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public-trans-it · 8 months

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i would love to hear your dark spore rant. i didnt even know spore had a sequel.

Oh anon. Poor sweet anon. I’m so sorry.

So, the thing about Darkspore is…

… it was a really REALLY… mediocre game.

Like, the moment to moment gameplay was… fine. Just fine. Not incredible. But not BAD! Really, it only had two major flaws:

The first, it was buggy as hell. One particularly nasty bug was present in the games launcher, and on certain systems the game would fail to install at all. They were unable to ever fix this bug, which I speculate was a major reason the game was abandoned by the devs so quickly and lead to it being taken down from every major digital distribution site. You could still install and play it if you already bought it though! If… it actually installed for you.

Which leads us to the second flaw. It’s right there on the box.

“Internet connection required”

The game has Always Online DRM. All the levels, enemies, loot, your entire account, was all stored server side. And servers are expensive. So, when the games bugs became unwieldy and not worth fixing, and they took it offline… it became a money sink. It was a game generating ZERO revenue, but had huge server maintenance costs. So eventually, they just shut down the servers.

It is now very difficult to obtain the game, requiring you to buy one of the few unopened physical copies remaining. And even once you do have it, it is IMPOSSIBLE to play. There is a project called Resurrection Capsule in the works, some fans trying to create a private server for it. But with so much info stored server side, they basically have to recreate entire subsystems from scratch. It’s… not going very fast, and to my knowledge hasn’t been touched in over a year.

Story

The story of the game is pretty basic. A progenitor race of alien super-scientists create a new, synthetic form of DNA, called Exponential-DNA, or E-DNA. This rapidly mutates to create new life, and can be guided to create specific, specialized organisms, condensing thousands of years of evolution to a few hours. It can also be injected into existing creatures to alter them and make them more powerful. However it also linked everything affected by it into a hivemind. So it was outlawed. The creator of it decided to respond by creating a E-DNA virus, called The Darkspore, infecting himself with it, and spreading it across the galaxy and conquering it, wiping out his own race.

You play as another member of that race, who has been in hibernation for 1000 years while that was going down. Your ship AI has woken you up because it has managed to stabilize E-DNA and also keep it disconnected from the hivemind, and needs you to go kill the guy who took over the galaxy. That is how the game starts.

…

And how the story ends. There is not really any more story past that part. You get a cutscene describing each of the games 6 planets the first time you visit it, and a final “Hey you won!” cutscene after killing the final boss which ends with the cliche “implication the villain isn’t really dead” trope, and… that’s it. That’s the entire story. Not really the selling point of this game. Its not even entirely clear if it takes place in the same universe as Spore! It’s just set dressing for “Run through these 24 levels and beat everything up”

Gameplay

Darkspore was created by Maxis. This alone was HUGE. This was a team of developers who only really made lifesims like The Sims and Sim City, taking a stab at making a diablolike game.

And I GENUINELY BELIEVE every single studio out there needs to do shit like this. Designing for something so outside your wheelhouse creates SOOOOO much innovation so quickly. You get fresh new ideas injected into the genre so quickly. The final product won’t be good! You don’t have any damn experience in the genre! But it will create something unique beautiful, and god damn I wish we lived in a world where that alone was enough and devs weren’t focused on chasing profits instead.

Genesis

Genesis is just a fancy way of saying ‘Element’. There are 5 of them: Plasma (fire and lightning), Bio (plants and animals), Cyber (machines), Necro (death and fear), and Quantum (space and time) and the way they interact is… certainly a choice I guess. Each Darkspore you face has a genesis it falls into, and each of your heroes has one as well. If your Genesis matches that of the darkspore you are fighting at the moment, you take double damage and they take half damage. If they don’t match, all damage both ways is neutral.

The system itself is kinda mediocre. The biggest part of it, however, is the Variant Skills. Each Genesis has 4 unique skills tied to it that represent the common elements of that type.

Heroes

There are 25 heroes in the game, which each have one Genesis and one Class (Sentinel which are the tanks, Ravagers which are the DPS, and Tempest which are the Casters/Support)

Each hero has 4 total variants, with the first one you unlock being Alpha, and as you level up your account (heroes do not have their own levels) you eventually can purchase their Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants, with each variant having slightly different stats, and a different one of their Genesis’ 4 variant abilities.

Each hero has a unique basic attack, which USUALLY has a little extra to it. For example Sage shoots a bolt that hurts enemies it hits, but heals allies it hits. Zrin alternates between two different punches, one of which has a short duration DoT and the other of which has a 10% stun chance. Stuff like that.

They also have a passive effect that is always active while you are playing them. Collect a soul from each enemy killed for a 5% damage boost, 10% damage bonus when attacking from behind, a stacking defense buff every time you take damage, stuff like that.

Finally, a character has 2 unique abilities. One that is unique to them and can only be used while you are playing that hero, and a second ability that is everyone in the squad can use if that hero is present.

Squad Decks

Which brings me to the first rant and something I am SO AUTISTIC ABOUT (positive). SQUADS. The game had you craft Squad Decks, collections of 3 heroes that you can swap between during your missions, for a total of 883.2k squad combinations (I think my math might be off on that). Swapping between them is on a cooldown of about 10 seconds, but otherwise is don’t instantaneously and as often as you want without penalty. You always have 5 abilities active:

- The unique ability of your active hero

- The Genesis ability of your active heroes variant

- Hero 1’s Squad ability

- Hero 2’s Squad ability

- Hero 3’s squad ability

The first two abilities change out every time you swap heroes, but the last 3 are fixed. So you have 3 abilities that you always have access to, and 6 abilities that are paired up and you can swap between which pair of those abilities is active.

Your heroes do NOT share a health/energy pool, but DO share healing pickups. Any time you pick up a health or energy restoration pickup, it refills a chunk of the respective health pool of your currently active hero, and a smaller chunk of each of your inactive heroes in the squad.

So the core loop of moment to moment gameplay becomes swapping situationally between heroes both offensively and defensively, to get access to your other heroes skills and also to mitigate damage from enemies based on their genesis or control where your healing is directed.

Loot

Loot in Darkspore is fairly standard for your average Diablolike. Item drops have 4 tiers: Common (Item Level=Account Level-5), Uncommon (Item Level=Account Level), Rarified (Item Level=Account Level+5), and Purified (Item Level=Account Level+10)

Items of higher tiers have more chances to roll on a table to gain beneficial modifiers.

Each item fell into one of a few different categories: Weapon, Hands, Feet, Offensive, Defensive, or Utility.

Each hero has one of each slot, plus an additional slot based on their class. Ravagers have an extra Offense slot, Sentinels have an extra Defense slot, and Tempests have an extra Utility slot. Any hero can equip any item you gain, with the exception of Weapons that are hero specific. Some heroes also lack Hands or Feet, in which case their weapon has extra stats and can get the same modifiers as hands and feet can.

The items you equip can then be added onto the Hero in the Hero Editor. The Hero Editor is often equated to the Creature Editor in Spore, which is BULLSHIT and was a pet peeve of mine the ENTIRE DAMN TIME THE FAME WAS LIVE. This is a FALSE EQUIVALENCE. It uses the outfit editor from the Tribal/Civilization phases of Spore instead. Importantly: this means you cannot alter the overall silhouette of your hero. It will always maintain the same basic profile and animations. However you can freely place the extra parts you equip anywhere on its body, and can also place multiple copies of them.

Additionally, old parts can have their stats stripped, converting them into ‘Detail’ parts with no stats, of which you can equip 6 different parts, each of which you can include 10 copies of on your hero. So you could get some pretty cool looks from it!

However all this loot is garbage and you likely would not use most of it outside of appearance. Which brings me to…

Cash-out Loot

Usually if you mention the word ‘cash’ in any sentence involving a game published by EA, it would be a call for concern. Luckily this isn’t that! It’s just gambling! Everything is fine!

The main progression in Darkspore comes from gear, and the best gear comes from how good your ships engines are. These come from account upgrades as you level up your account, determining how many levels you can do in a row. Every time you complete a level, you are given an option: Keep going, or ‘cash out’ and get a guaranteed piece of Uncommon gear, with a 10% chance of it becoming Rarified, as well as all the gear you picked up in the level.

If you choose to keep going, you have to complete the next level. If you die, you lose ALL the gear you picked up, including that guaranteed piece. If you make it to the end, you are given another choice: Risk it all again and go on to the next level, or stop here and get your TWO pieces of guaranteed uncommon loot, which each now have a 20% chance of becoming rarified and a 5% chance of becoming purified.

You can only go another of levels equal to the number of Engine Upgrades you have earned by leveling up your account. So at first, after the second level you HAVE to cash out. As you progress you can start to do many more levels at a time, getting a dozen pieces of gear that are practically guaranteed to be the highest rank.

But of course you have to play these levels in order, and you don’t get a chance to upgrade your character with all the cool new loot you found on the way, so you can’t just jump straight into this. You have to slowly build up to being able to push yourself this much, and once you can, you have a readily available source of some of the best gear in the game.

And that ties into my absolute favorite system of Darkspore:

Catalysts

Many diablolikes have a mechanic called ‘Sockets’. The gear you equip has its own type of equipment slot, and you put gems in there that give you small bonuses. Every game does it a little differently, but it’s kind of a staple of the series.

Darkspore uses a similar system, but utilizes it VERY differently. While you are running levels, enemies will rarely drop Catalysts instead of loot. These come in 5 colors: Purple (boosts your base stats), Red (boosts offensive secondary stats like damage or attack speed), Blue (boosts defensive secondary stats like health regen or damage resistance), Green (boosts utility secondary stats like movement speed or lifesteal), and Rainbow (can contain any of the bonuses of the previous categories) They also come in two sizes: Big and Small. This determines how big the bonus from them is.

You have a 3x3 grid on your HUD that the catalysts you collect go into. You can rearrange them however you want, and if you create a line of 3 of the same color (Rainbow is a wildcard and matches with all of them), it will double the bonus of all Catalysts in that line. This stacks, meaning if you create multiple lines over a single catalyst it could get a x3, x4, or even x5 bonus if it’s the center piece of the grid and forms a line in every direction.

However, you can’t save Catalysts. You can equip it to the grid or drop it on the ground and move on. That’s it. You have to decide now. Do you keep that Big Purple you have for the big buff to your most important stat, or do you trade it for that Small Rainbow for a mediocre stat you just found that you can plug in the middle and double everything else in your grid?

“Surely that only matters early game, and once you have good catalysts you don’t swap them out that much, right?” I hear the diablolike veterans asking, because that is how socketing works in most of those games. And normally you would be right. Except for one major change: All your catalysts only last until the end of your run. When you get to the cash out screen, and choose to keep going? You keep them. But if you choose to cash out, or if you ever die, your catalysts all vanish. Every new run you have to go through and collect them again, which results in you playing your heroes in new ways and adopting new strategies based on what catalysts drop for you each run.

It’s an INCREDIBLE easy to learn system that adds SO MUCH depth and replayability to the game. I love it so incredibly much. Each mechanic flows elegantly into the the next. The catalysts help you do better runs which gets you better gear which upgrades your heroes which lets you do better runs, the entire spiral being locked into your account level to give a quantifiable metric of how far this spiral is gone. It was so good!

And now, it’s gone forever.

Man that sure was a long post. Friends have heard me go on this rant SO many times. Thank god I never got into a second mediocre game filled with novel innovations that are ultimately lost to time and can never be experienced again due to Always Online DRM making it unplayable. Can you imagine if I didn’t learn my lesson and did that a second time? Ha!

… I never did that again. Right?

… right?

…

HEX: Shards of Fate

Hex was a digital TCG legal battle with TCG elements created by Cryptozoic. It was originally put up on Kickstarter, advertised as a digital card game with both PvE and PvP modes, a unique focus on the design space opened up by being a digital game, and gameplay damn near identical to Magic: The Gathering.

The thinly veiled truth was that this game was never meant to succeed. They had hoped it would, and it would be great if it did, but I’m fairly certain that was always a secondary objective. The first objective was to get sued by Wizards of the Coast over the similarities to Magic: The Gathering.

Now, that might sound strange to an outsider, but to anyone in the industry, they are probably nodding along and going “Yeah that tracks actually.”

You see, Wizards of the Coast is… bad. Really bad. They do everything in their power to choke the life out of the industry and have resorted to a lot of questionable tactics to do so. One of these is against anyone who develops any form of trading card game. You see, WotC has a patent on booster packs, customizable decks of cards, and turning cards sideways.

Literally.

U.S. Patent No 5,662,332 (A)

It is not a coincidence that the second two biggest names in TCGs don’t involve turning your cards sideways. Konami contested that Yugioh was different enough to not violate the patent.

WotC responded by suing them. They settled out of court.

Nintendo actually hired WotC to design the Pokémon TCG to NOT violate the patent in return for WotC getting to distribute the first few sets. WotC gladly accepted, distributed the game, got their cut of the sales, and as soon as that was over….

WotC responded by suing them. They settled out of court.

Every single other game out there ended up paying royalties to WotC. Because the cut of the sales to WotC was cheaper than going to court even if you won. WotC had their fingers in every pie, but was smart enough to make sure not to piss people off so much that refusal was ever a viable option.

Cryptozoic was a company that, at the time, was making several licensed TCGs. The big one that jumps out was the World of Warcraft TCG, which they were in charge of (though it was originally made by Upper Deck). Cryptozoic was begrudgingly paying royalties because having the WoWTCG license was too good and they didn’t want to give that up. Then Hearthstone happened and Cryptozoic was going to lose the WoWTCG license as it got discontinued.

So Cryptozoic set up their new game, Hex, specifically to bait WotC into suing them, so they could get the patent overturned.

See, the patent isn’t actually valid. You cannot patent a game mechanic. There are certainly aspects of the patent that ARE valid and CAN be enforced, but the parts about mechanics can’t actually be enforced. WotC uses it because people can’t contest it, but if it actually was used in court it would get overturned VERY easily, and WotC would be declawed.

So Cryptozoic created a game that was a clone of MtG, used a Kickstarter to build up a large amount of legal funds, and got sued by WotC! Yes! Exactly what they wanted!

… and then they settled out of court.

Sigh.

I guess I’ll talk about the game now.

Lore

The lore of the game was solid. Pretty typical fantasy setting. Humans and elves and sort of racist orcs (better than most other orcs I’ve seen at least) and extremely racist tribal coyote people make up the good guys. Undead, spider-orcs, dwarves, and also pretty racist samurai rabbit people make up the bad guys.

There are two types of magic in the world: Blood magic and Wild magic. Elves are adept at wild magic. Shin’hare (the rabbit people) are adept at wild magic as well. The Shin’hare tried to take over the world, forcing the Orcs, Humans, Elves, and Cyotle to ally together to drive them underground into the underworld.

There the Shin’hare met and allied with the Vennen, an all male race descended from Orcs. They were adept blood mages, and they procreated by kidnapping orcs and using them as incubators for spiders. I fucking love the Vennen. I’ll focus on them a lot in this. The Vennen taught the Shin’hare how to sacrifice their young for more power.

The two then allied with the Dwarves, a genderless race of sentient stone statues who excel at creating machinery, and who believe the world itself is a giant machine. Specifically, a weapon of mass destruction, and they are trying to set it off. They believe blowing people the fuck up to be their natural calling.

The underworld and overworld forces go back and forth a bit, with the Elves doing a large chunk of the work as the only overworld race that can use magic.

Then Hex happened. Hex is a massive meteor made up of Diamond, Emerald, and Sapphire. Hex punched clean through the world, scattering gems all across it, before stabilizing in orbit on the other side, becoming the worlds moon.

These gems were incredibly magical, allowing every race to now use magic. Diamonds were restorative, bringing life to things. Rubies were extremely destructive and burned bright and hot and quickly. Sapphire allowed finesse manipulation and control over water. These

Yes this is just the MtG color pie.

Eventually, humanity stumbled into one of their old crypts that was very close to the impact site of Hex, and found it CRAWLING with undead. They were taking the Diamonds from Hex and putting them into the eye sockets of human corpses, causing those corpses to reanimate. These were NOT actually undead, but an alien consciousness that existed within the gems that were using human corpses as a host.

The Necrotic sought a peaceful and symbiotic relationship with humanity as thanks for the use of the bodies. Humanity responded by getting really pissed off that the Necrotic were grave robbing, and went to war over it. Eventually the Necrotic retreated deep into the underworld and allied with the other races instead, eventually helping the Shin’hare with a second attack on the surface.

The lore has a lot more depth than that, but that’s the basic. I liked it a lot. The Orcs being good guys who just really liked tests of strength was a refreshing take on orcs. I liked them a lot. The extremely racist caricature that made up the Cyotle and the Shin’hare? Less so.

Digital Design Space

As for the actual gameplay… it was MtG. Like, almost 1:1.

Like…

Seriously.

Shards work similarly to Lands, with there being 5 basic shards, Diamond, Sapphire, Ruby, Wild, and Blood. You can only play one Shard per turn and when you do you get 1/1 Resource. 1 resource to spend on this turn, and 1 permanent resource. You spend that resource to play a card that costs 1, and you go down to 0/1 resources. Start of your turn, you would go back up to 1/1 resource.

Pretty straight forward stuff. Resources are a card type like in MtG, but once it’s played it acts as a perpetual resource like the Mana in Hearthstone, with no need to care about where the resource is coming from.

… wait a second though, this is a MtG clone. It uses the color pie. Caring where those resources come from is KIND OF a big deal in MtG.

Which is the first really cool difference between Hex and MtG! THRESHOLD! Each time you play a shard you gain 1 threshold in that color. To play a card, you have to have at least as many threshold as are displayed below its cost. See that purple dot below Murder? That means you need 1 blood threshold to play it.

Threshold is NOT consumed when you play a card, which DRASTICALLY alters deckbuilding and how feasible multi-color decks are.

For example, in MtG, if you had 4 swamps and 1 mountain in play, and 5 cards in hand that all cost R…. You can play 1 whole card this turn.

In Hex, if you have 4 Blood and 1 Ruby, and have 5 cards that all cost 1 and have a single Ruby threshold, you can play your entire hand that turn. This made it incredibly viable to splash colors in relatively smaller amounts. It also opened up cool new design space, like cards that cost 1 but still required 3 threshold in a color. Or cards that require 1 threshold of every type to activate a bonus effect (very common among Necrotic) or… for sockets!

HEY WE ARE COMING FULL CIRCLE!

Remember how I mentioned Diablolike games having sockets, but how Darkspore didn’t use it? Well Hex DOES. There was a pair of keywords called Socketable Major and Socketable Minor. Each set, there would be 10 gems (two of each color) that rotated out for Socketable cards. Cards with Major sockets could equip any gem, while minor sockets could only equip half of them. So for example the current rotation might have the Sapphire gems be “While you have at least 1 Sapphire Threshold, this card has Flying” for its Minor gem, and “When you play this card, if you have at least 3 Sapphire Threshold, target player draws 3 cards”

You chose which gem was in each Socketable card during deckbuilding. Different copies of the same card could have different gems equipped, or you could have the same gem equipped across multiple different cards. It was basically a way to go “This card was designed to be splashed in other color decks. You pick what that other color is.”

It opened up a lot of design space! This was something Hex did VERY well. They knew they were making a MtG clone, but they weren’t beholden to the same restrictions a physical card game did, and they THRIVED in those areas.

For example, REPLICATORS GAMBIT, a one cost card that creates six copies of a troop (read: creature) that just… could not exist in MtG.

Another example of this was in my favorite archetype in Hex: Mill. Now, I’m not normally a blue player. I’m not a big fan of the ‘you don’t get to play the game’ archetype. Even mill isn’t really my thing. But the way it worked in HexTCG? God I loved it. I wish I could see my opponents faces as they reached a trembling hand out to their bloated, grotesque deck, a cruel mockery of what it once was. They had started the match with only 60 cards, but now it held twice that number. Knowing every draw was more likely to bring their own skittering death out.

…

Maybe I should back up a bit.

Vennen are, in MtG terms, tribal Blue/Black with a focus on control. Specifically an aggressive form of control. Your wincon is still ‘beat your opponent to death’, but the means by which you do it is… spiders.

Lots of Vennen cards work by still allowing your opponent to do the thing that you blocked, but it now creates Spider Eggs in their deck. Lock down a creature as it enters play with ‘Everytime this creature becomes tapped, shuffle 3 spider eggs into your deck’ or ‘Whenever an opponent draws a third card this turn add a spider egg to their deck’ or ‘When this creature is destroyed add a spider egg to your opponent’s deck’ and when they DRAW a spider egg… well… the effect of a spider egg is more or less ‘When this card enters your hand or graveyard, draw/discard another card into that zone and destroy this one. Your opponent creates a Spiderling and puts it in play. “

Spiderlings are 1/1 Unblockable creatures.

The Vennen win con is to just fill your opponent with spiders and then shred them apart once the spiders start hatching. It was a DELIGHTFUL playstyle.

PvE

Hex also features a fairly robust PvE mode with a point crawl encounter map that was quite delightful. There were cards unique to PvE, but all PvP cards were also legal in PvE. In general, all your staples came from PvP and were the same core staples everyone uses to win (they were very generous with handing out common/uncommon PvP cards in the single player mode, which in turn also made Pauper a very popular format), however you also had PvE cards which made up your win cons. PvE cards weren’t balanced as tightly, and allowed to just be dumb overpowered bullshit just because it’s fun to use dumb overpowered bullshit sometimes!

There were also equipment slots that would modify the cards in your deck, turning PvP cards into PvE cards. For example, Replicators Gambit made it so that EVERY copy of that card gained that text.

PvE started with character creation. You would create a character that was one of the 8 races, and one of 6 3 different classes. Warrior, Cleric, or Ranger. I think there was a late update that added Mage but I don’t recall too clearly, and it isn’t document online anymore as far as I can tell!

Each class had a unique talent tree that you could customize and change how you played. Your race determined what colors you could play, and your level determined how many of each rarity you could play.

I played a Vennen Cleric. Cleric’s whole thing was that you would gain Blessings, 0 cost cards that would rise in your deck each turn, and could be played to draw a card as well as additional effects based on your build. My blessings put more eggs in the enemy deck, to the surprise of no one.

As you went from encounter to encounter you would earn new cards to modify your deck, swapping decks between fights. Then there were dungeons, long laborious streaks of a dozen or so encounters, with branching paths and decisions to be made, earning you tons of new packs and equipment and experience to boost your character. One especially fun encounter was crossing a desert with a pack of… I think it was gnomes? There were 20 of them that needed rescuing. The way you rescued them was putting them in your deck, and then leaving the desert through a single combat encounter. Except they were AWFUL. Like 3 cost vanilla 1/1’s level of awful. The more you had in your deck, the harder the encounter became. It was a really nice way to portray the logistical challenge of trying to fight while protecting all these useless tagalongs.

There were plans to even introduce Raids, 3v1 PvE encounters, but they fizzled out as the game got sunset.

The game was good. REALLY good. It relished in the digital design space in a way I haven’t quite seen since then. A few games, like Legends of Runeterra, have come close, but always fall short, and that’s so sad! I DESPERATELY want to play a TCG with this level of customization again!

Luckily that was the end of it. I finally learned the error of my ways, never touched anything ‘always online’ again, and now can live a life without regrets! … except Legends of Runeterra a little bit like I mentioned above but THATS IT! There are no other always online games I have regrets about!

…

ToonTown Online

Okay no, not seriously. I’ve never played toontown. But honestly it looked kinda silly and like a shitpost in video game form. I think it would have been fun to try at some point with a few friends. Not seriously, just to screw around in for a bit.

Never going to get that chance. Just like nearly everyone reading this will never get to play two of my biggest influences that shaped how I think about game design.

Always Online DRM is an insidious beast. It doesn’t just kill games, it kills *archival*. All we have left of these games is a relatively small number of gameplay videos. I was planning on having a lot more pictures in this post of all the interface elements I was talking about as I talked about them, but there just… aren’t any good pictures of them. Even these details are based on my own memory cross referenced with a couple of wikis, and even those were sparse.

Some games can’t feasibly avoid Always Online. MMO’s are a big example. But by adding it into a game that has a single player experience involved, and not making that single player experience a standalone thing on its own, you are destroying any hope that your game will be remembered. It will fade into obscurity. There will never be a cult revival. Your work will be discarded and forgotten and it’s… so incredibly sad to see.

I jokingly titled this section being about ToonTown, but really this section is about Kingdom Hearts: Union X. It was a mediocre and disgustingly predatory gacha. It was horribly managed with horrible issues around localization and it was just… a mess. But it was part of the world of Kingdom Hearts, and it’s story was important and mattered.

The game is no longer playable, but it’s also not entirely lost. The devs created a new version of it, as a gallery to view the cutscenes. The single-player side mode, Dark Road, is also included. The devs didn’t have to do this. They could have gone the same route as Darkspore and HexTCG, and had their work be forgotten. They chose to save it. Not in full, but at least the parts the deemed important.

It also makes me wonder how much this happens in other mediums. Ludology is a pretty new field, and it rarely goes into specific games and their impact on the medium, mostly just focusing on the impacts they have on humanity, rather than the mechanics themselves as these beautiful pieces of art. And it makes me wonder how often this happens with say… film critics. Are there any indie film makers who are deep in the paint of indie films and critique of not just the films themselves, but the very techniques being used, just sitting there going “It’s so upsetting that this big studio managed to do something this beautiful and all of us in the scene recognize it’s beauty, but no one else seems to, and now it’s gone?”

… as I’m writing this I actually realize that this does happen there. It’s how I found out about what became my favorite film of all time, The Man From Earth. It’s a small film that flopped horribly in theaters, and only gained any attention by being pirated by a lot by indies who wanted to talk about it. It’s a good movie, highly recommend. Not for everyone though.

I don’t know. I’m sure I had a point with all this but… seeing it happen again and again and now with streaming services taking stuff down it’s just… I can’t help but seeing not just more and more games, but more and more of EVERY artistic medium ending up in this area. How many digital artists entire portfolios have vanished off the face of the earth because their tumblr got deactivated? How many movies are going to be gone forever when Netflix eventually goes out of business? We can’t even rely on piracy! Many old pieces of media is just lost forever. Just ask the Doctor Who fandom. They probably know more about that than anyone else at this point.

But mostly I just really wish more developers would consider what parts of their games are important, and what kind of legacy they want to leave, instead of just what will generate a short burst of profit, with no care for what happens after.

… I should start doing video essays with how long this got. It’s like some kind of text based video essay. A text essay. Those are a new thing I just invented.

#Darkspore #Spore #Those are the only two tags on this post because those are the only games I talk about don’t worry about it. it’s fine. don’t read further.#HexTCG #Hex: Shards of Fate #Kingdom Hearts: Union X #Always Online DRM #The Man From Earth #I swear to god if anyone tells me I should just play Temo on LoR I will scream #YES I KNOW AND I DO #but also LoR sucks #and also that is missing THE ENTIRE POINT OF THIS RANT #the SAME THING IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO LEGENDS OF RUNETERRA #maybe not soon #but it WILL die someday #and be gone forever #because it isn’t being preserved #Text Essay

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 9 months

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AITA for getting back into gardening?

There’s a story to this I swear I swear.

So. My friend got introduced to the game Omori! I’ve been a fan since it was in development and have been slowly trying to convince them to play the game to have brainrot with me.

And, like many people, my friend grew to love the character Basil when they played it. He’s a shy, sweet boy who loves plants.

My friend has now entirely changed themselves and acts as if they are pretending to be Basil in real life. They bought new outfits that mimic the ones he wears, they’ve suddenly started growing plants, etc. it’s very strange.

This is totally fine may I add! Baffling, but it’s not hurting anyone and I am actually very happy for them if this is genuinely how they want to express themselves. What is not okay is how they’re… trying to stop me enjoying gardening..?

I love plants and after a longwinded medical issue, I’m feeling less shitty I’m back into it actively. I have a thriving aloe vera with babies, cacti, succulents, a fig tree, apple tree, pear tree, herbs, raspberry bush, blackberry bush, loganberry bush, tomatoes, potatoes, etc etc. you get the picture. I really love plants! And I decided since I’ve been feeling better, hey, why not plant some new stuff too? So I’ve got some sprouts of various plants growing.

As I enjoy plants and they also do, I figured it’s a good common thing to bond over! I thought since they were a beginner I could help them when they got stuck or needed advice. So I’ve been talking to them a lot about their plants, offering some stuff to them when I harvest it, like strawberries and raspberries and apples, etc. and also being a generally open person if they need advice.

I have discovered over the past month or three that it seems my friend can not keep a plant alive to save his own skin. It’s okay, he’s new to it, plants die, it’s life. But when I offer some help (eg: “take some of my flower food, it will really help you get more blossoms when the time comes,” “you need to prune this part, it’s dead and it will spread to the rest of the plant”) he acts like I’m speaking down to him or insulting him. And he keeps killing plants.

Eventually I actually got upset with the amount of plants he was killing. They are living things and deserve a fighting chance, just like any person or animal does. There is no reason not to treat a spider plant with the same care you would a tree. So I was like hey if you want I can help you set up a watering schedule / help you find out which plants need more shade or more sun and stuff so you can keep them alive longer and he just blew up at me. I’m talking like screaming that he knew what he was doing and it’s NORMAL for plants to die and i “didn’t even care about plants until [I] started so why are you copying?!” It threw me for a loop and actually made me cry because you know… I don’t like getting yelled at lmao. After I cried a little bit I told him that I wasn’t going to talk to him until he apologises for treating me like that because it was uncalled for and really hurtful, I was only trying to help him with his hobby so we could talk about plants together and maybe share some propagated sprouts or something when his plants were old enough. He complained about me online for about a week but no one really listened because it’s very common knowledge I’ve been gardening since I was literally about four years old. He’s since stopped complaining about it but still refuses to apologise.

I’m worried that I might have been an asshole by offering my advice and help? I never pushed it onto him or anything, just offered helpful tidbits and gave him some plant food once, but he might have taken it in a different way than how I meant it.

AITA?

~🌿

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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skunkes · 7 months

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sorry if this is a silly question but do you like. sit down and talk with your ocs in your head? and they tell you about themselves? how do you get them to reveal information....i am begging mine to let me know them orz

I do! In several different ways ^_^ the trick is to think of yourself as a character in your brain theater... ill mostly be explaining thru examples and using silly language ^_^ and its more How I Do It vs a how to....

"Sitting down and talking to em" interrogation style only happens before they're fully formed. when talon still didnt have very many traits it was like we were in a white room with 2 chairs... although you COULD make a scenario out of this its usually the Before for me. final tweaks in the form of basic traits and info before sending em out for further development

the way i get ocs to tell me about themselves is more thru actions! with talon I "locked him in a room" with al in the form of imagining how they'd meet. because I set it in talon's decrepit home with no running water or electricity, there come questions like. would he be accommodating? would he explain the vampirism or just rely on flashing his fangs or hiding them until its time to bite? these arent questions i actually went into the scenario having, but as you Play Dolls its questions that get answered anyway, ykwim? (although you could also go into the simulation (lol) with questions you want answered!) And its your brain so you can do as many takes and tweaks as you want, and things develop as you imagine the same thing, or different things, which all inform a character.

Scenarios could be anything. Im a serial daydreamer so anything goes depending on how bored I am or what im doing... and just like with real people, every scenario is a way to learn more about somebody...! It's like improv in your brain as you think up how they'd react and respond to things, and what they'd say. But also, going with your oc to the grocery store or a restaurant or to slay a dragon could give you insight into their behavior but likely not any info about their trauma or whatever, just like real people (but it also depends on the person) (and the oc!)

I DO have "sit down and talk" scenarios once i feel ive learned enough standard, early level friendship stuff about em though. It's much fun if you set the scene in your mind to mimic a real life Deep Conversation session. Sitting in the backyard on those plastic chairs, or aimless car ride at night. right now the one I keep going back to is just. Loafed in bed when you're really sleepy and just starting to say anything about anything and maybe get a little sentimental. sometimes its just me talking but I obvs have the ability to imagine how he'd be interpreting that in his brain, ykwim?? You play several roles at once I guess. It's like the sims, switching back and forth between povs, but the level of immersion i get into never feels like I'm Making Them Say It, it just feels natural at that point because I've learned enough.

There's also information that's shared by you figuring out what they'd Think (as above) vs what they say which is also fun characterwise... AND ALSO while im daydreaming scenarios I do multiple takes to find their voice. Like, I'm an overexplainer, a detailed therapy-speak-er. Sometimes I catch myself giving ocs that Voice and I have to do a retake. Like hold on, Talon would NOT be introspective. He wouldn't share all that shit I just "made" him say even if it is true and now I know about it. He'd say something insanely vague and confusing if anything at all. Let's take it from the top. etc

It rlly is about immersion! You have to have fun with it! Sometimes it's so Real to me that I genuinely can't develop an oc further because I cant make something up for them and they wont "tell me", which means I just have to spend more time with em I guess! or maybe need to leave em alone for a bit. or maybe ill never know (<- which also tells me about em!) just like real people. treat the fake people like real people in your fake dollhouse brain theater sims lot puppet show simulation.... also i added more in the tags bc i didnt know where to put it in the main txt 😭

#skunk mail #Anonymous #long post #LONG LONG POST.#also i didnt know where to add this but like. regardless of who im making interact #sometimes i imagine it in first person (my pov) sometimes 3rd person (spectator) and sometimes from the perspective of the oc #its like choosing a character in a video jame... like sometimes ill put talon in scenarios by himself and spectate #but other times its like okay what if we do it from his pov how would that change things #interacting with yourself (or other ocs) from the pov of the oc is also really fun.#this person (you) is trying to get you (oc) to open up. how do u react...#what do u know? what do u share?

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centrally-unplanned · 3 months

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As I am now full-in on the body count section of The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, I do have growing complaints about how it handles its sort of mystery build-up and reveal aspects. There is an adage for mystery novels to "have your answers ask more questions"; you set up a mystery, you *resolve* the mystery, but that resolution itself just creates deeper mysteries. This of course works very well to keep ratcheting up tension and keep the story moving forward; but it also resolves tension at the same time, you do actually get answers as you go. As an author you can perhaps think of there being a "quota" for the number of active questions for the reader to be considering; if you stack too many at once its both too hard to track them and is frustrating to read about, the story never delivers.

TFTBN breaks this rule; not every time, but a lot. In particular with Su's identity/trauma origin it happens all the time, you get literally dozens of "more mystery" moments behind it before you ever get any answers around it. Its just too coy by half! Why is my narrator like deliberately hiding their own thoughts from the reader across dozens of instances where those thoughts would be extremely relevant? The tension has already been ratcheted to the max, you can set it aside for a bit if you want but if you dangle the question in front of me too often it loses impact.

And even though now we have been getting answers, its *still* playing coy. You have a flashback to a scene of child Su being confronted by Ran over her identity mystery, and she breaks down and starts to explain it, and then the scene just cuts, so you only get a half an explanation. Which is enough to pretty much piece it together, so like the tension is gone? Now when you are coy about it (multiple times after that scene!) its a little lame actually, who ya fooling! But what it did is take away the opportunity to just have a really good scene. You cut away from a character's moment of emotional revelation and interpersonal confrontation.

Mysteries, to simplify of course, do two things for the reader; they make you turn the page in your desire to know more, and they set up dramatic stakes for their reveal in scenes. Its a balancing act ofc but you don't want to sacrifice the latter to keep baiting the former.

I feel this too around the "villain faction" for the story. Right now the villain faction is a virtually-unknown group of actors who have had no interactions or relationships with any of the characters, using mystery tactics to kill people. We are many chapters into that plot, multiple people of note have died, but they are still just strangers - their stated motives minimal and seemingly farcical.

Ofc I am no fool, I understand via meta knowledge and have picked up on the hints they have dropped that they will in fact not be strangers in full - I get how stories work. The problem is that meanwhile we have had like multiple scenes of the group having the traitor debate - "is it one of us?" But that question is silly because I *know nothing about the villains* of substance. Why would any of these classmates betray their group for them? We have no info on that. Oh sure sure I have these like, tiny *mechanical* hints. Like one time Seth? He gave a thumbs up to Ezekiel, when they were supposed to be mad at each other. Sus, my dudes. But that isn't a *motive*, right? Its not a compelling story, its just data. Because the story wont resolve any of its dangling questions, the idea that any of these people is a traitor is just dumb, you would have to like explain the entire plot in one infodump to sell it as interesting. By insisting on drip-feeding every mystery, instead of chained resolution-renewal, these plot threads aren't developed enough to work when they need to.

I do think this comes back to the fundamentals of the pacing issue - there is essentially a desire for this story to be longer than it is. Its a 3000 page book (equivalent ofc), but it isn't, not really. I am ~1000 pages into it I guess, but its probably not even ~500 pages in actual content. I could do this in definitely 400. And this is more than just a padding problem - its that structural thing, to make that length work and still be decent as a story (which it is, its a good story overall) you have to sort of chop up your big moments , which sort of kills them.

Like there is a character, Jia Fang, a fellow student who doesn't go with the group, but is mentioned a bunch as a sort of wild card, and its built up right? They are totally gonna show up somehow, there is tension about what they are up to, and then bam, they literally burst through the door. Its great, they make a huge impact, the chapter ends on that cliffhanger.

And then after maybe a few paragraphs with them the next *multiple chapters* are about a conversation between other people, about other topics where Fang is barely mentioned, and then literally, literally, we get multiple other student's academic thesis presentations, before the plot that Fang showed up to be involved in kicks back into gear. Its self-sabotage right, the literary moment broken apart because the story has to hit quota.

Its certainly a case where the serial nature of the publication would make it ludicrously difficult to fix, that I totally get. Art is really, really hard.

#the flower that bloomed nowhere

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insipid-drivel · 22 days

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Hi, hey, hello! I just wanted to say I saw your Basic Horse Info post and it made me SO happy. I've been riding since I was 2 (English, competitive hunter/jumper) and spent three years working alongside an equine vet. I always get so bothered when people handle horses incorrectly in media. I just wanted to shoot you a message and say thanks for taking the time to do that, and that it's super hella rad that you have barrel racing experience! I have ridden western a tiny bit myself, but nothing close to the skill it takes to run barrels. I'd love to get back into riding on my own terms someday (money pending) and dig more into that discipline. The agility on the flat is super cool to me! I am always down to talk shop about horses and riding and all that, so if you ever want a horsey chat pal, I'd love to be that person! Anyway have a wonderful day!

Thanks for reaching out! I seriously envy your ability to handle English riding rofl, I would always end up slipping off the saddle or just freaking out in general because I didn't feel like there was enough under my butt to keep me stable with English tack! Plus, I just... suck at dressage. I tried a little dressage, and my riding instructor would literally bow her head and pinch between her eyes at how terrible my posture was, how bad I was at remembering where to turn my head, etc.

I choose to blame learning to ride in my early teens rather than a very young age. Or just being a big baby, which is just as likely. My mom, who's worked with horses since she was a child, wanted to raise me in the saddle, but our finances never really worked out to where we could pull that off.

The funny thing is that I only got into barrel racing because it was the sport that my instructing horse practiced before his owner retired him from competing and trained him as a teaching horse. Once my ass was sitting on Western style tack, things kinda just clicked for me, and after a few months my teacher was running out of stuff for me to learn from the "general riding" category and busted out her old set of barrels one day just to give me something more to do! She didn't actually mean to get me hooked on it, but I don't think she should've ever blamed herself. I blame my horse, Chip, for getting me into barrel racing.

He was a sour old grump (he was about 14 when I started learning; your classic chestnut and white painted Quarterhorse), healthy, but had to retire from racing after he'd badly strained one of the tendons in his back legs and the vet warned he'd probably tear it if he had to keep competing seriously. He could still run the barrels from time to time for fun, but continuing to professionally compete would've lamed him permanently. He generally had the demeanor of a bitter athlete forced to retire before his career could really take off, and kind of... forgot he was supposed to be going easy on me when he saw the barrels. I had only just barely begun learning the rhythm for galloping and was still very, very nervous about it (I wasn't even that good at switching leads yet), but Chip did NOT care, took off at the barrels, and I suddenly found myself at a full gallop on his back, wide-eyed, and flying around those barrels.

After that? I couldn't stop barrel racing. My instructor started making the barrels a regular part of my riding instructions. That feeling of flying around those breakneck turns - the freedom and feeling of the gods of Life and Death flipping a coin on your odds of survival at the same time - woke something up in me, and I was racing casually with him and getting ready to try competition riding on a new horse when I started developing problems with my gallbladder that took me out of the saddle for good :( That's when I discovered a love for working as a stable hand, since it kept me with the horses and at the barn.

However, about 6 years ago, I had my gallbladder removed, my health has been getting better, and I now live in an area rife with horse ranches. The closest store to my house is literally a tack and garden supply shop. My doctor has been nudging me to get more exercise, and I'm really beginning to miss the smell of alfalfa flakes...

Feel free to visit my DMs/askbox again! I love reading the tags on that post and seeing other horse stories in the comments and tags, so it's awesome to hear from people directly about them :)

#asks

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acatwitha3ds · 1 year

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Playing the Sea of Stars Demo

I am definitely very much still in love with Harvestella (I have a huuuuge backlog of things to post about it, *lol*), but I thought I’d do a quick review of this new JRPG-inspired game coming this summer! [According to vol56 of the Nintendo Power podcast, the release date mentioned was August 29th, so cheers for that!]

Sea of Stars has so much charm, just from the opening art/screens alone. The music’s catchy, although I won’t yet deem it memorable since my playthru sort of blitzed by. But the pixels and designs, both in and out of battle, are easy on the eyes as well as detailed, and I definitely found myself itching to learn more about my trio of friends and the pirate crew with whom they were mixing up; the story’s enthralling enough, for sure. More thoughts below the cut! (Long post, but detailed, so enjoy the read!)

After adjusting a couple of minor things (sound/lighting) from the settings before I began, I also read thru the tutorials/info supplied from the main menu. The most interesting things came from the Combat submenus, I think:

MP Regen! From smacking your foes around!! The developers clearly have played their fair share of games where ethers were few and far between.

This struck me as rather confusing... All items? Max 10 items altogether? Or 10 of each item?

Vulnerabilities: A tried and true mechanism of most games, but their spin is fun.

This is also cool but makes me wonder if it provides any real advantages. (Even once I got into battle, I didn’t find myself swapping.)

You chose from these two protagonists, and each have their appeal. For my playthru, I went with Zale.

...but most importantly, once the game started up, I opened my bag and discovered 10 “items” means you can only carry 10 *meals* at a time. You can carry a huge number of ingredients and anything else you need! X’D Thank gods!

When things open, you’re given some time and space to get a feel for the field mechanics, which are great. I love being able to climb up and down things properly, the way I’ve always dreamed of doing in...all my other RPGs. Battle takes a moment to grasp, esp since hitting A with the right timing means you hit harder or apparently can block (ngl, I don’t think I ever managed to block). But once you’ve gotten the feel of things, you zip right into town and into the middle of a story, it seems...

Time to involve ourselves with the aforementioned pirates!

From there, Zale and friends receive the captain’s courier task and...well, it was actually a very fun puzzle that wasn’t frustrating to solve. I was happy for that, because the battles were a bit challenging (and I kept the optional item to boost health in the settings turned off). BUT, one huge plus for Sea of Stars: Don’t worry about your charries dying in battle. After a few turns, they will revive with a fraction of their HP on their own!!!

That was especially a relief since you do face one boss in this demo slice of the game...and ngl right before I beat the boss, two of my three charries were KO’d. :+ But I’m still super excited for this, and I won’t spoil a few things for when you “clear” the demo, but...well, I highly recommend you downloading and playing it!

In the meantime, I will count the days until August 29th (or whenever it comes out...)!

#sea of stars #screenshot #mewling stupid things

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gleefullypolin · 1 month

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I agree, there's no fun in worrying for me and it's not really the step by step I enjoy it's the journey and if I get to know the path a little bit I'll feel more confident in my enjoyment. I know it's not for everyone but I've never enjoyed something less by knowing, it just makes me feel prepared.

Man, I've seen enough people who have alleged info that they're fighting going into an Eloise hater era which makes me a little nervous for that whole plot. I was immediately smitten with Eloise in s1 and s2 sort of made me side eye some of the things she said/did and ugh, the heartbreak at the end was too much. Too Much!

What a poor lonely boy, trying to figure himself out. I do think the inclusion of him running from responsibility being something he's called out on in the books would be a good idea in the show. Swearing off women, touring the world are both all fine and good but the motivations behind both are sort of just more versions of escaping dealing with things. Writing Pen but leaving the others out feels like A Choice if confirmed. I saw somewhere that Pen's face changed to horrified or something like that when the last LW voiceover started so I wonder if she wrote what she wrote about him while angry and regretted it later? The impulsivity of it all!

They're going to have to go at each other if they ever want to move forward. He's always been a bit delicate with her and she's always been a bit shy with him so them having these different personas they're wearing that the other detests is just basically a slingshot to character development, ha. Thin line between love and hate and all that. Plus a carriage ride, etc etc.

They're so messy! I don't think LW will keep picking at him, especially after he apologizes but I won't be surprised if he, like in the books, doesn't love being called an empty headed charmer. Or if Penelope puts herself down continually in it. It's not going to endear LW to him if he's falling in love with Pen and LW is calling her out for her awkwardness.

Oh yes, I thought that was the wildest part of the spoilers? She was approached by the two men on their own before she embarrassed herself and Obi Wan as well before her dress was torn. And he seemed very kind about it all but I'm guessing the Cressida and Eloise element after embarrassing herself with an added bonus of watching Colin flirt with every woman in there was probably too much for her, poor thing.

It's such an intriguing set up! She's awkward socially but very sharp privately, I wonder if that's going to confuse him at all knowing how witty she is when she's with him. Though it doesn't seem like she needs too much of his help but you have to wonder since he seems to move so quickly from his slut era to being almost entirely focused on Pen if he has any other motivations. Especially adding in a man who is titled, wealthier, and genuinely interested in her. The guy seems like he is going to be going Through It.

So many TV shows lost promo during covid, they are not special in that regard. It's not some nefarious plot. I find most things can almost always be reduced to a ship war if you peel off the layers of whatever someone is yelling about in a fandom. I've been harassed and no matter what someone came at me with, in the end it was always about a ship I wasn't interested in. This is Polin's season and anything else about other ships or lack thereof is not an insult during it. It's not that deep, ha.

Oh no, not adult chores, I hate those. I have felt off the last couple of days so the Polin of it all has been keeping me comfortable and cozy. I will have a hell of a time when I have to go back to adult life tomorrow. My husband saw me with headphones on and simply let me be, it was fantastic.😄

I once watched an entire show just by reading the reviews of each episode and didn’t actually watch the show until it had finished airing on television. But it was glorious because it was a truly angsty type show and I got to watch it without feeling any of it.

I am seeing it go both ways with Eloise, some are mad at her for being angry and others are angry at Pen and honestly, I don’t have time for either. They are both young and making rash decisions. Pen needs to talk to her honestly and Eloise needs to shut up long enough to listen. But if she continues as she is in the first episode and shows she still has a heart, then I will be ok with Eloise, eventually. All in time.

I just ran into that spoiler article this afternoon and saw where Pen had the reaction after the apology, so that means she once again wrote something in anger and now will have regret. HOWEVER! That also means that she still feels it, and she still needs to be honest with her feelings with Colin because lets be honest, while she said those things about him in anger, she still feels them. And he IS still hiding behind this “new” Colin. I’m already dying because while I’m excited to get to the first 4 episodes it is the back half I am most excited for. The anger and honesty of their feelings.

It is in those feelings that the truth is told and that damn carriage ride. Impulsivity is exactly right. I cannot wait for that scene. They will both be angry. Colin at the fact that she has been having a go at him AND as you said, at herself. And she at finally getting to let her honesty go, to be her true self in front of the only person she has truly wanted to see her that way.

They have constantly sought the other out all these years because no one else understands them as much as they do for each other. I don’t even think he realizes it at this point. He knows she’s important to him. He knows she’s special, but he doesn’t know why. They are truly messy.

I also saw something that I found intriguing that perhaps the dream sequence could be hers and not his. That his dream happened earlier in the episode before the dreaded second visit to the brother. Then the whispy foggy one is Pen’s later that evening. Maybe confusion on her part and possibly her trying to let him go after the kiss because she does have suitors now and she needs to stop relying on her ole friend Colin and her feelings for him because she can’t more forward with him there in her mind. It was an interesting theory.

Now that men are seeking out her attention, Colin continuing to be there at her side would be a confusing thing for her, especially considering she loves him and he’s staring at her every 2 seconds like she’s a delectable pastry he would like to devour. Maybe in episode 4 she’s determined to let go of her feelings for him in order to move on with Lord Obi Wan. Say it ain’t so girlfriend. Lol. But I could see how that would lead to even more pining if suddenly her eyes turn a little colder from his direction and she truly does turn her attention elsewhere.

I find that people can turn a nefarious plot on anything these days. It doesn’t take much. I tend to like to focus on the pretty stuff instead. All it takes is a pretty picture and I suddenly want to play with that for a few hours and make something out of it. I don’t have time for the hate anymore. Why be angry when you can stare at something that makes you happy. I had 2 seasons where I found pretty things in the background to stare at, I’m going to enjoy my 1 season of them in the front. No one can take that away because it only lasts a season and then its gone.

I had my 20 year anniversary at work to celebrate this weekend and I think that had me feeling off all weekend. Too much adulting for my taste and that leads to sadness. I retreated into my thoughts myself and I think sometimes I just need to do that. Thank goodness for the Polin of it all!

#my asks #wonderful people

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relaxxattack · 3 years

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hi im asking u this bc u seem to be bee duo enthusiast so

ive been calling c! beeduos relationship platonic because i thought that was what their cc’s said, and i thought they had said that they were uncomfortable with ppl shipping the characters. But ive seen a lot of posts that say their relationship is canonically romantic? and i absolutely do not want to come across as homophobic by watering down a mlm relationship to just friends because that happens so much in media so.

what is the canon state of their relationship / ur opinions on the platonic thibg

dont worry abt answering if u dont want to!! i see a lot of differing opinions and i trust yours :)

aw it’s totally fine, im flattered you asked me about this!

let me put it simply: it’s a whole mess, lol.

first im going to talk about what’s happened fandom-wide that caused differing opinions, and then i’ll explain my own opinion/interpretation. :]

(this got really fucking long im so sorry)

ranboo and tubbo initially proclaimed the relationship was romantic, specifically in argument with the wiki editors who had set it as platonic by default. (you can see this in the vod where they decide they’re canonically married— it’s very funny. chat tells them the marriage is already on the wiki, they check, tubbo is jokingly offended that it says platonic and asks if he needs to up the romance).

tubbo also makes jokes about adultry, which sort of implies the relationship is not necessarily a platonic one.

(theres definetly more in that stream alone but it’s been a long time since i watched it so i don’t remember a lot of it.)

the wiki, because of this, suffers from going back and forth on platonic and romantic, seemingly unsure where the joke ends and the canon begins, or if its canonically a joke! a mess, as you can already tell.

this gets more complicated as the marriage bit goes on: outsiders, such as phil and scott, both at one point say “platonic marriage”, which then ranboo and tubbo agree with. however, when chat asks them if they’re platonic, they say the opposite. so there is a lot of confusion there.

there’s also the difficulty of being able to tell streamers and characters apart. ranboo and tubbo both don’t like being shipped irl, and that’s their boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed. (they’re also minors, but tbh when they’re 18 in a year i will still be following their boundaries regardless of their legal age).

due to people not wanting to be accused of minor shipping, they started adding the platonic tone indicator to most of their drawings— basically a way of saying “no homo”. meanwhile, tubbo frequently on stream flirts with ranboo and makes quite a bit of nsfw comments towards him that are frankly hilarious.

this goes on for a while with nobody really sure what’s canon, but a lot of people assuming it’s probably platonic, until: the drama of the mods night. a few mods dmed all the wiki editors telling them ranboo wanted his canon character relationship officially set to platonic.

unfortunately for those mods; the very same day, a few hours later, ranboo on stream makes fun of puffy delivering him and tubbo “friendship flowers”. because, and i quote, “bruh. we’re literally married. this must be how the ancient greeks felt.”

in case you don’t know, the internet often jokes about how historians will call ancient greeks ‘very good friends’ when they are quite obviously gay. so in this context, ranboo is joking that people will call him and c!tubbo, who are married, “close friends”, when he doesn’t think they are.

basically, ranboo canonized romantic bee duo, the very same day the mods told everyone he’d wanted a platonic one.

chaos and drama immediately erupted everywhere. on tumblr, we were talking about how weird it was of his mods to do something like that without asking him first. we ALSO talked about how weird it was of them to assume that ranboo can’t make his own decisions, or assume teenagers cannot be in relationships without it being sexual. twitter did the same thing but in the opposite direction: called ranboo mods homophobic, or said they were mad ranboo felt pressured into making a romantic relationship canon ‘just so people could have mlm rep.’

i dont want to go into detail about the drama that happened that night because apparently official people follow me and i dont want to stir it up or have them come “clarify” things. im just saying what we talked about.

ranboo in typical ranboo fashion apologized quickly and seriously. he was deeply sorry for possibly offending anyone with how he’d portrayed his rp relationship with tubbo, and he also assured everyone the mod thing was just a miscommunication.

he said he would talk to tubbo and they’d decide once and for all whether it was platonic or romantic, and then announce so everyone would know.

it’s now been a few months and we've had no word from them on that development. we still have no clue.

now, here’s my opinion:

i want to take ranboos word for it that it was a miscommunication with his mods, but... we had it on good authority from people on the wiki team and people in the discord with the mods that (while it was happening) they were really going after the wiki admins, and also made some weird comments about it. that combined with the way ranboo seemingly had no clue (considering he canonized their romance that very same day).... it’s very. sus of the mods.

then there’s the canon we’ve got since then. although occasionally adults in the room have called it a “platonic marriage” and tubbo once (back when it first started) called it a “plankton tectonic” marriage, in roleplay it’s been... kind of not that. tubbo and ranboo make nsfw jokes about each other in character, and their characters also share a master bedroom and bed in the mansion. there's also the way c!tommy really thinks it’s a romance between them as well, and they agree with and play off that— for instance confirming that they “fell in love” when he asked, or ranboo confirming that they “make out on occasion”.

people will still put platonic on their art and posts, imo, because they’re worried about breaking ranboo and tubbo’s irl boundaries by looking like they ship them. or even just being accused of shipping real life minors. and that’s a valid fear to have.

the thing is though: c!bee duo are not cc!bee duo. they’re roleplay characters. cc!bee duo are not okay with being shipped, but they made their characters get canonically married, and call each other “husbands”. so it’s okay to write the word “husband” in your comic without adding “platonic” to it, i promise.

telling the ccs that their characters have to be platonic is... weird. it comes off as not only babying them, but also as saying teens can’t date without it being gross. which isn’t true.

(this is why seeing people overuse “platonic husband” so much bothers me. like, they ARE husbands. you can just say it. what are you trying to hide...?)

do i think they’re canonically romantic? ehh, its likely. it’s still okay to interpret them as platonic, because again, it’s hard to tell where jokes end and roleplay begins. like, maybe it’s jokes in the rp too, and c!bee duo are just friends. friends can and should be allowed to make jokes like that with each other! aro & ace marriages exist!

or, maybe it’s actually part of the rp, and they’re very much romantic. we don’t know!

some people say they could be a qpr (queerplatonic romance), which i could see. (a qpr is a relationship that fluctuates between, or can’t quite be sorted into, “romantic” and “platonic”. people in a qpr can do romantic things while having platonic feelings for each other). in my opinion this is a very valid interpretation as well!

CONCLUSION (sorry this got so long omfg):

are c!bee duo romantic?

its likely, but you can still interpret them however you like!

should i put /p on bee duo content?

ehhh? i find it annoying when it’s overused (as do others), but if you’re worried you can. its up to preference. putting it too much is weird though

should i put /p on things cc! bee duo do?

no. you’re not the one saying it so you can’t decide the tone tags for that. imagine you said something to your friend and a random stranger came up and was like “haha but that was /p right...?”

can i ship c!bee duo?

mmm. i’m not sure on this one. they are canonically married and very flirtatious, but the ccs don’t like being shipped and they’re close enough to being the ccs that actively shipping might be against boundaries.

can i treat c!bee duo as romantic?

yes. literally just don’t be weird about it. it’s not that hard! you can understand that two characters are husbands without making it weird

here’s the most important thing: boundaries. cc bee duo still haven’t told us what their preferences and canon is about this whole thing.

right now, i am assuming based on what they already show us they’re comfortable with, but! the second they give us any more info! all these opinions will change!

i am only going off what they do. i would never want to cross boundaries at all. i just wish they would make theirs a little more clear.

..... i hope that helped anon, i went way off the rails... i need to go to sleep.

#it’s late im so sorry for how much i rambled and wrote #i hope this helps you #bee duo #og post #there’s probably so many spelling errors i need to go to bed #i tried to fix some spelling so reblog this one ig #and not the old one

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gffa · 3 years

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OKAY, I WILL DO MY BEST HERE, but it’s one of those cases where there’s A LOT of information and NOT A LOT of information at the same time! We have a bunch of details and some good general ideas, but it’s not like it was a set-in-stone process, so there’s plenty of wiggle room if you want it. The Inquisitorius was started in 19 BBY, the same year as the fall of the Republic and the genocide of the Jedi, but seems to have been officially started after the Purge happened. Sidious had been planning something like the Inquisitorius for a long time, but this specific version of them wasn’t necessarily always the only version in development. The Inquisitors are all fallen Jedi, presumably ones that were captured by the Empire and tortured into becoming dark siders. Several of them have mentioned that they were former Jedi, but the only one we’ve seen the process of is Trilla Suduri, who we saw being tortured for a very long time in Jedi: Fallen Order. (Link of the relevant scenes here. Warning: It can be a bit of a tough watch, Trilla is physically tortured and some of it you see from her perspective, as the electricity is jolted into her body, which can be kinda disturbing.) So, in theory, it’s possible that some of them fell on their own and agreed to join, but the one explicit example we have is where she was tortured into it and, while Cal is walking around their fortress, he talks about how multiple Jedi were broken there. (For another example, Prosset Dibs is a Jedi we saw falling to the dark in the Mace Windu: Jedi of the Republic comic, so he may have willingly joined or he may have healed while he was working in the Jedi Archives but not all the way and still had to be tortured into joining.) The Inquisitors are under the direct supervision of Darth Vader (after he’d discovered the program, he was put in charge of it), who trains them incredibly harshly--in Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, he’s shown cutting an arm off one of them and basically telling them to suck it up and keep fighting, to remember what loss feels like.

Sometimes they’d work with Darth Vader (the Grand Inquisitor went to the Jedi Temple in 19 BBY with Vader, where they confronted Jocasta Nu, the Ninth Sister went with Vader on a mission to investigate a possible Jedi sighting on Cabarria, Vader took them with when he went to kill Eeth Koth and kidnap his baby daughter, Vader had them with when he went to Mon Cala to confront Lee-Char, etc.), sometimes they operated separately from each other (all the times in Rebels or Jedi: Fallen Order that Kanan, Ezra, or Cal faced them when Vader wasn’t around, etc.), probably based on whatever Vader felt like or whatever Sidious felt like on a given day. The Inquisitorius as a group seem to have some degree of command over Purge Troopers, as they would often be seen leading a group of them (this happened often in Jedi: Fallen Order especially) and they could commandeer military assets (or probably civilian assets as well) if they needed to, so they had a certain amount of leeway when it came to their missions--so long as they didn’t piss off Vader or Sidious. Their main goals were to hunt down any Force-sensitives in the galaxy, whether newly discovered Force-sensitive children, former Jedi (whether they had left the Jedi Order or were Jedi in hiding, it didn’t matter), or even Force-sensitive adults who had never been trained by the Jedi. They would turn them if they could, but otherwise it was to kill anyone who might possibly be a Force-related threat of any kind. (What this means for planets like the Bardottens, they’ve never said.) They were greatly successful at their missions, so they wound up killing a great number of Jedi who had made it into hiding, along with Darth Vader being one of the biggest reasons the Jedi were mostly entirely gone by the time of the OT, which was helped along by Vader training the Jedi style out of them. Part of why he was so harsh to them (including cutting off limbs, etc.) was to force them to be more aggressive and less defensive, to be sharp and quick and fast to overpower Jedi, who were used to a different type of fight. They still had unique talents (as all Force-sensitives are not the same), like Ninth Sister had a great talent for reading emotions (including Vader’s, where she could sense how much he wanted to die),

As well as they weren’t actually Sith. Only Sidious, Vader, and Maul were Sith, the Inquisitors were dark siders or fallen Jedi or possibly a category unto themselves. They have some sort of headquarters, as seen in Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, where Vader is seen training them in issue #6 (same scene as above where he cuts off their hands or lightsabers their eye out), which is labelled as being on Coruscant, somewhere in The Works in the Industrial District:

There’s a training arena we see there and at least some sort of communication/strategy rooms that Vader and the Grand Inquisitor walk off into, while they discuss the other Inquisitors. Which means it’s a pretty big complex/building, but (according to Wookieepedia and I’ll trust them on this, instead of digging out my copies of the Complete Vehicles and Complete Locations book), it was a building of Sidious’ that he used as a hideout during the Clone Wars. To what extent Vader and the Inquisitorius took it over (whether they just had a few rooms or the entire skyscraper), I don’t think we know?

Later, in issue #20, we see there’s some sort of break room that Vader storms in on, when he returns to Coruscant, that the Inquisitors were sitting around and hanging out in:

From there, it would be reasonable to extrapolate that this was a base for their operations, the place they returned to after they came back from wherever they’d been sent, possibly even this is where they slept and ate and were sheltered in between missions. But that’s just reasonable conjecture, not hard canon! There is also Fortress Inquisitorius from Jedi: Fallen Order and it’s primary use was that it was where they took the Jedi they were torturing into becoming Inquisitors. I wouldn’t say it’s an academy, per se, but it was a place that they likely used as a headquarters. In issue #20 of Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, two of the Inquisitors rebel against Vader and he winds up chasing them down and cutting a huge swath of destruction in his path (LOL @ ANAKIN), which Sidious is not exactly pleased about. He says that he’s going to move the Inquisitorious off Coruscant to another world so this won’t happen again:

The comic was written in 2018 and Jedi: Fallen Order came out about 11 months later in 2019, so the above isn’t necessarily directly referring to that the Inquisitorious were moved to Fortress Inquisitorious on the moon Nur, but it’s also a very reasonable (and probably likely) assumption. We don’t have an exact timeline for when this issue takes place, but it’s minimum three years after Revenge of the Sith (the Mon Cala arc earlier in the comic is set three years post-ROTS), so probably around 15 or 14 BBY. However, Trilla seems to have been kidnapped much closer to Order 66, so it’s likely that Fortress Inquisitorius existed long before Order 66 happened, it was used to torture Jedi once their genocide happened, but it wasn’t the Inquisitor’s HQ until several years later. We don’t see a lot of Fortress Inquisitorious, the limited amount of areas you can play through it in Jedi: Fallen Order don’t tell you a ton about what goes on there, but it’s a pretty huge underwater skyscraper sized building and you do see several prison cells and at least one training dojo.

The galaxy at large didn’t know about Fortress Inquisitorious on the water moon of Nur or even the majority of the Empire itself didn’t know about it, it was a heavily kept secret. This is where Trilla and the other Jedi were taken, tortured, and forced into becoming Inquisitors and it’s likely that’s where the Inquisitors were based after the shitshow on Coruscant. It’s a big enough building that it’s likely to have pretty much whatever kind of stuff your clubhouse needs for the Inquisitors! But we don’t have much hard canon about it, no. As for the Inquisitors themselves, they’re complicated--some of them seemed almost loyal to each other, they would work together at times or even seem to avenge each other, but other times they would sneer at each other or mock each other, it seemed like they had a lot of shifting dynamics and probably a lot of it was fear at trying to survive being around Darth Vader. We don’t know for sure how many there specifically are or if, when one of them dies, they’re replaced by another, but it seems like there were at least twelve Inquisitors and we’ve never seen them be replaced, which I think implies that they were only ever meant to be a temporary measure and would be disposed of, as soon as Sidious knew all the Jedi were dead for sure/he could raise a new group of Force-sensitive children from birth. ANYWAY YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN: LOTS OF INFO BUT NOT A LOT OF INFO. 😂

#inquisitors #inquisitorius #fortress inquisitorius #meta #long post #really long post

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thirstworldproblemss · 3 years

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Fic: It’s All About What You Want, p1

Fandom: The Mandalorian Pairing: Din x F!Reader (no Y/N) Length: 11,131 words in part 1, ~21k total Rating: Mature (Explicit in part 2) Summary: Omega!Reader starts to feel differently about her Alpha employer, Mando, during a stopover on a planet with an unusual social hierarchy. [Set between seasons 1 & 2]

Warnings: A/B/O fic; this part contains scent-marking, confusion, implied f masturbation, and lots of UST; author doesn’t know how plots work [Part 2 has a drugged drink and the alpha/omega heat sex (p-in-v sex + knotting)]

Notes: This is my extremely belated Secret Santa fic for @lark-cale who has been absolutely the best possible sport about my extended tardiness, and also wrote this absolutely lovely Marcus Pike fic for me. Here you (finally) go, love. Thank you for your patience! I hope it you like it.

I also owe so many thank yous to @keeper0fthestars who repeatedly listened to me rant, talked me down, and picked me back up when I was ready to quit (and also read all 20k pre-editing which deserves a goddamn medal) and to @yespolkadotkitty for yet more encouragement (I needed a LOT), the beautiful custom banner, and beta’ing this beast!

It’s All About What You Want - part 1

[ twp’s Masterlist | Part 2 >> ]

—

Din stares at his reflection in the small mirror in the fresher.

“Pull it together, di-kut!” he tells himself, and then quickly shoves his helmet back on so he doesn’t have to see his stupid lovesick face any more. After all, only a complete idiot of an Alpha would fall in love with an Omega that didn’t love them back.

—

“So, where to next?” you ask Mando as he pilots the ship up though Duron’s atmosphere. “Do you have another bounty or are we going back to Nevarro?”

From the copilot’s seat, you watch as the blue-green sky fades to the black of space. The baby is tucked comfortably in your lap playing with his favorite control knob.

“Another bounty. Last known location Reglan II.” Mando says, but doesn’t elaborate right away, and that’s fine. Over the half-cycle you’ve been working for him, you’ve learned not to take Mando’s silences personally. He always gives you what you need eventually.

Sure enough, once the ship is out of atmo and presumably pointed in the right direction, Mando turns to you, pulling up a holomap of the galaxy and zooming in on a section near the Mid Rim.

“Here,” he says, pointing out the dot labeled Reglan II. A quick tap, and an info card for the planet appears.

You look it over, narrating for the baby’s sake. You don’t know how much he actually understands, but he babbles back happily. “A temperate climate—that means not too hot or too cold—that will be nice! Moderately developed. Ooh, maybe there’ll be someplace we can go shopping and get you some fresh fruit. And it’s a... a gynocentric omegarchy? What does that mean?”

“It means there’s a rigid social hierarchy.” Mando answers you. “Omega females at the top; Alpha males at the bottom. Should be safe for you and the kid to go out alone.”

“Wait, you mean Omegas are in charge?” you ask, surprised, and he nods. You try to imagine how that could possibly work. Usually it’s the asshole Alphas that have all the power because they’re willing to use their biological advantage and what or whoever else they can to get it. Of course—you eye the back of your employer’s shiny helmet—not every Alpha is a complete bishwag, but enough of them are to make an Omega-run society sound implausible. Nice, but implausible.

Something else occurs to you.

“And Alpha’s are on the bottom rung? Will that cause problems for you when you’re trying to catch the bounty?”

“I’ll manage.”

You imagine he probably will.

Arriving dirtside on Reglan II is uneventful... for all of about five minutes.

After getting your things together, you follow Mando down the ramp, and out into the space port, the baby tucked into a carrier slung across your front. The grey-jumpsuited ground crew working in the shipyard mostly ignores the three of you, at least until you get within scenting distance. You watch bemused as a short, furry Beta whirls around to stare at you with wide yellow eyes. They scent the air, then turn their back, speaking urgently into a com link.

You can’t make out the words, but Mando probably can. When you see his shoulders tense up, it’s enough to have you stepping a little closer. A few cycles ago, you’d have laughed at the idea that proximity to an Alpha could mean safety, but that was before you’d started working for Mando. It had seemed like the best of a bunch of bad options at the time, but he’s never given you cause to regret it.

“Let’s go.” He grabs your arm, urging you back towards the ship. You start to retreat, but before you can make it to the Crest, you’re intercepted by uniformed guards.

Mando sweeps you behind him with one arm, crouching slightly. You step in close and clutch the baby protectively, watching the guards warily as some of them spread out and circle around to surround the three of you. They’re all armed but none have their weapons drawn. Yet.

“Is there a problem?” Mando asks. His voice is calm, but the hand that hovers over the gun holster on his hip tells a different story. You’re sure the guards notice too. The baby whines into the tense silence, wiggling in protest against your too-tight hold. You shush him without looking down, trying to keep an eye on Mando and the guards at the same time.

“There doesn’t have to be,” one of the guards says, stepping forward with hands raised in a deliberately non-threatening way. She seems to be the one in charge. “If you come with us. We just need to ask you a few questions.”

Mando turns to you, and you feel him hesitate. Can tell he’s weighing the likelihood of being able to shoot his way back to the ship with you and the baby without anyone getting hurt. You give a slight shrug, trying to let him know you’ll follow his lead. You trust him to calculate the odds better than you can.

After a long moment, Mando turns back to the guard leader and nods. “We’ll come.”

The guards relax, and so does Mando, but you notice his hand doesn’t stray far from the gun on his hip. You resolve to stay alert and make a point of sticking close to his other side—just in case.

You’re escorted into one of the buildings surrounding the spaceport, down a long hall, and through a set of double doors flanked by another pair of guards. Security headquarters, you assume, based on the sheer number of uniformed guards in the room. Oddly enough you can’t smell a single Alpha among them, only Betas, and even a couple of Omegas which is weird. You’ve never heard of Omegas being part of a security force before, but maybe it has something to do with the social hierarchy Mando was telling you about.

The leader of your pack of guards keys you through a heavy duty blast door and into yet another hallway. This one is narrower and dark, featureless except for a row of doors with small windows in them. You jump as the blast door clangs shut behind you. Kriff. You don’t like being so cut off from the outside and your only means of escaping this planet if things go bad. You hug the baby close and scoot a little closer to Mando. You don’t like this at all.

“It’s okay,” Mando says, quietly. You turn a deeply skeptical look on him, but he looks the same as he ever does. The armor blocks most of his scent, but what little you can smell seems calm—overly so, like maybe he’s putting out calming pheromones. Or is he just so used to terrifying situations that they don’t affect him anymore?

Before you can question him, one of the doors along the hallway opens, and a tall, white, androgynous alien in an even whiter robe steps out.

“Mistress Omega, this way, please,” they say, putting their four arms to good use as they prop the door open with one hand, hold a holopad in another, and gesture you through with the remaining two.

A moment later, the guard leader says, “Mandalorian, you’re with me,” as she opens the neighboring door. Your anxiety spikes as you realize they mean to separate you.

“But...” You cast a pleading look at Mando. Realize with a start just how little space there is between the two of you. You wonder if you’ve been subconsciously edging closer to him or if he closed the distance himself. Then he wraps one large gloved hand around the back of your neck and squeezes, and you freeze in shock.

Your mind catalogs the feel of worn leather, cool and smooth against your skin, and the way his scent is suddenly filling your senses. Then Mando lets go and steps back; gives you the smallest of nods, like nothing out of the ordinary has happened; and follows the guard through the door.

You stare after him. Did that really just happen? Mando’s never touched you like that before. He hardly ever touches you, much less to scent-mark you like some storybook Alpha comforting a skittish packmate. Kriff, you kind of are a skittish pack—er—crewmate, aren’t you? Was he trying to make you feel better? If so, it seems to have worked. You’re still not happy to be here, but you definitely feel less nervous now. You kind of hate that.

Stupid Omega biology. Stupid feelings.

“What was that?” you grumble to the baby. He just babbles back as you finally get your ass in gear and follow the polite white alien through the door they’ve been holding open for you.

The room you enter is… nice. Welcoming, even. There’s soft lighting, framed art on the walls and a comfy-looking couch and two armchairs that sit on a large, fluffy rug in the center of the room. Except for the lack of windows it wouldn’t look out of place as some rich family's living room. However intimidating the hallway had been, this room was obviously designed to put people at ease.

“Please. Have a seat,” the alien offers. Now that it’s just the two of you, you can smell that they’re also an Omega, which makes you feel marginally better about being stuck in here with them. They watch as you sit gingerly on the couch before settling into one of the arm chairs.

The baby cranes his neck in an attempt to look around the room—no doubt checking to see if there’s anything edible. You free him from the carrier, settling him on your lap where he begins to fidget with your fingers.

“So what happens now?” you want to know.

“Now I ask you a few routine questions. The goal of this interview is to gain information about the intended purpose of your visit to Reglan II, and to verify your safety as an unmated Omega traveling with an Alpha.”

“Oh. Huh.” You’re not quite sure what to make of that, but you suppose it can’t hurt. “Okay.”

They smile at you encouragingly, then read the first question off the holopad. “Are you being coerced, restricted, restrained, or otherwise influenced against your will in any way by the Alpha you are traveling with?”

“What? No!” you exclaim, “He wouldn't do that.” You’re almost offended on Mando’s behalf, but.. well... you know how the universe works.

Your interviewer nods and makes a note on the holopad, smiling faintly.

“I am required to ask. Then you are traveling with this unmated Alpha Mandalorian of your own free will?”

“I… Yes.” Those are actually some pretty important questions, you realize. Maker, you wish they’d ask questions like this in more places.

“Good.” They nod again. More tapping at the holopad.

“What would happen if I... wasn’t?” you ask, thinking grimly of all the horror stories you’ve heard over the years. The ones you’ve seen firsthand.

“Then we would help you regain your autonomy. The government of Reglan II believes in an Omega’s right to self-determination without compulsion, and our society works to ensure the comfort and autonomy of all Omegas. If you were being held against your will, you would be offered sanctuary, and your attacker would be permanently expelled from the planet.”

“Oh,” you hear yourself say. There's an odd feeling buzzing in your chest at the idea that there is a whole planet working to protect people like you. It feels a little like fury and a little like grief and a whole lot like joy. Your lips tremble and stretch in an unfamiliar way. You think you’re smiling, but it feels strange, sharp. Your voice comes out unintentionally vicious when you continue, “I think I’m going to like it here.”

The alien Omega smiles back, a touch of the same sharpness in their smile, and a moment of understanding passes between the two of you.

They’ve just looked back down at the holopad to ask the next question when the baby lurches suddenly to one side, almost falling off your lap completely before you manage to grab him.

“Whoa! You okay there buddy?”

Big eyes slowly blink up at you, and he leans heavily against your arm.

“Are you getting tired? It’s almost naptime.” He’s usually a pretty good sleeper, but you have to wonder if he’ll really be able to go to sleep here in such an unfamiliar situation.

You look back up at your interviewer. “Do you mind if I walk around with him while we do this?”

“Not at all.”

So here you are, walking in slow circles around the couch, rocking the baby as you answer questions:

You came to this planet because Mando’s hunting a bounty.

No, you don’t know who he’s hunting. A female twi’lek Beta... uh... you think?

You’re pretty sure the plan is to stay until Mando catches the bounty, maybe a little longer.

It’s almost embarrassing how little you know, but plans are really more Mando’s department. Your job is to watch the baby and be an extra set of hands when needed. In exchange you get to travel the galaxy with Mando. It’s a pretty good deal, actually.

At this point you’re answering questions mostly on autopilot, more focused on keeping your voice quiet and trying to project a calming aura in hopes of lulling the baby to sleep. It all seems pretty routine, until...

“What are your heat preferences?” the alien asks.

Wait, what? You look over at them, confused. “What preferences?”

“Heat preferences. For a partner.”

You blink stupidly for a moment, trying to make sense of the question.

“I can put your Mandalorian companion down as your preferred heat partner,” they prompt. Your face or scent must give away your shock, because they quickly continue, “Or social services has a selection of safe, clean Alpha partners in a variety of genders on call. There are also well stocked isolation rooms available if you prefer to work though heats alone?”

“I…” You’re still stuck on the first option. Mando? Sex with Mando?!

“But I have a suppressant implant!” you finally manage to squeak.

“You will still need to make a selection. We are required to have one on record so that your consent is not violated in the event of a breakthrough heat.”

You duck your head to stare down at the baby. Thank goodness he’s already dozed off, because you’re sure as shit not projecting calming energy anymore.

“I— Can I think about it for a minute?”

“Of course.” Long white fingers begin tapping away at the holopad, and you’re grateful your interviewer is giving you at least the illusion of privacy.

You take a minute to tuck the now-sleeping little one back into his carrier, trying to decide what to do.

It's not like your answer will matter at all. You’ve been on suppressants for a long time without any issues, and your current implant is good for another three years. You haven’t had a heat since your very first ones as a teenager!

They are still expecting you to answer though, so you should probably at least try to take this seriously.

You close your eyes and take several deep breaths in through your nose, blowing them out through your mouth, trying to fight down the semi-hysterical laughter that wants to bubble up as you consider the offered options.

Mando? You snort. Yeah, No.

And definitely not some random Alpha.

You think about those “well stocked” isolation rooms. They’re almost guaranteed to be a damn sight nicer than the shitty rooms you’d locked yourself away in to ride out your first few heats. That was a long time ago, but you still remember how miserable it had been. The heat and the longing, the aching emptiness that eventually turned to cramping pain when nothing you tried could satisfy the need to be filled. It had been unbearable. You’d done everything you could think of—scrimped and saved and worked your ass off—to be able to buy suppressants as soon as you could, and you’d never looked back. You’d sworn at the time that you’d never feel that way again, and the promise of some fancy isolation room isn’t enough to change your mind.

But you also can't imagine letting an unknown Alpha help you through your heat. Your stomach knots up just thinking about being that vulnerable with someone you don’t know, and you have to take a few more carefully measured breaths to fight down a sudden bout of queasiness.

That leaves… Mando.

You’ve never really thought about Mando that way. Not after you got over your initial worry that he might try to take advantage of you like some other Alphas might have. Mando is just Mando. Your solid, dependable employer.

You might trust him enough, but you don’t even know what he looks like; barely know what he smells like under all that armor. But... The feel of his hand on the nape of your neck comes back to you, and you try to imagine that feeling, but more. What would it be like to be close to Mando, surrounded by his scent? To have him between your legs, pressing against you? What would it be like to have him inside you? The image comes easier than you’re expecting, arousal shooting though you hot and sudden.

You gasp, eyes flying open. You meet the politely questioning stare of your interviewer, feeling somewhat appalled with yourself. Your cheeks are burning, and you wish you could blame the heat there on embarrassment alone.

“I’ll just put you down for an isolation room, shall I?” they say, obviously sensing your distress.

“N-no. No.” You try to sound more certain than you feel. “Put the Mandalorian I’m travelling with down as my preferred heat partner, please.”

The interview wraps up quickly after that, and all too soon, you’re heading back out into the hallway, brand new temporary ID bracelet shimmering on your wrist. Mando’s already there, looking shiny and solid as always, but your all-too-recent thoughts about him fill your head, making it almost impossible for you to look at him. Out of the corner of your eye you see his helmet tilt forward slightly as he looks you and the baby over, and a shiver goes through you.

When the guard opens the door to escort you out, you’re glad for the excuse to turn away.

Mando’s silent on the way out. You think you feel his eyes on you, but you still can't look at him. You keep your head down and try to think about anything other than the bracelet around your wrist, which, among other things, lists Mando’s Bounty Hunters Guild identification number under ‘preferred heat partner.’

Once outside and out from under the watchful eyes of the guards, Mando immediately pulls you aside. Your stomach clenches in a not-entirely-unpleasant way when he presses in close, his bulk crowding you back against the wall of the building.

“Are you okay?” he demands, his voice low and raspy over the modulator. Has it always been that deep? Have his shoulders always been that broad? You catch yourself leaning in unconsciously, and okay, you need to stop. Mando is your employer. Your crewmate. A comrade—yes, a friendly one—but nothing more.

He raises a hand with—Kriff!—a matching ID bracelet to hover near your shoulder uncertainty. Is he going scent-mark you again? You inhale, trying to get a better handle on what is going on, then you narrow your eyes at him. He smells unsettled.

“Are you?” you ask, turning his question around on him. You wonder if the guards asked him any uncomfortable questions, or if he’s just reacting to the turmoil in your scent. It’s common knowledge that Alphas have a strong drive to protect those under their care. You’ve seen Mando go into worried protective mode over the kid before. You stare up at him, a little disconcerted to realize that you want him to get all protective of you too.

“I’m fine.” he says gruffly, hand dropping as he steps away. “Let’s go.”

Shit. You had to go and make it weird, didn’t you?

You tell yourself not to be disappointed that he didn’t touch you again.

—

The spaceport turns out to be on the edge of a good-sized town, which is also the bounty’s last known location.

You walk side by side with Mando on the road from the spaceport, content to follow his lead in silence. You’re trying to use the quiet time to sort out what’s going on in your head.

Okay, so you’ve had some unexpected thoughts about your employer. And that’s fine! It’s normal, even, for an Omega to think about an Alpha they spend a lot of time around. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It's not like Mando’s interested in you that way, so as long as you don’t do anything to make things awkward, it should be fine! You just need to relax and forget about it.

You tilt your head back, trying to let the warmth of the suns beating down on you and the gentle weight of the still-sleeping baby wash away the lingering tension. Spaceport security aside, this planet is actually really beautiful. The sky is wide and bluish-purple, twin suns peeking out from behind feathered white clouds. The low buildings that line the road are painted in a rainbow of colors, green plants springing up between them or hanging from their balconies. It’s… peaceful.

You turn to look at Mando and find his helmet titled in your direction. You smile at him, and he looks away.

As you get further into town, the road starts to get more crowded, and some of the sentients you pass shoot alarmed looks at Mando. You wonder if the Alpha thing, the Mandalorian thing, or the giant rifle strapped across his back. Probably all three, you think with pride. He is pretty intimidating.

The road eventually spits you out into a wide open square filled with row after row of colorful booths and stalls and shops. A marketplace! Your lips quirk up.

“Do we have time to look around?” you ask Mando.

He nods, adding, “I’ll ask around about the bounty while you shop.”

You shoot him a grin, taking off towards one of the rows of stalls. You have some pay saved up, and you’re excited to see what you can get with it.

You look over the contents of each little shop and stall carefully as you make your way down the aisle, stopping occasionally for a closer look or to ask for or argue over prices.

You’re surprised by how friendly everyone is. Strangers nod and smile and move out of your way, and the shopkeepers all seem to want to chat, some even spontaneously offer you a discount. Everything is going so well that when you start to feel nervous, it takes a little while to figure out why. Everyone is being too nice. It makes you feel like you should be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Then it does, but it’s not the shoe you were expecting.

“I don’t have anything to say to you, Alpha.” The sharp words make you look back at where Mando was trailing a little ways behind you.

Now that you’re paying attention, you see the way the crowd has parted around him, people tense or outright glaring, and it’s… odd... to see your own general mistrust of Alphas reflected in the faces of these strangers in the marketplace. They’re treating Mando like chopped convor liver, and it makes you want to defend him—to announce to these random market-goers that it’s okay: he’s trustworthy; one of the good ones. You don’t, of course, because that would be ridiculous, but you have to do something.

“There you are!” you call, backtracking to Mando and smiling up at him. “C’mon, there’s something I want to show you!” You hope the smile on your face looks more loving and less frantic than it feels. You’re trying to make it clear that you’re here with him, and, more than that, that you’re happy to be here with him. You are happy to be here with him, you remind yourself, trying to swallow down your nerves so your scent doesn’t give you away.

After a moment some of the tension melts out of the crowd. It’s working! Disgust fades into disinterest, and people start to move on with their shopping.

You tow Mando away, thankful that he follows your lead back to the stall you’d been exploring before the interruption. The seller tenses a little as the two of you enter, but relaxes when you start up a conversation, chattering about the colorful blankets he’s selling. A lot of heavy praise, a few minutes of bargaining, and one purchase later, he even condescends to answer a couple of Mando’s questions.

“Thank you,” Mando says quietly as the two of you step back out into the marketplace.

“You’re welcome!” You realize that you’re still holding his arm, and you give it a small pat before letting go.

After that, you pay more attention to how Mando’s being treated, watching him out of the corner of your eye as he collects nasty looks anytime he falls too far behind. One particularly rude Devoronian Beta even spits at him!

And after that, you hold onto his arm at all times, practically gluing yourself to his side. Things start to go a lot smoother like that. Everyone is just as polite to you either way, but they’re a whole lot more likely to answer Mando’s questions if you’re right there looking equally interested.

Once the baby wakes up, you discover that parking him in Mando’s arms works almost as well. But only almost, so you continue to stick close. You’re glad you can do something to protect Mando for once. It’s usually the other way around.

—

You stay at the marketplace until dinner time.

You and Mando have split up—he’s taken the baby to look for a fruit seller, and you’re in charge of finding the rest of dinner. You’re standing in front of two promising-looking food stalls, trying to decide between them, when a voice comes from behind you.

“Go with the one on the left. They don’t cut corners with their ingredients.”

You turn to see another Omega woman about your age, gesturing at the non-offending food stall.

“Oh, thank you!” You get in line, and when she joins behind you, you turn and introduce yourself.

“Lovely to meet you,” she says after you give your name. “I’m Aitana.”

“Nice to meet you too! And thanks for saving me from possible food poisoning. Do you have any recommendations for what to order that will survive a walk back to the spaceport?”

She does, as it turns out, and recommends a couple of types of stuffed bread, one with savory filling, the other spicy.

“Just make sure you ask to have them put in different bags,” she tells you. “If they sit together for too long the scents spread and it dulls the flavors.”

You thank Aitana for her help and place your order. You’re hoping to chat more with her after she orders, but by then both Mando and your food have arrived.

It’s time to go home.

—

Later that night, after the baby’s asleep, you and Mando sit together in the cockpit. He’s been telling you about some of the different worlds he’s visited, and he just finished a story about an ice planet where a giant sea creature apparently tried to eat the Crest. You think he must be pulling your tail, and you tell him so.

“It’s the truth,” he swears, then, “I’ll take you there someday if you like.”

“I don’t know,” you tease. “The ice planet I’d like to see. The gigantic hungry sea monster, not so much.”

“Good choice. Two words: fish breath.”

You can’t help but laugh out loud at that, but it also reminds you of something. Something you were thinking about earlier because of scents and prejudices and delicious bread.

“Oh!” you turn towards Mando suddenly, surprised to see he’s leaning in, closer than you expected.

“Do you think I should scent-mark you tomorrow?” you muse.

“Wh-what!?” He sounds so incredulous that it makes you giggle.

“No, really,” you tell him, liking the idea more the more you consider it. “Think about it! Everyone in the marketplace treated you much better when I was nearby today. The baby and I can’t go within you all the time, but people also treated you better once you smelled like me, even if I wasn't right there! So all I have to do is rub on you in the morning. You should have an easier time of things once you smell like you’re mine. Uh… Mando? You okay?”

He’s been getting progressively more and more tense as you babble on, finally ending in a strangled sound during your last sentence. Your stomach swoops when he doesn’t answer. Oh kriff, you’ve probably offended him! Why didn’t you just keep your stupid mouth shut.

“I mean, I could scent-mark you, if you think it would be helpful?” you try to backtrack, “But we don’t have to! If… if it’s weird or you’d rather not, then that’s fine, and oh Kriff—I’m sorry, Mando. I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t do it yourself or needed my help or…”

Mando’s hand covers yours and you fall silent. You squeeze your eyes shut, waiting for his judgement.

“It’s a good idea. Thank you,” he says, deliberately, before getting up stiffly, and disappearing out the door and down the ladder.

You sit there for a few minutes staring after him and wondering what just happened. It’s not until you get up to head to your own bunk in the storage space behind the cockpit that you realize you still have a goofy grin on your face.

He thought it was a good idea!

Of course, it doesn’t seem like such a good idea the next morning when you actually have to do the scent-marking.

You’re barely awake, just out of the fresher, and still in your ratty, threadbare pajamas, when Mando catches you in the hold and announces, “I’m going out. I should be back by dark.”

You cross your arms over your chest and stare at him for a moment, trying to get your brain to wake up. “Oh….kay. I guess I’ll take the baby back to the market today. If… um… if that’s okay? I can take the com link in case we need to contact each other.”

“That’s fine,” he says, but he still doesn’t make any move to leave. He’s just standing there facing you. If he were anyone else you would say he looked expectant, but… oh, kriff! Your conversation from the night before comes back to you, and your stomach swoops as you think about actually making good on your offer.

He must be able to smell the way your scent goes wonky or maybe your hesitation shows on your face, because Mando steps forward and lays a hand on the back of your neck again. Squeezing just like he did at the spaceport yesterday.

It’s simultaneously better and worse than last time. The gesture helps to settle your Omega, but it also reminds you of your thoughts from the day before, and heat blooms in your cheeks and the pit of your stomach.

“It’s okay if you’ve changed your mind,” comes his reassuring voice. And how does he do that? How does he always seem to know what you’re thinking? Maker, you sure hope he doesn’t know everything that you've been thinking.

“No. I do want to—“ you have to pause to swallow down the impulse to say mark you. Why is he still touching you? And why do you like it so much!? You ignore the way your skin tingles as the heat from his hand seems to leach through the glove, and finish instead, ”I want to help. Sit down, please?”

You gesture somewhat frantically to one of several crates scattered around the hold, and he finally, finally releases your neck and sits down facing you.

The newly released skin at the back of your neck prickles, goose bumps spreading outward from where his warm glove has been replaced with the cool air of the ship. You do your best not to shiver visibly under his gaze.

You circle around behind him, hoping to gain a little privacy. It takes a few false starts and a little bit of flailing on your part, but you do eventually run your hands across the back of his wide shoulders and down his arms. You stroke over the folds of his cape too, and hope that will be enough. It’s the best you can do, unless… You hesitate for a moment, then lift your hands to rub over the scent glands on the sides of your neck before bringing them down to mark the cowl around his.

A staticky exhale comes from the helmet, and Mando stands abruptly, spitting out a low “thank you” as he heads for the already-lowering rear ramp. You barely have time to call out “you’re welcome” and “good luck!” before he’s gone, the ramp beginning to rise again as soon as he’s clear.

“Okay, that was weird,” you say to the baby, who had poked his head out of Mando’s bunk when the ramp started lowering. You scoop him up, trying to ignore the way your hands still tingle where they touched Mando’s clothes. Your stomach feels a little shaky too, but you're glad you did it. Mando’s out there smelling like you, and it’s going to make it easier for him to find the bounty. Fierce pride spills through you.

It was a damn good idea, after all.

—

A supply run is also a good idea. A necessary one, you discover when you go looking for breakfast and come up empty. You dress quickly, pack up the baby and some sturdy bags, and head back out to the market.

You return to the same food vendor as yesterday, ordering more of the savory bread for the two of you. It was the baby’s favorite last night. You wonder how difficult it would be to make.

You’ve just snagged a spot at one of the long tables situated nearby, when a friendly voice calls out “you again!” and you’re thrilled to see Aitana, your acquaintance from yesterday, heading your way.

“So where’s your Alpha?” she asks, sliding in across from you, a steaming, yummy-smelling pastry in hand.

“He’s not my Alpha!” You concentrate on doling out bites of bread to the baby so you don’t have to look at her.

“No? Big shiny dude from yesterday? I’m pretty sure my nose says different!” she teases, and then smothers a laugh when you try to surreptitiously sniff yourself. You actually do smell just the tiniest bit like Mando. You try to ignore the thrill that shoots through you at the discovery.

Upon hearing you’re there for supplies, Aitana offers to give you a tour of the marketplace and help you find the best deals. The three of you set off after breakfast, the baby cooing happily in his carrier, and you very quickly realize that you’ve gotten lucky. Your new friend knows exactly where to go to get the best prices. She also seems to know all the best dirt on the shopkeepers.

Your first stop is a clothing stall. According to Aitana, the owner likes to get drunk off his ass every night and keeps trying to climb onstage to sing along (poorly) with the band at the local cantina, but his prices and wares are good. That’s good because you need some new pajamas—your encounter with Mando has driven home just how worn your current pair has gotten—and maybe see if you can find a jacket small enough for the baby.

After looking around a bit, you’ve found both and are now debating the relative merits of buying the baby a tiny cape to match his dad’s when Aitana calls your name.

“What about this?” she says, holding up a beautiful black wrap dress. The cut is nice as is the quality, and you're sure it would make anyone, even you, look elegant and beautiful. You make the mistake of running your hand over it, and discover that the fabric is thin and floaty without being see-through and one of the softest things you’ve ever felt. It’s not even all that expensive. Unfortunately it’s also not something you need.

You admire it for a long moment, before gently returning it to the pile.

“You’re not going to get it? It would look so nice on you!”

“It is lovely,” you agree wistfully, “but I don’t need it or have anywhere to wear it.”

“What about wearing it for your Alpha?” She’s teasing you again, but you can’t help but imagine it anyway.

What would it be like to stand before Mando wearing just that dress and nothing else? The image of him unwrapping you like the galaxy’s biggest Life Day present steals the breath from your lungs, and you have to shake your head to clear it.

“He’s not my Alpha,” you repeat, not sure if you’re reminding her or yourself. You give the dress a last lingering pat—it is very soft—then you make your purchases and move on to the next shop on your list.

It’s mid afternoon by the time your shopping is done, much more cheaply than usual thanks to your local guide. You thank Aitana profusely for her help and her lovely company, then head off towards the spaceport, weighed down by your purchases and the baby dozing in his carrier.

And if you make one extra stop at a certain clothing stall on the way back to the Crest, well that’s no one’s business but your own.

—

That night, you’ve just finished preparing dinner when Mando comes up the ramp. He seems to be in a better mood than this morning. His footsteps are lighter, and when the baby goes running to him, Mando chuckles and scoops him up easily.

When you ask, he helps you move a couple of the big crates in the hold, making a place for you to sit across from each other. You realize you can still smell yourself on him, just a little. It surprises you how much you like it, and you remind yourself sharply that he’s not really yours. He’s just your employer.

But as he sits with you and the baby, keeping you company while the two of you eat, you think he might also be your friend. The idea makes you smile.

Mando trails off in the middle of telling you about visiting the local cantina, just staring at you. At least you’re pretty sure he’s staring at you. You can’t see his eyes, but the weight of his gaze makes your skin prickle with awareness.

“What is it? Do I have something on my face?” you ask, shifting self-consciously.

“No, I just—” He pauses. “No.”

You wonder what he was going to say, and cast about for something to fill the suddenly-awkward silence.

“So the hunting went well?

“I didn’t locate the bounty yet, but I have some leads,” he says. He also thanks you again for scenting him. “It was a good idea. I don’t think I would have made as much progress without it.”

“You’re welcome. I’m glad it worked.” You smile at Mando again, proud that you could help him. When his visor stays trained on you, you imagine that he’s smiling back, and it makes happiness spread like liquid honey through your chest. You only wish you could smell him a little better, or that he could take off his helmet and share a meal with you.

You try to imagine what it would be like. He’d come home to you just like he did today, but once the door of the Crest was shut, he’d remove his helmet. You can’t imagine his face, but you can imagine the way his scent would be that much stronger. The way he might step forward and wrap a hand around the back of your neck again, only this time, he’d use his grip to pull you in, kissing your lips gently before ducking his head to lick and suck gently at your neck.

An indecipherable noise from Mando interrupts your daydream, and you realize with a guilty start that you’ve been fantasizing about the poor guy right in front of him.

“I—” his voice is hoarse over the modulator, and he clears his throat and tries again, “I need—”

He stops. You stare at him, taking in the tense set of his shoulders and the way one of his hands is gripping his knee so hard the leather squeaks, and will him to continue. You try not to imagine all the ways that sentence could end, ‘I need… you.’ It could end that way, right? Yeah, it could, but ‘I need you to stop stinking up the ship with your pheromones’ was probably more likely.

Oh, Maker. He probably can smell you. Shit! So much for not making things awkward! Your already heated cheeks burn hotter as embarrassment curdles in your stomach. What are you even doing, thinking about him that way?

“I need to go eat,” Mando says curtly, interrupting your panicked thoughts. He stands abruptly, grabs the bowl you prepared for him, and heads for the cockpit where he usually retreats to eat his meals in private. He hesitates for just a second as he passes by the crate you’re sitting on, and you feel the slightest brush of leather over the nape of your neck. Then he’s gone up the ladder with a soft “thank you,” leaving you staring blankly at the baby, breath stalled in your chest as warmth seems to ripple down your spine from the place where he touched.

What is he even doing??

—

You think it over carefully, lying in your cot later that night. You catalog the ways you've reacted to him. The things you’ve been thinking about. The way you decided not to shower tonight because you didn’t want to wash away the tiny hint of his scent that lingers on you.

And okay: you’re definitely attracted to Mando, and you might—might—be developing feelings for him.

That’s… not great, actually, since there’s absolutely no way he’s interested in you. Your chest clenches, and you roll onto your side trying to shake off the hopelessness weighing you down.

He’s been nothing but completely professional since he hired you, all those months ago. You consider it a win that he’s warmed up enough to have a friendly conversation with you, but there’s been nothing to suggest he considers you more than a valued employee. Except… well… you run your hand over the back of your neck, thinking about the times he’s touched you there over the last few days, and then you have to press your other hand to the surging ache between your legs. Yeah. You chuckle humorlessly to yourself there in the dark.

You’re totally screwed.

The next morning comes too soon, and you stumble out of bed and down the ladder to the fresher in a daze. Mando and the baby are sitting side by side on one of the crates in the hold, the baby munching on something from a little tray.

At least, you think blearily to yourself, I’ve got my new pajamas on this time.

Once you’re finished using the fresher, you wash your hands and stare at your anxious face in the tiny mirror. Now that you’re a little more awake, your stomach is in knots at the thought of facing Mando after your moment of... self discovery last night.

You make yourself take a couple of deep breaths and splash a little water on your face. Then you practice smiling at yourself in the mirror until it looks almost natural instead of half asleep or terrified. Okay, you can do this. One last deep breath, and you open the door smiling a hopefully-not-obviously-terrified smile.

You can’t quite force yourself to look at Mando, so you focus on the baby instead, making your voice as cheerful as you can.

“Good morning, little one. What have you got there?”

The baby coos and lifts his little tray up to show you.

“Oh I see.” You make a show of bending down and very seriously examining the contents, overly aware of Mando watching from beside him. You force another smile. “Looks like dad got you a good breakfast.”

Mando makes an odd sound at that, and you turn towards him, somehow surprised at how close he is. And, oh shit! You take an involuntary step back when you realize what you just let slip. You’ve been calling him the kid’s dad for a while now, but you’ve never said it in front of him before.

“Oh, sorry! I know that he’s not— That you’re not— I—” You try to fumble your way through an apology, but he only lets you mumble on for a few moments before cutting you off gently.

“It’s okay.”

You just shake your head, still feeling awkward and horrified at your lapse, because he explained this to you when he hired you to look after the baby.

“It’s okay,” he says again, standing and wrapping that big hand around the back of your neck again, and you can’t help the way that your eyes flutter shut and your head tips forward. He must be trying pretty hard to pump out calming pheromones, because even with the layers and helmet you can actually smell him clearly for once.

“Okay,” you whisper, and you relax under the weight of his hand, your head dropping even further forward until it’s almost touching his chest plate. It feels so nice that you guiltily resolve not to move a muscle so that you can continue enjoying the feeling of his hand on your neck for however long as he’s willing to stand here. It turns out to be a pretty long time, his scent slowly fading from calming to just calm.

Eventually a loud clang breaks the silence, and you both jump back from each other and stare down at the baby’s little tray, now on the floor, food scraps scattered around it.

“Oh no, buddy!” You say at the same time that you hear Mando swear. You drop to your knees and pick up the tray, trying to sweep up all the little bits of food.

“I have to go,” Mando says from above you.

“Alright,” you respond automatically, distracted trying to pick a particularly stubborn piece out of the floor grating.

“Would— will you—” Mando stumbles over his words, and heat rises up to fill you when you realize what he’s asking for, nearly stealing your breath. He’s asking you to scent-mark him before he leaves.

You set the tray on the crate with forced calm and stand, awkwardly brushing your hands off on your pants.

You step up in front of him, trying to ignore the way the heat is pooling in your cheeks and… other places. You don’t dare look at his visor, so you stare at his chest plate instead. Just like yesterday, you start by rubbing your hands across his shoulders and down his arms, but it’s so much more intimate when you’re standing face to face. He’s so broad and tall.

Mando stands solid and still as you touch him. You’re not even sure he’s breathing as you run your hands down his chest plate. Some madness seizes you, and you step forward and press your face to it, beskar cool and hard under your overheated cheek.

You hear a raged inhalation from under his helmet, and it brings you back to yourself. You can’t believe you just did that!

You start to step back, having embarrassed yourself yet again, but Mando has you by the back of the neck before you can go too far. You can hear someone’s heavy breathing rasping in and out, but you can’t tell if it’s you or Mando or both of you.

You realize that you want to scent-mark him. Not just so people will be more polite to him, but because you want every bit of him to be absolutely covered in the scent of you.

You are suddenly very aware of every inch of your body and his and the places they connect. And the places they don’t.

With his hand on your neck, his vambrace is lightly resting on your shoulder almost touching the scent glands on the side of your neck. You tilt your chin up, unconsciously angling your head until they make contact with his wrist, then arching your body to rub along his glove and vambrace.

Mando groans like you’re torturing him, and his other hand comes up to grip the side of your jaw, fingers splayed cover the scent gland on that side, lifting up and forward. The pressure forces your head back at a sharp angle, and you go up on your tiptoes without meaning to, every part of you straining forward towards him.

Then just as suddenly he lets go and steps back.

“I— I have to go,” he says again. And for the second morning in a row you’re left watching Mando’s back as he beats a quick retreat out the rear ramp.

You’re not sure how long you stand there staring blankly at the rear of the hold, your body still twitching and shivering and begging for him. Eventually you’re distracted by something squeezing your ankle, and you look down to see the baby hugging your leg. You pick him up, and he squeaks and coos at you excitedly.

“He just ran away, right buddy? That was running away.” You close your eyes, trying to get your body under control. “What am I doing? I have got to stop getting distracted and making your dad uncomfortable.”

The baby coos again, and you smile at him. It feels a little stiff around the edges, your mind still focused on Mando.

At least you’re damn sure he smells like you today.

—

After the scent-marking debacle, you can’t stand the idea of staying on the ship with only the baby and your thoughts for company. Somehow you manage to pull yourself together, finish cleaning up the spilled food from the floor, and get both of you ready to go. You decide to head back to the marketplace, hoping Aitana might be there again today. You could use a friendly face.

She is there, sitting at one of the long tables, and you're so relieved to see her, you feel like you could cry. When you sit down next to her, she greets you cheerfully and offers you one of the pastries off her plate. You thank her, and share it with the baby. It’s delicious. You wonder if Mando would like it? You rub a palm over your face. After this morning you’d better hope Mando still likes you, or you’re going to be right out of a job.

Aitana, more observant than you might like, asks if you’re okay.

“I…. I don’t know. I’m just so confused.” The whole situation with Mando is confusing—much too much so to try to explain in the middle of a busy marketplace. Instead you ask if she can take you somewhere less crowded, “Maybe somewhere that the little guy can stretch his legs?”

“Of course. Come with me.”

She leads you through the marketplace and down an alleyway that cuts through several rows of colorful buildings before delivering you to the edge of town.

You step out of the shadow of the last building and gasp. A wide meadow of gently waving green and grey grasses stretches out before you, scattered yellow flowers are being visited by delicate pink butterflies, and the perfectly clear blue-purple of the sky arcs overhead. It’s so beautiful that you actually stop and stare for a moment.

The baby seems to be enjoying the view as well. He babbles excitedly as you walk out into the meadow. You stroll along until you find an area with slightly shorter grass to let him down on, and you and Aitana sit nearby, smiling as you watch him roll happily through the grass and chase the butterflies. You have a small moment of terror when he starts munching on one of the yellow flowers, but your friend quickly reassures you that they’re safe to eat.

“Even for people,” she says, picking two and taking a bite off one before offering you the other. You take it, but decide against eating it, tucking it behind your ear instead.

She asks you again if you’d like to talk about what’s bothering you.

So you do, trying to borrow a little of the serenity of this perfect place to bridge the gap where your own inner calm is failing.

You tell her about everything that’s happened: getting detained by spaceport security, thinking about Mando that way for the first time, the way it’s only gotten harder not to think about it, and how your bright idea to scent-mark him so he wouldn’t be mistreated is not helping!

Aitana looks sympathetic at first, but more and more amused as you go on, until she’s barely hanging onto her composure by the time you’re struggling to describe how Mando keeps…. keeps….

“He keeps running away every time I do something awkward!”

Aitana loses it at that, the bright peals of her laughter ringing out across the meadow. And maybe it’s a little rude of her to laugh, but here under the gentle warmth of the twin suns you can’t quite manage to be annoyed. The situation can’t be all that bad if your friend is laughing, and… and Mando did look pretty silly this morning, cape streaming out behind him as he made his escape off the rear ramp.

The memory makes you snort, which sets Aitana off even more, and soon the two of you are laughing hysterically together. After a few minutes, she seems to master herself and sits up, gazing seriously at you, but as soon as she opens her mouth, she starts laughing again, which sets you off again, which, well... It may not be getting you any closer to figuring out your feelings, but you can’t help but feel better for the release of tension.

After several long minutes and false starts, both of you are finally calm again.

“You’re going to be fine,” Aitana begins, and you're hoping that maybe she’s finally going to give you some insight into the situation when the tranquility of the meadow is interrupted by a shout of your name.

Mando comes bursting out of the mouth of the alleyway, and you're up on your feet, already scooping up the baby before you even realize you’re moving.

You look to Mando for some clue of what’s going on, and quickly realize you panicked over nothing. The way Mando’s moving, his arms swinging loosely and the tiniest bit of bounce in his step, tells you that he’s bringing good news.

“Mando!” You shout, and wave, and his ground-eating stride covers the distance between you quickly. The baby’s hover pod trails along behind him. By the time he reaches you, you’re certain:

“You found the bounty, didn’t you?”

“How did you know?” he asks, sounding confused.

“Because you’re excited” you tell him, but that only seems to confuse him further.

“How— How do you always...?”

You just shrug and then make a face at Aitana who seems to be laughing at you from behind Mando’s back.

It occurs to you that they’ve never officially met, so you do a quick round of introductions. You’re glad to see Aitana treats Mando politely.

“My younger brother is an Alpha,” she explains. “He moved offworld many cycles ago.”

The baby reaches for Mando, so you hand him over, watching with a smile as he shows him the yellow flower he has clutched in one tiny green hand.

“Very nice,” Mando tells him, then immediately starts cursing when the baby shoves the entire thing in his mouth, “Spit that out you little—”

“It’s okay. They’re edible,” you reassure Mando, patting his shoulder, then looking at him in confusion when you feel him tense up.

“I did find the bounty,” he spits out, then hesitates before elaborating, “She’s holed up in the local Omega Club.”

“The Omega Club?” Aitana looks him over incredulously. “You’ll never get in there without—”

“Without an Omega,” Mando says, looking at you.

“Okay, wait. What even is an Omega club? And why do you need me?”

Mando hems and haws for a few moments until Aitana takes pity on him and explains.

“Omega Clubs promise to cater to any and all Omega needs, but they mostly exist to provide relief to Omegas in heat since there aren’t enough Alphas to go around.”

You wonder if that was where you’d find the “well stocked isolation rooms” mentioned back at the spaceport.

“Solitary Alphas aren’t allowed in unless they work there,” Mando says, “so the only way I’m getting in without a firefight is as your bodyguard.”

“Or your lover,” Aitana adds, and it sounds like Mando chokes on his tongue.

“Oh.” You very deliberately do not think about that second scenario. “What about the baby though? Won’t it be dangerous?”

You can’t imagine leaving him on the ship alone, but bringing him with you doesn’t seem viable either.

“I won't let anything happen to you,” Mando says quietly, and the hand he brushes over the back of your neck short circuits your brain before you can tell him you were worried for the baby, not yourself.

He turns to Aitana and looks her over appraisingly, then asks, “Would you be willing to watch the kid until tonight? I can pay you.”

“This little tadpole? I’ll watch him for free.”

She and Mando argue briefly about payment until she eventually accepts a small handful of coins to cover the cost of their dinner.

You and Mando walk Aitana home, the baby trailing behind you in his hover crib. She tells you a little bit more about the local Omega Club on the short walk, but it’s not enough that you really feel prepared. All too soon you’re giving the baby a kiss and waving goodbye.

Then all that’s left to do is go back to the Crest and get ready.

—

It had sounded so simple earlier: just get dressed up and go with Mando to the Omega Club.

“Sure. Simple,” you mutter to yourself, trying to check your appearance in the fresher’s tiny mirror.

You make a face, feeling self-conscious in the unfamiliar clothing. The wrap dress is simple but elegant, and far nicer than anything you’ve worn in years. You mostly stuck with drab, utilitarian clothing after you'd presented as an Omega during puberty, not wanting to draw any extra attention.

The dress is lovely though. You run your hands down your sides, enjoying the way the soft fabric settles over your hips. You adjust the neckline one last time to make sure you’re covered. Here goes nothing.

Mando is standing by the open weapons locker, and he turns to look at you when you exit the fresher.

You freeze in the middle of compulsively smoothing the dress over your hips, as heat rises under your skin and locks the breath in your lungs. He seems to be frozen too, and the moment stretches out until Mando finally gives himself a shake and turns back to the weapons locker. If it’s going to be like this all night you’re not sure you’ll survive. You’re just so aware of Mando, and you like having him look at you more than you should. You wonder what it would be like to submit to him.

“Good,” Mando says, and you shudder at the thought of it before you realize he’s talking about your dress. You stare down at yourself, and run your hands over the fabric self-consciously, smoothing imaginary wrinkles and ruthlessly squashing the urge to preen for this particular Alpha’s attention.

“Here. Put this on under the dress. Just in case,” Mando says, handing you a small bundle.

You stare at the leather wrapped metal in your hands for a minute before you realize that he’s just handed you a mini blaster and a holster for it. You try to straighten out the straps, but the weight of Mando’s gaze on you makes your fingers slow and clumsy. After the second time you nearly drop the stunner, you give up, looking for a place to set it down before you accidentally shoot yourself in the foot.

Mando must have reorganized the hold, because the crates you’d been using as seating are now lined up neatly by the rear ramp. The only flat surface left at this end is… Swallowing hard, you walk over to the open hatch of Mando’s bunk.

You look back at Mando seeking… something—permission, maybe?—but he’s closing up the weapon locker and doesn’t even glance in your direction.

Feeling like an intruder, you lean into the bunk just enough to set the gun down gingerly on the mattress. Mando’s rich, earthy scent seems to permeate the small space, along with a jumble of Alpha pheromones and traces of leather polish and gun oil. Your body responds, thighs trembling as you lift a foot and brace it on the edge of the opening. Making sure your back is to Mando, you fold back the open edge of the wrap dress to expose your thigh. Kriff. This feels way too intimate, too personal, being so exposed here in Mando’s space, but it’s too late now.

You puzzle over the mess you’ve made of the holster, straps twisting every which way around the formed leather piece. Thankfully it doesn’t take long to sort out the two straps and secure them around your leg, just above your knee. The holster sits oddly though, and you poke at it, trying to figure out why.

“It’s too low.” Mando’s voice comes from close behind you—much too close.

You panic, trying to spin to face him and flip your dress closed at the same time, and nearly fall on your face when your foot gets caught on the edge of his bunk. Only his big hands gripping your upper arms save you, but that mean he’s even closer! (Not nearly close enough, a little voice in your head insists.)

“Oh,” you breathe, trying to right yourself, too stunned by his nearness to even feel embarrassed. Once you find your balance, he releases you, one hand sliding up to wrap around the back of your neck. Warmth seems to radiate from his gloved hand, and a wave of heat rises up from your stomach to meet it, skin tingling in all the places he’s no longer touching you. You feel both calmer and paradoxically more on edge the longer you stand here, and you have to take a step back before you do something stupid like stepping forward to rub up against him.

“It’s—” Mando clears his throat, then continues, “It’s also upside down.”

What’s upside down?

“Can I?” he asks, inclining his helmet toward your leg. Oh, right. The holster!

“Uh huh,” you manage. You part the edges of your dress far enough to provide access to the holster, then wait, stomach feeling shaky with anticipation and not entirely sure what, exactly, you just agreed to.

Mando drops to one knee in front of you, and all you can do is stare down at his helmet as his hands reach for you. He makes contact just above your knee, and you have to remind yourself to breathe.

“Here.” His voice is going to be the death of you. Low and rasping and deeper than before, it makes your stomach clench. The fire there burning hotter as his large gloved hands make quick work of releasing the straps and flipping the holster.

“Like this,” he says, directing you to spread the edges of your dress wider.

You do as he asks, baring more of your leg to him. Kriff, this isn’t fair! Then his hands slide the holster high up your bare thigh, and you forget to breathe entirely.

Your entire being focuses, laser-like, on the feel of his leather covered fingers brushing across your sensitive skin as he wraps one of the straps around your thigh and buckles it. If it were any other man—any other Alpha—touching you like this, you would have been doing your best to incapacitate them and run for the hills, but with Mando you just wish he would touch you more.

A second later, you get your wish, as Mando reaches between your legs to position the other strap. Oh, Maker. Your whole body clenches. Then you jump as the cold metal of his vambrace makes contact with your inner thigh. You spread your legs a little wider to give him more room and try not to pant audibly. This is torture.

There’s a staticky gasp over the modulator, and Mando’s hands fumble for just a moment. Then they’re moving again, ghosting over your skin as they finish securing the second strap in place.

Shit. You’re so turned on that you can feel how wet you are. You close your eyes in mortification. Don’t even want to think about what Mando must be smelling down there.

Stupid Omega hormones. Stupid Alpha sense of smell.

Thankfully, Mando doesn’t comment, just smooths the material of your dress back into place over your thigh and stands, mercifully retreating to the far side of the hold. You stare after him, feeling overheated and shaky, but still mostly in control of yourself, until...

“Come here,” Mando demands gruffly, beckoning you over with two crooked fingers. No Alpha in his voice, just a dangerously pleasant rumble that makes you shiver all over again. “I want to see if it shows when you walk.”

You cross the hold towards Mando slowly. It pleases you more than it should to be obeying him. Mando stands stock still as you approach, but you know he’s watching you—watching your thighs—as you walk, and you can’t help but put a little extra swing into your hips. Fuck. Have you completely lost your mind?

“Looks good,” he rasps, and your body clenches. “Time to go.”

You’re not sure you’re going to survive the night.

—

[ Part 2 >> ]

[ Alternative p2 Links: Reblog or For Desktop ]

Edited to Add: The links above work fine for me, but apparently some people are having trouble with them, but you should still be able to copy & paste one of these addresses into a web browser):

https://thirstworldproblemss.tumblr.com/post/640140098884812800/itsallaboutwhatyouwant2

https://thirstworldproblemss.tumblr.com/post/646157327064580096/fic-its-all-about-what-you-want-p2

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/thirstworldproblemss/640140098884812800

Want more to read? twp’s Masterlist | twp’s Author & Fic Recs

——

End Notes: Part 2 is finished UP! The whole thing is finished, but I split it because I can’t handle trying to deal with a 21k post, and so that it’s easier for people who don’t want to read the accidental drugging scene that happens in the next bit to skip it (see the end notes of part 2 for more specifics).

SW References Used: Mando’a database, The Wookiepedia

Adorable Planet Dividers made by @whimsicalrogers

—

Tagging: (See my Tagging Lists Page to be added or removed)

@agirllovespancakes @heatherbel @keeper0fthestars @knittingqueen13 @lark-cale @pedropascalito @rosiefridayrogersunday @songsformonkeys @yespolkadotkitty

(Unsolicited tagging of people I think might be interested): @absurdthirst @frannyzooey @fromthedeskoftheraven)

#the mandalorian #din djarin #din djarin x reader #a/b/o #omegaverse #pedros12daysofchristmas #(but i'm so late it's actually the 12th day of the new year)#pp stuff #star wars #din x reader #my fic #fanfic #slow burn #because these idiots are almost too stupid to get to the lovers half of #idiots to lovers #mutual pining #ust #(resolved in p2)#it's all about what you want

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notbecauseofvictories · 2 years

Note

I realise you're years removed from this life but how did you deal with retaining necessary info and arguments during oral assessments in law school? I can keep my cool fine but sometimes fumble my recall at the start from nerves and have once or twice gotten badly thrown during questioning, should I just continue to drill myself and do as many mocks as possible to make stuff stick? I'm not struggling enough that it's been raised as a concern but I feel like an embarrassment.

Personally, I was an on-fire human disaster during oral arguments and so probably not the best person to give advice. (Seriously, I think of myself as a pretty solid public speaker, but the second you stuck me behind a lectern and told me to talk about the brief I had already researched and written, I fell apart. It was embarrassing.)

However, there are a couple things I wish I had done, based on later experiences coaching other people through oral arguments, moot-esque competitions, and just...figuring out how to do the law thing.

1. Break Down Your Argument Into Anchor Points

The truth is, your oral argument probably only makes 3-4 actual points. Everything else about your argument is extraneous---additional evidence, sub-arguments, case citations, underlying logic, etc. etc. So really what you need to communicate during oral argument is those 3-4 points, in whatever form you can cram them in.

(To be fair, these points might include case law or evidence or pertinent logic. It's different for every argument.)

Don't drill a 15 minute monologue into your skull---you might get interrupted, you might lose your place or drop a word, and then where will you be! Instead, memorize is those 3-4 points, know them inside and out and extemporaneously, unconnected from the rest. That way, when the judge interrupts and eats up minutes of your time, you can jump to Point #2 without worrying about all the extraneous detail you might have missed with Point #1.

2. Come Up With Fuzzy Non-Answers

Listen, I don't know how your law school does oral arguments, but my professor had local attorneys come and play judge for the day. (I'm pretty sure they got CLE for it, which is why they volunteered.) They were all very busy people, and so probably skimmed the brief <24 hours ahead of time, and retained maybe 50% of what they read.

It means that sometimes they were asking questions that I couldn't answer---they hadn't read closely, or were bringing their full-scale attorney knowledge to bear on a very limited fact pattern. It was terrifying.

In hindsight, I wish I'd developed a set of knee-jerk responses that were, actually, non-responses---"that's an excellent question, I'll look into it and get back to you, your honor." "I can't speak to that strand of case law, but we will do our research and amend our filings appropriately."

It's cheap, and everybody knows you're ducking the question---but it's worth it to have a couple non-responses ready to go in case of a question you legitimately don't know how to answer. It'll get you back to those important 3-4 points, and that's all you should care about.

3. Practice, Practice, Practice (I know, I know)

When I was a TA, I had office hours on weekends so that my 1Ls could run through their oral arguments with me. Simultaneously, I was practicing my oral arguments for a particular presentation/competition. And the deciding factor, the thing that yielded the best results on both sides?

Just fucking do it. Over and over, with people who will suggest things, stop you when you start babbling, reset when you're getting in too deep. It's not just practice, but practice with feedback, that makes the exercise valuable. If you have a TA or a tutor, seek them out. If you have a 2L mentor or a professional connection who can help you out on weekends---let them help you.

Some of that advice will be unhelpful because some portion of advice always is. But the more you practice, and think about what you say, how you do this...the less daunting and impossible it will seem. The better you get at making the connections sooner, or not getting thrown during questions, the overall better you'll get. It's truly unfortunate, how much boring grinding ignominious work goes into being good at something; unfortunately, I have yet to find a shortcut for it.

....and if you don't get better, if you aren't good?

Well, in 6ish years, you'll be able to laugh and groan and talk about how terrible you were in oral arguments, and it didn't stop you from liking law anyway.

#seriously. I was not good at it.#and then 2 years later my team won moot court so.#some things rats won't do

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stephspurs · 3 years

Text

A Family Affair | Euro 2020 Football Fanfiction

Hi besties - here is part 6! We are officially halfway through this fic! Part 6 sees friendships blossom, situationships struggle, and cheeky intercontinental facetime chats! I hope you all are enjoying it as much as i am! I love hearing from you after you've read it! Love always, Steph xx

Part 6 | parte sesta

warnings; a couple of tugs on the heartstrings (in both the best and worst ways)

word count; 2301

writing tools; third person until dashed line, first person thereafter.

next update; Friday 06/08 5pm AEST. Updates are three times/week (Monday, Wednesday & Friday)!

Tags (as requested by users); @footballffbarbiex @obsesseds-world @abysshaven

link to fic masterlist here

Amelia had been back in Turin for a week or so, settling back into her city apartment had been more difficult than she anticipated as she was now alone for the first time in more than 2.5 months. It wasn’t very often, but sometimes she did miss the companionship of having a boyfriend. She missed someone to have breakfast with, to watch movies under the covers, to bring to official events. She still did all of these things, with a date, that was a friend, that sometimes maybe crept beyond the friendship zone and into the we shouldn’t be doing this but it feels so good zone.

Fede was someone that hung around Amelia like a fly to sugar. She enjoyed the attention most of the time. She appreciated his friendship, wisdom, talent and intellect. He could hold a conversation, talk to her about the arts, sell her the dream. She even didn’t mind it when they did cross that line a few times. Long afternoons and even longer nights spent wrapped up together in his bed sheets, her bathtub, his kitchen, her lounge room...you get the point. It was almost as though the two were in a committed relationship - committed being the operable word.

Fede wanted Amelia all to himself, and she was just that - available to him and for him whenever he wished, which was often. That’s what confused Amelia most, he didn’t want to label their situationship. He was happy to be ‘friends’ outside the four walls of their respective homes, but lovers when the curtains were drawn. She would maybe understand if he was elusive, always going out and on his phone but he wasn’t. He spent all of his time with her, there wouldn't have been enough hours left in the day if he separated those he spent with her from those he spent alone.

The Juventus players noticed this behaviour early on, seeing a noticeable difference in the way their number 33 paid attention to their tactical sessions. How he was turning up to the training centre early, with an extra piccolo for the english member of their coaching staff. Federico claimed he was helping Amelia brush up on her Italian, but having an Italian-born mother who insisted on sharing her culture with her kids, meant she was pretty much fluent in the language before arriving in Turin. His teammates weren’t stupid and neither was she.

This was the one area of her life where Amelia felt comfortable to go with the flow, she didn’t need to prepare or overthink anything to do with the charming Italian boy from Firenze. She let him take it at his own pace, she was in no need to rush. She let him take her home to meet his Nonna, she spent quality alone time with his dogs when he’s running late from training, and that’s a rare occasion being that it’s normally her there after him and he hangs back to drive them both home.

Everything was progressing at his pace, and the moment Amelia just asks for some clarification on the situation, he would get visibly stressed. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. And for a long time he could, he had Amelia's attention and affection at Juve, he even had it during their european campaign. At the end of the tournament, when they all broke up for their summer breaks, Fede conveniently waited until their final round in the shower, if you know what i mean, before pulling her into bed and having a heart to heart with her.

Amelia thought that she was finally getting the clarification that she was after, which in a way she did. Fede spoke whimsical words about how she makes him feel wanted and understood, and in turn he told her about the affects he knew he had on her. It was a conversation that would turn Shakespeare to a pile of rose petals. In the end, he told her that he wanted to continue what they had just how they had been doing it. And so, that's exactly how they left it. No labels. Friends outside of the four walls of their apartments. That was all Amelia needed to be able to enjoy her family holiday in Mykonos, guilt free, not missing the man that became the equivalent of her shadow.

The constant company she had in Mykonos compared to what she was experiencing in Turin made her more eager to return to work than she had previously. Of course, there are group chats and facetimes and phone calls throughout the days that kept her occupied, but she was missing the boys and her brother. Her friendship with Kyle was back to its old ways, memes being shared across the european continent, long phone calls to talk about their problems. Kyle knew all about the Fede x Amelia situation, Amelia having given him the sparknotes version over a wine filled zoom session one evening that same week. Their pre-seasons hadn’t gone back yet so they were able to indulge in a bit of vino, guilt free.

She was surprised about the constant contact, or lack thereof, that some of the boys had maintained with her. Ben Chilwell hadn’t once messaged or instagrammed the girl, despite being active in their group chats and liking her holiday pictures on instagram. He even made the rookie error of liking a picture so far down on her instagram, there was no way to explain his need for being there. She messaged him a couple times, assuming he just got busy with whatever he was doing, but there was radio silence on the other end.

A friendship she was surprised had blossomed so well, considering their flirtatious start to life, was with that of Jack Grealish and Tyrone Mings. There had been more facetimes than she could count between herself and the two villa boys. Whether it was Tyrone telling her about a book he had finished that he thought she would enjoy, or Jack asking her how to cook dinner, maybe even them both cooking dinner together - of course she had to have a later dinner to be able to do so, with the time difference and all...and there was no way Jack was going to be having dinner an hour early “athlete’s schedule an all tha ya’know” he would smirk down the camera, brummie accent on full display.

She met Tyrone through Jack, he facetimed the girl for outfit advice one night before going out with the tall defender and the pair hit it off. Both giving Jack the fashion advice he needed but didn’t want to hear (a Gucci two piece tracksuit set is never the answer). Tyrone immediately noticed a certain attention to detail being applied by his fellow number 10, to the tactics that were being put forward by the girl that was far too good at her job. His training was improving, his set pieces having a certain amount of flare. There was also a lack of attention being paid from Jack to other girls. Instead, much preferring to spend the evening at home watching the same netflix series as Amelia so that he could discuss it with her the next day, or better yet, at the same time.

As pre-season had commenced, Amelia had been applying the same tactics that she developed (and that obviously worked) throughout the European campaign to her Juventus club level. Having faith in the four men that were with her and the Azzurri to ensure that their other teammates were completing them accurately. It appears that her skill was widely recognised, having a few missed calls and voice messages left from English telephone numbers that she was yet to listen to. In all seriousness, she was nervous to listen to them. Worried that they would make her an offer she couldn’t refuse. A wise person once told her that you shouldn’t make any decisions whilst you're at the top of your happy, or the bottom of your sad. You should make important decisions when your life is at its constant. It's very easy to accept things that you wouldn’t normally when you're at the peak of your mood, just as easy as it is to forget the bigger picture when you're down. Who knew Kyle Walker was so wise.

“So, i’ve got a bit of a dilemma” She spoke down to her facetime camera one evening in early August.

“Hit me with it darlin’” Jack spoke back to her, getting his dinner utensils out so that they could cook together again. He didn’t like not being prepared for her tutorial, he got stressed if she added pepper and his pepper was still in his pantry. Each afternoon, when it was agreed upon what they would be cooking together that evening, she sent him a list of what he would need out on his bench to complete the meal.

“I’ve missed a few calls from English teleco numbers this last week or so”

“Ok? Do you think they’re scams? You’re beautiful Amelia but I don't think it's actually an Egyptian prince on the other end that wants to offer you 250k in exchange for your paypal info…”

“Ha ha very funny - that was one time ok and he wasn’t a Prince, he was claiming to be an investment banker and wanted to help me start up my portfolio-ANYWAY JACK I WAS 16! God just forget I even told you that story” Amelia barked down facetime, now pausing what she was doing to point at the British boy with her wooden spoon, the same way her mother would to her when she was being cheeky. All she was met with was boisterous laughter.

“Nah i’m only joking, continue with your story.”

“I began to listen to the start of one and it was a talent acquisition manager for one of the premier league clubs, offering me a job” Amelia said as she continued to stir her pasta. Tonight they were making penne arrabiata. She received no reply from the boy. Looking down to her camera to check the call was still active, she saw him looking at the camera with a serious expression.

“Are you going to tell me what the problem is before I start to get excited that you’re going to be living within driving distance from me? Oh god i’ve just realised - was it from Villa? You could be even closer than I imagined” Jack started to ramble, getting over excited with the prospect of being so close to the girl that he could physically hang out with her, instead of virtually.

“Jack calm down, I didn't listen long enough to find out what club he was from. I have 5 more just like it waiting in my inbox.”

“What's the problem then Mils?” Jack could see the girl had apprehension written all over her face.

“I’m just nervous that they're going to tell me everything I've always wanted to hear. That they’re going to make me an offer I can't refuse and I have to leave my life here.” Their pasta was ready to be dished up now, so the girl poured herself a glass of red wine and got herself comfy on her couch.

“Come on, play the messages and i’ll listen to them with you, be your voice of reason,” Jack offered the girl.

“I should probably call Tyrone, you’re just going to reject every club that isn’t Villa.” she laughed before switching facetime to her laptop, moving to the floor of her lounge room and resting her elbows on her coffee table. With the phone near the screen of her mac, she began to play the messages.

_____________________________________________________________

“Hi Amelia, Shaun here from Newcastle United-” “As if you’d waste your talents at Newcastle”

“Jack! That's horrible! At least i know i already look good in the black and white striped kit”

“No, not happening. Next”

“Amelia, Hope you don’t mind but I got your number off of one of my players who knows you. Long story short, we have a position here are Arsenal” “Bloody Bukayo, needs to keep his silky mitts off ya”

“Jack, give it a rest or i’m calling Tyrone”

“Amelia White, Greg here from Aston Villa Football Club” “Get in Greggles!! That's it, stop listening, you’re taking this one”

“I need to listen to them all Jack”

“So, you’ll consider Villa?”

“I’ll consider all of them”

“You’d really go to Arsenal? Aren’t you a Spurs supporter? Shocking stuff”

“Ok maybe not all of them”

“Ciao Amelia, Mario here from Chelsea Football Club - I’ve heard nothing but good things about you. We could really use you here at Chelsea next season. Give me a call when you get a spare moment to discuss the opportunity”

“What? Nothing to say to this one, Jack?”

“Nah, sounds ok. You deserve to showcase your skills at a big club like Chelsea. And besides, you’ll have Jorginho there to look after you. Come on, next one”

“It’s the last one actually”

“Amelia, we’ve got a fantastic opportunity here at Manchester City for someone with your skill set. It would be a massive advantage to have your tactical insight to the game coupled alongside the fantastic leadership we’ve already got at the club”. “Holy shit, Pep called you himself? Kyle Walker really knows how to pull strings when he wants something”

“I am overwhelmed”

“Hey, you don’t need to make any decisions right now. Sleep on it, talk it over with your family. Speak to Jorgi, I know you’re close with him. And just let me know when you decide to pick Villa so i can start house huntin’ for ya”

“Night Jack, speak soon”

“Sleep tight darlin’, speak to ya tomorrow”

Part 7. | settima parte

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anime-and-manga-rants · 3 years

Text

Why Jujutsu Kaisen’s First Episode is So Good

Today, I want to take a look at JJK’s first episode and how its structure makes it one of the best anime first episodes I’ve ever seen.

At first, I wanted to make this another installment of my The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly series, but I don’t think the way those analyses are organized would do this episode justice. I’m going to tackle this analysis in a more linear way than that series. I’ll still be giving JJK’s first episode a grade at the end, though. It’s still a first episode, after all. And it’s too fun not to.

So, without further ado, let’s get into it.

...

The episode doesn’t start off on a bad note:

The first character we actually see (Gojo) doesn’t appear again until the second episode, which is a little strange, but it’s nothing necessarily bad. Normally, it’d be best to first introduce us to Itadori. But it’s part of this opening scene’s intrigue, in a way.

Having Gojo be introduced first only to immediately disappear raises some questions throughout the rest of the episode. Obviously, he’s got to be important to the story to be shown first. So where the hell did he go? This, combined with the fact that Itadori’s set to be executed while clearly oblivious as to why makes for an opening scene full of questions. ‘Who are they?’ for one, of course. But more than that: ‘Why does this teacher at Jujutsu Tech want to execute a boy who seemingly has no idea what he did to get there?’ And: ‘What’s Jujutsu Tech?’

Despite this scene lacking a gripping opening line — the opening line is Gojo saying “good morning” — it still keeps us interested enough to keep watching. It raises too many questions we want answered to not do so.

The tension in this opening scene is palpable, and that’s what makes it good. Stories are all about tension.

...

Moving on... the inciting incident occurs at the end of the episode; therefore, everything before then is setup.

Before getting too deep into any breakdown of the setup in this episode, I’d like to mention that setup and backstory are often seen as one in the first episode of any show. But this isn’t so— at least, they shouldn’t be. Setup is necessary in a first episode, but backstory isn’t.

Setup is introducing us to a protagonist’s ordinary world so that we can get a sense of the difference between what they’re used to and what they’re about to face. Backstory is essentially anything that comes before the story, and it’s often what we find in lengthy info-dumps that interrupt the flow of a story. Backstory is needed sometimes, but it’s far better slipped into a story in moderation, not dumped onto a reader at the very beginning. A literary agent would take one look at a heap of backstory in the first chapter of a novel and toss it in the reject pile. If it can be done respectfully in a first episode, then I’m on board. But usually it’s not needed right up front.

Which is why it’s so refreshing to see that JJK’s first episode has not a trace of backstory anywhere. Overall, this episode is really strong, and I think the lack of backstory plays a role in that.

Furthermore, the setup in this episode is tremendously well done.

You see, before the inciting incident, we must first be introduced to our protagonist’s ordinary world. ('Inciting incident’ is the name for the event that sets the protagonist on the story’s main journey.) But their ordinary world is going to be more boring than the new world they’re going to find themselves in for the majority of the story. Therefore, we need some tension to make the setup before the inciting incident more interesting. Because if it’s too boring (or too long), chances are the audience is going to give up before the story gets anywhere.

There’s plenty of tension in this episode, and it’s almost all thanks to Fushiguro and his quest:

Every once in a while, Itadori’s POV is interrupted in the best way possible by Fushiguro on his search for Sukuna’s finger. This is where the true tension of the episode builds. While Fushiguro’s scenes focus on building the tension of the ‘curse problem’ that culminates at the end of the episode, Itadori’s scenes focus on introducing us to our protagonist. The constant trouble that we’re reminded of every time Fushiguro is on screen plus the promise of Itadori somehow being involved (it’s a story, after all—he has to be involved somehow) makes for an engaging first episode.

And we can’t forget how Itadori is plenty interesting enough to keep the audience engaged without all that promise of trouble to come. Not to say that promise is bad! But we get a great sense of who Itadori is in this episode, and he’s awfully likable and fun. We can tell he’s going to be a complex character worth following.

...

Before I start on the next section, I can’t neglect to mention how there’s no trace of forced dialogue anywhere in this episode! Not even in the setup, where it’s most common. There’s no sign of anyone mentioning anything that they know good and well just because the audience doesn’t know it. And nothing is lost because of it!

We still manage to learn that Itadori’s got some superhuman strength (which would be strange if it appeared out of nowhere later in the episode, when he fights those curses with Fushiguro). We still manage to learn that he’s in the occult club. And that he isn’t afraid of ghosts despite his upperclassmen being terrified of them, and he tags along with them when they go to haunted places for moral support. (Which is a form of specificity— it’s something that truly makes a complex and lovable character. And you bet I laughed when that image popped up of his upperclassmen cowering behind him as he strolled so nonchalantly. How could I not like Itadori’s character?)

This is how a first episode should be done. This is showing (rather than telling) at its finest.

...

Just by the way Itadori is depicted in this episode, through his dialogue and his actions, we can tell he’s going to be a complex character. (The best kind of character!) Not only through his dialogue and actions, though. His promise of complexity is ensured the moment the story-worthy problem is introduced.

(There are two kinds of ‘problems’ in stories: the story-worthy problem and the surface-level problems. The surface-level problems are the ones that are easy to spot— for example, defeating Loki in the The Avengers. There are dozens, even hundreds, of surface-level problems in a story. After all, to defeat Loki, didn’t they have to recruit each Avenger, stop Loki in Stuttgart, and take down the Chitauri army during the climax? And those are only three. But there’s usually only one (or a few if there’s a large cast of important characters) story-worthy problem. These are the problems that are associated with a character arc. Take The Avengers again— didn’t Tony Stark demonstrate how he learned to make sacrifices for others when he redirected the missile into the wormhole at the end? Tony’s story-worthy problem was being too selfish.)

The idea of Itadori’s story-worthy problem is introduced in this episode’s setup:

It’s when his grandfather tells him to help others and not to waste his life.

Now, while Itadori interprets this in his own way — I’ll discuss why this is great later — the beginning is there. His acceptance of his grandfather’s advice (with his own twist) is going to be his story-worthy problem. The episode wants you to know it, too. After all, Itadori references his grandfather’s words during his and Fushiguro’s fight with the biggest curse:

(I’m using the manga to keep everything succinct.)

He’s clearly accepted his grandfather’s advice, though he’s taken more to the idea of giving people proper deaths. Of course, this still manifests in him wanting to help people, as not helping them would very likely lead to their untimely demises. Like how he helps Fushiguro in this scene.

The development of his character will be based on this desire to fulfill his grandfather’s dying wishes and how his views of that desire change as he faces more and more surface-level problems. This is what makes it a story-worthy problem.

Every good story needs both a story-worthy problem and many surface-level problems, because a story with just the latter wouldn’t be much of a story at all. We want to see characters change, whether it’s for the better or for the worse. Your story’s surface-level problems would have to be pretty interesting to keep an audience interested for the entire duration if there’s no story-worthy problem to be seen. Even then, your audience isn’t going to leave your work with much satisfaction. The story-worthy problem is what gives meaning to your specific characters being a part of your story. Why not just any old gaggle of characters? The story-worthy problem also what holds the structure of a story together.

The inciting incident is the best place to introduce the initial surface-level problem and hint towards the story-worthy problem. Itadori saying he’s got his own curse to deal with is about as big of a hint as we could get. It’s fantastic! It’s no good when the story-worthy problem is too difficult to even pinpoint.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to determine what event is the true inciting incident of a story. But the true inciting incident will always be wherever the story is kickstarted plus wherever the story-worthy problem is hinted at. Therefore, the inciting incident of JJK occurs when Itadori helps Fushiguro take down the curse and eats Sukuna’s finger to do so. (Usually it’s not quite so obvious what the story-worthy problem is, but it certainly works in this case!) After all, the story-worthy problem is clearly there, and as soon as he eats Sukuna’s finger, he’s secured himself a spot in a world he’s never been a part of before. If he hadn’t eaten the finger, he could’ve gone back to his normal life after the curse was defeated.

Therefore, JJK succeeds in giving us an inciting incident that accomplishes exactly what it needs to do in a way that deserves nothing but praise.

...

Earlier, I mentioned that I needed to discuss why Itadori interpreting his grandfather’s words in his own way is important. Well, it all has to do with agency.

Protagonists need agency. In other words, they need to decide things for themselves. They need to be active. Passive protagonists who are simply dragged around by the plot and do anything necessary to keep the plot going are the worst kinds of protagonists. They’re the protagonists we get bored of at best, hate at worst. I mean, they can’t do anything for themselves. Who wants to follow a doormat through a story?

Itadori is certainly following his grandfather’s advice, but he gave it a meaning that suited him more. He isn’t really following his grandfather’s words blindly. Another example: when he eats Sukuna’s finger. Fushiguro didn’t tell him to do that. Fushiguro only mentioned that the curse wanted to eat it to gain power. It was completely Itadori’s decision.

Therefore, right off the bat, our protagonist is making decisions for himself, even while being thrown (unwillingly) into an entirely foreign world.

...

I can’t end this analysis without first mentioning how well everything in this episode fits together.

I mean, come on... Itadori’s in the occult club, which is how he knew where Sukuna’s finger went, and because his upperclassmen are in the occult club, they wanted to investigate a cursed object. It was mandatory to join a club, and the occult club finishes before five, which is how Itadori could visit his grandfather and hear his grandfather’s advice (which would become the story-worthy problem).

And what about the occult club’s presentation of their research project to the student council president? They theorize that there’s a dead body buried in the rugby field, and that’s why the rugby players kept falling ill and had to be hospitalized...

Then, later, when Fushiguro walks to the rugby field, he spots a curse and asks himself, “Is there a dead body buried here or something?”

This episode is fantastic!

...

Well, I believe that’s about all I wanted to cover in this post. Everything else is a bit too minor to include, and I don’t want to make this too long. So, let’s hurry up and get to the grade for this episode.

I’m giving it an A+. It absolutely deserves it. I can’t think of another anime’s first episode that I would even consider rating this high. (Even giving Dr. Stone’s first episode an A- was a bit generous, honestly.)

Good for Jujutsu Kaisen!

...

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk anime #jjk analysis #fushiguro megumi #itadori yuuji #gojo satoru #jujutsu megumi #jujutsu gojo #jujutsu itadori #manga analysis #anime analysis

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high-functioning-lokipath · 3 years

Text

Unusual Way - Loki x Reader - Words: 3,294 (including song lyrics)

A/N: Reader is Silver Shadow. However, this doesn't follow the same 'first meeting/falling in love' sequence as "Hurting Each Other".

Loki and you were best friends and had been for about 2 years now since he moved into the tower. It all started the day he'd moved in while you were out on a mission and no one had the brilliant idea to tell you that you were now sharing your floor with someone.

~ 2 Years Ago~

So there you were, exhausted and dirty from the fight, looking forward to a nice hot shower. You'd already taken off your cape in the elevator and as you got off and walked down the hallway to your bedroom, you started to pull at the zipper of your jacket.

"I must say, I wasn't expecting you to be so forward."

"Who's there?" You yelled, not recognizing the voice that spoke to you. You whipped around, trying to see who it was that was speaking.

"Hello," A man suddenly said, appearing directly in front of you. You throw a quick punch but your hand goes right through him and he disappears. "Over here!" He exclaims, waving to you from a few steps away. You quickly draw one of your knives and throw it at him. Again it goes right through him.

"I said, who are you?" You demand, not having had a chance to get a good look at his face yet.

"Tsk tsk," He says, appearing once more, a few feet now away from you. "So impatient." As he talks you focus on the vase setting on the hallway table behind him and start drawing it towards you. If you time it just right, you can either hit him or, if he's not there again, stop it in time before it hits you. "I am Loki, of Asgard! And I am burdened wi-OW!" He yells as the vase hits his head. "Will anyone ever let me finish that thought?"

“Loki?” You screeched. “What are you doing here? Do the others know?” You asked, rushing up to the admittedly handsome man. Even during his attack on New York you couldn’t help but go a little starry-eyed at his presence.

“I am here to help. I,” He sighed, rubbing the back of his head again. “I’m here to work with you and your little team.” Your eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"Oh! Well, I, uh, sorry about that," You stuttered, gesturing to his head. "Here, let me fix that." You reached up and touched the back of his head gently.

"Thank you," He replied with a small smile.

"Let's start over," You grinned. "Hi, I'm Y/N. I guess I'm your new floormate." He grinned back, still surprised by your kindness.

"Yeah, I guess you are."

~ 6 Months Later ~

"C'mon, Y/N!" Loki yelled down the hallway. "The pairs' free dance is about to begin!" You ran out of the bathroom, socks sliding on the hardwoods.

"Woah!" You exclaimed, sliding, or rather bodyslamming, into him. He of course caught you easily, being used to this occurrence, and laughed. A few minutes later you were both sitting on the couch with a rather large bowl of popcorn between you. "Those twizzles were completely out of sync. That's going to ruin their score."

"Perhaps," he commented, tossing another buttery snack in his mouth. "But their lifts have been perfect unlike the other couples." You shrugged and continued watching. You found yourself shivering, however, as you continued watching the programs.

"Has the thermostat gone down?" You asked. Loki got up and checked.

"No, are you cold?" He, of course, didn't notice any difference since he was, not only a Frost Giant, but also wearing a lovely sweater, you thought.

"Yeah, must be the ice," You joked, nodding at the television. You eyed his soft, grey sweater once again and decided that, even though it looked absolutely stunning on him, you needed it more.

"Um, would it be alright if I borrowed your sweater?" You asked nervously. He looked mildly surprised but quickly pulled it off and handed it to you. "Thanks," You said quietly. The past couple weeks you'd realized you had developed a minor crush on your new best friend. You didn't say anything, however, for fear of ruining said friendship. "It smells like you," You chuckled, pulling the jumper close around you. Loki blushed brightly and apologized.

"Sorry, so sorry. I can-I can get a new one from the wash." He went to get up, face still flushed in embarrassment.

"Loki, it's fine," You replied, stopping him. "I don't mind. Thank you for lending it to me." He smiled sweetly at you in reply.

"You're welcome. After all, what are friends for?"

~ 1 Year Later ~

"He's too pretty for his own good, Nat!" you complained, throwing quick punches at your sparring partner.

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means if he knew what's good for him, he would be so perfect all the time!" You blocked three punches and landed one of your own. "If he doesn't I might have to take matters into my own hands."

"Meaning you'll finally ask him out instead of driving us all crazy pining over him like you have been for the past year and a half or so?" She retorted with a smirk, flipping you to the ground and pinning your arms behind you. You groaned and rolled out from under her, standing and holding your hands up in defeat.

"No! Of course not! It means I'd have to ugly him up a little." Natasha rolled her eyes and laughed.

"Like you'd ever have the guts! C'mon! Be honest with yourself! You liked him since New York. Just put on your big-girl pants and tell him! And if you can't find yours, I can lend you mine," She teased, playfully slapping your butt.

"Watch it, Widow!" you snapped. "I'm going to the conference room if it's not in use. I don't want to be disturbed, ok?"

"Fine, just let me know all the juicy details when you finally have the guts to go back to your floor, ok?" You rolled your eyes and walked out.

"Finally alone," you sighed, tossing your gym bag in a chair and slumping down in another. "FRIDAY?”

"Yes, Miss Y/N?" The AI replied.

"Please shut the blinds and lock the door. Emergency override only."

"Yes, Miss." You closed your eyes, tears threatening to slip through.

"FRIDAY, shuffle Linda Eder from my library."

"Of course," The AI replied. When I Look In Your Eyes started playing and you leaned back in the chair, closing your eyes and tuning out the rest of the world. You were so focused on your music and trying to figure out your own feelings that you didn't hear the door open. The next song started and you chuckled humorlessly.

"This one's for you," You said to yourself, thinking of your best friend. You sang along as Unusual Way played.

“In a very unusual way, one time I needed you

In a very unusual way, you were my friend

Maybe it lasted a day, maybe it lasted an hour

But somehow it will never end

In a very unusual way, I think I'm in love with you

In a very unusual way, I want to cry

Something inside me goes weak, something inside me surrenders

And you're the reason why, you're the reason why

You don't know what you do to me

Don't have a clue

You can't tell what it's like to be me

Looking at you

It scares me so that I can hardly speak...

In a very unusual way, I owe what I am to you

Though at times it appears I won't stay, I never go

Special to me in my life, since the first day that I met you

How could I ever forget you, once you had touched my soul

In a very unusual way...

You made me whole”

When you finished you thought you heard a noise behind you but when you turned around there was no one there. You shrugged it off as your own overactive imagination and got up, gathering your stuff. When you got back upstairs, you found Loki in the kitchen. "Thought you might like some lunch," He explained.

"Oh, thanks," You replied, sitting down and letting him serve you. After a few minutes of silent eating you decided you needed to say something. "Loki, I-"

"Y/N, I-" You both laughed, having spoken at the same time.

"You first," You both said. Laughing again, you shook your head and motioned for him to go on.

"Y/N, I must confess something. I-" He paused, taking a deep breath. "I wasn't going to say anything because I was afraid of how you'd respond but," He chuckled nervously. "I believe I've fallen in love."

"Oh!" You gasped. You set down your fork, losing your appetite quickly. "So who's the lucky lady? Do I know her?" You asked, taking a sip of water trying to look casual.

"Yes you do," He replied, smirking. "She's very beautiful and talented. She's kind and helpful to everyone. And most importantly she-"

BZZT BZZT

"Uh, sorry," you said, looking at your ringing phone. "I should take this. It's Steve." Loki looked upset but nodded. "Hello?"

"Y/N? We've got a problem. Is Loki with you?"

"Uh, yeah, he is. Cap, what's wrong?" Loki got up and moved closer to listen in on the conversation.

"We just got intel on a new Hydra base. This one's different though. They have too many defensive procedures in place for us to just attack. We need someone on the inside. That's where you and Loki come in."

"You're sending us to work undercover in a base?!" You screeched.

"Yes, pack a few things and be on the helicarrier in an hour. I'll finish briefing you then."

Working on the inside was, of course, much harder than you'd expected. Thankfully no one here knew you from your actual Hydra days so that made it easier. You just hadn't expected being separated from Loki for so long. Especially after your interrupted conversation, you wanted to talk to him again. Steve assured you, though, it would be a quick mission and you could get back to your normal life within a few weeks.

~ 6 Months Later ~

"You have exactly 2 minutes to get out before this whole place blows, you got that?" Cap yelled through your comms. The mission had gotten complicated and had extended to 6 Months for you both. But now you and Loki had apparently collected enough info for Cap and the others to finally come and blow it all open. Although, none of you had expected a literal explosion. You grabbed the last of the information you needed and booked it out of there. Once you made it into the clearing where the others had regrouped, you looked around frantically as Cap took a head count. "Loki's not out yet!"

"What!" You exclaimed. "There's only 30 seconds!" Suddenly your comms crackled to life.

"Found...girl…trapped," Loki said. The static made it impossible to understand the sentence fully but you understood what he meant.

"Loki! Get out!" Steve yelled.

"I'm going in," You said. Steve yelled to stop you but you were too quick. You teleported in and found the two, trying to shelter themselves in a corner. "Loki!"

"Y/N?" He exclaimed, turning to see you. "What are you doing here?"

"Trying to rescue you, you idiot! Now hold on." You reached out and grabbed Loki's and the girl's hands and teleported out just as the building exploded. Cap immediately went to help the girl, leading her back to the helicarrier.

"So," Loki said, looking at your hand still gripping his. You impulsively gave him a hug, the thought that you could have lost him starting to sink in. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," You replied, pulling away quickly. "I just-"

"Loki! Y/N! C'mon!" Cap called out. You were interrupted once more but ran to the helicarrier and rode back home in silence. When you landed back at the tower, you rushed to your bedroom and flung yourself on the bed face first.

"I need a life," You groaned. You heard Loki calling out for you so you rushed into the bathroom and quickly turned on the shower hoping that he would think you were in there and leave. Once you didn't hear him anymore you decided it actually was a good idea to take a shower so you adjusted the temperature and got in. A few minutes later you found yourself lost in the magical world of shower thoughts. Not wanting to get upset again, you decided on music. "FRIDAY, shuffle my library," You said.

"Right away," It replied. As you were dressing a few songs later, Unusual Way started playing and you thought back to the day you'd left for the mission. You sang along sadly, once again thinking of the man you loved who, apparently, loved someone else.

"You don't know what you do to me

Don't have a clue

You can't tell what it's like to be me

Looking at you"

You opened your door to go to the kitchen and Loki stumbled in. "Were you leaning on the door?"

"Maybe," He admitted, blushing. You stared at him, gesturing for him to explain. FRIDAY paused your music since you were talking and he glanced up at the ceiling. "I wanted to talk to you but I heard the shower start so I was going to leave but then I heard you singing and-"

"I don't like performing," You snapped, quite embarrassed that he'd heard you singing that song especially.

"But I want to hear you sing. Especially that song, you sing it so beautifully."

"How would you know? You heard me through a door," You scoffed. Pushing past him you walked out into the hallway, pulling your door shut behind you.

"Not six months ago I didn't." That stopped you in your tracks. Spinning around on your heel you marched back up to him.

"You heard me when?"

"In the conference room, the day we left for the mission. I'd gone to watch you practice and see if maybe you wanted to practice with me a little but Natasha said you'd left already. She told me where you were and that you didn't want to be disturbed but," He chuckled softly. "Has that ever stopped me?" You laughed and shook your head. "Well, I heard you singing and I decided to leave you be."

"Oh well, thanks I guess," You said, smiling softly, still embarrassed but not as mad anymore.

"May I ask, who were you singing to?"

"What do you mean?"

"When the song started you said 'this one's for you'. Who did you have in mind?"

"Oh," You said, surprised. You blushed brightly and shook your head. "Just someone I care for very much I suppose."

"You suppose?" He teased.

"Ok! I do care about him! Geez! You're as bad as Nat sometimes!" He laughed loudly and you could help but smile wider. You loved when he laughed like that, a real laugh that reached his eyes and filled the room. As you walked into the kitchen and sat down at the counter together, you quickly remembered your conversation at lunch that day though and frowned. "Unfortunately I don't think he quite thinks of me the same way."

"Why's that?" He asked, brows furrowing.

"I am quite sure he has his eyes on another girl."

"Is it the Captain?"

"Oh goodness no!" You immediately replied. "No, definitely not." His eyes suddenly lost their joy and he seemed almost scared to ask his next question. He got up and went to the window, putting quite a bit of space between you.

"Is it my brother?" He asked quietly.

"No! No no no! Never!" You exclaimed. You actually shuddered at the mental image. Realizing what needed to be done you teleported yourself in front of him with your back to the window. He startled and jumped back quickly. You smirked and stepped closer. "I don't know if you've noticed but I'm not a fan of blond's."

"Perhaps Banner then?" He stammered, trying to come up with an idea. You could not believe how clueless he could be.

"What? Ew! No!" You pretended to gag. "I like someone more fun, more mischievous," You grinned.

"Misch-oh," He breathed, finally figuring it out. You looked away, feeling embarrassment set in again. "Well, Y/N, I-"

"Look, I know you were trying to tell me before we left that you're in love and I couldn't be happier for you and I wish you all the best but I just needed you to know, ok?" You cried.

"But Y/N! You don't-"

"I'm sorry," You said, trying to run past him to lock yourself up in your room.

"Not so fast," He said, grabbing your arm.

"Wha-" You were cut off by a pair of lips meeting yours. He quickly pulled away, grinning like mad.

"You don't know what I've been trying and wanting to tell you! The girl I love is you, Y/N! I love you!"

"Me?" You squeaked, smiling giddily. He nodded and you laughed. "I cannot believe it. We've been idiots haven't we?"

"Most certainly," He agreed. He gave you another quick kiss and looked in your eyes. "I think I've loved you since we met but you know when I fell in love with you?"

"When?"

"When you borrowed that grey sweater and never gave it back." You gasped, eyes widening in surprise.

"I didn't realize I never returned it!"

"Oh sure! You wear it all the time!"

"I do no-oh," You paused, thinking about your closet. "Maybe I do," You chuckled. "Well, I actually liked you from the first time I saw you."

"When I scared you coming off the elevator?"

"No, 2012," You whispered. Loki stared at you, quite surprised. "I knew what you were doing was wrong but," You sat down on the couch, having wandered into the living area. "Somehow I understood you."

"Y/N, I don't know what to say. I, well, I was a very different man then and-"

"And you were pretty," You deadpanned.

"Ah, so my irresistible charms strike again." You both laughed and he sat beside you. "Y/N, I think we've been fooling ourselves for far too long. Now, you love me, right?"

"Yes!" You said emphatically.

"And I love you, right?"

"I sure hope so!" He grinned and you wondered where this was going. He stood up and took your hand in his.

"Well then, I should wish to officially court you if that should please you and have your approval," He said, bowing slightly.

"I accept," You replied immediately. You stood up and gave him a big hug. "Oh, Loki, thank you."

"You're welcome, my love. But I hope you know what this means."

"What?" You asked, pulling away just in time to see his smirk.

"It means you're no longer allowed to hog the popcorn bowl on skate night!"

"No," You retorted. "It means that as your girlfriend I can now officially tell you to get your own!" He gasped, playing offended.

"Why! I'm wounded!" He cried, holding his hand over his heart.

"Does this help?" You teased, placing your hand there instead.

"No," He smirked. "But this might," He said, pulling you in for another kiss. "I will never tire of that."

"Nor I," You sighed contentedly. "But we must stop for now."

"Why?"

"It's skate night and I need to get the popcorn ready!"

"Go sit down," He smiled. "I'll get it ready."

"Aw! How sweet!" You squealed. "Alrighty then." You walked back to the couch as settled in. "Loki, dear?" You called out towards the kitchen.

"Yes, darling?"

"Remember, 2 bowls!"

Loki Taglist

@lucywrites02

@delightfulheartdream

@serpentargo

@khena

@nyx2021

@kaz11283

@weasley-main-lover

@up-to-mischief

@lokislittlesigyn

@darkacademicfrom2021

@lokiwhxre

@loki-laufeyson965

@eclipsedplanet

Marvel (all characters) Taglist

@bartv21

@another-crazy-fangirl

@whatafuckingdumbass

@ladylulu143

@lokislittlesigyn

@gaitwae

@mysticunicorn7

@kind-of-crazy-butthatsokay

@thoughts-and-lovely-illusions

@for-hearthand-home

@lokistoriesblog

#loki #loki oneshot #loki imagine #loki fanfic #loki x reader #loki x you #loki x y/n #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #loki friggason #loki fluff

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im-whatchamccallit · 3 years

Text

Crushcrushcrush//Kim Hongjoong (ATEEZ)

Request: Hi i was wondering if you could do a soulmate werewolf hongjoong x human female reader angst and fluff like she over hears hongjoong saying something and she gets sad and shy and worried and stuff.....

Pairing: Kim Hongjoong x Fem!Reader

Genre: Angst with fluff at the end, Werewolf!AU, Soulmate!AU, a bit of College!AU

Warnings: Hongjoong’s kind of a dick with irrational thinking, cussing I guess

Word Count: 7.2k

(A/N: Lets just pretend I didn’t disappear for 6 whole months, but i am back and my medication is no longer giving me the big sad so I’m a little more motivated to write.This isn’t the best work I’ve done, this is actually idea 10 for this prompt and idk if it’s executed properly but Imma keep trying and hopefully, to keep from falling back into a slump, I’ll start a new series so I have a regular scheduled fic for everyone. Also, I think I botched expressing the AUS here but just let me know what you think. Sorry for always disappearing, I can’t promise I won’t go off the grid again but I’ll try harder to be active in anyway)

Your mother always said crushes stayed crushes for a reason: they hurt. Bad. But you thought she was wrong, that your feelings for someone could one day be reciprocated later if not sooner, and that’s what led you to him. Kim Hongjoong. The day you met was a complete accident, your body slamming into his as you wandered aimlessly during your freshman year of high school. He was gorgeous with wide brown eyes, beautiful pink lips and cheeks, his hair styled differently from the other boys to reveal his forehead, showing his individuality. He was perfection.

“I’m so sorry. Are you alright?” Those were the first words he spoke to you, his voice so gentle, so sweet. And the way he reached out to help you with no hesitation, holding your hands as he pulled you up effortlessly.

It was love at first sight, all until he looked down to your hands, eyes catching a glimpse of your wrist, a row of zeros peeking through the sleeve of your uniform jacket. He slowly pushed the fabric up, both your eyes widening to see your soulmate clock had finally timed out, his hands releasing yours to check his own wrist, a quiver to his lips as his clock matched yours, his once soft eyes now hard as he stared you down.

“Stay far away from me.” He warned, not saying another word as he headed to his homeroom, your body frozen as you watched him disappear. He was so harsh, yet you liked him. Maybe suddenly finding his soulmate scared him, but it was no problem to you! You were bound to end up together so you played the waiting game with him, being the perfect soulmate you could possibly be whether he accepted it or not.

And that led you here, now seniors in college and still acting the way you were when you met. Hongjoong was still cold, treating you like some plague while you could only smile along. You weren’t sure how you missed the fact you lived in a predominantly werewolf area until a public service announcement came on your television one night to remind humans to stay indoors during the full moon, that night dedicated to werewolves being as free as they could be, but it made you even more hopeful when you were on your way home from work one night, taking a shortcut through the woods since it lead right to your backyard.

You were 16 at the time, so the sight of a shirtless person would obviously make you flustered, but a shirtless Hongjoong? Enough to cause a nosebleed. He was 16 as well, the exact age a werewolf develops a mate bond and, seeing as you’ve already been confirmed as soulmates in the human world, the sudden desire to latch onto you and never let you go once you locked eyes only made your lifelong attachment more real, and he was freaking out. He didn’t speak, opting to shift without removing the remainder of his clothes, your eyes wide as he moved deeper through the thick trees and towards the horizon where the orange sky was in full view and, the grin on your face just couldn’t stop growing. You knew werewolves had a stronger drive to their mates, so the idea that he could avoid you forever was laughable. Sure, you were both 23 and he has uped his disdain for you from staying silent to calling you any vile name he could think of, but it was only a matter of time before he came around. You just knew it.

“(Y/n), stop gawking.” Miyeon joked, poking your side to snap you from your daydreams, your eyes widening when you noticed a few of Hongjoong’s friend’s catching your gaze, a blush painting your face as you turned away.

“I wasn’t gawking, just making sure their table was okay. I am their waitress tonight.”

“And every other night because you said, and I quote, ‘I wanna work at any table my Joongie’s going to be at!’” She mocked, your eyes rolling as you looked back towards them.

You took a job at a diner just a few blocks from both your apartment and college campus, the pay great and the distance convenient. It was the only time you had to yourself instead of lingering to Hongjoong, figuring out his classes and breaks to give him snacks and lunches you’d personally make for him since you overheard him complain about the campus food before, only to be told they tasted like shit and he’d find his own food. It was a bit of a kick to the face to hear that, but you had one saving grace: his pack. The first time Hongjoong sent you away with a bitter remark, they were curious about you, tracking you down when they weren’t with their alpha to get more info on who you were and what you found so loveable about the man treating you like some demon. They were surprised by how sweet you were and how accepting you were to be the unwanted luna of an eight-wolf pack. They could never hate Hongjoong but they sure as hell loved you just a little more than him. Unbeknownst to both of you, Yunho and Mingi found out where you worked, making a plan with the others to take Hongjoong there as much as possible so he would have no choice but to interact with you, even if he stayed silent to not appear like an asshole in front of the various strangers dining as well. Hongjoong would honestly never return if he had the choice, but something about the restaurant’s signature burger kept bringing him back, which is why he was here, sipping his soda angrily as he waited on his meal that would be served by his worst nightmare, you.

“I don’t know why you don’t just find someone else. Isn’t it easy for humans to reject soulmates? You could move on with no problems.” She said, helping you grasp onto the steel tray covered in various meals, a huff leaving you as you put on a bright smile.

“Because I know it’s harder to move on for wolves. You guys don’t have a choice on who your mates are, and you just accept it once you meet them. I know Hongjoong will accept me eventually, it’s just gonna take some time.” You gave one more smile before wobbling towards the table in question.

Hongjoong tried not to follow the gaze of his pack as they watched you happily approach them, letting out a huff as you adjusted the tray onto your shoulder, grasping the plates and placing them in front of the respective person, Hongjoong’s nose twitching at the smell of his burgers and fries, not wasting anytime to dig in as the other’s thanked you, but you shyly looked at the male before you, the tray pressed to your chest as you tried to find a casual way to speak with him.

“I-uh- I-I remembered last time you asked for extra cheese, so I decided to put cheese in the burger too! I hope you like it better than the tofu stew I made you for lunch the other week.”

“I didn’t ask for extra cheese this time, so why put it inside my burger where I can’t take it off?” He said spitefully, mouth still full as he set the half-eaten burger down.

Your smile faltered but bounced back as you reached towards his plate.

“O-oh! Well, I can take it back and make you another! This time I ca-“

“’This time’? You should’ve just done it from the start. Your job is to listen and do what you’re told and you can’t even do that? What can you do right?”

You swallowed hard, your eyes wandering to the people now staring at you as the scene unfolded, your heartbeat ringing in your ears as you tried to hold it together. The worst he’s called you in an idiot and that was usually under his breath, so to practically say it out loud, in front of strangers while you were in the middle of a shift and forced to do nothing but smile like you usually would, felt like you were being stabbed and burned simultaneously. You couldn’t keep smiling, looking down as you tried to apologize, only for him to cut you off once again.

“Go bother someone else. Or hide in the back if you’re just gonna keep fucking up this much.”

The space was eerily silent, even with the soft music playing, your eyes not leaving your shoes as you shuffled away. It was a pitiful sight, Seonghwa releasing a breath he didn’t realize he was holding as you went to a neighboring table to retrieve plates and glasses left by a couple from before. He was ready to tear Hongjoong’s head off, not as a gamma to an alpha but as one friend to another, his jaw tight as he prepared to berate him the way he did you but, somehow, Wooyoung beat him by asking a question none of them thought to ask before.

“What did she ever do to you that you have to treat her like that?”

There was a strange but tense silence as they awaited his answer, watching him taking small bites of his fries as he stared ahead at nothing before turning to them with what could only be described as a sadistic smirk.

“Imagine being 13 and finding out the best years of your life, the years of dating, hooking up, just discovering who you are, are gone because your mate decides to show up and take that from you.”

“Are you fucking stupid? That’s the reason we have mates, so we can do those things with one person instead of random people!” Seonghwa nearly yelled, trying to keep his voice low as to not alarm anymore spectators again.

“For the past 7 years, I’ve been trying to get her to leave or just reject me, but it’s clear to me now that she’s just an idiot that doesn’t understand she’s not needed, by me or anyone. And, if you’re as dumb as her, I’ll simplify it for you: she’s unwanted.”

Whatever pain you felt before suddenly disappeared into a numbness you couldn’t explain. He knew you were there, that you could hear him, that you would hear him, and yet he still said it. You were conflicted and sad, your lips curling in a mixture of disgust and anger before settling on a bright smile. Never mind the fact your tears finally spilled over, that your heart ached with every beat and your body felt heavy with the weight of being rejected by someone you waited so long for, you just had to smile. Soulmates were supposed to be a sure thing, supposed to be your happily ever after, yet it just turned out to be a crush, one that you should’ve let die the day you met him.

“(Y/n/n)…” Miyeon spoke cautiously as you made your way towards the bar, your other coworkers watching from beside her as if you were some strange spectacle.

“We have to start cleaning, y’know? It’ll help us get out of here a lot faster tonight.” You said in your usual cheerful tone, tears still flowing and a faint crack to your voice.

“How about you just head home for the day, (Y/n)? We can handle everything from here.” Your manager said, her eyes scanning your face as you moved past them and to the kitchen, their bodies following instinctively.

“What? No! I’m fine! We still have 4 more hours to go and I think if I get a head start with the chefs for tomorrow lunch specials I ca-“

“(Y/n), please-“

“I’m fine, Miyeon! Really! It’s not like I got broken up with or anything, I never even had a boyfriend! Just a crush on someone that thinks I’m a waste of space! Isn’t that super ironic? Spending most of your life chasing after someone that wants nothing to do with you? That’s really funny, right?” You choked out, lips pursing into a thin line to keep in your sobs but your attempts were futile, everything slowly starting to hit you at once until your body collapsed, one of the other servers catching you before you hit the ground.

It was all a blur from there, the words of comfort everyone offered turning into muffled noise as your cries of agony came out freely, the way Miyeon dragged you from the emergency exit at the back of the building and to her car to take you home, and even when you crawled into bed and managed to sleep despite the pounding headache. 7 years came and went and there was nothing to show for it. No soulmate, no boyfriend, no romance, not even a friendship. You were empty and for some reason the only thing filling your heart and mind was the person who broke you.

It felt like time stood still yet hours had passed, Hongjoong back in his own bedroom pressing away at his keyboard, stopping occasionally to write a few notes down from his new composition, but he wasn’t distracted enough to hear his door open, various footsteps entering and even a few bodies settling in on his bed, his eyes not bothering to leave his notebook as he figured this moment would come.

“You don’t need to lecture me.” He grumbled, going back to play a few more notes only to find his keyboard unplugged, Mingi tossing the cord away as his alpha stared him down.

“It’s only a lecture if you listen and learn, which you won’t, so we’re gonna make you feel as bad as possible for driving away the only person that gave a shit about you.” San said with a bright smile, a scoff leaving Hongjoong as he finally turned in his chair to face them, eyes scanning the room to see this situation wasn’t playful but truly hostile, almost like an ambush.

“So, you guys don’t care about me?”

“Trying to get you to accept your soulmate so you don’t die shows we care a lot more than we should.” Yeosang spoke, making himself comfortable as he sat against the pillow and headboard.

“But we’re the real assholes for trying to force her with someone as shitty as you.” Seonghwa finally said, Hongjoong’s head snapping in his direction as he let out a dry chuckle, shifting in his seat so he was leaning backwards, arms crossed as he told himself to stay calm during his friend’s potential tantrum.

“I feel like you have the most to say since you’ve been in love with my mate the longest, so go ahead, tell me how I’m such a bad man, Seonghwa. I’m all ears.” His smugness made the tension worse, Seonghwa stepping closer with clenched fist.

“I’m not in love with you mate, but if I didn’t know someone was waiting for me because we were fated to be together, maybe I would have asked (Y/n) out, because she deserves better than a lowlife with the brain function of a dead goldfish. But I respect her too much as your mate and my luna to not push those boundaries so I tried to help her get closer to you because I know you, Hongjoong. You’re not an asshole or a jerk, but to her? You treat her like shit, when really you’d have no one without her. You’re a short, scrawny, nerdy moron that locks himself in a dark room for days on end just to complete a single project, then emerge to eat cold pizza and watch Despicable Me because your pea-sized brain can’t comprehend anything that isn’t brightly colored animation. If you take away your alpha status, no girl would even look in your direction but you have someone literally at your side, the only human not afraid of you, trying to figure out everything there is to know about you, yet you can’t give her the time of day. You probably don’t even know a damn thing about her.”

“Unfortunately, I know more than enough about her.” Hongjoong spoke, all amusement gone as he glared at the older male, their mindlink clogged with threatening growls and barks, trying to keep their fight from getting physical.

That first sentence alone made Hongjoong’s blood boil, his face contorted in a mixture of pain and disgust. How could Seonghwa even say that to him, plotting to steal his mate all because he was a bit uncertain? That all it was, uncertainty! He didn’t hate you, or wish you weren’t around, he actually grew to anticipate and enjoy your ramblings about your day or whatever new thing caught your attention, he actually even loved the lunches that you’d make for him. He couldn’t help that over the years he grew to crave you more, but the thought of fully accepting you and solidifying that the best years of his life were about to be gone, restricted to one person forever before he could even determine for himself his likes and dislikes, what he considered real love rather than what fate wanted him to feel, was terrifying. So he distanced himself from you, spending the years watching you from afar in hopes that if he didn’t get too close he wouldn’t lose his free will completely.

But it was a bad habit that seeped into your college years, everyone assuming he cared so little for you when he knew everything there was to know. He knew where you worked before any of the boys did, where your apartment was, the fact you were a business major planning to open a bakery once you graduated, he knew you didn’t have classes on Fridays but always came back on campus because you prepared meals for the men’s and women’s wrestling team which is where Jongho first met you, he knew you hated mint chocolate chip ice cream just like him but loved chocolate ice cream with mint chips, he knew you were always cold but overheat at night and wake up at exactly 3am to change into shorts and a tank top to be more comfortable, he knew about the birthmark on your lower back and a scar on your hip from a cat scra-

“Holy shit, you’re insane.” Wooyoung breathed out, Hongjoong’s eyes focusing on the room in front of him, a mixture of shocked expressions and amused ones filling his vision.

“I liked it better when we thought you hated her but, hyung, you’ve been stalking her since your freshman year of high school?” Jongho asked cautiously.

It was a weird feeling bubbling inside Hongjoong, the primary one being embarrassment. He knew he’d sometimes unintentionally rant in their mindlink whenever he was upset but to make an almost decade long secret public to his pack, revealing the intimate details of how you slowly but surely ingrained yourself into not only his brain but his life until he felt like he was going crazy? It made him tear up, his face burn with a blush as he was finally forced to face the truth. He pushed you away but wanted you more than anything. He wanted to spend his years free to explore before finally settling down only to reject every girl that came close to him simply because they weren’t you, and he took that anger out on you. What was he so mad about? The fact you stood by his side with a smile happily accepting him while he tried and failed to lust after other women? Was he that pathetic? He could admit now that he was and, if he could turn back time, he would’ve introduced himself and walked you to class. Just the first step of fully accepting you.

“You’re still ranting in the mindlink, you know?” Seonghwa said softly, regaining the once again lost focus of his alpha who was too consumed in his own pity to notice the tension died down, their gazes soft as they tried to sympathize with their leader.

“Sorry. I wish none of you heard that stuff.” He admitted, sniffling as he realized he’d been crying, hand hurriedly wiping away tears from his cheeks.

“Well, it’s a good thing we did. We still think you’re a moron, but at least we know you’re feeling guilty about all of this.”

“Don’t worry, Joong, if you know (Y/n) like we do, she always sees the best in people, so she’ll forgive you. But you still have to apologize.” San followed up Mingi’s words, wrapping an arm around Hongjoong shoulders while giving a bright smile in response to his weak one.

“She’s my TA in Calc 3 and I have that class around noon tomorrow. She always stays after in case anyone has questions, so I can stall until you get there.” Yunho offered, Hongjoong feeling a slight warmth in his chest thinking about it all. He’d let go of his insecurities, fix everything he’s done wrong, and finally have you as his. Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough.

And tomorrow did come, but you were nowhere to be found. When Hongjoong arrived to Yunho’s class, he was met with a sympathetic apology on the account that you didn’t show up that day, you weren’t even at any of your other classes. The boys even tried to find you at work only to be met with a mob of your pissed coworkers led by Miyeon, threatening to rip their heads off if she saw their faces again. And that lasted for nearly 3 days, Hongjoong’s hope slowly dwindling away until he noticed two figures sneakily meeting halfway at the school’s entrance to exchange a large white cooler.

He recognized those bulky arms anywhere, and the thick Aussie accent was a dead giveaway as well, especially when it was followed by a distinct giggle. There was no mistaking it was Chan, but he could barely see the person with him, their voice low as they spoke to him and face hidden beneath a hood, but the scent emitting from them was strong, and beautiful, his eyes widening as he finally took it all in. You looked different, wearing a dark grey matching sweat suit which was a complete 180 from your usual attire, and you smelled faintly of passionfruit, possibly a change to your normal shampoo in an attempt to disguise yourself, but that thought only made his heart hurt more. Were you intentionally avoiding him? He could understand you hating him now but you were even ignoring the others in his pack, going from friends to complete strangers in a matter of hours and leaving them all devastated. He was going to fix this, here and now, if not for him and you than for his friends.

“Jongho’s been pretty upset about you not responding to his text. It’d really help if you stopped by to at least let him know you’re okay.” Chan pleaded, giving you a dimpled smile and hopeful gaze that made it impossible for you to hide your blushing face and grin.

“I just need a little more time, Chris. It’s like if you broke up with your mate and all the friends you made through her left you too. Except it’s me being broken up with by someone who was never my boyfriend and his friends came to me instead of me going to them. But, still, it hurts all the same.” You laughed slightly, trying to find some humor in the situation.

“You’re the only person that still calls me Chris.” He commented, trying to redirect the conversation as you clearly weren’t fine, neither of you noticing the burning glare just a few meters away.

“I just think it fits you best.” You admitted, neither of you breaking eye contact until you gasped, staring down to the box of food and drinks you bought.

“You should hurry to practice. You need to eat beforehand otherwise you’ll be weak after warmups alone. And I worked hard making those sandwiches and cutting that fruit, if it goes bad because you stayed here to cheer me up, I’ll really be mad.” You tried to put on your best scowl, your scolding undermined by his amused laughter.

“Alright, fine. Just stay safe, please?” You nodded, waving as you watched him turn to head to the school’s gymnasium, missing the way Chan glared at Hongjoong as he continued forward. Chan and Hongjoong’s packs were close, family almost, so the news of what Hongjoong did and why reached them in no time, and Chan was hoping today things would be fixed soon because, apart from you being the wrestling team’s beloved personal chef, you were like a sister to him.

You wasted no time leaving the campus behind, ready to go back into the darkness of your bedroom to forget you existed. You really wish you could disappear, that the ground would split beneath you and swallow you whole, but you couldn’t just leave when your phone was filled with calls and messages from friends and coworkers wondering where you were and if you were fine. So many people cared, what kind of person would you be to leave them all alone like this, especially when all they wanted was to help you? But being alone helped, trying to live life as normal as possible while adjusting to a Hongjoong-free lifestyle helped. It would take some time, but you’d find your normal someday. All you had to do was avoid-

“(Y/n)!” Your body froze.

He rarely called you by your name but his voice was distinct on its own, and it was the most sickly sweet thing you’ve ever heard. You wanted to run, to never have him see you like this. Dear god, how did you even look right now? You felt like shit, you probably looked the part. Dammit, Hongjoong was right all along, you were shit. You were worse than shit, you were just pathetic. A pathetic, lovestruck loser itching to just turn and say hi, to have the conversation you always dreamed of but you knew that wouldn’t happen. He’ll yell at you again. He’ll-

“(Y/n)? H-hi…” Hongjoong said shyly, standing right in front of you as you shrank into yourself.

His brows furrowed as you looked away, mentally arguing with yourself as you went over the days of self-reflecting you did, trying to find some lesson from your solitude to aid in this situation and it was starting to scare him. You were never quiet with him, you always had something to say even if it wasn’t important but, luckily, he had something important to say and hopefully you’d listen.

“I- T-the other day…. I w-was…. I-I’m sorry.” He stammered out, this confession a lot harder than he thought, especially now that you were facing him, eyes just as innocent as the day he met you, but he couldn’t run away this time.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, honestly. Everyone told me I was an idiot and I think they’re right. I treated you like you were garbage for years, all because I didn’t want to be mated so young. I just wanted to date around before I finally settled down with someone and, m-maybe I could’ve just said that, so you didn’t have to wait around for me all these years but, I never hated you, and I can’t hate you. I know you won’t forgive me right away but I think it’s only fair that I can be a good mate to you now.”

He swallowed hard, trying to suppress the desperate ‘please’ he wanted to add as your pupils began to shake, almost as if you were a machine malfunctioning, none of your self-reflecting preparing you for this moment, the only thing coming to mind being some sad blog article you found during your second day of isolation. ‘Forgiving and forgetting too soon is dangerous. Find yourself’. It wasn’t what you wanted but maybe what you need, what he needed. So, without hesitation, you smiled brightly at him although it never reached your eyes, clearing your throat as you tried to keep your voice steady.

“Hongjoong, I can’t forgive you easily. I waited for you, I tried to make you accept me and it always ended up with me getting hurt. Honestly, if I just treated you like a regular crush, maybe we could’ve forgotten we’re meant to be together until after graduation or something.” You laughed awkwardly, wanting to look away as his eyes softened in the saddest way, but you needed to do this, eyes locked on his as you exhaled through your nose.

“I couldn’t be by your side all the time, so whether you dated anyone is still a mystery to me but, I’ve been alone for seven years hoping you’d come around, and I think it’s time I take those years back. I’m not sure if what you said counted as a rejection or if we’re still mates but, if we are, we’ll come back to each other eventually. For now, I just need some time.”

You managed to walk past him without completely collapsing in tears, speed walking back to your apartment as you tried to swallow sobs, not even taking in the way Hongjoong stumbled to follow you, almost like a zombie as he attempted to plead for you to reconsider, to force himself to accept your decision but ask how long you needed, but he couldn’t do that. He tried to picture himself in your shoes, seven years of pining only to be publicly humiliated by the person you were meant to spend the rest of your life with. He couldn’t blame you for not forgiving him, and he sure as hell couldn’t force you, so he let you go, trudging in the opposite direction to his two story apartment just to hide in his bedroom until he didn’t feel like dying anymore.

But as more days passed and it only got harder for Hongjoong. He barely left his room but also never slept, every song he created was played in minor scales to fit his now melancholy life. The charisma he typically exuded was hidden with puffy red eyes from crying and a yellow knit sweater a few sizes too large for his body but it was the only thing that comforted him at this point, especially when knowing you had reconnected with everyone but him.

After exactly one week of distancing yourself from the world, you caved and meet with the boys individually (sans Hongjoong), apologizing for needing space although they completely understood, but the way each interaction ended made your guts churn with guilt. ‘Stay safe, luna’, that’s how all of them addressed you before they left, leaving you filled with the desire to return to how things were before. You missed your friends and, the fact your mate was finally ready to claim you, only made you want to forgive Hongjoong sooner. But you needed to be your own person for once. You had seven years worth of relationships to catch up on and you wouldn’t let them keep you from that.

Except when they did.

You should’ve known it was risky letting them know you had a date so soon, just some other human on campus that had yet found his soulmate. They sounded happy for you, Wooyoung going so far to ask where you met and where your date would be and what time, giving suggestions on what to say and wear since it was “your first”. It was a sweet gesture, and you thought nothing of it, but that information meant everything to him which led to now, the boys huddled together in their living room with a slightly paler and sickly looking Hongjoong curled into the corner of their loveseat.

“So they’re going bowling tonight at 8:30? We could ask her about it tomorrow in case she’s into him because hyung isn’t looking too great.” Yeosang commented, everyone looking to Hongjoong as he managed to drown his entire body within the sweater, only his head visible as he stared ahead like some lost puppy.

“He’s just weak from not being around her for so long, but their bond is still there so he’s fine. But we have nothing to worry about. She won’t fall in love with him so don’t get too involved, she’ll just stop talking to us again if we meddle too much.” Seonghwa warned, a chorus of ‘Okays’ confirming their dismissal as they all stood to retreat to their bedrooms.

“Wait, who is she going out with anyways? There’s only 10 other humans at that school.” Mingi’s question cause everyone to freeze, the silence in the room contrasting with the faint answer Woooyung gave in their mindlink, Hongjoong turning to look at him with hurt and pain.

“Why didn’t you say it was Yugyeom?!”

“I did! Just not to you, until now because I forgot to tune you out.” He said shyly, flinching as Hongjoong ran past him and right out their front door, none of them sure of what to do at that point.

It was such a minor yet major detail. Kim Yugyeom was admittedly the most wanted person any of them could think of. Human girls wanted him, werewolf girls wanted him, most guys couldn’t help but stare whenever he passed by. He was gorgeous with eyes that sparkled every time he smiled. He spoke about his soulmate with so much passion despite never meeting her, following his words with how he’d treat any girl before her with the same love and care. It was a pick up line meant to hook any hopelessly romantic girl in, the sweetest way to say their relationship wouldn’t last. But this was Kim Yugyeom, they knew it was only meant with good intentions, not wanting to string someone along with the false hope they’d be together forever. And that’s exactly what you needed. To explore while knowing you’d always come back to Hongjoong. But that’s not what Hongjoong wanted. He didn’t want you dating anyone else, finding temporary happiness when he was supposed to give you a lifetime of it. And humans were more flexible with their soulmates, they had the privilege to move one without the pain or withdrawals of losing their mate. Werewolves just died if they were rejected, heartbreak and loneliness consuming them, so there was no telling how your heart would react to someone exactly like you. Maybe you’ll fall in love with him. Maybe he’ll abandon his soulmate for you once he learns how amazing you are. Maybe Hongjoong would die from lack of food and sleep before he even reached your apartment, which he was still sprinting full speed towards. It was only 7:30pm, meaning he had an hour before you and Yugyeom went out, but he didn’t have a plan. He had no idea what he was doing, but he needed to stop you before you found yourself in love with someone else.

It was like some scene in a drama, Hongjoong’s chest heaving as he finally came to a stop just outside your apartment. His body felt like giving out as he climbed the two flights of stairs to your door, only to find you waving shyly to Yugyeom just as he turned away, trying not to lock eyes with Hongjoong but Hongjoong’s eyes were only trained on you, yours finding his as a panicked look crossed your face. Should you look away? Go back inside? What was he even doing there? You never told the boys your address… You gasped as he approached you, swallowing hard as you tried to remain calm, but how could you stay calm when you finally got a good look at him?

“Oh my god, are you okay?” You didn’t hesitate to ask, stepping further from your door to examine him, reaching for his face only to stumble back to your original position. You were making great progress, you can’t do that now.

“I’ve been better, but even then I wasn’t fine.” He said with a dry chuckle, your lips curling into a fake smile to not show how much his appearance affected you. He looked like he was on the brink of death. You knew wolves would get sick without their mates, but was it really killing him? Were you killing him?

“Joongi-Uhm, Hongjoong, how about you sit down? You look like you’re going to faint.” You offered, stepping back to allow him inside, watching him stumble past you and straight to your sofa as if he owned the place.

It was such an awkward moment for you, watching the poor boy curl into himself as his sweater practically became his body, a sigh leaving your lips as you shut your door. Instead of healing yourself, you had to heal him. It was oddly pitiful but your instincts screamed at you to do it.

Hongjoong shut his eyes as he eased into your sofa, feeling more comfortable than he was in his own home, even more so with your scent invading his senses, your body warmth radiating onto his as you carefully took a seat, trying to figure out what to do.

“Do you need food, or water? Or a doctor?” You asked, the giggle he let out this time weak but still enough to make your heart beat a bit faster.

“I just need you near me.” He admitted.

You let out a squeak as he shamelessly fell into your lap, head comfortably resting against your thighs as he laid face up. You couldn’t stop your hand from easing through his unnaturally colored locks, melting at how soft they were, bottom lip trapped under your teeth as you had to fight off the desire to cup his face. You’ve never gotten this close to him and he wasn’t telling you to go away, instead letting out content purrs as he nuzzled closer to you, your eyes burning with unshed tears. Why couldn’t he just want you from the start? You’d would’ve been able to hold him like this all the time, to see him happy and healthy rather than a shell of his former self. But he didn’t want you, and now he was at your apartment just to keep himself from dying. It was silly to think he cared about you as much as he did himself.

“Of course you do.” You whispered, laughing bitterly as your hand left his hair, moving to his arm to ease him back up into a sitting position.

You couldn’t get past him no matter how hard you tried, nor did you want to, but every word he said, everything he’s done, followed you like a ghost haunting some poor unsuspecting soul. Why did you have to love someone who didn’t love you the same? Why was this your life?

“Can you just hold me a little longer? P-please?” He asked with a cute whine to his voice.

You sighed and grabbed his arm, gently pulling him back into his previous position, fingers massaging his scalp as he finally opened his eyes to look at you. You were beautiful, even with the frown lines etched into your face. He wonder how long they’ve been there, especially when he’s only seen you smiling. Maybe you spent your alone time more upset than he thought. Where you upset before he came? You couldn’t be when Yugyeom was here, no one could be upset with him around. Except Hongjoong. He felt a grudge building inside him just from the mere thought of him with you. He felt like interrogating you on what he was doing here in the first place and why you gave your address out to just anyone, but it wasn’t his place to ask and probably wouldn’t be for a while, but jealousy and rage was all he felt so any reasonable thinking was thrown out the window.

“I don’t want you to see Yugyeom anymore.” He said definitely, your eyes widened as you stared at him incredulously, an amused giggle leaving your lips.

“That’s not for you to choose, Hongjoong. I told you I need time-“

“Those seven years you’ve been waiting I couldn’t be with anyone else. I always compared every girl I met to you and none of them came close to being as perfect, now I have to watch you date some dance major with pretty eyes because I was an insecure dumbass? He has a soulmate, and he’s always going to choose them no matter how much you like each other, so why not save your feelings? I’ll wait as long as you want me to, but just don’t fall in love with anyone else.”

You tried so hard to hide your smile. This wasn’t something you typically liked, possessive guys being on the list of things you found annoying, but considering it was Hongjoong, his soft eyes hard and sharp as their hue seemed to go pitch black as his words were both sweet and demanding, made you fall in love just a little more than you already were. You wanted to take this as his confession, as a truce in your previous one-sided enemyship, to tell him that you told Yugyeom you couldn’t go out with him because you could only see yourself with Hongjoong, but you needed time. Not time to date and explore the way you thought he had, but to watch him work as hard as you did to prove he was ready and willing to love you. It was a little malicious, sure, but it was all in good fun. He’d always be your mate after all.

“I don’t know, Hongjoong, you really hurt me…”

“It hurt knowing I wasn’t with you.” Your smile cracked through, causing his own to appear, your game already over.

“And how do you think I felt? You think you can make up seven years worth of waiting so easily?”

You squealed as he shot up, magically seeming more alive than when he arrived, eyes full of life and his lips and cheeks the same rosy color as when you met him, hands warm and soft as he cupped your face.

“Good thing I have forever to do it.”

The silence was comfortable but unbearable, especially as he hesitated to lean closer, your lips puckering to guide him but he didn’t seem to be catching on and, when he did, you shifted back, laughing awkwardly as you stared at one another, both of you taking a deep breath as you finally closed the gap between you, a weird electric sensation you could only dream of as your lips slowly grew accustom to one another, moving so slow yet feeling so urgent. It was all still new to the both of you, romance and dating only now becoming part of your lives, but it was exciting knowing that you had years ahead of you to perfect it, your entire lives dedicated to loving one another. And it only took a seven year crush to get you here.

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