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#Indy Car World Series
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Nigel Mansell.
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sabertoothwalrus · 3 months
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so I’ve been gaining a lot of insight into the animation industry recently, especially in regards to pitching & the creation of new shows. There’s a few ways to go about it.
First, there’s pitching to a studio. When you pitch, it has to be SHORT and CONCISE. You may write a lovingly detailed pitch bible that perfectly breaks down episodes and characterizations, and it might barely even get read. First impressions, first impressions, first impressions!
Most peoples’ first projects don’t get picked up. I’ve heard a few stories from directors that said they tried pitching a story they’d had for years, which got rejected, to then spend a week or even several hours in their car coming up with a new idea, only for that to get greenlit.
But that’s not the end of it. Just because a show gets greenlit, doesn’t mean it will ever get finished. There’s lots of things that can happen. Sometimes, unexpected major world events (like… a global pandemic) can cause projects to get chopped. Sometimes, a CEO change or studio merge means a single person can decide a project “no longer fits with the company’s brand.” Sometimes, the one producer that was rooting for your project gets laid off, and no one else cares enough, so it gets shelved. Sometimes, a streaming service decides to create an animation department, and then they decide they don’t want it anymore. Sometimes, the studio will be simultaneously be developing another project that was too similar to yours and they just didn’t think to tell you until they decide yours is the one with less potential.
On top of that, almost everyone in the industry is saying that “studios just don’t pick up original content anymore.” Studios want something they can franchise, something that will bring in money. New content is risky. Established fanbases are safer.
However! Studios can still be a very good thing. They can be unionized. They can provide better benefits and resources. They can have connections and infrastructure and a larger volume of workers. At a studio, you can divide the labor and produce more in less time. Longer episodes, longer seasons, more consistency in quality.
But this comes with all of the disadvantages of having more in the kitchen.
The alternative is indie animation.
With indie animation, you have total freedom. Full artistic control. It doesn’t even matter if your idea sucks ass, because there’s no one to tell you you can’t make it. You could make it anyway, and you can make it whatever you wanted.
The thing is, making animation is hard. In my production class last semester, the average maximum animation one person could make in that timeframe was 30-60 seconds, and that’s not even counting background design, sound design, or cleanup/color. To make a 5 minute animated short, you should probably have at least 5 people.
And it is CRUCIAL you have a production manager. Ideally someone who’s not already doing art for the project. Most projects without a production manager will fall apart pretty quickly. Once the adrenaline and impulse-fueled motivation wears off, you need someone to hold you accountable and enforce deadlines and proper time management.
Speaking of time, that’s also hard to get. The more people you have, the more likely schedules won’t line up. Most people will have school, or other jobs.
And it costs MONEY!!!!!! You either have everyone work for free and volunteer their time & energy, or you establish a business as a proper indie studio, with people who may or may not have experience on how to handle paying someone else’s salary. And the money has to come from somewhere, so you have to rely on crowdfunding like patreon or kickstarter. (This, by the way, is why I could never fault an indie animation for releasing merch with their pilot.)
And like, maybe you wanna do a series, and all your friends agree to volunteer their labor and time to make the first episode, but it was unanimously not sustainable. Deciding not to produce a second episode until you can raise enough money is not being suddenly greedy, it’s attempting to compensate people rather than expecting them to be continuously taken advantage of.
You have to consider your output as well. There are some outliers like Worthikids, who afaik does all his animation himself, and afaik can work on it full-time thanks to his patreon subscribers. And he still has only produced a total of 30 minutes of animation (for Big Top Burger specifically) in the past 4 years. This is an IMPRESSIVE feat and this is with using a lot of 3D as part of his pipeline!!
Indie animation also has the complication of being more accessible for fandoms. When you’re posting your Official Canon Content on youtube, it doesn’t look a lot different than the fandom-created video essay in the sidebar next to it. What’s canon vs what’s fanon becomes less distinguishable. The boundaries are blurrier. When the creator is just some guy you follow on twitter, it’s easier to prod them for info regarding ships and theories and word-of-god confirmation. They don’t have a PR team or entire international tv networks to appeal to. And this is when creators get frustrated that their fans snowball and turn their creation into something they don’t recognize (and no longer enjoy) anymore.
So it’s tricky.
Thankfully, the threshold to learn animation is fairly low nowadays!! There are TONS of resources online to learn it on your own without forking over a couple hundred thousand to a private art college. There are conventions and discord servers and events where you can network, if you know where to look.
I know it can seem discouraging in the face of capitalism, but I think that’s all the more reason why it’s so important to BE DETERMINED about animation!! We’re already starting to see the beginning of an indie animation boom, and I think it’s a testament to humanity’s desire to tell stories and create art. Even if there’s no financial gain, we do whatever it takes to tell our stories anyway.
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lovelyhan · 1 year
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— favorite poison ⟢
pairing: wonwoo x reader
summary: no strings attached sex is easy. catching feelings for a person you supposedly hate is hard. it's in times like this when wonwoo wishes he can set the dial to his life on easy mode forever, but everyone knows he's nothing if not stubbornly competitive.
word count: 15.5k words
tags: fuck buddies, not quite enemies to lovers, streamer!wonwoo, streamer!reader, attempt at humor, in denial!wonwoo, angst, smut
warnings: mentions of twitter porn, brief discussions of past trauma, slut shaming, mild violence (wonwoo punches someone in the face), graphic sexual content (minors dni!!)
notes: this is the sequel to underlying pretense! thank you so much for waiting so so patiently for this second part! big thank you to @playmetheclassics for proofreading this monster sequel for me >< i wouldn't have done this without you, indi UEUEUE
this is part of the game over series!
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smut tags: implied semi-public sex, game chair sex? jealousy, clothed sex, use of handcuffs, brief spanking, car sex, unprotected sex, oral (m and f receiving), fingering, degradation, dirty talk, daddy kink, hard and soft dom wonwoo, creampie, cum eating, aftercare
svt taglist: @wonderfulshinee - @misssugarlips - @yourfavoritefreakyhan - @jeanjacketjesus - @just-here-to-read-01 - @hanihans - @venusrae - @taestrwbrry - @minnie-mouser22 - @dreamhannies - @thvhannie - @kkooongie - @gae-uls - @lenireads - @gaebestie - @ryusha-rose - @enhacolor - @ilyvern - @woo8hao - @tommolex
wonwoo taglist: @renjunphile - @acgyu - @potatofrieswithketchup - @pluviophile-xxx - @pretty-trustme
fic taglist: @appachicken - @bekah931215
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part one - part two - part three - part four
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“So when are you introducing me?” 
The buzz of visitors inside the convention hall is already grating enough as it is, but when Mingyu walks over to Wonwoo’s designated booth, all it does is irritate him further.
He doesn’t exactly have to do anything aside from receive gifts from the viewers coming to pay him a visit and take a few photos with them, but Wonwoo is yet to accustom himself to being the center of attraction in front of so many people. So listening to his roommate-slash-best friend asking him stupid questions isn’t helping his case.
“To who? My family?” Wonwoo scoffs. 
Mingyu rolls his eyes. “No. Your girlfriend, genius.”
“What the hell are you even talking about?”
His best friend pouts, and Wonwoo is having a really tough time taking him seriously because Mingyu is wearing one of those hats with bunny ears that flop around if you press the buttons dangling from the front. “You’re always scampering off with some girl from time to time. The others haven’t noticed, but I’m your roommate, hyung.”
Roughly three months have passed since Wonwoo bit the bullet and agreed to be your…fuck buddy? Not-so-friend with benefits? Whatever this arrangement is called, he’s satisfied with getting to let off steam every once in a while, and you don’t seem to have any complaints as long as he fucked you stupid and helped you make filthy content for all the world to see. 
Honest to god, it’s a miracle how shit hasn’t hit the fan yet. But then again, you and Wonwoo were both careful and extremely selective about what gets posted on your secret Twitter porn account and what stays tucked away in the hidden galleries in your phones. That sort of cautiousness is rewarded with having to get away with everything you’re both daring enough to pull off behind the scenes.
Still, it doesn’t change the fact that, outside his sexual relations with you, Twitch streamers everyone_woo and Koyahngi pretty much hate each other’s guts. Even if yours is the best fucking pussy he’s ever had (something you’ll never catch him dead admitting aloud), he’s not about to do a complete one-eighty and treat you any differently in front of his friends and followers. You don’t seem to have any plans on doing that either.
Wonwoo hasn’t once brought you to their shared apartment, so he’s certain that Mingyu is basing all his hunches on pure intuition alone. And just because that intuition turns out to be somewhat right (PSA: you’re not his girlfriend) doesn’t mean Wonwoo has to come clean about his goings-on.
Besides, they’re at a fucking convention. Why is Mingyu trying to hotseat him now? 
“What gave you the impression that I’m ‘scampering off’ with just one girl?” Wonwoo smirks, shaking his head. 
“Whatever you say, elusive gamer who hasn’t felt the touch of a woman that isn’t his mom.”
“Fuck you. You know that’s not true.”
“Well, obviously, you’re smitten with someone, and once I find out who it is, I’m throwing the biggest party in Seoul,” Mingyu says with a huff of indignance coloring his words. He says it like it’s a threat, and Wonwoo makes a face at him. 
“Why?” he asks with a scowl.
“Because I love you, that’s why.” Mingyu then takes off the stupid hat and places it on top of Wonwoo’s head—even putting the work into making sure it fits and everything. “Anyway, I’m heading to Koyahngi’s booth to say hi. You wanna come with, or do you still have a stick up your ass when it comes to hanging out with her?”
Wonwoo has to keep himself from blurting out how he’s not the one with anything up his ass when it comes to you but realizes that if he wants to get Mingyu off his back, he probably shouldn’t make traumatizing allusions to his sex life. 
“I can’t exactly leave my spot until the main program starts. The same goes for you, idiot,” Wonwoo points out. “Who knows how many of your subscribers are looking for you at your booth? Go away and tend to them first.”
Mingyu pouts again, but since his best friend is a guy that’s literally a six-foot wall of muscle, Wonwoo doesn’t feel even an ounce of sympathy for him. “I haven’t even been gone for ten minutes! I just wanted to see how my friends are doing.”
“Then you shouldn’t have set up a booth at all, Gyu.” 
“Hmph. You’re always so stingy, hyung.” Mingyu crosses his arms before turning on his heel. “Anyway, I’m heading over to Koyahngi’s. I heard she’s cosplaying Sage today. Not that you care, though.”
He sounds so genuinely sulky that Wonwoo would’ve laughed a little as Mingyu stomps away to head to your booth. But the mention of you dressing up as a Valorant agent that Wonwoo has started to despise since meeting you makes a couple of memories from earlier this week resurface in his mind. 
Aside from the catgirl gimmick, your cosplays are but another selling point for your streams. You dubbed it the catgirlification of every playable character I like right after Wonwoo railed you two days ago in that same Sage cosplay that Mingyu just mentioned. 
What a fucking weirdo, Wonwoo mused for a second before blowing your back out again, not five minutes later.
About an hour later, the program on the main stage was in full swing, and Wonwoo had just finished doing a little segment with Soonyoung that one of the fans who won a raffle requested for them to do. It was a Pocky Game that got a little too intense because Soonyoung wouldn’t stop fucking squirming, and they nearly kissed in front of the entire audience. Wonwoo doesn’t entirely mind because PR is PR, after all.
The thing he does end up minding, though, comes a little later—after the convention hall settles into a more relaxed atmosphere and everyone is back to booth-hopping. 
Despite what he told Mingyu earlier, Wonwoo took it upon himself to do some wandering around. It’s kind of nice to see other streamers and content creators he’s only ever got to interact with on Discord or their respective streams.
But while he’s munching on a cherry-shaped cookie that Seungcheol is handing out to his visitors, the bane of his existence swoops down on him just when he thought he could finish this entire event in peace.
“Hey, daddy,” you giggle into his ear before swiping the cookie out of his hands, tossing it into your mouth without a second thought. “Didn’t think I’d get to see you today.”
Wonwoo clicks his tongue before shrugging off the arm you draped around his shoulder. “What do you want?”
“Nothing in particular,” you hum before swallowing the food you just stole from him. “But now that I got a taste of Cheol’s cherry cookies, I kinda want some more. Do you know where he is?” 
“I think I saw him flirting with a bunch of cosplayers near the stage.”
Wonwoo startles at the sound of a third party’s voice intruding in your conversation, and from the looks of it, you’re just as startled as he is. Turning around, though, his apprehension ebbs away when he recognizes who it is.
“Johnny,” he says with a small surprised smile before offering his hand for a casual shake. “It’s been a while.”
The famous streamer returns Wonwoo’s gesture gingerly, but he realizes that Johnny’s gaze isn’t trained on him at all. 
“It has been,” he chuckles before turning to you. “I didn’t know you were friends with Wonwoo, doll. How you got someone as cold as he is to warm up to you is beyond me, but at least you’re expanding your network.”
Wonwoo would’ve rolled his eyes. Johnny is just as frank as he remembers. But before Wonwoo can point out that: 1.) you and him are not friends, and 2.) he is not a cold person and therefore has absolutely no need to warm up to anyone, he quickly picks up on the sudden shift in the air. And it’s not his or Johnny’s discomfort he’s sensing right now. 
“Nah, you’ve got the wrong idea,” you respond to Johnny casually, but Wonwoo doesn’t miss how your fists are clenched at your sides. “Wonwoo would rather get banned from Twitch than call me his friend. I just like pissing him off every now and again, is all~ That, and his friends are pretty cool, so I need to tolerate him.”
Johnny laughs before reaching down to ruffle your carefully styled wig. To others, it would’ve looked like a display of casual affection between friends, but Wonwoo is keen enough to notice how you momentarily flinched from the older streamer’s touch. His brows knit together as he attempts to figure out what was going on.
Actually, how do you even know Johnny in the first place?
“Anyway, I’ll be going now,” he laughs before letting one eye drop into a wink. “It’s good to see both of you. Enjoy the rest of the convention, yeah?”
As Johnny exits, you’re a little too quick to fill in the silence he left.
“You’ve gotta take me to Cheol before he runs out of cookies,” you whine, tugging on his arm with a persistent look on his face—not even breathing a word about Johnny, as if it hasn’t been two minutes since he left. “I’m pretty sure I saw him wearing a Pikachu onesie, so he should be easy to—”
Wonwoo immediately cuts you off with a quick yank of your wrist. As he leads you to one of the unoccupied restrooms near the convention hall, your voice drones in annoyingly repetitive succession in his ears while you struggle to free yourself from his grip, but Wonwoo just won’t budge.
Not when he can’t get the sight of you with genuine fear in your gaze when you first laid your eyes on Johnny out of his head.
“Shit,” you whisper hoarsely the moment Wonwoo slams you against the door—a shit-eating grin resting haughtily on your lips as he nudges your thighs apart. “I knew you were possessive, but not this much. Johnny just gave me a few head pats, daddy. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
Yeah. Wonwoo is totally doing this out of some pathetic, alpha male need to stake his claim after another man got his grubby hands on you. Not because he was bothered by that look on your face and can’t think of any other way to help get your mind off it aside from fucking you senseless in a public bathroom.
“Shut up,” he murmurs before forcing your cheek against the cold door. “Now, take off your leggings before I tear a hole in them myself. Can’t mess up your perfect fucking Sage cosplay now, can we?”
You let out a noise caught between a sigh and a whimper as you do as you're told. From three months ago to now, your general opinion on Jeon Wonwoo as a dom has yet to change. Even if he was about to rail you with a fluffy bunny beanie still resting on top of his head.
He’s fucking perfect.
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Right after that unplanned quickie, Wonwoo is at least keen enough to observe his surroundings as both of you discreetly part ways and sneak back into the convention. Since the main events were taking place on the other side of the venue, not a lot of people were milling around, and he thankfully manages to blend into the crowd without rousing everyone’s suspicion. 
Well, almost everyone.
“You’re a pretty shitty actor; you know that?”
Wonwoo doesn’t have to turn around to recognize the smugness in Seungcheol’s tone. The moment he lays his eyes on one of his closest friends—still wearing that silly Pikachu onesie and giving out his cherry cookies—he knows he can’t weasel himself out of this conversation so easily. 
“What do you mean?” Wonwoo says, deciding to play along to gauge what Seungcheol does and doesn’t know.
The older man scoffs. “Come on, Wonwoo-yah. You weren’t being very discreet when you pulled our very good cat girl friend into the restroom. Doesn’t help that you both came out looking dishevelled as fuck. So much for hating each other, huh?” 
Okay. He has nothing left to hide then. Great.
“Were we that obvious?” Wonwoo lowers his voice into a whisper, and the only reason he’s genuinely asking is because Seungcheol isn’t the type to joke around about these kinds of things.
“Only to the eyes of someone who personally knows the both of you,” he snickers. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”
Wonwoo’s brows knit together, perplexed, but offers no more smart retorts. His heart is still pounding in his chest at the thought of having been seen with you. Fuck. He isn’t usually this careless. Then and there, he makes a mental note to not let his emotions pull the reins on his decisions next time.
“Thanks, hyung,” is all he tells Seungcheol in return. “I’m heading back. Uh, she was looking for you, by the way. Something about wanting more of your cookies.”
Seungcheol visibly perks up at the news, and Wonwoo has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. What is it with his friends and having some weird soft spot for you? 
As Wonwoo quietly slips back into his booth—greeting a bunch of his fans but not in a sociable mood—he recalls the prickle of heat in his chest when he saw how uncomfortable you were during that short conversation with Johnny. The memory makes his curiosity spike again, and he considers asking you about it the next time you invite him over.
But then he reminds himself that he does not have a soft spot for you unlike his friends. None at all. He’s just being a decent human being for having a modicum of concern because of how you reacted towards someone Wonwoo knows to be completely harmless. 
Aside  from the occasional NSFW spam on Twitter, Johnny’s pretty harmless, right?
“Hyung! Group pic, c’mon!” 
Wonwoo hears Mingyu call out to him several booths over and sighs. He probably shouldn’t put too much thought into something he won’t be able to figure out in the next five minutes anyway.
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The next time Wonwoo comes over to your apartment is to try out some new heart-shaped handcuffs you bought online. You wouldn’t stop gushing about it to him over text, and he has half the mind to just cuff you to the bed and leave because of how annoying you’re being.
But for some reason, the handcuffs lay forgotten on your unmade bed as Wonwoo sits right in front of your set-up—begrudgingly listening to your instructions as he attempts to solve an overworld puzzle in that stupid game you and Soonyoung kept pestering him to play. Genshin Impact, yeah, that’s the one. 
“You have to hit the purple towers with Electro attacks, idiot,” you sigh. “Dendro is for green towers. Hydro is for blue towers. Did you happen to skip kindergarten or something?”
“I thought elemental reactions applied to these, too,” he grumbles. “You’re the one who said that Dendro and Hydro are good with Electro.” 
“Yeah, yeah, keep making excuses, color dunce.”
Normally, Wonwoo wouldn’t have taken the insult lying down, but he stubbornly chooses to solve the puzzle until he’s finally unlocked the hidden desert area you claimed to be ‘too lazy to figure out right away’. A hint of smugness crosses his features as he flashes you a triumphant grin. Wonwoo half-expects you to just roll your eyes and blame his progress on dumb luck or something, but to his surprise, you clap your hands gleefully before placing a sloppy kiss on his cheek.
“Who’s my smart little gamer, huh?”
“Fuck off.”
It’s perfectly normal for him to hear you challenge his authority outside the bedroom. After all, you’ve made it your life’s mission to push all of Wonwoo’s buttons until he cracks and manhandles you in a way that leaves no room for your brattiness to slip out. Sometimes he likes to think that you rile him up on purpose because the so-called consequences end up rewarding you sexually tenfold instead. Which, Wonwoo thinks, is fucking sick, but from how much he lets you get away with it anyway, he figures that he’s got a few screws loose himself.
“Anyway, how about we check if you’ve got shit luck on gacha games or not,” you announce before nudging your customized gaming chair with your foot—the same one Wonwoo’s currently sitting on—so you can have better access to your mouse and keyboard. “Soonyoung’s luck is abysmal as hell. The only reason he’s got such a spiffy account is because of all those sponsors.”
Wonwoo scoffs. “Are you saying yours is any better?”
“Hey, I’ve got decent luck, mind you,” you huff before clicking a few times, and a new window pulls up on-screen, which Wonwoo recognizes as the wishing page. Soonyoung has shown it to him and the other guys enough times to remember what it looks like.
“Go on, just click the times ten button,” you urge him before tugging your gaming chair back to its original position. “It’s gonna let you wish for a character ten times, basically.”
“I know how gacha games work,” Wonwoo bites back.
“Of course you do,” you coo as he finally does a full summons.
He swears he’s going to edge you until you’re begging and crying later. It’s the least you could do for being such a pain in—
His vengeful thoughts are interrupted when you gasp out loud—eyes glued to the monitor as the shooting star glows like iridescent gold. Wonwoo doesn’t know shit about Genshin, but he’s pretty sure he just pulled a really rare character.
“I just pulled a five-star yesterday.” You scowl, staring at him disbelievingly. “How on earth—”
To your dismay, Wonwoo accidentally clicks on your mouse—ending the entire animation sequence a bit too early. But just when you’re about to berate him for being impatient, your jaw practically falls to the floor when you see all ten of your (technically Wonwoo’s) wish results.
He managed to bring home the featured five-star character five times. Five fucking times. Holy shit?
As you visibly freak out in your seat, bemoaning the fact that this legendary pull happened off-stream, Wonwoo stares at you bizarrely like he always does. You immediately take a screenshot, explaining that the probability of what just happened was several times less likely than you letting him fuck you while you’re livestreaming, but Wonwoo’s mind wanders a little right after that.
So…you would let him fuck you on stream, then? 
Not that it’s something he’s thought about before. Wonwoo likes the privacy your set-up affords him with, and he’s not about to jeopardize that with by committing such an inexplicable act of exhibitionism. But the mere picture it paints in his head is enough to make him swallow thickly. 
One of your stupidly short skirts bunched up to your waist. His hands kneading your breasts as he snaps his hips from behind you. All those pretty noises you make only for him now being heard by your incel-ridden fanbase. He bets they’d even like seeing their beloved Koyahngi get railed on-cam, but the thought of anyone else seeing you in ways only Wonwoo has had the privilege to makes his blood boil.
“Hm? You’ve gone quiet. What’s up?”
His eyes flicker over to your form—knees pressed against your chest underneath the oversized tee you’re wearing. You like to dress comfortably when you’re off-stream, which is understandable because even if you’re just sitting in front of a computer screen, doing so in full cosplay can be a huge hassle. He’s always wondered how you have it in you to put in all that effort for your viewers.
Curiosity lingers in your gaze when he prolongs the silence, but Wonwoo can’t bring himself to answer—mind too preoccupied with a whirlwind of thoughts to articulate any sort of reply. 
He can excuse those horny assholes on Twitter—your main target audience for the filthier content you make on the side. They have no idea who it is they’re really jacking off to anyway. But if some lesser man deigns to even think he deserves to look at you—the real you—while you’re writhing in the throes of pleasure…
You let out an undignified yelp when Wonwoo abruptly pulls you onto his lap, awkwardly straddling him as he stares at you intensely through the lens of his glasses. He can vaguely hear you muttering something about impatient men under your breath, but Wonwoo knows your irritation with him holds little to no weight with how you fold your legs on either side of his hips so his large hands can have better access to your ass.
“This is what you invited me for, isn’t it?” he murmurs, giving your backside a squeeze that has you mewling in response. 
Wonwoo smirks. What a needy little thing.
You gulp. “Y-Yeah, but—”
“Strip.”
“Wonwoo, I’ve gotta post about the wish results!”
He stares at you, unimpressed, and lets his hands fall onto the arm rests of your gaming chair, making you whimper at the loss of his touch. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
The effect of his authoritative tone manifests all too quickly. You bite your lower lip as you tug on the hem of your shirt, lifting it up just to tease a sliver of skin underneath. Wonwoo narrows his eyes, fully cognizant of what you’re trying to do, but it seems that you know better than to piss him off even further. 
Your shirt falls to the floor and Wonwoo has to keep himself from groaning at the sight before him. It’s one thing for you to forego a bra, but panties, too?
“Do you like it, daddy?” 
Knowing you, the question is meant to taunt than anything else, but Wonwoo lets it pass anyway.
It always drives him mad, how subtle you are whenever you want to get a rise out of him. The way you roll your hips into Wonwoo’s has a tantalizing feel to it and he has to grit his teeth to keep himself from snapping. He’ll play your games and drag this on for as long as he has to. Because he’s been with you long enough to know how much you love it when Wonwoo lets you have an illusion of authority for a sliver of a second, only to bully you into submission right after. 
“Fuck,” you whisper the moment the outline of his erection grazes your bare pussy. “Missed your cock so much… It’s been a while since I’ve had you inside me.”
Wonwoo scoffs. “And whose fault is that?”
“How was I supposed to know these conventions were scheduled one after the other?” You pout before grinding deliciously against his cock once again. He can practically feel how wet you are through his sweats and it doesn’t help that each forward motion brings your perky breasts closer to his face.
Wonwoo lets out another sigh as he wraps an arm around your waist before leaning down to latch his lips onto one of your nipples. You quickly jolt in response—not expecting him to indulge you with pleasure so quickly—but his actions spur you on. As his tongue expertly flicks across your sensitive bud, you quickly haul his aching cock out of the confines of his sweats, grinding your slit across his thick girth. 
You’re convinced that this is enough to get you off. Though you’ve memorized how the bulging veins on Wonwoo’s cock feels like inside you, having each ridge graze across your clit prickles the back of your head with newfound pleasure. A growl reverberates in his chest as you expertly slide your pussy along his dick, and you brace your hands on his broad shoulders to anchor yourself.
“Daddy,” you whine. “Can I? Please? Want it so bad.”
The words are punctuated with a pained moan when Wonwoo’s mouth trails higher before biting down on the junction between your neck and shoulders. He doesn’t miss the way your cunt momentarily pulses from his aggression, and he gladly guides your hips as you rub yourself all over his cock.
“My good little whore, always asking permission first,” he chuckles. “Go ahead. Fuck yourself on my cock.”
Wonwoo lifts you off his lap for a moment, earning himself a whine in protest, but when you realize he’s going to take off his sweats, you practically salivate once his strong thighs ease back onto your gaming chair. You don’t bother catching his gaze for an implicit confirmation. You simply sink down on his cock like you’ve been craving for days. 
A choked out moan gets caught in the back of your throat when he fills you to the brim—making your brain go blank for a moment before you remember to start doing as he asked. Wonwoo watches you through an intense, hooded gaze. The only indication that he’s even feeling remotely good is the way his fingers grip the arm rests tighter whenever your walls clench around him every now and again.
Despite the pure, unadulterated bliss that surges through you every time you’re mounted on Wonwoo’s length, it pisses you off how put-together he typically looks like when you’re on top.
You want to see him just as depraved as you are—panting and thrusting into you like he’ll die if he doesn’t fuck you deep enough. But you can never get Wonwoo to handle you the way you want to be handled when you’re riding him like this. As much as you like seeing those sharp eyes watching your every move, the only way he’ll truly fuck you like you deserve is…
Wonwoo’s brows are quick to furrow once you promptly lift yourself off his lap—length slipping out of your pussy as you make your way towards the bed. However, when you spread yourself out on the mattress face down, ass up, it definitely sparks his interest.
And like a cherry on top, you place those heart-shaped handcuffs of yours on the swell of your ass, almost like you’re inviting him to play with you.
The next thing he knows, the worn out threads of his self-control have snapped. He’s behind you not a moment later—hissing through his teeth as he throws his shirt somewhere on the floor. 
You moan when Wonwoo continues grinding his cock against your ass while he yanks both of your wrists behind you. The cold bite of the handcuffs alerts you to what you’ve allowed him to do, and when the lock clicks in place, you stifle a shuddering sigh into the sheets.
Suddenly, his breath is right next to your ear. “Where’s the key for this thing?” 
You feel Wonwoo tug against the fake metal to test for sturdiness, and you feel your chest warm at his discretion. Though he’s, by no means, soft with you, he always takes the time to check if you’re comfortable with what you’re about to do together—no matter how subtle.
“On the nightstand,” you tell him all while pushing your ass back to meet his shallow thrusts. “You can go wild with the cuffs, daddy. They’re high quality for a reason.”
A low, devilish laugh escapes him. 
“Be careful what you wish for, slut.”
He’s merciless with the way he slides his length back into your sopping hole, one hand pushing the back of your head further into the mattress as the other yanks at the chain link of the handcuffs. Each powerful stroke sends you forward on the bed, and his name tumbles in broken syllables from your mouth as he fucks the shape of his cock into you.
“That’s not what you’re supposed to call me,” he growls before snapping his hips with a particularly punishing thrust. “We’ve barely even started and I’ve already fucked you stupid? Are you so hungry for cock that you’ve already forgotten who I am?” 
“I-I’m sorry, daddy!” you whimper as he pounds into you relentlessly. “Just feels s-so fucking good. Love your cock so much!” 
“Yeah?” Wonwoo lets out a patronizing laugh before tugging on the handcuffs again—putting a delicious strain on your arms that amplifies your pleasure in some twisted way. “When you were out there dolling yourself up for conventions, did you think about my cock? Did you want me to fill you with my cum in the restroom again? You really fucking liked it when I did that to your Sage cosplay, didn’t you?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” you babble as tears start to cascade down your cheeks. “Want to get split open on your cock forever, daddy! Want your cum dripping down my thighs when there’s tons of people around—ah!” 
The sharp sound of one of Wonwoo’s palms colliding with the meat of your ass rings in your ears, and it leaves a pleasurable sting sizzling across your flesh. You can’t help the surge of pride that fills you as Wonwoo moans out loud the moment your pussy clenched around him in surprise.
“Dirty fucking cockslut,” he rasps. “You just love it when you’re being filthy for everyone to see.”
For a moment, you’re liberated from the steady burn your arms have been sustaining in such a complex position. Wonwoo surrenders his grip on the handcuffs—letting your bound wrists fall uselessly atop the small of your back. His cock doesn’t quite slip out of you, but you feel him move around from behind. You crane your neck to see what he’s up to, but when you see him angling his phone in a shot that would definitely make for good content to post later, you feel your arousal spark tenfold.
“Now be a good fucking girl for daddy, and let him show everyone how filthy you are.”
The moment the telltale sound of the record button being pressed hits your ears, Wonwoo reclaims his grip on your dainty handcuffs before resuming his ministrations. You let out a long-winded moan as you meet his powerful thrusts, hands instinctively straining against your restraints out of the need to rub your throbbing clit for faster release, but you know it’s a futile effort.
Behind you, Wonwoo is practically losing his mind over the sight of your creamy essence coating his cock with each slide of his hips. You’re extra responsive with the handcuffs as expected. You’ve always had a thing for switching things up in the bedroom, but you’re clenching around him even tighter than usual. 
He tells himself to just film a few seconds of you getting railed with your heart-shaped handcuffs adding more spice into the mix. Then he can truly have his way with you. 
When he’s satisfied, Wonwoo quickly discards his phone on your bed—eyes darting towards your nightstand before he spots what he’s looking for. Another needy whine reverberates in the air when his cock slips out of you so he can walk over to retrieve it. 
Like the good whore you are, you don’t even move an inch. You patiently wait for Wonwoo to return and fill you up again even if the fact that he’s making you wait in the first place makes you want to be a brat. But when you feel the handcuffs fall away from your wrists after he unlocks them, you whip your head around to flash him a startled look. 
Wonwoo tosses your newest toy away with little concern for their well-being before grabbing your face—crushing your lips together in an open-mouthed kiss.
“Mine,” he growls before manhandling you so that you’re laying on your back. “This slutty fucking pussy belongs to me, got that?”
You nod, moaning as he presses his tongue deep into your mouth. You would say yours in return, but you’re blindsided by the way Wonwoo throws your legs over his shoulders—plunging his fat dick back into the velvet heat of your cunt.
As he whispers the filthiest things into your ear, you figure that Wonwoo must have been just as pent up as you are. The consistency of his thrusts is starting to falter—sharp, calculated thrusts turning erratic and sloppy as his orgasm starts to catch up to him. 
With your hands free, you’re able to reach between your thighs in a feeble attempt at finding your clit. However, when Wonwoo catches wind of what you’re trying to do, he slaps your hand away—eyes boring into you with so much angry disappointment, you would’ve cried and begged for his forgiveness right then and there.
“Come on my cock or don’t come at all, whore,” he warns. “I’m already generous enough to have you writhing on my dick, and you can’t even be grateful about that?”
“I am, daddy!” You insist, tears threatening to spill again as you lace your arms around his neck. “You’re hitting me so deep. I’m g-gonna come soon, please—”
“Does my pretty cockslut want me to come inside her?” Wonwoo whispers before pressing your knees against your breasts. “Does she want me to fill her slutty pussy with my cum?”
“I want it, daddy. Want you to fill me up,” you beg as you desperately tug him down for a kiss. 
Normally, Wonwoo would’ve denied you simply because he can, and you wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. But for some reason, he lets himself fall into you—lips latching onto yours like he’s done hundreds of times before. 
It seems like the kiss is what catalyzes your release, and Wonwoo groans into your mouth when he feels your walls clamp down on his cock—desperately milking him for his cum. He isn’t too far behind. All it takes is a few more pistons of his hips before he stills inside you. 
The sensation of being filled with his hot cum makes you pull away from his lips as another long-winded moan sings in his ears. Wonwoo’s shudders from the aftermath of his release, all while slowly fucking his emission deeper into your cunt. From the satisfied purr that escapes you, he thinks you like it just as much as he does.
Wonwoo really didn’t plan on staying over. Really, he didn’t. But the way you tug him back down on the mattress right after he’s finished cleaning you up makes him a bit too hyper-aware of his own aching muscles—both from this morning’s weight training and the several rounds he just shared with you. So he lets you snuggle closer to his clothed chest, the warmth from both of your bodies permeating into each other. He’s never felt more toasty beneath a comforter than he does now.
“This is nice,” you tell him quietly. “I wonder if people will like it if I posted videos of us just cuddling.”
Wonwoo laughs, thumbs absentmindedly caressing the red marks left by your handcuffs. “Doubt it.”
Your silly lo-fi music still plays from your computer's speakers , but neither of you could be assed to get up and turn it off. Wonwoo wouldn’t call himself a professional cuddler—you two have only cuddled a total of three times since you started fucking around, and you often complained about how stiff he always is—but from how comfortably your limbs slot into his, he supposes that he’s doing an okay job.
There’s a hint of intimacy charging the air, one that’s leagues different from the carnal lust that clouds his brain every time he fucks you. His chest twists with each passing moment, and Wonwoo makes the mistake of flickering his eyes on your half-asleep form pressed against him. 
It’s been months since you and him started fooling around, but he knows perfectly well that he isn’t the first to have seen you so vulnerable . While he usually doesn’t give a shit about that, and Wonwoo knows the topic is quite sensitive from the little tells he could pick up on for the past few months…
“Can I ask about your old dom?”
Wonwoo can practically feel you stiffen against his touch, which is one of the main reasons why he hasn’t once tried to broach the topic in the past. Even if you could be a nuisance ninety percent of the time, he isn’t a fan of making people uncomfortable on purpose. He’s about to follow his inquiry up with the reassurance that it isn’t a big deal, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but—
You squirm away from his embrace, and Wonwoo lets you, albeit hesitantly. His shoulders relax when he realizes you’re just repositioning yourself so that you can face him directly, chewing the inside of your cheek like you don’t have the words just yet. 
“He was…mean,” you whisper, forcing Wonwoo to wrap his arms around you once again. “Even meaner than you are. You’re at least a semi-decent person outside the domspace, but that guy? Piece of shit for real.”
Wonwoo nods. “But you don’t really care about that, do you?”
“Yeah. I can look past him being the meanest dom on the face of the earth. As long as he could satisfy me sexually, then we’re all good.”
“So…what made you part ways?”
Your gaze drifts to Wonwoo for a moment. He looks a lot different when his face isn’t bathed in the deep red of your mood lights. His hair is tousled, eyes squinting a little even if you aren’t that far away from him. And the earnest tone in his voice as he posits the question is something you could get used to hearing every now and again.
“Well, I don’t really do relationships, you know that right?” you say and Wonwoo nods. “My old dom didn’t get that though. He was really possessive of me even outside of our sessions together. It got to a point where he would get really…physical with me just to get the point across.”
Silence dips between the both of you—white noise ringing so loud in Wonwoo’s head, he can barely hear your shitty lo-fi playlist anymore. He’s always had a thing for making you cry during sex, but that’s all it is—some dacryphilia play to scratch both of your kinks. No matter how infuriating you are, he can’t imagine himself ever hurting you outside a pleasurable, sexual context.
Then he remembers the first time you invited him over to film some clips. How you stared at him as he cleaned you up like you aren’t used to the aftercare. Like you aren’t used to being treated delicately.
Is that because of your old shitty dom?
“He’s a fucking asshole,” Wonwoo grumbles before pressing your body closer to his. 
You chuckle. “He is. I’m glad I got out of that before things got even uglier.”
“How’d you even get rid of him?”
“Eh, it’s nothing a little blackmail won’t fix.”
Wonwoo’s brow arches at your response. You’re such an evil little minx, it’s actually admirable.
A little later, the conversation about your previous sexual partners fades away, and you’re back to tracing weird shapes on Wonwoo’s chest for him to guess. He spends half the time convincing you to just shut up and go to sleep, but he finds himself indulging you in your silly whims regardless. 
“Wonwoo, you’re a pretty great fuck buddy, you know that?”
He hums. “Why is that?”
“‘Cause you never go overboard with the stuff you do to me,” you say, eyes drifting away from his as you list off the reasons off your fingers. “You always let me annoy the shit out of you without getting pissed for real. You’re good at keeping secrets, too. Oh, and I never have to worry about you looking for anything more than this since you’re a pretty laid back guy. Def not the commitment type, which is exactly my type.”
Wonwoo scoffs. “If I become someone that isn’t your type, would that get you off my back?”
“I doubt that would ever happen,” you giggle.
For some reason, part of him wishes for the same thing.
But you don’t have to know about that.
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On the morning of Soonyoung’s birthday, Wonwoo wakes up irritated.
He had a dream about you—one where you stopped being fuck buddies with him because you wanted to try things out again with your old dom. Someone that Wonwoo doesn’t even know, not even by name. Yet the rage that dream-Wonwoo felt upon seeing you hand-in-hand with some faceless punk as you both left him in the dust is almost too lifelike to ignore. 
So, he does something stupid.
He pulls up his phone—ignoring every message asking if he’s going to show up for Soonyoung’s party later—and pulls up his Twitter app. He doesn’t spend much time there, even if he is co-managing your super secret porn account. In fact, he eventually muted the notifs for that too, when the appeal of having your illicit acts shared to the unknowing public finally fizzled out. 
But he doesn’t log in to check the notifications you’ve amassed, as well as the pathetic DMs asking where your location was so they could fly in to fuck you themselves. No, Wonwoo scrolls past all the content you’ve made with him to unearth things best left in the past.
Like the videos he films with his own camera, the ones you made with your old dom are more than discreet—despite the hyper-possessive tendencies you’ve mentioned. There’s absolutely nothing to be gleaned about his identity, and Wonwoo is left wondering how stupid he’s being for wanting to know who it was that made you feel good before he came into the picture.
Why does it matter anyway, right? 
Even if you did hypothetically leave him to fuck around with your old shitty dom—or anyone else for the matter—why would it matter to Wonwoo? The two of you aren’t even friends. And if you had some other person to bother, that would mean less shit for him to deal with.
But why does the thought of letting someone else have you fill him with so much vitriol that Wonwoo nearly melts his cereal bowl with his glare alone when he comes out for breakfast?
“Hyung,” Mingyu calls out from the seat adjacent to his, rightfully concerned. “You okay? I can always grab a new brand if you hate this one so much.”
The taut muscles on his face soften at the sulking tone to Mingyu’s voice. “Oh, uh. Sorry. It’s not that. I was just thinking.”
“Of your girlfriend?”
“...Of how I’m going to break your PS5 if you don’t cut it out with that girlfriend shit.”
Mingyu whines. “Wonwoo-hyung, I paid good money for that! But fine, I won’t pester you anymore if you’re so intent on keeping her a secret from the world.”
A secret… That’s right. 
What you and Wonwoo have is something that not even his best friend is completely aware of. Sure, Mingyu’s roommate-senses have been tingling for weeks, but Wonwoo knows that he will never really know the full story unless either you or Wonwoo let him in on the secret. 
Which will probably never happen if the two of you want to keep your careers, of course.
“Anyway, the rest of the guys are asking if you’re coming to Soonyoung’s party,” Mingyu says in an attempt to divert the conversation, thank god. “Everyone else has already replied except for you.”
“Who else is invited again?”
“Uh, our usual group, Koyahngi, and I dunno, a bunch of other streamers we know. I think some of Soonyoung’s high school friends are gonna show up as a surprise, though, but that’s just what Jihoon told me.”
Wonwoo considers the information at hand for a moment. 
He doesn’t mind mingling with fellow streamers and probably some of Soonyoung’s other friends, but the last time he’s seen you specifically is the day he bit the bullet and asked about your old dom. A conversation which ended on a pretty agreeable note despite the obvious unease on your face when Wonwoo opened the topic.
The fact that you haven’t texted him since is a little worrisome, too. It’s been about two weeks since that happened, and Wonwoo is beginning to wonder if he unknowingly hit a nerve and this is your way of sending him a message. 
He would’ve taken the initiative and checked up on you during your first week of radio silence, but when he catches you doing pretty fine on your latest streams and when he gets roped into some partnership talks with an entertainment agency that wants to recruit him, Wonwoo decides to put it off for later. 
Besides, the two of you are grown adults—so are the rest of your thirsty audience on Twitter. They can survive two weeks without content.
“Yeah, I’ll come,” he tells Mingyu about five minutes later when he’s already putting away the dishes. “What time are we leaving?”
“Uh, the party starts at seven. Do we go early or fashionably late?”
“Early.”
“Of course. Gotta put the senior citizen to bed early.”
“Mingyu?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
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🐈‍⬛: Are you coming to Soonyoung’s party tonight?
🐈‍: yea, i just need to sort some stuff out
🐈‍⬛: Wow
🐈‍: ?
🐈‍⬛: I just didn’t think you’d reply
🐈‍: is daddy gonna punish me for ignoring him for so long &lt;3
🐈‍⬛: I’m being serious
🐈‍: well, so am i
🐈‍: anyway, tell soonie i’ll be there soon
🐈‍: i’m just talking to someone
🐈‍⬛: Okay
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Wonwoo has been hanging out with his friends long enough to know that only a select few can really handle their liquor. It doesn’t help that today’s celebrant is the worst lightweight of them all. It’s barely thirty minutes past eight, and Soonyoung is already screaming profanities on one of the tables—using an unopened bottle of absinthe that Seungcheol gifted him with as a makeshift microphone as he belts out trashy lyrics from songs Wonwoo vaguely recognizes.
Mingyu films the entire thing on his phone, stifling his laughter while sipping on his own drink. Wonwoo can only roll his eyes at his best friend’s tolerant behavior.
At around nine, Jeonghan and Joshua arrive at the scene with a tiger-themed cake in tow, and half the friend group has to physically restrain Soonyoung just so the birthday boy could blow out his fucking candles properly. After criticizing the baker’s work (“The eyes are uneven! Tiger eyes are perfectly symmetrical!), Jeonghan rounds up the other guests to sing a loud Happy Birthday just to get Soonyoung to finally shut up. When the song comes to a close, though, Seokmin giggles a little too conspiratorially before dunking Soonyoung’s face into the cake.
It’s gatherings like this—no matter how rowdy and unacceptably loud—that make Wonwoo stick around. He might not look the part, but he loves it when he sees his friends be themselves outside of their streamer personas. It’s like high school and college all over again. 
But when the clock on his phone reads ten-thirty, and he realizes you’re still not at the venue, Wonwoo considers shooting you another text asking where you were. It’s an idea he quickly shoots down the next second because first of all, you’re not even friends. It’d be weird if he just asked out of nowhere. 
He supposes he could use wanting a quick fuck as an excuse to get some intel on your whereabouts. But the thought of lying to you doesn’t sit right with Wonwoo for some goddamn reason. 
When Mingyu offers him a drink, he half-considers taking it just to get his mind off you. He’s pretty sure his roommate has picked up on his distracted behavior, and is only attempting to soothe him somewhat with some beer. But Wonwoo reminds him that he’s one of tonight’s designated drivers and decides to pass.
Everyone in attendance is in the middle of a game of truth or dare when Wonwoo’s phone buzzes in his jacket pocket. He’s quick to excuse himself when he sees who it’s from and what message was left for him to read.
🐈‍: help me. please.
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Thankfully, you had the foresight to send him your location after shooting him that cryptic text, and Wonwoo is glad to find that you’re just a few blocks away. Still, he decides to take his car since the weather decided to be a bitch, sending in an unexpected downpour in the middle of summer.
He pulls over in front of a closed bookshop once he’s sure you’re in the area—looking around for any signs of you. The streets are deserted, and Wonwoo is trying to figure out what could have possibly brought you to this place at this hour. Why didn’t you just head straight to Soonyoung’s party? 
And why did you call him for help?
Through the rain and the poor lighting, he finally spots you—standing underneath the canopy of a waiting shed next to a man whose back is turned to Wonwoo.
He doesn’t think twice. He just gets out of his car and runs in the rain—chest warming at the sight of your downcast face perking up at the sight of him. Wonwoo would’ve let himself be glad that you're safe and sound, if only your current company didn’t turn around and reveal his identity.
From the looks of it, you seemed to be having a pretty heated conversation before his arrival. Johnny was obviously annoyed when he turned to look at him, but the expression fell away when he realized the newcomer was Wonwoo. 
However, a sinister smile takes its place not a few seconds later.
“Huh, no wonder you were so quick to replace me, doll,” Johnny laughs insincerely, sharp eyes trained on Wonwoo as he stares the younger streamer up and down. “It’s him, huh?”
“This has nothing to fucking do with you, Johnny,” you grit out, but Wonwoo doesn’t miss the way your voice nearly cracks. “Can you just leave me alone? You don’t need me when you’ve got a bunch of other girls who want to suck your dick, right?”
Wonwoo observes the exchange with a stoic face that doesn’t betray his surprise. It doesn’t take a lot to realize at that moment that Johnny is most definitely the asshole dom whose face he wanted to pummel into the ground when he found out what he did to you. But the things he does know about Johnny and the things he’s just now finding out makes a storm brew inside of his head—unable to separate what’s fact from fiction.
Johnny’s a nice guy. Wonwoo knows this very well. But then again, he’s also the same person who blatantly likes Twitter porn on his official account, so where does that leave him?
“I guess you’re right, but your pussy’s a perfect fit,” Johnny chuckles. “Can’t help but want to hit that again and again, right Wonwoo?”
He stares down at him hard. “Don’t talk about her like she’s just some thing you can play with.”
“Oh? No wonder those new vids of yours have been extra livelier. Your new boytoy is a big old softie, huh?” Another mirthless laugh echoes in the empty streets, and Wonwoo feels his own body heat up with rage amidst the cold rain. “I never would’ve imagined it was Wonwoo, of all people, though. That really is a magic pussy you’ve got there, doll. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out you’re fucking his twelve other friends, too. Fucking whore—”
Before Johnny could get another word out, Wonwoo’s fist had already collided with the side of his face—knocking the older man to the ground with a disgruntled sound. He can vaguely hear you calling his name in shock, pulling him back with your little hands as Wonwoo stares down at a person he used to look up to.
“Call her that one more fucking time,” he rasps—eyes alight with anger, “and I’ll make sure it’s not just a busted eye you’re leaving with tonight.”
“Wonwoo,” you plead, tugging on his arm. “Please. He’s not worth it. Let’s just go.” 
Johnny still has it in him to bark out another laugh, spitting out some blood from his mouth and onto the pavement. “Running away again, princess? That’s what you’ve always been good at anyway.”
When Wonwoo moves to lunge at him again, you lace your fingers with his. For some reason, it makes him falter. Wonwoo stares at where your hands are adjoined, then looks into your eyes—glistening with tears as you beg him to stop.
Sending Johnny one last threatening glare, Wonwoo tightens his grip on your delicate fingers before leading you back to his car.
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Wonwoo doesn’t return to the party.
Instead, he shoots Mingyu a quick ‘something came up’ text, and that he won’t be able to play designated driver for the night. His best friend responds in kind, saying he should have fun with his girlfriend and just take a cab home. On normal days, he would’ve given Mingyu another unsolicited threat, but tonight, he’s focused on something else.
You’ve been quiet the entire time Wonwoo has been driving, hands placed on top of your lap as you gazed at the lights flashing by in a blur of colors and raindrops pouring down the window. He doesn’t have a particular destination in mind, but he figures that it’ll do you some good to have some time to mull over everything that happened. 
But when the silence gets too overbearing even for him, Wonwoo asks:
“What do you usually do when you’re upset?”
You turn your head slowly, red eyes shining even in the dark. Wiping the tears away, you say, “Buy a tub of ice cream and stargaze at the rooftop of my apartment building. That’s kinda impossible right now, though, since…”
Yeah. It was still raining. Fuck.
“Well,” Wonwoo starts, “we can still get some ice cream if you’re up for it. I know a supermarket that’s open twenty four-seven.” 
You don’t reply, simply letting your gaze drift back to the window, and Wonwoo takes that as an affirmative. 
The two of you sit in the silence so deafening, it unsettles even Wonwoo the silence connoisseur himself. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do in this kind of situation. Should he offer you some verbal comfort? Should he promise to deal with Johnny if he comes after you again?
In the end, Wonwoo chooses to preserve the quiet—thinking it’s what you need most right now.
He pulls into the supermarket’s parking lot in ten minutes. He’s about to tell you that he won’t take long—glancing around at the backseat to check if Mingyu left his umbrella there. But before he can even get a word out, you’ve already leaned across the center console, grabbing Wonwoo’s face with both hands before smashing your lips together. 
Wonwoo grunts, grabbing your shoulders as he gently pries you off him. “Hey—”
You don’t listen. Instead, you climb on top of his lap despite the limited space. He knows that the steering wheel digging into your back can’t be comfortable at all, so despite himself, Wonwoo pushes the driver’s seat all the way back. But then you choose to do something he doesn’t expect at all.
With the newfound legroom, you sink to the floor—puffy eyes looking up at him as you work on the buckle of his belt. Wonwoo gives you a stare that’s two parts disapproving and one part curious. In the end, he does nothing about it when you undo his jeans and take his cock in the warmth of your hand.
When it comes to you, it doesn’t take a lot to get him hard. The need to please shines in your eyes as you give him possibly one of the best handjobs in his life. You’re not even uttering a single sound, but your titillating gaze sends all the blood in his system straight to his dick.
Your mouth is on him the next thing he knows—giving his fat head some experimental kitten licks that make him want to shove your head down to the base of his cock. But he won’t. Wonwoo isn’t Johnny. He wouldn’t dare to be rough with you after what just happened, despite your apparent eagerness to give him head right here, of all places. 
The mere reminder of that asshole has him buzzing with rage again, but whatever frustration is left over gets quickly replaced with toe-curling pleasure when you take his heavy length in the heat of your mouth. Your tongue lathers the underside of his shaft as every inch bypasses your plump lips. What your mouth can’t reach, you compensate with your fingers—fondling both his balls and the base of his cock with tender yet salacious touches.
He has to tell you to knock it off. This probably isn’t how you’re supposed to deal with…whatever shit you have going on with Johnny. But your mouth feels like fucking heaven, and Wonwoo isn’t a good enough person to deny himself the pleasure.
The rain continues to pour outside, but the sound of it is eclipsed by the wet noise of you bobbing up and down his engorged cock. As Wonwoo’s orgasm slowly builds itself from the ground up, his large hand gathers your hair in a single clump—tugging hard enough to have you moaning around his length.
“Good, good girl,” he rasps before thrusting his hips into your mouth. 
 When he finally comes, you swallow every drop he pours down your throat. Even when your eyes start to sting with tears, you take it all while Wonwoo holds your head in place. 
As his high starts to ebb away, Wonwoo realizes this is probably the most breathless he’s been rendered since he started fucking around with you. He could probably blame that on the shitty car ventilation, but there’s just something so fucking enticing about seeing you wedged beneath him on the floor—face streaked with tears with remnants of his release still sticking on your lips.
Wordlessly, you peel yourself away as you scramble back to the passenger seat, making a nonchalant comment about how much you’ve imagined sucking him off in his car, but Wonwoo doesn’t quite process it all.
When he notices that the glass of his car windows have all but fogged up, he leans forward—one hand raised as he starts drawing shapes into the moisture. You stare at him with a bewildered look, wondering what on earth he was up to. But the moment you realize what he’s drawing, your expression twists from confusion to disbelief.
Stars. Wonwoo was drawing stars on his fucking windshield with his entire dick still out and everything. He doesn’t even look fazed while he’s doing it.
“You can’t be serious,” you say.
He shrugs and grabs some tissues from the glove compartment to clean up before putting himself away—handing it to you right after. 
He’s so fucking thoughtful; it still gives you whiplash.
“You said you wanted to see the stars, right?” Wonwoo shrugs. “This is the best I can give you right now, so.”
You stare at him for a couple of seconds longer—like you can’t believe a man like Jeon Wonwoo really exists on this earth. Then, you laugh. It’s one of those obnoxious ones that typically have Wonwoo rolling his eyes at you, but it sounds like music to his ears after seeing you cry your eyes out .
Wonwoo does manage to get enough ice cream for the two of you to feast on back in your apartment as you both watch this food show that Mingyu keeps recommending to him. The tricky part is trying to get your hands off him the entire time. 
For someone who went through something pretty traumatic earlier in the evening, you’re fucking insatiable. But Wonwoo’s resolve can no longer be shaken, and the dirtiest thing that you end up doing in your bedroom is giving him a kiss on the cheek before bidding him good night.
It’s only when you’re dozing softly against his chest—having trusted him enough to fall asleep in his company—that Wonwoo realizes something that might change the trajectory of your set-up for good.
He’s in love. 
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The next morning, Mingyu greets Wonwoo at the apartment like a mother would her troublemaking son who got caught sneaking home in the middle of the night.
“It’s Koyahngi, isn’t it?” he says point-blank. 
Wonwoo doesn’t exactly have the energy to play some mental gymnastics with Mingyu right now. The moment it dawned on him how he actually felt about you, he couldn’t get a wink of sleep. Thoughts about what he should do have kept him up all night. Should he come clean about it? Should he just leave it be?
But when he remembers what you said about him during that one visit of his…
I never have to worry about you looking for anything more than this since you’re a pretty laid back guy. Def not the commitment type.
That pretty much leaves him with one option, which is the one he’s been meaning to take all along. The idea of having to confess his love for you like some sort of prepubescent high schooler honestly makes him want to vomit. But at the same time, resorting to…concealing his feelings from plain sight doesn’t sit well with him either.
But no matter what he feels about either option, Wonwoo knows that keeping his mouth shut about it is the best option. Especially when you’re still emotionally high-strung from that encounter with Johnny. 
“So what if it is?” Wonwoo grumbles, plopping himself onto the couch right next to Mingyu.
“For what it’s worth, I’ve always thought the two of you were a good match,” his roommate offers, and Wonwoo appreciates his pep-talk. Really, he does. But he’s pep-talking him for the wrong fucking outcome. “You should totally go for it if you haven’t already.”
You don’t do relationships, and neither does Wonwoo. He knows if he uses this line of reasoning as a rebuttal to Mingyu’s words, his best friend will stubbornly insist that he get the girl anyways. He’s always been the one-track-mind type that gives it his all once he’s finally set on something. 
But Wonwoo is nothing like his enthusiastic roommate. He’s cold, and sharp-tongued, and everything you probably wouldn’t want in a boyfriend. All he’s good for is a quick fuck every now and again, and he’s not about to start deluding himself that he can be anything more to you.
(Yet part of him still hopes anyway.) 
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🐈‍: are u free today
🐈‍⬛: Be there in thirty
🐈‍: whoa i haven’t even told you what i had planned
🐈‍: what if i actually wanted to take you on a date to the park huh
🐈‍⬛: Did you?
🐈‍: no, my new raiden shogun cosplay set just arrived
🐈‍: and we kinda have this unspoken tradition 
🐈‍: if you know what i mean
🐈‍⬛: You want me to fuck you in it?
🐈‍: always <3
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There’s something off when Wonwoo shows up at your doorstep.
He knows you easily pick up on it from the way your eyes narrow slightly when you scrutinize him. From what he can tell, he’s acting as aloof as he always does, yet you still ask him, “You okay?” as if he’s doing something different.
“Yeah,” he mumbles before quietly closing the door behind him.
As you lead him to your room, you tell him that you haven’t put on your cosplay yet because the stockings that came with your order were itchy as fuck, and how you’re thinking of having them replaced one of these days. Wonwoo hums in reply, eyes trained on the takeout packaging that litters your kitchen counter. He has half the mind to tell you to start eating healthily, but reminds himself that’s the sort of thing boyfriends do—not fuck buddies.
Your dainty lo-fi playlist is streaming in your room like always, and when you see the assorted fabrics of your cosplay crumpled on your desk, you heave a tired sigh.
“I’m too lazy to put it on now,” you whine. “Can you just fuck me normally?”
He doesn’t give you a verbal response. Instead, Wonwoo pulls you by the hip, pressing you impossibly close to him as he rests his forehead on top of yours. You startle a little at his abruptness, but your body language betrays no sign of resistance. If anything, you lean more into his touch as the seconds tick past.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” you whisper like you’re afraid of shattering something delicate. “You seem out of it.”
“I’m fine,” he insists, and before you can say anything else in response, he slots your mouths together in a slow, sensual kiss. 
Wonwoo likes to get things done hard and fast. He’s a man who sticks to his schedules for the day if he can help it, so he typically treats these sessions with you as timed encounters. More often than not, he’ll be out of your door in two hours or less so he can dedicate his time to working out or planning for new content.
Now, it’s a little different. He takes his sweet time with you—mouths moving in voluptuous unison as if he’s finally dedicating each second to truly memorize the curve of your lips against his. You moan into the kiss, fingers threading through his dark hair before he pulls away from you with a breathless sigh. 
Wonwoo stares at you like you’re the center of the universe. He can only hope you see the same thing when you stare back.
You know when Wonwoo takes his glasses off, he means business. One moment he’s placing them on top of your nightstand, and the next, you’re suddenly pinned beneath him on your bed—getting your lips devoured by the insatiable man on top of you. 
There’s something so innately alluring to his kisses that you haven’t felt during the last time you fucked Wonwoo in this same room. Those were less kisses and more of a clash of teeth and tongue. Now, he stokes a kind of desire that almost scares you to have. You’re afraid if you indulge yourself too much in this version of him, you’ll get addicted. 
The two of you are supposed to be filming today. Yet you seem to have forgotten all about your plans as you lose yourselves in the heat of each other’s bodies. But despite the mellow pace that Wonwoo has established, the desperation still lingers in his touch. 
He flips the both of you over so that you’re sitting right on top of him, gasping out loud as you steady yourself across his hips. Wonwoo smiles lazily, drawing circles along the curve of your thigh before teasing the waistband of your shorts with a single finger. You whimper as you grind down against his hardening length, still confused about how soft he’s being with you today, but no complaints are going to be filed.
“You want my cock that badly?” he asks, and you nod a bit too enthusiastically. “Then work for it.”
You bite your lip, not bothering to remove either of your clothes when you haul out Wonwoo’s length from the fabric of his sweats. Just a few pumps from your small fingers has him hot and heavy in your hand—making your mouth water with anticipation. You don’t think you’ll ever get tired of taking him inside your tight little pussy.
Nudging the hem of both your shorts and panties to the side, you quietly sink down on his engorged cock with a strained whimper. The lack of prep definitely isn’t doing you any favors, but the raw stretch of him so deep inside your walls sends a rush of pleasure straight to your skull. In no time, you’re bouncing on top of his lap like a bitch in heat—mind hazy with the feeling of Wonwoo hitting you even deeper than usual. 
You sort of expected him to amp up the dirty talk. You don’t always get to ride him like this, yet Wonwoo stays perfectly quiet as he watches you thrash and moan above him. His hands rest comfortably at the curve of your waist, guiding your movements, all while offering up a few thrusts of his own.
It feels so fucking good whenever he hits that perfect spot inside you, but the pleasure pulls the wool over your eyes because you’re completely oblivious to the way Wonwoo is looking at you right now.
He was a fool to think that if he just had his way with you like he usually does, those delusions of his would go away naturally. That it would serve as an anchor to the reality of your relationship with him. But when Wonwoo has you chasing your high right before him—so devastatingly beautiful in the lowlights of your bedroom—he realizes he’s fucked.
All this does is make him fall even deeper in love with you. 
“S-So close,” you whimper, grinding down on his cock with each downward thrust. “Wonwoo, please, please. Fuck—!” 
He quickly shoots up from his initial position, lying down, fingers tangled in your hair as he forces your head close to meld your lips together once again. Wonwoo fucks up into you relentlessly, his breathing erratic against your mouth, all while he tries his best to keep all of his secrets from coming out of his own lips. 
You’re the most infuriating person he knows, but he can’t help but look after you anyways. He claims to hate you, but the way he’s rolling his hips into yours would tell a different story. You drive him insane each waking day, yet you have no clue of the extent of it.
He would never admit it—not in a million, billion years—but you’re Wonwoo’s favorite poison, and he’d rather watch himself burn from the inside out than find an antidote. 
He hates having to hide you away from the world like this. Hates treating you like some sort of dirty little secret. He’s allowed to share you with the world through anonymous pornography, but not as a bonafide lover, and it drives him up a fucking wall every time he thinks about it. 
But the thing about Wonwoo and sex is that once he finally gets to fuck the frustration out of his system, his clarity of mind is a bit too quick to settle. As he helps clean you up in the bathroom, he tells himself that it’s simply impossible for someone like you to want anything more with someone like him. After all, you said it yourself.
You don’t do relationships. 
Who the hell is Wonwoo to change your mind about that anyway?
“Wonwoo?”
He looks up at you just when he just finished wiping a cool, wet towel across your leg. “What?”
Your eyes shy away from his. “Um, you might call me a sap or something, but I…kinda liked it.”
“Liked what?”
“That,” you say while making some vague hand gestures at him. “When you were all gentle with me and stuff. I wouldn’t mind having soft Wonwoo again next time.”
Next time.
The words echo in Wonwoo’s mind far more than what he expected, and he finds himself frowning at the notion. Can he still keep up this charade, now that he’s aware of his feelings for you? How long can he continue the act until he inevitably slips up, and you find out?
How long does he have left before you drop him because he’s starting to want more from you?
“Wonwoo, where are you…?”
He doesn’t hear the rest of what you have to say because he’s already padding out of the bathroom—heart beating a little too loudly in his chest. Wonwoo fishes his glasses from the nightstand and the keys to his car. He’s more than intent on getting out of here as soon as possible, but it seems you have other plans.
“Hey,” you call out before tugging at his arm. Wonwoo forces himself not to meet your eyes, but he feels the intensity of your stare regardless. “You’re acting really fucking weird today. Is there something wrong? Did I do something you didn’t like?”
“No,” he mumbles, wanting to add, I’m the one who’s done something you won’t like, but opting to keep his silence instead. 
“Then…why are you acting like this?” 
The pleading look in your eyes almost makes him cave in and pour out everything that’s been flooding his heart for the past few days. It’s so easy to just rip the band-aid off and be honest. To risk everything for the abysmal chance of you reciprocating his feelings.
But Wonwoo knows that life isn’t a fucking gacha game, and he’s not about to throw away what he has with you now, especially when he knows what he wants doesn’t coincide with what you want. 
“Just having a shitty day,” he reasons, and the lie tastes like acid on his tongue. “I’ll text you later. Bye.”
Before Wonwoo steps out of your door, he makes another mistake of looking back. Now, he isn’t sure if he’ll ever get the image of you on the verge of tears as you stood all alone in your bedroom for reasons he’ll never know
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Wonwoo runs into Saerom in the supermarket one fateful afternoon.
Mingyu is usually the one who does the grocery runs for both of them—being the person who knows which brands are best for both food and apartment maintenance and all. But his best friend happened to land himself a modeling gig recently, and they rescheduled the shoot today on short notice. Wonwoo insisted that they could live another day without eating rice, but Mingyu was having none of it, and gave his roommate a full list of groceries he expects him to buy no later than today.
So here he is in the canned goods aisle, expression mirroring Saerom’s when she recognizes him as well. It’s not often that Wonwoo bumps into a familiar face in this part of town, so he’s rightfully surprised.
When she asks him if he’s free to have lunch with her at a nearby bistro, he sees no reason to decline. Saerom has always been his good friend, and it’s only natural for him to want to catch up. That, and he’s curious about what she’s doing here in the first place.
“I just moved into the neighborhood actually,” she explains once the waiter is done taking their orders. “Anyway, how are you? I haven’t spoken to you since that time I hijacked your stream.”
Wonwoo clearly remembers the day she asked him to look out for you all those months ago. Saerom is quite literally an angel, extending her concern even to the people who probably don’t need nor deserve it. He gulps down his water thickly, wondering if he should tell her the truth. 
But with how his brain seems to be all over the place these days, he ends up coming clean about it anyway.
When the food arrives, Wonwoo tells Saerom about the truth behind the porn videos implicating you in the past—how you’re actually the one being filmed in all of them. He also tells her about how Wonwoo takes part in the creation process of said videos (deciding to leave Johnny out of the story because that’s going to be another can of worms to deal with). Then, he ends the tall tale with the begrudging fact that he may or may not have caught feelings for someone he isn’t supposed to.
Saerom listens intently to each word—chewing on her salad with a contemplative look. She never betrays any sort of expression that would suggest her true opinions on the matter, which makes Wonwoo all too thankful that she’s the one he entrusted this with.
“I see,” she sighs once she’s finished the rest of her food. “I knew something was a bit off about her situation, but I’m glad that she’s safe, at least. Although about that budding romance of yours… Don’t you think it’ll be easier if you just discussed it with her directly? An outsider like me can only offer you so much advice, Wonwoo.”
He sighs, stabbing his food with his fork. “I know, but…what if she doesn’t want anything to do with me when she finds out how I really feel?”
Saerom lets out a wistful sigh—staring directly at Wonwoo like she intends for him to remember her next words for a long time.
“Then that’s your sign to find someone else who can accept the love you’re more than willing to give. If she turns you down, that’s more of her loss than yours, you know.”
Wonwoo wants to tell her she’s giving him too much credit. It almost sounds like Saerom is insisting that he’d actually make a good boyfriend. He half-wonders if he should ask her if she accidentally mistook him for Mingyu, but then Saerom’s phone rings in the middle of their conversation. 
It’s a short call, and Wonwoo doesn’t bother listening in to give her some privacy. When it ends, though, she bows her head in apology, letting him know that her boyfriend’s waiting for her at the parking lot.
“It’s nice meeting you again, Wonwoo.” She smiles before pulling him into a hug. “I hope your girl problems are already sorted out the next time I see you.”
Wonwoo lets out an uneasy laugh as he returns her embrace. 
He really hopes so, too. 
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One month.
It takes Wonwoo one entire month to reach out again, right after he left you without a word in your apartment last time. Part of him feels like he should be guilty for ghosting you so suddenly like that, but he swears he didn’t ghost you. 
He’s just…giving both of you some time and space away from each other. God knows his judgment gets clouded whenever he’s near you. 
Still, he doesn’t really expect you to forgive him for it right away. Much like Mingyu, you’re the sulky type. But while he usually deals with Mingyu’s sulking by leaving him alone for a few hours, that solution is counterproductive when it comes to you because…he’s already left you alone for a month. Wonwoo has a feeling that if he prolongs it any further, you might not talk to him ever again.
You were already wrapping up this evening’s stream when he left his own apartment, and he figures you’re getting ready for bed when he gets to yours.
His knuckles rap against the door once, twice, and he waits. 
Not that Wonwoo is counting, but it takes you five minutes to answer the door—already in your comfortable pajamas and your kitten skincare headband resting on top of your head. It seems that you weren’t expecting any late-night visitors when your eyes nearly bug out at the sight of him. 
“Won—” You shake your head as if you can’t even bear to say his name. “What are you doing here?”
He hesitates.
Wonwoo doesn’t have an answer for you. He gave you space for one month, and he still doesn’t know what to say when he finally deigned to show you his face. 
Your posture is rightfully apprehensive. Wonwoo can almost imagine how you’ve branded him as a raging ghoster in your head for the past few weeks. For a moment, he fears that you’ll throw him out of your apartment before he can even set foot in it, but you simply wait for him to respond—affording him some patience he definitely doesn’t deserve.
“I…” Wonwoo starts but his voice falters, forcing him to clear his throat awkwardly. “You’re getting better at using Chamber.”
You scowl at him, and if Mingyu was here, Wonwoo thinks he would’ve face-palmed because of how pathetic he’s being right now. 
Seriously? Bringing up the latest Valorant agent she’s playing when you’re supposed to say you’re in love with her? Wonwoo can practically hear his roommate in his head, along with an added, You’re so fucking mid, hyung. 
“Okay,” you say, still visibly wary of his presence. “Anything else? I’d rather get everything out of the way so you can continue ghosting me in peace.” 
Fuck. He knew it.
“I’m—” 
Sorry. I didn’t mean it. I was too scared of how I felt about you to deal with it like a normal person.
“—starting to think that you’re fine without me after all.”
At this point, Mingyu would’ve pummeled him to the ground.
Jeon Wonwoo, you have the emotional intelligence of a rock, imagination-Mingyu points out, and he couldn’t agree more.
“Well, thanks for pointing out the obvious. I am fine without you, asshole,” you bite back snarkily, making the motions to shut the door in his face, but Wonwoo wedges his foot in between. 
“Wait—fuck. I’m sorry,” he insists, swallowing thickly. “Can I come in? Please?”
The desperation in his tone makes you arch an eyebrow. Wonwoo never says please. It’s almost always the other way around, whether in a sexual context or not. So even if you know you should just leave him there like how he left you a month ago, you breathe out a sigh in defeat before opening the door wider for him.
“Fine.”
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You’ve never sat at your dining table with Wonwoo. You never had to. Whenever he comes over, it’s either to have sex or let you teach him about a game he can’t be assed to play on his own. He doesn’t stay long enough to warrant asking him if he wants some takeout or leftovers from the fridge, so seeing him nursing a glass of water across from you still feels surreal. 
“So are you going to explain why you suddenly just ditched me, or are we going to stew in the silence all night?” you ask. 
Wonwoo’s gaze flickers over to you irritably, and you hate to admit that the sight of that expression makes a pang of…something ripple in your chest. It’s been so long since you’ve seen him, much less spoken to him, so even if you should be fucking mad, you can’t help but miss him. 
God fucking damn it.
He doesn’t answer right away. Like he’s carefully choosing which words he’ll allow you to hear and which would be better off unsaid. But if there’s something you’ve come to know about Wonwoo after all these months, it’s that he doesn’t have good intuition when it comes to other people’s emotions. 
Even if it seems like he’s being particularly careful about his words, that doesn’t guarantee that what’s going to come out of his mouth won’t be stupid.  
“I just had to clear my head for a while,” he says, providing no context whatsoever, and that makes you frown even more. 
“Clear your head?” you echo as you cross your legs. “From what?”
Wonwoo’s usually aloof look shifts for a moment. An unreadable expression flits across his face, but it’s gone before you can even make sense of it.
“It’s nothing you should worry about.”
“Nothing I should… Wonwoo, you were already acting strange the last time you were here. Then you went ahead and ignored me for an entire month!” You slam your hands on the table, the Wonwoo’s glass rattling in the process.
“How am I not supposed to worry when all this time, you made me think I was the reason you suddenly just flaked on me like that?”
He narrows his eyes at you, as if he doesn’t quite get why you’re pissed. “Why does it even matter? I’m just your fuck buddy, right? Why should you care if I just come and go whenever I feel like it?”
The apathetic tone that accompanies his words lances straight through your chest. Were you an idiot for believing that the look he wore earlier in front of your apartment was genuine? That he was actually apologetic for leaving you alone with your thoughts as you wondered what you could’ve possibly done to drive him away without a word?
Your fists shake from where you’re pressing them into the polished wood of your dining table. Wonwoo’s indifferent stare doesn’t let up, and as the white noise rings in your ears, it makes you wonder…
“Why’d I have to fall in love with someone like you?”
The words come out so softly, so quietly that you doubt Wonwoo would’ve heard you. But as your vision gets blurry with tears, you don’t see how  surprise begins to eclipse his aloofness.
Wonwoo felt his heart drop to the pit of his stomach when his ears caught what you just said. He couldn’t have heard wrong. It was too quiet in your apartment to mistake what you said for anything else.
You’re…in love with him?
“You know what?” You breathe in deeply, eyes darting up to the ceiling as you wipe off the evidence of your vulnerability. “Just…leave, Wonwoo. I can’t talk to you right now. Please.”
“Say it again.”
When your gaze drifts back to him, it’s accompanied with an expression twisted into disbelief.
“What?”
Before you can even think about what he could even mean by that, Wonwoo gets up from his seat, striding over to your side of the table. You flash him another apprehensive stare, but all of a sudden, he cups your face in both of his hands—delicately, like he’s afraid of breaking something precious.
“Tell me you’re in love with me.”
You immediately bristle at his request. “Are you fucking insane? I know you’re a sadist but—”
Wonwoo presses forward without warning—capturing your lips in an unsolicited kiss that catches you off guard but angers you at the same time. No matter how badly you missed having him pressed up against you in more ways than one, you’re not going to let him trample on your feelings again. 
“I hate you,” you rasp, salty tears breaking their tension across your lashes as they slide down your cheeks in glistening streaks. “I fucking hate you, Jeon Wonwoo.”
Your words carry little weight to them, and Wonwoo is completely aware of this. Almost like he’s trying to placate you, he wipes your tears away with the pads of his thumbs—that hard-eyed gaze weathering into something softer, more sincere with each passing second. 
You abhor how handsome he looks like this.
“Is that your way of telling someone you love them?” he chuckles breathlessly, lips rising to the crown of your head as he presses a soft kiss on top. “If that’s the case, then…”
“I fucking hate you, too.”
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Wonwoo isn’t sure how long the two of you have been going at it, but by your fourth orgasm, your newfound lover is yet to be sated.
“Again,” he growls, tugging your limp body closer to his. “Say it again.”
One of the things Wonwoo particularly likes about exploring all sorts of sexual escapades with you is that you teach him things about himself that he never even knew about. 
First was that stupid daddy kink, and now…
“I love you,” you whimper, mindlessly grinding against his still hard cock despite being worn and spent. “I love you, Wonwoo.”
Despite the fact that your honesty drives him to near-insanity, Wonwoo can’t help the relieved sigh that fills his veins every time you utter the words. At first, you stubbornly kept up the act of hating him as he railed you into the mattress, but with every mind-numbing orgasm, your hate slowly bled into love, and Wonwoo finds it fucking cathartic. 
You beat him to what he came over to tell you himself. It was a little embarrassing on his part, he has to admit, but there’s some sort of relief that comes with knowing the same person he’s been vying for also feels the same way.
He’ll tell you the words properly someday.
Maybe not today or tomorrow, but Wonwoo promises that he’ll let you hear how much he adores you soon enough.
For now, he’ll give you one last release.
He’s certain that he can still go one more round, but he can’t really say the same for you. If Wonwoo makes you cream on his cock one more time, he’s afraid you’ll actually pass out from exhaustion. 
So instead, he lays you down on your plush pillows—crawling lower down your body until he finds himself between your legs. He chuckles when you crane your neck weakly to see what he’s trying to do, but Wonwoo is already hooking your thighs over his shoulders before you can say a word.
Your body twitches from oversensitivity as his tongue laves at your ruined cunt—not caring that his own spend has mixed with yours from where the creamy liquid seeps from your hole. Wonwoo groans into your cunt when your thighs squeeze around his head as if meaning to suffocate him with your pussy.
Honestly? If that’s the way he’s gonna go, he’ll accept it with open arms.
“Daddy,” you mewl, fingers tangling in his tousled hair. “I c-can’t anymore…”
Wonwoo suckles at your clit in response, earning himself a high-pitched whine as you roll your hips into his face. For someone who claims she can’t come anymore, you’re awfully eager for him to pinpoint your orgasm again.
“You can, baby,” he insists, peppering your inner thighs with kisses. “You can ‘cause you’re my good girl, aren’t you?” 
He feels your inner muscles clenching at his words, and Wonwoo makes a mental note to praise you more often. You might just like that more than his run-of-the-mill dirty talk after all.
“‘m your good girl,” you babble. “Always daddy’s good girl.”
Fuck. You’re going to be the death of him.
When you’ve recovered from the crest of your final orgasm, Wonwoo carries you to the bathroom and carries you into a bath he’d drawn himself. You complain about how he didn’t set the temperature in the tub right, and Wonwoo promises to do better next time. 
As the two of you soak in the semi-warm water, Wonwoo rests his head against the tiled wall—the fatigue starting to seep into his bones. He doesn’t let himself complain, though, because if he’s feeling spent, he can only imagine how sore you must be feeling. He wonders if he should order some food for the both of you or just let you sleep right away.
“Wonwoo?”
He raises an eyebrow at your meek voice calling out to him. “Yeah?”
You shift a little on his lap, turning around as droopy eyes bore into his. Wonwoo is about to call you out for being weird, but the words evaporate on his tongue when you lean forward to peck his lips. 
“Can I borrow your phone?”
He tilts his head to the side, wondering why you’re asking for his phone. You couldn’t possibly be asking him to film some content here in the tub…right?
Wonwoo watches in complete silence as you open his Twitter app—further feeding into his curiosity. But he doesn’t comment on whatever it is you’re about to do, patiently watching as you maneuver around the accounts logged onto his phone. 
However, when you pull up on the Settings tab of that porn account the two of you have been running for months, scrolling all the way down—
“What are you doing?” he asks as your finger hovers over the ‘Deactivate account’ button.
You glance at him, confused. “I’m getting rid of this account. What else does it look like?”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why? I can’t share my sex tapes with the rest of the world now that I have a boyfriend.”
The bathroom falls silent for about three heartbeats before Wonwoo wraps his arms around you in a tight embrace. You yelp in surprise, struggling against his iron-tight grip in a way that has water splashing all around you. Wonwoo couldn’t care less, though.
“I love you,” he murmurs into the naked skin of your shoulder. 
You don’t respond for a while, like you’re surprised by his easy admission. But the tension in Wonwoo’s spine unravels when you rest your head across his shoulder, chuckling as you caress his face tenderly.
“Don’t you dare think I’ll let you off the hook though,” you chide. “You’ve got several months of dates to make up for. Just because you took the express lane into being my boyfriend, doesn’t mean you get to skip out on the effort that normally comes with it.”
Wonwoo shakes his head, turning your face so his eyes can meet yours. 
He can’t believe he was stupid enough to run away from his own feelings for an entire month. If only he’d been more honest with both you and himself the last time he was here, he could’ve spent all the weeks after with you cradled in his embrace.
But then again, it’s the choices you both made so far that led you to where you are now.
And for now, he’s perfectly content with that.
“Challenge accepted.”
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part one - part two - part three - part four
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q: is there going to be a third part? a: yes! however, part 3 is literally just in its early stages of creation. i don't even have a serious doc for it, just a few vague plot bunnies gathering dust in my head SJDFHDFG BUT since i'm feeling generous, attached below is a little sneak peek of what you can expect!
This is, by far, the worst day of Mingyu’s life. Okay, maybe he’s exaggerating, but he likes to think that he’s a man of routine. If he doesn’t get to do his morning rituals right before his streams, it feels like the world has been tilted a few degrees off its proper axis. And that’s exactly what’s happening now, when Mingyu realizes that his favorite Twitter porn account is nowhere to be found.  How the hell is he supposed to get his daily dose of relief now?
aaaaaand that's all i have for now! thank you so much for waiting patiently for this installment! it took me an entire month since i posted the teaser, but here it is hehe :3c i hope you all liked it! do stay tuned for that third part, whenever the hell i can get around to writing it T T
this is part of the game over series!
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Terrible Visions
A scrambled timeline is a timeline that has proceeded much like ours, except that some particular facet has been mixed up all over the place. For example, in the scrambled timeline we will consider today, our world's fictional stories have been told by different people, and in different ways.
Bryan Lee O'Malley, in this alternate timeline, is best known as the cartoonist responsible for Homestuck, a popular comic series about a group of children who become embroiled in a cosmic-scale video game known as Sburb. Although Homestuck is probably most often associated with the cult classic Edgar Wright-directed film adaptation released in 2016, the comics themselves are highly-regarded, and the film brought a new audience to them. Netflix has commissioned an animated continuation, The Homestuck Epilogues, which is due to be released soon.
Andrew Hussie, on the other hand, is a figure you're likelier to know if you're overly online. His "MS Paint Adventures" series - most notably including Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, which is kind of like Homestuck but weirder and hornier - have firmly remained a fixture of obsessive Twitter fandom culture. It doesn't help that the best-known iteration, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, is infamous for stretching thousands of pages of meandering digressions out of a simple and focused narrative starting point. Scott Pilgrim fans have developed something of a toxic reputation, which is not entirely deserved - although of course Knives discourse is interminable, and back in the fandom's heyday there were reportedly incidents of fans assaulting each other "for being evil exes".
Scott Pilgrim fandom was very big back in the day, though, and consequently it was a nexus for other creative figures who would go on to surpass Hussie. Perhaps foremost among these is indie developer Toby Fox. He was literally living in Hussie's basement when he produced ROSEQUARTZ, a universally-beloved retro Goonies-like RPG about a human hybrid boy born to a race of gem-based aliens. He's now developing an episodic spiritual successor, RAZORQUEST, with more overtly dark themes. It revolves around an inheritance dispute among a demon-summoning family.
Other foundational figures in this timeline's internet culture include Alison Bechdel, who helped get the webcomic scene started. Although she's now more seriously acclaimed for her personal memoirs, her gaming webcomic Press Start To Dyke, which premiered in 1998, was once everywhere. It had a broad appeal, and at its height, it was common to see even straight guys sharing pages from it. Time has not been especially kind to it, though, and at this point its main legacy is test.png, a meme spawned by one of the comic's most ill-advised pages.
Then there's John C. McCrae, more often known by his pseudonym Wildbow. A prolific and reclusive author of doorstopping "web serials" - long-form fiction published online - McCrae's best-known serial is still his first, Wind, a noir superhero story set in an alternate history where capes are mostly just a subculture of unpowered vigilantes. Wind landed in a culture already rife with comic book deconstructions, like Alan Moore's 2002 graphic novel Worm Turns, but it nonetheless managed to stand out from the pack with its extensive cast of characters and its themes of coordination problems and the end of the world. Later McCrae web serials include Part (the first "Otherverse" serial; an urban fantasy story about a couple who die in a car accident and find that they have become ghosts), Tear (a "biopunk" story set in a collapsing underwater city), Warn (the controversial Wind sequel), and Play (the second "Otherverse" serial, set in a small Indiana town that helps hide a psychic girl from the CIA).
Last and perhaps least, we should discuss J. K. Rowling. Far and away the most famous of any of these authors, Rowling's name is inseparable from the YA series that she debuted with, the Luz Noceda books, which remain her one successful work. Although it was heavily derivative of older fantasy novels - like Jill Murphy's Academy For Little Witches, or Philip Pullman's Methods Of Rationality trilogy - Luz Noceda was still a monumental and unprecedented success in the publishing industry, and the film adaptations were consistent blockbusters. The final book, Luz Noceda and the Watcher of Rain, contained some allusions to a romantic relationship between Luz and her recently-redeemed associate Amity. Rowling confirmed that this was her intent in subsequent interviews and indicated that she had fought her publishers for it; the film would then go on to escalate matters slightly further.
There have been many lengthy and heated online arguments as to whether the references in the book itself constitute text or mere subtext. Whatever your stance on this discourse, a new complication has been introduced recently: although she has put out no official statement on the matter as of yet, it has become quite apparent from Rowling's shrinking network of contacts and her conspicuous silences that she is certainly TERF-sympathetic, and likely an outright TERF herself. For many, this is leading to a critical reevaluation of the social values inherent in the Luz Noceda series; others, to say the least, are holding off on that kind of reappraisal.
Anyway, Scott Pilgrim just beat Luz Noceda in a Twitter poll for Most Gay Media, and people are piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissed
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gureumz · 8 months
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bet? bet!
like a freak, like a g [installment 1]
rating: explicit
member: jake
premise: there's not much secrets to be found out with the director of recruitment. but he does recruit you for one hell of a challenge: fuck your way around his frat house.
notes: fem!reader, greek life!au, university!au, fwb!jake, slightly possessive!jake (but he's also down to share), dirty talk, brief mention of pregnancy, unprotected sex, creampie
a/n: first installment of the 'sleeping around the frat house' series! tried something different here, not sure if it'll work but i like this one~ i'm so excited for this series so i hope you all join along for the ride! *divider by cafekitsune
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jake sim is not your boyfriend.
he's a friend. from high school. who happens to go to the same university as you.
for the first few weeks of freshman year, the two of you were each other's default, having moved to this city all on your own for your respective degrees.
orientation, vacant periods, dinner after class. all of these were spent with jake. you clung onto each other like velcro. freshman jake and ______ versus the world.
and then jake decided to rush for a frat and you got roped into your own extracurriculars. the friendship faded into texts here and there about things that reminded you of each other. memes. an occasional selfie update.
until jake invited you to the frat's recruit-organized party for the year.
"i bought all the booze," jake had declared proudly, voice straining over the booming music. you nodded, genuinely impressed by how well the recruits put the party together.
"it's a fun party," you practically yelled into jake's ear. he pulled back and smiled down at you.
the recruits even managed to rent party lights for the night. and under the purple-red glow of the strobes, you realized just how handsome jake is up close. even when he's standing at the top of the stairs and you at the bottom, him beckoning you up, you could readily admit he was hot.
and you kind of did.
"jake," you breathed out quietly, leaning over the banister from the second floor overlooking the party below. jake is right beside you.
he turned to you, eyes blinking slowly from the alcohol he's consumed thus far. jake leans in closer and you can smell the heineken on his breath.
"i'm kinda...bored," you said rather lamely. jake snorted, leaning his head down on your shoulder. you breathe the scent of his shampoo in, nuzzling your face in his soft raven hair.
"what do you wanna do?" jake asked, craning his neck to look at you from where he's still laid down on your shoulder.
jake snaked an arm around your waist and you knew you were done for. a second later, you were kissing, and within another minute, he's pushing you towards the direction of his room at the very end of the hall.
"fuck, you're so hot," you blurted out over the creaking of his bed, his movements messy and frantic but still enough to have you throwing your head back in pleasure.
"so are you," jake had said, grinning down at you. his hands dug into your sides, keeping you pinned in place as he fucked into you with the enthusiasm only a drunk college frat boy could possess.
and the rest was history.
---
it went on like this for the next year and a half. a friendship maintained through quickies in his car and semi-dates in his frat house bedroom, takeout boxes on his desk while he fucked you doggy style on his (still) creaky bed.
it's not to say you kept things exclusive. that wasn't part of the deal.
whatever the deal is. you haven't really talked about it.
there would be times when neither of you would reach out for weeks or months on end. you'd start to wonder why he was gone so long but then you'd see jake post a girl's hand or half of someone's face on his instagram story, complete with an obscure poetic indie love song in the background.
ah. of course.
in your defense, you had your fair share of flings and situationships here and there. one even came close to an actual serious relationship.
yeonjun, a music major senior you went out with last year when you were a sophomore. he took you out to dates and introduced you to his friends and wrote you songs. but he always found an excuse to avoid that conversation.
(you found out without much difficulty that it was just his ex begging for him to come back.)
guess what happens next.
and so by the tail end of last academic year, you and jake somehow were aligned once again. both single. both horny.
three months later and here you are after the first day of classes of your third year, naked on jake's bed. just like the old times.
"i missed you," jake whispers, hands moving frantically over your body, tugging at your clothes while his mouth busied itself on your neck.
"we saw each other back home a few weeks ago," you reply, giggling when you feel jake lick a stripe up to your jaw.
he can be a little excitable sometimes. like a puppy.
"weeks, ________. can't believe you flew off to some island somewhere while i was left alone to jerk off to pictures of you," jake complains, blowing hair out of his eyes as he pulls away. he tugs his shirt off in one graceful swoop and you're greeted with an eyeful of his abs.
"well, if it's any consolation, i touched myself to your pictures, too," you respond, dropping your voice to a seductive lilt. your hand smooths down jake's bare torso as he leans back down over you, a grin spreading on his face.
"yeah?" he asks.
"oh yeah," you affirm, nodding. you reach down to cup jake through his sweats, a quiet hiss escaping him as you do so.
"fuck, baby, need you so bad," jake admits, hurriedly tugging and kicking off his pants. he's bare under the cotton fabric, having foregone boxers. typical jake.
jake spits on his palm, wrapping his hand around his shaft right after, jerking it to full hardness. he bites down on his lip as his other hand grabs at one of your tits, kneading and squeezing.
"wait," you call out, laying a hand on jake's arm. "you haven't fucked anyone while i was gone, right?"
jake rolls his eyes playfully, leaning down to kiss you. your teeth clash for a moment and you gasp slightly, not expecting such passion from jake.
"only wanted to fuck you," jake admits. he quirks an eyebrow, eyeing you curiously. "how about you?"
you shake your head. "couldn't go longer than a day without thinking about you filling me up with that cock."
jake grins, kissing you again. he lines his tip with your entrance, pulling away slightly as he slips in between your slick folds.
"missed this," jake mutters, pushing more and more of himself in. you simultaneously sigh out in relief once he's bottoms out.
"missed you," he adds.
you snake your arms around jake's shoulders, pulling him close as he starts to rut against you. he moans softly next to your ear and you let yourself do the same, your voices mingling and bouncing off the walls of jake's tiny bedroom.
"fuck, _______," jake groans. "how are you always so tight?"
you don't answer, merely wrapping your legs around jake's hips, pulling him closer. you hear him grunt as he leans back to look at you. his eyes are dark but focused on you. you feel fingers snake around your throat and you can't help the way your eyes roll into the back of your head.
"yeah, that's right," jake chuckles. he squeezes at your jugular lightly and you whine, grabbing at jake's wrist.
"such a whore, aren't you? my cockhungry whore," jake declares. you love it when he gets possessive and you know he knows. he uses it to his advantage any time he can.
"yeah," you agree, nodding as best as you can with jake squeezing at your air pipes. your voice is strained, hoarse from the way jake is choking you.
"yours. only yours."
jake curses under his breath, letting go of your neck. you gasp for air but any attempt to breathe is quickly cut short as you feel jake press your legs up against your chest. you cry out in surprise, jake hammering into you with a newfound speed and strength that sends your brain in a frenzy.
you always felt a certain way when jake has you like this, cunt in full view, body folded nearly in half, fucking into you like he was trying to put a baby in you.
"mine." jake sounds nearly animalistic, a primal need taking over him as he forces your legs harder against your chest.
your head is spinning, limbs going limp with how hard jake is fucking you. the feeling in your abdomen snaps tight, threatening to break.
you babble incoherently a barely distinguishable mix of jake's name, curses, and pained pleas of 'more, need more!' or 'feel s'fucking good, jakey! your cock feels so good!'. it doesn't take long for jake to give the last of his frenzied thrusts, pushing in deep when he cums, spurts of himself filling you up just as you'd hoped.
jake continues to fuck into you after a while, knowing you haven't finished just yet. you reach down between your legs to press your fingers onto your clit, hips grinding up to meet jake's. he complains of oversensitivity but he goes on and by mercy, your own orgasm finally takes over, you clenching down on jake's half flaccid dick.
he pulls out after a few moments, finally allowing himself some relief. you're both breathing hard, sweaty and tired from the whole ordeal. you prop yourself up on your elbows, meeting jake's eyes.
"please don't deprive me for that long ever again," jake says with a sleepy smile, slumping over you. you giggle as you fall back against his bed, jake's face cradled in your neck,
you run your fingers through his disheveled hair, lips pressed against his temple.
jake sim is not your boyfriend but it's times like this that it feels like he might be.
a noise jostles you out of your thoughts. a phone notification.
jake lifts his head from your chest, blindly groping around his bed for his phone. he finally locates it after a moment, handing it to you.
"can you read that for me? jake requests, voice muffled as he snuggles closer to you.
you squint as the sudden brightness of the screen practically assaults your eyes. you blink a few times, reading the message displayed on the notification.
from hee: are you done? i had to physically restrain jay from pounding your door down.
"oh shit," you say, throwing your head back in embarrassment.
"your frat bros heard us," you inform jake.
jake merely snorts, winding his arms around you and pulling you closer.
"as they have a million times before," jake points out. "it's not like i'm the only one who fucks loudly in this house."
your ears perk up at that.
"oh? is the rest of the frat a bunch of man whores like you?" you tease, nudging jake lightly with your knee. he lifts his head up, frowning at you.
"i'm not a man whore, thank you very much," jake says with a roll of his eye. "can't speak for the rest of them, though."
"spill," you urge, raising your eyebrows expectantly at jake.
"sorry, babe, the secrets of the frat must be kept with full confidentiality," jake counters with a shrug.
you narrow your eyes at that. you've seen jake's frat brothers around a handful of times. you'd have to be blind to not see their good looks. and you'd have to be a liar not to admit that they are, indeed, good-looking.
"unless you want to find out for yourself," jake adds, giving you a look as if to say, 'i dare you'.
you straighten up, leaning against jake's headboard.
"let's say i do want to find out," you begin, crossing your arms against your chest.
jake's mouth falls open but his expression quickly shifts into a look of mischief. he looks off to the side, as if pondering on what to tell you. after a few seconds, he snaps his fingers and returns his gaze to you. he's practically bouncing with excitement.
"you can always sleep your way around the house," jake suggests, cocking a brow, as if to challenge you.
you pause. a million different questions come tumbling down on you. before you could get a word out, jake holds out his arms.
"or, at least, the executive committee," jake hurriedly adds. "i can guarantee you, all the other members aren't worth your time."
if you weren't interested before, you're definitely intrigued now.
"i got one ticked off so far," you muse, smiling sweetly at jake. "not much secrets to be found with the director of recruitment."
it takes jake a moment to realize you're referring to him. he rolls his eyes, reaching over to tickle your side. you swat his arm away, giggling.
"as if any of the others could fuck you the way i do," jake scoffs. he leans over the side of the bed, reaching for his discarded shirt. he tosses it in your direction.
you catch the fabric in your hands, pulling it over your head. jake stops as he straightens up, the rest of his and your clothes in his hands. he gives you a one-over and smirks.
"make sure to let them fuck you while you wear this, okay?" jake teases, leaning in to kiss you.
"no promises," you taunt back. jake pulls away, a look of confusion on his face.
"you're not actually serious, are you?" jake questions. you nearly laugh at jake's genuinely clueless expression.
"why not? might be fun," you say with a shrug.
"besides, i never back down from a good challenge," you add.
jake studies you for a moment. you briefly think he might be mad or god forbid, disgusted with what you're attempting to do, but after a while, a shit-eating grin takes over his face.
"atta girl," jake says, winking. he kisses you again, hands grabbing at your waist.
jake sim is not your boyfriend because what boyfriend lets you fuck around with his frat brothers? but then again, it's not too late to talk about it. whatever it is with jake.
but for now, you have a task to get to.
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f1 · 2 years
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dezertvideogames · 1 month
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The Subnautica of other fears
Subnautica is a game infamous for it's almost all ocean planet, underwater worldbuilding, and deep sea gameplay. It's also the bane of all thalassaphobia peeps.
So here's the subnautica of other phobias
Claustrophobia Fear of Tight/Cramped Spaces - The Forest Series : After a plane crash leaves you stranded in a strange forests, something increasingly becomes... wrong. The caves around don't help.
Scopophobia Fear of being watched or the center of attention - Brighter Day : A weirdcore horror game where something is definitely watching you and definitely following you.
Entomophobia/Arachnophobia - Grounded : You play a group of kids who are stuck in a "honey I shrunk the kids" incident. They are forced to venture across their yard, and survive the various common insects around.
Megalophobia Fear of very very very big things - The Utility Room : An experience. More of an experience then a game and fever dreamish, worth it, and mysterious all the way. It's almost as if the universe accidentally left one strange dev room behind.
Nyctophobia Fear of darkness - Amnesia: The Bunker (from the Amnesia series) : It's a first-person survival horror. You play a French man trapped in a bunker during WW1, while being hunted by something inside its darkness.
Autophobia Fear of being/feeling alone - Firewatch : You work in a national park in order to watch out for fires. Traveling across the Wyoming wilderness takes a complicated turn.
Hemophobia Fear of blood or bleeding - Iron Lung : What awaits you in the deep of a strange moon. Trapped in a submarine you have no choice but to find out.
Amaxophobia Fear of car accidents or being run over - Decimate Drive : After freeing yourself from a kidnapping, the world you wake up to is full of hostile cars.
Final Boss Games:
Lethal Company
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Fun with friends :D
Genre: Indie Comedy Horror
Takes place on alien planets in outerspace
It's multiplayer, and very fun, but as soon as it hits the fan the sound design works hard to immerse you in the sudden loneliness. The games sound design is one the major players of Lethal Company's fear. As soon as a friend walks away the proximity chat teaches you just how separated you now are.
Before you know it you have had something unfriendly following behind you, and finally finding the silhouette of a friend in the dark you are betrayed by the creatures of the Lethal Company universe.
Fear of Darkness
Fear of Loneliness
Fear of Being Watched
Fear of Outerspace
The Metro Series
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Genre: Survival Horror Shooter
You play the beautiful and amazing Artyom Chynornyj in the post-apocalyptic world of Metro. Developed by Ukrainians and based off the Russian book series + Polish fanon writing community.
The world of Metro is unfair and unforgiving, full of mutated creatures, and the leftover souls that the destruction of humanity left in it's wake. Crawl across the underground of Russian cities, or panic across the even more dangerous world of the destroyed above.
Fear of Darkness
Fear of Wild Animals
Fear of Deep Water
Fear of Ghost/The Supernatural
Fear of Insects/Spider
Fear of Heights
Fear of Dead Bodies
Fear of the Cold
No Man's Sky
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The scariest game I've ever played. I don't know why, but this game freaks me out. I know the picture I chose was harmless, but I did that on purpose.
This game is beautiful, but don't let that fool ya. This world will leave you no hesitation lost in the unpredictable randomly generated horrors of space. From planet that are all water, to colossus creatures you see for only a split second, to the infinite colorless expanse of space.
Megalphobes and astrophobes, this is your subnautica
Fear of Outerspace
Fear of Darkness
Fear of Cramped Spaces
Fear of the Unknown
Fear of Very Very Very Big Things
Fear of Deep Water
Fear of Loneliness
Fear of Caves
Fear of the Supernatural
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sampsonstorm-critical · 3 months
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This is fucking bullshit. I am so sick and tired of my adult life being ruled by other people's kids because the parents are too fucking lazy to be a parent and supervise their children on the Internet. And to those who will say "well the parents work" then either teach your kids internet safety or take away their damn phones so they can't access it. Don't make it the entire fucking adult worlds problem. I got policed plenty while I was a child. Don't fucking do it to me when I'm an adult. This isnt right. This is a blatent violation of free speech and human rights. We all know what the government will do with this act. It has NOTHING to do with protecting kids. It has all to do with isolating the United States and closing off connections so people are unable to organize.
It will cut off abused children from seeking help. It will cut adults off from educational material containing "adult content". What? Are we going back to our elementary years "Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 14-hundred 92? Where we make cute little cut-outs of the bastard who tortured people? Yeah that's real cool to teach children. Not harmful at all. Wasn't harmful at all realizing all the propaganda I learned in school was BULLSHIT. When I could've been learning about; how to pay taxes, how to buy a car, how to buy a house, medical affairs, sexual education, how to clean properly, how to manage finances, types of trades. ALL THE SHIT TO ACTUALLY HELP IN MY ADULT LIFE.
Oh and you really wanna help kids? Let them fucking beat the shit out of their bullies and let those little monsters learn early, fucking with people for your enjoyment ISNT ACCEPTABLE, instead of your schools institution blaming the victim and sweeping the incident under the rug. Maybe then we wouldn't have so many adult monsters and people full of anxiety!
This will affect artists and indie creators who are primarily LGBTQ or who create adult related contents in their works. It will ruin any indie creators chances if they do not pair with a big company. It will systematically DESTROY our ability to connect and grow our audiences. It will be THE END for adult online cartoons, comics, web series, etc.
Oh and I'm saying this as someone who was groomed and had friends who were groomed. Wanna know why? Because my friends parents couldn't bother to be parents. But that also didn't stop us from watching bad VCR tapes. Kids are gonna find "harmful" content anywhere. It's called growing up. If you shield kids from the Internet you're just going to isolate and shelter them further while predators find a way around it once again. Hello the age of Normalizing the Dark Web which will put MORE people in danger including your precious children and minors. The Internet 2 will be the wild West again and the cycle will just repeat. Heed this warning. Leave the fucking internet alone. It's the last bastion of true freedom and if you take it away; SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES will come. Because people will finally hit their limit.
Leave it alone KOSA - REBLOG IF YOU AGREE
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insanityclause · 4 days
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The first season of “Loki” was the most popular of all the Marvel series to premiere on Disney+, and for good reason: The imaginative world of the Time Variance Authority (TVA) and the core relationships established within it — most notably the warm and hilarious partnership between Tom Hiddleston‘s title character and TVA functionary Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) — yielded one of the liveliest and most involving Marvel screen stories since the original “Iron Man.” But as impressive as Season 1 was, it was only a warm-up for the more ambitious, suspenseful, and poignant Season 2, in which Loki finally fulfills a destiny set up for him 13 years ago in the movie “Thor” — though in a way that neither he nor the audience could possibly have predicted.
The trajectory of Loki’s character from “Thor” to “Loki” Season 2 is about as complex a character arc as one can imagine, ranging from pure evil to selfless heroism and every gradation in between. For actor Tom Hiddleston, that’s both the pleasure and the challenge of playing the character. “It always feels different,” Hiddleston told IndieWire. “I get to play every note on the emotional scale.” Just as Hiddleston was able to expand upon and deepen his characterization, production designer Kasra Farahani used the opportunities provided by Season 2 to show additional aspects of the TVA and create worlds in which the characters would face their most difficult emotional, physical, and mental tests — tests which he helped shape as not only production designer but writer and director on Season 2.
The primary directorial voice on Season 2 was that of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, filmmakers who have worked together for over a decade, primarily in the world of indie features. For the second season of “Loki,” they applied their character-driven sensibility to the largest-scale project they had ever tackled and found a sweet spot between spectacle and humanity that culminates in the season’s deeply moving final episode. By carefully planning their visual style ahead of time, they were free to focus on the actors and emotional content of each scene on set, resulting in a season that’s as entertaining and powerful as anything currently on television, comic book, or otherwise.
In the videos below, watch how Hiddleston, Farahani, Benson, and Moorhead crafted the most emotionally complex entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date.
The Acting of ‘Loki’
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When Tom Hiddleston first played Loki 13 years ago in “Thor,” he couldn’t possibly have known how much the breadth and depth of the character would encompass over multiple movies and a TV series. In Season 2 of “Loki,” Hiddleston was called upon to find new dimensions in Loki that brought both the actor and the character full circle. “One of the first things Loki says in ‘The Avengers’ is ‘I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose,'” Hiddleston said. “It’s a line that’s full of arrogance and entitlement and hubris. In the first episode of Season 2, Mobius tells a story, and the conclusion is that sometimes, purpose is more burden than glory. Loki realizes he has to make a sacrifice, which is to give his life to protect the lives of others and to sit on a kind of throne. It calls back to a line from the first ‘Thor,’ when Odin addresses Thor and Loki and says, ‘Only one of you can ascend to the throne, but you were both born to be kings.’ Fifteen years later, Loki’s walking up to a kind of throne, but it comes in a shape he would never have recognized and almost a shape he dare not step into because he’s giving his life for others, but he’s consigning himself to solitude.”
The opportunity to play a character who begins as a pure villain and becomes a self-sacrificing hero has proven to be one of the great gifts of Hiddleston’s career. “The constant reward of playing this character is that the character itself contains the whole range of emotions,” Hiddleston said. “He has been playful, mischievous, transgressive, disruptive, spontaneous, unpredictable, mercurial. He’s been full of charm and wit but also had moments of great pain and solitude and loneliness and emotional turmoil and doubt and terror. I get to play all the chords and the keys on the piano; I get to play the light keys, and I get to play the heavy keys in the lower octaves. And I think that’s what’s been so great, so challenging and rewarding and fulfilling: that it never feels like the same gig.”
In the video above, watch how Hiddleston approaches the emotional journey of Loki and works with collaborators across departments to create the character.
The Production Design of ‘Loki’
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Hiddleston and other actors on “Loki” have praised production designer Kasra Farahani for creating environments that facilitate their best work. His intricately detailed, often 360-degree sets produce an immersive experience for the audience as well. “I design in a way to give directors and cinematographers a lot of options in terms of getting a shot that’s very memorable,” Farahani told IndieWire. Season 2 of “Loki” has given us some of Farahani’s most elaborate and vivid sets yet, from a recreation of the 1893 World’s Fair to a “temporal core control room” inspired by Cold War architectural designs. Many of the sets grow out of Farahani’s attempt to present a relatable world that exists — at least initially — in a world with lower stakes than a typical Marvel story. “There’s an uncanny reflection of parts of the world the audience lives in, in terms of the bureaucracy,” Farahani told IndieWire, adding that for him, the show’s strength “lies in its particular cocktail of humor and character drama and weirdness.”
Keeping that tonal balance at the forefront is part of Farahani’s all-encompassing perspective. Season 2 of “Loki” provided new opportunities in this regard, as Farahani came on staff as a writer and also directed the “1893” episode. Being in the writers room allowed Farahani to contribute to the show’s world-building from the ground up and maximize his resources as a product designer. “I was able to flex a lot of muscle in terms of proposing the new direction these characters might go in, but also run it against my production design mind and feed that back into the writing process,” Farahani said. “It was as efficient as I’ve ever had the opportunity to be, because you’re getting out in front of some of the pitfalls that you get in writing, which is sometimes writing things that are too big and expensive for the amount of time you’re going to spend in them.” Directing on his own sets provided an additional pleasure and felt like a natural extension of his work. “I design every set the way I would hope it would be designed if I were directing it.”
In the video above, Farahani explains his approach to designing Loki’s sets and talks about directing the ambitious “1893” episode.
The Direction of ‘Loki’
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Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead first worked in the Marvel Cinematic Universe on “Moon Knight,” and it was during additional photography on that series that they first learned of the possibility of working on “Loki” Season 2 from Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. “The thing that made us pretty excited about it was that he said, ‘We don’t really have any reason to do it if we’re not going to do it completely differently,'” Moorhead told IndieWire. Given that freedom, Benson and Moorhead set about creating a visual style that departed from the first season’s more classical, tripod and dolly-oriented approach. “We did a lot of hand-held,” Benson said. “Low angles, wide angles, and close-up right on the eyeline.” The filmmakers had extensive conversations with cinematographer Isaac Bauman about the guiding principles for the visual style, which he then turned into a 700-page reference guide for everyone on set; that rigorous planning ended up giving Benson and Moorhead maximum flexibility when it came time to shoot.
“We decided to be extraordinarily rigid with our presentation so that we could be much more fluid with the story and the performances,” Moorhead said. “Because we knew exactly what we were going to do walking into any situation with the cinematography, that actually took a lot of the pressure off. We weren’t just figuring those kind of things out on the day, so what we could do is make discoveries in the blocking and the performances.” Moorhead added that the document created for the show also served as a North Star for other directors and helped everyone find a tone that was slightly different from Season 1. “There’s a pervasive sense of doom and dread through the show, and one of the things that results is a phrase that we use a lot, which is just turn down the volume. [That means] quieter performances where it seems people might often be yelling at each other — they end up whispering intensely. These emotions that would normally be heightened [created] a much quieter baseline so that whenever we had to go big, it felt even bigger.”
Watch the video above to hear Benson and Moorhead describe their approach to directing and how “Loki” fits into their overall filmography.
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thevagabondexpress · 3 months
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diagnosing the last hours characters with modern music tastes
Cordelia: I feel like she'd have two modes. The first would be soft, upbeat, folk and country but also piano-based stuff, anything major key and with big sound. Caroline Jones, Ruth B., Noah Kahan. I also thing she'd really like Shakira. That's her kind of day-to-day music, it's what she puts on in the car, around the house, when going for a jog, etc. But she also has a collection of women rap artists of the Megan and OSHUN variety which is what she puts on when she's doing hard workouts/training.
James: I agree that he'd be emo but I don't think he'd actually listen to a lot of "traditional canon" emo music. I think he'd find it too loud and intense in the wrong way. I think he'd prefer shoegaze, a la Radiohead, and bands like Five Three Eyes that are fast but fuzzed out. Generally anything with softer mastering where it sounds great at a lower volume.
Matthew: He'd love disco and neuvo-disco/retro-rock. Gloria Gaynor, Suzanne Somers, MonaLisa Twins, the Lemon Twigs. It's fun and silly and also empowering, besides which I think he'd like the fashion and the sparkle of it all. On his bad days, though, when the depression and/or ptsd and/or temptation to return to the addiction hits hard, what used to be his heavy drinking days, I think he'd fall back on an artist like P!NK or Florence + the Machine. Someone who can speak to the truth of the lowest lows of where he's been and remind him that he doesn't have to go back there, that there are other choices, things to live for. That, with time and effort, it does get better.
Thomas: He dug up the local college student indie rock station and he listens to it religiously. It's a habit he picked up in Madrid, he wanted to listen to Spanish music but didn't know where to look/how to search for it so he acquainted himself with radio and just flipped stations until he found something with a sound he liked. When asked to pick songs individually/curate his own music I think he'd end up falling back on his dad's taste in music: Eric Clapton, Bruce Cockburn, the Stones.
Alastair: I feel like Alastair would have unarguably the vastest taste in music of the lot of them, but also that it would generally run to music from well before his time. His mom has vinyls and cassette tapes from Iran before the Revolution and he's dubbed CDs and MP4's of them so he has his own copies and isn't stealing her. He enjoys listener-supported classical music radio, and also newer instrumental of the Haygood Hardy variety. He likes soft jazz and blues, Mahalia Jackson, Mama Thornton. He would ADORE Nina Simone. I think if I had to give a taste in music from after 1970, I'd say he also probably likes artists like Tracy Chapman and Mint Green that speak to a similar lived experience to his own.
Christopher: On one hand, I don't think he really cares that much about music. On the other hand, I think he would be the type to unapologetically listen to high school concert band music. He got hold of Robert W. Smith's storms series (Into the Storm, The Tempest, The Maelstrom), realized there's a crap ton of pieces in this genre that are Inspired By Science, and now every time Matthew comes down to the basement laboratory he ends up lodging a complaint about the sheer amount of French horn.
Grace: Living with Tatiana I don't think she was really allowed much if any access to music but I imagine she found ways around that anyhow. I think she's the other person who would really enjoy Florence + the Machine. I think most of her music would be older, melancholy women folk singers. Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Claudia Schmidt, the McGarrigle Sisters. I think she'd find them soothing. They'd help her calm down when things get difficult, help her to find beauty in a world that's caused her mostly pain. I think her favorite artist would be Lenka. She's got this kind of upbeat, slightly silly vibe that would make Grace smile but I also think she'd find that songs like "Silhouette" and "Ivory Tower" could speak to her truth when she needs someone to, without getting too deep in and triggering her.
Lucie: She listens to Kpop and movie soundtracks. Also if it's appeared in one of those "badass women" edits over on youtube 100% she has it on her playlist or did at some point.
Jesse: Like Grace, he didn't really have access to music living with Tatiana. Also he was dead for like almost a decade so there's that. He probably mostly listens to whatever Lucie listens to, but I like to think he does experiments like picking a new genre/radio station to listen to every day, trying to figure out what he likes and doesn't like independently of his girlfriend.
Anna: idk. She strikes me as someone who'd like Siouxsie and the Banshees. Also Halsey and Hozier. Maybe bands like Linkin Park and Evanescence—she doesn't say it because she doesn't like being dissed for listening to "old cringe emo" but they got her through gender dysphoria when she was twelve so she knows there's some worth in them.
Charles: He really doesn't listen to music. He listens to NPR or Radio Canada or the British equivalent because it makes him feel up-to-date and liberal but he doesn't actually hear the content, it just goes in one ear and out the other.
@alastairstom @chaosandtwo
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coimbrabertone · 19 days
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I Guess We Gotta Talk About Andretti...
So, I've been rather negative when it comes to modern F1 on this blog, and unfortunately, we gotta go there again this week.
So, this week, at Indycar's Long Beach Grand Prix - which turned into a pretty good race at the end - Mario Andretti was interviewed when it comes to his son, Michael's, bid to bring Andretti to Formula One as an eleventh team.
Mario, the 1978 Formula One World Champion, said that he's offended and finds it ridiculous that F1 has rejected the application, that Andretti has worked hard to create a deal with GM, has promised to support drivers in F2 and F3, and that value is added to Formula One by having an eleventh team. Basically, Andretti has met every hurdle that FOM has put ahead of them, and what have the FOM and the teams done in turn?
The teams are trying to get a ten-team limit put into the new Concorde Agreement.
Do I think that Andretti would instantly fix all my problems with modern F1? No.
Do I think F1 would be more interesting with another team? Yes.
Why? Because first of all, so many drivers have been stuck on the outside because there's too few seats in F1. Felipe Drugovich is doing fuck all this season because he couldn't get an F1 drive as a runaway F2 champion. Theo Pourchaire, the next F2 champion, is about to do his second Indycar race this weekend with Arrow McLaren. Mick Schumacher, Callum Ilott, and Robert Shwartzman are all in sports cars after super promising F3 and F2 careers. Marcus Armstrong is in Indycar, Louis Deletraz in IMSA, etc, etc.
Even Oscar Piastri, who has one of the most successful junior careers of recent memory, had to take a year off and ended up debuting with McLaren instead of Alpine.
All of these guys who could have F1 seats are instead doing amazing things in other series. Meanwhile, Lance Stroll has an Aston seat because his dad owns the team, Yuki Tsunoda has an Alpha Tauri seat because Honda wants a Japanese driver, and Daniel Ricciardo is his teammate for reasons that even Red Bull seems puzzled about at this point.
Adding two seats in F1 could improve that situation.
At least one of those seats would likely go to an American, and maybe Logan Sargeant has soured some people's tastes towards that, but hey, if you're going to have three races in the US, you're gonna need American talent to help support that interest.
Haas sure as hell isn't doing a good job of being an American team. Hell, Haas isn't doing a good job of much of anything. They have no ambition, they have two safe, boring, older drivers who will score a few points every once in awhile and let the team collect its prize money check at the end of the season. There's nothing exciting about that, Haas isn't going to have some young charger to breathe life into the back of the grid, Haas isn't going to master the 2026 regulations and give some amazing Brawn storyline, they don't even make their own cars - they have Dallara do it.
Andretti is going to have more ambition than that, I can guarantee that if nothing else. Andretti has three full time cars in Indycar, a bunch of cars in Indy Lights, two cars in IMSA in association with Wayne Taylor Racing, and is potentially laying the groundwork for a move into NASCAR as well.
Marco Andretti is in Trucks while Gainbridge, a major investor in Andretti, has been popping up on the Spire cars, along with rumors that Gainbridge and Andretti wanting to buy into the team.
All of this along with a share in an Australian Supercars team, a Formula E team, and Extreme E. They're a global team that isn't afraid to spend money. They're trying to win championships in series across the world.
F1 doesn't think all of that is good enough.
Why? Because that would mean the teams have to split money eleven ways instead of ten. That's it. That's the entire reason.
Paddock space? Space for twenty-six cars is written into the rules.
Value added? Look at all that stuff above, Andretti isn't coming to F1 to fuck around, and even if it was, half the grid is doing the same thing.
It's all about the money.
As much as I fully believe Andretti is overqualified for F1, I almost want them to say fuck it and abandon F1, put the money into the rest of your series. Marcus Ericsson, Kyle Kirkwood, and Colton Herta are competitive each and every week in an Indycar series where being a few tenths off could put you at the back of the field. The #10 and #40 WTR Andretti cars in IMSA are major championship threats. Plus, if Andretti can get that Spire deal and get into NASCAR, that's a sport that's experiencing its own resurgence in popularity.
I know NASCAR is very much focused in the US but having 4.3 million viewers for Talladega this last weekend is four times the ratings that F1 pulls, and everyone's talking about how big F1 is becoming in the US. F1 is getting all these American sponsors and American races, but whenever it comes to letting more Americans into the sport, there's always this hostility.
Motorsports is more than just F1, and the more F1 turns up its nose at the rest of motorsports, the more it alienates fans like me.
Which is a damn shame, because F1 was my first love in motorsports.
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sgkophie · 2 years
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Man's World - Chapter 1 - Grin It and Bear It
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Pairing: Female!Leclerc reader x Carlos Sainz Jr
Warnings: slow burn, eventual Smut, enemies to lovers
Rating: Mature
AN: Thought I'd finally start my own F1 fanfic! I've seen so many amazing writers recently and I love all your stories so I wanted to try my hand at something too! :) Comments and love appreciated - but please enjoy! Yay!
Mini Synopsis: Georgia Leclerc is one of Bugatti's two female drivers. As the newest team in Formula 1, Bugatti has a lot to prove - especially since Team Principal Isabelle Binotto has decided to make the team a pre-dominantly female run team - from race engineers all the way to drivers. But even though Georgia has had an impressive start to her career, the press have labeled her a sassy hot head, nothing like her twin brother Charles.
With sponsorship money on the line, Ferrari and Bugatti come up with one solution – fake a relationship between Georgia and Carlos with the hopes that the Sponsors will see the drivers in a new light. An easy task – if the drivers didn’t hate each other.
Check out the full intro synopsis here!
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While being the sister of Charles Leclerc had it benefits, namely, I had a “built in” lifelong supporter and best friend who loved me dearly, it also had its downside – the constant comparison. While we might have been twins, we couldn’t have been more different from birth. Charles was incredibly outgoing; everyone who met him immediately fell in love with his gorgeous smile and generous laugh. I, however, was more reserved and direct. I didn’t woo the crowd at public gatherings or more importantly, woo the sponsors at private Bugatti events that I had been forced to attend. 
My close friends and family saw the real me – the constant prankster and jokester of the family, as Lorenzo would like to say – but the rest of the world saw me as a boring, quiet, and somber young woman whose reserved nature was lost on them in comparison to my brother. 
As a young girl karting with my brother, I dreamed of racing in F1. When that dream didn’t come true at 18, I decided to move to Indy Car in America – trying my hand at something new and exciting. The thrill of Indy Car was real – and the fans, much to my surprise, welcomed me as a female driver more than I was expecting. There were plenty of bitter, misogynist comments thrown my way – saying that I slept around to get my wins and didn’t deserve my trophies, but for the most part, the community had welcomed me and set me up for success – leading to my first Indy Car championship.
When Isabelle Binotto approached me and told me she was building a predominantly female F1 team with two female drivers, I was shocked. Shocked that Volkswagon’s CEO was letting the team build something so new and risky, but also shocked that she wanted me on the team. It was a no brainer – driving in Formula 1 like my brother had been both our dreams since we were 5 years old racing in go-karts. And while I knew the challenge would be difficult, the cars were so much faster than Indy Cars, I knew the challenge would be worth it. I wanted to show young girls that they too could make it to Formula 1. I wanted to prove myself to the world, and this was my chance.
My fellow driving partner, Lily, was the driving partner every driver hoped for. At just 19 years old, she had won the W-series championship and at 20, she was now the youngest Formula 1 driver on the grid and the youngest ever woman to compete. Lily was everything a Formula 1 team wanted. She was the definition of beautiful inside and out, and the press ate her up. It didn’t matter how many ridiculous questions they threw her way, she answered them with finesse that even movie stars would envy. Still, even if our personalities were different on-track and in the paddock, our friendship had started to blossom. She managed to navigate my introverted personality and made me feel incredibly comfortable. In return, as the older, more experienced driver, I gave her tips on driving the cars and helped her get mentally prepared before races. We spent a lot of time training together and hanging out in the sim. 
The season had started off great; the car Bugatti had built had turned out to be incredible. Testing in Bahrain was one of a kind – a real dream come true. The fan base was building quickly and sponsors started to show real interest in the team. Much to Bugatti’s excitement, having female drivers opened opportunities for new sponsors such as make-up companies and handbag designers, companies that didn’t typically approach the male drivers. 
But by race three one thing was becoming clear – the press were quickly starting to hate me. Comments about my “ambition” and “pushy” nature on the track had already made headlines after race 2, and by qualifying of race 3, the press were branding me this season’s viper. While male drivers like Max Verstappen could get away with short, snippy remarks in the media pen and glaring at the camera, it was clear that the press were not going to let a female driver get away with similar behavior. 
I knew this wasn’t going to be easy, and I had suspected there would be bitter comments about any success I had, but what I wasn’t expecting was for the media to directly ask me questions like, “Georgia, how do you deal with periods during races?” and “Georgia, how does your boyfriend feel with all your traveling?” Apparently my snarky reply of “The same way you deal with your period, Will” didn’t get the laugh I had intended. No one likes a woman talking about periods on national TV, it so happens. 
They also didn’t seem to like my lack of a boyfriend. Rumors had already circulated about me and my brother’s close friend Pierre Gasly a couple years ago when I had come to visit Charles at some races in previous seasons, but now the rumor mill was rampant. The obsession on my dating life was fascinating to me. On one hand, they were clearly scrutinizing the fact that any boyfriend I could possibly have would be so torn with my traveling all the time, and on the other hand, I was dating every man under the sun. 
At the start of the season the media had dubbed me “Sissy Leclerc”, a somewhat rude but at least boring nickname. By race three, I was “Sassy Leclerc” – something my team principal deemed to be much worse, especially with big sponsorship names hovering around, discussing deals. Hearing the word Bugatti might make you think unlimited funds, but it was far from the truth. We had to sustain enough funds to prove ourselves, just like anyone else. With a majority female engineering team and paddock crew, there was a lot at stake here. 
Still I wasn’t going to let it bother me. Within my first 3 races I had secured two podiums and come 5th in the 3rd race. I was second in the drivers championship, with the rest of the season to play for. 
The first win of the season had been magical. After just four races, I had managed to not only get on the podium, but stand on the tallest step. As I looked to my left, I saw my brother, splashing me with champagne and hugging me all at the same time. The look of pride in his eyes gave me a warm feeling – a reminder of the support my entire family had given me for the last 24 years of my life. Regardless of the fact that I had passed Charles on track in what I’m sure the media would deem a “tense battle between siblings”, I could see the look of love and happiness for me in his eyes. 
“Congrats Peaches, I’m so proud of you,” I heard him whisper in my ear as we were leaving the podium celebration. 
As kids we visited America often. My aunt and uncle had moved there when I was younger, so every couple of years we went to visit their beautiful house in Georgia. It’s there that Charles had started to call me Peaches after a round of peach picking at a local farm – and after that, the name had stuck.
Drenched in champagne and smelling of sweat, I smiled, giving him one last hug before running down the paddock and back to my team who were waiting for me with open arms. 
Bugatti’s race strategist, Susie Wolff, wife of Toto Wolff, was first to greet me. How Bugatti managed to steal her from Mercedes, I’ll never know – but over the last several years she had become a confidant and mentor to me. Being a Formula 1 test driver herself, she knew the pressure I was facing and the tough work it took to be a driver. 
“Congrats Georgie – P1! Well deserved.” She gave me a huge hug and big smile, followed by a pat on the back. 
“You know what I think this win deserves?” I said smiling, a little hint of mischief playing on my face, which I could tell Susie noticed by the slight uptick of the corner of her mouth.
“You still have to do media duties, don’t even ask.” 
The smile on my face dropped. I knew that would be the case, but I had let myself hope, for one millisecond, that maybe the joy would allow me some reprieve. It was silly to even hope it. A race winner is expected to do media – and if we were to keep gaining sponsors, I needed to get my face in front of a camera and smile and chat about how happy I was. 
I looked over to Isabelle, the Bugatti team principal, who smiled and waved at me. I think in all my time of knowing her, Isabelle had smiled maybe 3 times, so I was honored that my race win was one of them. Isabelle was an incredible woman. Her success in the W-series and Formula E was well regarded. She was a brilliant strategist, and while you could only describe her as having a tough personality, she had the finesse to manage the media like a genius. Unlike me, her tough nature and direct comments were revered by the press and F1 community alike. She could command a room full of men and get exactly what she wanted. Her hard exterior was always on display at races – but I knew there was someone soft and gentle underneath. She fiercely cared about the people who worked for her and put her name and reputation on the line to start a female-focused Formula 1 team because she believed in us. 
I nodded and waved back to her, and then head to my drivers room to freshen up before the post-race media conference would begin. As I exited the drivers room I was met by Lizzie, my poor Media Manager who had been saddled with what could only be her toughest assignment yet. Still, even if I was likely a nightmare to manage at press events, she wore her brave assignment with the world’s biggest smile and most uplifting nature I had ever seen. The paddock could be on fire, and I think Lizzie would announce, “At least we have free lighting!” 
“GEORGIE!” She gave me a massive hug, practically strangling the upper part of my body. Lizzie was an impressive 6’0, so compared to my 5’3 stature, she always towered over me. 
“Hi Liz, thanks! What a race – just marvelous at the end, fighting with Charles and Max like that – just incredible. But now I assume its time to go feed the vultures?” I asked, my voice dropping with the end question.
“Yes, yes, time to go show the media what a star we all know you to be,” she let out, giving me a big wink and shoulder squeeze.
We soon arrived at the media center, and for the first time in my career, I took my spot in the center chair. It felt thrilling to sit down in it. Charles reached out and gave my shoulder a tap, whispering, “Just grin it and bear it, Peaches, we’ll soon be out drinking to celebrate.” 
I smirked back, and settled into my chair, nodding to Max who smiled at me, whispering another congrats before the conference started. I never understood the feeling, but no matter what the circumstance was, I immediately began to feel anxiety and pressure at these press events. Here I was with a phenomenal, well-deserved win, but I could feel my hands start to sweat profusely and the worlds that tumbled out of my mouth never seemed to be quite what I wanted to say – or what they wanted to hear. 
“So Georgia, congrats on your first win with Bugatti. It must feel thrilling to be the second woman to ever win a Formula 1 race and the first in the last 3 decades, how do you feel?” 
“Phenomenal, it’s truly a dream come true,” I replied, smiling slightly at the journalist. A few uncomfortable seconds passed, the journalist clearly expecting me to say more. I turned to Lizzie, her hands motioning to continue speaking, but before I could continue, the journalist had moved on. 
“So Charles, I saw you and Georgia had quite the battle around lap 40. How did it feel to be beat out by your sister?” 
“It was a great battle! My sister is an incredible driver and that Bugatti is fast as lightning. Disappointed I couldn’t keep up, but it’s hard to fight with that kind of talent. Plus, I knew if she beat me, she would have to be the one buying drinks tonight, not me, so it’s not all a loss.” 
With that he turned to me and winked, getting several chuckles out of the journalists. 
I rolled my eyes, leaning over to shove Charles’ shoulder a tad. These press events were always easier when Charles was there. He was undoubtedly my biggest fan (well, second, behind Lorenzo) and his light-heartedness always made me feel more at ease. 
The press conference continued at its normal bring pace. To my relief, majority of the questions seemed to be targeted at Max and Charles, leaving me to answer a few questions. While I should have been more offended that the media spent most of their time asking the 2nd and 3rd place drivers more questions, in truth, I felt relived. Less questions asked meant less chance to screw this up for myself. 
As the hour started to come to an end, I was beginning to feel a bit better. I had answered a few more questions with a little more “of my sunny disposition”, as Lizzie would say, and felt like I was beginning to improve on my media relations. 
“So Georgia, now that you’re a race winner, I bet you’re beginning to see the WDC in your view. Do you think it’s time to see more women in racing?” 
Ah, here it was, the stupid question they loved to ask all the drivers, but especially me. They always asked this question as if they were trying to find me in a lie and get me to admit, “actually I think women should get back to the kitchen where they belong.” 
Before I could stop myself, I let out the most exasperated sigh and rolled my eyes. 
“I think we all know the answer to that question because you have all managed to ask it to me at ever single press event I’ve ever showed up at. What are you looking for me to say? No?” 
I could see Lizzie waving in the background, her hand going across her throat, signaling for me to quit before I was ahead.
But it was too late. “Sassy Leclerc” had been released. 
The silence was deafening. I looked over to Charles for help, but his face told me what I should have done – grinned it and beared it. 
“Obviously I want more women in the sport. If we had more women, maybe you would all stop focusing on ‘my love life’ or ‘my periods’ or ‘what racing bra do I wear’ because me and Lily wouldn’t be the shiny new toys to harass.”  
Now that was definitely the wrong thing to say. 
But it was said. 
After a few more awkward moments, the head of F1 Media and Communications came on the stage and thanked all the journalists for attending. Before Charles could say anything, I quickly got out of my seat and sprinted towards the exit, hoping to make a quick escape before I was bombarded by fans and journalists. 
Lizzie took off after me, her long legs allowing her to quickly catch up with me. As we walked back into the Bugatti hospitality suite, I could see the look of displeasure on Isabelle’s face. The smile that had been on her face just an hour earlier was replaced with a disappointed frown. She pointed her finger at me, signaling for me to ‘come hither’ to her office. 
“Look before you say anything, I know. I should have dropped it and answered the usual answer, “Yes of course I want more women.” But I just couldn’t do it this time. It’s starting to become morose and rude.”
“Georgia, I appreciate that the press are morons,” Isabelle said, taking a seat at her desk, her piercing green eyes slicing me open, as if she was reading a book that she had already read before, but needed to re-read in case she had missed something important. “But unfortunately, the F1 journalist community isn’t going to change overnight, so it’s our job to help guide them to that change. It’ll be slow – you know this – and yelling at a reporter is only going to make you look like a hot head, something the press want to see.” 
I knew she was right. Change in a male dominated sport would be slow, and we had to be careful. Generations of racing women depended on us, and the fight wasn’t going to be won in 4 races. Having the media hate me wasn’t going to encourage the other teams to hire female drivers. 
“I know, I’m sorry, I’ll work on it and do better next race.”
Isabelle nodded, knowing there was no reason to further the conversation. She might be annoyed, but she didn’t want to dampen my day. The fact was I was now a Formula 1 winner and the fight for the WDC was on. I was going to enjoy today, even if the media had it out for me. 
After leaving her office, I saw Susie and Lizzie slide into Isabelle’s office and shut the door. My gut told me I would be hearing about what they would be discussing at the next race, but I didn’t care – tonight was my night. 
Isabelle welcomed Susie and Lizzie into the office, signaling for them to shut the door. “Well,” she said, “I talked to Mattia and he’s agreed to the idea. Carlos is also struggling and two sponsors are talking about backing out after his recent trip to Ibiza.” 
“Who gets the job of telling her?” Lizzie asked slowly, knowing full well it would be her, but hoping that the Bugatti team principal might take pity on her. 
“We’ll tell her together – Charles and Carlos have been summoned to Miami early and we’ll do the same. Mattia thought it might be good to bring in Charles and Lorenzo, might help soften the blow to the two of them,” Isabelle mused, taking pity on Lizzie. She knew Georgia was going to react badly to this (and truth be told, she hated the idea herself), but there was a lot at stake here. “Susie I think you should be there to help her understand why we’re doing this. She respects you greatly.”
Susie sighed, but nodded, “Okay, Miami it is.” 
Tag List: @internetgremlin-writes
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meshlasolus · 1 year
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Temple of the Forbidden Eye (2)
Indiana Jones x OC
Series Summary: The relationship between student and teacher is strictly professional, or at least it should be. He’s never met his match in archeological intelligence, and if he ever does, it might drive him to do something stupid. 
A/n: The amount of people who actually read the first chapter veery much surprised me because Indy barely gets enough love anymore but bro I’m so happy y’all liked it and I love this man so I will fr try and update this more often.
Warnings: i don’t even know what counts as a warning for this series tbh… old fashioned ways of thinking i suppose??
(Co-written by the lovely @theatrelove3000 you guys should go give her a follow)
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There was a warm wind that swept through her hair as she rounded the corner of the block. She looked back down at her note, tucked into the top of her book. This was in fact the correct street, but it looked so different than how she imagined. Her old mentor described the great Indiana Jones as the world’s most accomplished archeologist, and for all the daring and adventurous stories she’d been told, she couldn’t possibly imagine him living in a quaint neighborhood like this, all lined with picket fences and well maintained front lawns. 
She read the mailboxes, seeing the iron letters hanging on each one, signifying each house’s address, finding the one next to the end of the cul-de-sac and checking the small paper slip once more to confirm that this was the right house. It was older looking, more warm and inviting than the others. It didn’t appear as perfectly manicured as the other cookie cutter houses. It looked lived in. Like a home. the corners of the walls had chipped paint, and water lines from rain. 
Class today had gone the same as always, her professor hadn’t even stopped her on the way out, or in the hall as he was leaving the building. It was just another day for him, as it should be for her. She couldn’t help her nerves though, as she strode up to the front door, ready to knock. Hesitation was only momentary, as a deep breath was inhaled, and she laid three firm raps on the door. 
While waiting for the occupant of the house to open said door, she turned and looked around her on the porch. There were some interesting looking plants that she didn’t recognize as being from this country, or any she’d heard of thus far. They must be exotic, small reminders of his work in the field. She smiled at the thought of his worldly travels, it all seemed so exciting, and she was enthralled to one day embark on such journeys.
Her head whipped back to the door as the old creaking hinges brought her back to reality. Still nervous, she was smiling wide, but her hands were shaking. Calm down, she had to think to herself. This is just a part of your work.
“Hi,” she said in a released breath, holding her hands together to quell their rapid movements. He gave a slight chuckle and smirked. She seemed far less confident here than in the classroom setting. Maybe when she was there she felt the need to prove herself. “I hope I’m not too late, I got a bit lost on the way.”
“You walked here?” he tilted his head, looking around behind her to see if there was at least someone to drop her off. Not a car in sight, or even another person for that matter. She was completely alone… which to him didn’t seem quite safe. 
“Yes, I like walking places,” she mentally cursed herself for such a stupid sentence to come from her lips. She had been working for years to get here, she’d hoped it all wouldn’t be ruined by a few airheaded remarks. Professor Jones did not share the sentiment. Though he thought it sweet and endearing that she enjoyed something so simple as taking walks, he also saw the signs of her nerves the second he opened the door, and figured she’d be more calm once the work began inside. 
“Well, you’re not late at all, in fact,” he held the door open for her to follow him in, shutting it behind her when her feet were on the hardwood floors. You took a moment to look around the entranceway before he stepped forward. “I just got everything set up in the office.”
You looked at the unique pieces in his living room, all from different cultures and dynasties. They were very interesting, but you noted that not one piece in the room was real, only a copy of something he had found in the past. He believed that all precious artifacts belonged in a museum, and he’d be damned if he went along in hypocrisy and kept a rare treasure for himself. That wasn’t part of his job, he didn’t take trophies. 
“See something you like?” he noticed her slowing down behind him, only turning when in his peripheral she wasn’t there. He took in her studious look of curiosity, watching as she gazed from one item to another. “Bet you can’t tell which one is real.” 
She looked at him with a surprised look. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. Of all the days in her life to be flustered and speechless, this should not have been the day. She opted instead not to say a word, but to close her mouth and get closer to the pieces in the room. All she had to do was take into account one thing, and then she was sure. 
“This map,” she pointed to it on the encasing table in the corner of the room, turning back to him with a straight face. 
He nodded, seemingly impressed with how quickly she figured it out. Perhaps she had been earlier trained in detecting markings on old parchment, or maybe she’d learned how to differentiate aged ink from reprinting, she may have possibly even known the map from-
“It wasn’t that hard, it’s the only thing in here covered in glass.”
Well, so much for that. He supposed deductive reasoning was also a good skill, and she was quick on her heels to notice it so fast. He chuckled, smiling genuinely at her now confident and forward demeanor. She was very sure of herself, almost like that of his colleagues. 
“Huh,” he shook his head, letting whatever thought that entered his mind to pass when he did. It wasn’t a bad thought, a very true one, actually. She used common sense to do something that every other student in his classroom would take hours to figure out. She was  intelligent in her studies, but she was also just smart. Possibly a gifted mind like his. He hoped he’d soon unravel all her hidden talents and abilities, as he knew she was already more than just a student in his class. She was dedicated, and confident in her studies like no other boy in his class had ever been. 
“Something wrong?” She asked, her head tilted slightly as her brows furrowed in confusion. She didn’t know if he was impressed, or if she had upset him in some way. She knew better than to speak so plainly with a man in this field, but she couldn’t help but feel more comfortable to do so around his presence. The others would shoot her down, remind her of her place, but he had encouraged her, so why shouldn’t she?
“No, nothing’s wrong,” he shook his head, not sure if he should explain himself or not. It didn’t seem that important, and there was work to be done, so he continued down the hall again, calling out for her to come with him. “Follow me.”
As soon as she entered the room she was filled with a ghastly surprise. The sacred office and workspace of the great Indiana Jones, where he conducted business as well as studied ancient artifacts… was a complete mess. Papers in stacks all across the room, with folders opened to random pages and thrown half-hazardly in different spots. There were even large books, the texts in which broke down great historical landmarks, maps, and hidden treasures of the world. There wasn’t exactly a pattern to which they had been pulled from the shelves, as they didn’t seem to connect with one another at all. 
Her face scrunched up with slight disgust, not expecting to see that her favorite professor was in fact, a slob.
“The plan is to find my paper on Degas Painting. I’ve already started organizing different reports into separate categories; and I think if we work for a few hours we can make some decent progress on finding it.” 
He journeyed further into the room, careful not to step on any papers on the floor. She was still at a loss for words. It was only when he looked up and met her eyes that she had something to say. 
“How can you work with such a mess around you?” She laughed, disbelief covered her expression, and he saw her mind turning the gears within her head. What was she thinking about?
“It may look that way to some, but I know where everything is.”
“Except for your paper on Degas Painting.”
-
Thirteen minutes. He had left her alone to search for only thirteen minutes. There was an important phone call that he simply couldn’t miss, and it lasted for a duration of thirteen minutes. How in that time could she have managed to do this? When he hung up the phone, he walked back into the room, assuming she’d be right where he left her. No, she was not, and how could he have been so foolish as to think that the most intelligent student in his very prestigious class would have sat there clueless without him? 
His eyes were wide, and his jaw was nearly slack as he scanned the room. Not only were all the papers filed away in their respective folders, but they were organized on the desk. Every little thing had been put away, he assumed in orderly fashion. Hell, he took a few steps into the room and saw the paper he was looking for laying by itself on the desk. The bolded letters ‘Degas Painting’ in black ink were clear as day. He’d been searching for it for days, going through stacks and stacks of files to try and recover it for his class. He looked up to you in the corner, scanning the bookshelves as you placed books back where they went. The most noticeable thing he saw? His hat had been removed from his desk, and she wore it on her head. He had half a mind to walk across the floor and take it back, without even saying a word. 
He wasn’t angry, but somewhat irritated that she’d moved all his things, which he’d spent days looking through. He also found it somewhat annoying that his new apprentice was already better at the job than he was. But she’s never been in the field, he reminds himself. 
He huffed a long breath, placing his hands on his hips as he narrowed his eyes at her. She finally turned around, having seen that he came back, and there was a sweet smile laid widely across her face. She was clearly proud of the work she had accomplished, and he’d hate to negate the good work, but there was still the matter of his prized high-crowned sable fedora. 
“That’s my hat,” he pointed to it, his tone more firm, but not aggressive. She would moreso describe it as possessive. 
She was quick to take it off of her head, holding it gently within her hands in an attempt to ease his mind. 
“I’m sorry,” she suddenly felt the need to explain herself, looking around the room in an attempt to avoid looking at him. He got this upset over a hat? “It’s just that, it took up space on the desk, and I didn’t really know where to move it.”
He came up to where she stood, snatching away the hat and placing it on his own head. It wasn’t done spitefully, in fact, she almost laughed at the comedic way he adjusted it after. He must really like his hat, it seemed like his most important possession. He wore it well, she noted that right away.
“You found the paper,” he crossed his arms, nodding slightly to her in thanks, but not giving too much recognition away. “And you cleaned my office.” 
She wasn’t sure if he was still upset about the hat, or if he was genuinely offended by the fact that she had gone outside of her instruction and done what she wanted. She’d hoped he might be pleased with her efforts, but of course, she was probably just assuming too much of her favorite professor… again.
“I promise I put everything away as it was organized, I even put the books back in alphabetical order,” She defended, walking two steps back to the bookshelf and letting him see for himself. This was the best his office had looked in years, with everything being in perfect order like he’d never gotten around to maintaining it before. “I’m sorry that I didn’t ask, I just thought that it might be easier for you-”
“You did good, kid,” he smirked, getting her to stop her mindless rambling. His small nod of approval made her smile, her nerves fading away again as her chest filled with pride. 
He thought she had done good, and with that she was pleased.
-
The small sofa against the wall of his office was practically sunken in by how long the weight had been placed upon the cushions. It had been many, many hours since they sat down to go through the paper and yet neither of them seemed to notice. The sun had gone down ages ago and they had needed to turn on lamps to continue.
At some point in the evening, she had gotten hungry. When she asked if he had something to eat, he responded, "I eat when the work is done." Which… wasn't very comforting as given the state of his office when she arrived, he was clearly never 'done working.' 
Professor Jones had given her permission to go check his kitchen to find some food, but his kitchen was arguably worse than his office. It was perfectly clean, that wasn't the problem. The problem was the lack of food he has. He has a total of three cans of soup, one half of a loaf of sliced bread and a jar of peanut butter.
"Professor?"
He hummed in acknowledgement, not looking up, though she required his attention.
"Are you dead? Or… undead or something?"
That got his attention, "Um… what?"
"Undead. Are you actually alive?"
Doctor Jones was genuinely baffled for a second or two. He’d been surprised by her antics nearly all day, and yet, there was still more to her that came with every word she said. Her joking tone obviously indicated she was mocking him for something, but he was unsure of the reason this time around.
"You're not making any sense,” he paused, finally glancing up from his work to respond with effort. “What are you even talking about?" He sounds a little annoyed now..
"You have nothing to eat," she says, gesturing in the direction of the kitchen. She was sure he’d known this, or at least hoped he did, otherwise her jokes of the ‘undead professor’ may not seem so far-fetched.
"Sure I do."
Lies. She searched high and low in every cabinet and corner of that kitchen. It wasn’t hard to deduce that there wasn’t anything there. It was quite clear to anyone with a half decent set of eyes. 
"No, actually… You don't. You don't have any food. So are you?"
He rolled his eyes, but knew she was probably right. He never went into that kitchen, and barely even remembered to shop for food on a regular basis. He’d always get food from the cafeteria of the University, or better yet, any new place he found on the walk home that looked suitable to his picky taste. 
"Miss Ledger-"
"I know that you said you don't eat until the work is done, but based on the state of your kitchen, I'm assuming that you just don't eat… Ever," she crossed her arms, trying to think of how he could possibly get along on his own. He didn’t seem to be married, or have a roommate, and she highly doubted he found himself in the company of his peers while at home. 
He huffed a bit and tossed the paper on the coffee table in front of him. He looks over at Scarlett, watching her for a moment. She's more… for lack of a better word, mouthy than most women he's met. It's actually nice. Refreshing, even. Not even the male students he's worked with would speak to him like this. It's clear that she knows her value and is happy to be herself, even around authority. Though sometimes annoying, especially right now, he would do his best to encourage that the attitude stays the same, as it would do well for her if she were to continue in this industry. 
"Yes, I do eat. No, I'm not an undead individual. More often than not, I get food in a restaurant or at school. I don't go shopping for it very often," His tone is calm, though dripping with sarcasm at the beginning, "If you are that hungry, I can go get something, but I'm about ninety percent sure there is at least a can of soup in there."
"So you only eat soup when you're at home?"
It was funny to try and imagine him, the world renowned Professor Jones, hovering over a small pot at the stove whilst he stirred a batch of soup from a can in his pantry. She didn’t know why, but it amused her. 
"Or a sandwich."
"Yes, because that's so much better," Her tone matched his, impressing him yet again. There were few people in the world that could keep up with his wit and never-ending sarcasm. She reminded him of himself, so much it almost frightened him.
He sighed a little. Dropping his head to hide the smile, he shakes his head slightly. "I'll eat if you make enough for both of us, since it bothers you so much."
She was almost satisfied… but there was still one fact of the matter that continued to reign true.
"That still leaves the problem of you having no food," her pointed look was enough to make him smirk. He really was impressed with her demeanor. She was relentless, now that she’d been given his approval. He wondered if she would be so forward now, if he had been so reassuring to her efforts before. 
"Just make the soup, there's enough in there. I know that for a fact."
She huffs and turns on her heel, calling over her shoulder, "fine. But I'm going to make you go grocery shopping so you have at least something with protein to eat."
He laughs quietly, going back to his work. When she returns, she has a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a piece of bread for each of them. They continue to work while they eat, and though the silence is deafening, it’s comfortable, and welcomed. 
A few hours later, he catches a movement out of the corner of his eye. She was resting with her head in her hand, arm propped up on the back of the sofa. He turns back to the paper but she moves again. He turns to look at her fully this time and notices her eyes are half closed. Interesting. The movement he was seeing was her nodding off and waking herself back up. He wondered if he had kept her for too long, or if she might be upset that there was so much work to be done. He thought about how dedicated she was, though, and knew she was probably just tired from a long day of work.
Turning back to look at the clock across the room, he realized what time it was. As he went to wake her up, he remembered that she had walked there. He may live in a better neighborhood but that didn’t mean it was safe for a young woman to walk alone at night, and he didn’t have a clue as to where she might live. After thinking about his options for a moment, and taking stock of his own wakefulness, he decided that it was too late for him to drive her home. He set the papers he was holding down, and leaned over to take the ones she had out of her hand. The feeling of papers falling woke her again and she tried to tighten her hold on them, but they were already in her professor's grasp.
“I have a guest room. I’ll walk you up there. Do you need something more comfortable to sleep in?” His voice sounded raspy and tired, even to his own ears. His offer was rushed out, and hadn’t been thought through completely, but she understood well enough in her dreary state.
“I’m sorry, what’s happening?” She reaches up to rub the sleep out of her eyes, sitting up straight again. The sweet and quiet tone she held was such a contrast to her bellaring complaints of his lack of food from earlier. It made him smile to see yet another side of his favorite student. He’d realized by now that she was.
“You are dozing. It’s too late for me to, in good conscience, allow you to walk home alone and I am not in any state to drive you. You are going to stay here for the night.”
As harsh as it sounded, he was right. It wasn’t safe, nor was it in her best interest to even leave the walls of this house at this hour. She, of course, had other thoughts on the matter, having walked home in far worse conditions before, though it was foolish in anyone’s book.
“Oh- No, Professor, it’s alright. I don't mind going home, I don't want to intrude."
"You aren't intruding. I'm offering,” he insisted, taking the papers she tried to retrieve from the table. It was by far the time to call it a night.
"Professor-" She seemed mildly uncomfortable at his suggestion, though it was more of a demand. He doesn’t want anything from her and she could tell based on his demeanor. He just wanted her to be safe and get a decent night's rest. There was no harm in it by any means, but based on how it might look in the eyes of others, she still had to think it through. These may be modern times but there were societal norms and expectations. A young woman staying the night in her professor’s house would not be considered acceptable by any means.
"Miss Ledger, have you ever heard the phrase 'nothing good ever happens after two a.m.?'" He asked with a slanted look on his face, brows raised in suspicion. He made it up on the spot, but still asked for the heck of it, and to hopefully lead her to agree with him faster.
"No but-"
"In my experience, it's very true. It's now two-thirty.You're staying here,” The tone of finality in his voice was more than clear. He wasn’t going to back down and gave no other option than for her to agree. He wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing he allowed his best student to walk across town in the middle of the night, while barely keeping her eyes open from the exhaustion that weighed on her shoulders.
She looked at him, then at the clock, and with a heave of her shoulders, she’d decided it was probably best that she stay where it is guaranteed she will be safe. He was renowned worldwide for being a grand explorer, surely he was a better option than the streets after midnight.
“Alright,” she conceded, nodding to him firmly. He noticed she seemed more comfortable now that the subject was put to rest.
“Thank you. I don’t have the energy to argue with you about your own safety right now,” He smiles gently and stands up off the sofa, offering his hand to help her up. His smile, even in her barely awake state of mind, was warm and genuine. She didn’t think he could smile like that, as she’d witnessed too many smirks and side eyes from the man in the last several hours to consider it as a possibility.
She smiled back and took his hand. “To be entirely honest, neither do I.” 
That made him grin. He likes her, more than he would care to admit. She not only reminded him of himself, but also offered opposite attributes. He couldn’t wait to work alongside her on a project, for he felt their personalities and skills would compliment the other perfectly. 
Gesturing with his arm for her to go first, he let her walk out of his office then led her through the house. He opened the door to the guest bedroom, which she saw was perfectly clean, if not a little dusty. He leaves her for just a moment and comes back with an old shirt and pair of sleep pants he hadn’t worn in a long time. He gives directions to the restroom before bidding her goodnight and heading to bed himself.
When he woke up the next morning, he had hoped to bid her a good day, but the door to the guest room was open, and peeking in, he saw no sign of her, but the bed was perfectly made and the clothes he gave her were folded and sitting on the end. She had even dusted off the surfaces. 
He was only slightly upset to find that she had left so early, for the signs of her being there were clear, and he felt he could get accustomed to the look of it.
-
Tags: @justanothersadperson93 @sparklytoaster
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denimbex1986 · 10 months
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'Since his breakthrough performance in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later over two decades ago, Cillian Murphy has become one of the biggest names in acting. Later, Murphy honed his skills with an iconic performance as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders and a series of collaborations with beloved director Christopher Nolan. After appearing in The Dark Knight, Inception, and Dunkirk, he now takes on the starring role of the eponymous Oppenheimer in one of the most anticipated films of the year.
Alongside the Irish actor’s love for cinema, he also harbours a passion for music. In his youth, Murphy sang and played guitar in bands, even meeting his wife at one of his gigs in the mid-1990s. His most promising band was The Sons of Mr Green Genes, named after the Frank Zappa song, which featured Murphy and his brother Páidi. Acid Jazz Records even contacted the duo to offer them a deal, but they declined.
Though Murphy’s gigging days are behind him, music remains a huge part of the actor’s life. During an interview with the Sunday Independent Life Magazine, he stated: “The only extravagant thing about my lifestyle is my stereo system, buying music and going to gigs.” He still plays and writes alone and with friends and was even featured on a recent single by The Coral.
Expectedly, for someone so well-versed in music, Murphy’s taste is varied. Though he presents on the alternative station BBC Radio 6, his taste stretches beyond dad rock. From the early synth-pop of Christine and the Queens to fellow Irish performer Van Morrison, Murphy has littered his interviews and radio shows with wide-spanning music recommendations. We’ve collated a number of tracks he’s shared his love for throughout the years.
Murphy once awarded the title of his favourite band to Radiohead, naming ‘No Surprises’ as the song he wishes he’d written in an interview with NME. He states: “I think they’re the biggest band, who became the biggest band in the world without wanting to be the biggest band in the world. They’re probably my favourite band.”
Murphy also once noted his love for the contemporary Irish band Fontaines D.C. On one of his shows for the BBC, he stated, “I’ve been playing a lot of Irish music, but I am Irish, and there is a great explosion of new Irish music!” He names ‘Liberty Belle’ as one of his favourite tracks from their 2019 debut album Dogrel, but adds, “Every single tune, they’re relentlessly themselves.”
Murphy also shared his love for rapper Kendrick Lamar, noting that DAMN was the first album his 11-year-old son ever purchased. Murphy’s own was The Final Countdown by Europe: “I’m not ashamed of it; it’s a great riff. But Kendrick Lamar… Look, I think he tips it.”
Ranging from Beatles classics to contemporary rap and 2000s indie, check out our collated list of Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy’s favourite songs below.
Cillian Murphy’s favourite songs:
Christine and the Queens – ‘Tilted’ Elbow – ‘Fly Boy Blue / Lunette’ Europe – ‘The Final Countdown’ Fleetwood Mac – ‘Man of the World’ Fontaines D.C. – ‘Liberty Belle’ Jackson C. Frank – ‘Blues Run the Game’ John Lennon – ‘God’ Kendrick Lamar – ‘YAH’ Low – ‘Always Trying to Work It Out’ Marvin Pontiac – ‘Small Car’ Massive Attack – ‘Hymn of the Big Wheel’ Paul McCartney – ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ Radiohead – ‘Daydreaming’ Radiohead – ‘No Surprises’ Stevie Wonder – ‘Sugar’ The Band – ‘The Weight’ The Beatles – ‘Love Me Do’ The Kinks – ‘You Really Got Me’ The Strokes – ‘Someday’ The Velvet Underground – ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ Van Morrison – ‘Sweet Thing’'
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starryguykai · 4 months
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When I first started wanting to branch out with the games I played, I had no idea where to look. SO!
The following under the cut is a very long masterpost of indie games I recommend, sorted by category and alphabetical order, with short descriptions and links to their store pages.
Titles italicized are free, and I'll be updating this as I play more 👍
EXPLORATION
Babdi - Babdi is a beautiful and quiet brutalist city, with your only concrete goal in this game to get a train ticket to leave. This game takes about 1-2 hours to fully explore, and it has a lovely sense of place and scale.
Hollow Knight - A tiny bug knight explores a ruined kingdom, looking for answers. This game has had its praises sung a lot, but I cannot recommend it enough, with a melancholy atmosphere, very charming character design, and lovely art direction that balances skillfully between being cute and mournful.
Rain World - You are a slugcat, a creature in the middle of the foodchain, exploring a broken biomechanical ecosystem. You must learn about each microbiome in order to survive, and get enough food to hibernate before the deadly rain comes. This game has fantastic creature design and programming, my favorite background art direction of any game I've ever played, and insanely intricate lore. I highly recommend getting the Downpour DLC-- it not only fixes the personal gripes I have with the base game, but adds an immense amount to the story and world with five new campaigns.
Somnium - Your email got lost in transit, and you have to explore a early-2000s webscape to recover it! With art direction that captures the whimsy of the early internet, and very charming character design and writing, it takes about half an hour to play and I was smiling the whole time.
Outer Wilds - An open world game about space exploration, xenoarchaeology, and physics. This is my favorite game of all time, and in order for the game to work, you can't say much about it! It also has a horror dlc with its own story.
FPS
ULTRAKILL - Humanity is dead. Blood is fuel. Hell is full. Inspired by Dante's Inferno and Greek mythology, you play as a machine tearing its way through hell in PS1-like graphics. Its hard to oversell the strength of Ultrakill's concepts and how well they're executed-- this game is constantly saying "do you know what would be so cool" and is right every single time.
HORROR
Go to Bed - A very simple horror game about going to bed (it should take less than half an hour to play).
Signalis - A robot named Elster fights her way down through a sick facility to fulfill a mysterious promise. I can't say much about it without spoiling, but its prose, gritty combat, and art direction are phenomenal.
SOMA - Simon Jarrett goes to the doctor to get his brain scanned, and wakes up 100 years in the future, in an underwater facility full of robots with human consciousnesses. This game has a "safe mode" where the "monsters" don't kill you, which I recommend as its more accurate to the world, more convenient to play, and in the majority of cases, doesn't reduce the horror. Even playing in "safe mode" it was the most intense horror I've ever experienced by a landslide, and is very dear to me in its environments, writing, and concepts! I would highly recommend checking the content warnings, as well as playing when you're both emotionally and psychologically stable.
Subway Midnight - A young woman takes the subway, where many people have gone missing. What could go wrong? Really lovely combination of 2D and 3D that makes the most of its limitation of "walking through a subway car" to create a game that's charming, beautiful, and very unique.
PUZZLE
Freshly Frosted - A game about making donuts! You arrange donuts with a series of conveyer belts, the factory's work lining up with the music's beat. Its very relaxing, and the narration is very pleasant. A really great game to wind down with at the end of the day.
Manifold Garden - You solve puzzles by changing the gravity of an infinite world without fall damage. This game definitely has a learning curve while getting used to the physics rules, but the puzzles are clever and intuitive once it clicks! Its also very pretty.
Mini Motorways - You connect cars to their destinations through plotting roads, bridges, and motorways. Like Freshly Frosted, its a simple concept, but something nice to wind down with!
Smile for Me - A game where you communicate through nodding and shaking your head! You are the local florist's kid, staying in a "wellness resort", a bizarre cross between a hotel and psychiatric ward. Your mission? Make people happy! Really sweet with an unsettling undercurrent that gets addressed in an interesting way.
Vignettes - You rotate objects to make them transform, and explore different areas and themes as the forms fluctuate. Another simple, but beautiful game, with really fantastic art direction!
ROGUELIKES
Going Under - An unpaid intern battles her way through the dungeons of failed start-ups. A criminally underrated, super fun anti-capitalist satire with a huge variety of builds, that uses the "corporate art style" in a beautiful way!
TEXT-BASED
Citizen Sleeper - You are an escaped Sleeper, a cyborg with partial human memories, who fled to a massive space station. The company that made your body programmed for planned obsolescence: what will you make of the time you have? This is a constant game of juggling food, health, and money as you roleplay and explore, with beautiful character art and prose. It feels like a sad hug, housing a wide variety of very touching stories.
GUTLESS - A short story of an angry man traveling to the bottom of the ocean. Raw, harsh, and visceral. This story is NSFW.
In Other Waters - By the same devs of Citizen Sleeper, but an earlier game! You are the AI in a marine biologist's suit, and guide her as she navigates through the waters of an alien world. The only visuals you see are dots, walls, and elevation maps to mark your surroundings. If you're a fan of the deep sea or speculative biology, you'll love this game!
Please Tell Me You Love Me - Your old favorite online rpg game is shutting down, and you're having one last hurrah with your guild. Short, sweet, and will leave you with a smile.
The Ouroborous Incident - A notorious tech company releases a strange new product. An interesting short story with a fun conclusion, it dips in and out of sci-fi, comedy, and horror, while sharing information through different tabs of updating text threads, transcripts, and news reports.
UNSORTABLE
Inscryption - A grisly roguelike card game that takes place in an escape room, where you're trapped by a mysterious man that you can only see the eyes of. I recommend going in not knowing much, as this game has a lot of surprises. You play the story by default, but it also has an endless mode that is very fun!
What the Golf? - A very silly game about golf, made for people who hate golf. Takes the concept of "golf" and plays with it like silly putty, and has a ridiculous variety of mechanics.
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supernovafics · 1 year
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✧∘ଂ ࿐ ཾ 𝑳𝑬𝑻𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑺𝑬𝑽𝑬𝑵. ✭・.・✫・゜・。.
pairing: ex-bestfriend!steve x fem!reader
word count: 686 words
warnings: explicit language
series masterlist | last part — next part
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
❝ 𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖'𝒓𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒆. 𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒆'𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒆. ❞
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
Dear Steve,
It’s honestly hard to say for sure if I don’t have feelings for you anymore. The obvious answer should be no since we haven’t talked to each other in so long. But, full transparency, there was no moment where I realized that I no longer liked you in that way. Instead, the feelings just got buried deep down and pushed to the side because there was nowhere else for them to go.
I think it actually would be better if I didn’t like you anymore because all I want for us is to at least be friends again. I just wanna be able to talk to you again, about nothing but also everything, sit in your car again, watch a movie with you that you’d probably hate again.
Quite literally do anything with you again. And I especially don’t want to mess things up this time around. 
Anyway, let’s talk about the mundane shit I would be telling you, or probably would have already told you, if we were actually talking right now.
I definitely would have told you that I am still in California and I’m currently going to college here. 
Also, I’m a film major, which may come as a surprise, but also maybe not? My movie obsession was already pretty strong in Hawkins, and it only became so much more serious here, so in my mind, it was pretty inevitable. I am also (sadly) minoring in accounting to make my parents somewhat happy. 
I honestly don’t know exactly what I want to do in film just yet, but I’m working on a set right now for this indie movie, and that’s really cool. I’m only getting coffees and lunches for everyone and doing other busy work, but I still love the environment.
I also live with the most insane roommate in the world (in hindsight, I should have never taken her number off one of those boards where people offer their tutoring and dog-walking services). But, the apartment we have is really close to a beach so it makes the shitty roommate situation slightly okay. The beach honestly reminds me a lot of the one we went to that first summer. The boardwalk has the same energy and there’s a photo booth right outside a crappy arcade. But, the ocean doesn’t feel scary here. 
I remember that summer we both had been too nervous to get in the water. Even though we’d swim in your pool practically all of the time, there was just something so daunting about those waves.  
This beach is different, so much calmer, I think you’d like it just as much as I do. The first time I stepped foot in the sand there, I thought of you. 
It’s always the most random of things that remind me of you. And even the most mundane things too. Like, over a week ago I was walking to class and I saw some guy wearing those pair of Nikes that you used to wear religiously in middle school. And I softly laughed because I remembered how many times I had begged you to get rid of those sneakers because of how destroyed they were and because they smelled so bad. But, you would always tell me that you could never get rid of them because they were your “lucky pair,” I never understood what you meant by that, so I would always just roll my eyes at that response. Eventually, you grew out of them though, thank God. 
I was gonna ask if you still think about me sometimes, but I don’t know if I wanna hear your answer because it could so easily be no. 
That’s probably the worst part about writing these letters. I have no idea where your head’s at with everything that happened. 
Maybe you’ve already somehow gotten your own closure with everything, so everything I wrote is pointless to you. Or maybe what we were is so far in the past for you that none of this even matters to you anymore.
There are so many fucking possibilities. And that nerve-wracking thought makes me really not wanna send these. 
Sincerely,
Y/N
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
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