#but it's still a great resource for nerds like me who eat this stuff up like candy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

1kook · 4 years

Text

hulu & woohoo

summary: But there’s more important matters to attend to than Jungkook’s Jersey Shore boner. warnings: slight feelings of insecurity, smut; fingering, cunnilingus, cum eating, squirting, handjobs, unprotected, riding, slight praise kink misc: if you’re not a Jersey shore fan honestly GET OUT, mentions of capitalism😡, more kind/understanding kook, basically a “what are we?” fic but silly, irresponsible emailing habits, its so dumb just read wc: 6.3k

[ this is a sequel to netflix & chill !! ]

started off silly then I was like 😳what if we sprinkled in a dilemma™️😳 anyway here’s the kook i imagined for this fic <3

Contrary to popular belief, Jungkook does in fact have his own paid subscription to Netflix. He doesn’t ride on his family account anymore, nor does he swindle his friends into sharing their passwords ‘just once.’ Just like everything else about his mature persona, Jungkook is adamant on paying those ten and something dollars for the streaming platform.

However, his fall into capitalism doesn’t end there.

Among other things, Jungkook also pays for Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, HBO, as well as a couple indie stuff you’ve never heard of in all your years. He’s a bigger nerd than you originally thought, with an incessant need to watch every single piece of media available.

Frankly, you don’t see the need to own so many different streaming services, especially not when pirating websites exist and you could so easily watch Jersey Shore for free, if you’re not too concerned with infecting your laptop with every software virus known to humankind. Luckily for you, your app developer boo with his—admittedly tiny—knowledge in computers can iron out those issues for you.

It’s moments like these, Jungkook fiddling with the internal system settings of your laptop to the best of his abilities, that you find yourself grateful for having met Jungkook, and even if it’s been a little over two months now and he still hasn’t popped the question (“Will you be my girlfriend?”), you’d still kiss him silly.

He sighs for the umpteenth time, rubbing his eyes as he stares at the same system warning on the screen. “Babe, just pay the six bucks for Hulu and you can watch all the Jersey Shore episodes you want,” he says, leaning back in his chair as he stares at you from across the dining table.

You scoff, almost scandalized by his suggestion. “You think I have the resources to hand over six bucks every month?” You abandon your homework in front of you, the one you had so dutifully been working on before your computer was flooded with about a thousand Hot Moms in YOUR Area! notifications before abruptly shutting down. “Buddy, that's lunch at Starbucks.”

Jungkook clicks around a few more times, round glasses sliding down his nose which he will occasionally scrunch up to save from falling. “First of all, lunch at Starbucks sounds sad,” he retorts, and you kick his shin from beneath the table. He doesn’t even flinch, the damn muscle bunny, instead leveling you with an unimpressed glare. “Second of all, I told you I’d give you my passwords but you said—“

“No!” You exclaim.

Call it what you want, but that rose-tinted image of Jungkook being a saint in this world, too sweet and naive for his own good, never faded. Your brain saw it that night of your first date and ran with it, never mind the fact he was quite the devious scoundrel, gentlemanly perception be damned the way he’d tug at your skirts and your hair in public like you were on the playground, always teasing, always playing with you, so discreetly no one would ever see it coming from him, of all people. Your brain saw all that too, the little childish streak he’d get sometimes, but your heart stomped it out, wrapped up in the image of Jungkook being your golden boy, and you couldn’t possibly take advantage of such an angel’s kindness to mooch off his streaming services.

From across the table, Jungkook gives you a pointed look, as if he knows you’re trapped in that brain of yours again. Unlike you, Jungkook was easily able to pick apart your true personality, and the way the devil on your shoulder spoke more often than not. He knew you were prone to outrageous schemes and evil villain monologues, and he still kept you around. Let you linger around his home in his big shirts and eat his healthy breakfasts with him. Jungkook liked you, as silly and mean as you were, and he was very obvious about it.

“The password—“

“Is none of my business,” you halt him with a tone of finality in your voice, gesturing for him to slide the beat up laptop back over. Jungkook sighs, runs a hand over his face like you’ve worn him out, but relents.

Taking it with a triumphant grin, you settle back into your seat, nudge his foot with yours beneath the table. Jungkook nudges you back, the adorable fuzzy socks he was wearing making you giggle, a sound that finally brings a smile to his face. “Y’know…” he says, “if you’re gonna be the Disney villain you claim to be, you might as well just take all my passwords.”

Rolling your eyes, you focus your attention back on copying some notes for class, falling back into the rhythm of glancing at the screen and back at your notebook. “You’re cute,” you mindlessly hum, taking great pleasure in the rosy hue that rises to his cheeks, one he tries to hide by coughing into his elbow. You set your pencil down, watch him squirm under your gaze like he always does, blushy and shy like he hadn’t had you twisted like a pretzel beneath him an hour ago. “Don’t worry about it,” you tell him, reaching over to place your hand over his, where it’s idly tapping over some textbook he’s got out. Immediately, he turns it over, squeezes your palm in his. “I don’t mind getting thirty two viruses an hour.”

The reluctant worry in his gaze remains, sweet puppy eyes flickering over you as if trying to catch a hint of a lie. He was so adorable, you could kiss him silly. Finally, Jungkook gives in, though he does so with a lot of effort; letting you fool around on pirating websites truly was the bane of his existence. “Just bring it to me if it breaks down again, okay?” He settles, and you nod.

To your surprise, he brings your hand up and presses a kiss to the back of your knuckles, holds your gaze like he absolutely adores you.

He was so handsome, so caring, and so blatantly not yours.

—

“Not heading to your boyfriend's house today?” Doyeon asks the second she steps into your shared dorm, fighting with the boots on her feet. In the last two months of knowing Jungkook (everybody say thank you, Kim Namjoon), it’s become rare to see you home for more than two nights in a row. Jungkook was irresistible in more ways than you could count. If you weren’t falling into bed with him, you were smothering his cute face on the couch, or hovering behind him in the kitchen.

“Not my boyfriend,” you deny, huffy, and she knows how you feel about the subject, which is why she only prods more.

“Wow,” Doyeon drawls, glancing over your shoulder where you’ve got Jersey Shore playing on one half of the screen, an essay document on the other. “The man you see every other night, who looks and fucks like a god, who buys you a shit ton of presents, and treats you like you’re his world… is not your boyfriend?”

On screen, the toxic couple of the century is engaged in another screaming match, the reality tv show quickly spiraling as dramatic music takes over the speakers.

You scratch the back of your head. “Yeah. Well.”

Doyeon almost combusts at your response, flinging herself onto her twin bed in disgust. “He is a fool, a court jester if you will,” she seethes. “You're the hottest babe in a fifteen mile radius chasing after him and he still hasn’t asked you?”

Deciding you can’t comfortably watch the toxicity on screen with Doyeon talking so loudly, you slam down on the spacebar to pause the show. The fickity website, set out to ruin you since you first discovered it a few weeks ago, crashes. It takes your half-assed essay with it as the whole computer suddenly blacks out. You sigh.

“And on top of that,” she’s still going, “you’re hot and evil. Like bro. Come on.”

“Yes, I’m sure every man dreams of getting with an evil seductress,” you sarcastically reply, reaching for your phone to text Jungkook for help, when you suddenly remember why exactly you’re not with him right now. He’d gone to Busan to visit his family this weekend, a quick trip, he’d told you with his tongue down your throat. You shiver at the memory.

You still really want to watch Jersey Shore, though. Almost desperately. It’d been a long time since you watched it, and you honestly forgot the pivotal role that and a bunch of other reality shows had played in shaping you into the conniving woman you were today.

Doyeon seems about done with her tirade against Jeon Jungkook, dramatically storming into the en-suite bathroom you share with your neighbors.

Tapping your phone against your lip, you carefully consider your options. You could just boot your laptop back up, pray for the best and move on. But the 240p episodes were doing a number on your eyes, and for a moment you considered handing over those six bucks to pay for a Hulu membership.

It’s short-lived, and eventually you settle on calling Jungkook.

He answers on the fourth ring, and wherever he is is insanely loud. There’s voices shouting, lots of bustling, until eventually a door closes and Jungkook’s silky voice oozes through the speaker. “Baby? What’s up?”

“Hi,” you respond, feel something disgustingly sweet settle in your chest. “Is this a bad time?” You ask tentatively.

Jungkook laughs, low and raspy. “No,” he tells you, and you hear the smile in his voice. “Never a bad time for you.”

You could lunge through the screen right now, rain kisses down on his face until he’s giggling, telling you it’s too much. The feeling in your chest tightens, and you almost blurt out something embarrassingly cheesy, but a voice in the background calls for him, and Jungkook’s voice responds, “In a sec, mom. I’m talking to a friend right now.”

The glass roof shatters.

Even though you’d just told Doyeon you two weren’t a thing, despite all the coupley things you did, something about Jungkook telling his mom you’re just a friend isn't right. You frown, listen as his mother, a voice just as delicate as his, asks him to grab something from inside. With each second that ticks by, the discomfort you feel grows tenfold, until you’re barely holding yourself together.

Eventually, Jungkook returns. “So what’s up?” He asks again, and you remember what you initially called for. Putting on your big girl pants, you brush your uncalled for insecurities to the side, making sure he can’t detect anything in your tone.

“Your Hulu password. Can I have it?” You say, realize how robotical your voice sounds and belatedly throw in a, “please.”

Jungkook laughs, loud and boyish. The sound almost makes you melt, makes you fall for him even more. The niggling doubt in the back of your head still rings, but it’s temporarily washed away by the man on the phone. “Finally giving in?” He chuckles, doesn’t give you time to respond. “Sure, babe. I’ll text you the login stuff.” You hum, twirl your pencil idly as Jungkook announces he has to go, something about his family waiting on him. You bid him adieu, send him a halfhearted kiss over the phone, and only hope he feels half as content as you do when he does the same for you.

You don’t want to be dramatic about it. In your heart of hearts, you know Jungkook is just more reserved when it comes to dating. He wants to be one hundred percent sure your heart is in the same game as his, tied to the same rules, and putting in the same effort. But there’s a seed of insecurity that plants itself in the back of your head, tells you the reason Jungkook hasn’t asked you out is simply because you’re not good enough.

Jungkook was as rich as they come—not in money, but in personality. (Well, with the way he was advancing through his career, you get the sense he’ll be rich rich in the next few years too.) He had a huge heart, so caring and supportive of those around him, and an even bigger moral compass—hence the ridiculous amounts of streaming services he paid for—and you strongly believed no one was worthy of standing beside someone as wonderful as him.

Sadly, that meant you too.

Jungkook was your dream lover, and with every passing day, you were beginning to think you weren’t his. It had been two months since your first date, and realistically speaking, you know it’s not weird for people to casually date for such a time. It hadn’t been that long, truthfully, but the way you and Jungkook had clicked made it seem so.

He treated you like a queen, pleased your heart and body like no other. None of what Doyeon said earlier was a fib—he picked you up from school in that classy Benz, let you stay the night and sleep in his clothes, ate you out in the morning like you were his breakfast. You acted like you were in a relationship, but what exactly were the two of you?

Were Jungkook’s feelings even at the same level as yours?

Some days, you couldn’t fathom the idea of being so far away from him, texting him incessantly to feel a semblance of his presence. There was always a metaphorical elephant sitting on your chest, the weight of your unlabeled relationship, your insecurities, waiting for him to finally cut you off, decide you’re not what he wants. You wonder sometimes if he sees you out of convenience, but you always remind yourself Jungkook was too emotional and soft to drag someone around like that. (Or was he?)

Realizing how deep you’ve fallen into your spiraling pit of uncertainty, you shake yourself of those thoughts, mindlessly typing in the Hulu login credentials Jungkook texts you.

—

You’re in the student center when Jungkook comes home, laptop and books spread out over a circle table to stop anyone else from coming up to you. You’ve got your headphones in, the background sounds of late 2000’s club music from a Jersey Shore episode drifting through your ears.

A hand suddenly grabs onto your shoulder, and you send nearly half the table’s contents onto the floor when you screech, leg blindly kicking the table. “Woah, woah,” Jungkook calms, pulling out an earbud for you, and the sight of his face makes you relax again, before you’re striking his chest.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” you warn, shooting daggers at him as he pulls a chair close to you, plopping down beside you. Jungkook laughs, kisses your temple.

“You doing okay, beautiful?” He inquires, and your heartbeat, which had only just begun to settle from your fright, lurches at the hooded gaze he sends you.

You nod, unconsciously lean closer to him. Jungkook smiles, cheeks pulled tight when you plant a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Glad to hear it,” he says, wrapping an arm around your shoulders to keep you close.

You never thought you’d be one of those people. Y’know, the couple shoving PDA down everyone’s throats in a very crowded place. But you can’t help it with Jungkook, gaze honed in on the mole beneath his lip as he recounts his trip to his family’s place. His hair is fluffy again, parted a little to the side to show his forehead. He’s got that big dark hoodie on, the one you love. Your love-addled brain thinks, I could give you a family, but you quickly shut that thought down.

There was no need to think as much for a man who wasn’t even your boyfriend.

Before you can spiral, there’s a set of fingers brushing over your neck, almost casually. You return your attention to Jungkook, watch him leisurely gaze over the bustling students around you. “Missed you,” he says quietly, like he doesn’t want anyone to hear. Hell, if your eyes hadn’t been trained on his face, you don’t think you would’ve.

Finally, he glances back at you. He says nothing, his eyes dipping down to your mouth. He leans forward, presses a smooch to your lips, only to smile at you afterward. “Come over?”

The difference between you and Jungkook is that you were very obviously, outwardly evil. You were not embarrassed to admit you were scheming, or that you had ulterior motives behind doing something. You used what you had to your advantage, mastered all types of expressions to get what you wanted.

Jungkook, on the other hand, was a subtle schemer. In fact, he was so goddamn subtle, you doubt he even knew he was a schemer.

But he definitely was one, and your experiences with him were enough to convince you so. There were times he’d stare at you longingly, like a puppy, until you’d do something for him. Times he’d use his demure face to lure you into going to the hardware store for him, into watching some boring documentary with him. Times, like now, where his voice was a little too smooth and low to be considered his normal pitch, clouded gaze sweeping over your features until you understood what he meant by come over.

Numbly, you nod, watch the quirk of his lips as he kisses you once more before gathering your things for you.

The car ride passes by in a flash, Jungkook’s hand on your knee, your head in the clouds. You imagine how easy it would be to just lean over right here, tug him out of his sweats and get that super suck 5000 on him. But Jungkook’s shy, the devil on your shoulder croons, he’d like it better in the backseat, where no one can see.

Your bag hasn’t even touched the floor yet when he pushes you against the door of his house, shoes and coats half off as he envelopes your lips with his.

His hands are warm, cupping your neck to guide you through the kiss, blindly pulling you down the hall. You feel him falter by the stairs, torn between just throwing you on the couch and ravishing you there or making the trip upstairs to the comfort of his bed. You reach up, run your fingers through his hair. “Wherever you want, baby,” you reassure him, and become consumed with glee when his hands grab into the backs of your thighs, hitch you into his arms as he rushes the two of you up the stairs.

The bed is as fluffy as you remember it, and you bounce up towards the pillows after he drops you on the end. He tugs his shirt over his head, chocolate strands coming out a mess afterwards, before crawling up your body. Jungkook’s hands are incessant, grabbing onto every inch of you he possibly can. He kisses up your tummy, pushing your shirt up as he goes, hikes it over the swell of your breasts to gently fondle them in his palms.

When he’s just about suffocated himself between them, he pops back out, catches your gaze with a twinkle in his. “Hi,” you squeak, and Jungkook grins, leaning up to kiss you.

“Hi, pretty girl,” he returns, let’s your tongue slide into his mouth, sucks on the appendage teasingly. You whimper, and Jungkook releases. “You miss me?” He asks, and if you hadn’t been well-versed in the art of Jungkook’s sexy talk, you wouldn’t have noticed the tingle of nervousness that curls around the question.

You placate him, “always.”

It’s all Jungkook needs as he wiggles you out of your clothes, shucks them off somewhere to the side. His hands trail over your body, massage your breasts and pinch the nipples. You sigh, melt into the sheets as he runs his palms over you. He rolls you over, pulls your hips up and carefully pushes your face into the mattress, pushing your hair to the side to peck your neck when he leans over.

“So soft for me, sweetheart,” he purrs, hands slithering around your waist, down your abdomen until the tip of his pointer finger is idly swirling over your clit.

You whine, clutch the comforter beneath you at the touch. “Oh, fuck,” you groan, push your hips back against him. He’s still got his sweats on, and you want desperately to turn around and rip them off of him, feel the press of his cock against your ass.

As if sensing your urgency, Jungkook calms you with kisses trailing over your spine, hot breath fanning over your neck. His fingers slow, just barely grazing over your clit. “Did you touch yourself while I was gone?” He asks, and you struggle to choke out a response when he presses his finger down against you.

“No,” you eventually gasp, jolt when his hand reaches down, glides through the swollen folds of your cunt.

As if content with your response, Jungkook lets his fingers caress you for a few beats, laps against the side of your neck as you whimper, beg him to continue. When he does, it’s with no ounce of his usual gentle attitude, two fingers shoving forcefully past the tight clench of your pussy lips, deep into your cunt. You shudder, gasping into the sheets.

“Good girl,” Jungkook praises, flutters a kiss right below your ear. Your neurons are working overtime, unsure of what to do as he explores your cunt, fingers dragging against your walls. You want to close your eyes, bask in his touches, but every brush of his fingers has them rolling back, fluttering open. “This pussy is mine, isn’t it?”

His fingers curl, briefly brushing over your soft spot. But it’s enough to make you cry out, pant against the sheets. “Yours,” you choke, push back against him like he’ll do it again.

A thumb circles your clit, and the tight feeling in your belly snaps, has you crying out his name as your first orgasm in a few days washes over you. “Jungkook,” you whimper, nearly sob when his hands pull away, letting you flop down onto the mattress in a boneless heap. Your thighs feel sticky, and you watch blearily as Jungkook hovers behind you.

“So quickly?” He chuckles, turning you back over. He spreads your legs, exposing your pussy to the cool air of the room, and you shiver. A lone finger drags over your cunt, collecting the glossy substance on the tip, before Jungkook is sucking it into his mouth.

He had an affinity for this kind of stuff, you’ve learned. Like he genuinely thought your cum was the most delicious thing in the entire world. That being said, you’re not surprised when he ducks down, pushes your legs to your chest as he begins devouring your pussy.

“Slow down,” you gasp, hand curling in his hair as he spares you not, sensitivity be damned. He was gonna lick you clean. He groans, tongue shoved into your cunt, cute nose brushing against your clit. “Kook,” you warn, though it’s more of a shuddered cry. “I-I’ll come again.”

He pulls off with a wet smack, licks over his tongue as he narrows you with a daring glare. Gone was your sweet Jungkook, replaced with this cum-eating heathen who only purrs, “in my mouth” at your warning.

You scream when the second orgasm hits you, pushing his face against your cunt as his tongue continues, lapping at your folds and your hole as a gush of wetness spurts out of you. For a second, your vision pales, soundless cries caught in your throat as you come all over his face. When you touch down on earth again, your body feels featherlight.

Jungkook is watching you from between your thighs, his face, hair, and chest glistening. “Oh fuck,” he gasps, shit-eating grin slowly consuming his features. “Did you just.”

You groan, cover your face with your palms as Jungkook settles over you, beaming excitedly at your newest ability. “No,” you whine, pushing him away from where he’s basically glued to your cheek. “That’s so weird.”

He laughs, cute and airy. “Fuck, sweetheart, you squirted all over me,” he sighs, cuddles against you, and you wrap your arms around him only to hide your face in his shoulder, also glistening with your pleasure. He shifts closer, and the hard press of his cock rubs along the inside of your thigh.

“Can we take a break?” You murmur quietly, hesitantly. “I can’t feel my legs.” Jungkook nods, presses a kiss to your temple as he gets off the bed, tossing his t-shirt over to you. He stumbles towards the en-suite, comes back with a dry face and chest; his hair is still damp. He tugs the sheets out from under you, cuddles close. He’s got the two of you wrapped up in no time, your head cradled against his shoulder as he reaches out blindly for the tablet he keeps on the side of his bed, the Hulu app already open.

“Any requests?” He hums, scrolling through the multitude of movies and shows. You wiggle closer, stop his finger when he returns to the home page, and Jersey Shore is the first thing to appear. “You’re kidding.”

“It’s a good show!” You defend, click on it before he can argue. You press closer, throw a leg over his waist where you can feel his still rock hard member hiding beneath his sweats. Poor guy, you think, he must be suffering. But you have to rest for a moment if you wanna ride the shit out of him and knock him breathless like you’d planned.

Jungkook doesn’t comment on the erection he’s sporting, instead choosing to criticize everything wrong with Jersey Shore. You’re not surprised. He’s an avid film nerd, obsessed with ‘real’ storylines, not whatever reality tv shows were.

You’ve seen this episode about a hundred times, so you don’t really mind that he completely ruins it for you with his nitpicking. It’s cute, listening to him ramble about television integrity while you listen to the subtle thudding of his heart beneath your ear.

He’s on his fifth slandering of DJ Pauly D when you decide you’ve had enough, muscles in your legs feeling rejuvenated as you wiggle into his lap, toss the tablet off to the side as you straddle him. “That show makes you hard?” You tease, let your sensitive folds settle over the bulge in his pants.

Jungkook combusts, cheeks flushing at your jab. “No,” he huffs, “my pretty girlfriend’s boobs pressed up against me does.”

You short circuit.

“Huh?” You blurt dumbly. Jungkook rolls his eyes, too concerned with guiding your hips over his crotch to realize you’re having a complete meltdown in your head. An airy moan leaves his mouth, head lolling back against the pillows, when he moves you just right, grinds against you perfectly. But there’s more important matters to attend to than Jungkook’s Jersey Shore boner. “Kook,” you say, cup his face in your palms to force him to look you in the eye.

Jungkook huffs, pointedly looking down at where you sit on him, “babe, gonna need you to—“

“What did you say?” You interrogate, press your foreheads together until he has no choice but to look at you.

Annoyed with your act, he groans. “Babe, your hips,” he urges, almost desperately.

“No,” you retort, “not until you say it again.”

“Say what again?” He cries, lips twitching in irritation, and you’re about two seconds from behind shoved into the mattress, pounded into from behind like he’d done the last time you teased him a little too much.

“That I’m your girlfriend!” You exclaim, heart hammering in your ears.

Jungkook seems to finally halt at that. “Oh,” he responds, leaning back to scan over your expression. “You are?” He says, unsure of what point you’re trying to make.

Your brain fizzes at the news. “Since when?” You cry, suddenly feeling dumb for all the time you spent moping over this perfect boy you thought didn’t want you. “You never asked!”

Jungkook levels you with an unimpressed stare, reaches over for the iPad you tossed to the side, some dramatic fight scene on a boardwalk taking place on screen. You wanna scream. Why is he so concerned with Jersey Shore now of all times?

Before you can rain down your displeasure on him, he’s turning it around and showing you a bookmarked email.

It’s from you, apparently, sent a few weeks back at exactly two in the morning. You glance at the date received. It’s from Doyeon’s half birthday, when the two of you had drunk yourselves silly on wine. The title is some mix of dashes and exclamation points, but that’s irrelevant when the contents of the email come to view, some stupid slur of beeee myyy boyfrienderdd????? ;))((;;; that has your jaw dropping in mortification.

You glance back at Jungkook, who seems just as confused as you. “What the hell?” You shriek, snatch the tablet from his hand to see that not only was it a single email, but a thread of emails all asking the same question—there’s even a three stanza sonnet detailing your love for the mole on the side of his neck. You could die. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?! I was so drunk— how could you even take me seriously?”

Jungkook shrugs, almost amused now as he watches you scroll through the twenty emails you sent him. “The next day you told me you really liked me over lunch, so I didn’t mind. Besides, drunk words are sober thoughts, y’know.”

You stare in disbelief. “You told your mom I was your friend,” you whisper.

The blood rises to his cheeks quickly. “Babe,” he sputters. “I’m not exactly introducing her to every girl I date after three weeks.”

It makes sense, and you hate how much it does so. Pursing your lips, you look away, focus on the bedside table and hope he doesn’t see the tears that threaten to spew out of your eyes. He does, he always does. “Hey, what’s wrong?” He hums, sits up to pull you into his arms. One hand brushes over the back of your head, gently. Softly. “Did that upset you?”

You shake your head no, can’t help the ugly Kim Kardashian sob that rips itself from your throat. “I thought you didn’t like me,” you sniffle, covering your face with the iPad when he tries to duck closer and get a look at you. “Because it’s been two months.”

Jungkook shushes you, hugs you close to his chest as you cry like a baby over some apparently unjustifiable doubts. “That big brain of yours,” he sighs, kisses the frown of your head. “Too busy being evil to be logical.” You whine in protest, and Jungkook chuckles, carefully laying back with you clinging to his chest.

He lets you cry it out, palms rubbing over your back, listens to the annoying Jersey Shore opening song playing when the episode ends. When you’re done, you sit up, try to pretend your eyes aren’t swollen and puffy. Jungkook smiles. “All good?”

You might love him.

“I’m gonna ride you,” you announce, and he chokes in surprise, and before he can try to convince you it’s okay, you’re wrestling his sweats and boxers off, taking his half hard cock into your hand. Jungkook flounders, tries to calm you down, but you’re on a mission, working your hand over him until he’s fattening in your hold, melting into the pillows.

“Baby,” he grunts, rolling his hips into your palm. You lean over, pucker your lips and let a thick drop of saliva fall onto the tip of his cock. It trickles over your fingers, makes it easier to run your hands over him. Jungkook groans, reaches down to cup his hand over yours, urging you to squeeze tighter.

When he’s finally as hard as you want him, tip engorged and angry, you sit up, place your palms on his chest as you scoot over him. Jungkook watches you with dark eyes, skin flushed as you line him up. His hands reach for your hips to steady you, tiny gasps falling from his lips at the first prod against your folds. You’re wet from watching him squirm beneath you, from feeling the heavy weight of his cock in your hand, and you hope he feels how much he excites you.

“That’s it,” he croons as you slowly sink down on him, whimpers catching in your throat from the stretch. “That’s my girl.”

Jungkook is purposeful with his words, smiles at you when the muscles in your thighs jolt at the term. When you’re seated to the hilt, folds brushing against his pelvis, Jungkook ruts experimentally. “Fuck,” he chokes breathlessly.

You let your body adjust, spine tingling with every subtle shift from the man beneath you, still so sensitive from your two orgasms from before. Jungkook waits, even though you know all he wants to do right now is fuck up into you like a madman.

When you’re relaxed enough, you begin to move, pushing yourself on your knees slowly, hissing at the drag of his cock against your folds. “F-Fuck,” you whimper, fingernails scratching against where you’ve got them on his chest still. Jungkook grips your hips tightly, and you unconsciously reach for his forearms to steady yourself instead.

“There you go,” he purrs as you slowly pick up the pace, cock sliding inside of you rougher, faster. You know it’s mostly him, muscles in his arms flexing as he moves you up and down, but you don’t care—it feels so good, the upward curve of his cock brushing against your soft spot with each drop of your hips.

He holds you down on one thrust, grinds you over his cock until your clit is rubbing against him roughly, and you cry out his name. You want to kiss him, so very badly, but your position makes it hard. Besides, the sweat beginning to pool in the deep of his collarbones hinted at his oncoming orgasm.

Still, you can’t help the way your eyes instinctively go to trace over his mouth, pouty lips pushed out even more in exertion, teeth grinding together every time your pussy swallows him anew. “Kook,” you mewl, hips bucking forward.

He hums, plants his feet firmly on the mattress as he begins fucking into you. “What is it?” He grunts, pistons into your dripping cunt as you whimper, pleasure crawling up and down your spine. “My pretty girl needs something?”

You wail, nod your head as he continues fucking, ramming his cock into your quivering hole, precum dripping over him. “Yours,” you gasp, mind stuck on what he’d said earlier. “‘M all yours,” you sob, body finally giving out, and you barely catch yourself from falling into him with a palm pressed flatly against his chest.

Jungkook smirks, bucks into you brutally, like he wants you to fall into a boneless heap on top of him. “Yeah, you are,” he groans, as you finally give in, lips brushing against his ear when you flop down on him. “My pretty girl,” he huffs, and you nod, muscles pulled taut as your orgasm begins looming over you. “So cute and mean,” he rambles, lips pressed to your temple. His hips are beginning to lose their rhythm, thrusts growing stilted as he chases his high. “But you know what?” He murmurs, and you whimper. “I like her just like that.”

If his words don’t knock the air out of your lungs, your orgasm surely does. It makes you shudder, the way his hands run over your body, cock ruts into your heat, and you almost cry when the pleasure gets a hold of you. Your muscles tighten, and then loosen, melting into his chest. You’re trembling in his arms, like a leaf holding onto a branch for dear life, choked gasps of his name muffled against his neck.

Jungkook pistons into you, rounds the final corner in his race to orgasm, and eventually spurts his hot cum into you, coats your walls as another reminder that you’re his. He’s a silent orgasmer, sounds catching in his throat as his body twitches beneath you, silent even afterwards as he regains his senses.

A few moments later, you’re shifting out of his hold, pushing yourself onto your elbows to glance down at him. Jungkook’s eyes are shut, but, as if sensing you’re looking at him, he flutters them open, chocolate irises softening at the sight of you.

“Holy shit,” he groans, rolls you off of him carefully. His hand brushes over your thigh, like he’s contemplating licking you clean again, but you stop him with a pointed raise of your brows. “Fine. Pass me the tablet.”

You do, and it’s almost unnerving how easily the two of you slip back into comfort, Jungkook changing into some shorts and handing you your discarded panties, before climbing into bed to watch Jersey Shore. You’ve missed about an entire hour-long episode, so you end up rewinding until the point you last saw.

“You and your Netflix and chilling,” Jungkook snorts, head nestled against your breasts. You roll your eyes.

“This is Hulu,” you point out.

“Oh yeah,” he hums, snuggles closer. His body feels so nice and warm over yours, hands wrapped around you like a lifeline. You end up positioning the tablet off by your hip, supported by a pillow so the two of you can watch properly.

You’re still processing your new title, your new boyfriend, when he perks his head up suddenly, solemn gaze catching yours.

“Hulu and Woohoo,” he says, ever so seriously, and you understand why Doyeon thinks he’s a fool.

[ part three ; imax & climax ]

#goldenclosetnet #ksmutclub #networkbangtan #jungkook smut #jeon jungkook smut #jjk smut #jungkook fic #jeon jungkook fic #mine

3K notes · View notes

justheretobreakthings · 4 years

Text

Kings Over Aces - Chapter 7

(Previous Chapter) (Next Chapter)

Word Count: 4,445 (Total Word Count: 26,986) Read on AO3 Fancy a cup o’ joe?

Story Summary:

The Voltron Coalition has an alliance in the works with the resource-rich planet of Yuipra, and it’s the paladins’ job to keep on the king’s good side while the deal is made. That shouldn’t shouldn’t be too great a challenge; after all, they’ve courted plenty of planets before for the sake of alliances.

Unfortunately, things are made much more complicated when the king takes a special interest in Keith.

Chapter content warning for discussion of sexual assault. Fic content warning for attempted rape.

Time passed in a sludge, hiding in the silence of his bedroom and switching between sitting huddled on his bed and pacing the length of his room. He had gotten dressed in his regular day clothes right after he’d made it to his room, after triple-checking that the door was securely locked so no one could burst in on him. It felt good to have his gloves and jacket on again, and focusing on the feel of their fabric against his skin almost blocked out the lingering sensation of Olren’s fingers brushing along his torso or intertwined in Keith’s own, almost made his body feel like his own again.

Almost.

Somehow he’d managed to fall asleep at some point, despite his jacket and boots remaining on and him not daring to get under his bedcovers, and it wasn’t all that different from being awake, since the visions of his evening with Olren and where else it could have gone assaulted him relentlessly regardless of whether he was awake or sleeping. Still, it was probably a good thing that he was woken by a knock at his door.

He startled awake, fishing instinctively for his knife under the pillow before Coran’s voice joined the knocking. “Number Four? Are you all right in there?”

Keith let his grip on the knife loosen and took a breath, trying to calm his racing heart. He wasn’t sure if its elevated rate was due to him being startled or left over from his dreaming. “Number Four? Keith?”

“Yeah,” Keith croaked out.

The knocking stopped. “We’ve made breakfast. Are you up for joining us? We, ah - we’ve noticed, you’ve been in there a while, without eating…”

Keith grimaced. “Um… no, thank you, Coran.”

“Right. Ah, I understand.” Coran cleared his throat. “Well, whenever you’re ready. Let us know if you need anything, anything at all, okay?”

There was silence at the door, probably Coran waiting for a response, and when he didn’t get one, he audibly sighed, and footsteps retreated down the hall as he left. Keith waited a few ticks after they were out of earshot before he got up and resumed yesterday’s pacing.

He wasn’t keeping track of the time passing, so it was hard to say how long it was before he was greeted by another knock at the door, accompanied by Hunk timidly trying to tempt him out for a snack. Again Keith declined. When Shiro came knocking later, Keith couldn’t even bring himself to reply aloud, and he waited silently on his bed until Shiro gave up and let him be.

They seemed to be taking it in turns to check in on him, and when Pidge came next, she wasn’t so easily deterred. Keith jumped at the sound of her knocks, which sounded like Pidge was throwing her entire weight into, and she half-yelled through the door. “Keith!” she said. “Keith, this isn’t healthy, okay? You have to eat, you have to - have to do something! Come on, please, we’re worried about you.”

Keith remained silent where he was, huddled on the bed, legs throbbing from all the pacing he’d done with no food to energize them.

“Keith?” Pidge called again. When Keith still didn’t reply, she let out a frustrated breath. “Keith, if you don’t respond, I’m coming in there. I have to make sure you’re okay.” True to her word, a couple of soft beeps followed, sounds that Keith recognized as coming from a comms tablet. She was probably hacking into the lock on the door. “If you’re okay and you really don’t want me coming in, say something.”

Keith opened his mouth, ready to speak up, to tell her to go away, but no sound came out. On some level, he knew that what he was doing, isolating himself in his room and not moving from his bed and wallowing in thoughts of what had happened, wasn’t good for him. And he knew that he would have to face the others eventually, to talk things out, but he didn’t know if he was ready. He didn’t know that he ever would be.

It seemed, though, that it was happening, ready or not, and he let it. He sat still as Pidge got the door unlocked and it slid open with its familiar electronic hiss, and he waited for her to make the first move. It took a moment - Pidge didn’t seem to have had much of a plan beyond getting his door open, seeing how long she spent hovering in the doorway, tablet gripped tightly in her hands and eyes darting around Keith’s room. Probably looking for some indication of what he’d been doing all this time shut in here by himself.

Eventually, she took a deep breath and asked, “Is it okay if I sit down?” She gestured toward the foot of his bed.

After a few seconds, Keith silently nodded, pulling his feet closer toward himself and wrapping his arms around his knees. The mattress sank a little as Pidge took a seat, tucking the tablet into her sweatshirt’s pocket, and Keith kept his gaze down, not wanting to meet her eyes despite her intense gaze obviously wanting him to look up.

When it became clear that he wasn’t going to, Pidge cleared her throat. “Keith, I, um - ” she said. “I wanted to, uh - to say that - well, we all want to say sorry. About what happened. What we talked you into doing. It was - it was fucked up, and it was so fucking obvious that you didn’t want to and - and - and we could’ve been looking for alliances with other planets, so that excuse, that we needed it, it - it didn’t - it didn’t justify, um… just, I can’t even begin to - ”

“Forget it,” Keith mumbled, eyes still on his knees. “It’s over. You weren’t the one pushing for it. Wasn’t your idea.” He sighed, turning his head to rest his cheek on his knee. “Wasn’t your fault.”

“Okay, fine, I didn’t force you. But I didn’t stop it either. I - I didn’t want to - I mean, like, Shiro and Allura were all for it, and I was thinking that, like, if they wanted you to do it, then I couldn’t exactly shout them down, but - but - God, Keith, that was so stupid of me. I should’ve - I should’ve - ”

Her voice broke, and the rest of the sentence was cut off by her hitched breath. Finally Keith lifted his head to look at her, and was surprised by the sight. Pidge had removed her glasses, and was scrubbing at her eyes, her cheeks and nose a bold pink.

“Pidge?” Keith said. “Are, um - are you - ?”

“Oh, God, Keith, don’t do that!” Pidge said, waving a hand at him. “Don’t be asking me if I’m okay! I’m not the one who just - who had - who went through what you did! You’re the one we’re worried about! Trust me, having to watch it was bad, yeah, but being in your shoes… I can’t even…”

She took a deep breath and lowered her head, moving her glasses down to wipe at the lenses with the hem of her shirt. “You know, back in middle school, there were some kids who were kinda - well, they were assholes. Had a habit of picking on me, and anyone else they considered ‘weird’. And they liked to dare each other to do things, you know, stupid things that they could film and thought were funny. And one time, apparently one of the guys had been dared to kiss me. They didn’t know I was aroace, heck, I didn’t know it at the time either, it wasn’t about that, it was just like, ‘haha, won’t it be so funny and embarrassing to have to kiss the freaky nerd girl, isn’t that a riot’.

“So, I’m walking in the hall during passing period, minding my own damn business, and all of a sudden I’m grabbed by the arm, and this fucker is spinning me around and plants one on me. Tongue and all. Only took a couple seconds, I was just too stunned to do anything but stand there. And when he’s done he runs off to his buddies, laughing his ass off, and I just - I didn’t even know what to do. I’m standing there shaking and confused and people are staring, and if I could go back in time and do things over, I would have chased that guy down and knocked his teeth out. But I didn’t. I was, I dunno, in a bit of a stupor, I guess. I went to the nurse and told her I felt sick, which, you know, was true. And she let me go home early.

“And that was… God, even now, all this time after it feels… icky, just thinking about it. And I can’t even - I can’t even imagine, how it felt, for you, after, um, after what - what that guy…” She took another deep breath. “Look, I don’t know where on the spectrum you are when it comes to romance and stuff, like, in terms of favorable and neutral and repulsed and all, but if it were me… Like, um, there was a point in that garden of his where we couldn’t see what was happening, because your camera was pressed up too close to Olren’s chest, but we could still hear, through the mic, and - and even just watching from the Castle, I was getting queasy, got that same feeling in my stomach that I did back then. I should’ve pulled the plug on it right then and there. I should’ve told the others, that’s it, we’re going in there and stopping it. But…”

“Pidge,” Keith said, the word coming out in a dry crackle. “It’s not… I mean, he didn’t even, um - he didn’t manage to - ”

“So what?!” Pidge snapped. “Yeah, he didn’t manage to do the absolute worst, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t do plenty else to you! And don’t try to claim it was any less fucked up than it really was, because you wouldn’t be hiding out in your room like this if everything else he did wasn’t bad too.” With a sigh she set her glasses down on the bed and leaned up against the wall, head tilted toward the ceiling. “Lance and Shiro told us how they found you. How close it got. And Allura and Coran - they turned the camera off, but apparently they still could hear everything. Allura was looking like she was gonna throw up when Hunk and I got back. Just being witnesses to that shit was awful, so to actually have it happen to you… however bad we’re feeling, it’s nowhere close to you. And it’s our fault, for pushing this, for not stopping it. I should have stopped it, fuck, if anyone knows how weird this would have been for you, it’s me. I should’ve - I - ”

“Hey.” Tentatively Keith uncurled a little to reach out a shaking hand toward Pidge. But she was sitting too far from him to reach her, and he couldn’t bring himself to uncurl any further, not right now, so he let his hand drop onto the bedspread as he gulped down the lump in his throat. “Don’t - don’t do that. Don’t start beating yourself up over this. I mean… you… you’re the one who suggested the cameras.” His eyes widened, the realization hitting him even as he said the words. “God, if you hadn’t, then…”

“We wouldn’t have been there to stop it,” Pidge whispered. She let out a strangled sound and brought her hands to her mouth, eyes watering anew. “Holy shit, Keith. This was way too close. Shit, Keith.”

“I know.”

Pidge shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “You know, the others all want to apologize too. It’s why we were all there waiting when you got out of the pod. Well, that and just, you know, making sure you’re okay. Physically. But I - I don’t think it’s possible. To say sorry enough. To be apologetic enough to make it okay.”

Keith winced. “It’s… it isn’t their - ”

“I know, I know, wasn’t our fault. It was that fuckface king’s doing, I know. Not ours. But we all still let it happen. And, well, sure that king was a bastard, and none of us should’ve trusted him. But the rest of us… we’re your teammates. Shiro and Allura, they’re our leaders. You should have been able to trust us.”

Keith was silent, unsure what he could say to that. It wasn’t as if any of them were flawless. Hell, he had made plenty of his own bad calls as the Black Paladin. They had all been thrust against their will into an absolute hell of a situation, unprepared to be soldiers and diplomats and intergalactic symbols of hope. Even Allura had been raised in peacetime, and hadn’t expected to take the throne so suddenly or lead Voltron in Alfor’s stead.

They were all still learning, finding their footing, and they’d come a long way, but… it suddenly seemed almost arrogant, to think that they had come far enough to be making the calls for things like this. And trusting his team’s ability to do so had nearly destroyed him.

“Keith?” Pidge said softly. “You still with me?”

“Yeah,” Keith said. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, sorry, just - just thinking.”

“Oh.”

“I think… I think I need a break.”

Pidge paused, brows wrinkling. “A break… from, um, from being Black Paladin?”

“... I don’t know.”

“Hm.” She pursed her lips.

“It’s not, um, it’s not that I don’t - ”

“You don’t need to explain. I get it.” She sniffed once more and swiped her sleeve across her nose. “Hey, so, uh, how are you - how are you feeling right now about, uh, about being touched?”

“Being touched?” Keith repeated.

“Not - not that way, not like - I meant, like, would you be okay if, say… I hugged you right now?”

“Oh. Um, you can hug me, if you - ”

He didn’t even have a chance to finish his sentence before Pidge was diving across the bed, wrapping Keith in a tight hug and burying her face into the fabric of his jacket. Keith hesitantly returned the hug, resting his face on her shaking shoulder, and as Pidge’s tears soaked his jacket, he couldn’t help letting a few of his own fall as well.

He stayed silent, though, letting Pidge’s muffled sobs be the only sound for the length of the hug until she finally, reluctantly, pulled away and cleared her throat. “Right. Um. So, I told you that the whole team wants to apologize, and, um, if - if you’re okay with it, I just have to give the go ahead and we can meet up in the lounge, get it all out. But only if you’re okay with it.”

Keith took a long, slow breath. “I… probably should hear them out,” he said. “Guess hiding out here isn’t exactly great for me.”

Pidge smiled sadly. “Yeah. Not that you aren’t good at the whole hermit thing, just, there are definitely better talents to have. I’ll message the others.” She pulled the tablet out of her pocket, then frowned before muttering, “Shit,” and digging into the pocket again. “Promised Hunk I’d give you this.” She pulled a little rectangle from the pocket, one of the Altean energy bars Coran had dug out of storage a while back that were surprisingly filling despite tasting like styrofoam. “Seeing as you haven’t eaten anything in forever.”

“Thanks, but, um, I’m kinda nauseous right now. Not up for eating.”

Pidge huffed. “Nausea’s a sign of hunger, genius. It’ll only get worse the longer you don’t eat. Come on, it’s small.” She shoved the bar into Keith’s hand. “Eat it. I’ll message the others, and we can go eat them once you’re done.”

Keith rolled his eyes, but at Pidge’s scowl, he obediently unwrapped the bar and bit into it. After a few taps on the tablet, Pidge pocketed it and watched Keith closely, as if worried he’d try to hide the energy bar instead of eating it, like a picky toddler. He ate slowly and the food sat in his stomach like concrete when he finished, but admittedly he didn’t feel quite as shaky anymore once it was down.

“You ready?” Pidge asked as he crumpled the wrapper and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

“No,” Keith said, but he stood up and nodded toward the door. “But I’m coming. Lead the way.”

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

He could hear the voices of the other paladins, hushed though they were, as he and Pidge neared the lounge, but they dropped off the moment he entered. All eyes turned toward the entryway, and Keith hovered uncertainly at the edge of the room.

Allura was the first to acknowledge him aloud, rising from her seat with her hands crossed in front of her, almost the very picture of grace and decorum that she always was, but the loose tendrils of hair and tiredness of her eyes gave her away. This wasn’t her making a speech before foreign dignitaries or giving a report to coalition members. This was her being fully aware that the threads holding her team together were growing frayed, and knowing she had played a part, however well-meaning that part may have been.

At least, that was Keith’s best guess as to where her mind was. She was never easy to read, but at the moment, at least she was giving a little away. In the seat adjacent to hers, Shiro’s face was a blank mask, revealing nothing at all, so perhaps it was just her seeming open in comparison.

“Keith,” she said. “It’s good to see you up and about again. I must admit, we were growing worried.”

“Forget worried, Hunk here has been a blubbering mess,” Lance said, gesturing with his thumb toward Hunk, who even now was dewey-eyed and red-nosed.

“Oh, excuse me for caring about my friend’s well-being,” Hunk said. “No shame in crying, Lance.”

“Hey, I didn’t say it to embarrass you or anything, just letting Keith know what he missed while he wasn’t around.”

“The point they are trying to make, Number Four,” Coran interrupted. “Is that we’ve all been quite concerned about you and how you were, ah, dealing with things. I imagine you’ve been having difficult since everything that occurred on Yuipra, and we want to be there for you, if you’ll let us.”

Keith nodded minutely. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Pidge, uh, she told me as much.”

“Well, you certainly deserve to hear it from us too,” Allura said. She nodded toward an empty spot on the sofa beside Shiro. “Will you please take a seat?”

“If you want to,” Hunk said hastily. “You know, only if you’re comfortable. You can stand, if that’s better. Or, here, I’ve got the good cushion, you can take my seat - ”

“Hunk,” said Pidge. “Take it easy.”

“That’s okay, Hunk,” Keith said, slowly descending the steps toward the center of the lounge as Pidge followed close behind. “I’m fine here.” He settled in next to Shiro, glancing toward him as he did. Shiro offered him a little smile that didn’t seem to reach his eyes, but kept his hands folded tightly in his lap.

“Right,” Allura said, lowering herself back into her seat and smoothing out her already smooth dress. “Now. I’m sure you know that the reason we all want to speak to - ”

“We’re sorry!” Hunk cried out suddenly. “Oh my God, Keith, we are so so so sorry! About what happened with Olren, and making you do that practicing and making dumb jokes during the ‘date’ thing and not stopping and it was so messed up, man, so messed up, and that guy is a total sicko and we never should have let him so much as touch you but we did and that was wrong and we didn’t listen, oh God, you said you didn’t want to but we didn’t listen and he almost - ”

“Hunk, breathe!” Lance said, grabbing his shoulder as Hunk let out a long, loud sniffle.

“Um,” Keith said. “Uh, look, Hunk, it’s okay - ”

“We appreciate the sentiment, Keith,” said Coran. “But no, it’s really not. We know how bad things got down there, and it wouldn’t have gotten that way if we hadn’t pushed it the way we had. You deserve to have your boundaries and your comfort respected, and it shouldn’t have taken something like this to get us to realize it.”

Lance sighed. “Yeah, dude, it was - it was fucked up, honestly. Look, I don’t really, um, get how you, uh - like, your whole thing about dates, it’s not something I can, uh, relate to, or whatever, but - but it’s pretty obvious that it matters. A lot. And I, um, I shouldn’t have, like, been making jokes about it or making fun of you while everything was going on. I mean, I swear I wasn’t trying to be mean about anything, honest, I was trying to relieve the tension. But, uh, there shouldn’t have been all that tension in the first place, is what I’m saying. And I kinda just made things worse. I’m sorry too.”

“I certainly don’t expect you to just be all right with everything right away,” Allura said. “Well, I should say, I don’t expect you to ever be all right with what happened with King Olren, but I meant that I understand if you’re not quick to forgive our involvement. You made it clear from the start how dreadful something like this was for you, but I was too focused on Yuipra’s resources to realize you were hurting. There are other alliances out there that we can make, other planets we can bring into the coalition. But there’s only one Keith and… we nearly were careless enough to let that be destroyed. I cannot apologize enough.”

“Neither can I, Keith,” Shiro said, speaking up for the first time since Keith had arrived. “I know you have your boundaries, and I know how important they are to you, and you deserve to have them respected. Believe me, if I had had even the slightest inkling of what kind of person Olren was, what he really wanted from you, I never would have encouraged you to agree to the date. I’m sorry that everything turned out the way they - ”

“Hang on,” Pidge said, lifting her hand slightly. “What do you mean by that?”

Shiro blinked over at her. “What? By ‘sorry’?”

Pidge shook her head. “No, not that. You said that if you’d known how far Olren wanted to go, you would’ve stopped it.”

“Pidge, I don’t know what you - ”

“Look, this isn’t a conditional thing, okay?” Pidge said, her eyes narrowing. “Sure, Olren was a bastard who deserves to have his large intestine ripped out through his throat, but that’s not the point.”

“Ew. Pidge,” said Lance.

Pidge ignored him. “Imagine that wasn’t the case. Say that Olren was a perfect chaste gentleman throughout the whole evening with Keith. Wouldn’t change the fact that we had pushed Keith into going on a date after he made it clear how distressing that would be for him, basically ignored him after he came out to all of us. That’s still on us.”

Shiro sighed. “Pidge, I’m apologizing for that, you know that I’m sorry about all of this.”

“That’s not what you said.”

“Pidge,” said Keith. “It’s okay, you don’t need to - ”

“Yes, I do, okay?” said Pidge. “Sure, everyone’s sorry, but, shit, we all gotta make sure we know what we’re apologizing for. What Olren did, that’s not our fault. We didn’t make him treat Keith the way he did. But Keith being there in the palace with him in the first place? That’s our fault. And that’s what we have to take away from this. What if next time someone wants to get all cozy with Keith in exchange for an alliance, it’s someone who’s actually sweet and polite and non-rapey. Does that mean it’s okay now to force Keith into their arms against his will, tell him to grin and bear it?”

Shiro grimaced. “Look, that’s really not relevant to - ”

“Holy shit, Shiro, the answer is no!” Pidge said, getting to her feet and jabbing her finger toward him. “Are you fucking serious right now?!”

“Pidge, you need to calm down,” Shiro said, a bit of a stony edge creeping into his own voice. “I know that, okay? I don’t need you making me feel any more terrible about this whole thing than I already do. Because I do. I feel awful and the last thing I would ever want is to see my little brother hurting like this. You know that, don’t you, Keith?”

Keith gulped and nodded. “Yeah. ‘Course.”

“And it was never my intention to disrespect you or harm you in any way.”

“Oh, good,” Pidge huffed. “Because the road to Heaven is the one that’s paved with good intentions, right?”

Shiro sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, and Allura cleared her throat. “You know what, this is all growing rather intense,” she said. “We’re all tired, emotions are running high. Perhaps it would be best to clear our heads for a bit. We all could do with a chance to cool down.”

“Good idea,” Lance said, getting to his feet as his eyes darted between Pidge and Shiro. “Uh, Coran, you got any more of those smoky bubble things for the bathtubs?”

“Oh, plenty, Number Three,” Coran said. “I’ll show you where I keep them. Keith, would you be interested in trying one? I can’t begin to describe how relaxing they are. Don’t even need to take a bath with them, just plop them in a bowl of water near your bed and enjoy the mist.”

“I’ll pass, thanks, Coran,” said Keith.

Coran nodded understandingly toward him before following Lance out of the lounge, and Pidge stomped off behind them without a word to the others. The rest of the team began making their way out of the lounge too, while Keith stayed seated, unmoving.

“Hey,” Shiro said, his expression pinched and tight as he got to his feet beside Keith. “I do mean it. I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Keith said.

“About everything.”

Keith nodded.

“You okay?”

“... Uh-huh,” Keith said.

“Good,” said Shiro. He hesitated, then gave Keith a stiff pat on the shoulder. “If you need to talk some more, my door’s always open.”

“Right. Thanks, Shiro.” One more pat on his shoulder, and then Shiro was gone. Keith didn’t bother watching him leave, just listened to his receding footsteps as they gradually faded to silence.

#aroace keith #vldgen #vld fic #keith #pidge #my writing #fic: kings over aces

47 notes · View notes

icosmohunters · 4 years

Text

chapter seven : candor

chapter seven of cosmo hunters!

word count : 4.5k words

synopsis : after the meeting, hope finds herself feeling suspicious. all of this talk about a coup d’etat has her throwing glances at the pirates who she believes might be responsible for all of this. but upon taking the time to sit down and talk, she’s about to uncover some horrifying details.

once the meeting had come to an end, hope wandered out through the doors with a look of hysteria plastered onto a pale face. she had expected the whole experience to have been more subtle rather than something that was going to stun her out of her wits.

it had been like entering a dream sequence, perhaps the most jarring one yet. she’s never been into a meeting like, let along received news of a possible overthrow of a major corporation like voyage inc. it was ghastly. it wasn’t even a political party nor a part of a major government. it was a global company that manufactured the resources required for the human space colonization process.

but voyage had started off as scientists and engineers and mathematicians and ended up into lieutenants and generals and politicians. from an ambitious project into a major contribution to the evolution of humans. and now, there were signs of people showing hostility towards them.

potentially physical hostility, based on what she’d heard.

“ you okay, hope? ”.

the girl rose her head with furrowed brows and saw hina standing in front of her, expression worried and tender. “ y-yeah, of course. it’s just quite overwhelming. but i think it’ll all work out ”, she replied. even though she felt absolutely no confidence in her own words.

“ of course it will! all of this sucks, i know, but i don’t think it’ll get too serious. oh, hiro and i are going to get some food from the cafeteria ”, the other girl pointed in the direction of the boy who’d gone off to a vending machine to acquire something. “ they’re serving chicken katsu curry for lunch. ”

hope’s stomach churned. as hungry as she was after not having had a proper meal in a couple of days, she also felt too anxious to eat anything. and if something settled in her stomach, she wouldn’t be able to hold it there. not with how much her heart was racing at that moment.

the reason why she was particularly worried was because of the pirates. she had been at j-colony the same time as the act of vandalism against voyage was committed. and she recalled that she had passed out because of that bomb, she didn’t know how long she was out for but the pirates were out whilst she was unavailable.

doing potentially anything, getting up to no good.

perhaps it was just convenient that it had all happened at the same time. besides, the city was so large that it could have potentially been anyone. but her suspicions were still intact, especially since she knew the crew’s hatred towards this very corporation. the reason for it, she wasn’t aware of.

“ uh, yeah, i’ll go ”.

the way to the cafeteria was long, but hope didn’t really take the time to notice it because she was so deep in thought. she almost walked face-first into so many people if hiro hadn’t pulled her back the last minute. he scolded her, inquiring her what the matter was but she didn’t reply at first.

if the meeting room had been large, the cafeteria was larger. it stretched on for a great length and walls covered only in glass allowed a great view of the outside world, well, moon. titan wasn’t particularly grand at that moment considering it was raining methane of all things. but the view was familiar and brought a sense of safety for the young bounty hunter.

tables scattered around, hope searched aimlessly for the pirates. surely they wouldn’t have gotten far, especially with how great this place was, unless if they truly wanted to risk putting themselves in danger. it was already dangerous, to begin with, being here. but they’d promised to behave so where were they?

“ are you looking for your people? ”, hiro asked and hope nodded slightly. “ well, if they’ve been here before, they couldn’t have gotten lost. but you said they’re newbies so you just have to pray you’ll find them. ”

hope did pray, mostly under her breath, and she wasn’t even religious. she just hoped the universe would gift her with a day of relief. or even a moment of relief, especially in this climate, especially when her suspicions were high and especially when she was carefully trying to avoid problems.

sighing, hope followed hiro and hina to where the food was being served. thank god she didn’t have to pay, that was the last thing she needed. so upon collecting her food, a plate of chicken katsu curry with sticky rice, not to mention a carton of juice and a mandarin to peel and enjoy, she walked to one of the tables and took a seat. hina sat right beside her.

“ so, tell me, what do you think? it’s a bit weird, isn’t it? for years, it seemed all so peaceful but now it’s gone to shit. it always does ”, hina began and saw hope’s resilience to talk. “ it just changes a lot of things. ”

hiro sighed, lifting up his spoon and gazing at it for a moment. “ i think it was inevitable. voyage has a lot of influence and there are just some people out there who refuse to accept it. it doesn’t help that voyage doesn’t tolerate rebellion ”, he said before shrugging softly.

“ tell me about it, these guys may pose themselves as angels as they’re helping with the colonization process. but they’re like a dictatorship, nobody can challenge them without getting bashed ”.

hope stared down at her food. it felt wrong to be sitting with two proper voyage workers, hiding the fact that she had brought pirates into headquarters, pirates who were potentially responsible for the vandalism at j-colony. she inhaled deeply and looked to the side.

her eyes widened slightly when she spotted a familiar trail of blonde hair and a voyage uniform. vivienne. standing up abruptly, hope called her, “ io! ”.

vivienne was no idiot, so she turned swiftly upon hearing her fake name being called. her face lit up with a small smile, and hope couldn’t help but feel guilty for earlier, for having snapped out for no basic necessity other than due to her explosive temper and defensive ego.

the blonde suddenly turned and called out to someone. soon, hope saw the pirates coming in. dawn’s face lit up after seeing the bounty hunter, whom she waved excitedly at before dragging the others over.

“ oh, you’re cute! ”, hina commented when the young girl approached.

dawn’s cheeks appeared to glow pink at that point, “ t-thank you. i’m stella, by the way. ” the girl looked towards hope who didn’t seem willing to meet her gaze. “ is it okay if we sit with you guys? ”.

“ as long as you manage to stay quiet ”, hiro said, raising his glass of water to his lips before letting his gaze all on hope. “ care to introduce us, hope? ”.

gulping, the girl nodded. “ that’s stella. blondie is io, one with the bruise is leo, nerd is benjamin, and the other one’s roger. ”

hiro snorted, “ roger? ”. his gaze flew towards enzo who rose a brow as if posed with a challenge and hope wished that nothing argumentative would come out of these two meeting. usually, two confident people clash, and most of the time it’s not in a good way.

“ yeah. you must be hiro ”, enzo said slowly, but then his gaze fell on hina and softened. “ and who’s this pretty lady? ”. hope swore she heard dom groan slightly in the back.

hina seemed to giggle and waved in greeting, “ hina koyabashi! it’s a pleasure to meet all of you. why don’t you all get some food? it’s really good today. ” hope didn’t understand how this girl was so pleasant, it was puzzling but she chose not to question something she probably won’t understand, hope isn’t a pleasant person.

“ oh, that’d be nice. but we’re planning on getting food elsewhere anyway, thank you for asking ”, vivienne said but still sat down beside hope, who was struggling to eat her food. “ so, how was the meeting? ”.

“ wonderful ”, hiro spoke, putting his glass of water down. “ we found out that there have been some acts of vandalism being committed against voyage at the j-colony. someone completely trashed the base there overnight and now they think a coup is being committed. ”

“ a what? ”, enzo questioned.

hope glared down at her plate, “ an uprising. ”

“ o-oh. ”

she felt the tension in the air almost immediately, hearing vivienne inhale deeply beside her but not a word came from the pirates, which was weird. and it only added to hope’s suspicions, but she didn’t show any reaction to indicate that. she simply let hiro continue to explain.

“ but now we’re on high alert. they’re investigating nearly every colony in search of any criminal activities targetting institutions. stuff on earth is completely messed up, some people are being put on leave to ensure their safety ”, he stated.

hope hadn’t heard about that. feeling her stomach churn once more, she simply stabbed her straw through the hole on her juice carton and inhaled deeply. her father was most likely not going to get his arm nor his treatment, he was going to be put off work completely.

how long was her old man going to have to wait to get the treatment he deserved immediately? she needed to visit him. but she just felt like something was going to get in the way, and she needed to prevent them. she’s been avoiding going back home in fear that she’ll get attached and not be able to go back to work. but now she wanted to see her family.

“ that’s . . . a shame ”, dom uttered and then sighed. “ well, voyage has angered many people, i can see why some people have revolted. not that i agree with it but it makes sense. ”

hina snapped her fingers and pointed, “ see? he gets it! i’m not the only one who thinks this company can be bat shit insane sometimes. hope, you recruited some very smart people. ” hope didn’t react at first, she just gave a halfassed chuckle and tried to eat.

hiro’s gaze remained on hope for a long time, she felt it but she didn’t think to question him about it. she could already imagine the thoughts rolling through his brain, the questions and the assumptions on how hope came to find these people and she didn’t have the brainpower to make up a credible story.

“ how’d you find ‘em, hope? ”.

“ hm? ”.

before hiro could repeat himself, vivienne swept in, now the ball was in her court. “ we were always looking to join something like voyage. thankfully, hope gave us the opportunity and signed us in. we’re newbies thanks to her. ”

“ oh, that’s so nice! but it seems like you guys already ran into some trouble ”, the girl beside hope stated. hina glanced over at dom and tilted her head. “ is that why leo has a bruise? ”.

now hope like she was going to throw up. she gulped and tried not to bring attention to herself whilst also avoiding dom’s gaze. she was bad at many things but knowing when someone is looking at you is something she’s mastered.

“ we ran into some trouble with pirates ”, dom said slowly, crossing his arms over his chest. “ i’m not the best fighter so i got hit. but we also jacked the guy up afterward so it’s all fair and square. ” hope felt like she was being threatened, she couldn’t look up, nor even think about having her food.

hiro scoffed, “ pirates? well, that just proves yoh’s theory. it’s just criminals on loose sturring up a fuss because they can’t see that they’re in the wrong. ” hope really wished he would stop talking now.

“ you don’t know that ”, enzo said with a rising tone. biting back a wince, hope adjusted herself in her chair. her gaze fell on quinn who was already looking back at her. he didn’t need to say much but his eyes held a sweetness in them that she’s never noticed before, a caring undertone to a usually grim expression.

“ oh, come on, some of these criminals on the loose turn into criminals because they think voyage is against ‘em or something. as far as i’m aware, voyage has only ever attacked anyone because they attacked first ”, hiro continued but then pursed his lips and shrugged smugly. “ that’s just my theory. ”

“ hope, you okay? ”.

the attention suddenly shifting onto her stunned her. she blinked slightly and reeled back in shock before sighing, and then offering them all a nod. “ y-yeah, absolutely. i just don’t feel like eating anymore ”, she said.

vivienne’s hand met her shoulder once more and this time hope didn’t shrug it away. “ we should probably get you back to the ship ”, she decided whilst rubbing her back slightly.

“ oh, you’re leaving so soon? ”, hina said in a tone of sadness, pouting but she nodded and gave the group a smile. “ well, i suppose there’s no reason to stick around. hope, it was lovely meeting you. ”

whilst getting up from her seat, hope saw hina offering a handshake and ultimately accepted, giving a firm one of her own. her gaze went over towards hiro and he just nodded and waved her off. cold, as per usual.

hope then followed lazily behind the crew, who seemed more adamant about getting to the ship than she was. but she could almost understand why. they were in a dangerous environment that could potentially end in an altercation that would reveal their identities.

she couldn’t help but throw a gaze over her shoulder, seeing hina wave happily at her and hiro glance back with no interest. still, she reached into her pocket and felt the squishy toy he’d given her, and carried on walking.

after going through the exits and slipping their oxygen helmets on, they traveled back to the ship. hope didn’t even get to say goodbye to creed nor to esme, but she would end up coming back at some point to enjoy it. well, to enjoy the company of the people in the corporation. people whom she didn’t mind being around.

when the stairs for nebula opened, hope stopped and took one quick glance back at the headquarters. the experience here wasn’t the best, but what was she expecting? in a way, she disagreed with hiro’s statement, and now, she could moderately understand the trepidation and hesitation the pirates showed to coming within a range of anyone belonging to voyage.

it was just all bad news. bad news and the strive for perfection.

“ well, thank god that’s over! ”, enzo declared, giving out a loud sigh whilst proceeding to remove all of the garments, especially the badges and the gloves. with quite a lot of distaste, might she add? “ also, hope, i can see why you dislike that guy so much. ”

they had entered the lounge once more and enzo had collapsed onto the couch alongside quinn, a small frown on his face. “ like, is he always that much of a douche? ”, he questioned, arms crossed behind his head.

“ you didn’t even speak to him properly ”, quinn mumbled.

enzo rose up slightly onto his seat and pointed a figure in some general direction, supposedly where hiro was. “ you’re kidding, right? that guy gives off bad villain vibes, you could feel it from a mile away ”, enzo argued.

“ hiro . . . is a complex individual ”, hope cut in, gaining enzo’s attention once more. “ we used to train together, share the same room. he was always competitive, always trying to be the pillar of perfection but what i admire most about him, despite hating his guts, is how precise and watchful he is. ” she took a small pause and took out the animal squishy toy once more. “ he sees, remembers, and acts. ”

dawn gasped and cooed, “ that’s so cute! ”.

“ yeah ”, hope agreed with a small chuckle, raising her brows slightly. “ he gave it to me. he knows i’m not fond of packed environments. the noise usually causes some awful sensations, as they did today, but he kept me from having a total breakdown. ” playing with the toy for a little longer, she soon tucked it back into her pocket.

quinn hummed before elbowing enzo gently, “ he’s not a villain, cap, he’s just moody. just how you’re not a villain, but you are an arrogant prick. ”

vivienne burst into laughter and hope snorted, averting her gaze away as to avoid being seen smiling so plainly. she had to admit, as much as she wasn’t accustomed to being around so many people, she could get behind the idea of being humored frequently. they provided free humor, so she might as well enjoy it.

hope’s eyes trailed up towards dom whilst quinn and enzo bickered. he seemed to be in a better mood than she’s seen him, but then again, she doesn’t exactly pay much attention to him. but the bruise was obvious now and it was started to grind her gears. she was mad at herself.

yes, he might have deserved it but hope felt like she could have easily stepped back and come out of her fit of blind rage because some guy said something she didn’t like. she’s heard so many things, was spat so many insults at yet he was the one who managed to push her to her limit. and she didn’t even know him!

a stranger doesn’t deserve to make you angry, she reminded herself. but then again, neither do they deserve a punch for making you angry. hope stared for just a little longer and when his head moved as if to look at her, she looked back down.

after a couple of hours, nebula had left titan and they were in outer space once again. hope had chosen to eat her food alone, and she could hear the laughter and chatter from the dining room even from the lounge. it wasn’t disrupting her as much as she’d imagined.

the bounty hunter had changed into some decent clothes, being a t-shirt and some sweatpants because as far as she was aware, she wasn’t going to move from a slow orbit any time soon. she wanted to relax, especially after having such a shaky day.

dawn and vivienne had prepared some nice carbonara pasta with the ingredients hope had in her fridge, and she hated to admit it but it was just like her mother’s back hope. if not better.

but she had long lost the taste of her mother’s food since she left, and after that, it was mostly microwaved food, she barely had the energy to prepare something fresh. but she could burn the carbs off afterward, even if it hurt every bone in her body.

whilst eating, she was flipping through her stats again since she didn’t get to check them. after having gained some bounty points, her level had risen to sixty-seven, especially considering crimson had been a particularly hard person to catch and considering he was in the top ten most sought after criminals, the reward for his death was high.

hope sighed. rising five levels after one kill felt like a relief, especially considering she would end up on some of the league tables. she didn’t know exactly where she was placed in the board of bounty hunters but she could have been in the top twenty. the recognition is often quite the self-esteem boost.

but even after killing him, she couldn’t help but remain worried. she shouldn’t have brought the pirates to voyage and when the news in the meeting was revealed, she felt sick. in fear that because she slept, she missed the chance of seeing the pirates up to no good. then again, nothing could prove they had anything to do with the incident.

but it was a probability.

and she still had to take these guys to pluto and that’s an easy portal ride away but why was she so hesitant? she wanted to get rid of the problem rather than keep it around but she didn’t want to let them go until she had the answers she required.

thankfully, she wasn’t going to have to wait for long. she felt like dinner had finished when the doors of the lounge opened and she heard some voices filter in and then pause when they seemed to detect her.

“ hope, have you finished eating? ”.

“ it wasn’t you guys, was it? ”.

hope turned and looked over her shoulder towards the two figures belonging to dawn and dom, who both looked puzzled. and then enzo came in, followed by vivienne and quinn.

she frowned, “ i want to believe that it wasn’t. for some reason, i’m showing the leniency to trust you even though i probably shouldn’t. but if it was you guys who were responsible for the vandalism against voyage, i have to know. and then i’ll make the decision.” hope paused and gulped. “ the last thing i want is to have to remove my trust from the table. ”

“ n-no, of course not ”, enzo began, sounding nervous. “ oh god, no, i know weren’t there when you were passed out but we didn’t go to vandalize anything. we already have targets on our backs, the last thing we want is to cause more mayhem. besides, our feelings towards voyage are sour but they’re not toxic. ”

vivienne interrupted, “ and we don’t even have the funds to buy the resources required considering most of our money got blown up with our ship. all we have is dom’s bank account to save us. we wouldn’t waste money on spray paint and bombs. ”

hope nodded slightly and then looked down. at her trembling hands, she noticed her middle and index finger had crossed and locked together. she didn’t know just how much she believed them but hearing it from them was better than assuming they’d truly done it.

“ don’t tell me you don’t believe us ”, dom began.

hope snapped back quickly, “ i do. ” blinking, she took a moment to gather herself and her thoughts. “ i do believe you. i want to believe you because, i think that i gave you too many chances and if you spoil it this time, i won’t be able to handle it. ”

“ handle what? you can take us to where we have to be now that all of that is over ”, dom persisted, nodding towards some random direction. “ you can take us to pluto, can’t you? ”.

“ y-yes, bu— ”.

“ well, why don’t you take us th— ”.

“ hope, i’ve detected a new addition to your bounty list. ”

a.j saved her once again. the bounty hunter ran a hand through her hair, sighing with frustration. usually, she would go up to her cabin to hear about the details but she didn’t mind sharing them in front of the pirates. it wasn’t like she was going to ask them to go along with it. not after what happened last time.

“ proceed, a.j. ”

“ real name unknown, but the alias voyage has given them is the puppeteer. voyage has signed them as a technological terrorist, as they have been responsible for many government-targeted financial and cyber attacks. it’s said that perhaps they’re looking for money. but others have stated it’s pure psychopathy. they’re on top of the bounty list when it comes to hackers ”.

hope’s eyes widened but she didn’t react as quickly as enzo did after he let out a small exhale, “ the puppeteer? ”.

“ it’s a stupid name ”, dom commented with a snort.

“ no, shut up, i know who they are ”, enzo growled and crossed his arms, hope acknowledged the dense muscles for a moment and then shyly gazed away. “ the puppeteer, you mean the one who was behind the 3017 financial wipe that stole over a hundred billion dollars from global banks? ”.

a.j replied swiftly, “ that is correct. ”

why was he acting like this? hope furrowed her brows slightly whilst staring at enzo, who seemed to be trying to collect his thoughts. “ holy shit ”, he muttered under his breath.

“ enzo, are you al— ”.

“ we’re helping. ”

hope reacted with a scoff, “ are you out of your mind? the last time you tried to help me catch a criminal, you nearly killed me and let him escape! ”.

“ this is different ”, enzo replied. “ the puppeteer is a force to be reckoned with, they have the capacity of putting an entire country through a blackout that could potentially end with millions of lives lost. they’re a financial thief and have been behind many terrorist attacks committed against innocent people. in concerts and in reunions and meetings. ” he looked towards hope with determined eyes. “ you need to let us help ”.

“ i don’t feel like i owe you that leisure ”, hope said through gritted teeth. “ if this son of a bitch ends up being dangerous, i don’t want anyone dying and me getting the blame for it. ”

dom rolled his eyes, “ you think we’re that incapable of fighting? ”.

“ i mean you nearly let crimson get away through that smoke even though you knew how to handle yourselves ”, the bounty hunter snapped and forced herself to calm down, to lower her tone. “ i’m not letting anyone help. i can handle it myself. ”

“ consider it as part of the bargain, hope ”, enzo insisted, god he was so persistent, it made her blood boil!

“ dying isn’t part of it. and that’s final. ”

“ fine, we’ll just devise a plan without you in it but we’re going to somehow help, we are. don’t underestimate us ”, enzo said and turned to walk away. and the pirates followed, some reluctantly but hope called out just before the doors could close.

“ fine! ”.

they turned and looked at her with equal expressions of shock. hope couldn’t believe that, yet again, she was going to let herself be put in danger because of these pirates, that she was going to try to work alongside them as if they were a team. this was supposed to be her mission, her well-earned reward. she didn’t want to share it with anyone, call her selfish if you want but she’s been doing fine for four years by herself. without pirates mingling with her business.

and yet here she was.

risking it all over again.

“ y-you . . . you can help me hunt the puppeteer down. ”

#chapter 7 #writing #original writing #space adventure #space pirates au

4 notes · View notes

greenninjagal-blog · 5 years

Text

Even If It Kills Us (but it wont hopefully) pt4

hey, Hey, HEy, HEY Sander’s Sides Mafia AU part 4! I have no clue how it got this far.

Part Three is right here if you need a refresher! And Part One is here if you’re new around. Summary: Virgil has always been normal. Unfortunately, when he’s named the heir to his family’s mafia normal is the last thing he needs to be, right there besides dead.

Quick Taglist: @iolanomsgranola @sylveon-lover-crazyfangirl1415 @skullfire2004 @deathshadowrules @laragazzadellluna @kindly-falling @lefaystrent @levy-the-b00kw0rm @fandomobsessed-nerd @just-another-rainbowblog

Let me know if I missed anyone or you want to be added

Virgil falls asleep listening to Roman talk about his cars and Patton answering politely and Logan grumbling under his breath.

He expects to wake up with a gun in his face

well not really

he expects to wake up on his desk back in his dorm with seven and a half empty energy drinks next to him and Patton making those concerned noises in the back of his throat.

Because he expects that the entire night had been some insane, chemically induced, fever dream that he can forget with a lot of coffee and a long conversation with Patton about anything else.

If that wasn’t an option, Virgil expects to wake up with a gun to his face, with just enough time to think fuc-- before Logan/Roman/someone pulls the trigger and Virgil’s lovely brain matter splatters all over the car seats.

Or maybe they’d let him crawl out of the car and they’d kill him in some remote warehouse and throw his body into a harbor

like in the movies

Virgil recalls, vaguely, that Roman said “We’re going to mine.”

He thought that had meant, like, Roman had a safehouse or two

maybe a condo? stocked with the barest essentials

Or an abandoned apartment building

He wasn’t expecting to wake up to Roman’s entire fucking mansion

“Welcome to mi casa!” Roman finds a pair of shades somewhere and puts them on.

(It’s nearing one in the morning. why????)

Despite that, Roman’s casa is bigger than the entire dorm building back at their college. Virgil can’t see much given the lack of light, but its massive. They drove by two fountains just to get to the garage, which, because Roman is just that extra was fucking underground with a door that rose up like the Batcave.

“Hideous, isn’t it?” Logan says. Virgil thinks he’s talking to him.

“You’re just jealous!” Roman sings as he drives down the brightly lit curved ramp to a parking garage. “I actually use the money I make!”

“I use my money as well!”

Roman snorts, “Right my bad! I did notice that was a new tie.”

Logan glances down at his tie-- still splattered with blood from earlier. “You noticed?”

“Of course!” Roman says, “What do you take me for?”

Patton sways in his seat facing Virgil with a toothy grin. His freckles seemed to have multiplied in the change of light. “Isn’t this exciting, V?”

Virgil shrugs because words are hard and he’s still tired

and trying to figure out why Roman took them to his own house.

Aren’t they rivals?

Won’t his family try to kill him?

“I live alone!” Roman says as if he can read minds. He parks the car among a couple others arranged in a rainbow order.

“Just when I thought your gross misuse of finances couldn’t get more distasteful.” Logan sneers as he throws open his door.

“You love it!”

“I hate you!”

Patton giggles which sends a warm comforting feeling through Virgil.

(He still can’t believe that Patton is here with him, that Patton didn’t run off, that Patton didn’t save himself.)

((Guiltily, Virgil wonders if he would have done the same thing. He doesn’t like the answer he comes up with))

Virgil climbs out of the car, and Patton follows him a second later, mouth gaping with awe around the cavernous area.

There are a bunch of cars. Virgil doesn’t know the name of any of them.

Roman stops by his front tire again, huffing at the noticeable white dashes in the red. He rubs a thumb over one, wistful.

Virgil thinks he should just be happy they aren’t dead.

“V! Look!” Patton’s voice echoes in the empty hall, “It matches you!”

Its a purple car. Dark purple with decals in a laser vibrant purple. The windows are dark tinted. It looks more expensive than the red one they just climbed out of.

Virgil is mad about how much he likes it at first glance.

“You can have it,” Roman says.

Virgil whips to look at him.

“What? You obviously like it. I’ve had my eye on different purple Maserati for a few months.” Roman waves a hand. He strolls over to a wall of keys and grabs one from the hooks.

And throws it at Virgil.

He catches it out of instinct. And immediately drops it on the ground, because he’s never held anything that valuable before what the fuCK--

“What about you Padre?” Roman says, “See anything you like?”

“Roman!” Logan yells, “Stop throwing your resources around! It’s late and I would like to sleep.”

Roman sticks out his tongue at the other man, and throws an arm around a giggly Patton, “What is the point of amassing my babies if I can’t dote on my friends? You can still have the power cruiser--”

“I’ve told you before I don’t need a motorcycle!”

His face is surprisingly pink for that statement. Logan straightens himself. fiddling with his tie. “I appreciate the offer, Prince. But if I wanted it, I would have bought myself one. I don’t need your charity--stop, stop that!”

Roman smiles and lowers the hand he was using to mock the other.

Virgil smothers the urge to laugh, it rises up into a sharp cough that he isn’t nearly as good at hiding.

Roman looks delighted.

“Okay, okay,” he says, “Inside we go.” He hooks Patton around the waist and leads him towards the area where Logan was, like its Prom night.

“And hey, Amethyst Alarm,” he calls over his shoulder, “either keep the keys or put them back on the wall.” He shoots a grin that makes Virgil’s stomach do a flip for some stupid reason.

Virgil grabs the keys off the ground and storms over to the wall.

how dare he just give Virgil a fucking car

He doesn’t need a flashy purple car

He needs to not be dead before the end of the week.

Owning a car like that? riding in one?

Virgil’s driver’s license is mostly for show: he walked everywhere he needed to go.

He puts the keys on the hook.

Somehow they end up in his pocket.

Fuck

The inside of his house is just as big as the garage.

“It’s not much...” Roman has the audacity to say right to Virgil’s face.

Has he ever seen a college dorm room.

Virgil has grown up just barely getting by. Raised by a single mother, in this economy?

Until Patton came along Virgil had always assumed he’d go straight into the work force rather than try for a college.

And standing in the kitchen of Roman’s mansion, part of him is just barely resisting the urge to wrap his hands around Roman’s neck and give him a shake.

((The other part feels like he just started living Ouran Highschool Host Club))

“Is anyone hungry?” Roman says, “I can’t cook but there’s stuff in there. Oh! wait we can order pizza!--”

Logan bats the side of Roman’s head, “This is no time to just be eating! And we are not ordering a Pizza! That’s just asking for unwanted access to the building. We need to figure out what we are going to do to keep Virgil safe until he is ready to take over.”

Virgil’s stomach does a bad drop thing. Because then he remembers that despite the fancy cars and the huge house and the excess of money, Roman and Logan both do things that are super illegal.

And hello? Virgil doesn’t want to go to jail.

They killed people. Virgil has trouble disposing of the spiders that find their way in the room even when Patton is frantically begging him to obliterate the “creepy crawly death dealer”.

“I can cook!” Patton says brightly before Virgil can voice any of those thoughts in his head.

Logan opens his mouth to say something, probably demeaning and rude.

“It’s okay!” Patton is quicker, “You guys must be all tired! I’ll make something quick to eat and you guys can talk about all that business stuff! Then we can go off to bed!”

Logan looks like he just wants to argue because he can.

“Sounds great, Pat,” Virgil cuts in because really he is tired.

“Fine,” Logan huffs. He waves around the kitchen, “At least you’re useful for something.”

“Can you not?” Virgil snaps, “He’s been more useful than you have!”

“Pardon?! I--”

“It’s okay!” Patton says, “I don’t mind, kiddo! Cooking helps me think!”

“And not being around fools helps me think,” Logan turned away from them, “Prince, you have an armory, do you not? I would like to re-equip myself.”

If Virgil had to guess Roman’s expression reads “this is a bad idea”, but he forces a smile, and claps his hands.

“Excellent idea! Come along my dear Orchid Offense! We must find you a weapon as well!”

“Don’t call me that,” Virgil says.

He glances back at Patton, who is already sorting through the (well stocked) pantry with a grin. It doesn’t feel right to leave him behind.

((when was the last time he went somewhere without Patton?))

But Logan is already out the door and down the hall(?) and Roman tapping his foot impatiently.

Virgil goes.

It feels wrong. Bad.

Roman prattles on about something. Virgil’s hyper aware of how close they are standing, how Roman’s hair does this stupid wave when he combs it back with a hand, how his sunglasses comes off his head and hang off his collar like some frat boy and Virgil is left staring at eyes burning with a warm passion.

Logan walks a few steps ahead of them, moving like he knows this place. His glasses catch on the light which prevents Virgil from seeing them.

His shoulders are tense though, tense and and angry and frustrated.

“What’s your deal with Patton?” Virgil asks him, effectively cutting off Roman.

Logan sends a glare in his direction. “Pardon? I don’t have a “deal” with your cardigan clad clout.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“I’m not fooling anyone,” Logan’s terse response should have had the hairs on Virgil’s neck rising. Instead it just makes him angrier.

“He is a liability,” Logan says, “Your friendship with him-- particularly your unwillingness to tell him to go home is frustrating to me. He isn’t part of this situation. He would be safer if you would cease communication with him all together.”

He turns around at the end of the hall, standing somewhat in the shadows and appearing very threatening. they are face-to-face again.

(Blood on his collar, blood on his tie, tense shoulders, and powerful hands)

Roman’s voice dies in his throat at the expression on Logan’s face.

“You, Virgil, would be safer if you ceased communication with him all together.” Logan says, “Because the second anyone outside this room finds out your unwillingness to sacrifice him, they will use it against you. I don’t even trust Roman to not one day use this information to his advantage--”

“HEy!”

“--This family is all that I have.” Logan says, “This is all I have known. You are to be the new leader of it, and I cannot afford to follow a leader who can be blackmailed.”

“Have you considered that I DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR LEADER!”

It appeared as if the thought had, indeed, not.

Virgil stands toe to toe with Logan, every terrible feeling in his stomach swirling into toxic thoughts. He can’t bring himself to take a step back, to put more space between them, to give into the itch of his skin that feels like a million bugs burrowing into his veins.

Because he doesn’t want this

didn’t ask for this

not Roman’s cars, not Logan’s loyal following or whatever he thinks this is

Virgil wanted to live to see Twenty-one, to graduate.

He wanted to hook his arm with Patton’s and stroll down the street to the movies and eat too-salty popcorn and drink overly expensive soda and not be shot at.

Mafia family? Thanks, but no thanks. Virgil is a struggling college student with no family. He thinks he prefers it, to half his family trying to kill him because of some guy Virgil never met died.

Logan stares at Virgil his dark eyes searching for something.

Virgil doesn’t know what, doesn’t care, doesn’t.

Then Roman laughs. It shatters the tension between the three of them like a sledge hammer, and it isn’t pleasant. It’s the laughter he had used back when he first pulled up on the side walk and told them to get in or die.

“Take a breather, Sanders,” he says unkindly. Virgil doesn’t know if he means Logan or him.

“You’re both acting like this is the end of the world.” The other heir to the rival mafia family breezes by the two of them to a random door and pushes it open. “For one, Lolo, your job is like the least dangerous.”

“Does your stupidity know no ends?” Logan shoots back, “My job is the most dangerous. I handle the money.”

Virgil’s 95% sure he misheard.

“I’m sorry, you’re an accountant?”

Because if the accountant killed a bunch of guys, what the fuck could the rest of the family do?

Logan’s ears turn red, “I prefer the term bookkeeper!”

“Oh yes! Such a fear inducing nickname, Calculator Watch!” Roman rolls his eyes, “Beware the bookkeeper! He can do three digit division while drunk!”

“Shut up!” Logan snarls at him. He shoulder checks the other out of the way and pushes into the room Roman motioned for their needs. “It was one time--”

Virgil looks at Roman who had a Cheshire smile curling off his face. “No it wasn’t.”

Virgil doesn’t even know where to start unpacking that statement.

Honestly, he’s still digesting the fact that Logan is a glorified four function calculator and not some experienced hitman/assassin/enforcer combination.

The armory, is well, an armory?

Virgil’s never been in an armory before.

Four walls each with a multitude of weapons on them: more guns than Virgil has ever seen, a whole section dedicated to swords, axes, javelins-- where did Roman get all this stuff?

Nevermind Virgil didn’t want to know.

Logan scampers to the guns without much of hesitation. His fingers ghost over his options before he takes one off the stand and considers it.

Roman dances around the walls, absolutely delighted. He pauses at the swords, and Virgil swears he hears the term “precious-es” drop from his mouth.

Virgil drifts.

His eyes catch on a few of the blades, although they all look to be ceremonial. He tries to remember the last time he carried his knife with him. High school? No it must have been when he moved out for college. His mother always insisted that if he was going to go out, he’d have a knife with him.

He had left it on his bed, certain that the blade and his mother could keep each other better company than he ever had.

“Help yourself!” Roman tells them, “I have plenty--”

“ROMAN!”

Virgil turns at the sound of Logan’s scream.

(because it isn’t a yelp, isn’t a yell, it’s a scream full of a raw emotion and panic and Virgil didn’t know Logan was capable of that.)

And then there’s a gunshot.

because there’s always a gun shot.

Virgil blinks.

One second Logan is standing in front of a rack of guns then next both he and Roman are on the ground and there’s someone else in the room dressed from head to foot in black with smiling Mardi Gras masks.

the light panel behind Roman and his swords shatters.

Logan’s gun raises and he fires, but the shot goes wide from his awkward angle.

The intruder fires again and this time he doesn’t miss.

Logan swears.

And Virgil is just standing there, frozen, like someone watching a terrible, horrible movie. By the time he remembers to move there’s three more guys in the room all armed, Logan’s gun is on the ground, and he’s gripping his shooting shoulder with a murderous look, and there’s no escape.

“Who the fuck!” Roman demands, from his spot on the ground. His sun glasses had skidded across the room and Virgil watches at they go crunch under one of the men’s boots.

“Roman Prince,” One of them says, “And Virgil Sanders, it’s time you are both dethroned.”

Virgil hasn’t even been on this throne more than five hours

The man doesn’t seem to care. He and his buddies raised their guns.

“No!” Logan yells, blood pouring down his arm.

Virgil stares down the barrel of a gun. Knife in his hand and knows that he’s too far away to do anything, not enough practice recently to be able to throw it, not enough, not enough.

He can see their fingers on the triggers--

And then a frying pan slams into the back of one of the men’s heads and he drops like a wet sandbag to the floor.

Virgil watches without being able to breathe as someone--someone kicks the knees out of another guy and his shots explode right up the wall behind Roman leaving him unharmed.

someone jams an elbow into another’s throat and then slams his head with another intruder.

someone palm strikes the last man in the gut and when the man doubles over someone breaks them over his knee.

Then Virgil, Roman, and Logan are left staring at Patton standing over four unconscious men with a dangerously bright smile that highlighted the faint markings of bruise on his left cheek and a frying pan in his right hand.

“Sorry kiddos! I may have made a bit of a mess in the kitchen!”

Part Five

#mafia au #mafia war #virgil sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #guns #swearing #violence #rip Roman's sunglasses #frying pans #patton is a badass

289 notes · View notes

kosegruppaa · 4 years

Note

I have never been to New York and I was wondering what you thought were some cool/must see places to go? 😃 also, what was your experience with getting around and transportation? The anxiety I feel like I’m going to have with being somewhere with so many people and it’s so massive..

hiii anon!

so first of all, i’ve only been to new york this once and for one week, so i’m absolutely no expert on anything! so take all of this with a grain of salt, and also probably ask someone else and do your own research based on what you find interesting when you travel! that said, here are my take aways:

my two favourite things that we did there, that are usually on those “top things to do in new york”, were visiting the MoMa and seeing a show on Broadway. the moma has so many well known painters and also lots of other art and in general i found it to be one of the better museum experiences i’ve ever had with those kinds of large, mostly permanent exhibition museum. you don’t have to pay for audio guides and can just get them on your phone! (which is a nice bonus for me cause you can also go on there before and/or after you actually visit the museum, if you know you are the type of nerd that could spend 7 hours in a museum just reading up on stuff etc. but your friends aren’t).

and i loved seeing mean girls the musical! it was so fun and good, and it’s just an experience too! i though it was made into a show really well, and i also liked the changes they had made to make it more modern. the way they translated karen being “the dumb one” into song was my fave joke, also the guy who played damien was really great. overall a really cool show, and as usual when i go to large venue shows like that, the only thing i didn’t like were the few people around me who didn’t know how to keep quiet during the whole performance.

other things i really enjoyed were more low key things, like just going out to eat every day, going out to bars one night and just walking around places and also visiting book shops (honestly my fave thing wherever i go). oh and seeing the stonewall inn! i literally just walked past and looked at it for like 15 seconds and took a picture but like still worth to see imo :)

i found that getting around was really easy. the subway was not hard to figure out (i’m used to the public transportation in many other cities/countries though, if you’ve never used it much, it might take more figuring out, maybe?). it did get crowded at times though, so if that is an issue for you, it might be good to think of other alternatives or not use it at certain times? we ended up using uber quite a bit too, especially at night or when we just didn’t feel like chaning subway lines and walking any more that day lol. we were three people, so the prices were very reasonable! every time we requested an uber we got one that was less then 5 minutes away!

but again, i was there for a week, there are so many things i didn’t do or don’t even know about, so like, definitely don’t use me as your nyc resource!

#anon #thanks for asking!#very like typical nyc tourist things that i didn't do was going up in one of the tall buildings #or visit the statue of liberty #also didn't do anything related to either friends or sex and the city #which was like 80% of what some friends of mine suggested lol

2 notes · View notes

takerfoxx · 5 years

Text

Gonna knock off some big ones here! The fav(s) of the day are...

BOBA FETT!

Okay guys, let’s get this out straight out of the gate. I grew up as a major Star Wars fan. My dad is an old-school sci-fi nerd and it really rubbed off on me. Classic science fiction was our bread and butter growing up, and the Star Wars movies were no exception. We must’ve watched those suckers a gazillion times.

And the expanded universe? Oh, I was all over that shit! And I mean the old stuff! The Truce at Bakura, the Heir to the Empire trilogy, the Kyp Durron trilogy, both the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian trilogies (there were a lot of trilogies), Darksaber, Planet of Twilight, Shadows of the Empire, The Courtship of Princess Leia, Young Han Solo, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, the Young Jedi Knight series, all of the Tales books, Galaxy of Fear, even less well regarded stuff like The Crystal Star. All that and more filled my bookshelves.

But like many young Star Wars fans, my boy was the guy that got like four lines of dialogue and quickly gets killed off in the first half of the third film.

It’s hard to really articulate what made Boba Fett so appealing. I think it’s part of the air of mystery around him. In Empire, he strides in with a totally badass design, is the guy to track down and capture the heroes, backtalks Darth Vader and gets away with it, and escapes with one of the main characters in tow. I guess that caused people to become intrigued by him and want to see what he would do in the last film. And sure enough, he shows up looking all cool and mysterious, flies into a direct confrontation with both Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, seems to get the upper hand...and is summarily dispatched by a fluke accident.

Lame.

So I guess many who would become Star Wars writers were, like myself, let down by this, and sought to “correct” this by giving ol’ Boba his own mythos, complex history, cast of closely-related characters, and make it so that he escaped the damn worm and would go on to cross paths with the heroes in every obligatory “The one with Boba Fett!” entry in every long-running Star Wars book series ever.

And boy, did I eat it up!

The Bounty Hunter Wars! An entry in both Tales From the Bounty Hunters and Tales From Jabba’s Palace! Endless comics! The aforementioned obligatory Boba Fett books! All of this created a character that became almost revered by the fandom, who cast a shadow over the whole multi-verse. I bought the books, played with the toys, and even wrote a short little Boba Fett story in sixth grade. I mean, this guy was just cool.

Needless to say, I’m not the Star Wars fan I once was. I mean, the only one of these movies since RotJ that I’ve actually liked is also one of the least popular, so that’s a thing. Hell, I was debating putting up a Star Wars entry to begin with. But man, even if I’m not all that into Star Wars anymore, it can’t be denied that for a time it reigned supreme, and Boba Fett was, in my world, the king.

(Though lowkey, it was kind of hilarious watching writers try to reconcile the already established Boba Fett origin with the one created by the prequels after Attack of the Clones dropped)

He’s no good to me dead.

Also...

DARTH REVAN!

So I went from almost not doing a Star Wars entry to doing one with multiple characters. Yeah, go figure.

All right. So, Knights of the Old Republic is probably my last great foray into Star Wars before sort of slipping out of the fandom. It was recommended to me by a work friend, so I popped over to EB Games (remember them?), grabbed up a used copy, popped it into my X-Box, and...

I think I averaged about eight hours a day on those games. Each of them.

It was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had, a wholly new Star Wars story taking place centuries before the films (and yet somehow still having the same technology level) that features none of the classic characters, but still felt very much Star Wars, but also its own thing: a sprawling space adventure as you, the apprentice Jedi, joins up with a ragtag group of companions and travel the galaxy trying to thwart a rogue Sith Lord from finding some long lost superweapon. The worlds you visit! The characters you meet! The quests, the leveling, the force powers, the plot, everything was just so fresh and so cool!

And then you get to the twist, a twist that is now notorious for being one of the best twists in gaming history: finding out that you aren’t just some new Jedi rising up to stop a Sith Lord: you are actually DARTH MOTHERFUCKING REVAN, the Sith Lord that was the master of the current Sith Lord, long thought dead but had actually been captured, mind-wiped and reprogrammed by the Jedi! What do you do with this new information? Well, that’s up to you!

Needless to say, when this was revealed in the game, I started screaming, and screaming loudly. What a twist! What a game-changer!

Now granted, being the PC of an RPG means that Revan’s personality was decided by the player’s choices, so he didn’t get much of a canon personality of his own, but that still doesn’t change the fact that he’s the centerpoint of one of the coolest pieces of the Star Wars EU that there is, and that’s worth a lot in my opinion.

Also, Bastila was bae, just sayin’. Sort of a proto-Serana, if you ask me.

(note: yes, I know about his role in SWTOR and don’t care for it. No, I haven’t read the novels yet, but I do intend to)

Honor is a fool's prize. Glory is of no use to the dead.

And finally...

GRAND ADMIRAL THRAWN!

The Heir to the Empire is the granddaddy of the OG Expanded Universe. I mean, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye technically came first, but no one remembers that. No, it was all about Timothy Zahn’s epic follow-up to the original Star Wars trilogy, which set the gold standard for the series for years to come and also introduced several of its most iconic characters. Mara Jade? She came from here. Talon Kardde? Also here.

And then you have the trilogy’s centerpiece, Grand Admiral Thrawn.

It’s sort of interesting how iconic Thrawn has become as a Star Wars villain, given how different he is from all of them. I mean, he’s not a Sith. Hell, he’s not force sensitive at all. He’s a military officer, in a series where they tend to be treated as expendable underlings. But through actually using his brain, studying his opponents’ strategies and cultures, making use of the resources available to him, and actually being fair to his subordinates, he’s gone on to almost rival Darth Vader in popularity in some circles. A brilliant tactician who managed to (mostly) overcome the Empire’s prejudice against non-humans through sheer efficiency, he came incredibly close to bringing the New Republic to its knees simply by outplaying them at every turn. His knack for figuring out his opponents’ thought process simply through studying their cultures’ works of art was inspired, and those who tried to outsmart him often came to regret it. What was more, he also was surprisingly honorable, having a strict moral code. He simply believed that the Empire was the best way to run things, and acted accordingly. Though don’t let that fool you into thinking that he wasn’t just as ruthless as anyone else in the Empire. He was just smarter than most about it.

While there was admittedly a lot of crap in the EU that Disney was wise to get rid of, losing characters like Thrawn was a major blow, which was why it was so awesome to see him return in the Rebels tv show. I literally have seen videos of grown men crying with joy just through watching his reveal trailer. And while I don’t have the time or means to watch Rebels for myself, I do want to give it a go sometime in the future, and Thrawn is a big part of that.

But it was so artistically done.

#star wars #knights of the old republic #heir to the empire #boba fett #darth revan #grand admiral thrawn #fav of the day

23 notes · View notes

viduregia-blog · 5 years

Text

-- Prompt 01: Questionnaire

(content warning for: disordered eating, maybe substance abuse?)

01. Tell us about your character’s name. Was it given to them or chosen? Does it hold any special meaning? If your character has aliases or nicknames, how did they get them and what do they mean?

Her birth name was largely picked because one of her moms thought it sounded pretty-- it’s not much deeper than that from an in-fiction perspective.

And Uria Grata, the primary alias that she uses, is the name of a girl whose identity she stole... So it was picked for that reason LOL. Her second most used alias, Violet Waxbi, was designed to help her blend in among various different groups while on the job.

Out of fiction, I’m a giant fucking nerd and adapted her birth name from that of a brood parasite (aka bird that puts its eggs in the nests of other birds), and her aliases are both plays on the name of the bird that this specific brood parasite takes advantage of.

Also when she was a kid some of the other gang members called her Songbird (because i said so), and she still occasionally uses it as a call sign or whatever.

02. What is your character’s relationship to their homeworld? Do they hold fond memories of it, or do they hate it? Are they still here, and if not, do they miss it?

i mean............... she’s definitely not still there! kinda sucks when ur planet goes boom but she’s coping ! sort of !! sure wish more of her family and friends had gotten off planet with her !!

So mostly she tries to avoid thinking about Taris. But. There aren’t many positive memories of the planet itself, it was dirty and and oppressive and, later, war torn. Most days she didn’t see the sun, and good food was hard to find at the best of times. Memories of the people there are much more favorable, though, and sometimes she misses that. Sometimes she even misses the smell and everything just because it was so familiar.

Getting off Taris was one of the best things she ever did, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt sometimes.

Getting her family off Taris was just as important, even if it took a lot of convincing-- but with the Exchange taking over, even they could see that things weren’t likely to get better. A good quarter of the Hidden Beks had managed to find refuge elsewhere before the quarantine and Taris’ eventual destruction, Vidu’s family included.

03. Describe your character’s relationship with those who raised them. Was it positive? Negative? Neutral? What sorts of ideologies were they raised with, and do they still stand by them now?

She loves her moms!!! and the other older swoop gang members that helped them raise her! Loves them so much she almost didn’t leave for Coruscant when she got the chance but they weren’t gonna stand for that... It was a very tearful mushy goodbye.

Growing up, there was a lot of emphasis on loyalty and working for the good of the group, and she still carries that with her, though she’s expanded her gang to include the whole of the Republic at this point. Just one huge family. Also, a healthy dose of distrust for strangers.

04. What is your character’s relationship with the Force? Is your character Force-sensitive? Whether or not they are, do they believe in it? Do they lean more towards the dark or the light or are they somewhere in between?

I mean maybe if you squint real hard there might be a hint of force around her but like....... Not enough to do anything with. Once in a blue moon she has a gut feeling abt something and it turns out right, but like, it’s probably just intuition? She does believe in it well enough, though-- like, she’s seen a few Jedi at work. They do fancy stuff that seems to support the whole force thing. She doesn’t think about it very much, but she knows it’s out there.

If she had more sensitivity she would rest somewhere in the middle, though. She’s all about shades of gray.

05. What three word would you use to describe your character? What three words would your character use to describe themself? What three words would someone close to them use?

me: determined, resourceful, scattered

vidu: i don’t have time for this (yes she knows that’s more than three words)

del, sis agent: stubborn, protective, hot

06. Describe your character’s aesthetic. Do they tend towards fashion or function? Do they like to accessorize? How does this extend into their own personal spaces, such as their home or their workspace?

god she misses the days when aesthetic didn’t matter as much..... she spent her whole youth running around in whatever fabric she could throw on at the last second.... although occasionally she made the whole gang attend her “fashion shows” but even then, it was mostly her making her brothers and anyone else nearby dress up silly......

now, though, she has to dress up and accessorize properly as a matter of survival. if she doesn’t look the part, who knows what’ll happen? this applies to her apartment, too-- it very much looks the part. although, it and her desk are also Always some level of a total mess. there’s lots of shoving dirty clothes under the bed when someone comes to visit.

07. What are your character’s vices? Guilty pleasures? Bad habits? Weak spots?

in her down time, she’s a real sucker for anything that feels luxurious. vidu almost never takes a day off, but u can bet when she does she spends the whole day in the bath!! u can also bet she spent most of at least one paycheck on super fancy soft sheets, and has more nice alcohol in her apartment than she does food.

she does have the unfortunate habit of substituting drink (alcohol, caf, experimental energy drinks, protein shakes, etc) for food, though, and most days she only eats once because she forgets so easily. she’s just not used to food being that easily accessible!! she probably never will be!! and if she’s not in polite company, chances are high she’ll scarf her food so fast it gives her a stomach ache...

other bad habits: having zero relationships outside of work, and finding dares almost impossible to resist

08. Tell us about your character’s relationship with food. What are their favorites? Do they enjoy cooking? Are they adventurous? Will they eat absolutely anything or are they hard to please?

Oops i guess I talked about it a little in the last question, BUT.... yeah, she’s not great about food. As a kid it wasn’t always easy to come by, and now that it is she doesn’t know what to do with it. How do manage eating schedule?? How do GROCERY SHOP?? ???? ? No. If she doesn’t snag something at work then she’s either not eating or she’s ordering out.

Pretty sure Vidu has never cooked-- that was more her brother’s thing. She’s not like, burn water bad, but.... She does avoid it like the plague. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t occasionally hoard food when she does remember to go shopping, though. There’s a lot of shit in her cabinets that never sees the light of day.

In terms of what she will eat, though.... I mean she’s eaten things a lot grosser than anything you’ll find for sale on Coruscant. She can and will eat bugs off the ground on a dare. Let’s leave it at that.

09. How does your character feel about engaging in relationships—romantic and / or sexual—with others? What is their history like? Do they fall in love easily? Are they constantly in and out of relationships?

Vidu’s never really been in an official relationship yet, and she’s dead set on keeping it that way until her single status stops being a career asset. At the moment, being able to flirt around without worrying about someone getting hurt is too important to risk a relationship.

She will occasionally have a one night stand, though, when she’s not too busy. It’s just nice to indulge in the fantasy, sometimes. She's developed a number of crushes throughout her life, but has yet to follow anything through.

Also it’s kind of a given, in her mind, that she’ll end up sleeping with someone for career favors someday, but it hasn’t come to that yet.

10. What is your character’s pain tolerance like? Can they hold their own in a fight, despite injury? If someone hurts them with the aim of gaining information, how much can they take before they cave?

I mean she certainly doesn’t like pain !!! She’s also incredibly stubborn, though. So it ends up like this: she’ll whine for an hour about a stubbed toe, but she’ll keep working on a sprained ankle without saying anything to anybody (limping pathetically around the office and then straightening up whenever anyone comes into view..... Faster limping when they turn away).

Also if she ever gets tortured, she’s already worked out that she’s going to take as much as seems plausible and then immediately start lying her ass off. Come up with a story and stick to it. Last just long enough that it would seem like she’d broken for real, and then start giving false information out the wazoo. With this method, she hopes to never actually find the limits of her pain tolerance cause she doesn’t know what they are and she doesn’t want to.

11. What is your character’s weapon of choice? Are they more skilled as a melee fighter or do they have more skill with ranged weapons? What’s their fighting style like? What sort of training do they have behind them?

Vidu tries to avoid combat as much as possible-- even when things got bad on Taris she made herself useful by transporting supplies and doing basic first aid, rather than being involved with the fighting too much.

That being said, she also has stupidly good aim. She’s been handling blasters for most of her life, and has spent a lot of time doing target practice, but has more limited practice with moving targets. It’s been more than enough to keep her alive in any combat situations that have come up, regardless.

12. Does your character have any words or catchphrases that they say frequently? Tell us about how they picked them up.

When she took on her new identity, Vidu did a whole overhaul of her vocabulary. There was just too much that was indicative of where she came from-- now that it’s been a few years, she rarely makes slip-ups anymore. Also, given that 90% of her interactions are work related, she’s in customer service voice (and the stock phrases that go with that) like... Most of the time.

13. Tell us about a negative experience your character has had with either the Jedi or the Sith, and how this has affected their standing. Whether currently aligned or unaligned with either faction, if forced to choose, how would they side?

i mean the sith blew up..... her whole planet and a good number of people she considered like family. there’s no coming back from that, she’s gonna be down with sith till she dies. Outside of that, though, she’s pretty forgiving. See: going to work for the republic after they royally fucked up defending her planet. She hasn’t had many experiences with the Jedi outside of bureaucratic nonsense, but she would still pick them over the sith any day.

14. How would your character react to seeing a relative or friend on the opposing side of a battle or mission?

I mean she’d certainly try to avoid fighting them until they had a chance to explain themselves. If it came down to it, her aim is good enough that she can generally fake missing people by inches, if she needed to uphold a cover but still wanted to let them get away.

It would certainly warrant a good talking to later though!!

15. Describe a memory that your character finds embarrassing.

That time her older brother talked her into sneaking out in the middle of the night to try out a swoop bike for the first time. It turned out it was broken and minorly exploded when she turned it on, naturally alerting all adults in the area. Her brother was gone by the time they got to the scene, but Vidu had tripped getting off and was dealing with a busted nose for too long to escape.

It’s mostly embarrassing because she should have known better, her brother was always pulling shit like that.

16. What goals does your character hold for themself and what steps have they taken towards achieving them? How far are they willing to go to reach them? What is their be-all and end-all?

Destroy the Empire. Not really. I mean yes, really, in the moments when she lets herself go really hog wild with the daydreaming, but. She doesn’t imagine that will happen in her lifetime. In the meantime, she’s content to aim for running the Strategic Information Service and getting it really set up to start crippling the Empire’s operations.

Her steps have been pretty good so far, she’s already in a position of some mild authority within the organization, and she’s slowly building a network of powerful people that value her opinion. She’ll get there someday. The ends justify the means, in this case, so...... She probably wouldn’t stoop to murder but even that is a tiny bit questionable depending on who it is.

17. What is the one thing your character would change about their life if they were given the chance? What other lives could they have lived as a result?

Taris not being blown up would be..... nice..... Most of the things she would change are so far outside of her control that it’s not even really worth dreaming about, honestly. If Taris hadn’t been blown up, if the Mandalorian Wars hadn’t fucked them, if Taris hadn’t been a shithole in the first place-- it’s not worth thinking about.

There’s a small, secret part of her that thinks maybe a nice calm life with her family would be okay, living under the radar on Bogden with them, setting up a chill lil smuggling operation. Would be great, even, but honestly even in her daydreams she knows that she would get bored of that really quick. She doesn’t know who she is without some kind of crusade.

18. Living in such a high-conflict time, how does your character feel about doing what they must to survive? Will they hurt or kill others—either directly or indirectly—to protect themself and / or those close to them? If so, do they regret it when all is said and done?

As mentioned previously, she’s a big proponent of the ends justifying the means. If it’s to protect herself or others, she has no qualms about killing or maiming, and she’s done it before. For reasons less vital than defense there would be... Hesitation. She hasn’t been put in a position to find out, yet, whether or not she’d be willing to kill someone who’s not a direct threat in order to guarantee the success of a bigger picture goal. If she did, though, she would be torn up about it for a while.

19. What is the biggest problem your character is currently dealing with?

Vidu’s job is consuming her every waking moment, right now. It’s a good distraction, honestly, from having to think about everything that’s been lost in the fighting. Her biggest problem right at this particular moment is that one of her agents didn’t return from a mission recently, and she hasn’t been able to re-establish contact for a good while, so she probably has to recruit someone knew to re-establish coverage in their sectors.

20. Give us 3+ headcanons of any length or subject matter.

okay here we go again:

1. Agents: Vidu’s first recruit was a smuggler named Del Kos, and her suspiciously well trained travelling companion, Scorpio, though he’s technically not on the payroll. Anyway, Vidu and Del get along really well and it’s actually terrible when they end up on the same planet cause Del inevitably gets Vidu drunk, and Vidu is both a lightweight and a really rowdy drunk, so Scorpio always has to step in and manage things or it ends with Del starting a bar brawl while Vidu goes full wrestling announcer voice and takes bets from her perch atop the bar.

At the moment, Vidu also manages two other official agents, but I want to leave those open for later development so I’m not gonna go too much into them.

2. Bike Skills: Vidu’s actually really good at swoop bike racing but she can’t tell anyone!! It would blow her cover!! But she is, at all times, dying inside that she doesn’t get to flaunt one of her biggest pride points. This only really becomes a problem when she sees someone watching a swoop race and can’t contain it anymore and becomes the most obnoxious sports fan right in their ear.

3. Sexuality: The girl is a big ol’ gay, zero interest in guys, but flirts with them all the time to get what she wants. She can’t help it if they’re easily manipulated!!

bonus. Give us a list of any length telling us why our “fave is problematic.”

is she tho...? i mean.... is she?

jk of course she is:

she stole a whole ass identity and is living a lie she drinks more wine and caffa than she eats food she probably lets her agents get away with more than she should she’s working really hard to get everyone she works for wrapped around her finger doesn’t have any friends outside of work crosses professional boundaries with the work friends she does have her apartment looks like a whirlwind went through it at all times so does her desk someone save her poor coworkers and the janitor

#sidereal prompt 01 #2 #3 #4 #5 #prompt #musing

3 notes · View notes

neth-dugan · 6 years

Text

Nine Worlds - Sunday

Saturday found [HERE]

I woke up on Sunday not feeling really tired, but also really sad that it would be the last day. And on Sunday stuff ends earlier too which is also a bummer. I get why, some have to leave in the evening but it’s still sad. This was also the day when I had the most panels to sit on.

AIs AND SUPERINTELLIGENCES - ARE THEY REALLY COMING FOR US?

...bonus points if you recognise this movie that wasn’t mentioned in the talk.

A good portion of this was on the history of computing, which was interesting, From pre-electronics to Ada Lovelace to Alan Turing to Siri.

I wish I remembered more. it went through a few modern computers that had passed various landmarks such as chess and go and the like. And then the ‘scary’ bit that sci-fi doesn’t tend to cover so much. If an AI comes about there is a good chance it’ll focus on one task and obsess over it, and do so in a way that human brains don’t get and can’t really combat. Like, they could focus so much on one menial thing that they take over the planet to make the perfect paperclips.

To me, a question at this point is does this count as an AI? If it can’t reason its way that destroying the world to make a paperclip is a tad much is it a true AI or just a very very smart and resourceful paperclip making software.

It’s not like I’d expect AIs to think in the same way humans do, but some ability to reason and set their own goals or change their minds would seem to be a part of it. And endlessly striving towards perfecting one goal originally programmed into them by a human that they can’t break free of? Not sure that counts. I know even humans can be very goal orientated, and some of us can focus very intently on things and that is our thing. But the way the speaker was talking about it sounded different. I don’t know. Would be interesting to stick people from different fields in a room and have a chat about it.

A thing I found interesting in all this talk of AIs going way too OTT to fulfil an imperative, and AIs taking over for whatever reason... there was no mention of texts where humans wilfully submit. Which, granted, there aren’t a lot. I had to run off after this for my own panel but I made sure I told the speaker about Travellers. It isn’t the main plot of the story or anything but worth checking out for how they do the AI thing.

OUR LAST, BEST HOPE FOR SCIENCE FICTION:25 YEARS OF BABYLON 5

It’s been twenty five years since the B5 pilot, and it’s still one of the best science fictions hows out there, and one with far too little recognition. Last year, @knittedace and I kept saying we need to do a B5 panel this year. Needed to do one. Turns out we weren’t the only ones an a bunch of us submitted a proposal for one, and the Nine Worlds content folk shoved us into an e-mail group together and let us figure it out. Which is amazing, but also daunting because there is so much to talk about for this show. @knittedace decided she’d rather be in the audience but still, so much fun.

One of our panelists cosplayed as Londo last year and offered to do so again for this panel. Someone, at some point, suggested he remain in character for the panel, and so it began. Ambassador Mollari moderating it which a bottle of his favourite tipple on hand, and Centauri woman on hand to keep him in line, a Bajoran Starfleet officer trying to bridge rifts and a human along for the ride.

...the Bajoran Starfleet officer (me) praying to Susan Ivanova

Funnily enough, the night before this I was approached by a guy who was going to be on my Star Trek panel. It turns out he has a Psi Cop uniform and wondered if I wanted him to turn up in it. I said yes please, that would be fantastic. And when he turned up? It was a very good uniform, and as an impromptu thing I asked if he wouldn’t mind staying in character for the session. He said yes and it was so good.

...the Corps is mother, the Corps is father.

People noticed coming in that he was there, and what he was doing, and I think a few were rather tickled by it. Before the panel proper started I did warn them all that we had him there, and as such we all needed to send him nasty thoughts in 5, 4, 3, 2...1. And he played along. There was a fair bit of this going on through the panel at different bits and I don’t know how it looked to others, but sitting on stage it felt great.

We did a quick stop tour about a lot of things. The fantastic women of B5, and how they’re all different from each other. How characters grow and change and have depth, and in fact there is a lot of change in B5. We talked a fair bit about how it shows the rise of racism and how insidious it can be. How it can sneak up on you. And how we need to learn from that. How it did well regarding diversity, especially given its time and how it made Ivanova bi and treated same gender marriage as a simple fact of life in the time period of the show.

One line I remember fondly coming from Londo was “Behold Minbari Jesus - his name is Jeff”. Which made me laugh inside a fair bit.

We talked a lot about our favourite moments. I couldn’t choose. I was stuck between this moment, this moment, and the War Without End two parter. Londo stepped out of character and the real person talked about this amazing scene between Londo and G’Kar that you can see here and I’ll never do justice describing.

We also talked about Michael O’Hare. It turns out not everybody knew his story, so here is a link to JMS himself talking about it. But in short, he wasn’t well and had some mental health issues going on in the first season to the point where he had to leave at the end. Nobody on the cast knew, they thought he was just odd or short tempered but had no idea. JMS got him as much support as he could on set, ready to pull the plug when he needed to. Which he did at the end of the season. O’Hare told JMS that when he died, he could tell the world what had happened. And so JMS did.

It amazes me what that man went through, that he was determined to keep the show going, keep all the people working on it employed and tell that story even though it was hard and there had been offers to stop production. It makes me sad that he felt the stigma around mental health to the point where he couldn’t be open about it, or that he wasn’t able to receive better treatment whilst working. We do know that he did get treatment and he eventually got better as he appeared in season three for two episodes and you can visibly tell he looks better.

Babylon 5 has had a lot of deaths in its cast over the years. A lot, especially considering it wasn’t even made that long ago. In the group we’d decided we were definitely going to do a moment of silence in the memory of those now beyond the rim. And though I think we were going to do it at the end, it felt right to do it after talking about O’Hare, as he is one of those deaths. He died of reasons unrelated to his mental illness, for those wondering.

...two of those now lost to us.

Despite that sombre note, we had a fantastic panel and had a great time. Our resident Psi Cop took the microphone around the audience for us instead of one of the tech volunteers (who usually do it). We had a few people in Star Trek costumes, myself included, and we did mention Star Trek and DS9. All without being mean, hostile or falling into that trap of ‘we must be rivals and look down on DS9′ thing you see in some B5 groups.

I’d declared there would be none of this on the group chat before, all agreed, and at least one person mentioned to me after that they were glad this didn’t happen. So yay.

Also, at the end I declared one side of the room purple, and one side green. The room was decently full and even if one side didn’t go back as far, I don’t think there was a massive difference in numbers. So after checking it was okay with everyone, we had a shouting contest and whichever side won, won for their team.

Purple won. Even if I weren’t on the panel, I still think this would be a up on events this year.

FAT REPRESENTATION IN GEEK CULTURE, PART TWO (SECOND BREAKFAST)

A sequel to a pane a couple years back that I wasn’t at, this was amazing. It was, in large, a big group therapy session on living life when you’re big. How you’re treated and dismissed and harassed and ridiculed. How people will justify it as being ‘concerned for your health’ which is a a bunch of bull. The ignorance and also how the way we grow up and society leads to self loathing and the like. The need for body positivity and how some parts of the fashion world are starting to cater to us.

It was pretty freeing. Nine worlds in general is pretty great about size. I’ve never felt shamed for being large. Never felt out of place for it or looked at the wrong way. But this space especially was really great.

There are things you don’t get if you aren’t fat. The way people can look at you when you eat, the way you’re sometimes scared to eat your fill, the way being your body is seen as itself an imposition on the space of others just by existing or sitting down. The way you’re always so conscious of that. Of that person who jumps out of their seat next to you the minute they can to go sit somewhere else. Anywhere else.

So this? I loved this.

...now, if people designing clothes for us fat folk would realise that me being fat does not mean I have big boobs. Or that some of us carry in the stomach a ton. And design for that. And get models for that.

If they do this again next year? I am going back. That is for sure.

SUBVERTING BRO CULTURE AND FANWORKS

Whilst waiting for this to start, being the only panelist in the room for a while and not wanting to stare ate folks, I struck up a conversation around B5 and Star Trek, I think. I know B5 was in there at least. But, y’know, nerd convention. To be expected.

I was asked to be on this pretty late, had the least prep out of the four I sat on or ran, and mostly agreed for the Check, Please! content that would likely pop up. There was a lot of sports fandom stuff which I don’t know so well, but also a lot of things that work fandom wide. And culture wide. And another panelist knew a lot about a game I know nothing of, but themselves knew nothing of Check, Please! It was kinda amusing, but still worked some how I think.

It occurred to me, that maybe one of the reasons you get so many coffee shop AUs (and similar) is to take these characters doing dangerous things in very bro culture places and put them into a different place. A less bro place, a safer place. I’m still fed up of the things but I do wonder if that’s the case, and that makes me think of them better.

If you look at fandom, at some of the popular tropes or tendencies you see a lot of this. Characters in a very masculine environment, and fandom deconstructing that somehow. Either by complete AUs or by building families or what have you.

There was a lot of real life sports situations, sports fandoms and real life bro culture at college. How some places are trying to dismantle this but especially in universities with the constant turnover of students etc it takes real effort and framework.

Oh, also, lots of good things said about Brooklyn Nine Nine. Which. Yes. That show is so good and subverts so many stereotypes and it doesn’t have the ‘chase you endlessly’ guy ‘win’ the girl, but eventually realise they need to back off. And Terry. And Jake who starts off not the best, though still better than most, and just gets better and better. And. And. Good show on subverting bro culture, that one. Also lots of talk of Black Sails, but I know nothing of this sadly. One of its actors turned up and was on a panel I think? Don’t know which actor or which panel though, but that is awesome. I’d so do that in their position too.

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY - SQUEE AND MOAN

Some time last year before the show aired, a bunch of nerds decided we would likely want to talk about this show at Nine Worlds and all submitted the idea of ‘Star Trek: Discovery. Something. We’ll figure it out later’. And then much like my B5 group, we were all thrown in together to figure it out. It seems like my title was kept but honestly? It wasn’t a ton of moan. The panelists were all fans, something I warned the room of ahead of time.

Much like my Queer Dax panel last year, there were a fair few people in the room before start time. So we ended up having a pre-panel panel on Star Trek in general and the new Picard series specifically. I also recommended ‘A Stitch in Time’ by Andrew Robinson (Garak) and how you can get it as an eBook now. I know for a fact at least one person has since bought it. Muahahahaha.

Our friend the Psi Cop from earlier had now changed uniform to TOS movies uniform, now a proud Starfleet officer. A far better costume than my TNG uniform hoodie and pin. After asking permission to audio record it, he did so and so you can listen to the entire panel here. It’s about an hour long but I think interesting.

Honestly, I could’ve kept talking about it for ages. I had notes of what we’d agreed to talk about on e-mail, and which order of priority they sat at. Of course new stuff pops up and the flow of it means you may miss a thing or flip the order a bit but I find having that sort of thing really useful. I tweeted about it later and Doug Jones, Saru himself, liked it so yay. Someone on the cast knows a convention full of nerds in England love his work.

We talked about diversity, how like other Treks this one was made to fit the world we live in as it is made. How the tone of sci-fi has shifted and if that’s impacted things. Diversity and representation. Some things we didn’t think were so great. But generally it was a big ‘WE LOVE YOU’ fest.

It was also the last formal panel of Nine worlds. I think there were a two things in the slot after, but this was in the last major slot. It was an honour really.

FOOD AND DINNER AND REST OH MY

So I’d been separated rom @knittedace and @laalratty most of the day. I was also a bit tired and kinda wondering around the bar area when I came across @unwoundbobbin and proposed the four of us go to dinner if everyone was okay with it. But I did need to go to my room and rest a bit.

So I did, everyone was good with the idea, though it took the three of us a while to get back downstairs to meet up with @unwoundbobbin again. There was some Slash played but we went off to Wagamama’s for dinner where we had great food and good conversation. Me and @knittedace were out of costume at this point.

It was sad. End of the con. But there was one formal thing left...

THE NOT THE END OF THE CON QUIZ

The quiz at the end of the convention. It is tradition, though it was also a new group of people doing it this year.

The four of us got a table, and found ourselves sharing with another two, and then another two people found their way to us later. Amusingly, at dinner there had been talk of which topics would be preferable to turn up. They turned up.

@knittedace and @laalratty got us most of our points, the everyone contributed and in a tough race every single point is essential. At one point @laalratty thought the giant spider in Harry Potter was called Aragorn and that was amusing but I’m not kidding. Those two were fantastic. And when we won? We won in large part thanks to them.

...me with my price of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers coaster. TRICERATOPS! I’m also slightly worried about the Riddler, looks like something may be afoot.

We got to go up and pick out our prizes, a few bits of ‘stuff’ per person. I saw Power Rangers and went ‘MINE!’ and so now I have MMPR coasters. It was all kindly donated by a con goer and quiz partaker who was apparently trying to clear out a lot of nerdy goods they have. Which seemed to have not been touched, packets not opened and the like.

IT’S THE FINAL CON NIGHT.... *CRIES*

And that was it. The last official event of Nine Worlds. Our team drifted towards the bar, claimed a table for victory celebrations. Which mean @knittedace wearing an inflatable crown she’d chosen as a prize, and playing Slash.

A good portion hadn’t heard of slash before so we had to teach them. Some just wanted to watch rather than play - though some of them joined in. I think everyone was enjoying themselves in their own way and I was glad to have a big long hard game of Slash. I felt like I hadn’t been playing it nearly enough, as Nine Worlds is the only place I can.

I did manage to convert several people to it though. It should be noted, that it’s a home made deck and we don’t really play with any rules. It’s mostly card assisted crack fic creation. As the night went on some drifted away to bed, some others drifted towards us and joined in. It was fun.

Whilst this was going on, and as the bar slowly emptied, there was another group of people in the bar doing tarot reading. Me, @laalratty and @knittedace stopped there on the way to our room. Got our readings. Mine was done on this really awesome deck that was queer friendly and fat friendly and stuff. I loved the artwork. I don’t believe there’s any actual magic or power in it other that what we choose to place on it ourselves. But it was fun. And the person doing it was pretty awesome themselves, asks you questions and makes you think. Which is tarot at its best I think. Not the claiming to know what will come next.

As all this was going on, a group of nerds had gathered around a grand piano near the main lobby entrance. The lift that brought in people from the outside world, and a few people did arrive to find themselves being serenade with nerdy songs they didn’t understand. But it was great. They sang well, the piano player played well. The woman who did the BSL sessions was there and I think was signing at one point.

We neared them to get to the lifts to our room, and as they did so I heard them sing this song. Which will always and forever make me think of Due South. Of new beginnings in endings. I think I said something long the lines of ‘OMG!’ when I realised what they were singing and surprised them. Oooops. But that song gives me many feels. I don’t know if anybody there knew of the Due South connection, but I hope so.

And with that, me, @knittedace and @laalratty went to the room. Went to bed. And Nine Worlds was over. Which makes that song being the last thing I heard at the convention fit pretty well, to be honest.

MISC STUFF

So, our room? Our room had the best number ever.

Yup, three asexuals got to the room, saw the 69 and giggled a lot. And found it amusing all through the convention. Didn’t tell anybody at the time as giving your room number to strangers is a bad idea. But we aren’t there now, so I can share.

They put three asexuals in a 69 room. Brilliant.

On a not so fun side, every night there was a disco I could hear it as I tried to get to sleep. On the fourth floor. I am not best pleased by that and really wish they’d turn the volume down. It’s annoying enough for me, but at least I know what is going on and understand it. Not everyone at the hotel is a convention goer. People have been telling Nine Worlds for years to please turn it down but it’d seem not.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THAT POLICE THING? THE FUTURE OF NINE WORLDS?

I’m going to do a separate post for that. I will link to that both HERE and on Thursday’s post once posted.

#nine worlds #nineworlds #babylon 5 #star trek #omgcp #body positivity #b99

2 notes · View notes

haxorus-imp · 6 years

Text

Alien Affections - Villainous/Reader - Chapter 6

You groaned and mentally counted the spybots again. 34. 34 spybots were created in total. 'Well, it's easier than college. I got a job at least.' You flattened your brow in slight agitation. 'Though, I'm not getting paid for doing any of this crap.' You thought, snidely. 'Well, I am living off of Black Hat's resources. So, I guess this brings meaning to that "As in Rome, do as the Romans did. If you can't pay with money, pay with your body." saying.' You surmised. Ah, your boss. He was already proving to be a handful for you. It was quite obvious that Black Hat didn't like you. Not much, anyway. He probably just hates new people? You shrugged at the thought. So far, you've been polite, relaxed, and easy-going with little-to-no resistance. The man must be easily triggered by simple things if he's thatuptight all of the time. You think Flug needs to prescribe him some chill pills. Because he's the type of guy that really needs some. You let out an inner laugh at your lame internal joke. Stretching out your arms and back, popping them in the process, which relieved some pent up tension from within your bones. Allowing you to release a relieved sigh as the stress ebbed away from your joints. "Halfway finished!" You announced, catching the attention of Flug, as he was completing the internal work for the gamma ray gun on his opposite work station. "Ah. That's great (Name)! You're doing well!" Flug said, optimistically. "I didn't expect you to make so many within a short amount of time!" "It's hard work. But, at least I'm close to finishing up." You sighed. Leaning back in the work chair. Suddenly, you smelt something very putrid fuming up from below you. It confused you for a moment, until you looked down at your shirt. "Aw, man!" You wailed. Catching Flug's attention once more. "What's wrong, (Name)?" Flug asked, turning his body around to look in your direction in worry. "I got machine grease on my favorite pajamas!" You, still in your alien and UFO pajamas, complained. While, looking down at the ugly stain on the front of the glow-in-the-dark alien icon. "Worst yet, these are the only brand of clothes I brought with me! I still haven't changed out of them from last night...eck. I feel dirty now." You mumbled and got up to walk to the basin in the corner of the lab, next to a large machine with a lot of blinking lights and levers. Flug seemed to notice your conundrum and paused, appearing to be lost in thought for a few minutes, as you silently tried to clean the harsh grease off with some feverish rubbing of a damp rag from the lab sink. Mumbling profanities under your breath as you did so. "Oh! How about this!" Flug exclaimed suddenly, startling you slightly. "Tomorrow is when I go out to fetch supplies to prepare for next weeks' projects and restock up on food after we shoot the videos." Flug explained. "Basically, tomorrow is errand day. You can come along and see if we can find a few outfits for you to use while you're here!" Flug offered. You looked at Flug and smiled. "Really? Oh, thank you so much Flug! Heh. It's kinda funny. I feel like I've known you since my whole 4 years at college, yet I've only known you for about a day!" You gave Flug a warm smile. "O-Oh! You're welcome!" Flug replied, bashfully. "I must say, learning about your world has been a trip for me as well. So many things to hear about, stories to tell, and learning everything that goes on in the other side of the cosmos."

"It's actually fun to hang around with you, I'll admit it. You're so laid back, I don't see how you're NOT a nervous wreck from being so far from home! If it was me in your shoes, I would be shivering at every shadow...and would probably be deathly afraid of Black Hat all over again." Flug sighed. You blinked, looking sympathetically towards Flug for a moment. But, you shrugged it off. "Hey, while we're on this topic, you've never told me about your own world! It's mostly been about mine." You stated. "I also want to know what your planet is like! What's it like living on a world full of factions and people with superpowers or advanced technology? What's different about your world? How does it feel to know that super powers exist?! Oooohh~! So many things I want to ask you as well!" You grinned at some questions that passed though your mind. "Well, maybe if we go out to eat or have some time while shopping, I'll gladly tell you about my own home too. It's only fair." Flug responded, his eyes beaming happiness through his goggles. You bounced on your heels in excitement. "And just think! We're both the very first people to talk to other intelligent, and friendly, alien life! My world may have some action or drama every now and then, but your planet is beaming with so many new things! Different physics, geography, and even culture! We might even be the first ever people to contact life outside of our own planets!" Your eyes grew so wide, Flug could swear that they sparkled. "We can keep notes of each other! To take back home! Then I can show my cryptid-believing friend that I was right! Aliens WERE the right way to go!" You flailed a little in your excitement. "Maybe I can take back some evidence? Like a miniature ray gun? That'll show e'm I'm not a liar! I would have evidence that couldn't be denied! Utterly irrefutable!" You squealed. Flug couldn't help but chuckle at your nerding out episode. He could feel his own heart racing as he observed your escapade.

But, he knew why. Your excitement was becoming infectious. He couldn't blame you personally. The excitement of meeting someone from another planet was coursing through his veins as well. He was still curious of many things. Some that he hoped you held the answer to.

What technology did your planet hold? How do your people do things without any heroes? Without any superpowers? How does your race survive as a species?

Was the evolutionary route different? Or was something else at play here?

Even now, he can't wait until later to get back to studying the blood sample he took from you. He feels like there's something special about your blood. Maybe it could hold the secret to your evolutionary branch? He didn't know what yet, but he'll get there. That's why he's studying it, of course! He is a scientist and an inventor.

And he is excellent at what he does. "Well, I'm gonna hit the bathroom and clean up." You said, calming down from your high. Flug snapped out of his thoughts. "Oh! Really?" "Yeah." You nodded. "I'm gonna find 5.0.5 and see if he can wash my clothes while I clean up." You said, walking away from the sink and heading to the lab entrance. "See ya later, Flug! Take care!" You waved, exiting the lab. Flug just waved slightly as you left an continued to work on the gamma ray gun. His project, while still incomplete and untested, was close to it's final stages. Soon, he'll get his spare time to study the unique blood sample. -- The only sound that stated life was present in the pristine and elegant bathroom was the sound of the faucet turning on within the bath-shower hybrid tub. Warm water rushed out of the spout, coating your skin in warmth and gave you a soothing feeling of relaxation. You sighed as you rubbed your scalp clear of excess oils and loose hairs. It felt like paradise. Just letting the water run down your skin and into the drain. You weren't really a single-type of washing preference person. You would take showers some days and baths on others. Usually, it mostly depends if you need to shave or relax. Sometimes, you didn't even have a choice. It was either one or the other most of the time. Not that you complained. You are mostly glad to get cleaned in the end. You lathered up a rag with some soap, which had a nice fragrance, to cleanse your body with. While you did this, you let your mind wonder. Tomorrow was presentation day. The day of the catalog photo shoot. Which will be preformed and used to show off your creations. You honestly don't think you'll be present for the shoot. It'll probably be handled by Black Hat and Flug mostly anyway. You're more concerned with the world that you will get to explore tomorrow when you go run errands with Flug. You sighed, letting the foamy lather wash off of your skin as you put some shampoo in your hand. I mean, there are some concerns you have about going out into the city. What if people notice your differences like Dementia and Flug did? I mean, even Black Hat probably picked up on your strange appearances! What if you turn too many heads and make Flug uncomfortable? What if you and him get separated? Just...what if? You rubbed your arms, suddenly feeling something attached to one of them. You looked over and saw the bandage from last night. Still clinging to your arm and covering a wound that had stopped bleeding a long time ago. Steadily, you peeled it off of your skin and opened the door to the hybrid. Depositing the bandage into the bin that wasn't too far from the door and closed the hybrid door back. You rinsed your head clear of foam as you walked back under the flowing water. Pressing your forehead to the wall, you sighed. '(Name)...we talked about this. Everything is going to be fine! No need to stress yourself. Besides! Who cares about that worrisome stuff? Just throw those thoughts away like that used bandage. It's a whole new world!' You then paused and blinked to yourself. Then, you allowed a smug look to cross your face as an idea popped into your head. "I can show you the world~, shining, shimmering, splendid~" "Now, tell me princess, when did you last let your heart decide~?" You sang, albeit softly. Laughing lightly. You kept singing in a low volume, letting the motion of your hands and body fit your own personal imaginings. It was silly to sing in the shower, but with the stress that you have faced in the last 24 hours, you might as well sing heavy metal songs at the top of your voice. Just to release the tension. But, Black Hat would have your head if you did that. Dementia did say that she played guitar when she came rushing into the kitchen at lunch, apparently overhearing your talent-associated conversation with Flug. You would like to see her preform sometime. You bet she would play like a punk-rockstar. Seeing as she shared similarities to said-genre when one looks at her outfit. So, it would probably be safe. Probably. You hummed the chorus of the song playing in your head, letting your imagination drift as you rinsed the conditioning out of your hair. "A whole new world~" "A hundred thousand things to see~!" You sung, finishing up your cleaning session and preparing yourself to get out of the stream of water. By the time you finished the song, you had stepped out of the bath-shower hybrid and are currently drying off with a large and fluffy rose red towel. You hummed as you finished brushing out your hair to the beat of the final tunes in your head. Rising your mouth out with gargle, you still did not have a toothbrush, and spat it into the sink. You sighed peacefully. Cleaned, freshened up, and with the towel wrapped securely around yourself, you prepared to leave the refuge of the bathroom. Singing did help a little. It was mostly just a personal relief valve for you. You're not the best singer, but practicing during the times when you were alone sure did give you a decent pair of pipes. You unlocked the door and headed out into the hallway. Only to be surprised by a startled shout. When you looked over, you saw your boss, Black Hat. He was just standing there across from you, stiff like a statue. "Oh. Hey, boss." You greeted. -- Black was NOT expecting this. He was just on his way to 'check up' on Flug and you to see how progress was coming along, only to hear a door open and had himself become visually assaulted by nudity! Black Hat was standing in horror-filled surprise as you stood there in the hall with nothing but a large fluffy red towel to cover yourself and wet hair sticking to your skin. Without warning him, no less! "Why are you out wondering the halls dressed like that?!" Black Hat screeched. "...Because I just got out of the shower?" You replied, nonchalantly. "That doesn't excuse this large amount of indecency! This is a business! Not your personal home!" Black Hat scowled. Okay, now you're just getting mad at this bastards' accusatory tone. Whoa! Whoa! Slow down, (Name)! Two negatives don't make a positive! You took a steady breath to calm yourself and kept your face and body relaxed. You know he hates that. "I got some engine grease on my pajamas while working. Those, being the only clothes that I brought with me and that fit me, are in the wash." You explained. "That reminds me!" You exclaimed. "Have you seen 5.0.5 around? He probably has my clothes ready." You muttered, placing a finger on your chin. "No! I haven't! Just...for evils' sake! Follow me!" He growled. You looked at him in confusion, but followed anyway. It took a few minutes, until he opened a door to a bedroom. It had a goth-like theme to it, like the rest of the house. Yet, the bed looked like something fit for a mansion! It was a deep red color, with a few mixtures of dull grays and blacks. The blankets also had top hat prints on them. Which was a trend around this manor, as you seemed to notice a lot of things that had to do with top hats or had designs of top hats on them. Like the wallpaper for instance. You suspect that Black Hat literally has an obsession with the object. It also had a canopy with curtains that could be pulled or adjusted to your liking. Plenty of pillows and comfortable-looking blankets. You let out a whistle. "Nice room. Who does it belong to?" You asked. Black Hat just looked over and rolled his one visible eye. "This is YOUR room, you imbecile. This will serve as your room until you eventually leave." Black Hat stated. "Oh! Sweet!" You gaped. "Thanks, boss!" You smiled at him. "Stop smiling at me." Black Hat warned. You would'ave frowned at him in a huff if you didn't feel a nudge on your arm. You turned to see 5.0.5 behind you, big adorable eyes and all, as he was holding a neatly folded pair of alien and UFO pajamas out to you. You smiled brightly at the return of your favorite clothes. Using one hand, you fetched the clothes from his paws and opened the top to see, to your relief, that the grease stain was gone completely. You passed the clothes over to your hand that was holding the towel up. "Ah! Thanks 5.0.5! You managed to get that nasty stain out and saved my favorite shirt! You're such a good bear!" You rubbed 5.0.5's head affectionately with your free hand, as the bear rubbed its' own head into your palm. Loving the friendly attention you were giving him. The clearing of a throat broke the good mood like glass. Oh, right. Your boss was still here. You looked over to Black Hat with your eyebrow raised. "What? Do you want to be petted too?" You smirked. "Got two hands for the job!" You couldn't help but laugh at Black Hat's deadpan expression. "Oh, come now, boss! I'm just being silly." "More like stupidly childish." He grunted. "I'm taking my leave, get dressed, we have a big day tomorrow. Come 5.0.5!" Black Hat snarled, causing the bear to whimper. Black Hat reached the door and waited for 5.0.5 to scurry on by him. But, before he could close the door, you called out to him. "What?! Can't you see I'm busy?!" He snapped. You didn't let that get you down nor stop what you were going to say, you just grinned at him lazily. "Thanks again, boss! I'm grateful for your hospitality!" You thanked. Black Hat just snorted. "You should be." Before closing the door, albeit a little too loudly for your liking. You laughed. Yep, he hates the lazy smile. "Goodnight, boss!" You called out to the fading footsteps out in the hall. You then prepared the bed and changed into your alien-themed clothes once more. Pulling back the covers and worming your way underneath the blankets. It was as soft and as pleasant as you imagined it. Like sleeping on a cloud. That could possibly be the back pain from working hunched over a workbench all day talking, but you didn't care. You adjusted the covers slightly, turned out the light on the nightstand by the bed, and rolled over as a welcoming gloomy darkness fell over the room. Yet, it was not completely dark. The lights from the suburban streets outside lit a fairly decent amount of the room. A calm mixture of pale and dark lights. It felt like you were in a hotel room. Just like the ones you used to stop and sleep in on the way to your final destination on a road trip. You yawned and rolled over. You wouldn't be lying if you said you weren't homesick. But, everyone feels like this when they travel. You're probably the first person to travel farther than any other human being from your planet. Farther than any astronaut has, anyway. Neil Armstrong can eat his heart out. You chuckled to yourself. That's just what this is. A long vacation. Then, you'll go back with an alien souvenir and make your mark on the great wall of human history. Ha! That will show your cryptid-believing friend! Bigfoot is fake and aliens are real! You then closed your eyes to that thought and slowly drifted off to sleep. Silently preparing for another day of adventure. -- A sudden beam of light incinerated a wooden target that was set up in the lab for testing purposes. Flug held the gun with accurate skill, as he was currently taking notes on what needed to be tweaked tomorrow morning before the presentation. He muttered a couple of math fractions underneath his breath. Testing was a delicate process. As one malfunction could injure a client and give them a bad rep, or show a faulty product that Black Hat will have his head over. So far, everything worked out. The machine fired and didn't shoot off into random directions, which was great. It even hit the desired target. Which was also great. Flug sat the weapon down as he decided to call it quits for tonight. Turning the machine off and he began to clean his station, until the lab door opened. He turned around expecting you to return from your shower, but was instantly put on edge when it was Black Hat instead. "A-AH! Black Hat, s-sir! I didn't expect you t-to come down here so late! I was expecting it to be (Name)!" Flug scrambled to make himself stand to attention. Black Hat merely raise a brow at the spectacle. "(Name) went to bed in their assigned room." Black Hat said, bluntly. "O-oh." Flug muttered, nervously shifting on his feet. "How's the gamma rays' progress coming along?" Black Hat questioned. "It's m-mostly done. Just a few tweaks in the morning a-and it'll be ready!" Flug replied. Black Hat nodded, apparently pleased. "And (Name)'s progress?" He asked. "Well, they m-made about 34 spybots today. They said that t-they'll finish the rest in the morning." Flug stated, nervously rubbing and grabbing his arm out of habit. Black Hat frowned a little at that. "They need to pick up the pace if they are going to reach the deadlines in time." Black Hat hummed. Flug nodded and swallowed his anxious fears to ask Black Hat about (Name)'s apparent clothes situation. "Black Hat, if you don't mind me...uh, asking this." This caught Black Hat's attention. "But, (Name) is in need of a few outfits if they are going to be staying here for a while." Flug explained. "So. I need to ask you, if they can come with me into the city while I run my weekly errands and purchase some clothes for them." Flug said. It was silent for a few moments, putting Flug on edge for a bit. "....Fine." Black Hat caved. Flug sighed in relief. "BUT." Black Hat paused. "They can only have three outfits. Other necessities, like undergarments, don't count." Black Hat stated. "If they are going to get some, they can only choose three." Flug was flabbergasted. "B-But, why only three, sir?" Flug stuttered. "They got under my skin tonight, they're taking this as a lesser form of punishment. Only three outfits! No more, no less." Black Hat shrugged. Flug couldn't really deny Black Hat. "Understood, sir." Flug submitted. Black Hat then began to walk back to the exit of the lab, right before turning around and looking at Flug. "Don't stay up too late, Flug. It's presentation day tomorrow. Get out of the lab, get cleaned up, and go sleep in your actual room. Do not fall asleep in the lab cot this time." He warned, then departed. Flug gave out a heavy sigh. He was afraid that Black Hat would say something along that line. He looked over toward the fridge where the vile of your blood was being kept. He guessed that the testing will have to wait for some other time then. Just when he's not so busy. Flug fixed up his station and headed toward the lab door. Turning off the lights and exiting the lab. Leaving the dark rooms' machines to hum and beep all through the night. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next> <Previous ~First~

#Villainous #Flug x Reader #Black Hat x Reader #Alien Affections #Fanfic

12 notes · View notes

still-finding-our-way · 3 years

Text

15th November 2020 Harford to Western Beacon

Date of walk 15th November

Present Sarah, Alex, Jennie

Blimey a whole month since this plan was hatched. There has a been a lot of moor walking since then with this project and in addition. It’s become what happens on days off. I work and I walk. Today we hit the southernmost tip off the moor, Western Beacon with some other tors and lots of cairns and stones on the way. The most wonderful thing about this walk was Alex’s police issue 25 year old boots which actually keep water out. This I not something I had yet experienced or thought really possible but they were amazing. Better than the fresh air, the wind, the views, the laughter, the gossip. Alex’s boots. Yum yum yum. The second best thing was Sarah’s gloves. Although they were teeny weeny tiny they were warmy yummy scrummy. I have learnt nothing from the previous walk despite the lessons loud and clear. GEAR. BUY IT. ITS ALL THAT MATTERS,

On this walk I was throwing out dates to events that I don’t think were right. We know stuff between us. That there were forests once, that cairns means bury, that beacon means fire and communication, that bronze age means settlements ( maybe) and today we learnt about new layers on our Dartmoor palimpsest like the OS lot with their new-fangled old-fangled trigonometry technologies to help poor lost feminists locate themselves in time and space if they only knew how. And again there were loads of thing we could not see in the landscape but were there apparently like a race course and a firing range. I can’t yet see with moor eyes. The landscape is so empty yet so full all at the same time. When I get my moor eyes I will be able to see the things I cannot now.

Today was about really shit weather and technique. Alex makes the compass more friendly and I was able to make tentative associations between it and something positive - and not a school maths class. The compass puts me off because it looks like something I used to carry to school in a pencil case everyday but be unsure of its utility. He is very suave and very sure and its comforting to be out there with him. He and Sarah look good together, good gear and ying-yanging their strengths and sandwiches (who gets the crust). We talk and walk and laugh and share and I feel lucky to have this.

Things I have learnt from this walk.

Today I claimed the bronze age was 10000 years ago which is bullshit. This plagued me all day. The ice age was 11/12000 years ago so it wouldn’t line up. When I got home I checked and started learning all sort of stuff. Like that Britain only became an island 8000 years ago when a tsunami wiped us off the edge of Norway by a wave so big it dismembered creatures in its way (Nice!). 8000 years WTF, how could I only know that now? That shook my identity as an islander I can tell you. I am happier now knowing that the bronze age was back where it should be about 3-4000 years ago. And totally marvel at the length of time that the moors have been used for.

Dartmoor emerged out of the last ice age densely forested and it was around this time that people started to inhabit it properly. People means deforestation and deforestation created man eating peart bogs (still need to sort that one). People did start to leave Dartmoor for a while due to fOOOOkking up the soil but did return briefly around 9/10AD. There are over 1200 sites on Dartmoor including cairns (burial sites), ceremonial sites and over 75 stone rows - in fact, 60 per cent of all the stone rows in England can be found on Dartmoor. There is a great web site here that documents them all in total nerd fashion. There are 15 stone circles. One of the most dramatic is the circle at Grey Wethers wherever that is. Now I have looked it up and we were bloody well there. Grey Wethers is the double stone circle we went to near Fernworthy. The only double circle on the moor. Significance now know ! Most of these rows and circles were built in clearings in forests so they must feel all cold and naked now.

Other things I already knew but need to know harder

I must get a map

I must get a folder

I must get boots

I must get gaiters

I must get gloves

I must get a compass, a GPS, a decent hat, a good coat, a bag to throw muddy stuff in at the end.

Stuff to read – Stone Rows - http://www.dartmoorwalks.org.uk/resource/rows.php#:~:text=The%20longest%20is%20the%20Stall,triple%20stone%20rows%20on%20Dartmoor.

0 notes

jenroses · 7 years

Text

If you’re feeling disconnected, if you are having a hard time engaging in the world and it feels like no one sees you, if you are having a hard time finding joy or finding the will to strive towards goals you have wanted, here’s a little refocusing pep talk.

First of all, it is no great mystery right now why you are having a hard time connecting. I don’t know who you are and I don’t know your life, but I know if you have a soul and are aware of what’s going on in the world as a compassionate person, you are probably stressed, worried and afraid, even if you are leading a sheltered and/or privileged existence.

And if you aren’t leading a sheltered existence, if you’re struggling with pain, illness, financial stress, housing stress or discrimination, the past year has made all those things a lot worse.

It is this way for pretty much every compassionate soul I know.

There are things you love to do, things you are very good at, things that usually provide you joy, and if you were NOT under a huge amount of stress, they’d probably still be working right now.

Because I’m a giant nerd, I’m going to put this in computer terms.

When your system is new, and hasn’t gotten bogged down, you may have plenty of emotional resources on top of what you need to get out of bed in the morning. That 8 gigs of RAM is great when you haven’t loaded all your worries.bin and intrusivethoughts.dll and Politics.exe.

When shit gets real, your entire processor, RAM and disk drive get completely sidetracked by dealing with the cognitive and emotional demands of dealingwithcrap.html.

EVERYTHING slows down. Nonessential processes get ignored. Essential processes don’t work very well.

I’m not going to tell you there’s a magic solution, but I can tell you where the problem ISN’T and give you some strategies for freeing up resources in the short term.

The problem is not you. This shit is genuinely, objectively hard. Literally everyone is struggling with it. Rich celebrities are struggling with it, and they can literally buy all the stress relief that money can buy… but they can’t just fix the problem.

Just because it’s hard for everyone doesn’t mean that your struggle is small or irrelevant. Survivor’s guilt or “Privilege guilt” from not having to struggle with EVERY issue will not help the people who are dealing with worse, and it will not help you. It is understandable to have thoughts about “But other people have it worse!” But please do not use that as a reason not to give yourself a break for struggling with what is, objectively, hard, even if it isn’t objectively the “hardest”. (Literally everyone thinks there’s someone worse off than them. And they’re right. It doesn’t MATTER in the triage of “Do you get to feel bad.” Yes. You can feel bad.

“Other people are coping better! If someone who is disabled can cope so well, why can’t I?” First of all, that idea can fuck off. I can tell you that for me, a disabled person, one of the reasons I can do some of the things I do is that my inability to do all the things that people normally do means that that stuff has been picked up by a support system I am lucky to have, If you see someone on a prosthetic leg running marathons, it’s because they had the support system to get that prosthetic leg, the physical training to learn how to use it, medical care, etc… they did not just magically wake up in the morning as an amputee with no resources and run a marathon. I’m not out running marathons because my disability precludes that kind of exercise and it’s not a reasonable goal for me to have.

There are a fair number of accomplishments which can bend to sheer force of will, but even force of will (read: sustained focused effort) is a RESOURCE that not everyone is good at, and some people who sometimes have a strong force of will, do not ALWAYS have a strong force of will in every situation.

So, how to free up resources?

Forgive yourself up front. It’s hard enough dealing with all the shit without having to deal with your own self-flagellation. It’s a hard habit to get out of. Use self talk. “This is legitimately hard. Anyone would have a hard time with this. I’m not a bad person for having difficulty with a difficult thing.”

Break things into manageable chunks.

If your phone has a calendar function, put everything into it. Operate under the assumption that you’re having a hard time and let yourself lean on the tools available to keep track, even when your brain is not registering everything. You do not need to store your entire calendar in your brain. Set up reminders.

Look for ways to streamline. I fill a pill-minder with my meds every two weeks, and the ones that don’t go in the pill-minder are literally the first thing I see when I sit up in bed in the morning. This saves a lot. If you have an elaborate hair and makeup routine, if it is too much, look for ways to simplify. When purchasing clothes, look for ways to minimize your decision-making. Don’t waste cognitive function on trivial shit that can be managed structurally.

Block out specific time to check on current events and pay attention to the national shitshow… and ONLY that time. Don’t wallow for 8 hours at a stretch on the national news, it is NOT good for your mental health. It is possible to take in the full horror in under an hour per day. You can’t fix it all, but you can pick which issues you devote time to and what kind of time you spend. Aggregators like WTF and even Late Night hosts can help streamline the process of checking in with less stress than watching national news.

Allow yourself down time. It’s hard to be social when everyone is so stressed.

If you need connection, sometimes structured activities, volunteering, church if you go (there are very progressive churches available) are easier than casual social events.

Reach out online. You are not alone.

Now, there are going to be times when you really just have to get shit done. When you need your brain to shut the fuck up for a bit and let you DO.

Here are the SHORT TERM tricks to get your brain in gear.

Compartmentalize. Need to go have a job interview? Need to take a test? Time for some visualization. Picture all the shit that is weighing you down, every intrusive thought, as things that you can pack into an envelope or a picnic basket or hell, a U-haul if they’re big enough. Put ‘em all in. Every one of them. Close up the basket and set it down inside your front door. When you walk out that door, all that stuff stays at home. It will be there when you get back, we’re not throwing it out. Just don’t take it with you to school, to your job interview. DO pick it back up when you get home. We’re not burying it, we’re just giving it a time and place.

Some of the intrusive worries may be livelier than others. If they try to follow you out the door, or show up when you don’t want them, give them the name and voice of someone you don’t like or trust and would dismiss out of hand. “You’re terrible at this.” “Shut up, Kellyanne, no one trusts you.” “Just hit the snoozebutton, it doesn’t matter.” “Fuck off Chad, I’m getting up.” It just needs to be someone you would roll your eyes at. (h/t to the Check please fandom for this one, IDK who posted it first, but it stuck with me as one of the most useful things I’ve ever learned online.)

Be nice to your future self by taking care of literally everything you possibly can the night before. Pick out clothes. Decide what you will eat. Have a checklist if you need to. Find everything that needs finding while you’re awake. I know this sounds overly organized but it’s something I’ve had to do because if I didn’t, mornings were hell and involved me driving people places when I wanted to be asleep because we missed a bus. It is ten times easier to find clothes when you’re not supposed to be out the door in ten minutes. This is all done cognitively. Some people do these things instinctively? I guess? I don’t. I have to think about every single step every time. But it’s worth it to not have a panic attack when I’m trying to get someplace important and am ending up late. When I was still responsible for getting my kids to school, I could get my middle child from sound asleep to the bus in about 7 minutes because everything was completely set up ahead of time.

Anyway. I hope some of this helps. If nothing else, remembering that this is a reasonable response to unreasonably stimulus has helped me immeasurably.

#Mine #mental health #politics #fucking 2017 #sometimes depression and anxiety are adaptive responses to an intolerable situation

62 notes · View notes

dlkardenal · 4 years

Text

Behind the Scalpel #2 - Dar’s journey with cover design

Hey there, traveler!

Today I’d like to share a personal story concerning both the woes of being a writer, my mentality on self-publishing, and our current project. This is the story of how I created the cover for our WIP.

To tackle a few things heads up, I’m not a complete amateur when it comes to graphic design, however, I am only scraping the surface. I’ve never received any education in graphic design but it became a kind of guilty pleasure for me as soon as I found the magic of MS Paint, so I’ve got some years of self-education, reading up on the topic and long hours of just d*cking around with graphic software behind my back.

Given that, I’d only recommend doing the cover yourself if you know what you are doing or you don’t have any other options – me personally falling in the latter category. We are trying to self publish with little to no funds, to begin with, and thus have to make some tough decisions. One of them is the fact that we can’t afford to hire a professional cover designer, so I either do it myself or not at all. Since giving up is not an option, I decided to do it or die trying. Here’s how I did it.

Basically, I created the first version of the cover before we finished the first draft (not the first English draft, the first draft in our native tongue.) All I knew that it’s shaping up to be a desert fantasy, so I need something with that feeling. So as every newbie would, I hit up google, typed „desert fantasy art” and clicked images. I found a nice looking art, added a black border, slapped a title onto it and this is what arose from that witches’ brew of a design:

So, there are a couple of problems with this. First, it is boring. You look at it, admire the art for a splinter of a second, and go on about your business. Second, which keeps coming back, is the genre. This one looks like a Jane Austen romance when it should scream epic adventure and magic and stuff. The third problem was the method I acquired the art because Google Images is rarely a place to browse for royalty-free stuff you’d use on a book cover. But I was content with this for a while, shoved it into a folder on my laptop, and kept writing the book.

Months pass by and we both started to lose enthusiasm and needed something to fire us up once more. I remembered the rush of excitement when I designed the first cover, so I got on my trusted laptop to do it all over again – this time trying to follow the law and use royalty-free images. But learning from the first cover, I wanted to do something exciting, something someone would click on out of curiosity, so I started browsing digital artworks on Pinterest. This is actually good advice for anyone looking for inspiration – but inspiration only. Don’t go wildly right click-saving things from there, or you run into the royalty thing again.

What I found were fractals. If you’re not familiar with the term, fractal arts are procedurally generated, mostly geometrical images which look trippy as fuck and if an artist gives their personal touch, they can look spectacular. To give a great example, I searched for royalty-free (see? I’m smart :3 ) fractal images and found this:

As you can see it is really eye-catching and I haven’t seen this style used as cover before, so I thought I can make something different. I got to work, added shaded borders, and a more fancy title and created cover v2.0.

Way to go! But there were still problems with this. We realized that one of our strong suits as writers is painting a vibrant world that’s easy to imagine yourself into. By using a lot of different senses in the descriptions one could almost feel the heat of the desert, the cooling sea breeze from the port, or the smell of roasting shashlik – but this cover didn’t give off this vibe. It felt cold, brittle (hence the silver) so it still needed a few changes. That was pretty easy to fix, I just tampered with the color temperature and voile! Cover design v2.1 was born:

Now, this was hinting at the right vibe, it looked almost like a quicksand swallowing the title which was all nice and good, but this was about the time we run into a bit of advice we then saw everywhere – research the market. Now, dear readers, what the fuck does that mean? It took me a while to figure out, but what people mean by that is to go on Amazon or Barnes&Noble or wherever you satiate your bibliophile thirst and look at other successful book covers in your genre. So I did, browsed Amazon best-selling fantasy books for hours, and noticed a few trends. First, most fantasy books didn’t use a fancy font, those were mostly for romance novels. The second is, pretty much every fantasy (by that I mean the myriad of Brandon Sanderson, George R.R. Martin and Anthony Ryan books) used some kind of image in the middle instead of just the title. Armed with this knowledge I jumped back on GIMP and got to work once again.

Now it was looking more like the big names, an epic but simplistic font, a thing in the middle (in our case a two-headed viper bracelet, a piece of important jewelry from the book) and even a quote. Now was the time for me to send it to my taste-testers: my younger sisters, both book nerds in their own genre.

And they told me they liked the previous font better. They found the snake and the quote a nice touch, but the font was too bland. Because at this point I had no idea who to trust with advice, I rushed to correct it and come up with a new, better version combining those two elements. So after a bit of designing again, cover v2.3 got birthed into this shining world.

Looking fancy, eh? This was the time I learned how to create a golden text effect without photoshop (yeah, I forgot to mention, photoshop would eat up, chew, and spit out the 4 GB ram in my 6 years old laptop, so I use GIMP instead). This was almost perfection… almost. We were content with this for a few weeks, right before we ran into several niche fantasy covers we quite liked that were more on the simplistic side, with a dark background, a fancy title and a beautiful border frame. We thought if it caught our eyes, it would catch other people’s attention too, so the designing bug bit me again and I opened GIMP for the umpteenth time.

The idea was simple: create a black background with the fractal as a border, an artistic title and maybe some extra touches. This was the point we regressed back into the black and silver style because black and gold was too mainstream. It was more difficult to get right, but eventually I came up with this:

This time I was sure I hit perfection. It reminded me somewhat to Game of Thrones, it had two viper heads and a simplistic style. Around this time we found our first somewhat useful beta-readers, so I was brave enough to show them. The answer was in line with our reoccurring theme of being unable to paint a clear genre image: they thought it looked like a contemporary girl novel with some spooky snakes for a bizarre cavalcade effect. I’m gonna admit it, it felt like shit but being an author is about constant growth and learning from bitching beta-readers, so I decided to do some more research. I found a couple of useful resources, to be precise, a blogpost from Neha Yazmin (link here: https://nehayazmin.blogspot.com/2020/05/Book-cover-design-tips.html ) and a youtube video by Just Angus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SgJV8wGkcI). They’re both useful and entertaining, so go give them a look. We realized looking beautiful to us means nothing if people pick up the book and think about the wrong genre, thus they will be disappointed by the book by default. We had to make it look like an adventurous fantasy set in a magical desert, so I had to change my entire mindset.

I was browsing Pinterest one evening and found the magical looking Arabic calligraphy, precisely Take the Leap by Everitte Barbee. With a rush of enthusiasm, I grabbed the image and ran away with it, not thinking about some important things, and created this.

Now things were shaping up to be almost pitch-perfect. The font was fancy but fantasy-esque, the style was eye-catching but minimalistic, it screamed middle-eastern and it was unique. But remember the important things I shrugged off? One of them was the royalty-thing again. Turns out this image (or to be precise the ink and paper version of it) was already used in another book cover. Also, Arabic calligraphy uses words from the Quran. Now, I’m not a very religious person and I know next to nothing about Islamic religion. As much as I adore ancient Arabic aesthetics, I think it’s common courtesy to leave things you don’t understand a word of alone and not use them obliviously in commerce. But I believe I hit something on the head with this silhouette filled with fractal art, so I searched for some free stock images until I found what I was looking for. So, at the end of this surprisingly long wall of text about almost a year of redesigns and trial-and-error style approaches, I’ll leave you with our final cover (for now at least). I hope you found it entertaining and somewhat useful, if you have any questions or even critique, please, let me know in any way you prefer. Bah, it was nice to get this off my chest. Stay sharp, travelers!

Dar

The current version of our cover:

#behindthescalpel #amwriting #amdesigning #book #bookcover #book cover #fantasy #writing #writers #writerblr #writeblr #WIP #current wip #bookworm #amreading

0 notes

badpunsmcgee · 7 years

Video

youtube

Alrighty! I’m sharing this video as part of Marks birthday request, I’m going to share the first episode of Outlast 1 on my Facebook but this here has a whole nother meaning to it. So buckle the fuckle up cuz we about to write a novel or whatever!

So I know this isn’t an old video but it has everything to do with why I subscribed to mark ages and ages ago when dinosaurs still bussed tables at the last supper.

Roughly four or five years ago I was homeless, no not couch surfing, genuinely homeless. I had a camp under a bridge near Longview Washington and got my resources from either begging or scavenging. I had one friend, Steven, who had access to a shitty laptop that someone tossed. He liked to watch online videos, mostly cats and/or gun related stuff. It was a nice reprieve from our daily hell. One of these video watching expirences involved what I referred to as a “moron with bad hair” screaming a lot. And I mean a LOT! I thought it was stupid, but my friend insisted that we had to watch him and i obliged. After all, we didn’t have many comforts, why not let him watch some guy yelling loud? About three months later someone stole the laptop, and all we had were flip phones, our days of YouTube had ended. I think this hit Steven harder than it hit me.

We continued our lives on the road for a few more months and I made it to Montana, I found out my mother was there and wanted to see her and my little sister. Steven followed shortly after.

We lived in the garage for two weeks in the winter. During that time I had a revelation, I had been doing this for years… But I couldn’t do this as an old woman. I couldn’t scrounge food if my hands were old and frozen, I couldn’t run away from danger with arthritis in my knees, I couldn’t survive a cold night, I couldn’t fight if someone attacked me. I brought it up to Steven, who at the time was watching “Shark Boy” doing a vlog on a phone he borrowed from my step dad. He was talking about motivation, doing better and being better than what he was right now. Improving his life with the help of his supporters. I didn’t know why at the time, but I felt motivation at those words. I set out to find a job the next morning. An overall unsuccessful endeavour that led to me finding out about a place called Job Corps at a local youth shelter. We both applied immediately, I made it in. Steven didn’t. It was a hard goodbye, but a necessary one. After a year training in construction carpentry and earning my HSD while living on the campus I met another Steven. He was a raging nerd who always had a laptop on him and almost always was watching videos that he had downloaded off the library computer. Feeling that ol crave for friendship I started hanging out with him, and one day asked to join him while he was watching videos. Guess what he was watching. That motherfucking sharknado of a YouTuber! He was playing a game called Outlast. I was enthralled, I loved the game to death, and the commentary actually cracked me up. For the next few months I downloaded his videos (we weren’t allowed access to YouTube or facebook, some moron ruined that) when they became available, watching through the whole series and even digging up some of his older videos. Hell I even found that motivational vlog I had watches almost a year prior. This guy was FUCKING hilarious. I became a huge fan, and even tried to send fanmail to him once or twice. Shortly after I graduated I got my own place, I got a shitty touch screen phone, made an account, subscribed to Mark, and watched his videos as I lived on a mattress eating ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. His vlogs motivated me to join FEMA and voulenteer with NCCC, his gameplay made me laugh even when I was crying seconds before, his heartfelt words and our awesome community made me realise I wasn’t alone.

Right now I have a stable job, a great apartment in Portland, and I’m reconnected with my family.

This video, Outlast 2, is very symbolic for me. It felt like the closing of a loop. In that moment, when I saw that notification pop up, the world rocked for a moment. I saw little 20 year old homeless me. I saw all the hopelessness that I lived in for years and years, and I saw that all change, get better, and move toward a brighter future all because of a couple of Stevens and a laptop with a sharky screamer on it.

No matter how trivial it may have been at first, I have no doubt that Mark helped me change my life. And he continues to help, motivating me when I feel like I’m losing my way.

That’s why this video is so important, because it marks a point in a journey that I haven’t completed yet; it reminds me (in its own weird way) that I can rise out of anything and become better.

TL;DR: I’m not saying Outlast 1 saved my life, but I am saying it sure as hell helped, Thank you Mark. Thank you so damn much.

Happy Birthday bruv.

#markiplier #markipliergame #outlast #outlast 2 #vlogs #motivation #happy birthday

1 note · View note

sugirandom · 7 years

Text

365 days of writing: day 131

Day 131: Passion

This day went by pretty fast. I met with my new Japanese Conversation partner on Skype this morning and she’s a very nice person and was understanding even though my connection was very horrible on our call. She said I knew more Japanese than she expected so she was pretty impressed. I also complemented her on her English and we talked mostly about our pets and some about family life. After that I spent some time watching my watch later queue on youtube and then got ready to head out with the employment resource lady. We went to the Social Security office and filled to get my name and gender updated. We talked to this woman wearing TMNT pants while we were waiting. I just complimented her on her pants and wasn’t expecting the three of us to get involved in a conversation lol.

I didn’t have to wait that long and the process was less painful than I thought it would be so I’m very happy to have gotten that done. Now I just have to wait two weeks for it to come in the mail. The only thing left after that is to change my state I.D. and then I’ll be able to change my name on my cards, bank accounts, work, etc. It does feel good to make progress even though I don’t get too much time to relax before dinner. I did watch two episodes of Dragon Ball and I’ll try but I don’t think I’ll be able to finish my watch later queue on youtube today. In this episode they found the pirate treasure they were looking for and now they just have to fight General Blue and find the Dragon Ball. They did basically reveal General Blue to be gay, if it wasn’t already blatantly obvious enough. It’s not the best way of treating the issue, I’ve probably discussed how even presently Anime does tend to put LGBT characters in villain roles. It’s always been a big mixed bag for me because I tend to like said villains half the time despite this being a really bad thing to have especially in an Anime boys watched…

I believe they referred to him as an Okama (sp?)…which if I understand the term correctly is like a really feminine gay guy. I mean I honestly do feel like it was a little funny how Bulma got attracted to him before realizing he was gay, then forgot a minute later and tried to save herself by using her feminine charm. It makes me wonder just how many times she used her appeal to get out of dangerous situations with men and I went from being amused to disturbed just now. I’m going to move on to a different subject now. Let me just say that I do hope one day we can see good LGBT representation in a mainstream Anime. I don’t really feel like we have that much presently…I mean I do think it seems like a far off dream for it to happen in a mainstream Shounen or Shoujo Anime (other than the titles that are geared towards a specific crowd) but it’s a nice thought anyway.

Poppy ended up staying at the beach another night and she’s planning to come home tonight. I just don’t have any idea of what time she plans on coming home so I’ll probably end up cooking one of our home chef meals alone again. Alas, one day we’ll cook them together again but that day seems more distant than I’d like. Mom and dad changed the day to go to the buffet in PA to tomorrow. I have an appointment to get my chest looked at tomorrow. Just a standard post-op to see how my healing from my chest surgery is going. I’m not jumping for joy about having to go far away after that appointment and needing to eat a snack in the car but they want to celebrate mother’s day tomorrow so I guess I can at least get it over with but having two of my days off cut in half by stuff is not fun. Next week or so I’m going back to working three days too. Oh well, I guess when I’m healing from my surgery I’ll have more time than I want…assuming I won’t be high on pain killers lol.

In other news I looked at Natasha’s FB profile just to see what she was up to and apparently she’s already gotten herself a boyfriend. This is what…a week after we agreed to be friends because it was too painful for her to think about me going to Japan. I had a feeling she would get along just fine without me since she was posting inappropriate pictures on FB. Oh well, it’s for the best because even though she’s sweet in the end we’re just too different anyway if what I’ve seen on her FB page is any indication. So yeah that’s great news for all the sexy single men and women who are into me. Ha ha…I try to laugh.

Speaking of which I’m going to get into a kinda personal thing I just wanted to discuss. Some people might think this is TMI so if it starts to get that way for you just pretend my entry ended with the last paragraph (it’s probably not even that bad). I initially worried that I might somehow get less passionate after being on testosterone but I’ve actually found the opposite seems to be true. Like I have more passion for what I love and things are touching me more. Sure, I’ve noticed I seem to look at things in a more sensual way as well but not in a primitive just needing to satisfy sexual urges way…just a sort of…appreciating things more? Like I appreciate my writing and singing more and I appreciate my favorite characters more too (sorry I’m such a nerd who is more attracted to fictional characters than real people at times). I’m wondering if it has to do with the fact that despite still getting into my darker moods I’m happier overall. Like, if depression can suck your interests out of you then I’m experiencing the opposite of that because I’m happier. It’s certainly a good thing I think, I want to be able to truly enjoy my life and the things I have a passion for so it’s nice that I’m moving in that direction and I just hope it keeps going up from here. I’m sorry if that didn’t make any sense. I’m not going to watch any LoI today because I don’t want to ruin the good mood I’m in and I know it’s hit or miss with that Anime…

#365 days of writing #day 131 #Sugi writes

1 note · View note

weightloss18-blog1 · 6 years

Text

Cycle Synching With Food & Fitness

New Post has been published on https://designweightloss.com/cycle-synching-with-food-fitness/

Cycle Synching With Food & Fitness

Hi, guys!

So, I’m talking about hormones today! Woohoo! Aren’t they a blast for us gals, especially during *that* time of the month? While I don’t believe that there’s any woman who can say she loves alllllll of the fun side effects that come with the menstrual cycle, I DO believe that taking the time to learn about our bodies and our hormones can make a world of a difference in how we feel!

No clue where to start? I highly recommend reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility. It’s crazy to think I didn’t learn how my body really works until I was almost 38 years old! This book should be required reading as a teenager! Anyway…

I’ve talked before about how I went off the pill last August (after some trial and error between switching brands and experiencing all sorts of wackiness). Hormonally, I was not in the best place, but I was committed to staying off the pill to try and learn how to manage my cycle naturally. Needless to say, this quest turned me into a total fertility nerd, and I wanted to know anything and everything about how my body works. Seed cycling was my first jump into a more natural way of balancing hormones – and while I was skeptical at first, I totally noticed a difference. I really thought seeds were magical… until they weren’t, and I stopped noticing all of the awesome effects.

After that, I thought, what else is out there to try? Awhile back, I picked up a book with all sorts of information about cycle synching called Woman Code by Alisa Vitti, a functional nutritionist and women’s hormone expert – and I am super glad that I did! You’re probably asking yourself – what the heck is cycle syncing, you hippy?! It sounds a little out there, but trust me, once you get the hang of it, it’s not at all.