#didn't realize i had so many thoughts abt this but hey the show's been going for 7 years i've had lots of time to think ig | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lennjamin-o7 · 2 years

Note

you'd be surprised at how many people reread your fic lmao, I also love rereading your fic (esp for the angst 👀). One of the funniest thing I realized at one of my rereads is that all of the blessed ones have the same 'short word + name of weapon' pattern techno does. I did an irl facepalm for not realizing it sooner lmao.

My favorite scenes is definitely techno's dream sequences, esp because it's genuinely does feel like a dream. Idk how to explain it, but it's scratching my brain in the best way. Plus the way you revealed the blood god!! Honestly I think that's one of the best application of "show don't tell" I've seen in a while. Cuz, you never said that it was the blood god, but Everything in that exact moment just Screams it. I just love the dream sequences alright. Also, the fact that the blood god actually hates how the church is treating techno is really funny to me, cuz now there's three parties who wants techno, and none of them will go down easily (unless techno's gonna off of blood god's hand with that little bet 👀).

Alright this is getting too long, I've already poured out so much in the comments and somehow I'm still having thoughts abt this fic 😵‍💫 what I want to say is, this is such a good fic I love it very much mwah /p

side note: I don't know why, but my brain has decided that your blood god looks like Mohg from elden ring (tw for body horror if you decide to look him up tho). I mean, his title is Lord of Blood so it kinda makes sense.

I'm so happy that something I created gave you enough joy that you read it not once but TWICE. But you insinuating that you read it more than twice. Bruh. I'm just incredibly flattered 💚💚💚.

I am incredibly proud of the names for the Blessed so I am glad people enjoy that, too, and it's not just me giggling at it. I originally was making it that every Blessed had 2 Syllable Adjective + 1 Syllable Weapon, specifically. So it had the exact same stressed syllables as Technoblade's name when said outloud. Just so it was even more integrated into the fic. (Also, Subtleknife is a nudge at His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, which also has religious themes to it. Especially in relation to religious zealotry and overreach. So, I thought it would be a fun little fitting addition)

But as I added more names, it became harder to do that pattern because there are only so many 1 syllable weapons. And I really didn't want to keep reusing weapons, even if in Universe that's what they would have had to do. And I had the wiki for Melee weapons open on my computer for so long lol. So, I know I eventually caved on sticking strictly with that setup as more side ocs were named.

I am so glad you like the dream sequences! I have a BLAST writing those, and I have actually written two or three that never made it into the fic because I felt I needed to use them more sparingly. If I use them too often, I feel like it will ruin the tension of them, you know? So, as much fun as I had writing them, I do have to restrain myself lol. But trust me, I love them very much. And there will definitely be more in the fic because I am weak and want more. It definitely scratches my brain, too.

And I am glad I've been successful with the Show, Don't Tell. That is one of my personal goals when I started writing this fic in particular. To do better with show don't tell. And its really encouraging to hear that it was successful. Especially with the Blood God, because I was trying to hit that niche of, like, eldritch horror. Which HAS to be show not tell. Because I can't just say "hey, this guy is horrifying and incomprehensible!" and have the same impact. I had a lot of fun trying to find the right words to get across the feelings of those scenes. It was a lot of effort, but really really fun effort.

And Techno is in the middle of a multi-sided tug of war and doesn't even realize it lololol. Unfortunately, he's the rope. Which isn't, you know, great. I mean, for him anyways. All of us that like angst are having fun.

I love every word so if you are worried about it being long for me, please don't worry. I'm screenshotting it, printing it out, and eating it. I love it. Delicious food. Chef kiss. I love it. And I love the comments. And I am so happy it makes you happy enough to rotate it in your brain. Because it also rotates in my brain.

And I've never played Elden Ring, but I did look that up and fuck that is a cool design. The people who designed that game really went off. And feel free to imagine the Blood God like that, its looks neat as hell!

And its not like I've described what the Blood God looks like.

Because Techno hasn't looked at him yet.

Which I'm sure isn't significant. :)

Have a great day! And seriously. Thank you for the ask 💚💚💚

#lenn writes #to be truly free #ask and ye shall receive #happeetmblr

6 notes · View notes

yourmidnightlover · 3 years

Text

lost my everything

Summary- while revealing something to spencer, you confess something during the process. he didn't know how to react, which led to a terrible accident in which he might lose you forever.

TW: talk abt mental and physical abuse, alluding to death, talk about self-harm, SAD ENDING

WC- 3,152

a/n - please don't read if you're sensitive to self-harm or talk about emotional and physical abuse because reader goes into discussion about these things. i care about you and your safety so if you need to talk about anything please seek help or my inbox is always open! you are loved and you are needed <3

masterlist

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

one thing about being the youngest member of the team meant that the second-youngest member was drawn to you.

that second youngest member happened to be spencer reid.

you had just had another paperwork day today since you got back from one the night previous. you were currently in the conference room discussing the case before we got off-topic, curtesy of spencer's coffee problem.

"i might have a slight problem with my coffee addiction, but there are many studies that go to show the benefits of drinking coffee. supposedly, drinking coffee could extend your life period, strengthen your liver, increase your body's glucose production, and even-"

"okay, that's all for today guys. go home and get rest before a case comes in," hotch interjected and warned.

you placed your hand on spencer's arm, this time underneath the table, as his face began to fall from disappointment. he turned to face and gave a tight-lipped grin before you removed my hand and we both stood up.

"so, spence, my place or yours for the doctor who marathon this time?" you said as he grabbed his bag from his desk.

"we went to mine last, so we can just go to yours this time," he said with his natural pep back. "besides, i kinda like your apartment better," he shrugged with another wide smile.

"clearly you do," you joked. "you almost always say my place," you laughed as you both joined jj. pen, and emily in the elevator.

"hey, y/n, would you wanna go to o'kiefs with us tonight?" jj offered kindly.

"already got plans. maybe next time!" you said with a smile, turning back to see spencer wearing the same smile on your face.

honestly, you and spencer have gone to the bar with the team a few times. you weren't opposed to going with them, you just knew that going meant everyone would pressure you to drink alcohol.

last time, you had succumbed to peer pressure. spencer had to drive you home and hold your hair as you puked into the toilet, it was a very good bonding experience. you didn't remember much, but you do remember you convinced him to stay the night, although he did end up sleeping on the couch rather than in the bed with you.

"after last time, i don't blame you, y/l/n," emily laughed out, giving a concerned look recalling the memories flooding her mind.

"next time we won't pressure you so much!" penny consoled. "i didn't know how much you meant it when you said you can't handle your alcohol," she winced.

"yea... i really meant it," you laughed out, trying to shed some light on the subject. the elevator opened, allowing you to go your separate ways for the night. "have fun you guys!" you called as you walked to your car with spencer.

spencer and you have been carpooling to work ever since you learned he took the metro to work and only lived a couple blocks from your apartment complex. you couldn't stand the thought of something bad happening to him while on the train, so you've offered to give him a ride there and back ever since.

in return, spencer insisted on paying for daily coffee runs for the two of you. it was his way 'of returning the fuel money in another type of fuel.'

you and spencer crawled into the car and began the drive back to your place. it wasn't too long to your place, only a 20-minute drive, but being with spencer made it feel like half that.

"do you even remember what happened the last time you went to the bar with them?" spencer laughed.

"not exactly..." you grimaced. "just that you took me home, there was a bit of puking, and i coerced you to stay the night. and you slept on the couch, which is absolutely ridiculous! i mean, i was the one who practically made you stay, so shouldn't i have slept on the couch? it's not like we haven't slept in the same bed before," you ranted.

"you're right, we have slept in the same bed before," he clarified. "but each time we did that you weren't drunk out of your mind," he sassed.

"ha-ha, spence," you mocked. "i did say i couldn't handle my alcohol. is there anything you wanna fill me in on?"

truthfully, yes.

there was something he wanted to fill you in on.

he wanted to tell you how you confessed your past to him.

he wanted to tell you how you kissed him right after...

and he kissed you back.

he could still remember the way your lips tasted, still covered by the vodka from the shots you took hours before.

but he didn't want you to think less of him since he kissed you back.

he just couldn't help it.

he'd been helplessly in love with you for so long, yearning to be with you as more than friends... as more than what he thought you wanted. but that kiss was his hope.

it was hope that maybe you felt a fraction of the chemistry he did. it was hope that maybe even if you didn't like him, you still had an attraction towards him in some kind of way. it was hope that maybe you would grow those same feelings for him.

but no matter how much 'hope' that kiss gave him, he shouldn't have kissed you back. he knew how vulnerable you were by telling him about your history of abuse.

you told him about your parents. about how they would throw you around when they were high, or drunk, or both. you told him about how they would call you worthless, a whore, stupid, good-for-nothing, basically every name in the book. but you didn't tell him about how you coped with the abuse.

so, when he told you how amazing you are to be able to turn your life around how you did, and how beautiful you are and always have been, you couldn't help but embrace him with a kiss.

you kissed him.

and he kissed you.

in a wonderful, vulnerable moment, he kissed you back as he'd always wanted to each night you spent with each other.

"nope," he shook his head. "nothing to fill you in on."

"i guess that's good," you shrugged.

he also wanted to know if you'd ever tell him about what happened when you were in your right mind. he wanted to know that you trusted him with your darkest secret that you accidentally already spilled to him.

although, maybe you should know about what you admitted to him. it was your life, after all. it was your past that you revealed to him in a simple drunken mistake.

"actually..." spencer started, taking a deep breath as he looked into your eyes. "you did mention something."

"okay... what'd i mention?" you wondered.

"you told me about..." he tried to find the right words to say. "about your parents."

"oh...?" you began to realize what you had admitted to him that very night, still not remembering the events that followed. "i didn't want you to find out like that..." you trailed off.

"i figured you didn't," he gave a small grin. you looked over at him hesitantly.

you thought about all the ways you could react to this. you could block him out and act like it was his fault you drunkenly confessed your past. you could ignore the fact that you told him at all and just move on, burrowing all the emotions inside of you once again. or, you could try to finally move on from what happened and how you coped with it by talking to spencer about it.

"when we get to my place, would you mind if we held off on the marathon? i should probably elaborate a bit more," you asked meekly.

"of course we can. we can do whatever you want tonight, y/n," he soothed, placing a hand on your lower thigh comfortingly.

you drove back to your place in silence, the both of you anticipating the conversation awaiting you.

when you finally entered your apartment, you both shed your coats by the door, hanging them on the hook, placed your guns and badged on the table beside the hook, and sat down on the couch comfortably. you crossed your legs, your knee up in the air, as spencer sat down with his knee touching the one still on the couch.

"so... how much did i say?" you asked curiously.

"you talked about the emotional and physical abuse, but nothing too in depth," he confirmed.

"when i was young, about 12, my parents got into a minor car accident," you began telling him about your past, trying to recall the memories with little hurt or pain. "they weren't at fault, it was a drunk teenager, but they each got addicted to their pain meds from the hospital. i would be asleep when they would come home from a night out, drunk and high out of their minds. i remember the first night it happened. i wandered in the living room, curious of what the ruckus was, and was greeted by my dad's hand slapping me across my face," you chuckled humorlessly, not knowing what other reaction was appropriate.

"he told me i shouldn't have been up or seen what they were doing. he was furious," you furrowed your brows as tears began to well in your eyes at the memory as spencer gingerly placed his hand comfortingly on your knee, scooting a tad bit closer to you. "after that night it became almost a pattern of his. he would come home and then get upset from his high coming down, and take it out on me. my mom just laughed and watched as he would hit me."

"eventually, they started just belittling me. they would say i was a coward for not standing up for myself. they would say i was stupid, or worthless. they especially liked to call me 'a waste of space,' i think that one was their favorite," you took a shaky, deep breath as you knew you were about to reveal for the first time to anyone what you would do to cope with the abuse.

"eventually i started to believe them. i started to believe the things they said about me. i thought i truly was an ugly, undeserving, piece of garbage," you turned to see spencer's eyes full of tears, mirroring your own. "i would self-harm because i believed them. each night after they were done with their own abuse, i felt so... frustrated. the only way i could get that frustration out was to do that. the scars are still there, taunting me of how weak i was to not just endure the pain," you finished.

you didn't even realize tears were streaming down your eyes until you noticed the few on spencer's cheek. he reached his hand up to wipe the tears on your face, ignoring that of his own.

"you aren't weak, y/n. you are unbelievably strong for getting through that. you have to know how amazing you are," he told you, demanding you to see you the way he saw you.

because the way he saw you, you were beyond perfect. you were so much stronger for going through that. if anything, knowing you went through that made him think you were that much more amazing.

and honestly, the way you were thinking is that when you told spencer, he might think less of you. he might think you were dumb for doing that to yourself, inflicting pain upon your own body to relieve yourself of pain.

that was anything but true.

"s-so you don't think any less of me?" you asked confused, looking into his eyes for any tells of his lying.

"absolutely not. if anything i think you're stronger now that i know what you've endured," he assured you, moving a stray piece of hair behind your ear as he moved even closer to you.

"thank you so much, spencer," you said as you lunged forward, your arms immediately pulling him closer around his neck into a hug.

"you don't need to thank me, y/n," he started as he rubbed circles in your back soothingly. "if it helps anything at all... i think your amazing. i always have, and i always will."

"spencer..." you pulled back and looked into his eyes. "just... i need to tell you one more thing."

"alright," he nodded, prompting you to continue.

"i uhm, i'm in love with you," you bit your lip in anticipation for his response.

he didn't say anything.

he couldn't say anything.

he wanted to say something, but he didn't know how.

he didn't even know if you actually said that, or if you were just a figment of his imagination.

because at this point, he felt so much more for you than love.

he was infatuated with you.

but you read it as rejection, so you quickly unhinged your arms from around his neck and retreated into a ball while on the couch.

"i-i'm sorry," you said after quickly realizing the reality of the situation.

he didn't feel the same.

"you d-don't need to say it back. i shouldn't have sprung that on you. i-i've just felt that way for so long, and i thought that maybe you did too, but i shouldn't have assumed anything. i'm so sorry," you looked at him, waiting for him to say anything. to admit anything.

"oh god, and i just spilled everything to you," you ran your hand through your hair.

silence.

"i think i need to go for a walk," you said, getting up from the couch and rushing out the door after grabbing your coat.

you opted for taking the stairs to run outside, being the quickest option.

spencer was speechless, still sitting on your couch, dumbfounded.

he was overwhelmed with emotions.

you loved him?

he couldn't believe that someone so smart, so beautiful, so kind, so funny, so... everything would ever love him.

and he was too late to say it back.

he couldn't wrap his head around the fact that you loved him, so he just sat there in awe of this revelation.

by the time he realized what you had said, and was ready to say it back, you were already out of the door and down the stairs.

you were walking all too fast with tears flooding your eyesight.

you had just lost the one person you loved the most. the one person who's always there for you. the only person you've felt a connection with. you lost your everything.

by the time spencer ran down the stairs in an attempt to chase you, you were nowhere to be found. he could always call your cell, but he wanted to admit his undying love and affection in person, not over some dumb cellular device.

you didn't know where you were going, just letting your feet take you wherever they pleased. it had been a bit cold and you had left everything at your place, so you began rubbing your arms in search for more friction.

you were walking around a corner when you were pulled into an alley by some random white guy. with a harsh hand on your arm, you whined out quietly from the sudden pain.

you didn't have your gun.

"money! NOW!" he demanded. you stayed there with tears in your eyes, too emotional to speak.

your wallet was back at the house.

"are you too dumb to speak? i said MONEY!" he said, pushing a gun you were now made aware of into your stomach.

"i-i don't have my wallet," you admitted with a shaky voice, tears now streaming down your face faster than before.

the night was supposed to be another night with spencer, watching your favorite show and being with your favorite person. you were supposed to be cuddled up on his couch, probably falling asleep in his arms by now.

and now you were being mugged and were probably going to get hurt in one way or another.

"and why is that, doll?" he pushed the gun further into your lower stomach .

"i-i was in a r-rush. i s-swear i d-don't have anyth-thing!" you stuttered, trying to convince him to let you go.

"too bad... you've already seen my face. let's hope you have a nice nap," he growled before pulling the trigger, a bullet running through your lower stomach.

spencer was near you when the bullet went off. he was walking home.

you didn't even realize it, but you were walking in the direction of your love's own home when you were ambushed.

he heard the gun go off.

he naturally ran into the alley with his gun raised, ready to fire at anyone fleeing the scene. he managed to take the guy down with a single bullet before realizing it was you who was shot.

he quickly grabbed his phone and dialed 911 and demanded an ambulance at the corner of 5th and maine, alerting them that an agent was down.

"Y/N!" he yelled, running to kneel beside your limp body. "please, no..." he pleaded.

he put his hand to your neck in an attempt to find any pulse. there was a weak one. there was that hope again. he pulled you onto his lap, your body now resting atop his.

"stay with me. i-i didn't get to tell you how i felt," he cried as he put pressure on where the blood was coming out.

"sp-spencer?" you asked, barely regaining consciousness.

"it's me, y/n. i'm here," he soothed, running a hand through your hair to move it from your face.

"i'm s-s-sorry," you choked out, feeling your eyelids become heavier by the second.

"no. don't apologize to me," he told you. "i should be apologizing."

"it's n-not... your... fault," you felt your breath coming slower, the weight on your chest becoming unbearable.

"i-if i would've just told you how i felt..." he began thinking about how horrible a mistake he had made.

sirens were nearing, hope was becoming greater. spencer clung to your body tighter than ever as if holding you closer to him would will your heart to beat stronger, even if it was for just a bit longer.

"i-i..." you took another uneven breath, reaching your hand up slowly to wipe a tear from his face. "lo-love..." another breath. "you," you finished, your hand cascading down from his face and falling limp onto spencer’s lap, now accepting your own fate as the ambulance was now right outside the alley.

there was a moment when spencer thought maybe you’d wake up. you’d come back to him. but once they loaded you into the ambulance he had to accept one thing.

he had lost his everything...

@averyhotchner @greenprisca @muffin-cup

#spencer reid angst #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #spencer reid imagine #spencer x y/n #spencer x reader #sad ending

240 notes · View notes

sammonroe · 2 years

Note

I agree with everything you said. Honestly I don't know what else to say, probably have some stuff but I'm overwhelmed with emotions rn as I often am when it comes to Scott and Higher Ground in general. I really appreciate that you took time to respond with such a thought-out response! And now I know how to spell Auggie😂

Some more heavy topics ahead

I was a LOT like Shelby (dealing w sexual trauma by being overly sexual/hypersexual) and a lot like Scott because I had to turn 17 to realize that hey, what happened to you when you were 10 wasn't right!!! Stop blaming yourself! Stop being so angry and just.. talk. Or at least these two resonated within me the most.

I do truly believe that a friendship between these two would have been more impactful as well. But I can also see the realism in their choice to be a couple. Especially since back then moreso than now a guy and a gal couldn't be JUST friends.

And ooh I remembered what I wanted to say originally!!

I believe there's truth to both versions of why Scott wrote Elaine the letters. I think he was scared that especially given her initial reaction, telling Shelby that he thought it would make it okay if he loved Elaine would kind of get a better reaction and sympathy from her since he wants her to like him (Idk how to put it any better) and definitely not think he's in the wrong.

And I think he told his mom a slightly truer version- perhaps the objective truth, not how he tried to cope with the situation in his mind by reasoning that if he loves his abuser it's okay- because what does he have to lose? His mother is already in New Mexico with another man and his father has custody of him. Perhaps he just realized or accepted that that's the reality of his situation. And maybe deep down he knew that his mother would probably not judge him harshly.

Either way I actually really liked that Scott gave two different answers when it comes to the letters. Once again it was more believable to me and I know I'd done similar things because I was scared and desperate to get some sympathy for the shit I had to go through.

Anyway, you've quickly become one of my favourite blogs! I only have one friend with whom I can talk abt Hayden and the many characters he's brought to life. Currently Scott and Sam (Anakin is constant haha) because I love these two boys so much and I feel them deeply. I don't know if you do emoji anons but I'll sign my stuff with 👻 if you don't mind :) cuz I'm a ghostie :p

sorry, this is so late, this year got busy quick, but I love Higher Ground for the reason you just gave; a lot of kids were able to relate to these "troubled" teens (sadly), and not with typical issues. they're heavy and managed to tackle them without getting too graphic about it. now, the show's not flawless, there are some stereotypes and personal beliefs that make me raise my brows, but I was none the wiser as a literal child back then (8 years old) first watching it.

I like to think the latter was Scott's truth, the reason he gave his mother; because even if they're somewhat estranged, I know Scott loves his mother, and even though he'd grown close to Shelby, I like to believe he trusts his mother more than a girl he recently grew fond of. it makes sense she made him write down the things he couldn't say to her so she could later use it as blackmail if Scott were to open his mouth. she's a parasite, and the fact the series ends on her "getting away with it" like Scott feared in the first place, (and the reason he didn't want to open his mouth), is the worst kind of denial of closure I've had in fiction.

but that means a lot to me considering I rarely post, haha. I appreciate it.

#scott barringer

9 notes · View notes

everyhowlmarksthedead · 4 years

Text

❛ A FIRST DATE ❜

with Johnny ‘Coco’ Cruz.

Request: Can I request a fluffy Coco imagine?? From his POV about their 1st date and his thoughts abt her and stuff? I really want some coco fluff lol. ❤❤🔥

BY ANON

Word count: about 1.7k

Aurora says: this writing hasn't been edited, you may find some grammar mistakes, I'm sorry about that!

Gif credits: to the author.

Masterlist. You can subscribe to my broadcast list, to be notified whenever I post a writing!

“Brother, just be yourself”.

Angel thinks that Coco is giving it more importance than it really has, after trying different outfits, without finding the perfect one. He doesn't have many clothes, because he doesn't really need it. But now, he's really pissed off.

“If I act like usually, she'll kick ma' ass in fucking seconds”. He grumbles sitting over his bed, rubbing his face with both hands.

You two met at the hospital some week ago, when he suffered some kind of accident that left him blind in one eye, for some time. He felt his heart pumping because of love for the first time, when he saw you after cleaning his healthy eye. And before that, he was already truly fascinated by the way you had to calm him down using your voice. A sweet and honeyed tone that he could be listening to his whole life. He couldn't help but think how good falling asleep every night hearing you talking would be. It took him almost two weeks to ask you out, but he couldn't feel more happy when you said yes without letting him finish the question. Coco felt strange when he left the hospital after it, experimenting a bunch of sensations stuck in his chest that made him feel better than ever.

Now, his insecurities are coming into the light. Everything he touches ends up destroyed, broken. You are too pure for his shit. You don't deserve to take that risk. Taking off his phone from his pocket, he searches for your number. Gilly and Angel are looking at him intrigued, until they find out what he's going to do. The big one takes the phone off from his hands, while the oldest Reyes holds him to guide him towards the door.

“You're not gonna flake on her, pendejo”. He grunts, pushing him outside his house.

His brothers follow him to the meeting place, watching you sit on a bench waiting for him, after twenty minutes standing up and walking around the big fountain. You look beautiful, dressed with a pair of shorts, a baggy white shirt with the sleeves rolled up on your shoulders and black sneakers. He turns around, trying to run away from your life again, facing his friends.

“I can't”. He just says, with his hands almost sweating. “She's too much for me”.

“She's perfect for you, man!” Gilly rolls his eyes.

“C'mon, Coco, don' be a chicken and get the girl”.

Licking his bottom lip, he just nods in silence, trying to find the perfect words to encourage himself. Turning over his Vans, he starts his way towards you, doubting for some seconds. And he's about to leave when you raise your eyes from your phone. The smile you draw with the corner of your lips gives him a heart attack, knowing that he could die full of happiness right now.

“Hey, I thought you weren't coming”.

Maybe it wasn't the greeting he was expecting and he feels so sorry for having made you wait. Stroking the back of his head, he forces a grin.

“Yeah… I was… 'bout to not comen'”.

Your gesture turning from enthusiasm to disheartening, causes him some bitter shivers inside his chest. He has already fuck up the good vibes between you two, that borned in the hospital. Seeing you nod in silence, shrugging your shoulders, makes him feel out of air; trying to think something to fix it up.

“I really… appreciate that, at least, you came to tell me that this isn't going to happen… It would be… humiliating”. You whisper putting your gaze away from him.

Coco can see the way your lips are trembling, as if you were about to cry, and it's painful. For him, it's painful.

“No, mami, lis—”.

“It's okay, Johnny, you don't have to excuse yourself”. Waving a hand on air, you try to make it easy for him. “I get it”.

He's missing the boat, watching you turning around and focusing your attention on the screen of your phone again. Maybe typing to some friend to pick you up, maybe about to call anyone else. But finally, the orders from his brain move his body to stop you.

“No, wait!” He says somewhat loud, grabbing your left wrist. “I wanna date you. I wanna have a lot of dates with you. This ain't you, mami, but me”.

Looking at his hand confused, you travel his arm until finding his dark and desperate eyes, talking to you in silence. Begging you to listen.

“My life is a shit. A mess... A chaos. I… had this accident with my eye because… of a dogfight with another gang. I didn' wanna lie to you, you know? I think you're smart, and pretty and… you don' deserve a guy like me who is… always in fuckin' trouble and that… used to ride a bike that probably would never ride again, just… with a shitty work on a scrapyard”. Coco is getting more and more nervous because you're not saying a single word back. He gulps with some difficulty, taking a step closer to you. “I ain't a good man, I don' do good things, but… I really wanna date you, mami. I've never been so true in ma' life”.

And he's about to give up with a crappy sensation running his body, when you tangle your finger with the ones that were gripping your arm.

“Maybe you can teach me to drive a bike, so I can ride for you”. You just say, hoping that it's enough for him.

“That sounds good, ma'”. He replies with no hesitation, feeling like for the first time he's having a good opportunity in his life.

Watching you smile again it's like seeing a rainbow after a destructive storm, putting his arm over your shoulders to start a low walk.

“Do you like pizza?” You ask then, raising your head toward his.

“Yeah, 'course”. He answers with an incredulous gesture on his face.

“Okay, do you know a food truck close to the hospital, with red and blues stripes?”

“No”.

“Seriously?” You almost scream, breaking into laughs. “You like pizza and you have never tried it before?”

Coco shakes his head, falling in love a little more after hearing your laughter. That simple gesture has made him feel more happy than ever before.

“You're gonna really, really love it”. You say with emotion, moving a hand on air to highlight your words.

“I'm sure”. He chuckles nodding. “You look pretty convinced”.

And you weren't wrong. Maybe not everybody would think that sitting on an edge of a sidewalk, eating pizza, it's the perfect date. But for him, it's the perfect one. He can ask for anything else that hearing you talk for hours about your hobbies, about what you would like to be in five years, about the things the two of you have in common. And he has never talked this much, either. But it's too easy for him to follow the conversation and flow it into another one, until the night falls over the town.

Coco insists on walking with you back to your home, just to be sure that you come safe. And even if he has had so much fun, he's doubting if you would like to repeat it. Maybe at the end you were just trying to be kind with him, because he seemed so desperate for being with you for a couple hours, to not make him feel bad. And maybe that was the reason why you didn't want him to take you home. But the real reason is that your housemates are waiting on the porch for you to tell them how it was. As soon as they see you coming closer, they run into the house ashamed and laughing, making your cheeks burn when Coco notices what is going on.

“Sorry, they're like children…” You say hastily, stopping your steps and placing yourself in front of him.

“It's okay, ma'. My… friends are waiting too”.

Between the two of you gets installed an uncomfortable silence for some seconds, until he sees you holding your bag, looking for something inside it. He breaks into loud laughs when his healthy eyes focus on the heart shaped lollipop, that you're offering him.

“I heard you the day you visited the hospital, so… there's your reward for being a good boy”.

Coco takes it, shaking his head and showing you a funny smile, before catching you between his arms. Embracing you tightly, he places a kiss on your cheek. A lovely one. Pulling himself away, he opens the candy to tuck it into his mouth.

“The best one”. He says tasting the strawberry flavor of it.

“Okay, ah… I have three kids to take care of”. You joke about your friends, pointing at your house for a second. “I had so much fun today…”

“Yeah, me too… We can repe—”.

“I'm free tomorrow”.

Hearing you interrupt him, after realizing that he wants to have another date with you. Taking off the lollipop from his mouth, he leans forward to press your lips with his, shortening the distance between both. Feeling your fingers getting tangled in his shirt give him some pleasant chills, ending up pecking your lips gently.

“What about breakfast? I know a place with the best pancakes”. He proposes then, giving you an eskimo kiss.

“I like it”. You nod, kissing his lips a last time.

“Pick you up at ten?”

“Pick me up at ten”.

“Have a good night, mami”.

“You too, pirate”. Puckering your lips, he laughs again. “Enjoy it, you're gonna see again in a couple months”.

He frowns a little confused, drawing slowly a huge smile on his lips.

“Spoiler of your next doctor appointment”.

“Is tha' why you told me tha' I could teach you?”

Walking backwards to your house, he sees you happily nodding.

“'Am gonna marry you one day, you know'et?”

These words may have been somewhat precipitate, or at least that's what he's thinking until seeing you nod again.

“I hope it”.

“Shit”, he thinks to himself, licking again the lollipop; not leaving your hood until you're inside your house.

#mayans mc x reader #mayans mc imagine #mayans x reader #johnny coco cruz x reader #johnny coco cruz imagine #coco cruz imagine #coco cruz x reader #coco cruz

197 notes · View notes

sanchoyo · 3 years

Text

danny phantom season 2, ep 12-16 thoughts! these episodes, in comparison to the first 10 or so, felt way more laid back and low-stakes, which I appreciate sometimes. I didn't appreciate how lazy jack's halfa design was in masters of time, it made me so annoyed I redesigned it. 👎🏻 u_u

see prev episode thoughts in this tag <3

-'picking a fight with me and my upgraded form!' 'you upgraded to a mullet?' DANNNNY. YOU CANT SAY THAT TO TECHNUS. YOUVE HAD A MULLET TWICE NOW ('fun' split danny, and evil future danny BOTH HAD THEM). I HAVE THE RECEIPTS.

-danny seeing technus hurting valerie and yelling I AM GOING TO BREAK YOU IN HALF. SAMEEEE <3

-axion labs is now a part of vladco. FUCK YOU VLAD. hes not even really IN this episode, but just thought I'd throw out a nice fuck you anyway.

-'capable of blasting a single person into space in (2) minutes!' tucker. that would kill someone. i mean yeah they might get to space, but theres NO WAY THEY WOULDNT CATCH FIRE, OR THEIR ORGANS WOULDNT LIQUIFY BECAUSE OF THE STRAIN. THEY'D PROBABLY PASS OUT BEFORE THEN, BUT. ...no, okay, I get why vlad bought this company. this is RIGHT up his alley.

-danny KNOWS VAL DIDNT DO THIS, THAT SOMEONE STOLE THE SUIT. AND SPENDING ALL NIGHT CHATTING WITH HER. <3 and val is a 9TH DEGREE BLACKBELT?? danny's mom is, too!! omg and she hunts ghosts, his parents would love her. and her fav fruit is kumquat bc its a funny word. im so with danny val is amazing. I love her and I Do Not Want To Hear It From Sam.

-I knew danny wanted to be an astronaut, but the bowling tidbit is like. yes give me more useless info abt these characters, I love tiny details that make them feel more human, and im glad hes got hobbies aside from ghost stuff, we dont really see a lot of that!!! (I mean, we knew 'fun' danny from when he split himself in half liked bowling, so obv it makes sense he LIKES it, but hes very GOOD at it. so proud of him, bowling king) val calling him neil armstrong and them teasing each other. LOVE THAT.

-technus you are my favorite grandpa for setting this up. SAM WHY ARE YOU BEING SO CREEPY BE HAPPY FOR YOUR FRIEND!!! STOP SPYING ON THEM!!! who actually cares if technus did 'set them up' together, theyre having fun and enjoy each others company!!! 'you think the universe wants you two to be together?' 'i dunno, but maybe /I/ do!' EXACTLY DANNY!!! SOO TRUE.

-and valerie being happy sam said she wants to try and be happy for them and make room at the lunch table for them. and hugging sam over it. VAL NEEDS MORE FRIENDS.

-VAL GOING AFTER TECHNUS IN HER SUIT WITH (1) MILK, AND (1) TREE BRANCH AND KEYS!!!. I LOVE YOUUUU BEST GIRL. her new suit kicks ass

-dannys like 'HEY IM AN ASTRONAUT :D' AW. ...HES IN SPACE... the fact he's actually intending to give her the ring. with SAMS NAME ON IT?? IM CRINGING DANNY NO. YOU CANT DO THAT...thank god he didnt. thank god valerie cut it off and said they can just stay friends for now. tbh, they both have a lot on their plates!! they obv both still like each other...it can be a future thing!! when she knows about phantom! youre 14 theres no need to rush. I just want her to have friends and be happy :(

-...danny struggles to do (1) pull up. SAME. but all the ghost fighting in phantom form REALLY doesnt carry over at ALL? that sucks

-sam being as fit as she is, is not just a goth. shes a goth jock.

-honey I Shrank Our Kid, One of his Enemies, and his Bully: the episode

-dash's crush on phantom is So Obvious. fitness buddies :) watching them interact always makes me laugh. also, phantom, with PANTS. 'how many costume changes you gonna go through, what is this, vegas??' DASSH DJKSFHASKDF

-MADDIE GOING AFTER THE MOUSE WITH A BROOM, WHAT THE FUCK. AAAH. JUST BUY SOME KIND OF MOUSE TRAP.

-danny likes lime and vinegar chips. which sound very good.

-'our boy finally has the physical prowess of a 60 year old president!' ...poor danny LMAO

-'what's wrong with beauty pageants' oh tucker you sweet naïve child. what ISNT wrong with them. who approved this for a high school?? (I mean, yes. unfortunately child pageants exist, but...) also danny and tucker once again treating the pretty girls like objects. I need to meet the grown man who wrote this, I just want to talk...

-prince aragon's dragon form reminds me of maleficent (color scheme wise) which is always a bonus. considering the episode is called beauty marked, I feel like the sleeping beauty references are deliberate

-sam with the fake fangs. once again her accessories never miss. hate the 'not like other girls, girls who get sucked into this kind of thing are all shallow and all want to be carbon copies' bs tho.

-sam trying to be the Worst Bride, being rude as shit. DORA IS GOING TO GET KILLED. DID YOU MISS THE PART WHERE SHE SAID THE PRINCE WILL HAVE HER HEAD IF YOU ARENT THE IDEAL BRIDE. YOU /KNOW/ DANNY WILL COME SAVE YOU. JUST ACT CHILL UNTIL THEN. even if you were doing fine to get him to take off the crown, consider maybe not letting his poor sister get punished also?? sure, she could also take off the crown and has dragon powers, but did you know that for sure?? dora didnt even really realize it until you guys talked!! (or at least, she was scared to stand up to him. you had no guarantee she would...) but. good for dora. ANOTHER friendly ghost to add to the List :)

-tucker is so under appreciated in his time. if he was doing a tech-based campaign today he'd have a better shot. people in 2004 had NO IDEA how much tech would be a part of our day-to-day lives...altho. tbh if you're going to be running for student council president, maybe you should..focus on things to actually improve the school? since he's going for a tech angle, he could say like, he would be running fundraisers for the schools computers to be upgraded, etc? we've already SEEN he can be good at money-making entrepreneur type stuff!!

-oh my god wait. this episode is JUST YUGIOH?????! A REBORN PHAROH USING A TEENAGER AS A VESSEL?? YESSSSSS

-tucker using his new minion to feed him grapes and carry him. AND LOCUSTS ONTO THE BULLIES. I love how when he's possessed, he gains winged eyeliner.

-this episode is giving me big 'plankton makes everyone in bikini bottom his slaves and build monuments of him from the spongebob movie' vibes. and the pharaoh has a traitor who works for him? VERY big yugioh vibes. aknadin confirmed

-I like that danny is still completely exhausted after using ghostly wail. (still patiently waiting on him to get duplication)

-LOVE the fenton's 80s outfits. I get hes 14 and embarrassed by everything they do because theyre his parents, but. cmon, this is one objectively cool thing theyve done. love 80s fashion.

-...was vlad just standing on that streetlight waiting for danny to come out? how'd he know they'd be coming out the back? how long has he been up there???

-oh, wait, his ecto-acne has flareups? that SUCKS. danny was...well I dont want to say he was LUCKY HE HALF-DIED, but he was lucky his was pretty instant (I'm assuming that had to do with the power/scale of the portals being different?) I remember in the ep we met him, vlad made a point of saying he was stuck in a hospital for a long time, so. that really actually sucks and I feel bad. not that it excuses anything he's done...but like. it does suck.

-vlad being so sure danny wouldnt help him he made it somehow contagious to his friends to make sure he'd get help? danny is a nice boy, he wouldve helped if it was anyone else. the only reason he wouldn't have is because of the shit vlad did to him, on purpose. vlad 100% dug his own grave by being the biggest asshole, so it is very hard to feel bad for him.

-clockwork is back!!! and making danny learn lessons The Hard Way. Uhhh, okay. I kind of get Danny’s logic, that time traveling this far back would prevent vlad from becoming a halfa also, ergo no arch nemesis or ectoacne to worry about. But the fact that was basically the first solution Danny came up with to solve this problem is actually so funny. It’s so extreme

-APPRICIATION FOR THESE 80S LESBIAN BG CHARACTERS.

-vlad telling maddie in the lab (in the 80s) he has something he's wanted to tell her 'for a long time'...how long have they known each other? I assumed they met in college, since jack always calls vlad his college buddy/roommate, so jack and vlad for sure met in college, but did vlad know maddie longer? thats surprising if so. Tho we don’t know what year of college they’re in so they could mean they met as freshmen and a few years have past…speaking of maddie shes crushing the 80s look.

-vlad blames jack, but. maybe dont stick your face 2 inches from the portal??! THIS FEELS LIKE LAB SAFETY BASICS. IF SOMETHING HAS POTENTIAL TO BE DANGEROUS, DONT GET NEAR IT. WITH YOUR FACE UNPROTECTED IN ANY WAY. (altho jack didnt really give a Big Warning besides screaming BONZAI. so. also that, but cmon.) also, they need gloves, goggles, and to pull all of their hair back tbh. but fuck lab safety, I guess!

-cryyyyinnng at how lazy they were with jack's ghost form design, its just plasmius' design on jack!!! you couldve given him his own design!!

-there. I did that in about 10 minutes and its somehow less lazy than what made it into the show. embarrassing! better yet, I think the episode would've been better if maddie would've gotten the ectoacne. or maybe its just me, wanting to see her design! anyway. I'm sure people have already done redesigns of them both as halfas. I have to go look after I finish this watch through. Also mildly frustrated jacks resentment and bitterness is basically also a copy paste of vlads backstory. They’re different characters, I really don’t think jack would stew in bitterness and jealousy the same way vlad would!! I also don’t think he’d give up after one time of trying to hunt ghosts and getting laughed at. Our canon timeline says different…I dunno, I get it was for laughs, but I’m annoyed because the POTENTIAL this plot has…

-did vlad really wear a stupid cheese hat to his wedding. ok actually that kinda rules. and the cheese door knocker. the dairy-only buffet table. vlad still got rich, just on being the New Dairy King. (Assuming that means he owns a lot of dairy businesses?) ok! this actually is great. hope maddie isn't lactose intolerant!

-'no matter how hard I tried, I could never get rid of my ghost half, the half I knew Maddie could never accept' ohh, ouch, what a horrible thing to say to her HALF GHOST SON. 'YOUR MOM WILL NEVER ACCEPT YOU' BASICALLY.

-maddie strapping danny to the table with a lazer pointed at him in a secret lab she keeps from vlad that she makes a point of saying is sound proof so he can scream all he wants...CHRIST. DANNYS POOR PYSCHE.

-also, not to feel bad for alternate vlad (because, he did lie to maddie saying jack blames her and never wants to see her again...) but. being married to a woman 20+ years and she immediately goes back to jack? if she didnt love vlad and feels like she had to hide shit from him, and says she wasted her best years with him, WHY MARRY HIM. it feels like leading him on!!! cannot believe im feeling bad for vlad, but. this alternate timeline vlad is significantly Less Horrible than Our Vlad. did she not think she'd get funding for her ghost stuff? (which, fair assumption since they're considered 'ghost fanatics/nuts in canon...but...) why did she think jack or vlad would be her ONLY OPTIONS? be like your sister. be single. Actually, this au could’ve been really interesting if after the accident, vlad lied to her and said jack never wanted to see her again, but she stays single. Imagine how much that would bug vlad… like, in her mind, it was never a competition it was jack or no one type situation…

-danny being like 'leave him ALONE' this jack is a HOMEWRECKER, DANNY. let them go to court and settle this at the least. ...or just throw vlad into the portal. (100% human, defenseless vlad) CHRIST, MADDIE THATS BRUTAL. THATS MURDER.

-danny seeing his mom immediately accepting him and his dad being half ghosts in this universe, if I was him this would be a great sign that his universe's maddie would also.

-*maddie voice* "clockwork will help!" *2 seconds later, with clockwork* "I will Not Help." TOUGH LOVE KING. YES LET DANNY SEE THE SODA HIMSELF AND DEVOLP BETTER OBSERVATION SKILLS.

-when clockwork ""reset time to the way it was"" just before danny "meddled"" ...did he really erase a whole alternate timeline? ...damn. because maddie and danny both called it an alternate timeline by name, it splitting when the college incident went different, so it wouldnt have really mattered if he reset it, right. like because danny's timeline is on a different stream? why didnt clockwork just. show danny a replay and not Reset That Timeline. wh...I wonder how many people that Erased From Existence. Anyway! once again stating clockwork is casually terrifying!

#danny phantom #dp thoughts #sanchoyorambles

10 notes · View notes

olderthannetfic · 4 years

Note

Hey, sorry to ask this, but a few days ago I saw a post/discussion about the history of original work on ao3 (i.e. how and when it was allowed). I thought it was in my likes, but it's not, and I thought you had reblogged it recently, but I didn't find it. I was wondering if you have seen this discussion around? Or where I can find more about it? This specific post talked abt how who defended original work on ao3 were not the BNFs, if that helps.

That was me running my mouth in the reblogs of something or other. It’s just the one comment.

But what’s that you say? Some tl;dr about a pet topic? Don’t mind if I do! ;) (To be honest, most of this debate happened years ago, and a lot of the long meta was by me back then too, so…)

Okay, so, the situation with Original Works is actually super interesting and a microcosm of early years OTW wank.

This is going to be even more tl;dr than my usual. To try to summarize very briefly:

There were two big cultural factions. One thought “original” was the opposite of “fan”. That one was in charge of OTW. It was hard to get voices from the other side into the debate because they already felt excluded from OTW.

This divide broke down more or less into Ye Olde Slash Fandom on the “it’s the opposite” side and anime fandom on the “WTF?” side. Americans on one side and a lot of non-US, non-English language fandom on the other.

I. Media Fandom, Anime Fandom, and Early OTW

I went to that first fundraising party that astolat threw in New York City back in… god… 2007? 2008? I wasn’t on the Board or any official position until the committees got started later, but I was around right from the very beginning.

Whether you’re looking at volunteers or at people who commented on astolat’s original post, there were always a variety of fans from a variety of fannish backgrounds. People aren’t absolutely in one camp or another, and fannish interests change over time. If you go dig through Dreamwidth posts to find who was actually participating in this debate at the time, half of them are probably in the other camp now.

If you think like that sounds like a preamble to me making a bunch of offensively sweeping generalizations and divvying fans up into little groups, you’d be right! Haha.

I.a. Ye Olde Media Fandom

There are a lot of camps of people who like fanfic. One of the biggest divisions has been Ye Olde Media Fandom vs. anime fandom. Astolat’s social circle–my LJ social circle–was filled with people with decades of fannish experience and a deep knowledge of the Media Fandom side of things.

Those fandom history treatises that start with K/S zines in Star Trek fandom in the 70s and move on through the mainstream buddy cops like Starsky & Hutch to the more niche, sff buddy cops like Fraser and Ray or Jim and Blair are talking about Media Fandom. I try to always capitalize it because the name is lulzy and bizarre to me unless it’s a proper noun for a specific historical thing. It was coined as a rude term for “mass media” fandom aka dumb people who like, ughhhh, Star Trek, ughhh, instead of books. This is a very ancient slapfight from the type of fandom you find at Worldcon, often called “SF fandom” or plain “fandom”.

(Yes, this leads to mega confusion on the part of some old dudes when they find Fanlore and fail to understand that “fandom” there refers to what these people would call “Media Fandom”. They think only they get the unmarked form. But I digress…)

Media Fandom is a specific flavor of fandom. It’s where the slash zines were. It’s where the fans of live action US TV shows were. It’s the history that acafans have laid out well and that tends to get used to defend the idea of a female subculture writing transgressive and transformative fanfic. On the video side, Media Fandom is where Kandy Fong invented vidding by making Star Trek slideshows.

(Kandy’s still around, BTW. She’s usually at Escapade in L.A. Ask her to tell you about the dancing penises sketch in person. She’s hilarious.)

Astolat and friends had been going to slash cons for years. They founded Vividcon. And Yuletide. That meant that when astolat said “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” we all jumped to help. This is a lady who gets things done.

From a Worldcon perspective, or even from an older Media Fandom perspective, this group was comparatively young, hip, and welcoming. Their fandom interests were comparatively broad. Just look at Yuletide!

In fact, yes, let us look at Yuletide… [ominous music]

I.b. Yuletide sucks at anime

From the very first year (2003), Yuletide mods have asked for help with anime fandoms, been confused about anime fandoms, or made bad judgment calls about anime fandoms. They’ve fucked up on Superhero comics and plenty of other things over the years, but anime has been the most consistent (well, and JRPGs, but there’s so much overlap in those fic fandoms).

There was already bad feeling about this. There were years of bad feeling about this.

I.c. Where are the historians?

Academic study of fanficcy things pretty much got started with Textual Poachers and Enterprising Women. Other acafans who are well known to LJ and later Tumblr are people like Francesca Coppa who wrote a very nice summary of the history of Media Fandom. These are not the only academics who exist, these academics themselves have written about many other things, and by now, OTW’s own journal has covered a lot of other territory, but to this day I see complaints on Tumblr that “acafans” only care about K/S and oldschool slash fandom.

There were years of bad feeling about this as well.

I.d. What kind of fan was I?

Now, by the time OTW got started, I’d moseyed over to not only a lot of live action US TV but a lot of old-as-fuck US TV that is squarely in the Media Fandom camp. But once upon a time, I was a weeaboo hanging out with my weeaboo friends in college. I learned Japanese (sort of). I moved to Japan. Livin’ the weeaboo dream!

More importantly, I used to be a member of a lot of anime mailing lists back in the Yahoo Groups days. I didn’t realize what a cultural gap that would cause until the original works issue came up on AO3.

I.e. Anime Fandom, German-language Fandom, Original M/M

Once upon a time–namely in that Yahoo Groups era–there was an archive called Boys in Chains. It was where you found The Good Stuff™. Heavy kink and power exchange galore! It was extremely well known in the parts of fandom I was in, even if you weren’t on the associated mailing list. It contained lots of fic, but it also had lots of original work.

Around that same era, I was on a critique list called Crimson Ink, which was mixed fic and original. The “original slash” and “original yaoi” crowds mixed freely and were in fanfic spaces. Remember, this is like 2003. You’re never going to get your gay fantasy novel published in English in the US. A couple of fangirl presses started around then, but they died an ignominious death after their first print run.

Fanfiction.net used to allow original work before it spun that off into FictionPress. We forget this today, but if you were an early FFN person, the separation wasn’t so great either.

Meanwhile, German-language fandom was hanging out on sites like Animexx.de, a big-ass fic archive that prominently mentions also including original work. I have the impression that Spanish-language fandom was similar too.

Shousetsu Bang*Bang was founded in 2005. It was a webzine for original m/m, but it was entirely populated by fanfic fandom types.

In all of those kinds of spaces, there was a lot of “original” work that was kind of slash or BL-ish and seen as fannish if it was posted in the fannish space. These weren’t anime-only spaces. They were multifandom spaces where it was seen as obvious and normal that a couple of huge fandoms like Harry Potter would dominate but that everything else big would naturally be anime.

While fans from every background are everywhere, I found that the concentration of EFL fans living in Continental Europe, South America, and Asia was much higher in this kind of space, even the exclusively English language part of it, than in my US TV fandoms.

II. AO3 Early Adopters

AO3 went into closed beta in 2009. In 2010, it was open to the general public (albeit with the invitation queue it still has). But not everyone was interested yet. Just like fandom is loath to leave the dying, shambling mess of Tumblr, fandom was loath to leave dwindling LJ/DW circles or was happy enough on Fanfiction.net. I used to see a lot of posts like “Why are you guys trying to STEAL fanfic from the original! FFN is enough!”

I literally could not give away the invitations I had. No one wanted them.

So who was on AO3? Obviously enough, it was all of us who built it and our friends. So that means a bunch of oldschool Livejournal slashers coming from fandoms like Due South or Stargate Atlantis.

The queue was open. Anyone could make an account. Everyone was welcome. In theory…

But more and more, there started to be these posts about how “AO3 Hates Anime Fandom” and “FFN is for anime. AO3 is for Western fandoms.” and “If you guys actually wanted anime fandom on there, you’d invite us better and make us more welcome.”

At the time, I found these posts obnoxious. People aren’t purely in one sort of fandom or the other. No one was stopping anime fandom from making accounts. No one was banning anime fandom. If there wasn’t much from old fandoms, that was because old fandoms seldom move.

Things began to change. Trolls on FFN forced the Twilight porn writers out, creating enough fuss and brouhaha to mobilize people who would rather have stayed put. AO3 got big enough that randos found it by accident. Original work started to pop up, posted by people who’d never looked at the rules and had no idea it was not allowed.

III. History of AO3’s Policy

I had argued for allowing “original work” during the initial discussions about the ToS. On one side of this issue was me. On the other, everyone else on the committee.

I was overruled.

Open Door started importing old archives to save them. Boys in Chains was hugely important to fandom history from my point of view. It was slated to be imported… maybe. Except that Boys in Chains is half original. AO3 was happy to grandfather in those stories, but the final archive owner felt, quite rightly, that it would be unfair to tell half of the authors they were welcome in the new space while spitting on the other half.

I was pissed. I had been pissed since being overruled the first time. To me, the fact that it should be allowed was so blatantly obvious that it was hard to even explain why.

(To be honest, this difficulty in explaining why and the even greater difficulty in figuring out the source of that difficulty is what held the discussion back for so long. When every assumption on either side is completely opposite, it’s hard to communicate.)

I felt betrayed. It would be like if you helped build something, and everyone was suddenly like “Well, obviously, we can’t allow m/m. It’s not normal fanfic.”

So we discussed it again and, again, it was me vs. literally everyone else. And still the “AO3 is only for Western slash fandom” bitching rose in volume and more and more people complained of feeling excluded from the new fandom hub. Finally, the committee agreed to open the issue up for public comment and get some more input. I was a fool and neither wrote nor proofread the post. It went out phrasing the question as allowing “non fannish” work or something of that sort.

I was furious. The entire point of the whole debate was that I saw some original work, the original work that belongs on AO3, as inherently fannish. And now this had been presented to the AO3 audience as something completely different. Think pieces were popping up in the journals of everyone I knew about diluting AO3’s mission and how we needed to save AO3 from encroachment. Public opinion was very negative. That’s both because of how the post was phrased and because OTW die hards at the time were mostly from the same fannish background. This tidal wave of negativity meant that there was virtually no chance of changing this poisonous rule. And if the rule didn’t change, the people who wanted the rule change were never going to show up to explain why it mattered.

If you’ve been reading my tumblr, I think you can guess what happened next.

I posted a long post to my Dreamwidth. It was a masterwork of passive aggression. In it, I wrung my hands about how simply tragic it would be if AO3 had to delete all of the original work… like anthropomorfic.

Now, I think anthropomorfic counts as fanfic as much as anything else, but I also knew that it fails most rigorous “based on a canon” type definitions of fic and, more importantly, it’s a favorite Yuletide fandom of many of the people on the side that wanted to ban original work.

That’s a nice fandom of yours. It would be a pity if something happened to it.

Yup. Passive aggressive blackmail. Go me. Suddenly, there was a lot of awkward backtracking and confused running in circles in various journals. The committee agreed to table the idea for a while but not rule out the idea of allowing original works in the future. We agreed to halt all deletions of original work. If a fan posted it, the Abuse Committee (which I was also head of at the time) would not delete that work even though it was technically against the rules.

Time passed. The people on the negative side got tired. I wanted off that committee and had wanted off for ages, but I was damned if I was going to leave before ramming through this piece of policy. Grudgematch till I die! (Look, I never said I wasn’t a wanker.)

After a while, some other fans came forward with more types of “original work” as evidence that it should be allowed. These were from parts of fandom none of us on the committee knew a damn thing about.

This new evidence combined with the gradual accretion of original stuff on AO3 without the sky falling eventually led us to quietly rule Original Work a valid fandom. There was never even a big announcement post. I slipped a word to the Boys in Chains mod myself.

IV. What Were They So Afraid Of Anyway?

So why were people so resistant? Seems like a dick move, right?

Not exactly.

I mean, I was enraged and waged a one-woman war to change the rules, but the other side wasn’t nuts. The objections were usually the following:

I just don’t get why it would be allowed. It never was in my fannish spaces.

Most of our members don’t want this.

Most of the examples of things that ought to be included are m/m. We are privileging m/m if we allow it, and AO3 already has a m/m-centric reputation that can feel exclusionary to some fans.

AO3 is a young, shaky platform that can barely handle the load and content we already have. If we open to original work, we’ll be opening the floodgates. The volume of posting will be so high, it will drown out the fic we’re actually here to protect.

Protecting stuff that doesn’t need protection because it’s not an IP issue would dilute OTW’s mission.

If we allow it, idiots will try to turn AO3 into advertising space, posting only the first chapter and a link to where you can pay to read the rest.

If we add another category of text before we add fan art, that’s a slap in the face of the fan artists we are already failing.

These arguments all make perfect sense in context.

Obvously, the issue with the first two is that different fannish communities have different norms. I knew that a very large community disagreed with the then current AO3 policy, but since so few of them were around to comment, it seemed like a tiny fringe minority.

The m/m thing is… complex. M/M content with zero IP issues is at risk. It is always at risk in a way that even f/f is not (though f/f is also always at risk). Asking for m/m to be exactly equivalent to f/f or m/f in numbers, tropes, whatever is ignoring the historical realities. In our current moment of queer activism in the West, we treat all types of queerness as part of one community with one set of goals, but once you get to culture and art or even more specific activism, this forced homogenization is neither useful nor healthy.

OTOH, AO3 really did have PR problems related to the perception that we gave m/m fandom the kid glove treatment. That objection wasn’t coming from nowhere.

AO3 was shaky. It was tiny when I first brought up this argument. Hell, it wasn’t even in closed beta the first time we discussed this. Part of what made the quiet rules change possible was AO3 organically getting much bigger and OTW having to buy many more servers for unrelated reasons.

The “floodgates” thing was put to rest by tacitly allowing original work before the rules change. We had a period to study how fans actually behaved, and as I predicted, only a small amount of original work got posted. It was indeed mostly things like original BL-ish stories or original work that had been part of a mixed original/fic fest, exchange, zine, etc. Currently, the “Original Work” fandom on AO3 only has 76,348 works. That’s pretty big compared to individual fandoms but tiny compared to AO3’s current size.

The commercial argument was spurious because commercial spam had been against the rules from the very beginning. OH THE IRONY that nowadays AO3 has all these idiots trying to post the first chapter of their fanfic and then direct you to where you can buy the rest.

AO3 has plenty of fanfic of public domain works. One of the problems with gatekeeping original work is that any way you try to distinguish it (not based on a specific canon, not an IP issue, etc.) will apply to some set of obviously allowable fandoms.

As for fan art… OTW has failed fan artists. They needed protection as much as or even more than fic writers. Just look at Tumblr! If we had succeeded at making DeviantArt but allowing boners, fan art fandom could have been safe all these years. Or when Tumblr inevitably shat the bed, we could have scooped up all those people instead of them scattering to twitter and god knows where.

OTW has failed vidders too, at least in terms of preservation. I know I’m not the only one who thinks this. Other major people from like the first Board and shit have discussed this with me offline. Doing some kind of vidding project, possibly outside of OTW is on a lot of our to-do lists. But at least one of OTW’s biggest victories has been that copyright exemption. OTW has demonstrably done really positive things for vidders that other organizations and sites have not. As a vidder, I never expected to see good hosting for the actual video files, and I’m quite content.

But fan artists… yeah. That argument makes sense at least from a place of frustration.

BTW, for the love of god, if you’re a n00b to OTW stuff, please do not reblog this post excitedly telling me that hosting fan art is on OTW’s road map, so yay, good news. Someone always does that, and it’s so irritating. I haven’t been involved in OTW in years, but I used to be, and I know what is on the roadmap. The couple of you who do heavy lifting on sysadmin and coding and policy things are welcome to weigh in as usual. I know none of us like that we can’t host fan art. It’s not what we intended.

Nonetheless, I found this argument to be the perfect being the enemy of the good. If we can save more text now without losing much of anything, we should do it. The fact that we’re fucking up on the fan art front is not a reason to spread the misery around.

V. Is “Original” the Opposite of “Fanfic”?

Okay, so that tl;dr above is why “BNFs” were on one side and “nobodies” were on the other. BNFs from one cultural background founded OTW. BNFs from the other cultural background weren’t even aware that the debate was going on.

But what was the underlying philosophical problem in even having the conversation?

It took me a long time, but I finally worked it out: We had two completely different ways of categorizing writing, and they were so baked into how we phrased questions that everything ended up being unanswerable to the other side. Here is what I came up with:

Schema 1

Fanfic - based on someone else’s IP

Original Work - the opposite

Schema 2

Non-Fannish Work - School essays, stories you are writing to try to sell to a mainstream publisher

Fannish Work Type 1 - based on other people’s characters directly (i.e. fanfic) Type 2 - based on tropes or whatever (“original slash” and the like)

Now, in the current moment when half of Tumblr just got into Chinese webnovels and the m/m ebook industry is thriving in English, original, tropey, BL-ish work is no longer different from “things I am trying to sell”. But this is how the divide was circa 2005 on fannish websites, and it’s the divide that was driving this internal OTW debate.

VI. Let’s Summarize the Camps One More Time

So, again, the debate makes perfect sense if you understand who was involved.

On the mainstream “But that’s not fanfic? I’m confused?” side:

Big US TV fandoms in English

Fandom historians of K/S–>buddy cop slash–>SGA, etc.

Americans

On the other side:

Anime fandom

“Original slash” fandom that had already been chased off of everywhere

People upset that AO3 wasn’t farther on translating the interface and supporting non-English language fandom.

People upset about US-centrism in fandom

Yes, I am very white, very American, and by now very into old buddy cop shows, but this was basically how the breakdown worked. It meant that something that looked like a minor quibble to one side was really, really not.

#fandom history #fandom meta #original work #cowboyformitski

789 notes · View notes

hiimsociallyawkward · 3 years

Text

the wicked day

hey guys. i'm back with my random and annoying merlin thoughts. i should be studying for my bio quiz, but yk- i don't want to :,) love you @lady-ofmagic-andstars✨enjoy✨

literally every time i'm going watching i'm going to comment on john hurt that says young man instead of young boy

it's so subtle but wow. thanks i didn't need to be hurt so early on in the episode

i know i know i'm basically a child but this is so exciting

merlin is so cute

aw no not arthur being pouty abt his big birthday

I LOVE THE 'i heard that' thing so much. i love it i love it

off topic, but i love knife throwing. i've always thought that if i had to choose a weapon that's not a gun, i'd choose knifes. swords? maces? crossbows? sure. but knives?? that's where it's really at

i love arthur not wanting to overburden their citizens

ok uther? i hate him

but here? i love him

he's a good dad here. remembering arthur's birthday? that's so sweet. uther in season 4 is the only time i semi like him

AW ARTHUR AND UTHER AT DINNER

i love them

off topic but i like that arthur is wearing his 'every day' clothes, jacket and a tunic under his cape. that's it. the knights are all wearing his garb but arthur is just wearing his 'regular clothes'

hehe gwen being nervous about arthur being on the wheel is so sweet

idk why but i always get nervous at that last knife.

like of COURSe i know he's not going to get hit but it's scary.

the 'not wearing any trousers' thing omg. bbc really decided to do that

i wish we had more of this parental dynamic of arthur and uther

dam alright arthur. being out of it but still being in it enough to see the guy in the reflection? i stan

SKLFJASLDFJA uther fighting to protect arthur

literally me through his whole scene going 'oh jeez oh jeez oh jeez' on repeat.

so off topic but i kind of like the hairstyle they have for most of the guys in this show?? idk is that weird

oh jeez oh jeez oh jeez uther dying

like, i HATe him. i've been waiting for this since season 1 but this scene makes me sad

ok i don't remember the last episode of merlin so i forget what arthur says when he's dying in merlin's arms??

it's something like 'hold me' right? i feel like that has the same energy as 'stay with me' so while i can't exactly say this is sort of parallel, it's sort of parallel?

i mean, ok 1. dying in someone else's arms. 2. dying in the arms of someone you love? romantically, platonically, familial? doesn't matter. both uther and arthur died in the arms of someone they loved. 3. i'm just gonna say 'hold me' and 'stay with me' have the SAME energy, so if no one has called semi-parallels, i'm calling semi-parallels

bradley's single tear

stfu agarvaine. i'm serious. legit everytime he shows up i wanna pow pow pow him

legit. agaravaine needs to get away from morgana.

DO NOT GRAB HER ARM MISTER. LET GO OF HER

I DON'T CARE THAT YOU'RE SECRETLY IN LOVE WITH HER. LET GO OF HER RN

i've said it once and i'll say it again, i love gwen

not to romanticize death or anything but i like candle light vigils.

ok maybe slightly symbolic but probably not? ok actually i think it is, not to toot my own horn but this is also just really straightforward too.

arthur wearing 'street garb' and his 'knight stuff' sort of differentiates between 'arthur' and 'prince arthur'. the scene where merlin and arthur are looking over the vigil and merlin's talking about how there's nothing that can be done, and arthur mentions using magic, i may be off about this but i feel like he's speaking more from prince arthur rather than arthur, uther is my father.

like of course arthur's hurting, everyone knows he's hurting. but idk. i feel like he feels like he's not ready to be king. he needs more time, and he can't be king yet. so therefore, prince arthur is talking about needing to save their king.

gaius and merlin are both right here. idk what else to say.

wow merlin 'you can't stop me' love that

jeez 'maybe this is my chance to change that' little do you know what's happening soon merlin.

oh shoot.

arthur asking merlin if he would use magic to save his father? i'm just thinking back to merlin crying, but not crying over balinor because he couldn't tell arthur, and merlin having to mourn his father in secret. vs. arthur, asking merlin for advice. sharing all his worries and insecurities with gwen. begging gaius to do something more for his father. this just makes me so sad

arthur TRUSTING merlin. with everything. taking merlin's opinion on things and aw

this is dumb but tbh i really like merlin's outfit. like tbh i think i dress in the same sort of style, just ✨modern✨ sadly, no neckerchief for me but i do have a necklace that says 'heather' despite my name being 'ashley'. ily conan gray

ugh. arthur calling merlin a coward but also calling him brave?? you need to pick a side arthur

LMAO ARTHUR STOP THINKING ABOUT WATCHING MERLIN PEE

bruh arthur breaking the vase. it's so dumb but merlin referring to the vase over and over actually makes me chuckle

ok merlin going 'you have come to kill me?' reminds me of another show but i can't remember but i thought i'd put it out here anyways

oh shoot i just realized/remember that uther got stabbed on arthur's birthday. hell of a gift am i right 😭

hehe arthur 'sweeping' with the broom. silly goose

dragoon sounds so vulnerable asking for the right to use magic freely

i love you arthur. this scene, i'm like YES. arthur i love him

i love the saying 'my word'. like, i don't want people to promise me anything anymore. i want them to give me their word.

HAHA THIS IS SO DUMB. MERLIN SAYING 'QUESTIONS. SO MANY QUESTIONS'. I LITERALLY SAY IT WITH THE SHOW EVERY TIME. WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME

aw arthur just sitting there with the cup and trying not to break it HAHA he's so sweet. slightly scared after that vase yk what i mean

ok i don't like morgana and everything but that necklace? that's a stroke of genius. yes girl. make up the plan as you go along

frick you agarvaine. do not scare gwen you PERV

jeez agarvainewas SO rude putting that necklace onto uther. like yes, ik you don't like him but STILL. that's just rude

i'm going to start calling people toads now

hehe arthur closing his door and merlin being right there. it's not necessarily a trope but it totally is and i love it

ah yes. merlin and the tavern. i feel like it's been referred to before but it's still funny.

ok ik arthur carrying merlin is there for kicks for the kids but i laughed anyways

apparently i have the humor of a 10 year old

this is really dumb but the scene with arthur and the two guards. i'm just thinking 'how tall are these guards'. ofc ik that the staging/perception could be doing something that might be making arthur look shorter, but my first reaction was 'bradley is 6' just how tall are these guards??'

merlin's speech about magic makes me sad

aw 'i hope, one day, that you'll see me in a different light'

dragoon has the same effect on arthur as merlin does

uther waking up 😭

AW. UTHER'S LITTLE SIGH AND THEN 'ARTHUR' BREAK MY HEART COVEY. BREAK IT A THOUSAND TIMES.

they're both so happy. this makes me so sad now. oh jeez. oh jeez. oh jeez

oh jeez oh jeez merlin's expression. AW merlin gave arthur his word. oh jeez this is very stressful and i'm only watching this

ok obviously. merlin doesn't want to see arthur in pain. but ALSO this was merlin's chance to change things once and for all. and now uther is dead. #no liam just payne

arthur's face post crying. skf;aldjfa;ldk AW

frick you agarvaine. literally die. i can't wait for merlin to kill you

i think this scene is pretty. the light on the left and the dark on the right? ok actually, i'm going to be making an off base comparison now because that's all i do.

i'm remembering this post i saw on here and it was like, arthur uther and morgana in the throne room. in order of the way they sit in the throne room, first it's arthur, uther, and then morgana

well. the really dumb and off base comparison here is the 'light' goodness of arthur and the 'dark' evil of morgana being mirrored in the picture above.

'light', bravery, doing what's right- being on the left. 'dark', evil, power on the right- and arthur in the middle of it, king

like i said, it's a dumb off base comparison, but at least the picture is pretty

oh jeez this scene

my heart breaks for both of them

merlin not being able to form a sentence at first.

😭😭😭😭 arthur please. you're breaking everyone's heart right now

you already knew i had to include this scene

arthur walking in there all alone

oh jeez he's all alone

dumb parallel number 2. arthur walking into the throne room with uther, father and son. merlin and gaius closing the door for arthur- pseudo father and pseudo son.

'he'll never know who i really am'

i want to do a DEH post soon but jeez. the line that hits hardest for me in DEH is 'i never let them see the worst of me. cause what if everyone saw? what if everyone knew? would they like what they saw? or would they hate it too? and jeez that's all i can think about when i think about merlin and his secrets

again. no liam, just payne

asldkfja;sldkfjas dlf merlin waiting for arthur

i have so many feelings

i love the show of affections for his father. you already know that uther wasn't affectionate when arthur was growing up, but still. forehead kiss? i love it

I DIDN'T WANT YOU TO FEEL THAT YOU WERE ALONE. i hate this and love this so much. i'm not saying merlin is completely selfless, because merlin wants magic to be leagalized and arthur is the way to do that. but omg merlin not wanting for arthur to feel like he's alone breaks me

first, merlin being physically alone while waiting for arthur. arthur was technically alone too, but he was with his father

but also, merlin being alone in the sense of his magic. no one knows except for gaius. lancelot knew and then they killed him. merlin is so alone when it comes to his magic, and morgana's enchantment only pushes merlin into his 'magic shell' more. arthur thinks magic is pure evil, and merlin is made of magic. what does that mean would think of arthur. this hurts me so much i'm so sad

friend 😭

arthur asking if he's hungry and them getting breakfast together

ok this sound track

pendragon red. i actually stan

gwen wearing a purple dress?? color symbolism?? nah i'm over thinking

ASIFA;SDLFJAD HE'S KING OF CAMELOT

IT'S LIKE I WANT TO CRY BECAUSE I'M SO PROUD RIGHT NOW.

oh jeez oh jeez.

and merlin saying 'long live the king' at the end of the episode?

chills

Anyways! I’ll be back next week to rant more about aithusa so I’ll see you then! thanks I love you bye

8 notes · View notes

jemmydoolz · 4 years

Text

Edgar Has Always Been Kind of a Bitch

hi okay so it's a little after midnight but I'm posting a fic rn bc it's the first fic I've written in like,, a yr and a half and also I'm rlly excited abt it??

anyway battle buddies/fahc jeremwood angst based on ramblings in a gc

(warning for minor assault implications at the beginning, and brief mentions of a suicide attempt at the end)!!!

Fiona and Gavin decide that what Jeremy needs is a night of bevs, and, to put it simply, get wasted, so the crew settles on going to a club that Friday. Jeremy only has one or two drinks, but boy does he get fucked up.

Ryan’s sitting and talking with Geoff and Jack in a booth, sipping a diet coke. He looks over Jack’s shoulder to see Jeremy standing at the bar with a much taller, more intimidating man looming over him. The guy reaches out toward Jeremy, who leans away from the touch. Jeremy nervously laughs and his eyes frantically dart around for someone, anyone who might be able to help him.

“Hello? Earth to Ryan?” Jack waves her hand in front of Ryan’s face.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah. sorry. Hey, um, I’m gonna go home, I’m just not really feeling great,” Ryan murmurs as he slides out of the booth, already heading toward Jeremy.

“Um, alright, I guess? Drive safe,” Jack calls after him.

Ryan speeds up when he sees the man grab Jeremy’s arm. Jeremy’s face flipped through a thousand emotions at once when he saw Ryan approaching, but eventually landed on confused but grateful. He gave Jeremy a look that said just go with what I’m about to say.

“Hey, babe,” Ryan says. The man immediately drops his grip on Jeremy’s arm. Jeremy does his best not to choke on his own spit when he hears the word babe come out of Ryan’s mouth. He hadn’t heard it in so long, and he didn’t think it would still hurt so much.

“Oh, hey!” Jeremy turns to Ryan and reaches up to peck him on the lips. “Where’d Edgar go? It’s his birthday, I figured he would wanna hang out with his friends!”

Fuck. Mentioning something about their friend ‘Edgar’ was always code for I don’t feel good about this, let’s leave. Edgar’s birthday meant I’m having a panic attack, I need your help. Ryan wanted to punch the guy that was practically feeling Jeremy up. No—he wanted to fucking kill that bastard. He and Jeremy may have had a severe falling out, they may have suffered years of heartache and longing, but he still felt responsible to make sure Jeremy was safe.

“He said he kinda wanted to go home. He went to the bathroom while I found you. You, uh, just about ready?” Ryan’s eyes flitted between Jeremy and the other man, who cleared his throat and mumbled something about needing to go find his friends before walking off.

Jeremy and Ryan both sigh in relief once he’s gone.

“Wanna head outside for some fresh air for a minute?” Ryan asks, getting a meek, obviously shaken-up nod in return.

Jeremy says something that Ryan can’t quite hear over the music as they walk outside.

“Hm?”

“Oh, nothing. It was dumb.” Jeremy shakes his head. Ryan has had enough experience to know that it was better to just leave it alone. They both wordlessly come to a stop and lean against the wall of the building a few yards from the door. Almost as if they had been working as partners for years. They spend a few minutes saying nothing, watching people on the street, looking at the stars in the sky. Ryan can’t help but study the intricacies of Jeremy, realizing that so many things have changed, but somehow almost nothing about him is different. Jeremy’s hair is just a tad bit more grown out than it ever was at the agency (also, it’s bright purple and orange, which is not exactly the most appealing color combination, but that’s a topic for another day), but he still runs his hands through it when he’s lost in thought. It’s curlier than it used to be, but maybe that’s just because it’s longer. He still clenches his jaw so hard it seems like he’s going to break his teeth when he’s scared. He still wears a tank top under his shirt, no matter how hot it is outside. His eyes still crinkle at the corners when he lets out a bark of laughter that Ryan still swears up and down sounds exactly like a squeaky toy. He’s changed, though. Ryan can see in his eyes that he’s become aware of reality. He knows the responsibility he carries, the heavy consequences that come with his actions, that death is around the corner at every moment.

“D’you- d’you want me to take you home?” Ryan says barely above a whisper, but loud enough for Jeremy to hear. “You can go back inside if you want, but I know you always used to want to go home and be alone after Edgar shows up.” Jeremy lets out the tiniest breathy chuckle.

“Edgar has always been kind of a bitch, hasn’t he?” Jeremy says as he looks away from the sky to meet Ryan’s gaze, and his heart falls apart all over again for the thousandth time. That fond look of reminiscence and joy was one Ryan donned frequently at the agency. “I- Yeah. yeah. I’d really appreciate a ride home. I’m just a little too drunk to drive, I think.”

“Alright. I parked just down the street. Penthouse or your apartment?” Ryan hadn’t even noticed that Jeremy did seem somewhat tipsy; his Boston accent slipping in occasionally and his words slurring the tiniest bit.

“Um, apartment,” Jeremy says. “D’you rem-”

“Yes, I remember where your apartment is, Jeremy.”

It’s only a few minutes into the drive to the other side of town when Jeremy pipes up. “I honestly didn’t really expect you to help me. I didn’t expect you to remember Edgar, either. I dunno why I said it, I guess just vaguely hoping you would even though it’s been, what, three years?” he pauses for a moment and just takes in Ryan's profile. “I always hope you remember things from then. I know it went to shit, but we still had so much fun. We made so many memories and did so much dumb shit there. But I’m glad that stupid fuckin’ place collapsed. All of it was complete bullshit. I just wish it all fell apart before we did.”

Ryan doesn’t know how to respond. So he doesn’t.

“All those meetings I had to stay late for? Fuckin’ useless. They served no purpose, and I don't know why I was forced to go to them. I feel like the only reason I had to go to those meetings was because someone was hiding something from me. It was obvious that so many things were kept from us.” Jeremy stops for a second to try to will away the lump rising in his throat. “I thought you were cheating on me. For the longest time. I still don’t know whether you actually were. You were always out on ‘special missions’ and shit.”

The moment Ryan hears Jeremy let out a shaky breath his heart breaks.

“Was it me? Was I not good enough? I promise I tried my hardest to be what you needed. I’m sorry if I wasn’t. All I wanted was the best for you, Ryan. Even now, I just want you to be happy. If you're happier with someone else, then that’s what I want. I don’t blame you, though. I don’t deserve someone like you. You deserve so much better than me. I would do anything for you, Rye. We were together for so long. We did everything together! I thought I was gonna marry you. I was saving up money to get a ring. I guess I was too stupid to see that you didn’t want me anymore.”

Ryan looks over to see the tears staining Jeremy’s cheeks reflecting the soft orange glow of the streetlamps. Is this really what Jeremy thinks?

“I was so in love with you, Ryan Haywood. I’m- I’m still in love with you. I love you so goddamn much it hurts sometimes. Every time I see you hurt, upset, angry, anything other than healthy and happy my heart aches. I’m sorry I wasn't enough. I promise I tried. Fuck, I tried so hard.”

With every sob Jeremy lets out, Ryan's heart breaks just a little bit more. The short distance left until Ryan pulls up to Jeremy’s apartment building is spent wordlessly. Jeremy’s clambering out of the car and reaching to grab the door when Ryan speaks.

“Hey, Jer, do you want me to walk you up? I just want to make sure you’re safe.”

“No. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’ve already been a pain in your ass tonight, I don't need to waste even more of your time. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything.” Jeremy sniffles and wipes his cheeks, giving a half-hearted smile before shutting the door and walking away.

Ryan sits there for a second, unable to process fully what he just heard. He starts driving without even knowing where he was going, and he’s so lost in his thoughts that suddenly he’s sitting in his car in front of the boardwalk along the beach and crying. He can’t believe anything he was just told—there is no way in hell that the brilliant, witty, talented Jeremy Dooley ever doubts his worth. It’s jarring to think that part of it was because of Ryan. He was going on extra missions because the agency was growing more and more demanding. For months they tormented Ryan with the threat of kicking out Jeremy. They said they’d do other things to him that Ryan doesn’t want to remember. Why did Jeremy never bring it up? Why did he just accept that Ryan had ‘moved on?’ Their lives were so intertwined with one another that Ryan never felt truly whole again. The only reason Ryan went with the break up was that he saw how distant and cold Jeremy had gotten. Ryan had assumed that, for whatever reason, Jeremy had changed his mind. He hated it, he was devastated, but he didn't know how to fix it.

Ryan decides he doesn’t want to go back to the penthouse tonight. He pulls up to the nearest crew safehouse, and suddenly things click.

Jeremy had always struggled with bad self-image and depression. He had gone to Ryan for comfort, which he was always more than willing to give. Jeremy was doing better. At least he told Ryan he was.

Jack had mentioned a while ago that when Jeremy first joined the crew, she had found him after a suicide attempt and barely left his side until he recovered. The only reason for it Jack had told Ryan about was ‘emotional trauma from a past relationship, that he didn’t really want to talk about.’

Ryan did that to him.

Ryan made the love of his life want to die.

The pieces left of his heart fall into more shards than there are grains of sand in this world.

He collapses onto the couch inside, too exhausted to even get to the bed. He knows he’s not going to be able to sleep, though.

To: Geoff

Dropped Jeremy off at his place, he was pretty drunk though so check on him please

To: Geoff

I’m staying at kung fu safehouse for the night

#my fic #holy fuck #i did that !!!#thats a whole ass 1874 words babeyyy!!!!!#fahc #fahc ryan #fahc jeremy #fahc au #angst #battle buddies #fake ah ryan #fake ah jeremy #fake ah crew #fake ah au #minor suicide mention #suicide mention tw #ragehappy

70 notes · View notes

clovd-9 · 6 years

Text

tattoo artist!taeyong × apprentice!reader (ft. ten)

promt: could you write an AU with taeyong as a tattoo artist please? I love you!!

A/n: I think I'm gonna write like 2-3 more parts to this because there's so many ideas I have for it and not enough room. Also...I love you too. ALsO my dad is a tattoo artist and I love writing these kinds of AUs bc I actually know abt them.

You never really expected to be a tattoo artists,, yet here you were,, in the waiting room of a tattoo parlor,, and all because of your friend and roommate, Ten

He had told you of a job opening to be an artist's apprentice,, yet failed to mention that it was to be a tattoo artists... or that your guide was a friend of his

So naturally you assumed they'd be loud, annoying, and lazy,, yet you gave it a shot bc why not

Then someone calls your name, and you turn around to meet the infamous Taeyong

His hair was white, standing out against his tan skin and dark tattoos,, his eyes were large and dark, looking at you

It took you a moment to find your voice,, feeling small in his gaze, but you nodded and followed him as he walked

The interview was pretty basic,, asking you if you had any experience, if you were comfortable with seeing blood, the essentials,, then he showed you his tools, explaining basic safety and hazards

His voice was rather monotoned and matched his expressionless face,, but somehow you still were caught up in what he was saying

By the end he simply told you he'd text you with any information/if you got the job,, then he turned around and went right along doing whatever he was doing before you had come in

Ten told you he was always like that,, expressionless,, but he was a cool guy and that you should give him a shot if you got the job

Which you did, exactly two days later he had texted you, giving you a schedule and telling you to bring a sweatshirt because the shop often as cold

So you show up the next day, dressed casually with a sweatshirt tucked in your arm,, he tells you to go to his booth, saying he has extra pens and inks for you to use which was kinda nice of him because you had no supplies at all

His first client comes in, and he sets up his station, making sure to give you a nice view of what he's doing,, then he turns on his music which is surprisingly,, soft r&b,, unlike everyone else around you who's blasting modern rap

It kind of catches you off guard,, yeah he's chill but,, he has some dimensions to him??

Anyways,, when he finally starts with the tattoo he suddenly has an expression on his face,, hed concentrated on what he's doing, his eyebrows furrowed

When he quickly glances at you,, you realize you've been observing him more than his work, which quickly causes you to burn with embarrassment as you focus on what his hand is doing

To your luck, he doesnt bring it up after he's done, rather asking your questions and seeing if you noticed certain techniques,, when you answer all of his questions he doesn't say anything but a simple okay and goes right back to cleaning his pen and table

Whenever you come home, Ten asks you a billion questions,, but they're oddly specific

Like,, did he mention anything else besides work, did he get lots of texts or phone calls,, and you're like what no idk jdiwkakf why

But he shrugs, saying he was just curious,, but you had your suspicions

So the next time you're around Taeyong you pay attention to what he's doing more,, turns out his phone blows up and he stares at it like it's a dead bug,, and you ofc bring this info to Ten bc you want to be in on the tea

But he refuses to tell you, saying taeyong would beat his ass,, so you leave it be and focus on your work

The longer you and Taeyong work together, the more he talks and tries to make conversation

Like one time he asked you out of the blue if you had seen how almost all animals from the Seoul area had been adopted,, and you were like yeah omg but you were also bamboozled bc why does a quiet creepy emo like taeyong pay attention to the news- or dogs and cats??

The both of you find out your similarities and interests, and small talk is no longer awkward because hey it's about things you actually like and know about

Ten drops in sometimes,, which reveals Taeyong's goofier side

You actually heard him laugh when Ten was telling a story and you were like hE DOES THAT?

But by now a few months have gone by and you've done quite a few tattoos, you're getting pretty good at it too,, Taeyong even told you good job on your most recent one which made you feel proud of yourself but you didn't tell him that

You found yourself getting more interested in who Taeyong actually was, and not who was at work

Parts of himself would show when he talked about how much he adored music, or how he actually wanted to be a dancer but discovered the art of tattoos

A small part of you even thought he was cute,, god forbid you tell Ten though he'd probably tell Taeyong and everyone in your shop

When your apprenticeship reached 6 months, Taeyong told you that you should consider becoming an independent artist,, to which this made you feel a pang of sadness,, bc you actually grew to really enjoy working alongside him,, but you told him okay

You brainstormed how to stay around him longer because quite frankly you were terrified of most other artists,, and then it came to you, why not work in the same shop?

So you called the owner of your current shop, discussed booth rent, and bam, you were set

When you told taeyong, he smiled widely, suddenly hugging you

"I'm sorry, I'm just happy for you!" He exclaimed, his smile never fading

You thanked him, saying that you wouldn't have been there if it weren't for him,, and ten but meh who cares about him rn

So the both of you work in the booth next to each other, often talking while giving tattoos or during break

And honestly, it didn't even seem like you were working, rather than just doing something you loved to do,, with someone you liked loved to do it with

To be continued ;)

#nct #nct127 #nct u #lee taeyong #taeyong #taeyong tattoo artist au #taeyong au #grunge taeyong #taeyong fluff #nct au #nct fluff #tattoo artist nct

27 notes · View notes

fyars · 6 years

Text

171216 Premium Unit Event #1 Jinyoung & Youngjae Full Fanacc

They were dressed in their Kono Mune Ni stage outfits - Jinyoung in a white shirt and Youngjae in a black silk shirt.

When they went up stage, Furuya-san (MC) asked them to introduce themselves. Basically it must be → "Hello! This is GOT7" then their names, but since JB was not here, the 2 stumbled a bit and said the phrase "We are GOT7" unsynchronizedly, then giggled in embarrassment.

When it's Jinyoung's turn to introduce himself, he lifted the mic to fast with exceeding strength, making it collide into his own teeth with a "BANG!". JY immediately held his lips like a kid clearly suffering but YJ just laughed loudly bc his hyung's accident is just so cute

Since the event hall is very small, the "Bang!" sound from Jinyoung's mic even echoed harder, making it even more embarrassing for him. To cover up that embarrassment, JY quickly said "Everyone, I'm okay, I'M OKAY!" while his plumped lips from just got even redder ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

JY: (still embarrassed) Hmmm... Japan is really hot eh? MC+YJ+Agases: ????? MC: You meant like.."hot"? Really? In this winter weather? YJ: Not...cold at all? JY: Totally not cold at all. But hot. Since everyone is here~~~ MC: You meant Korea is SUPER COLD, while Japan is a bit warm, but here is TOO HOT bc your fans are here? JY: *shy* MC: Everyone~ Is it hot in here? Ahgases: Yeah~ㅋㅋㅋ MC: Hey (that reaction is) cold~ JY: Sorry~ (for the lame joke) MC: It's okay, took only 2mins anyway YJ: AHAHAHAHAHA

MC: How do you feel working as an unit and having unit event like this, just 2 of you? JY: It's the first time we do this as an unit right? Well after all, aren't we the best (among the 3 units)? MC: You even make ranking of the units in your group??? JY: Of course! ㅍㅅㅍ JY: It's special. Since this is the 1st time we promote in this form, I'm super happy to be able to do event like this. YJ: It's somehow "fushigi" (=strange)! MC: Strange? YJ: *innocently* Yeah strange desu yo↗︎! JY: I'm sorry this kid says strange stuff sometimes. YJ: Uhm can we...sit now? MC: Of course of course! YJ: *in tiny voice* Uhmm and...I need water..please... (HIS OTTERING IS SHOWING!!) MC: Ahaha okay~ *calls staff* YJ: Oh and...uhm.. 2 water please For Jinyoung hyung too~ JY: Awww *holds YJ's hand* (my child is) so kind!♡♡♡

Furuya-san then asked some staff to get water for them immediately (seemed like they didn't expect Youngjae to ask for water so they didn't prepare) while

JY: *raised both hands to clap nobly* Water please~ MC: Wow such a courteous way of ordering, sir! YJ: ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

When Furuya-san was asking for water into his mic so that the background staff could hear, Youngjae even said in tiny voice "Everyone, please gimme water~" in that super adorable expression while bringing his hands together. He's not an idol. He's an otter ㅠㅠㅠㅠ

MC: I went to your Osaka TURN UP show last time! JY: Alone? MC: Yup JY: After the show we would definitely want to greet you, but you didn't show up.. MC: .... YJ: Were you busy!? JY: It's totally okay though.... MC: .... YJ: Were you busy!? MC: ...... JY: No, really, it's okay YJ: I WAS OKAY TOO! But this place hurts a bit *places a hand on his chest* MC: ... JY: Why~ MC: Hey it's premium unit event today and you two came just to bully me?? YJ: Teehee sorry~ JY: He must have been "I forgot ehe~" MC: NO I DIDN'T JY: ㅋㅋㅋ MC: But the live was really amazing! Your stages were so cool! "Kono mune ni" perf was splendid too! YJ: Oh really? So among 3 units which one is the best match to your style? MC: ... JYYJ: *turns to interpreter noona* Tell him he must answer right away! Must answer right away! MC: After all, it's "Kono mune ni" for me! YJ: But after one show when we asked which stage he liked best he said "Bam's 97 Y&R stage was~"! MC: Oh no no I didn't say such terrible thing! JY: Wow~ *unbelievable face* MC: *tries hard to convince 2young* I'm just a man seeing life in rose color JY: Woa~ "life is colored rose" huh? MC: Yea "life is colored rose"! This gentleman here really says something impressive! JY: *giggles with his wrinkled eye-smile* ㅋㅋㅋ

MC: Let's talk abt their unit song. What thought did you have in mind when you wrote this song, Youngjae? YJ: Its original name is "Daijoubu" (It's alright). Geunde...demo... (both mean "but") MC: Awesome! Translating by himself! YJ: AHAHA~ JY: *pats YJ* It's okay, just go on! :)

YJ: Its original title was 괜찮아/Daijoubu, but during the process of translating the lyrics I wrote, many changes occurred gradually too. 괜찮아 means "Wherever you are it's still okay, I'm still here. As long as you come back to me it'll be okay". That's what I had in mind.

MC: Jinyoung, when you first listened to the song how did you feel? JY: I thought it's a very well written song. It's a song containing so much of Youngjae's own color, that's why it's really fun when we practiced it. MC: So you mean you can feel the emotions in this song while practicing, that's why it's enjoyable right? JY: Honestly speaking if a song sounds so-so to me I wouldn't want to practice it, but this song is different! It inspires me! YJ: AHAHAHA~ JY: Gotta do what you want right!? MC: So basically you won't feel the urge to practice songs you don't like? JY: But not this song!! What I said is just for example! MC: If your company gives you songs you don't like you'll be like "I don't wanna practice~ don't wanna~" too? YJ: AHAHAHA I'M SO HAPPY XD MC: Also, the piano scene in your unit teaser is awesome! YJ: Oh really? You saw it? MC: Wh...what did you mean by "saw it"? Of course we saw that's why we are talking about it now, right? YJ: AHAHAHAHA OH RIGHT HAHAHA OUCH *almost choked on his own spit*

YJ: I just wanted to play the piano, since it's how I made "Kono mune ni". I wrote lyrics for it first, then made the melody after using the piano. That's why I wanted to put the piano playing scene into our video too. My scene was filmed as exactly as how I created the song.

Since YJ's Japanese is still limited, all the explanations on Kono mune ni were in Korean and got translated. But YJ always ended his long explanation with Jpn phrases like "imi desu" (It means~) or "deshita" (that was), which was really cute

JY: He's really studying Jpn hard!

JY: YJ's scene was easy. Mine was hard tho. At least YJ still could play the piano, while I had nothing to do!! Like, just sit there and made blank face. PD would tell me "Look that way!" and I was like, *looks*. When it's done, I was just "Thanks for the work!" then went home MC: "Kono mune ni..." stage was great, but of course we're also looking forward to Budokan live too! YJ: Yes please look forward to it! Because~ All: OOOHHHHH~~ YJ: WOOOHH~ hehe let's stop here! I will just reveal this much! JY: So, who are going to Budokan!? Ahgases: \\٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و// MC: ' v ' JY: WHO. GONNA. GO. TO. BUDOKAN?? MC: *finally realized he is targeted* Wait, are you bullying me now? JY: *shrugged* Again, who gonna go to Budokan? *turns to look at interpreter noona* YJ: She has schedule alr~

MC: Let's move to Unit song associated game. It's confession time!!! Please give it an applause everyone! *Kono mune ni is playing* YJ: Why did you play Kono mune ni when the atmosphere is about to hyper up like this? MC: Now using your song title "Kono mune ni..." (In this heart), let's try confessing something you can't say normally to each other! Since today there're only the 2 of you here, I think it will help strength your bond too. YJ: *already places both hands on his left chest* MC: Youngjae, you feelin' it? Anything (confession) came out (from your heart) already? YJ: *tugged the shirt's neck to look at his bare chest inside* MC: Wait this is getting strange! YJ: Still nothing~ MC: GYAAA WHADDA YOU LOOKING FOR FROM THERE!? YJ: Nothing coming yet~ MC: Jinyoung first! Confession please! JY: *Thinking REAL hard* MC: Wow his head gear is running desperately at the moment JY: Can I have some times? I can't recall any, so maybe I'm just gonna make one. MC: "Making" something to confess, okay.... ^^'' MC: So Youngjae, your confession? YJ: *also thinking hard* Hmmm.... I ONLY like everyone right now~ HAI IT'S A JOKE! HAHA~ JY: Oh wait, how about everyone? Do you have something to confess to us? MC: What a splendid thing! Now they totally kick the question to their fans YJ: Anyone wanna confess? You! *points at a random fan* Ahgase: Gyaa kawaiiii! YJ: Kawaii? Okay so her confession to me is I am kawaii

Youngjae then went off the stage all the way to a fan at 3~4th row to ask her confession. But her voice was small so

YJ: I can't hear you. Let's speak louder, like this *places the mic to his mouth* Ah AH AHHHHHHH And it was very explosive. I hope the fan was alright.

Another ahgase: Actually I want to ask a question more than a confession to JY. 「Jinyoung-san」「Jinyoung-oppa」「Jinyoung-hwangjanim」just「Jinyoung」&「Jinyoung-chan」which do you like best?

YJ: From my perspective it's Jinyoung-chan~♡ JY: Hmm I'd like to be called "Jinyoung-oppa" MC: Everyone let's call "Jinyoung-oppa" together! Ahgase: Jinyoung-oppa~~ JY: Hey, are you alright? That noona over there clearly looks terrified by the "oppa" thing. She kept shaking her head like this *imitates* Ahgase: No I don't~ JY: Noona if it's hard you don't need to try, okay~

JY: I now got one confession to YJ. It's an apology though. In the van that takes us around for activities, YJ always practices his singing and enunciation. But I'm really sleepy... and it keeps blasting to my ears... MC: Always? JY: Yeah always... YJ: Because I'm a singer, and I got a super loud voice. Plus the van is small so my voice echoes even more... JY: So when YJ isn't looking, I....secretly turn UP the volume in my earphones.... YJ: I gotta confess to hyung too! Everytime JY hyung feels cold he'll turn on the heater full-fledged. When he does that, it's super hot for me, so when he's sleeping I secretly adjust the temperature DOWN All: YJ: Bc the hot air can't flow outside, I just switch it OFF~ MC: Well then, with these confessions as an opportunity, will anything in the van be changed in the future for the 2 of you? JY: I will...just turn up the volume of my earphones louder~ YJ: And I will turn down the temperature of the heater more lol~

After this was the fansign segment, and last greetings before the event ended. Both of them said they're looking forward to seeing Ahgases again in Budokan. When they both exited already, JY playfully peeked out from the stage wing again to wave at fans and tease Furuya-san lol.

fanacc by coded4d9dc

#Choi Youngjae #Youngjae #GOT7 #Park Jinyoung #2young #171216 Premium Unit Event #171216 #FanAcc #fanacc trans #era: turn up

77 notes · View notes