploits.

By now, he’s fully in love. He loves you; he’s in love with you. All the signs are there now. His stomach twists and flutters when he sees you or hears your voice. His eyes are pulled to you like magnets. You invade his thoughts, especially at night when he’s alone in his tiny quarters.

When he has to send BB-8 away or power the little droid down so Poe can relieve the tension on his own, can shut his eyes and pretend it’s you touching him, you whispering in his ear, telling him everything he wants to hear. Telling him that you’ve wanted him just as long as he’s wanted you, which is to say: almost as long as you’ve known each other.

It’s inconvenient: it’s hard to keep the friendly competition from turning flirty. It’s hard not to be jealous when others flirt with you, and it’s even harder when you flirt back.

Poe Dameron may be cocky outwardly, but there’s a deep channel of insecurity in him. His mother had been a Rebel pilot, and his father had been a member of the Pathfinders. When he was young, he hadn’t seen much of them and had lived with his grandfather. His parents, especially his mother, held an outsized, almost legendary status.

Poe often holds himself against their legacy and finds himself lacking—especially after his spice-running days. He’s the son of Shara Bey and Kes Dameron. That’s as close to royalty that a person can get without actually being royalty. Poe wonders all the time if he’s honoring his birthright.

You don’t seem to have that insecurity. And why not? You spent years running a spy cell that arguably kept the Resistance going. Now you’re commanding your own squadron. You’re impressive, Poe knows. You’re a more natural successor to his parents than him.

Poe’s never struggled so much with love before, though maybe that’s the difference between you and everyone that came before you. It was always an easy thing to charm his way into someone’s bed because it was always a shallow encounter, two starships passing in the night. With you, Poe isn’t quite sure he deserves you.

-----

You have your ghosts, though, just as he does.

Sometimes the two of you share a flask of blue mappa and sit in a hidden-away corner of the hangar and just talk. He tells you a little about his spice running days, his heart in his throat the first time he admits it. He worries that you’ll judge him, but if you do, you don’t say so. You just nod, take another sip from the flask, and pass it back to him.

Your own shadowy history comes out in measured bursts. The invasion of your home planet by the First Order. They had targeted your father’s company—highly-sought microchips that ran ships and weapons alike—and when your father resisted, they killed him.

They killed most of his employees, for good measure. Killed your entire family. Obliterated most of the population, in fact, because your home world was sparsely populated aside from the families that worked for your father.

You had only been spared because you’d been off-world on a delivery run at the time. You had returned to a graveyard: everyone you ever knew or loved dead. You barely escaped with your own life, and you spent the next year in a berserker’s fury, killing anyone and everyone even tangentially related to the First Order.

Once your fury was under control, you joined up with the Resistance.

It’s one night in the hangar that you ask him, your voice uncharacteristically uncertain, “do you think I’ll ever be able to wash all of the blood off of my hands?”

Poe doesn’t know. Can he be clean of the blood he’s spilled either? War is a messy, ugly business, and everyone on both sides is dirtied by it.

He doesn’t answer you. He only puts an arm around you, lays a hand on the side of your head until you sigh and rest it against shoulder.

-----

The problem of being in love with you—the Resistance’s Fly Girl, the bold Black Sun Squadron leader in her dark blade of a ship—is that Poe never knows if each time he tells you good-bye will be the last time he sees you.

Your squadron is good. You’re a great leader: you handle your team like you handle your ship—assertively but not domineering them. You know when they need discipline and when they need to let off steam, and Poe knows they love you.

But the Black Sun Squadron is good (maybe better than his own Black Squadron, though Poe will never, ever admit it out loud), so Leia uses you for the riskiest missions. The most critical ones. Sometimes Poe goes entire long stretches without seeing you—the two of you separated by your disparate orders from the General—and he always worries that he’ll return to D’Qar and find you gone forever.

There’s a long period where he doesn’t see you, and he’s sick to his stomach the whole time. You are in a distant star system, impersonating a First Order officer. It’s your spy work again, made a shade easier with your TIE fighter, and Leia cajoled you into it. Poe frets the whole time, agonizes during his long sleepless nights to BB-8, who chirps and beeps at him in sympathy.

When you finally return, you’re hollow-eyed and ragged. You look worn to the bone and exhausted, and there’s a deep cut hastily bandaged on the underside of your jaw.

When you catch sight of him, he sees the tears that spring to your eyes. When he takes the few quick strides to get to you, when he pulls you into a tight hug, you hug him back so hard that it steals his breath away.

-----

It isn’t all chaos and tragedy, though.

You and Poe are friends, and you’re similar in a lot of ways.

One way you’re similar? Poe can be flirty, knows full well that he’s appealing to some, and he plays up the charm to his full advantage. Bats his big brown eyes, leans in close, calls people “sweetheart” to wheedle things to his own benefit.

You’re flirty too. You’re not as aggressive about it as he is; like your flying, you’re subtler. You finesse it, you play it delicately. You draw people in gradually, turn on your charm by slow degrees until the person is caught in the tractor beam of your personality.

And since you and Poe are friends….well, you flirt with each other.

To you, Poe guesses it’s just you being you: making him feel like he’s the only person in the room, drawing him in with your charm and wit and good humor. You call him Fly Boy with a faint lilt of sarcasm that is defanged by the dazzling smile you pair it with.

Once, he brings his ship back badly damaged after a fire-fight in the Outer Rim. That night, the two of you go to the cantina, and you—half-tipsy on spotchka—recall the time Poe jokingly said that he makes love like he flies. The joke, all those months ago, had been something he drunkenly said, trying to flirt with you. Something about having good hands and understanding what the ship was telling him. You had only rolled your eyes at the time, but you had clearly filed it away in your memory.

“Remember when you said that?” you whisper to him now, a devilish look in your eyes and that half-smirk curving your lips.

He nods, and you nod back, then you turn and lift your half-empty glass to the rest of the table in a toast. You give a shrill whistle until they are silent and watching you, and you toast Poe.

“To Poe Dameron, the Resistance’s poster Fly Boy: may he fuck better than he flies, and may the Resistance win this war before he runs out of ships and lovers.”

The table erupts in roaring laughter, and whistles, and applause, and everyone throws their drinks back after shouting “hear, hear!”

Poe can only grin back at you. He shakes his head ruefully.

“You’re a menace, Fly Girl,” he says.

-----

It’s moments like that where Poe mulls them over late at night in his quarters. He argues with BB-8, who takes an extremely optimistic view of you. The little droid loves you as much as a droid can love, and Poe finds himself wondering if you’re just being flirty with him or if it’s more.

Because while it’s true that you’re friendly and flirty with a lot of people, you certainly seem to be more with him. And Poe knows that he’s the only one you have your deep talks with, your purgative discussions where you bleed out some of the darkness of your past.

That has to mean something. You let him see the darkest parts of yourself, and you accept the darkest parts of him. That’s deeper than flirting at the cantina. That’s real foundational stuff, and Poe is certain you don’t do that with anyone but him.

-----

Maybe Poe would have time to finesse the situation, to draw you out carefully. To test the waters. He has an idea to increase the flirting, to dial it up and see how you react. The two of you are casually touchy, but he could try to deepen those moments.

If he took your hand during one of your deep discussions, would you pull away?

If he brushed a kiss to your cheek at the cantina, would you turn away?

He wants to try. He’s desperate to try. He hasn’t had someone in his bed since he met you, and he yearns for you. It’s the sweetest torture, those casual touches the two of you share. When he sits beside you, it’s like his skin is aflame, so close to your own. When he goes back to his own lonely bed, it’s like he carries the echo of that near-touch with him, burning him, branding his skin as he tosses and turns and thinks of you.

-----

He has the vague plan to try and draw you out, but fate intervenes.

Fate, in this case, is a pair of pilots from the Jade Squadron. They are middling pilots, nothing special but solid as far as support goes. Poe can’t even remember their names, just thinks of them as “Tall” and “Short.”

You and Poe are in your hidden-away corner of the hangar, just chatting amicably about happier childhood memories. Him playing on Dameron ranch with his grandfather. You doing little odd jobs in your mother’s workshop, building droids together.

The hidden-away corner is hidden, but not soundproof. The Jade squadron pilots, Tall and Short, walk nearby and pause near where your TIE fighter is parked against blocks.

“Look at this ship,” Tall says, and his voice carries across to where you and Poe sit. The two of you go quiet, your words trailing off, and you both listen.

“It’s like two models beyond what Kylo Ren has, I heard,” Short replies.

“Do you really believe she stole it?”

“What do you mean?” Short asks. “You think she’s First Order?”

Tall scoffs, and the harsh noise carries to Poe’s ears. “Nah, c’mon. She probably just offered a favor to some hangar guard or something.”

He must make some gesture, or maybe he says something quieter, but Short bursts into laughter and Tall joins in. The implication is something rude, that you traded off a sexual favor for a ship. Poe glances over at you, and he can see how your shoulders tense up around your ears in the shadows of your corner. He clenches his fist against his thigh.

When Short’s laughter trails off, he says, “I bet that’s Dameron’s angle.”

“Angle for what?”

“His X-wing is a piece of shit. You seen it? Black Leader, and he’s up there in a taped-together relic. You know he wants that TIE fighter.”

“Yeah, but General Organa let her keep it,” Tall points out.

“Yeah, but,” Short counters, “Dameron can charm a Wookiee out of its fur. Why else would he stick so close to her? They are inseparable.”

Poe’s face burns in fury. He peers over to where the two pilots are chatting, and he can see Tall shrug. “Maybe he actually likes her.”

“I doubt it. You know the type of women he used to pull.”

Tall snorts. “Yeah, the type that could fit in that TIE fighter with some spare room in the seat.”

“Exactly. Hence the long con. I’d bet my own X-wing, but it’s a piece of shit too. He’s playing her for that ship, and once she gives it up, he’ll drop her.”

Tall reaches out and runs an appreciative hand along the sleek black curve of your ship. “I’d never give up a ship like this, but the way she looks at him? I bet you’re right.”

The two of them laugh again, and they walk around the ship, but their words trail off. Then they leave, and the silence that lays over the hangar is heavy. Poe glances over at you, and your fists are so tight in your lap that your knuckles show white under your skin. There’s tension radiating off of you, and Poe swallows hard. Clears his throat, tries to think of what to say….

You don’t give him a chance. You spring to your feet and stride away—not towards the living quarters or the cantina, but outside, into the dense overgrown forest outside of the packed-dirt runway.

“Hey, wait!” he calls out, and he has to jog to catch up. By the time he does, you’re already deep into the verdant overgrowth, and while it’s only early evening, in here, it’s darker.

“Leave it, Poe.” You toss the words over your shoulder, and they sound bitten off, like you’re pushing them between your clenched jaw.

“Sweetheart—”

“I want to be alone!”

He shakes his head even if you can’t see it. He’s only a step or two behind you, and he reaches out a hand and manages to catch ahold of your arm. He tries to still you—or at least slow you—but instead you pivot on your heel and turn on him.

“Is it true?” Your face is thunderous—eyebrows knit together, eyes narrowed, fierce frown on your lips. You put your hands on your hips and brace your feet wide, ready to fight him.

Poe is stunned. “Are you serious? You believe them?”

“Yes! No!” You throw your hands in the air, exasperated. “I don’t know!”

“Why would you believe them? They’re jealous of your ship. You heard them.”

“Both things can be true,” you spit out. “They can be jealous of my ship and you can be…” You trail off, falter. Unable to say the accusing words, and Poe’s initial stunned feeling flares into anger.

“Say it.” He crosses his arms and squares up to you, just as challenging.

“No.”

“No, I want you to say it. Say that I’m just using you. Say that I’m trying to con you out of that fucking ship.”

You don’t back down, not really. You glare at him, watch him for a beat. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard that, you know.”

“That I’m using you?”

A bit of your fury fades from your expression, and there’s a shadow of pain that passes across your face. “That there has to be a reason why we’re friends, because….” Another trailing off, another sentence you can’t seem to voice.

“Because why?” A bit of his own anger dies down too.

“Because I’m not….your usual type,” you say, pulling back at the last minute, and your voice sounds so pained now that the rest of Poe’s anger burns off.

“What’s my type, sweetheart?” He says it softly, and he uncrosses his arms. Holds his hands out, open. This is my chance, he thinks. His heart is pounding in his chest, so hard it seems to knock against his ribcage, and his mouth feels dry. There’s no opportunity to try and tease you out now, so he’ll have to just plunge in, admit his feelings….

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” you reply. The pain is apparent in your voice, strained, and you dodge around him, try to get past him, but he’s faster. He hooks his hand around your wrist and holds you fast. Pulls your firmly, but slowly back to him until you are standing in front of him. You drop your head and refuse to look at him, and it’s so out of character for you—you, the bold pilot, the assured spy-mistress—that all of Poe’s questions about you are answered then and there.

You must feel something for him. If you didn’t, you would have laughed at those Jade Squadron pilots, made some derisive joke about them, elbowed Poe in his side.

“What’s my type?” he asks again, and he drops his voice to a near-whisper.

And he answers his own question for you. The two of you are on uneven ground—he’s on surer footing—and he wants you to be clear of the situation.

“My type is you,” he says. “C’mon, how can you not know that?”

“You’re not funny, Poe.” You raise your face and glare at him, and whatever feelings are churning through you, you seem to read his words, his tone wrong. You seem to think he’s teasing you or worse….that those Jade Squadron assholes are right and that he’s only being friendly to get your ship.

You break his hold and stride away, and Poe is so stunned that it takes him a beat to follow—and by then, you are long gone.

*****

It’s easy to avoid Poe.

You’re in separate squadrons, and you’re often sent on separate missions. All you have to do is keep away from the common congregation areas—the small, cobbled together cantina, mostly.

It’s easy to stay away from there, frankly. Those Jade Squadron pilots put a bad taste in your mouth, a bitterness that creeps up the back of your throat when you are in social settings now. They awakened that self-doubting voice in your head, the one that makes you think everyone is looking at you and judging you.

Ironic, that in a galaxy full of every conceivable species and body type (from Hutts to Jawas and everything in between), you could still be made to feel unwieldy and ugly.

It’s that self-doubting voice that convinces you that you can’t possibly be Poe’s type, despite that weird, charged moment in the jungle. That he was only being nice, trying to diffuse the tension that had sprang up with the Jade pilots’ cruel speculations.

You’re so angry with the entire situation. Angry at those Jade assholes, angry at yourself. Angry, a little, at Poe himself. Angry that he turned out to be such a nice guy. Angry that it took no time at all to be friends, and just as angry that you fell for him.

You would have been happy for things to stay exactly as they had been: a friendship that was deep and true. The playful flirting, the deeper talks about your respective pasts and your future hopes. The pining that makes you sigh and makes your heart ache.

But the entire friendship has skewed in an embarrassing way, and you don’t know how to navigate it. You know from your spying days and your time now as a squadron leader: there’s always three paths through a problem.

You can hide, you can flee, or you can fight.

You don’t want to fight Poe, and you can’t flee the Resistance. Besides, the safest path is always to hide, so that’s what you do now.

-----

Your quarters are cramped and small, and every other public space holds the potential of Poe finding you. The two of you used to sit in a cozy corner of the hangar, but that’s the first place he’d look.

When you aren’t on a mission, you slip off to your private place. Outside of the hangar, off into the wild green verge, there’s a small clearing that opens up on a little stream and pool. You often take a flask of spotchka there, kick off your boots, and dip your feet in the cool water while you sit alone with your thoughts.

You’re lonely. You miss your friend, and you miss the convivial evenings with the other rebels in the cantina. But those Jade pilots broke something in you, and you’d rather be lonely than mocked….or rejected.

It takes a few missions—you coming and going, Poe coming and going. A few star-cycles. It takes a little time before Poe finally tracks you down, and in the end, it’s BB-8 who finds you first.

You’re sitting with your back against a tree, your feet gently paddling against the water of the pool. No spotchka tonight—just you gazing up at the darkening sky, missing your family and your home world. Feeling sorry for yourself.

You hear the rustling in the undergrowth, and you start to reach for the vibroknife you keep at your side, but then you hear the familiar beeping of the little droid…and the heavier tread of boots, and a murmuring voice that you’d recognize anywhere.

There’s nowhere to run to. You’ve been found—probably by BB-8’s heat-seeking technology—and anyway, your little hiding place has been discovered.

The two of them break into the clearing, and the droid chirps happily, whizzes over to you and bumps against you gently, over and over until you can’t help but laugh. Then it rolls back to Poe for the praise it’s owed for finding you, which Poe freely gives.

Then he glances at you, and he sends BB-8 back to the base, leaving just the two of you.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says.

Why bother lying? Poe’s too smart for that.

“Yes,” you reply simply.

He sighs and walks over to you. He kicks his own boots off and sits beside you. He rolls his pants up to the middle of his shins, then eases his feet into the water too. Then he just sits there for a long stretch—not talking, not looking at you. He only gazes into the water, and it’s just as it always was—that charged way you start to feel when you’re near him, the way every cell of you seems to come alive.

“Do you really think I was just trying to get your ship?” he finally asks.

Deep down, you don’t. Poe’s charming, and he often uses his charm to get his way, but he is never malicious with it. It would have been cruel to befriend you just to get the ship, and Poe is never cruel.

“No.” You pause and glance at him, but he’s still focused on the water. “I don’t think that.”

“Then why haven’t you spoken to me since that night?”

Poe’s too smart to bother lying to him. You tell him the truth, or at least the simplest version of it.

You shrug in embarrassment, give a bitter laugh. “Because those Jade squadron pilots struck too close to the truth.”

“Which is?”

“That I have feelings for you, but that I also know you’re so far out of my league that if everyone else sees it, you must too.”

The sudden admission must shock him, especially after so many days of you dodging him. He swivels his head to look at you, and you can see him out of the corner of your eye, but you refuse to meet his gaze.

“I’m out of your league?” he asks, incredulous. “You got that backwards, sweetheart.”

You laugh again, bitter, not a hint of amusement. “Sure, Poe.”

He turns more, twists until one leg is tucked under him and his entire body is facing you. You can feel the weight of his eyes on you, and you shrink a little at the force of it.

“You’re serious. You seriously think I’m out of your league?” He shakes his head. “You’re delusional.”

He sounds so skeptical that his voice goes up a half-octave, squeaks a little when he says the word delusional, and you laugh. You can’t help it. It’s one of his talents, making you laugh when you feel like you’ll never smile again. He’s done it plenty of times: when you’re in a low mood about a recent loss in the field, when you’re missing your family.

Your laughter makes him laugh, and for a long moment, it feels like old times. You think, for a moment, that you and Poe can go back to the way it was, awkward feelings buried again and the two of you good friends.

The laughter dies off, though, and the moment turns serious again. Tense. The tension lays over the two of you, thick and heavy, and you know that no matter what, there’s no going back to the fun, flirty way the two of you used to be. You’re not going to be able to sit in that dark corner of the hangar either, sharing secrets, comforting each other when dark thoughts threaten.

You feel the sting of tears in your eyes, and you turn your head away from Poe, but he must see the tears before you do. He moves again, into a kneeling position, and he reaches out a hand to touch your face. To turn your head, gently, back to face him.

“C’mon, don’t cry,” he whispers. You still can’t meet his gaze, so you close your eyes. One tear, two…they creep out and start to roll down your cheeks, but he reaches out and brushes them away, gentle as air.

“Don’t cry,” he repeats. You can hear him moving again, rustling near you, and then you feel his arms around you. Kneeling beside you, pulling you against the broad span of his chest. “Why are you crying? Is it that bad, having feelings for me?”

He asks the last question with a teasing lilt, and it draws a watery laugh out of you. You sniffle and try to push away from him, but he holds you fast.

“I was being honest, before,” he says against your head. “You are my type.”

“Poe—”

“No, I need you to listen, sweetheart,” he interrupts. He holds you against him, and you are all too aware that this is the closest you’ve been to him, the most you’ve touched him. His heart is under your ear, and you can hear the quiet thud of it.

“I don’t know when it started,” he explains. “I knew you were this hot-shot spy, and then you came back to base and demanded to be a pilot.” He chuckles against your head and adds, “you were super irritating, so it probably didn’t start at the beginning.”

You laugh again, sniffle again. “Rude.”

“I think it started on your test run that Leia made you do. Remember? I was floored that you even managed to steal that ship, but then….we went on the trial run. It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen, the way you handled that ship. Like it was a part of you. Like it was made for you.”

He sighs, and shifts a little. One of his hands drifts down to the middle of your back, and he rubs a comforting circle there as he continues.

“I had this thought of trying to flirt with you, but then we went into hyperspace. That blue star, remember that? We circled it. We just drifted, and you said that if this war wasn’t going on, you’d be out exploring the regions beyond the Outer Rim.”

“I remember.”

“You sounded so furious that you had to fight in the Resistance. That’s when it started, I think. Not just wanting you for a night, but wanting all of you for….for longer, I guess. For as long as you’d have me. I remember thinking, ‘she’s got some darkness in her past, like me.’ I remember thinking that maybe we were the same. Or at least similar. I thought, ‘maybe I could let her really know who I am.’”

You snort, and when you push away from him, he lets you. You brush the back of your hand across your eyes and then glance at him. He’s watching you; there’s not a bit of guile in his expression. He looks open, expectant.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything then?” you ask.

“Why didn’t you?”

“You heard those Jade assholes, Poe. And there’s a hundred different women who are better—”

He cuts you off with an unhappy grumble and a stern shake of his head. “I’ve never thought that about you. I think you’re perfect just the way you are.”

“Okay, sure.” You roll your eyes and stand up, brushing the dirt off of your pants. You shake both of your feet, trying to get most of the water off of them, and then you put your boots back on. Poe stands up too, puts his own boots on, but something in him snaps.

“Why are you so stubborn?” he asks, and the quiet and calm is gone from his voice. Now he sounds pissed, and when you look at him in surprise, he’s glaring at you, both of his hands on his hips.

“What?”

“Why are you so fucking stubborn?” he repeats, amending it with a curse word. “You are so damned convinced that I’m out of your league that you aren’t even listening to what I’m telling you.”

“Hey, I—”

“No, I sat here and poured my heart out to you. I’ve told you twice now that I have feelings for you, and you wave me off. You’d rather believe those assholes from the Jade squadron? You think they know me—know us—better than we do?”

“No, but—”

There’s no stopping him, though. Poe Dameron, you’re discovering, has been suffering in silence too, and you’ve walked him right up to his limit…and beyond it. He doesn’t let you get a word in edgewise now—he’s fully ranting.

“I’ve wanted you for months!” he yells, throwing his hands in the air. “Since that trial run, and every day after was like torture! Flirting with you at the cantina, sitting in the hangar and spilling my worst secrets to you! Every time I thought, ‘this time I’ll tell her how I feel,’ but every time, I lost my nerve. Every damned time! You’re the fucking Fly Girl who steals prototype ships and runs the best squadron in the fleet, and I’m just the guy who’s trying to forget the fact that he’s Shara Bey’s son and he ruined her memory by being a spice-runner.”

“Poe, come on—” You reach out a hand to him, but he bats it away, angry.

“You have no idea how sick it makes me when you’re off on a mission. Leia sends you on the most dangerous ones, and I get sick to death, worried I’ll never see you again. Worried that you’ll die and I’ll never have the chance to tell you how I feel. But when I finally do tell you how I feel, you roll your eyes and say it’s a mistake.”

His words—and the passion behind them—stuns you. You can only stare at him, open-mouthed, as he breathes heavy, through his nose, snorting and chuffing like a bantha. He glares at you, and for a moment you think he might actually hate you…you never realized the depth of his feelings, and he’s right to be angry at your dismissive attitude.

“I’m sorry,” you say softly. You reach your hands out to him, palms up, like he’s a skittish creature you’re trying to soothe. “I’m sorry, Poe. I didn’t realize.”

“You didn’t want to realize,” he snaps. “You notice everything little thing, but you never noticed me?”

“Maybe I didn’t believe it. Maybe I was so wrapped up in my own low moods that I couldn’t believe that you felt the same way.”

He snorts again, shakes his head, but he doesn’t reply.

“It makes me sick when you’re on a mission too,” you tell him, quiet. “I’m always terrified that when you take off, it’s the last time I’ll see you.”

“Then why did you avoid me?”

You drop your hands and shrug. You rub the back of your neck and look away, up at the stars glittering in the now-dark sky.

“I don’t really know how to do any of this stuff, Poe,” you admit. Which is the truth: you’ve had a few brief flings, but never a relationship. The rise of the First Order and the decimation of your planet put a halt to any of that, and you’ve been almost singularly focused on your revenge ever since.

“I just thought you were too good for me, and I never wanted our friendship to suffer,” you continue. “Being your friend was enough for me, because at least I got to be near you.”

“We can’t go back to being just friends,” he tells you.

You nod, miserable. This was exactly what you were avoiding, and fresh tears rise and blur your vision, but before you can open your mouth to say another wrong, stupid thing, Poe snaps a second time.

He’s on you in an instant, his hands cupping your face, drawing you to him, and then his mouth is on you too, hot and insistent. His lips against yours, and when you gasp in surprise, his tongue invades your mouth too. You can taste the heavy mint on his breath, and the spotchka beneath it, and beneath that…him.

He backs you up until you are pressed between him and the smooth bark of the tree, and he doesn’t give you a single moment to catch your breath. Not a single inch of relief as he kisses you, as he groans into your mouth, as he rolls his hips against you. One hand is still on your face, cupping against your cheek, but the other drifts lower—his knuckles drag over the side of your throat, then over your collarbones, until he is palming the curves of your breasts, kneading at the softness there, groaning again.

Your brain can’t seem to comprehend what’s happening. You kiss him back—or try to: his mouth works against yours, his tongue insistent, stealing your breath from you. Your hands settle on his shoulders, but you keep trying to understand what has happened.

You started the evening sitting alone, maudlin and full of self-pity. Now the length of your body is trapped between Poe Dameron and a tree, and he’s kissing you like a dervish. How did you get from there to here?

Poe senses your confusion, and he misreads it. He stills his hands, and he breaks the kiss with you. He peers into your eyes, his own narrowed as he tries to read whatever is going on in your mind.

“What do you…don’t you…” he starts, but he trails off. Then there’s hurt on his face, his handsome features twisted in pain. He sighs, and you can see where the moment may go: more misunderstanding. More hurt. Him stalking away from you, and that tight-throat feeling that one of you may die in a dangerous mission without the other knowing…

“I’m just catching up,” you whisper. You shift one hand to the back of his neck, pushing your fingertips into the curls there. The other hand…you press it against his chest, over his heart, and this time you can feel it thudding away against your palm.

“Too fast?”

You shake your head. “No…still in disbelief, I guess.”

The frown disappears from his face, and Poe smiles at you. It’s like the sun breaking the line of the horizon after a long night. He opens his mouth to say something—maybe one of his flirty lines, or maybe a teasing one—but instead he just leans forward and kisses you again. Gentler this time. Slower. More deliberate.

He breaks the kiss a moment later and presses his forehead against yours. His hands have slipped to your waist, and he gives you a gentle squeeze.

“Can we go back to the quarters now?” he asks. “Because I’ve waited forever.”

You’ve waited almost as long. You smile back at him, then slip your hand into his. It’s dark now, after all, and you’re on surer footing here in your private little spot. You lead him back to base, and then to your quarters.

*****

It probably wasn’t fair, setting BB-8 on your trail, using the little droid to track you down, but Poe was tired of waiting. Waiting for you to turn up, waiting for a chance to talk to you and explain his side of things.

He was already so tired of fighting—his own demons, the First Order, the weighty expectations that come with being Shara Bey’s only son—that fighting you was the thing that broke him.

But it paid off: BB-8 found you, and the entire stupid unrequited misunderstanding between you and him is over. Now he’s in your room, the cramped space a mirror to his own quarters, and if you’re shy as you strip for him—your hands shake, he notices, as you pluck at the buttons and buckles on your vest and shirt—at least you’re here. With him. Your eyes darting to his face from time to time, seeking reassurance.

It breaks his heart to think that all this time, you thought you were the one lacking. You thought you were the one with something to prove. He can still see a shade of that even now, the tiniest bit of hesitation when you look at him, as if you’re expecting him to change his mind and leave.

It takes him less time to shuck off his own clothes. He doesn’t bother to make it look seductive—he just undoes his pants, shoves them down and kicks out of them. Tears his shirt over his head, mussing his hair. He’s ravenous for you, absolutely slavering to get you into bed, and the moment you’re finally stripped bare too, he does just that.

His hands on your waist again, pivoting you and then gently shoving you backwards onto the narrow bed. He takes a single moment to gaze down at you, to burn the image into his mind. You’re so fucking gorgeous that it breaks his heart here too—that you thought you weren’t. That you believed other people when they said you weren’t.

Then he’s on you. Poe Dameron has an entire catalog of moves, step-by-step seductions, but he doesn’t think of a single one the moment he’s on you. He has waited so long, has made himself content with the small, incidental touches at the cantina or in the hangar. The way you would nudge him, the few times he chanced to put his arm around your shoulders.

Now?

It’s like a feast of sensation. Not just touch, though the feeling of you underneath him—the length of him pressing you into the thin mattress of your cot—feels like paradise. You’re soft and warm, and when he places a hand on the inside of your thigh, you part your legs eagerly to make room for him. When he settles against you, bracketed by your raised knees on either side of him, when he brushes the throbbing length of him against your core….well, it’s not just touch.

It’s sound, too. The choked-off whimper you give. The way your breath hitches in your throat. The sound of his name when you whisper it, when you plead for more. His own answering groan at the feel of you, then again at how you touch him: one hand tangled in his hair, steering his face to yours, but the other hand reaching down and grasping his ass, spurring him on.

He should tease you. Punish you, just a little bit. There’s still a thin thread of irritation in him. Irritated that you never noticed how he felt, when you noticed absolutely everything else. Irritation that you thought him shallow, maybe.

But there’s no weight to his irritation. Not really. Deep down, he knows that it’s just your own insecurity, and he recognizes it because he has his own struggles with feeling insecure.

So he doesn’t tease you, and he doesn’t draw it out. He’s absolutely aching for you, and your hand is on him—first on his ass, then the curve of his lower back—driving him on.

He kisses you again, then breaks away to look at you. The entire moment by the stream, you avoided looking at him. Now you gaze back at him, and he can see the whole spectrum of emotions you’re feeling. Love, desire. Fear.

He recognizes them too. He feels exactly the same.

“Tell me you want this,” he murmurs.

You slide your hand around from the back of his head to cup his face. Your trace the tip of your thumb over him—trace the shape of his lips, rubs against his stubbled cheek. The trace of fear in your eyes fades, and all Poe can see is the love and desire there.

“I want this,” you murmur back. “I want you, Poe.”

You feel so fucking good. He watches your face carefully as he pushes into you, and you must feel it too. You gaze at him, but then your eyelids flutter shut, and you breathe out his name and a curse, gasping when he finally bottoms out in your velvety depths.

There will be softer moments (in the morning, in fact, when Poe will ease into you as he spoons you, a slower, quieter moment). This is decidedly not a soft moment, though: it’s been a chain reaction since he kissed you by the stream, and now that he’s inside you, he combusts.

You must be feeling the same way. You open your eyes wide and stare up at him, a stunned look on your face, but you wrap your legs around his waist. It shifts the angle, allows him an extra fraction into you, and you groan when he takes it.

He draws out halfway, rolls his hips as he sinks back into you. Repeats it, tries to go slow, but you spur him on—your heels digging into his ass, pressing him forward each time he tries to pull out.

“Poe, please,” you beg him, and damned if it doesn’t make him twitch inside you, hearing how sweet it sounds, both his name in your mouth and your pleading. “Please, please. Please.”

“So polite,” he growls near your ear, but you turn your head and nip at him, catching him right near the hinge of his jaw.

It’s not a painful bite, nothing but the straight line of your teeth pressed against his skin for the briefest moment, but it makes him go absolutely feral. He growls again, captures your mouth with his own, and he thrusts into you. Hard. Enough to jostle you under him, but you take it, and you whine for more and press your heels into him.

“Fuck, sweetheart,” he mutters. “Feel so good.”

You do, and he must feel good to you, because you raise your hips as best you can, chasing more of him, begging for him. Poe reaches out and hooks your right leg under the hinge of your knee, presses it up and out, spreading you wider for him. Granting him more of you, and he must be hitting some spot in you, the thick drag of his cock against your clenching heat. You whimper each time he bottoms out in you, a whine in the back of your throat.

“Close,” you manage to choke out. Your eyes are wide, glassy with tears, and you’re panting underneath him. “Poe…’m so close.”

“You gonna come for me?” he asks, and he changes his rhythm, adds a second, stuttering thrust as he bottoms out. A doubling press where the end of him is hitting the end of you, and it makes your eyes flutter shut again. A tear creeps out from the corner of your eye.

He can feel the sheen of sweat break out across his back and shoulders and chest. He fucks you harder, hammers you into the mattress of your bed, and he has the mad thought that he might actually merge with you. It’s the first time he’s ever felt so connected to a lover, and Poe realizes deep down that because of the love between the two of you, even if neither of you have voiced it yet.

He comes first, technically. He feels the unbearable tension suddenly snap, the heat and warmth spiraling out from the center of him as his hips judder against you. He comes with a low groan, spilling inside you, and its either those final strokes or the sensation of the heat of his release….you come a beat after him.

You’re so quiet when you come. Only that same whine in the back of your throat, only his name whispered against the skin of his neck, where your face is buried. You arch underneath him, your arms trembling, and he can feel how your pussy clenches at him, tries to draw him in.

-----

Immediately after…that’s when Poe feels a sting of shame. He moved so fast, and while you had moved just as fast alongside him, maybe he should have gone slower. Been more romantic about it. You aren’t just a hook-up, a one-night stand, but he has to make sure you know that.

“Hey,” he says. He lifts his head from where it’s resting against your chest, and he bumps your nose with his own. “You okay?”

“Better than.” You smile up at him, a goofy, cock-drunk grin, and he returns it with one of his own. “You?” you ask.

“Absolutely.” A beat. “I’ve wanted to do that since forever.”

You hum at that, and he leans down to kiss you, soft and lingering. You kiss him back, tangle your fingers in his hair again. You stretch the moment into something so sweet, so infinitely tender, that every sharp-edged doubt Poe has ever harbored is ground down a bit. They lose some of their sting, and for the first time in a very long time, Poe thinks he might deserve good things after all.

-----

It’s only later—after a second round, just as frenzied—that the two of you talk. Just a little: you’re both tired. Sated with each other. Your bed is narrow, and the two of you are pressed close together, facing each other. Your legs are tangled together, your arms around each other. Poe reaches down and tugs the thin blanket up to cover you, but you’re both so warm, you really don’t need it.

“I meant everything I said, you know,” he tells you. Bumps your nose with his own again, makes you smile again. “I’ve wanted you for a long time.”

He doesn’t say “love,” not yet. He won’t say it until later, when you return from a routine supply mission that goes badly. Poe won’t say it until he thinks you’re dead, and when you return in your ship and stagger out of the cockpit, he’ll be right there, the words already out of his mouth even as he pulls you to him.

You don’t say “love” right now either. You’ll say it first when he’s asleep, days from now. You’ll say it when you watch him sleep, the sharp ache in your heart pushing the whispered words right out of you.

“I’ve wanted you too,” you reply. “I’m glad you came and found me.”

He kisses your forehead and settles back down against the pillow, and a drowsy quiet falls over you. He can feel himself relaxing, and he knows he’s not far from sleep.

But you speak up before he does. “I was wrong, you know,” you say.

“How so?”

“At the cantina, remember? I made that toast, but I was wrong.”

Poe doesn’t know what you’re talking about at first, and he casts his mind back to all those evenings in the smoky bar. A million moments with you: side by side, regaling the assembled crowd with tales of your respective exploits.

“I don’t remember,” he says, and he just catches the glint of humor in your eye, that teasing smirk on your lips before you respond.

“You definitely fuck better than you fly, Dameron.”

~~~Tag List~~~ @bananas-pajamas @massivecolorspygiant @imspillingcoffee @amneris21 @paintballkid711 @mad-girl-without-a-box @bestattempt @rosiefridayrogersunday @strawberrydragon @hoeforthefictional @greeneyedblondie44 @leannawithacapitala @stardust-galaxies @buckybarneshairpullingkink @harriedandharassed @thatpinkshirt @xoxabs88xox @ataraxydreams @blunt-cake-yes @castiellover77 @shesbiochem4 @isvvc-pvscvl @frankie-catfish-morales @foxilayde @blacksquadron-roguetwo @zizzlekwum

#poe dameron #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron imagine #star wars

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undeath1245 · 1 year

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The “lore” of Overwatch

Do you guys think that the franchise’s lore is lackluster, boring if not worse? Because I feel like there isn’t enough substance in the backstory behind Bl*zz*rd’s hit FPS game. Or most likely, the lore is being swept aside to focus on other things other than maintaining the game’s “sequel” and its shitty monetization system.

Now, I figure that the franchise has to have a backstory to explain its playable characters’ backgrounds; TV Tropes refer to it as an “excuse plot”. But, the lore has so much substance and content that it shouldn’t be swept aside and left out for so long. I mean, I became a huge fan of Overwatch’s story from its animated shorts, and the last one I saw was “Infiltration”. I honestly feel like this story could have benefited better if it was told through either a single-player story mode (excluding the upcoming indefinitely cancelled PvE mode), a standalone single-player FPS game, or, even better, an animated series made by the same studio that made these shorts. I’m a bit skeptical about following the story again and watching the other shorts I missed, largely because I’m unsure if the writing and overall lore is good or not. Many people say that the shorts’ writing was plain and shallow, as if they needed to be made as soon as possible to appeal to the fans who adore the animation and story, and the animation is wonderful, I tell you what.

Some people say that some of these shorts don’t entirely match with a player character's overall personality and backstory. Take Hana Song, for example. In the game, she is characterized as a snarky, giddy Gamer Girl™ and mech pilot who spouts annoying quips at her enemies, and I love that about her. But from what I’ve heard, in her own short, “Shooting Star”, D.Va is characterized as a war-torn soldier who apparently uses her Gamer Girl™ personality as some sort of public façade, as she retains a vigilant, worried demeanor in case the “enemy” ever comes back, whomever that is. It’s almost as if her joy and spunky personality had already diminished, and we didn’t get to see any of that happen. It could have been better if we could see some flashbacks about her career as a skilled, popular gamer and her good times with her teammates before things went south. I mean, “Honor and Glory” did this better with Reinhardt. Plus, wasn’t D.Va supposed to be a StarCraft gamer? Because I heard that got retconned by Michael Chu.

And that brings us to another issue with the franchise’s lore: the retcons. From what I heard, Overwatch’s lore suffered from so many retcons, and I don’t know why. I think the first instance I heard of such a retcon was when Moira was introduced. Before Moira, it was heavily hinted that Mercy was responsible for Gabriel’s transformation, when she botched a resurrection that turned him into a shadowy freak. But in Moira’s origin story, she was the one responsible for giving Gabriel the spooky sublimation powers he currently possesses. At first, I thought that it was Mercy’s resurrection ability that further fucked up his body, but after reading some Wiki pages, Gabriel was resurrected into Reaper by Moira after his supposed death. Adding to this retcon, Brigitte (or Birgitta as I prefer to call her as such) was supposed to be 28 years old before her age was retconned to 23 years. Another instance of these retcons is that, from what I read from this post, Gabriel rebelled against Overwatch because of his bitter jealousy of Jack when he got promoted as strike commander, not because of his dispute with his team from their differing ideas and methods. One other retcon is that, from what I was reading from this page on All the Tropes, Pharah was supposed to be fully Egyptian until her ethnicity was retconned to be mixed race, Egyptian and First Nations to be precise, granted that it was probably because of her Thunderbird skin.

But then again, after reading this excerpt, some of these retcons were probably misinterpreted as such because they somehow interfered with the fandom’s overall headcanon, like Mercy being responsible for Gabriel’s transformation. But then again, when it comes to the writers adding in new stuff into your game’s story, especially when it comes to adding in new characters, and especially when it comes to adding in new stuff through mere snippets (the animated shorts and comics), you think that they should have planned the full story ahead much earlier instead of later on. I’m not saying that they should have added in some sort of story mode early on in the first version. I’m saying that they should have made a complete outline of the game’s story instead of making it up as they went along, not that this method was bad. I’m sure that there are other stories that were made up as the writers went along and were handled well, too.

(incoming rant)

I began writing this post around a couple of months ago. I was largely neutral with what Liar Entertainment has in store for the PvE mode. I never planned on getting it and playing it right away, largely because I’m not a PC gamer and I don’t want to sell my personal information. I was waiting for the playthroughs that were to be uploaded onto YouTube. But then, on May 16th, Bl*zz*rd had announced that the PvE mode has been cancelled. Not only that, but from what I’ve heard, it had been cancelled ever since around 2021, largely because of management issues and executives prioritizing the oh-so most popular PvP mode more than anticipated PvE mode. So essentially, Overwatch Lite (that’s what I’m calling the current version) was not only a glorified update that dared to call itself a sequel, but it was also a complete scam from the beginning. Fans had been waiting for a story mode ever since, especially those who are diehard fans of the game’s lore, and the PvE mode was basically what they were itching for. Sure that it wasn’t like a single-player campaign like in other games like in Call of Duty or Halo, but it was a campaign mode nonetheless, at best a multiplayer campaign similar to Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty: Zombies mind you. And yet, Bl*zz*rd decided to pull the plug on it and focus on the traditional PvP mode, and more likely what to put in their shitty online store. I heard that the company had been declining ever since *ct*v*s**n merged with them, and I’m no avid gamer, but I feel inclined to believe as such. Maybe if that merger had never happened, Bl*zz*rd would have remained as the most popular, most beloved video game company ever known. Maybe if that merger hadn’t happened, Overwatch, or even Project Titan, would have flourished as one of the most popular FPS games of all time.

Sorry that I almost turned this post into a rant there. I’m still a bit agitated that content like the game’s lore and story is currently being handled by a diminishing video game company, with the PvE mode being split into fragments locked behind a battle pass paywall. I have no idea what’s going to happen with this franchise at this point. Maybe these missions would be fun and engaging. Maybe the story is still happening. Who knows? All I know that, now that Liar Entertainment had come clean to the PvE mode being cancelled, I think that the game’s playerbase will diminish as time rolls by. I know that there will be a couple of players still latching onto the Overwatch scene and sticking around for future seasons. I honestly can’t blame them. I mean, you got to at least stick around to see if those battle pass-locked missions and cinematics are worth the money. But at this point, now that the company had wiped out all faith in the playerbase, Overwatch will fall, no one wins, and that planned lore that people had been waiting for is lost in time. But, it doesn’t mean that it could be the end for the fandom, or the remains of the fandom at this point. We could still make some fan works here and there, do some fan art and even make some fan-made shorts if we could. If Bl*zz*rd couldn’t deliver the story as promised, we might as well make it ourselves. I know that there are a lot of fan stories out there that explores the many concepts of Overwatch. I still remember some comic dubs of such. Heck, we could even explore cut content from the game, like the heroes from Prometheus.

There’s plenty of material out there. All it takes is our imagination. I know that fanon shouldn’t hold superiority over canon, nor should it be held over people’s heads. But sometimes, when it comes to an incomplete, interrupted storyline like Overwatch’s, maybe we ought to fill in the blanks and create what we can come up with. I don’t want to end this post on a low note, rather a fairly high note. If the company won’t deliver the story, we might as well make like the Mad Titan Thanos and make it ourselves.

#Blizzard Entertainment #Overwatch #Overwatch 2 #Michael Chu #D.Va #Reinhardt #Mercy #Reaper #Moira #Soldier: 76 #Pharah #Brigitte #lore #storytelling #retcons #criticisms

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hvrdfeelings · 5 months

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( song kang. cis man. he / him. ) ⸺ 🦬 greetings, buffalos !walking around campus, sporting his death tarot card we’ve spotted DAEHYUN “JOHNNY” MOON, a twenty eight year old who contributes to our thriving community as a GUARD. according to our intel, he’s been around the sanctuary for seven years and what we know about him, aside from the fact that he doesn’t agree with the decision to close the gates, is that before the outbreak, he had dreams of becoming a pro gamer and now he views the aftermath as his own personal video game to keep himself sane, but he’ll also always jump at the chance to volunteer at the greenhouse as he finds it therapeutic amongst the chaos, and he carries the death card around with him despite not believing in the practice as it was the last thing his mother gave to him. doesn’t that make him fantastic ? we think it does, and that’s why we appreciate him so much, grateful for what he gives to our community.

⸺ written by honey ( she/they . 28 . pst . n/a. )

basics

korean name: Moon Daehyun american name: Johnny age: twenty eight birthday: january 7th, 1995 zodiac sign: capricorn sun, aries moon, cancer rising gender: cis male sexuality: bisexual occupation: guard positive traits: cooperative & intuitive negative traits: disorganized & reckless

headcanons

born in suwon, south korea, daehyun's family moved to anaheim, california when he was five years old. he suffered through his elementary school days with kids picking on him for not knowing english, for bringing 'smelly' foods from home for lunch, and being smaller than everyone. he'd come home each day crying, with his parents asking if he had made any friends and all daehyun wanted to do was to go back home.

during the summer before he would enter middle school, his father had gotten a new job that would require the moon family to move to aspen, colorado and that's when daehyun decided that he would create a new persona of himself -- he wouldn't be the same kid who got picked on back in california. he started to go by johnny and while he hadn't lost the accent, his fluency level in english got him by just enough that no one questioned him.

in second grade, at six years old, his parents would welcome a baby girl and let's just say, he holds a lot of regret about how he acted towards his sister when they were just children. she became the favorite, the one who could never do wrong. and at the time, he couldn't understand it, why his parents suddenly started treating him different but he simply blamed her -- they were happy until she came along. but after all these years, he eventually realized it was never her that he should have been upset with. but at his parents for practically pitting them against one another from the day she had been born.

entering high school, daehyun had lost the accent and only went by johnny. at this point, he was more american than korean, so why continue using that name? he had ultimately stopped speaking to his parents unless absolutely necessary because why should he try when they have the perfect little girl to take care of them later on in life? despite the good grades and attempts at extracurricular activities, none of it seemed to matter to them. so he began to hide away in his bedroom on weeknights and weekends, making friends with people through pc gaming because the only thing that mattered on there was skill and daehyun had an endless amount of it.

it started off with making small amounts here and there from local tournaments, his parents constantly mocking his dreams because who could make a living off playing video games? but daehyun knew there were people making some kind of living and he wanted to be just like them. so instead of having those classic high school experiences like attending dancings or falling in love, he made all of his online whether it be with warcraft, starcraft or league of legends.

but that dream got cut short when the outbreak began at only seventeen, just one year sigh of being eighteen where he had amazing (not so well thought out) plans of moving and going to college. being across the country and proving his parents wrong. now he was stuck with them and his sister and no internet. this was just great.

his father went first, not the healthiest man in the world, and daehyun was handed a gun. he had to be the man of the family now. protect his mother and sister. false assumptions being made that because he could shoot a weapon in a game, those skills would transfer to real life and boy was everyone so wrong about that. at nineteen, his hands shook whenever he held it in his hands. the things they expected him to shoot were real, there was no respawning.. but if he really thought about it, how different was their life now to a game like fallout 2? could he not just view the infected in the real world like the infected from the game? after that epiphany, his hands shook less and his accuracy got better. and unfortunately, daehyun would sometimes get a little too trigger happy.

at twenty, his mother passed and handed him a tarot card that represented death. it had been a hobby she picked up after her husband passed. if it kept her sane, he didn't judge but he also certainly didn't believe in it. but of all the cards she had to give him, did it have to be death? though he could vaguely remember her telling him that it didn't mean what he thought it did. while they only got close due to the virus and were ultimately forced to spend time together, he keeps the card folded up in his pocket as a reminder of her.

due to him and his sister not being all that close, they had no real reason to stick together once their mom passed and his sister had decided to run away in the middle of the night. she was just fourteen at the time, he spent days and weeks trying to find her because he assumed that's what a good older brother does. he hoped she hadn't met a terrible fate but eventually, even he knew he had to move on from the hunt. she was either alive and well, or she wasn't... to this day, he still thinks about her and if he could've done more in finding her.

luckily, at twenty one, daehyun had found the sanctuary that he had heard whispers about. he would offer his skills as a shooter, promising to protect those in the university like they were his own family as he had failed to protect his sister. and if he's not on duty, he always happily volunteers at the greenhouse or sometimes even the farm (when it isn't required) as he finds working with his hands to be therapeutic.

at the university: in the beginning, daehyun struggled to open up to people and make friends as his way of making friends had been through a computer screen but it's a bit easer for him now as he's been at the university for quite some time. it can be hard for him to turn off the 'video game' mindset -- like wanting to have the most amount of kills or trying to show off even though he understands it's not a race and he's there to protect over everything else. since there isn't much to speed run in real life, his current fixation is how quickly he can take apart his gun and put it back together. if he's not on duty or volunteering, he likes to play card games such as poker or you can find him pretending like he knows how to play chess.

wanted connections

his sister! -- tbh most of this is utp, i have no name in mind or fc (obviously has to be korean/korean american), and around 22?

an ex. -- i imagine they met at the university and they broke up due to having different opinions on whether or not the gate should be closed. since he's bisexual, fc can be quite literally anyone.

other than that, i'm open to anything else! especially friends/found family

#survivors.intro #// i havent rped on tumblr for many years so pls forgive me <333

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official-zerg-fangirl · 10 months

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how do you feel about kerrigan going super Saiyan in Legacy of the Void? what about the Amon plot in general?

(idk if you get notifications when a question is answered publicly, so @fall-warning hi, also THANKS FOR SENDING THIS. I LOVE ATTENTION I LOVE TALKING ABOUT MY GIRL)

Oh, That Jean Grey ass Kerrigan transformation is half the reason my bio says "Starcraft 2 never happened, Metzen can suck my dick." *

*the other half is the Kerrinor Kiss, because on Official-zerg-fangirl, the running gag is I have an irrational hate for Raynor bcs I was one of Those middle school girls who would legit be jealous of a fictional character (I just didn't realize what i felt was jealousy bcs i didnt know i was gay)

I hate it! I HATE IT. IT SUCKS.

I am normally an extremely big fan of fire, and red, and phoenixes, and literal deities, and women being any or all of the above. But none of that should have been Kerrigan, and definitely not in the way it was handled. Fuck you, Blizzard. Fuck you for the insane bullshit happening behind the scenes, but also fuck you for what LotV did to my girl!

I refuse to play any part of LotV to this day! I don't fucking care! Sorry to the protoss stans, it's great that you got so much extra lore with Alarak or whatever, but absolutely FUCK what they did to my girl!

oh but I loved the amon plotline tho.

"m'am, why the fuck" it was validating it was powerful it is everything the character arc of the entire Zerg species was building up to and it turned Kerrigan into the antihero she was always meant to be, and LotV is probably great but that epilogue ruined it with a pointless second transformation.

[more deranged rambling below]

Look, Kerrigan's character arc in Brood War was top notch it was S tier it was great I wrote a literal essay about how I do sincerely believe Kerrigan in SC1 + Brood War had a heroic character arc, and I am of course correct, and the canon agrees, BUT WE WILL GET TO THAT,

now initially ofc i was like naw SC2 never happened. Obviously I've softened on that opinion (but saying it never happened is funny. so is acting like everyone is missing the point of Kerrigan except for me. this blog is the space where i get to play up an extremely cocky persona ok)

SC2's general insistence (at least that's my first impression) on treating her zergness like a boring corruption and "ooh Kerrigan was good before but she's evil now" bothers me. like they do this to her instead of, oh I don't know, she was abused and exploited as a child fucking soldier, she latched onto the guy who 'saved' her and was too wrapped up in the exhilaration of having someone who 'cared' about her that she couldn't recognize she was being used as literal fucking bait, and then he LEFT HER TO FUCKING GET EATEN BY ALIENS, and by the grace of fucking god, those aliens saw her value and potential in a way no one else ever could, they elevated her, made her stronger, gave her the means to break off the shackles implanted in her skull (remember the Amerigo mission???), and from that point on, all the anger she'd been harboring from all those years of abuse could run freely, so of fucking course she became impatient and vengeful!

Yes, Kerrigan was extremely destructive, spiteful, cruel,even! But you think someone who's only ever known violence and death and cruelty could ever be anything else? are we so naiive as to imagine a perfectly human Sarah Kerrigan would not become the Queen of Blades Her fatal flaw is wrath, you see how quick she is to anger when she fights Tassadar. To quote the man himself,

"So long as you continue to be so predictable, O Queen, I need not face you at all. You are your own worst enemy."

she is predictable because of her wrath. In her beginning as the Queen of Blades, she's too consumed by all her fury, by her newfound power that she can and will use to demolish everyone who's wronged her, and she hasn't yet learned the wisdom required to use said power. this is a flaw she overcomes in Brood War, wherein she delays her fury and rage to arrange a temporary alliance, to wait for just the right moment to have her vengeance and crush her enemies.

aaaaaand here's the Wings of Liberty campaign going like "Zerg turned her evil. yeah she's killing and infecting terrans bcs that's what zerg do. we need to redeem her by removing her zergyness."

like - no acknowledgement to the fact that the terrans are currently being commanded by the dude who used her and then fucking left her to die???? bro like of all people you'd think Raynor would understand why she's waging war on the Dominion HE'S LITERALLY DOING THE SAME THING, but Blizzard gonna Blizzard and the final boss is Kerrigan bcs Raynor's gotta work with the Dominion to neutralize the greater threat - which is somehow Kerrigan. Okay.

It just really rubbed me the wrong way. Can you tell that it rubbed me the wrong way?

but then it redeemed itself. Bcs the Amon plotline.

NO I AM NOT JOKING. FUCK YOU THE AMON PLOTLINE WAS GOOD.

"oh but it derails everything and now my simple slapfight between humans and two aliens has transformed into some sort of cosmic battle between good and evil" fuck no it doesn't it was foreshadowed back in Brood War did you forget Duran? the fuck you think that man was doing if NOT foreshadowing that some fucking hidden power beyond every race's leaders was controlling the situation specifically through the Zerg? Even BEFORE Brood War, the lore that the Zerg and Protoss were both created by the xel'naga and that the Zerg were specifically created with a mandate to assimilate the Protoss was right the fuck there. you know who said that shit? THE OVERMIND. Pay attention bro, Amon was there all along!

Could he have maybe been introduced in a less jarring way okay sure but he didn't derail shit, this WAS the rails, you just got too caught up in the surface level fighting to recognize what was happening!

also, the Amon plotline was (before that FUCKING EPILOGUE) so extremely validating to me, let me tell you a story about when i was playing HotS - no, even before HotS, whcih did a lot of good stuff, in fucking Wings of Liberty, a campaign I just spent a few paragraphs shitting on, it did one super good thing. it did the Zeratul missions. It did this shit:

oh I imagine a lot of Starcraft fans hated this cutscene bcs it was an out of nowhere messiah plotline delivered via literal exposition ghost, but, see, I'm smarter than your average Starcraft fan, I am a genius and I'm sexy, and I know my wife Kerrigan better than anyone, even the fucking Starcraft writers (suck my dick Metzen) and I see this cutscene at 7:33PM, April 29, 2021, and I ran into my friend's DMs and said "I FUCKING CALLED IT"

BECAUSE I WROTE A FANFIC (unfinished, novel-length, self-indulgent, OCxKerrigan, highly nsfw, no I haven't posted it anywhere I wanna finish it first I wanna perfect it).

AND IN THAT FANFIC I WROTE SOMETHING SO ABSOLUTELY DERANGED I FIGURED IT WAS JUST SELF INDULGENT ABSOLUTE SKEWERING OF THE CANON JUST TO RUN SHAMELESS ZERG APOLOGIA:

I wrote that the Overmind, before capturing Kerrigan at New Gettysburg, telepathically communicated with her, and very specifically said that her human psionic mind would resist control until the bitter end, that it would kill itself rather than accept forced subjugation into the zerg, and THUS he had to ask Kerrigan PERMISSION, that he couldn't and didn't want to strip her of her free will, and he specifically promised to her power, and purpose, and the potential to usurp his place as the leader of the Zerg, and he specifically welcomed that possibility-

and like that's stupid that's so fucking stupid, why would the zerg ever value free will why would the Overmind pursue to the ends of the earth a servant that he couldn't control, that he knew could and would one day usurp him? there's no way this is canon-compliant-

IT IS

AND NOT JUST CANON-COMPLIANT, IT'S FUCKING CANON. ACTUALLY LITERALLY CANON.

STRAIGHT FROM TASSADAR'S MOUTH, THE OVERMIND DID THAT SHIT. THE GODDAMN EYEMONSTER HAD PLANNED ALL ALONG FOR KERRIGAN TO HAVE FREE WILL AND THAT HE SPECIFICALLY VALUED HER FREEDOM.

The only reason I can't say I predicted the future is because I started writing this fic after WoL released, but I clearly had some sort of precognition I fucking knew I was on the wavelength my deranged apologia was canon I was right.

OH AND THIS AMON SHIT GIVES ME FULL JUSTIFICATION TO BE A GREATER APOLOGIST THAN I EVER COULD BEFORE. BEFORE IT WAS LIKE "c'mon the zerg aren't people, they're mindless demons of destruction" OHHH NO YOU DON'T MOTHERFUCKER! THEY ARE PEOPLE, THEY HAVE MINDS AND FEELINGS AND WILL AND THEY'RE BEING CONTROLLED BY THEIR CREATOR - NO, THEIR CORRUPTER, AGAINST THEIR BEST INTERESTS,

AND THE PRIMAL ZERG, THE PRIMAL ZERG! THEIR GLORIOUS PAST! ZERUS, THE GARDEN OF EDEN BEFORE AMON'S MEDDLING, WHERE THERE IS NO CONTROL AND NO DESOLATION, ONLY THE RULE OF THE HUNT! HERE, WE SHALL FORGE A VISION OF THE LIBERATED SWARM, REUNITE WITH OUR PAST TO FORGE A BETTER FUTURE, AND OH LET'S NOT EVEN TALK ABOUT THE PARALLELS BETWEEN WHAT AMON DID TO THE ZERG AND WHAT THE GHOST PROGRAM DID TO KERRIGAN,

BECAUSE THAT'S JUST IT, KERRIGAN IS THE SWARM, WHICH IS WHY SHE BELONGS IN THE SWARM.

SHE AND THE ZERG BOTH EXIST AS BEINGS OF INCREDIBLE POTENTIAL WHOSE FUTURES WERE STOLEN AND CORRUPTED FOR THE SAKE OF A HIGHER POWER'S TWISTED WAR GAME, TURNED INTO A LIVING WEAPON AND SET TOWARDS A CAUSE THEY DON'T BELIEVE IN, THEY ARE CHAINED AND THEY WILL ONLY ACHIEVE THEIR GREATEST SELVES ONCE THOSE CHAINS ARE BROKEN,

and this entire fucking theme of subjugation and of being transformed into a living weapon was in Brood War, too! That was what the UED did to the Zerg! This is why Kerrigan is the hero of Brood War, an entire species was enslaved and her, with her human mind, was the only hope anyone had of not submitting to Earth's slave army! Amon is simply the greater master who enslaves the zerg more subtly, with chains that are harder to break because they permeate across the hive mind link itself,

And by the fucking WAY, the revelations of that xel'naga relic, Zeratul's visions, the insight given by Zurvan of the primal Zerg, all bring such a delicious context to the entire wings of liberty campaign, and they make that campaign good and make everything I complained about earlier just an extra spicy flavoring and a dash of gray to our terran heroes, THEY MADE ME ACTUALLY LIKE RAYNOR???

bcs you know what, fine, perhaps Raynor does see the Queen of Blades as nothing but pure evil, perhaps he does choose to ally with the Dominion to destroy her, that is his human perspective, as someone who loved Kerrigan but knew her so briefly, all he can truly see is the Zerg as he understands them, the mindless living weapon, the infested terrans that beg for death as they seek to tear you limb from limb. We are imperfect, we aren't omniscient, perhaps I should forgive Raynor for his short-sightedness. He cannot concieve of harmony with the zerg because of what he has seen, so of course his dear friend is corrupted, infested, controlled, and he has to free her, and maybe he can make this deal with the devil. From his eyes, this is the best route he can take. He even knows he should not kill her, he knows what she's meant to be, and he has no idea how she'll go from the monster he sees now to the savior of Zeratul's prophecy, so he does what he thinks is best.

and as we see in HotS (and i think also LotV a bit?), Raynor's choice to use the relic was a mistake, it robs the zerg of their salvation and feeds so much energy into Amon's greedy maw... but also, it wasn't a mistake.

See, Kerrigan's temporary severance from the swarm frees her of the influence of Amon on her mind (though I am adamant that her actions have been PRIMARILY motivated by rage and vengeance and spite!), and when she sheds her humanity once more and properly returns to the Swarm, it is in the sacred birthplace of all Zerg, on the planet that obeys the law of nature, where hardship and violence are tools to produce an ever-greater self, and all that she has suffered will become her strength,

AND KERRIGAN ASCENDS - NO, EVOLVES - INTO HER PRIMAL SELF IN ORDER TO FULLY REALIZE THE OVERMIND'S PLOT OF LIBERATION. I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG AND SHE WAS A HERO, THANK YOU HEART OF THE FUCKING SWARM YOU REDEEMED SC2.

which just makes the fucking fire lady 'oh shes not zerg anymore she's xel'naga heehee' feel all the more bullshit???? Like, i thought it was bullshit before I knew anything abt HotS but now its SUPER bullshit, bcs primal kerrigan WAS her perfected self. She didn't NEED to become xel'naga. SHE IS ZERG! SHE IS THE QUEEN OF BLADES!

It's just so pointless. Nothing you could do to Kerrigan in this literal final hour of the entire Starcraft franchise could possibly be as thematically powerful as the Zerus arc, and you should've just continued those themes. leave Kerrigan's character arc concluded. Stop fucking with it. You had something amazing and you fumbled the bag at the literal last second. seriously, what the fuck? THAT'S how you end the series? What happened in the writers' room- other than the creepy misogynist bullshit we already know was happening, of course?

anyways yeah I hope that satisfied your curiosity. :D i don't wanna know how many words this was, I just know it took me like 2h to write. maybe more. I don't have a good sense of time. it's the autism.

#starcraft #zerg #kerrigan #sc2 analysis #warning deranged rambles here #HI CAN YOU TELL I LOVE KERRIGAN

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