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notnctu · 3 years

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backseat chronicles - n.jm | ridin’ club

━ welcome to the ridin’ club smut series

genre ➠ slow burn, smut, fluff, lil angst wordcount ➠ 8.5k details ➠ fem!reader, streetracer!jaemin, badboy!jaemin, college!au ━ where Jaemin brings you to his club races as his arm candy. warnings ➠ explicit language, overstimulation, flirty banter, pet names, softdom!jaemin, car sex, praise kink, hittin it raw (y/n on the pill), oral, daddy kink, slight corruption kink, fingering synopsis ➠ There is no reasonable explanation as to why or how you always end up in the backseat of Na Jaemin’s beloved car. Almost routinely, he picks you up around ten in the evening with the stereo blasting the raunchiest lyrics for your entire suburban neighborhood to hear. The entire night remains purely friendly, a dabble of flirtatious comments because well, it’s Jaemin for fuck sakes. But all it takes is one suggestive gaze from his dark, lustful eyes and a drop in his voice that rumbles your core to have you climbing over the seats to get to the back. taglist ➠ @rabbit-doyochi ; @darkneogotmyback ; @im-lame-irl ; @p-mini ; @niniluvsmarkhyuck ; @saniahmichael ; @jaehy9ngs ; @danyxthirstae01 ; @jaehyunoos ; @pikijaemin ; @suhweo ; @yunoyeol ; @lanadreamie ; @ta3ilmoon ;

a/n ➠ hi yall its author doie❀!! thank you for over 1k notes on this series, im beyond impressed by the amount of attention this got! it really blew up and its so crazy!! i wrote this one with more of a romantic plotline i realized its too hard to keep it pwp with all the story building and characterization i have :)) it’s almost over yall! pls pls leave me feedback im sorry it took so long to write ):

While college lecture rooms are too big to interact with other students, discussion classes are there to ease the difficulty. A classroom for about twenty students from a three hundred person lecture. It’s administered by a clueless TA, who barely began his second term in graduate school.

Unlike lecture, attendance is mandatory for participation points. You show up every time without a fail, so it came as a shock to you when a certain blue haired student finally appeared from the list of absent students.

Na Jaemin. The notorious playboy with looks that kill and partakes in some illegal racing club. It’s as if every person in the room fawns over his aura, Jaemin drips with an inexplicable alluring confidence. You didn’t know anything about him besides the fact that he never shows up for class and rumors about how he’s slept with the entire cheer squad.

But he’s drawn to you like a magnet: always sitting in the available spot next to you, asking about your day before the TA arrives, developing an odd staring problem. You don’t feed much into his attention, minding your own business when he starts with his notably flirtatious greeting.

“You just take my breath away, (Y/N).” Jaemin cocks back in his seat with legs stretched wide in an overly comfortable manner. The smug smirk on his face cannot be ignored, he’s doing the absolute most to get you to pay the smallest attention to him.

“I didn’t do anything in particular to do that, Jaemin.” You respond bitterly, pulling out your notes for today’s discussion class. The TA enjoys wasting the first twenty minutes going over the past lecture slides and running through the most obvious topics.

You pay no mind to Jaemin peering over at you with the single handedly most dreamy eyes and smile --- stars shining in his dark orbs and a dazzling twinkle in his wide toothy grin.

“That’s why you’re so amazing. You do nothing and it still leaves me breathless.” His sneaky eyes examine your clothing choice for the long day. On this warm afternoon, the short tank top does nothing to hide much of your skin and the denim shorts that ride up a little too well drive Jaemin insane. And when you cross your legs together, he swallows the spit that pools in the back of his throat.

Your ears catch onto the murmurs of the rest of the class, the midterm is next week. The wretched midterm that is half of your grade dooms you, it is going to take an endless amount of completely undistracted dedicated hours of study--- “On a more serious note, can you help me with this class?”

His voice shatters your inner panic, if anything, adds to the stress that already beats down on your shoulders. You look up to glare at him, but you’re entirely taken aback by the new styling of his hair and the exposure of his tattoos.

The sweet blue cotton candied strands are ruffled lazily above his brows, messy from him constantly running his hand through them. Jaemin sits relaxed in gray sweatpants that are extremely baggy on his slender figure, hands are shoved casually into the pockets.

But what has you staring for longer is the long sleeve of tattoos that wrap around his left arm. Not that you’re surprised that Jaemin has tattoos, let alone a whole sleeve, but this is your first time seeing it as this is the first time he’s come to class without his leather jacket on. Something about the intricate lines and shadowing make Jaemin seem much cooler, almost more attractive.

When you meet his eyes, his lips curl slowly into a sly side smile and he’s practically eating you up under his gaze. He definitely knew that you were staring and what comes next out of his mouth will haunt you for it. “Like what you see, beautiful?”

“I don’t have the time to help you.” The best way out of this situation is to simply ignore it. Jaemin is overly adored and admired by many, he’ll find someone else to help him.

“Jaemin, do you want to study together?” There you go, folks. The random girl snickers with her small huddle of friends in the upper corner of the room, like a crowd of crows, they’re all waiting around for Jaemin to accept her offer so he can be easily integrated into their little group.

However, you watch how his glances bounce between you and her. The most sickly sweet, kind smile is almost too fake to consider it to be genuine. His final choice surprises you, “thank you for offering, but I only want (Y/N)...”

Your breath hitches and gets caught in your throat as you hope for him to finish his sentence, the drumming of your heart distracting you even more. Jaemin wants you? While the thought is flattering, it puzzles you greatly.

“... to help me with my studies.” Jaemin finishes his sentence after a rather long pause, his eyes finally resting upon your figure shying away and finding any way to seem uninterested in the conversation. “Is that going to be okay, (Y/N)?”

“What do I get out of it?” You can’t believe that you are actually considering it. But this is a man that only wants you to help him. Jaemin is an impossible, yet charming man and whatever comfortable attire he is wearing today is really aiding in his request.

He lights up, ears perked up and eyes attentive. His hands fold together on the empty desk, leaning forward towards you. “Dates with me.”

Rolling your eyes, you groan slightly at the arrogant answer. “I don’t care about that. I want something that benefits me.”

“I’ll make sure you’re well fed.” There is a tiny plea in his tone, a remarkable shift from his cool aura. “What do you want? I’ll give it to you.”

“I guess I can’t turn down free food…” there is a hang in your sentence as you contemplate what chaos you’re about to dive into and what life changes are about to be explored with Jaemin.

“Before you agree,” Jaemin chuckles, “there’s one more thing I’d like you to do for me.”

You’re quick to shoot a daggering glare at the overly enthusiastic boy, “why do I suddenly owe you favors?”

“Because I say so.” He deadpans, a chill running down your spine at the deep dip in his octave. The playfulness that was present all this time suddenly vanished, a serious look that intimidates you, but sexy enough to where it erupts something in your core. He blinks at you with dark clouded eyes and you nervously anticipate what he is going to ask next of you.

“Accompany me to my races.” He speaks lowly as if he’s afraid of someone else eavesdropping in the conversation.

Here’s your issue with that request: you’ve never really been part of that scene. You’ve lived pretty mundanely, even in college. It’s simple, you like to stay within the boundaries of what you enjoy to do and what you have to do. But you’re always open minded and willing to try something to determine whether or not you’re fond of it.

Partying and drinking copious amounts of alcohol weren’t your favorite things to do, especially to the point of forgetting your nights. You wanted to remember your nights as much as you do your days. The youth isn’t here for long, why waste them by blacking out in the middle of a large party? Also, whoever said that alcohol goes down smooth is a blatant liar.

Illegal racing could possibly be an extension of people who participate in those things, which is fine, but does place a crippling fear of coming off too boring or unrelatable inside your nervous system. But just because you don’t do those things doesn’t mean that you’re not as cool, right?

Since when was your status based nonsensically on how often you spend your nights in socializing crowds full of sweaty bodies and how much cheap booze you can drink? It had to be all in your head --- you’re just dreading any awkward socializing with people who race cars when it’s absolutely illegal.

“Why me?” It’s a genuine answer, possibly stemming from your insecurities of not being on the same level of charm as Jaemin exudes. You’re not a fool, you’re well aware of the many different people he comes across on campus so, why you?

Jaemin doesn’t hesitate to answer, “why not you? You’re just my type. Hot and smart. Cute and a little shy. The greatest duality, if you ask me.” His words seem so genuine that it has you believing these things about yourself as well.

Nonetheless, you’re taken aback by his observations and his choice of descriptions. “We’ve barely ever talked. How can you say these things so confidently about me?”

Jaemin slightly pulls your chair closer to his own and you yelp in response to the sudden movement and lack of space that separates the two of you. He leans into you, breath hot on your skin and obvious eyes darting between your shocked ones and pretty lips.

“So let’s get to know each other. I can already tell that it’ll just make me fall for you even more.” His finger lightly traces your jaw, stopping at your chin to give it a small lift to meet his focus. Jaemin loves how you squirm underneath his intensity, you’re too cute to let go. “Plus, my boys will love you. I’m sure of it.”

The TA rushes in quickly and is utterly distressed from the traffic that had pushed back his schedule. “Sorry, I’m late everyone.” He rummages through his things to find his notes, but groans to see that the monitor of the computer is off. It’s going to take him another ten minutes to input all his credentials.

But your attention doesn’t stray from Jaemin, especially with his delicate touch at the bottom of your chin. His gentle smile enacts nothing but a soft love, and a peak of interest. Na Jaemin, the one and only. He’s like an adventure waiting to be explored, an open bottle of fun for you to take a sip.

“What would I have to do?” Your voice comes out shaky.

“Just be there as your pretty self.” Jaemin comes off as the type to always have women around him, “you’ll be my lucky charm. For some reason, I always feel better around you.”

The escalation of this conversation is possibly more action you’ve had to handle in the last two years. Jaemin drops your chin and falls back into his own seat with his arms crossed. He is about to turn your life upside down and whether that be a good or bad thing, you don’t mind. You’re excited for the new thrills that come with being by Na Jaemin’s side.

Jaemin’s hot hands lift your shirt quickly, throwing it towards the front seat of his car. His lips return to your soft neck, nibbling at your skin tenderly and with love bites that will remind you of his gentle touches. The streetlamps outside flicker impatiently as you feel the eagerness soaking your panties and he lifts you up to take them off.

“My sweet girl,” his voice is light and airy that it becomes almost lost in the heat of the car. “You’re excited tonight. Did you miss me?” The devilish smirk can be felt upon your collarbones.

“Yes, I haven’t seen you for almost five days.” A peculiar whine settles in your pout and Jaemin’s low growl sends shivers down your spine. The only barrier are his own tight jeans and your hands are fast at unbuckling his belt. Jaemin relaxes back, forearms resting on your soft thighs and watching the neediness in your expression and the speed of your hands. He smiles to himself seeing you this way, wanting him so badly that you can’t wait to get him out of his jeans.

Throughout the two months that you and Jaemin finally became well acquainted, he’s fallen inexplicably into your trance. His friends made it very clear to you that he doesn’t keep the same girl around for more than a few weeks. But he’s brought you to almost every race so far and despite the initial shock of your appearance after the third time, you didn’t let the passing comments phase you.

Why he hasn’t replaced you is unknown and truthfully, there is no reasonable explanation how you always wind up in the backseat of his car by the end of the night. It’s become part of your routine. Jaemin picks you up around ten in the evening with raunchy lyrics blasting out of his personalized car for your entire suburban neighborhood to hear. More often than not, Jaemin has food ready for you to devour and a cozy blanket for your exposed legs.

You’ve learned a bit more about him through your backseat chronicles. Jaemin is possibly one of the only people in your life with a heart bigger than his own body, while also being as carefree as he can. Oddly enough, he cares about you as his friend and as his companion. Not to mention the ridiculous, yet endearing nickname, “Lucky Charm”, that he has coined upon you.

Jaemin has been the best adventure you’ve had in ages. While he takes you on intoxicating thrill rides on the leather of his back seats, every street race has been more than unforgettable. He shares one of the same values as you --- wanting to remember the present. You both know that you’ll remember each other enough for it to transcend into your next lives.

You have him to thank for your youthful experiences, to learn and dive into this new found world of mischief under his care. Jaemin treats you extraordinarily well, he’d never hurt a soul. He showers you in appraisal and carefulness, he’s attentive to your behavior and remembers your favorite things. And he reminds you almost every time you see him that he’s so grateful to have you in his life.

“Have you been touching yourself?” Jaemin’s bold question catches you off guard as it causes your hands to shyly hover over his unzipped jeans. When you glance up at him with soft innocent eyes, as if you’re guilty of a crime and wish to beg for forgiveness, his facial expression is serious and intimidating.

“Continue, baby. You can be honest with me. Daddy isn’t going to punish you if you did.” His tone is sweet and light, but his eyes are dark and piercing. His lips are drawn tightly into a thin line, no curve in sight.

His finger grazes down your cheek gently as he admires your slightly parted lips and the way your eyelashes dance every time you blink. However, his other hand urges you to continue your previous action of getting him out of his restrictive jeans.

You nod, while rubbing his erection through his gray briefs that hug him so tightly. There’s a sharp intake of breath when you pull the waistband of his underwear down and his cock stands against his lower abdomen. “Do you think of me when you do?” His voice gets caught in his throat when you take him in your warm hand.

“Always.” You kiss his jawline and fix your position above his dick. Your slick pussy presses down against his shaft, coating it in your juices and rubbing his tip to your clit for a delicious sensation. Jaemin groans, his gaze dipping between your lower bodies and back to your face.

“My sweet (Y/N) thinks about her daddy fucking her senseless while she touches herself.” Jaemin chuckles darkly, grinding his hips harder against you. There is a shift in the atmosphere as he grips your hips and slowly enters your dripping hole. “That’s cute, baby.”

You hold onto his shoulders as his raw dick fills you to the brim, stretching you out like past nights. Gasps leave your body when he starts pulling all the way out to only have you sink back down. “Daddy, please just fuck me.”

Jaemin picks up his speed, knowing that you have a quiz due at midnight that you scolded him for forgetting earlier. The grip on his shoulders tighten as this man navigates your body all too well. He knows you like the back of his hand, fucking the spot that causes your body to lose control.

One of his favorite sights in the world is the view of your lips parted open with loud whimpers falling effortlessly. Your eyes roll back into your skull as his hips roll deeper into your walls, the tip hitting your sweet spot repeatedly.

“You’re always the best girl for me, aren’t you?” His hand wraps around your neck when you throw your head back, choking you lightly and your walls grip around his shaft. “I know you’re close. Cum on my dick, baby. Be a good girl.”

Jaemin’s tattoos shine under the moonlight when you peer down at him. His hooded eyes are intoxicated by the pure image of your fucked out body and he’s truly in love. “My good girl, come on baby.” He continues to encourage, his other hand giving you a smack on your ass when he drills mercilessly into you.

The familiar bubbling occupy your lower half and the feeling of release unravels all so suddenly. You fall forward, Jaemin lets go of your neck to hold your limp body close to him, your head on his shoulder as your orgasm overtakes you. He grinds his hips into you to prolong your shaking climax, cooing sweet nothings in your ear as his other hand takes a whole handful of ass to squeeze.

He bottoms out, filling you up to the rim to cum deep inside of you. Jaemin moans loudly, his cum spilling all over your walls. You two sit like that until he grows soft, pampering your temples with gentle kisses. Jaemin remembers to take care of you, no matter what.

While you’re in his arms, he reaches for sanitary wipes in the side compartments. He lifts your hips slowly to pull out and you sigh at the emptiness. Gently, he swipes at the dripping cum from your pussy and makes sure that you’re all cleaned up before getting dressed.

“So, you want to tell me why you’ve been MIA for the past five days?” Rolling your eyes, you pull up your panties and fix the last decency of your hair.

“Car meets that are too far for me to take you.” His thumb rubs your chin lovingly and Jaemin’s eyes are so bright and mesmerizing, you find that it’s hard to look him in the eye at times.

“Not because you’ve been hooking up with other girls?” There is a tinge of sarcasm that laces your rhetorical question and though you don’t expect him to give you an actual answer, you take note of his reaction. Jaemin raises an eyebrow, clearing his throat and looking out the window away from you.

“And if I was?” Truthfully, that question hurt you more than your’s hurt him. His hand rests underneath his chin as he patiently waits for your answer. He admires the clear night sky and the rundown abandoned liquor store that stands all by itself.

“What do you want me to say?” Question after question, a stiff tension replaces the sex of the car.

“I’ll take you back now.” Jaemin crawls back to the driver’s seat, completely ignoring your confused figure. He has always been quite like this: going aloof whenever he wants to dodge something. However, it’s been happening more frequently the past times you two have been seeing each other.

The truth is simple, yet entirely complex at the same time. You and Jaemin aren’t dating, despite always going out together and him posessively introducing you to other men. You and Jaemin aren’t dating.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t stop you from growing feelings for him and you can tell that this happens too often for the attractive boy. He can’t have a fuckbuddy that won’t fall head over heels for him. But who could really blame you? Even if all this time Jaemin was pretending that he cared about you, he still pampers you like a princess; he still tells you he does.

But when it comes to discussion about advancing into something more, he hides and grows silent. This has you wondering, maybe this entire thing to him is all sex? And he can’t love you back the way you do.

No one knows his heart, not even himself. He’s never wanted to complicate his life, it’s always been about two things: racing and having fun. There is no easy way to explain it all, the thoughts that flood his mind and heart, so he chooses every way to ignore it. Overall, he’s genuinely lost. You are one source of stability in his life that he isn’t willing to let go, ever. But just because he won’t let you go, doesn’t mean that you won’t take the chance to leave when you’re fed up with him.

This has him wondering, how far can he push before he pushes you too far?

“No, it’s fine. I’ll just walk.” Tonight is unsettling, it usually doesn’t end like this. Jaemin locks the car doors and turns around to reach for your hand. “Jaemin, open the door.”

“I want you to say that you hate when I sleep with other people.” Jaemin confesses all too wildly as his hand lightly squeezes around your wrist. “And I want you to mean it.” He’s only speaking words of truth that haven’t had the time to process in his own thoughts.

“I hate when you sleep with other people.” And you do mean it. You mean it more than anything you’ve ever said to this man. Jaemin just sighs, bringing your wrist to his lips for a lasting kiss.

“Can I drive you home?” Jaemin asks softly, eyes dipping down to the leather seats and avoiding all need for eye contact.

“Yes, Jaemin.” He pulls you back into the passenger seat and drapes the soft blanket over your exposed legs. “Hopefully, I still have time to take my quiz.”

“Can I come inside?” Jaemin coolly turns his marble wheel to reverse out of the parking space, a hand resting on the shoulder of your seat as he does a double take behind him for any pedestrians, even if you two are far out in the middle of nowhere and there isn’t anyone around; Jaemin knows you have the hots for him when he does that specific move.

“What do you mean? You’ve already cum inside.”

It’s the sound of disappointment as his tongue tsks at you and he flicks lightly at your forehead. He steps on the acceleration, revving the annoying engine that roars throughout the peaceful night. The multicolored lights illuminate around his stereo and at your feet, creating the Rainbow Road right out of Mario Kart.

Jaemin isn’t like the others who pay close attention to the details of his car. His motto goes, “if I like it, I’m going to have it.” Whether or not anything matches goes beyond his worries.

In some ways, his car is a mirror of his own personality --- wild and free, colorful and welcoming. And his skills as a driver? Safe, no matter how far the speedometer goes, Jaemin always makes you feel safe.

“I mean come inside your room for aftercare. You know how much I hate leaving you without a proper cuddle.” He pouts and almost immediately his cute baby tone comes out with his beg. Almost subconsciously, Jaemin lays his right palm open facing up to invite yours in. Almost routinely, you lace your hands to complete his hold. Getting Jaemin to smile has never been easier as his hold grows tighter.

“You can’t stay over tonight though. My housemates are doing some Single Girls Only house event tomorrow and it starts immediately when we wake up.” You laugh as the ridiculous words fill the air.

“And you’re participating in that?” Jaemin mindlessly asks and you’re unable to differentiate his implications from the question. Is he asking because the idea is horrendously nothing you’d like to do or he’s implying that you’re not single?

“Why wouldn’t I?” Sounding rather harsher than intended, Jaemin finally realizes how poorly he had worded his previous question. Yet, a part of him feels disappointment whirling in his chest and a desire to feel wanted by you.

“Doesn’t seem like something you’d like: wallowing in your singleness.” He chuckles, remaining lighthearted and playful.

“I really don’t.” Jaemin brings your knuckles up to his lips for a lingering kiss, his eyes darting quickly on the road ahead now that you’ve entered the metropolitan areas and his speed drops significantly to avoid getting ticketed.

“I’ll come pick you up. Instead of being single tomorrow, you’ll be on a date.” When you turn to examine his facial expression, the serious tension in his jawline and focused eyes alarm you. Your stomach twists into knots and if he couldn't already tell, your palms grow sweaty at his offer.

“That’s such a slap in the face to them.” Pulling your hand away from his, you cross your arms and lean your head against the cold window. “I don’t think I can do that to them.”

“I have a race tomorrow.” He starts, his head tilting over at you with his round gorgeous begging eyes, “at least, come to that with me.”

“Okay, but only because I want to see Haechan.” As if it wasn’t moments ago, Jaemin was the one balls deep in you and now you’re spewing enthusiasm for another man. It’s all a joke, a way for you to conceal your undying attraction for Jaemin.

You still remember the first time you met the sunshine that is Haechan and the jealousy that seeped from Jaemin’s words when he noticed the exchange of flirtation. Haechan is someone you’d knowingly gravitate towards: a man with a loud personality that just knows how to conduct every personality in the room. And at that moment, Jaemin couldn’t tell if being more observant was a good or bad thing.

Jaemin never saw himself as outgoing as his other friends, staying more kept in his own circle, but he had the confidence to fake it. He’s bold, rather impulsive and slightly narcissistic, Jaemin knows how to use his strengths very well.

However, when he saw the soft smirk on Haechan’s face and your shy mannerisms, a small tinge in his chest ignited a died out flame. He didn’t realize it before, but that was the very start of his long tumble of feelings for you.

“Do you say those things to purposefully get me jealous?” Jaemin rests his hand on your thigh, giving it a harsh squeeze. His eyes never leave the road and his tone reverts back to his dominant tone.

“Well, are you jealous?” It’s like you two dance in circles, answer questions with a question does not stop.

And as bratty as your tone is, you don’t expect the quick “yes” that answers back and the smoldering look he gives you briefly before focusing back on the drive.

“Then good.” You huff, ready to hop out of the car after the odd, yet sensual tension. Jaemin pulls up to your house and double parks the car to lean in for a nightly goodbye kiss.

“You’re not coming in?” You try to read his facial expressions, but he hides his emotions too perfectly.

His lips curl into a smile before saying, “I think it’s better I cool off tonight.” And you mindlessly give him a peck, but he holds your face to deepen it. Through the kiss, you can feel the neediness by the way Jaemin shoves his tongue into your mouth. The taste of lust against your palette is difficult to ignore, but your academically responsible mind screams at you about your forgotten quiz.

Your hand lightly taps at his chest and he pulls away, his eyes drinking up your swollen lips. “I have a quiz, Jaemin.”

“I know, sorry. It’s just so easy to get lost in you.” Jaemin kisses your cheek once more before you exit. You smile back at him as his words have grown a strong effect on you lately. Bidding him goodbye, he wishes you sweet dreams as he patiently makes sure you’re fully inside your house.

“Is the music too loud?” Jaemin checks over at your hunched figure in the passenger seat. You’re diligently flipping through your thick textbook, a yellow highlighter in one hand and the other comfortably holding Jaemin’s.

The worst part of college is the never ending midterms that are given at any time. Studying in his car isn’t a rare sight, if anything it is more expected than you not doing anything related to your academics. But Jaemin genuinely doesn’t mind, even being mindful about his own actions to ensure an optimal studying space for you.

He really is an ideal guy. Like his first promise, he keeps you well fed and never once asks you for any monetary pay back. Jaemin adjusts the car temperature before you even step into the vehicle, knowing that you prefer wearing less clothes rather than more. Though he isn’t academically responsible, he still makes the effort to try and understand enough information to pass his classes.

The sole flaw would be the lack of open communication. It’s genuinely difficult for you to read his emotions or intentions. Jaemin always has a dazed look in his eyes whenever he looks at you, and it’s an internal fight about whether or not you’re being delusional.

“Music is fine, honey.” The mindless use of a pet name slips from your lips, but your concentration on neoliberalism and globalization doesn’t allow for you to notice.

Nevertheless, Jaemin catches on immediately to the usage. While he showers you in ridiculous nicknames, you’re not one to do so. “Honey?”

“Yes?” You answer back carelessly, not entirely actively listening to him as you highlight an important concept in your book.

“No, you called me honey.”

Looking up from your page, you blink at him with wide eyes and mouth slightly agape. “I did?”

Jaemin chuckles and finally pulls into the overly crowded parking lot, a whole mass of fanboys cheering at the arrival of his flashy vehicle. Everyone just loves Jaemin.

This familiar scene plays like a reel --- several high beams cast light under the dark sky due to the lack of functioning street lamps, dizzy multicolored cars that blaze the tracks, and the all too distinct smell of musky cologne in the chilly air. Oh, and the wide eye admirable stares when you get out of the car.

“Hi, you’re stunning.” A bold new recruit blinks at you in complete awe and awkwardly clears his throat once he realizes his rash comment.

Jaemin raises an eyebrow at him, then at how you plan on handling the situation. You’re flattered, nonetheless, but know that Jaemin didn’t bring you here to flirt with other men. “Thank you. I hope you enjoy your membership in the Ridin’ Club.”

The gracefulness in your delicate voice has the youthful recruit swooning and subtly giddy as he runs off to join a group of others that have been eying you across the parking lot. Jaemin casually drapes his leather jacket over your exposed shoulders, knowing the temperature change is going to result in you most likely catching a cold and because you never bring a jacket despite his plea.

“The power you hold.” Jaemin winks at you before pulling you into a larger crowd to socialize with more impressionable recruits.

“Ah, so you’re (Y/N)!” The stranger is unrecognizable, but you giggle to acknowledge his confident statement. “We haven’t met before, but Jaemin was talking about you the other night at our motorcycle meet.”

Your eyes light up, as if you’ve unlocked a new fun fact of Na Jaemin. “You drive a motorcycle too?” You’re truly shocked at the talent of this man.

Jaemin snakes his arm around your lower waist to draw you closer to his side. “Yeah, but I can’t fuck you in a motorcycle, can I?”

Before the other men can comment on the obvious sexual tension that Jaemin created, he leans in to whisper into your ear. “Actually, I can, but we’ll save our decency from unwanted exposure.” His hot breath grazes against the shell of your ear and you just know where you two are going to end up tonight.

“Bro, you guys probably fuck in the backseat of his car.” One of them chimes recklessly, punching at each others’ chest playfully as if he made a decent joke.

“Why don’t you stay to find out?” Jaemin retorts and the grip on your hip becomes tighter. You’re too flustered to add much into this odd form of competitive banter, distracted by none other than the way Jaemin keeps glancing over at you with a delicious gleam in his eyes.

“So what? You don’t care about us now?” You’d know that bratty tone from anywhere as Lee Haechan pushes past everyone else to rush over to the both of you.

“Aw, are your feelings hurt?” Jaemin sticks his tongue out at his friend before cordially sharing a handshake with him.

“Just slightly.” Haechan looks over at you with a wide grin and playful eyes, “hello, my pretty girl.”

“Drop the possessives, Haechan.” Jaemin rolls his eyes with an irritable twitch on his lips.

He hates how obviously jealous he gets. It’s something too difficult for himself to control, he’s exhausted his efforts to bite his tongue whenever it comes to other people’s flirtations. The thought of someone else calling you theirs doesn’t sit well with him.

“I understand your jealousy, Jaem. If someone was flirting with (Y/N), I wouldn’t be able to stand it either.” Haechan fixes the falling jacket on your shoulders. “But she can handle herself, I know those pretty lips have a mind of their own.” His gaze drops momentarily, yet obvious enough for you to grow shy at how strong Haechan is coming off tonight.

“Stop trying to corrupt her, that’s my job.” Jaemin playfully pushes at Haechan’s chest and they both break out laughing.

“I haven’t said one thing and you’re both talking about me as if I’m not here.” Your small pout is literally the cutest thing to Jaemin. He physically has to stop himself from planting the sweetest kiss on it.

It’s blatantly clear that you’re hot stuff. You’re the perfect example of a head turner, your captivating aura has its ability to suffocate those around you. However, Jaemin has seen all sides of you, but overall finding you so entirely cute. And oddly enough, Jaemin has a knack for cute things.

“Is that (Y/N) I hear?” Huang Renjun engulfs you in a hug, showing clear affection and doesn’t mind doing so. “How did your project go?”

“It went well. You accomplish a lot when you don’t procrastinate.” Renjun gleams at your statement and if Jaemin is delusional enough, he’d probably mistaken the twinkle in his eyes for infatuation instead of admiration.

“You’re so responsible, why are you messing with Jaemin?” Renjun sighs and though his question is more of a joke, there is some truth behind his words.

Your friendship with his friends differ immensely compared to other girls who have come around. Like Jaemin had said before, his boys were going to like you and they do, a lot. Sometimes making it obvious that you’re too good for him.

Jeno comes up from the side, an unidentifiable bruise on his neck and a new cut on his brow. Lee Jeno being such a rough character, his appearance speaks well about how his day has been.

But when he lays his eyes on you, it’s as if all his pain is replaced with joy and security. “(Y/N)! I haven’t seen you in so long!” The enthusiastic boy rushes over to greet you with a warm smile.

“I’m pretty sure I was here a week ago.” You laugh, but welcome him in your arms for a tender friendly hug and pat his head out of habit.

“It’s been a week?! That’s so long.” Jeno narrows his eyes at Jaemin and flicks his forehead.

“Ow!” Jaemin exclaims while rubbing the pain away. “You act like she doesn’t go to the same school as us and therefore, can see her any time you want to.” The tone in Jaemin’s voice raises some eyebrows as they all exchange glances to each other before bursting into laughter.

“Like your jealous ass would allow for that?” Haechan remarks and Jaemin doesn’t outwardly react. However, Jaemin’s hand is squeezing you so tight that you’re more than certain he’s bothered by the comment.

“Oh, stop it. You all know I’m Team Jaemin. He does have the most wins this past month.” You only know that through Jaemin’s proud boasting, anything else in the racing world is unknown to you.

Jaemin situates you in between his legs as he slightly sits on the hood of his car. His arms wrap around your middle and chin rests on your shoulder. Public display of affection isn’t a problem for him, and you learned much earlier that Jaemin can’t keep his hands off of you.

Renjun scoffs at your whimsical fact, in absolute disbelief. “It hurts more hearing you say it. I’m getting my car upgraded, but once it’s done, I’m going to blaze his ass on the tracks.”

“Are you racing today?” Jeno asks the blue haired fellow that clings onto you like a koala.

“Yeah, against a newbie. Apparently he’s really good, so I’m not too sure I’ll win.” Jaemin mumbles into your hair.

“You say that every time, yet you win!” Renjun crosses his arms, weight shifting to his left leg as he pops his hip out. There is always a sense of competition between anyone with Renjun.

Jaemin perks up behind you and when you turn around in his arms, you’re face to face with a beaming smile. “That’s because I have you.” Eyes lock with yours, he isn’t saying that directed to Renjun. Na Jaemin has you wrapped around his pinky, the butterflies fluttering in your stomach are too hard to ignore.

“Alright, lovebirds. Get in your car and let’s start this shit.” Haechan groans and claps his hands to draw the crowd’s attention. Cupping them around his mouth, he roars into the starry night, “let’s roll!”

During the race, Jaemin’s number one priority is to keep you safe. While you’ve sat in his car for a number of times now, it’s different once the loud bang goes off and he’s hitting 100 mph. Tonight’s track is much more dangerous, with twists and turns that can have the vehicle flying weightlessly if he’s not careful.

“You trust me, right?” Jaemin has both hands on the wheel and the engine rumbling as you both anticipate the start of the race.

Spectators watch on the sidelines as if it’s the ultimate battle, but Jaemin doesn’t pay them much mind. He’s more concerned about you instead. “Of course. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. You’ve proven yourself that you’re an excellent driver, so let’s win this.”

Jaemin smirks at your encouraging words, feeling a warmth spread across his chest. “I’ll tap out any time you want me to, okay?”

You nod and the initial whip of the car is so intense that you didn’t even register the sound off. It’s not your first race, but it’s been awhile since the last one. When you adjust to the pressure, the lanes in front of you cause a slight queasiness in your stomach.

It’s a two lane windy road that wraps around the mountain side and Jaemin happens to be in the outer lane. All it takes is a second of lost control and you two will hit the metal railings that guard the cliff below. Despite your inner panic, Jaemin guides you through the pooling anxiety that leaves you restless.

“(Y/N), look up and out the window. We’re coming up on the cliff side view, I’ve always wanted to bring you here.” Your eyes land on the dazzling glitter that dances on the ripples of the lake. It’s so vast, the moon high up in the sky is reflected on the water below. It’s a romantic scene of melancholy and bliss. Suddenly, you feel at peace in the middle of this high speed race.

“It’s beautiful, Jaem.” You whisper calmly and he’d reach for your hand to hold, but races take too much wheel control. And he’d turn to look at you, but races take too much concentration on the road ahead.

But throughout every obstacle, he hears the gentleness and the solidarity in your cadence in the midst of all the high stress. He, too, feels peace. He feels calm knowing that you’re simply by his side, even in the face of danger. So, he can finally admit to himself… he genuinely developed feelings for you.

Before you know it, you’re thrusted side to side from the sharp turns and the adrenaline kicks in when the other racer catches up right next to Jaemin. “Fuck,” Jaemin curses underneath his breath and steps harshly on the acceleration. “Baby, I’m going to go a bit faster so hold onto something.” He warns and your hand finds the grab handle. It’s neck and neck at this point.

Usually, you squeeze your eyes shut to avoid becoming too overwhelmed by the sights in front of you. Tonight is different, not entirely knowing why, you’re observing every element that circles around the perimeter.

The finish line is up ahead, but there is no sign that the other racer is slowing down. Then, you see it: the fatal mistake that can cost you both of your lives if you didn’t catch it. “Jaemin, watch out!” You yelp when the other car inches dangerously close, your warning allows Jaemin to make a controlled swerve away from a possible hit.

Jaemin shakes his head and tsks at the recklessness. “Now I know why he’s good. It’s foul play.” He blows his bang out of his eyes and casually says, “thank you for warning me. This is why I need you by my side.”

He makes it to the finish line barely before the other, winning the race by half a second. Jaemin brakes smoothly, tire marks scrapping the concrete below, and you both exit the car to celebrate with everyone else.

But before the mass of eager shouting men make their way over to you two, Jaemin hurries to your side to pull you into a steamy, rewarding kiss. The scene is just like the movies; his hand on your lower back and yours on his chest lightly. His lips taste like triumph, like he had won more than just a simple race against a random stranger. He’s won the best person he could ever have.

You two fled the scene after cussing out the other racer. It was a rare sight to see: Jaemin being all bothered and angry, practically fuming after scrambling back into the driver’s seat. However, your mind had mischievous plans of its own and all it took was one look from his hooded eyes for you to announce that you wanted him --- badly.

Back in your usual abandoned parking lot, Jaemin pauses before following you to the back seats. With the engine off and the dead of the night being absolute silent, the tension remains thick around you two. “(Y/N),” Jaemin is about to confess something he never thought he’d admit. He turns to you sitting in the middle seat with just your panties on and a curious look on your face.

His heart burns and despite being so incredibly aroused, he controls his urges enough to be able to say, “I’m into you.”

“I know you’re into me, that’s how we ended up like this in the first place.” You giggle cluelessly to his words, still not understanding the odd shift in mood and intentions. It’s always his unclear, messy intentions.

Though he can’t entirely figure out his puzzle pieces, he has plenty to connect the dots. “I like you. I want to be in a relationship with you and call you my girlfriend.”

You’re stunned. Did Jaemin just confess to you as you sit in your panties ready to fuck? This softness is different from the sides you’ve seen of him. It’s similar to a lost bunny, wandering grasslands to find a purpose. He looks so fragile, one intense stare and he’d crumble. This softness is vulnerability.

“So do it.” The boldness catches him off guard, but switches on the dominance in him. “If you want me, come show it.”

He climbs over the middle console to push you into the leather seats. “Not acting shy anymore, are you?” Practically ripping your shirt off of you, he cups your breast lightly and flicks at your nipples. Your immediate reaction results in a rush of wetness down your core.

“Before I forget,” sitting up, you share a passionate kiss that you’ve held back long enough. You give it every ounce of feeling you have for him. “If it isn’t obvious enough, I like you too.”

“It’s obvious, baby.” Kissing your nose, he wraps a hand around your throat to lightly push you back down. “But hearing you say it out loud makes me happy.” Jaemin smirks, hand still choking you gently and pampering your jawline with soft kisses.

His free hand reaches down into your dripping panties, circling your clit with your wetness. The sensation causes you to whimper for more. “Daddy, give it to me.” You wiggle in his palm, knowing that the nickname is more than effective.

“My sweet (Y/N) wants to get fucked?” Jaemin rolls your underwear off and rids himself of his own bottoms.

“Yes, please.” Through the darkness, his hard dick stands proudly. Jaemin lines himself up as he thrusts into you without another second of hesitation. He waits for you to adjust to his size, his tip barely grazing your sweet spot. “Fuck…”

“You take me so well, my pretty baby.” Jaemin starts moving his hips, slowly at first to build a rhythm. Taking your legs, he presses them into your chest to fuck you at a deeper angle. And you feel him practically in your guts, his cock pumping against your walls deliciously and bumping into your g-spot. “Do you want more of me?”

Your train of thought is in utter shambles and whatever Jaemin is saying to you barely processes. You’re overwhelmed by a pleasure that fills every system, every part of your body. To answer him, you let out an incoherent noise of approval.

Jaemin pulls your hips down while thrusting forward into you, maximizing every inch of his strokes. This single action causes you to scream and grip onto the headrest. “Who knew my sweet girl could be so fucking dirty?” Jaemin chuckles darkly, his cadence dropping several decibels. “When I first met you, I wanted to ruin you.”

All of his filthy words edge you closer to your release as he continues to repeat his previous motion. He holds your hips in place to grind into you, the feeling of his tip rubbing your walls has your eyes rolling back. “Do you want to cum, (Y/N)?”

“Yes!” You yell, the tight ball in your lower abdomen is bound to break any minute. “I want to cum so badly, please.” You beg and moan, the arch in your back lifts you from the seat of the car. Jaemin snaps his hips into you, drilling you quickly to reach your high. And you break. An euphoric cry fills the air as your walls clench around his length. You hear the extra wetness create a slick noise, but Jaemin isn’t done with you yet.

“You wanted to cum so fucking badly. I’ll reward you with one more for being such a good girl for me.” His thumb flicks at your clit and you convulse into spasms from the sensitivity. Your violently shaking legs can’t hold themselves up anymore and Jaemin rests them on his shoulders. He lines kisses along your ankle as the pleasure overtakes you.

“I don’t think I can do it.” You whine, your fingers twisting and toes curling.

“You are going to try, okay baby?” He coos, but it’s most definitely a demand. He sits back on his knees to pick up more speed, fucking endlessly into your swollen pussy and thumb rubbing fast strips against your bud.

“I’m going to snap, Jaem.” You cry, tears rimming your eyes and before you know it, a second wave hits you. Your second orgasm is ruinous and has you squirming around to regain some sense of control.

“Oh fuck, you’re so beautiful.” Jaemin slows down as your walls grip around him again, tighter this time. “I’m going to fill you up with cum,--- watch it drip out of you.” He grunts while releasing into you, his dick twitching and spraying your insides with white.

He pulls out as hot, white cum spills from your pussy. You take this moment to catch your breath and relax your legs. However, Jaemin coats his two fingers and shoves the cum back into you. “Jaemin!” You exclaim at the sudden intrusion.

He curls them into your plushy walls and finger fucks you into another oblivion. “Wait, again?” Your hands wrap around his wrist, but Jaemin moves too fast for you to catch it.

You’re a moaning mess again, louder than before. Jaemin leans down and flicks his tongue against your overstimulated bundle of nerves. Your back arches automatically and a low animalistic scream rises from your throat.

He observes your body lines underneath the moonlight and the last remaining light the broken street lamps have to offer. Your face contours and you’re so far out into ecstasy that you don’t notice how intensely Jaemin watches you lose yourself.

“It feels too good!” With one last thrilling orgasm, you almost pass out and you see small stars of dizziness. He soaks up every last bit of your cathartic reaction and festers a small sense of pride that he can make you feel all this pleasure.

“Such a good girl. You’re beyond impressive, baby.” Jaemin pulls his fingers out to lick them clean and finds some wipes to help you out of your sticky situation.

“Now that you’re my girlfriend, can we cuddle at any time now? Not just as after care.” He peers up at you and the one word enacts a burning warmth to spread across your chest. That is the best nickname he can call you by.

“I think the Singles Girls Only house event is still going on, but after that, yes a million times.” You laugh and wrap your arms around him into a big loving hug.

Jaemin feels right at home. All the long years of living carelessly and wild, he’s finally found someone worth the extra mile. While Jaemin was a thriving adventure to be explored, you were his comfort to run back to.

It is through the intimacy of your backseat chronicles that Jaemin was able to fall deeper for you. You’re his lucky charm, for some reason, he always feels better around you.

#neosmutcollective #neowritingsnet #nct-writers #kpopscape #neothestars #nct scenarios #nct smut #jaemin #nct #jaemin smut #jaemin scenarios #na jaemin #nct dream #nct dream scenarios #nct dream smut #nct imagines #nct dream series #ridinclub

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hawflake · 2 years

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miyuki is just??? he’s so complex and there is SO much the series hints at behind all his words and actions…he’s so full of contradictions, sincerity and insincerity….everyone always makes comments about his “nasty” personality but honestly i don’t think that’s the best way to put it…..like he rly doesn’t strike me as a terrible person at all? like aside from the times he’s being annoying just to get a rise from someone, even when he’s being sincere and serious i think it’s just the certain way he says things that rubs ppl the wrong way a lot of the time (i.e. his fight w/ zono) but i also get a feeling that maybe he, to some extent, purposefully presents himself this way? and the reasons are probably not even 100% under his control like maybe a part of it is subconscious, maybe even like a defense mechanism, and inextricably linked to something deeper? like….maybe he doesn't do it on purpose, but he’s definitely aware of it and allows himself to be this way because he gets something out of it that he thinks is benefiting him somehow for whatever reason? but even when he says he doesn’t care about being disliked (and there's a whole lot to talk about when it comes to his perspective on teammates vs Friends), i honestly believe all his teammates’ comments about him being nasty, unfriendly, arrogant, etc has got to affect him in some way

like one of the most heartbreaking things about him to me and that always makes me Feel Too Much is i get the feeling he doesnt place nearly enough value in himself as miyuki kazuya the person vs miyuki kazuya the baseball player. all those times u see him not playing baseball, like in class for example, he gives off a very diff aura than when he’s on the field. you see how he rly doesn’t have many friends, if any at all, p much the only person he talks to in his class is kuramochi, both of them isolated from everyone else in the room, and whenever someone does come to talk to him it’s almost always about baseball. like no one comes to talk to him about homework or classes or anything. it just. says so much about him? just. whenever he’s not playing baseball and he’s just… Normal, you get someone much more....subdued, solitary, awkward…..it’s such a stark difference from who he is as Miyuki the Catcher, the 4th batter, captain….. like all these little things just gets me dying to know more backstory. we already got little glimpses of his life and his past, his middle school experiences, his dad always working/very distant, always home alone for the most part, cooking for and eating by himself even as a little kid, and his mother a huge unknown.

but what rly killed me is when he’s made captain, he’s eventually forced to face himself as a person, because he quickly realizes captaincy isn’t just about performing well as a player. and u see him struggle dealing with team problems that aren’t just about someone’s swing or batting average, struggle bc he’s closed himself off to everyone, even himself, for so long that for probably the first time in his life his doubts about himself trickle over to even his baseball life. he seems like he usually avoids dealing with/thinking about any non-baseball related problems regarding himself but baseball and seidou and the team are so important to him and bc his feelings of responsibility and loyalty and respect to this team are so strong he’s forced to confront himself as a person now that the two sides of him he’s managed to keep separate for so long are finally intertwining in this new role he’s taking on and he’s so completely at a loss of what to do and feels like he doesn’t have what it takes to measure up and he finally goes to tetsu for advice

i've mentioned before but his talk w/ tetsu is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. i love tetsu so much he’s just so straightforward and honest and blunt. he never sugarcoats anything but whatever he says there’s never any malicious intent or double meaning and he works so incredibly hard and is one of the people miyuki respects the most and??? to have tetsu say he believes in him, that if it’s him he can do it….like tetsu was the former captain, he knows exactly what it takes, everything that goes into the role as captain, and he just. with very few words but ones that are loaded with meaning in a way that’s just so very tetsu, tells miyuki he recommended him for captain despite all the responsibilities and burdens he already has to deal with because he believes he can make the team stronger bc of who he is. and miyuki’s totally speechless face and then that genuine warm little smile always gets me bc? when has anyone ever told him they believe in his potential as a person, rather than just his potential as a baseball player?

i'm just .

#this has been in my drafts since *checks* march 13 2016 most likely written at the height of some emotional breakdown or another #i have not interacted with the manga since then so. here #daiya no ace

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felassan · 3 years

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Gamers For Groceries 2 event

A Twitch stream event from a few days ago. It can currently be re-watched here (it was fun & interesting, so I do recommend to check it out direct). This post contains some notes on things of particular interest & relevant timestamps, in case this is useful to anyone (for example bc of accessibility reasons).

First up is the All About Animating panel, a series of mini-interviews with game devs (animators) asking what they do, how they got there, and advice for anyone interested in getting into the industry. Some or all of the devs that were interviewed are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and a lot about the craft of game dev animation in general. This segment runs from timestamp ~38 mins 40 secs to 1:07:50. Some notes:

[sounded like DA4] Right now the creature team are working on different creatures in a way which involves going through a lot of mocap data

At BioWare they have a pretty big technical animation team, to support their animators, so each tech animator has a different specialty. Tech anim involves animation support, character art support, and rigging the characters so that the animators can pose them

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] One of the featured animators’ area of specialty at the moment is faces and hair (building the control structure for face animations). First they had to decide how the face rig and its control structure would work. This involves a lot of performance capture of live actors for things like cinematics and gameplay animation, therefore the rigs for bodies and faces have to be able to accurately capture the full range of expressions and emotions that the actor is portraying. Right now the stage that this dev is working on most is setting up the heads that they’re getting through the pipeline from character art e.g. making adjustments based on feedback from the cinematics team. “Polish - just trying to get realism”

Hair tech has come quite a long way in the last few years [in the industry]

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] Hair is very complex to get right. “In the past most games have used card-based hair, which is basically like sheets of polygons with a texture on it that looks like hair, through layers of transparency. But real hair is strand-based, digital strands, so we’re starting to look into that kind of tech - try to get more realistic, more beautiful hair, but there’s always a performance cost to hair. Layers of transparent things are always an expense, they need to balance like, it looks good and moves well, but it doesn’t make your computer or console chug. [...] I guess we’re in the prototype stage but we’ve almost got a set pipeline. It’s always fun to experiment”

In Mass Effect 2 or 3, Miranda’s hair was as expensive as a whole character (!)

[on balancing hair costs/performance, general] It depends on things like character importance and how many characters are on-screen at the time. When you’re in gameplay fighting a bunch of monsters you’re not going to be giving full beautiful hair to all the characters and the monsters, as it will cost too much. (Having a helmet on is a convenient way to get rid of hair.) But if it’s a cinematic scene, with 2 characters talking to each other in a dramatic context, there’s a better budget for nice hair allocated

Some of the hair in Anthem was quite expensive in cinematics. They kept getting bugs from QA saying (for example) that a character’s hair was tripling the performance cost in the scene, so it would go back to character art so they could take away some of the hair cards. “Tough balance, quality versus cost”

“I wish all the characters could have beautiful strand hair”

For p-cap, a lot of the time they don’t want to be too prescriptive in terms of the direction that they’re giving the actors, as the actors know what they’re doing and have a lot of experience, so they give them vague instructions that they then riff off of

[sounded like DA4] They recently did a mocap shoot

[sounded like DA4] There’s a bit more productivity happening now in the pandemic situation; now that the animators are not all going to the capture lab in Vancouver in person for shoots, if it’s not their turn to direct a shot they can instead be working on something else on their computers (multi-tasking). ((Lead DA4 Producer Scylla Costa recently gave a talk at a games festival on the challenges of DA production during the pandemic. In part of this talk he talked about various benefits and drawbacks to the remote-working situation. He also talked about and showed some behind-the-scenes stuff for p-cap and mocap. Notes, images and link here))

[sounded like DA4] Special mocap suits were sent out that they can use with a laptop to go anywhere and shoot motion capture. It’s not as high fidelity as what comes out of the capture lab, but it’s really good for prototyping stuff. Before the pandemic they did some of this (going to a park and shooting some running around)

[sounded like DA4] In one of the shoots they had some actors who were really well-trained in dancing. They were trying to get them to do some combat stuff. This was a bit challenging in the pandemic situation as there’s only so much they can demonstrate/portray as an example to the actors from a distance on camera. “It’s hard to describe what a ‘dodge to attack’ is through the camera to somebody who has no idea what combat looks like in video games”

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] The pandemic has really affected performance capture for the face side of things badly, as in order to record, the actor gets dots painted on their face in specific locations by a makeup artist. They can’t do that right now because of social distancing/restrictions, so they haven’t been recording faces at the moment

The more detailed a face, the more joints it has, the more the cost to performance is

---

There was also the Writers’ Block panel, featuring DA writers Mary Kirby, Sheryl Chee and Patrick Weekes, and DA editor Karin Weekes. The timestamps for this segment are ~2:37:50 - 3:26:20. Some notes:

PW has never been weirder than when they were writing Cole on DAI

PW thinks that they accidentally wrote part of “Timber” by Kesha into Solas at one point and they were like “Well, okay, I have to stop listening to Kesha”

For Sheryl, after a while Blackwall’s VA always nailed doing his lines. She loved the quality of his voice and so after a while would always hear his voice while she was writing. This really worked out

^ Mary had this with Merrill. As soon as they cast Eve Myles she listened to several hours of her in Torchwood, and then just wrote to the way that she spoke as much as possible

^ PW had this with GDL as Solas and FPJ as Bull. As soon as they heard FPJ’s delivery, they were like “Oh, okay, I have to write some lines differently, because Bull is smarter than I realized”. With GDL they were like “Okay, he’s going to put poetry into anything I say, in the best way possible”. In early drafts of Solas lines there were parts where they [PW] wondered “Is this too melodramatic? Is this too tragically-angstful?” and then they would hear GDL and be like “Oh! [It’s fine] Game on!”

For localization, German words are often quite long so they often have to make sure that everything fits on the GUI

They think scenes like the romance scenes sound prettier in the Italian versions

Behind the curtain in creating the in-world languages: PW: “There are some awesome websites that have every elven word, like ‘Here are the translations and verb tenses and conjugations’ [etc], [...] and usually Mary and I get very sad slightly looking at those pages going like ‘Does that mean that we have to stick to that?’ [...] The rule is, if I’ve looked at the Wiki and the words, and I go ‘Here’s the correct grammatical way to do it’, and if that turns out to be too long or too many disconnected syllables and it just looks bad or sounds bad, then we shorten it to something simpler, because the key is we want to give the flavor of a foreign language, but we don’t have the world-building budget and capacity to make something that is going to be dictionary-real [in a way that] someone could go through and translate all the background things written on the old temple walls”. Part of the reason for this is the consideration for VAs, who already have to act while bearing lots of things in mind, like the cues in the script for each line

Mary: “For building a language, the first things that I started with for qunlat, elven and dwarven, was what words do we need to use the most? Greetings, farewells, words for friend and enemy, basic things that will come up easily in conversation. After that it’s ‘How difficult is this for other writers to use?’ Can they just pick it off the Wiki? Do they need just one word? Do they need to write whole sentences, and how does that work? Qunlat has almost no grammar to it because asking anyone to learn how to use Qunari grammar and conjugate verbs in a pretend language is impossible, and then once you’ve done that a human being has to be able to read it, while not knowing what any of it means”

PW: “One thing that I was really impressed with with Mary in particular doing, Mary was one of the big lore people across the entire DA series; I can look at a word and go like, ‘That has two A’s in a row, that’s definitely a Qunari word. That word is kind of long and maybe has some apostrophes and has a couple of flowy vowel sounds, that’s probably elven’, I think that’s what’s important. You want players to be able to look at a word, players want to feel smart, [like] ‘Oh I don’t know what that means but I totally know that’s a word from the Qunari people!’”. Mary: “Every language has its own set of phonemes, the sounds that they make, and the sort of word structure and spelling so that it gives a flavor to that language. Hopefully that is always chosen to be pronounceable, because again, very important that the words can be said by human beings :D”

Sheryl: “One of the fun things to do is to make up swear words in the fake languages [...] Recently Brianne wanted a word, I don’t know if she managed to find one”

The origin of bosh’tet in ME: it’s just saying “bastard” and slurring it

PW: “I feel like there are times when past writers kind of leave traps for future writers, where past writers will go ‘Okay, I’m going to write this detailed phrase in a codex entry but don’t worry, it doesn’t matter if it can never be said aloud, because it’ll never have to be voiced!’ and then, next game, guess what guys! Look what you have to make someone [a VA] say! And you’re like [facepalm], c’mon!”

Karin: “Now, four games in, we have pages and pages of all these examples, and I wanna say this, well that’s how we said something before, well that’s ridiculous, I don’t wanna say that, but now we’ve said it and it’s out there, so it’s like, how do we, y’know, how do we evolve, and sometimes we just go ‘Screw it! Languages are living languages! We’ll just say it like this now!’”

PW's favorite is the sarcastic Mythal’enaste, “Because it’s the sarcastic Mythal's blessing that basically means you’re getting screwed over somehow. I love it because Mythal nasty! Whoever wrote that clearly never thought that someone would have to say this out loud”

Sheryl wrote Bull’s joke icicles line. She also wrote Isabela’s big boats line - Jennifer took it out but then DG was like “No it has to come back”

They have a pun test, they get a few of them and have to allot them wisely so as not to oversaturate on the puns. “Is this good/bad enough to be one of the times that we pull the trigger? We did have one of those recently, I obviously can’t talk about it, but it was pronounced Okay to go ahead”

The ‘baby-est’ writer is Brianne, who’s been there 8 years

It makes PW sad that the players never get to see the writers’ temp-text [placeholder text when portions are a WIP]. “People have the best temp-text". Mary: “The number of conversations that I’ve temped in like ‘WELL. I hope nothing BAD happens HERE’”

Q. If you could bring in anybody from outside of gamedev, who would you like to work with and do a writer’s session with? PW: “I will say romance novelist Nora Roberts, she is really smart and also she knows how to write inside a genre, and do wonders within it. Her structure is so good. If you pick up one of her books, you know here’s when this is gonna happen, here’s when they’re gonna meet, here’s when this first moment will happen. We’re all experienced and I feel pretty good about that but I really like all of the things she does that way, and also I am a sucker for romance so I would love to bring a romance novelist in and just have them look at our scenes and go ‘Okay here, no, they should pull the tie so that the article of clothing comes open, we need a sense of how warm the skin is here’ - something like that. I’d wanna see what they could do with that”

“Luke writes the best worst lines”

“I’m always impressed with Mary getting away with lines. There are lines that I look at like, wow, you buried that one. [...] The only players who get that line, I feel like they earned it if they went that far into it. [...] And then Varric or Merrill says a ridiculous line in a one-time throwaway”

Karin: “The group dynamic, you’ll see conversations or snippets of a lunch chat or a thing we’ve been joking about and you’ll see it get pulled in, and how all of you [the writers] are able to take a normal kind of thing - as normal as we get as a group anyway - and then turn it into a moment, and use it to further the plot or use it to further a character. It’s just the cleverest thing and it happens in so many different ways. [...] The little snippet of life, then how you crafted it into this very cool thing”

Quartermaster Threnn was written by PW in half a day. “When I was writing Threnn, ‘Okay, this is a good-hearted [person], I was doing a little bit of Steel Magnolias, southern, no-nonsense, but like, blue collar Steel Magnolias’. This is someone accustomed to the ways of the world so she’s going to call a spade a spade. If you come up to her and you’re an elf she doesn’t recognize you and says ‘Buckets are over there’ because she thinks you’re there to clean, [but] ‘Anyone calls you a knife-ear you come to me I’ll take care of it’. It’s problematic but she’s trying - the good-hearted person rooted for the wrong group on every occasion. She was a proud Loghain supporter, she gets really exited if he comes to Skyhold. That was a fun character for me to write because I had a viewpoint in my mind. I remember someone was like ‘Threnn is really important to me’. And you have to honor that, cause you’re like ‘Cool, it means so much to me that this connected with some part of you’”

---

Also of interest was the Mass Affection panel, in which BioWare devs looked back in over a decade of history to remaster a classic. It featured devs who worked on MELE. The timestamps for this segment are ~3:36:09 - 4:24:37. Some notes:

When the pandemic hit the MELE team were in a relatively awkward spot. They were really entering into what they consider full production and were on-boarding a bunch of teams, as well as training and on-boarding third-party external partner specialized teams worldwide. When the pandemic hit, BioWare and EA were super on top of it. They were tracking it weeks beforehand, getting everyone their computers ready, and getting everything encrypted. When the middle of March 2020 hit they were home rightaway. EA were nothing but supportive throughout the entire thing. They got money every quarter for stuff. It functionally ‘hit’ at 4-6 different times for them as the pandemic occurred in different places throughout the world at different times depending on each country’s response plan (and their external partners were in different countries). “So it was one of those things where it was just like, every day we’d come in like can we still work with this company anymore? Do we need to find someone else? Do we need to pull people in off the other projects at BioWare to fill gaps here and there?”

There was a bug on Virmire at the part when you’re coming into the STG camp. If the Mako had its new boosters on and you came hurtling in really fast, it cut to the cutscene, but the Mako hit a jump and when Ash was like “What do we do now?” the Mako ended up literally flying around in the background sideways and then crashing into the camp

Another bug: when they were re-tuning the guns, the physics force on some of the guns with Hammerhead rounds was so high that when you were fighting some of the Thorian Creepers, you could ragdoll them so hard that you could basically embed them in the roof. They’d be moving so fast that they’d penetrate all the walls with their legs dangling out. It was so easy to do and you could do it to everybody. You could launch a geth halfway across an Uncharted World

Another bug: with Shepard’s casual appearance in ME3, if you didn’t have it set up perfectly correctly it would default to Grunt for some reason. You’d be walking around as Grunt, going on dates as Grunt, and your face would be all scrunched up because it was all mapped to human bones still, so it was just, like, Nightmare Fuel of Grunt

Another bug: in ME2 on Illium when trying to recruit Samara, the Asari enemies just would not stop screaming - regardless of whether they were hit or not, it was endless screaming. Later one of the devs got an audio file of the scream, endless and looped, and now one of the devs has it on their phone and uses it for their morning alarm tone

“Shepard would come up to characters and they’d just be screaming”

---

There was also the Programming Variables panel, talking about what hurdles game programmers face. Some [or all?] of the devs that were part of this panel are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and about the craft of game dev programming in general. The timestamps for this segment are ~ 4:24:46 - 5:06:02.

[source]

[insights/notes from Gamers For Groceries 1]

[☕ found this post or blog interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #video games #long post #longpost #in case this is of interest to anyone #mass effect #anthem #covid mention #cole #spirit boy #solas #lul

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ricksbowen · 4 years

Text

one more time | pt. 1

IN WHICH: y/n realizes she had a one night stand with the one person she didn’t expect.

INSPIRATION: feel good inc. — gorillaz, babylon — 5 seconds of summer

WARNING: this whole series is gonna be pretty sexual. i’m making ricky and everyone in the crew a year up, so everyone’s in their senior year and 18+. there’s also implications of sex so read with caution. there’s also underage drinking

A/N: since simply utterly is coming to an end, i’m posting a friends with benefits au cause everyone who reads my stuff probably noticed how much i love clichés

pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3, pt. 4, pt. 5, pt. 6

You had been best friends with Ricky Bowen since the 3rd grade.

It was unconventional, the way you both met each other. Ricky had accidentally tossed a football right into your eye, and to make it up to you, he let you give him one back by punching him in the eye. You both had to see the principal that day, with your matching black eyes as the principal threatened to call your parents.

Since then, you had been inseparable. You stuck with Ricky through thick and thin; from when his parents started having problems to when Nini Salazar-Roberts broke up with him right before junior year, you were there. You were there to read lines out for High School Musical: the Musical with him. You were always there, with your window wide open and the rope ladder already hanging out for him to climb up to your room.

In the same way, he was there for you. From when the boy you had a crush on for years rejected you to when you got asked out on your first date and needed outfit advice, he was there. When your boyfriend broke up with you in the middle of junior year, he was there with movies and blankets. He had pictures of you hung up in his room, his favorite being the one from third grade. You, with the glasses that were a side too big for your face and him, with his two front teeth missing, smiling at the camera with matching black eyes.

You both knew each other’s secrets. The fears of love you both attained in your lives, the overwhelming dislike of growing up— you looked to each other for a way to escape.

Your friendship has always been that way: strong, unbreakable.

You rubbed your eyes groggily, forcing yourself up off the bed. Immediately, you noticed the lack of clothes you had and the body next to yours. Letting out a small groan, you cursed yourself for yet another guy you had to let down with a note.

That fear of love always stayed.

You shut your eyes, rubbing your temples to try and remember what had happened last night.

Ej’s college acception party. Winning beer pong with Ricky against Seb and Carlos. Drinking an alarming amount of alcohol and skinny dipping in the pool. Kissing someone hard while you pushed them up against the door.

What a party.

You stood up, making sure whoever was next to you in bed was fast asleep. His head was hidden under the blankets, and soft snores escaped his huddled form. You let out a small sigh, reaching down for the haphazardly thrown clothes around the room.

You passed an absurdly patterned red blue and white shirt as you reached for your bra, eyes lingering on the item of clothing for just a second too long.

You’ve seen that shirt before.

You shook your head to rid of your thought, ignoring the striking pain that followed from your hangover. You trudged around the room, picking up the dress you wore that night. You then found your underwear, and as you walked closer to it to reach it, your eyes landed on another piece of clothing.

A white inside shirt. To anyone else, that would’ve meant nothing. But to you, it meant something that made your heart drop.

“What are you wearing?” you laughed out the minute Ricky opened his door.

“I think it’s pretty snazzy for a college acceptance party,” Ricky grinned, giving you a twirl and letting oddly patterned shirt lift up as he did. He wore an oddly patterned button-up that was unbuttoned with a white tank top underneath and black pants.

You could hear Big Red snort next to you, and you rolled your eyes with a grin, crossing your arms over your chest.

“C’mon, lover boy, Ej’s been spamming me with texts since we’re five minutes late.”

Ricky walked up to the both of you, slinging his arms over both of your shoulders lazily. “Are we planning on getting shitfaced while we’re there?”

“What else are we supposed to do?” Big Red grinned, and you all cheered in response as you made your way to your car.

“Y/N?”

You whipped around, letting out a scream and immediately covering yourself up. Ricky slapped a hand over his eyes, yelling ‘Oh my God!’ over and over while you covered yourself with the clothes you had in your hands.

“What the fuck, Ricky?” you yelled, Ricky shaking his head rapidly and pointing blindly towards you with his free hand.

“Don’t you ‘what the fuck me!’” he fired back, his voice two octaves higher. “I don’t know what happened either!”

“You— We—“ you groaned, slipping on your underwear and looking between your underwear and Ricky’s patterned shirt. You put your bra on and slipped his shirt over your shoulders, blaming your choice on the fact that your dress would’ve taken more time.

“We fucked!” Ricky sputtered, removing his eyes and looking at you. His face bloomed red at the sight of you in nothing but his shirt and undergarments, but there were more pressing matters to deal with.

“Shut up!” you hissed, pressing a finger to your lips and looking around at the room you both were in.

This wasn’t your house or Ricky’s.

“Oh my God,” you muttered, running a hand through your hair and making your way to the door. You opened it slowly, peeking out in the hall while Ricky climbed out of bed and pulled his boxers and pants on. The smell of breakfast wafted down the hall, and you cursed under your breath as you shut the door slowly. “We never left Ej’s house.”

“Are we just ignoring the fact that we most likely had sex?” Ricky asked, head pounding with confusion as he walked over to you.

“We’re just gonna skip over that part,” you stated, glaring at him. You leaned back against the closed door, closing your eyes and trying to let the memories come back to you.

“Holy shit!”

You cheered as you made the last cup in, Seb and Carlos groaning in defeat and the crowd of people you barely knew yelling in victory around you. You pulled Ricky into a hug, his arms around your waist as he lifted you up and spun you around drunkenly.

“We are gods!” Ricky hollered, making you laugh as your arms went around his neck. His eyes lingered on you for just a second too long before he put you back down, swaying slightly as he did.

You looked at him, an unspoken agreement between both of you as the sounds of the party became white noise. Your hand reached for his, intertwining with his fingers as you pulled him away from everyone else.

You led him down the hall, ignoring the other people talking and making out as you opened a random door and pulled him inside with a laugh.

You shut the door and pressed him up against it, his hands reached down to your cheeks and bringing your lips to his. The kiss was fast, needy, and you found yourself wanting more as you tugged his button-up shirt off and he started undoing your dress.

“We can’t tell anyone about this,” you stated, opening your eyes to look at him. He was biting his lip, eyebrows furrowed as he nodded in instant agreement.

“You’re right. Besides, it meant nothing, right?” Ricky asked as if he was reassuring himself more than you.

You nodded your head rapidly, letting out a breath. “You’re right! It was just..”

“Sex,” Ricky finished, and you sighed, buttoning the middle button on his shirt as a way to cover yourself up just a bit more.

You opened the door, peeking your head out and stepping out of the room. You heard voices from the kitchen, and your heartbeat sped up when you realized you had to explain your situation to the people there. Your fingers started nervously tapping on the door, the habit immediately catching Ricky’s eye.

“Chill out— you’re tapping your fingers again,” Ricky murmured behind you, and you sent him a look before you started walking down the hall to the kitchen.

“Ah, look who’s awake!” Big Red grinned teasingly, leaning against the countertop as he ate his pancakes. Carlos was seated on the counter, his smile almost as big as Big Red’s as he ate his own pile of pancakes. There were two other plates on the countertop, ready for you and Ricky.

“Don’t,” you grumbled, sitting next to Carlos and cutting a piece of the pancake you had.

“Where’s Ej? And why are you two still here?” Ricky asked, trying to ignore Big Red’s eyes on him as he started eating his pancakes nonchalantly.

“Work or something. Honestly, I have no idea— he just had to leave in a hurry,” Big Red explained with a growing smile. “We both passed out from last night so we just slept on the couches.”

“Seb was here too. He had to leave since his mom called,” Carlos added. “Ej and Seb don’t know that you two fucked, so you’re in the clear,” Carlos spoke indifferently, as if he was talking about the weather.

“Carlos—“ you glared, making him shrug nonchalantly and shove another piece of pancake into his mouth.

“Now, don’t ignore our questions because we do deserve an explanation,” Carlos stated, pointing his fork between you and Ricky. You were staying on opposite sides of the kitchen, Ricky with Big Red and You with Carlos.

“We may have been passed out drunk last night, but you two were loud enough that we heard,” Big Red snickered, grabbing his glass of orange juice as he started making sounds that sounded similar to a bed creaking. Ricky slapped the side of his bicep, making Big Red snigger again.

“I wish we know how it happened,” you said with a slight frown.

“So, you aren’t even together?” Big Red asked.

“Nope,” Ricky replied, popping the ‘p’ as he finished his pancakes.

“That’s some cliche shit right there,” Carlos commented, making you roll your eyes. “What? I’m just saying you,” he pointed his fork to Ricky, “and you,” he pointed his fork to you, “have been best friends for how long now? And you had sex on a drunken night?” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Talk about a WattPad fanfic coming to life.”

“How do you even know about what that WattPad stuff?” Big Red asked with a raised brow, Carlos hiding his smile behind his glass of water.

“Harry Styles is a beaut,” Carlos stated, making you chuckle while Big Red shook his head. “But back to the point. What’re you two gonna do now?”

Ricky shrugged, looking down at the mess of syrup on his plate as he thought. “It was just one time. It won’t happen again.”

“Yep,” you added. “We promised that it was just meaningless sex.”

“Mhm,” Carlos hummed, sharing a look with Big Red as he listened. “Are you sure?”

“A hundred percent,” you replied with a reassuring smile.

—

Ricky grabbed your thighs, wrapping it around his waist as he kissed down your neck. He pressed you up against the wall, his lips descending down your neck and leaving marks in its wake.

You let out a breathy moan, feeling him nip playfully before he pulled your shirt off and threw it somewhere in his room.

It was supposed to be a study date. You were paired up on a project, and you both only lasted an hour before you got to where you were now; making out and stripping each other against the wall.

You tugged his hair roughly, the low groan he let out hitting you in more ways that one as you pulled his shirt off and throw it behind him. You pulled him back to your lips with need, lips locking with urgency as everything went into overdrive.

“You gotta be quiet, hun,” he breathed against your neck, trying to pull his pants down while you nodded frantically. You threw your head back against the door, letting out a whimper when you felt him grind against you hard. He moaned into your neck, breath hot against your skin while you managed a smirk.

“You too, lover boy,” you groaned when you felt him buck up against you, hands gripping him as if your life depended on it. “We — shit — promised it wouldn’t happen again,” you managed between moans, feeling him move. Each thrust sent up up the wall and back down, and your legs wrapped harder around him.

“I know, but,” he bit his lip, trying to keep in the sounds that threatened to come out “Just one more time,” Ricky murmured breathlessly, kissing under your ear while you nodded.

“Yeah. One more time.”

—

TAGS: @tomshufflepuff, @myrandom-fandomlife, @softpeteparker, @sarcarstic-space-weirdo

#ricky bowen imagine #ricky bowen headcannons #ricky bowen angst #ricky bowen smut #ricky bowen hcs #ricky bowen #ricky bowen x reader #ricky bowen imagines #joshua bassett imagine #joshua bassett hcs #joshua bassett angst #joshua bassett imagines #joshua bassett x reader #joshua bassett #big red #carlos rodriguez #hsmtmts #high school musical: the musical: the series #ej caswell

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ghostmartyr · 4 years

Text

SnK 128 Thoughts

Pacing, I think, is the single most difficult thing to do correctly when telling a story. Out loud or in text, you have to juggle every cue you’re giving off, keep it all relevant, and make it so when things fall into place, they’re falling to the gravity that the story’s been given.

That’s why we’ve got something of a problem in this arc.

I complain a lot, because it’s easy, and this is hardly a flawless work. Organization has also been one of the regular things this series just has trouble with.

Still, while I really feel that the last few chapters aren’t the best way to tell this story, the story chosen is a monster to keep in line.

[insert amusing pre-cut joke of your choice here]

Conflict is the root of every story. Character vs self. Character vs character. Character vs nature. Pick one, then plant the seed and watch the clash reform the setting. Knowing your protagonist often involves knowing your villain.

Eren has always been the best protagonist for this series. He embodies the fury of humanity in an environment that embraces complacency. He is the voice that shouts for people to do something.

Back in Trost, everyone on his starting squad plans on picking the Survey Corps. Because of his constant, unfettering influence. He’s the one who is always reminding them that there’s a world outside that they’re abandoning. He never lets Jean forget it. He interrupts parties with the vocal equivalent of hammering 99 problems to every door.

Eren is one of the top ten soldiers in the 104th, and he makes sure everyone knows what he’s using his skills for. And before they themselves are confronted with what’s being asked of them to join him, everyone in his social circle is ready to make the same choice.

Moving forward is what Eren does in a world that’s been trapped in stagnation. He is a force of change. He is a force of impotent rage in the face of disaster.

He is every reaction the humans inside the walls don’t have, because as a people, they can’t imagine what there is to be done about their problems. Staying within the safety of the walls and limiting their potential in return for not dying a bloody death seems fair, to them.

They are imprisoned, so Eren, our protagonist, seeks freedom.

Being born free is the linchpin of his first successful transformation.

His first rather disturbing act of violence comes from him murdering slavers.

The wings of freedom are the iconic brand of his chosen military branch.

Subtlety.

That’s all very straightforward and simple to work with.

Then we open up the setting, and things are still rather simple, just in a turn that kicks off one hell of a problem.

The world itself is a cage. Physically, in the form of internment camps, or culturally, in the form of how people think about each other and act. There is no freedom for the citizens of Paradis now that they have broken out of their shell. There is just another prison, and a ticking time bomb.

Naturally, in its most basic form, this would make the world Eren’s enemy, because Eren is the champion of freedom.

Only then, if you stick to the most basic form of the concept, the simple answer is that when everyone else dies, then you will have your freedom.

Eren might be the story’s protagonist, but that’s because he stands at the fulcrum of all the story’s core ideas. He makes the rest of the plot move. He is the focus point. He is why there’s a story, and not a jumble of confused, dying people throwing themselves at the problem of titans.

He’s not everything that’s going on.

The world’s cruelty is not what this story is about.

Eren starts thinking about the outside world because a boy shares his dreams of the ocean.

Mikasa takes the time to salute a little girl on a battlefield.

Sasha fights a titan off with a bow and arrow to save one child’s life. She dies because she won’t kill a little girl.

Levi chooses not to revive Erwin so that Erwin can die without being brutally abused as the rest of mankind’s sacrifice.

Niccolo’s entire concept of what he’s fighting for is disrupted because people like his cooking.

Gabi is protected and treated like a child by the 104th even after they know she pulled the trigger on their friend.

Colt dies because of his insistence on giving his little brother comfort.

Reiner’s still breathing because there’s a few little kids he can do some good for.

Annie just wants to see her dad again.

Humanity, as a general concept, begins in an easily condemnable place in the manga. One of the first things Paradis does is send out a large percentage of its citizens to die so that the rest can live. Meanwhile, the only people who do try to go outside and learn more about the world are smeared even as they’re bringing back corpses.

By the end of Uprising, there’s a crowd of cheering people waiting for the Scouts to succeed.

People are awful.

They can do better.

A lot of Eren’s objection to Jean is highlighted through that. He never gives Connie a hard time for wanting to join the MPs. It’s Jean, who’s vocally joining up just so he can take it easy, that Eren objects to. Jean doesn’t have to be a jackass. It’s a decision he’s making.

Jean decides to do better.

In the beginning, people are willing to settle for ‘good enough.' Slowly, as the arcs go by, we approach a near universal take of people seeing problems and taking preventative action.

Here, with the Yeagerists, we come back to the original sin of Paradis.

As long as this one little island is okay, and no one on it has to worry about death, what does the outside world matter? Especially when that outside world has repeatedly promised to kill them? Killing them all first isn’t a problem, it’s a solution.

Samuel’s there at the start of Trost.

Sasha saves his life.

Connie kills him.

They don’t hate each other. Neither one wants to pull the trigger. But Samuel is willing to see the rest of the world die if it means keeping Paradis safe. Connie isn’t.

Over and over, the cycle plays out the exact same way. People kill each other to free themselves. As long as there’s always an Us vs Them dynamic, the bloodshed continues indefinitely. The Eldian Empire enslaved the world through titans. Marley won its freedom and decided it was okay to do the same thing as long as they only enslaved Eldians.

The methodology is what’s going to fuck everyone over in the end.

During Uprising, it is routinely discussed that it’s possible the royal family and the upper brass do know something that makes a coup a bad idea. It’s possible that overthrowing them will bring Paradis into an even darker landscape.

What it comes down to is that whatever they know, they’re willing to let everyone else die if it saves their own skin.

Since that particular Everyone Else is united, the coup continues, and the island’s given its chance at actual peace.

Now, the Yeagerists are making that same argument.

Meanwhile, before we were dealing with this, we had Zeke. His argument was that seeing as the world would never change, Ymir’s people were all cursed and damned, it is for the best of all of us if we all die.

He’s the ultimate counter to Eren. Eren is fighting for life, while Zeke is only searching for the best death.

Only by all appearances, Eren’s fight has landed him in the exact same place. It’s only the question of which people are dying.

Getting back to Connie and Samuel, if you squint, Connie is betraying his allegiance to his comrades. ...If you squint. I know he feels that way, and I know what the chapter title is, but the Yeagerists are a genocidal cult who bully their way into power and try to kill off their actual Commander, who Connie is still following.

Samuel might not be aware of that, but that’s what we’ve got.

The closest Connie came to betrayal was throwing a Warrior Candidate into his mom’s mouth, and we wrapped up that subplot.

Without squinting, Samuel is betraying the ideals that Connie chose the Survey Corps for. Connie wants to save people. He doesn’t want all this death, regardless of how it benefits him.

So this whole conflict, throughout this entire chapter, is really all about who wants which people dead.

The Warriors are still fighting for Marley. Despite everything, that’s their home, and their base of operations if they ever want a chance at fixing things. Paradis has more friends on it than they like thinking about, but Paradis is not their problem.

Kiyomi and the Hizuru flock are pretty much... she is just so done, and it’s very easy to see why. This is not their war. They were looking for a beneficial partnership. For power and resources, sure, but they were willing to play ball. Now they get to watch as the nation they helped kills off the world and their only allies are rushing them to a basement. Hopefully to do something significant before their country burns.

What’s left of the Scouts who are actually following the legitimate chain of command is, surprisingly, focused on stopping Eren’s genocide.

Then I guess the rest of the world probably has opinions, but they don’t get any pages. But it’s pretty safe to assume Eren’s high on their ‘want dead’ list. If not all of Paradis.

We’ve got one group of people who are actually, actively, doing the anti-genocide thing.

The rest is just fighting over the biggest piece of the pie.

The conflict is that some people think genocide is bad, and some people think genocide is okay, actually.

And, you know, fine.

Only then we have Eren.

Protagonist boy.

We don’t know his conflict, and he has more power than anyone else in the entire cast. Unless we count the primordial ooze as a cast member. He is a giant stegosaurus monster who has threatened the entire world, and as far as anyone with eyes can see, he’s actually going through with it.

Nothing presented anywhere suggests that there is a way to stop him.

At best, if people succeed in killing him, they will have unleashed a bunch of mindless Colossals into the world. If we revisit our volume 1 knowledge, we know this to be a problem.

Making all of this really, really pointless.

Obviously, this is what all these characters would do in this situation.

Obviously, we have some feelings about them being forced to kill their allies while the world falls apart.

Obviously, the author probably being willing to fast-forward through all of this is not necessarily an indication that that is what creates the optimal story.

Obviously, these are important details.

The plot still might as well be a glacier.

There is one person moving pieces around. Everyone else is just scrambling on the board he’s created and rehashing whether or not genocide is a good thing every time they’re considering shooting someone they kind of don’t want to.

All of the tension is literally an ocean away.

As great as the character moments are, there’s nothing to ground them in. There’s just a baseless hope that somehow, there’s a way out of this, and the story doesn’t end with yet another genocide kicking off a rebellion.

Magath flips on his worst hot take immediately. He does that because his country is dying and it’s reorganizing his priorities and beliefs to line up with what he’s actually feeling instead of parroting the world that created him.

Yelena goes from being catatonic to being a nuisance because -- reasons?

Connie almost kills Falco then doesn’t, because he really, honestly, was never going to kill the kid and we all knew that.

The driving force of all these potential conflicts is just too distant. As much work as everyone’s doing, they’re only making progress towards getting to Eren.

When you have a character who can end the world choosing to end the world, it creates problems. When that character is your protagonist, it’s even worse.

In the past, Eren’s absence has spurred characters to action and revealed more of the world’s secrets. Presently, unlike in his various kidnappings, Eren is the one with the secrets. His absence is making people do stuff, but not stuff that has any tangible meaning outside of putting actions to the belief that genocide is bad.

Secrets, and people seeking answers, has been a major player in moving the plot from the beginning.

Here though, we have the issue of no one having the luxury of investigating why this is happening. Mikasa and Armin might be desperate to know, but they have no tools available to them except the airship. Which, again, just puts them in the same place as Eren. It does not give them much more than they had the last time they were in a room with him.

Whatever secrets are in place, they are insignificant next to the fact that the world is ending as they watch.

Only, you know, slowly.

Because the decision has been made that Eren’s perspective is going to be a Reveal. It has to stay private until the moment it’s relevant to the other members of the cast, or otherwise, what was the point of holding off so long?

The result is this. Too much going on in too little time, and all of it technically mattering, but not enough that spending 40 pages on it really changes how the story is progressing.

I’m not sure this is a problem that would be easy to see coming. In the design phase, I mean. I’ve kind of been cautiously whining about these concerns for several months.

But the stage is set like this: Eren pulls the doomsday trigger. Enough time must pass for Paradis to cultivate a new normal and for Eren to reach land with his squad of titans. The goal is gathering our cast and stopping Eren.

There’s a disconnect between what needs to be done and how much time it takes to portray those things.

Connie’s breakdown over feeding Falco to his mom is a character moment that helps to inform his emotions this chapter. That’s probably why it survived. It still drags four named characters off to a village in the middle of nowhere while Floch’s reign is establishing itself.

Magath’s turnabout this chapter is the culmination of a lot of the emotional connections he’s made with Eldians, and the attachment he has to his home, but it comes after driving in the point of why Marley is so fucking awful. He’s spouting rhetoric last chapter, then he’s immediately confronted with the birthplace of that rhetoric being destroyed thanks to events he’s had a part in forging.

Yelena goes from being willing to let Floch shoot her to having an interest in watching things play out. Courtesy of one background dump.

The emotional beats these characters are all due do not match up with what they have to do, and it’s making things come across as really disjointed. It’s a frustrating combination of this needing more pages, but the idea of yet more pages being spent off where the main plot actually is going on is exhausting.

The world is ending, but the world has been ending for months.

We’ve clearly got a checklist of things to get done before we meet up with Eren, but he’s hoarding the plot. Sticking around to watch the list be physically checked is...

To paraphrase some tumblr post from the past few months, it feels like laundry, mostly.

The story wouldn’t survive just jumping to Eren. The more time we’re away from him, the greater the impact when we finally know what’s up. The more time we have with our squad of unlikely, plucky heroes, the more we’re going to want to punch Eren in the face for not listening to them. Again.

It’s not that there’s no value in devoting chapters to all of this planning and reeling. It’s that no matter what happens here, it is not fixing the larger problem of Eren’s genocide campaign.

The plot is across the ocean, and we are months into watching our cast try to reconnect with it.

For me, that makes it a bit dull to read, but it is hard to hold it against the story. Writing the end of the world when you intend to make the audience care about the world -- even though the protagonist is ending it -- that is a lot of plot. Knitting it all together is not a simple task. You can see the seams popping.

Oh well.

One of the things I will stand by is that this manga is a great story told gracelessly. If you read it all linearly, problems are going to be noticed. Stuff be weird. Plus timed terribly.

But there’s a lot of emotion packed into it all. It’s a story that, when you look back in retrospect, free of any time line and observing only through the lens of your knowledge, it holds up and has power.

So I’m glad all of this stuff is being drawn, because one day, when the story’s over, having a fragmented, disjointed thread of progression isn’t going to matter so much.

Some stories survive on how they’re told.

Arguably, that includes this one, because the anime got people through the first few volumes.

This story, primarily, survives on the quality of what it is attempting to lump together.

...Not that I don’t wish it wouldn’t try a little harder to pace itself, but I suppose all that energy is being spent on Eren. You know. Since he’s the only one who has any of the parts of the plot that matter.

Uh.

As far as what actually happened this chapter, yay for Mikasa showing attachment to Kiyomi and crew. Intrigue for the question of where Eren is being such a topic (he’s a fucking giant stegosaurus last I saw figure it out). Sadness for Samuel being on the wrong side after surviving so long (Connie probably remembers Sasha saving his life). Sadness for Reiner trying to spare his friends the pain of what he went through for his cause. Pat on the head for Annie still being impossibly Annie. Pat on the head for Onyankopon just because (sorry about your life yikes).

The absolute funniest part of all of this, to me, is that Daz is now dead.

Beats freezing to death in a blizzard while two teenagers shout about philosophy over your unconscious body?

Anyway, another month goes by.

Much the way waves do in Wind Waker.

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 128 #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #spoilers #tl;dr #chapter post #it might be worth noting that I spent all of the time writing this post wondering what the hell I was talking about #the nature of how these posts are written means that is now your problem

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yoursummerfrost · 4 years

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Ask meme time! Pick three fics you have written, post a favorite section of each and explain why it is your favorite. Then, pass it on!

How could you ask me to choose between my children?! :P This is fun, though, thank you! I’ll pick three fics that have gotten less traffic compared to my others :) Going under the cut ‘cause it’s kinda long!

from my bones, wrapped around you:

"Mazikeen," Lucifer calls. Maze bites the inside of her cheek and walks back out into the living room. Everyone is sitting on the couch except for Eve—who's hovering near the piano where Maze left her—and Lucifer, at the bar. "At least let me pour you a drink, before you go?"

Maze swallows, looking at all of them. Linda is smiling at her. Trixie's in Chloe's lap, holding a glass of chocolate milk.

Lucifer gestures with her favorite bottle of scotch.

"Okay," she says, and slides onto a stool to watch him pour.

There's quiet conversation behind them; someone talks about calling Ella and Dan. Lucifer slides the glass into her hand and she can't think of drinking it.

"I worried about you, while I was gone," he tells her. "I hoped you were well."

She swirls the scotch around, watching how it reflects the light. "It doesn't really matter how I was."

"I've no idea what you mean," he says.

"I'm supposed to live in the moment, right?" Maze finally takes a drink, rolling the sting around on her tongue. "Benefits of being soulless."

"Mazikeen," Lucifer says, and his voice cracks with something she has to chase down her throat. "I've never lost sleep over your soul. But I care very much about your heart."

Maze's second thought is of the balcony. How she could jump off of it, and he'd use those wings that once upon a time he made her hack off to catch her. Her third thought is about glass, and how it breaks.

Her first thought is, You're home.

Maze chugs the rest of her scotch and tells him, "Make the next one a double."

It’s hard to pick one snippet from this fic, because there were so many little moments where I wanted this reflection of soullessness to weave itself together. Ultimately I went with the culmination, which is this interaction between Maze and Lucifer. These are two people who went from being all each other had to drifting apart while they tried to grow. And now, trying to navigate this horrible mess of lingering loyalty and growing resentment, Lucifer reaches out with this peace offering--pouring her a drink, which is a refrain from the show.

Throughout the fic, Maze has been grappling with her lack of a soul. Rivers told her that she had one, Amenadiel suggested she could grow one. Eve is fixated on the freedom that being soulless brings. And Lucifer, who stood with her in Hell and abandoned her on Earth, says this: it doesn’t matter how you were created, or what you were born with. I see who you’ve become.

from truth (like blood under fingernails):

"You didn't fool me," Dan argues. "I know you."

"No," Lucifer says, "you don't."

Dan takes another step forward. "I do."

"I'm the Devil!"

Dan throws his hands up and snaps, "I know," and Lucifer snarls, "Do you?" and his face is gone, charred and blistering like it's been peeled off under a blowtorch, and—

Dan thinks, Did you do that, too? and—

He understands, suddenly. The mutilated wings he can't touch and the nauseous fear that curls up and hisses in his own belly and the fucking horror of what can you make out of this?

"It won't work," he says, and takes a gnarled hand up in his own. "I'm so fucking tired of running away, Lucifer. I won't do it again."

Lucifer's face flickers back into place. He says, "I don't understand."

Dan swallows. He looks down, traces a careful finger over the ring on Lucifer's hand. "You can't push me away because you're scared. I won't let you."

"You need to leave," Lucifer insists.

"Tell me you don't want me," Dan says. He looks up, meets the confusion in Lucifer's eyes. "You never lie, right? If you can tell me that you don't fucking want me—that you don't want me here—I'll go."

Lucifer's lips purse. He laughs, softly, this beautiful wide-eyed thing spreading across his face. Dan always wants to touch the space between his eyebrows when he looks like that—the gentle furrow of them.

"You still owe me a favor," Lucifer says.

Dan frowns, a little amused. "I… yeah, I do."

"And you'd do anything?" Lucifer asks. "Whatever I asked of you?"

"Of course." Dan reaches as Lucifer pulls his hand away. "Luce, I don't understand."

Lucifer smiles and cups Dan's cheek with the hand and kisses him, chaste and gentle and with the faintest taste of salt even though Dan can't remember him crying, and he feels as all-encompassing as he always does right up until he pulls away.

"Leave me."

Dan opens his eyes, feeling— "What?"

"Pay me my due," Lucifer says, gently. "And leave me."

Hoo, boy. First of all, this fic was supposed to be like 16k of enemies to lovers hate sex, and then it wasn’t. But the penultimate scene is my favorite because of the way we finally see Dan and Lucifer’s hangups smashing against each other--Dan is always running, and Lucifer is always pushing people away. But Dan is finally ready to be brave, and he quite literally sees Lucifer at his worst and wants to stay anyway. So he uses Lucifer’s Devil-ness against him, and gives him an ultimatum to force his hand.

And Lucifer’s response has a lot of layers: at first, he’s genuinely trying to push Dan away with his Devil face. But then there’s a shift that we don’t necessarily understand until the finale scene. For most of the fic, Lucifer has been hanging this favor that Dan owes him over Dan’s head; it’s been in a pretty light-hearted way for Dan, who can’t think of much he wouldn’t do for Lucifer. But for Lucifer, who cares so deeply about free will--who Fell for it, the idea of having that control over Dan was unthinkable. So Lucifer cashes in the favor by forcing Dan to leave him, which is the one thing Dan wouldn’t do of his own free will--thus simultaneously exercising Lucifer’s power over Dan and freeing him from it.

from a heart i couldn’t silence:

"I miss pigeons," says Julian. "I mean, some would say seagulls are effectively the pigeons of the coast, but there's subtleties. Pigeons have a humbleness to them that I can respect—seagulls think they're better than us."

Yen barks out a laugh before she can stop herself. "That's the most incomprehensible pile of bullshit I've ever heard."

"It's not!" Julian insists. "You know I'm right, Yennefer."

Yen rolls her eyes and looks over at Ciri; she's smiling now, her hands still wringing her sweatshirt while she talks to the group.

"... I never thanked you, you know," Julian says abruptly.

Yen shifts uncomfortably. "For what, not failing you? It was for my own benefit—I couldn't risk you retaking my fucking class. I would've killed you and prison isn't in my five year plan."

Julian says, "For Geralt."

Yennefer loathes playing dumb. It's beneath her in every way. She asks, "What about him?"

"There was a month and a half period where I got really into playing 'Jolene' on guitar," Julian answers.

Yen's nostrils flare. "I don't want to play six degrees of separation with your brain right now, Julian."

She can tell it hits too hard by the way his posture changes. She doesn't apologize.

"I know that if you'd asked him not to, he wouldn't have ever…" Julian trails off, but she'll grant him that measure of obscurity. "I mean, I just—I know it makes you uncomfortable. You don't really like me. And I love him more than pretty much anything and… thank you, for that."

What do you love more? Yen wonders. Says nothing about it or anything else that could lead the point of a dagger to somewhere soft.

Remarkably, a crab skitters across the wooden walkway and into the brackish water of the creek.

Julian says, "Forget I said anything," at the same exact time Yen tells him, "It was the way he smiled at you."

"I'm sorry?" Julian asks.

"People like you and I," Yen says slowly, "learned how to be greedy. Geralt doesn't want loudly, or often. He's convinced he isn't made for it."

Julian says softly, "I know."

"And he smiled at you," Yen says, "like he wanted to be wrong."

Look, this scene isn’t even really the point of the fic, so much as it’s setting up for a story like 3 or 4 fics later in the series, but I’m low-key deeply obsessed with yennskier and I just really love this dynamic for them. This mutual dislike that morphs into begrudging respect, and slowly they uncover how similar they are in key ways? I eat that shit up. Also, they’re having this interaction coming off of some joint protectiveness over Ciri, which is also my shit.

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #personal writing meta #the witcher #jaskier #lucifer #Anonymous

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norwegianpornfaerie · 4 years

Text

Dear Yuletide Writer 2020

First of all, thank you! This is an unusual year for us all, and Yuletide is one of those few things we can still enjoy just like usual. So I’d like to thank you not just for taking part in this wonderful exchange, but for taking the extra time to read this letter. Please note that I don’t expect you to adhere to everything I say here; I’m providing it in case you’d like to know more. And since you’re here, I’m assuming that’s the case. You’re already doing a great job!

Most importantly: Don’t try to bend over backwards to make your story fit my prompts and suggestions, if you’re not feeling them. I’m assuming you signed up to write my fandoms and characters because you have a genuine interest in them, and that’s what makes for the best stories. So let the optional details be optional, and take the below as a guideline and inspiration!

Do Not Wants: You will find these in my prompts, below the cut.

Things I really enjoy:

First time stories! I absolutely prefer this to anything else, in relationship-focused stories. As I tend to say, I’m secretly an 18th century romantic poet. Slow burn, UST, all that good stuff. I’d rather have one smoking sex scene at the end of a story, with a lot of build-up, than five scattered throughout. I realize you’ve got limited time and words here, but whatever you can give, I will happily take.

Casefic! I love detective stories, especially the classics, so anything in that vein will make me very happy indeed.

Plot, and plot twists. Plot is delicious. I don’t mind character studies, but a good plot will make me happier than anything. And a twist in the tail is my everything.

In-character, explicit sex. If you enjoy writing that sort of thing, I am a sucker for a well-written explicit sex scene. I love reading sex scenes that let the characters shine. Much more interesting than plain porn!

World-building. In science fiction or fantasy canons in particular, I can never get enough of this. Let me know what people have for breakfast, how their clothes are made, where they shop, where they go on vacation and how - tell me about the three seashells! (#obscureDemolitionManreference) In short: Details!

Humor! Humor is so important, in life and fiction alike. Some of my fandoms are humor fandoms, but even those who aren’t, can absolutely benefit from humor. I believe humor is what makes us who we are and keeps us going, be we alien hybrids or robots or just plain humans.

A note on shipping: If I’ve specified a ship and you don’t like it, please don’t feel obligated to write it. I’ve tried to make that clear in the prompts, but it bears repeating.

Now, author, if you’ve read the above and think “but I only write gen” or “but I hate plotty stories” or “I couldn’t write casefic to save my life” - really, really don’t worry. You matched with me because you like one or more of the same fandoms and characters as me, and that’s more than enough. I trust you to write the best story you can, and that means writing it the way YOU want to. I’m obviously very happy if you chose to include some of my likes, but don’t feel forced to do so.

If you’ve read all the above, and you’re still not sure about something, maybe my fics on AO3 might be helpful? I generally like to read the same type of stuff I write.

Thank you, thank you yet again, and have a great Yuletide!

See below the cut for my sign-up details and fandoms.

Robot Series - Isaac Asimov

R. Daneel Olivaw

Elijah Baley

Caves of Steel is probably my favorite novel of all time, as are the rest of the novels, and I am very fond of Daneel and Elijah. I find the world they inhabit fascinating, both the future society of Earth, and the Outer Worlds. As I both love detective fiction, science fiction and above all robots, these stories may as well have been written specifically for me. A lot of the appeal lies in how the stories manage both to deliver an entertaining mystery, as well as heart-felt interpersonal drama in a straightforward way. Daneel is one of my favorite fictional characters; the way his empathy and personality shines through programming and limitations.

Wants: Casefic. Seriously, if you can write me casefic for this fandom, I will be delighted. A murder mystery would be fantastic. I do ship Daneel and Elijah, and I would love to read about the unresolved tension between them. Explicit sex would be great! World-building and exploring whichever location they are at, be it Earth or one of the Outer Worlds, or on a space ship or station, etc. Exploration of Daneel's character; Elijah stuggling to come to terms with his feelings for him - preferably romantic feelings, but if you don't want to write that, feelings of deep friendship. Bickering and banter and held-back affection!

Do Not Wants: Daneel or Elijah shipped with other characters. Canonical relationships are okay to mention or feature, but I don't want them to be the main focus of the story. No mention of Elijah's death, please, and no mention of Daneel's ultimate fate - though a story reuniting them after Elijah's death would be more than welcome. No PWP, please, I prefer my porn with added plot. No hurt without comfort. No mention of bodily fluids other than blood, semen or saliva in a sexual context. No body horror/permanent disfigurment.

Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse

Reginald Jeeves (Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse)

Bertram "Bertie" Wooster (Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse)

This is one of my comfort fandoms - I take such joy in the language and the characters and the masterful plots... but mostly in Jeeves. I have great affinity for Bertie, and can identify with him quite often, and so it's no wonder that I, too, am deeply fond of Jeeves. I see him as a deeply feeling person with masterful control, and scintilating intelligence. Who also happens to be petty and jealous when it suits him. It is the character interation and interpersonal relationship I adore the most, as well as the clever, intelligent humor.

Wants: I do ship these two, and I would absolutely adore some UST ending in, erm, resolved tension. If you don't care to write that, I'd love a story based on their mutual admiration and friendship. Ideally, I would prefer a story written in first person, but I have no clear preferences as to who should be the narrator. Bertie, of course, narrates most of the stories in canon, but if you are more of a Jeeves, or would rather write in his voice, nothing would be better than that. I believe Bertie is genuinely intelligent and clever, and I love when this is shown in writing. Particularly if Jeeves comes to realize it/comes to Bertie's defense if someone belittles him.

Do Not Wants: Jeeves or Bertie shipped with other characters. No PWP, please, I prefer my porn with added plot. No hurt without comfort. No mention of bodily fluids other than blood, semen or saliva in a sexual context. No body horror/permanent disfigurment.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Nicholas Angel

Danny Butterman

Hot Fuzz is my favorite of the Cornetto Trilogy, and just plain one of my favorite films overall. I love the details, the clever writing, the loving genre references - but most of all, I love Nicholas and Danny. There is something quite wholesome about the two of them and how they grow together; the joy of two people finding one another a perfect fit. Danny and Nicholas make one another better without changing who they are, which is a wonderful thing. And then there's the tone of the film, which is perfectly balanced; it's funny without being silly, realistic without getting grimdark. Just right.

Wants: I do ship Nicholas and Danny, so I'd love a slow burn romantic story. If you don't ship them, a story about their developing friendship would be very welcome. Domestic scenes and village life! For some reason, I really like reading about these two in a holiday setting, so that would be wonderful. Awkward miscommunication which gets resolved sweetly is my jam for these two. Haplessness and held-back affection and building a life together.

Do Not Wants: Danny or Nicholas shipped with other characters. No PWP, please, I prefer my porn with added plot. No hurt without comfort. No mention of bodily fluids other than blood, semen or saliva in a sexual context. No body horror/permanent disfigurment.

XCOM: Chimera Squad

Cherub (XCOM: Chimera Squad)

I absolutely love the XCOM franchise, so I was very excited to play Chimera Squad. I was particularly interested to see what society would be like after the war, with human and alien cultures blended. There was a little bit of that in the game, but not nearly enough to satisfy my curiosity - I'm hungry for more! What I love about XCOM, beyond the game mechanics, is the setting and the world-building. When I see a Muton in a t-shirt, I want to know more! I've requested Cherub because he's my favorite character, but I'd prefer something not too character-centric.

Wants: World-building! And lots of it. Show me where people live and work; aliens and hybrids and humans all. How do interspecies relationships work? Can humans interbreed with aliens? How has alien culture affected society? Burger Palace: We need to know what's going on there. What's popular culture like? All that good stuff.

Do Not Wants: Anything too character-focused or introspective. Any ship is fine, slash or het, so long as it's not the main focus of the story (I want to see the world). No PWP, please, I prefer my porn with added plot. No hurt without comfort. No mention of bodily fluids other than blood, semen or saliva in a sexual context. No body horror/permanent disfigurment.

#Yuletide #Yuletide 2020 #Dear Yuletide Writer

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downn-in-flames · 4 years

Text

and it was like slow motion

What do you do when the one who means the most to you is the one who didn't show?

{prequel the first to and all the pieces fall}

notes: this is just a short little one-shot prequel to a novel i've got in the works - it's an alternate universe in which voldemort doesn't exist and james + lily don't get together during their seventh year. the novel picks up about three years after they've graduated hogwarts, and this one-shot takes place in september 1978.if you can't tell by the title and summary alone, this fic is heavily based on the moment i knew by taylor swift, and the series as a whole pulls from the red, reputation, and lover albums. :P

read it on: hpft | ao3 | ffnet

She'd be lying if she said she didn't pick this dress out specifically for James.

He'd always liked her in yellow, always told her it made her look like sunshine. And she'd always flushed at the compliment, unsure if it was meant to be friendly or meant to be something more.

She's now almost positive that it was the latter.

The sweetheart neckline is also for his benefit; it shows off her cleavage just enough that she knows he won't be able to resist glancing at it every so often, and she'll obviously call him out on it, and he'll stammer out some sort of excuse, and she'll respond with something coy, and…

She's getting ahead of herself.

But she can't really help it - she hasn't seen the bloke since graduation, so it's natural that she'd be a little overeager about the thought of seeing him again.

She watches as her reflection runs her hands over the fabric, making sure every last inch of it is in place. Her red hair falls down her back in waves and her makeup is mostly natural - nothing like the sort of stuff she's gotten used to - but it's enough to make her look like she's positively glowing.

There's a knock on the door, effectively startling Lily from her trance of watching herself in the mirror.

She knows, objectively, that it's not James - James has never been great about getting anywhere on time, he was at least somewhat better while he was Head Boy, but that was only for official things. Anything else, and he was useless.

But even despite that logic, she feels hope rise in her chest anyways.

When she opens the door though, there's no tall, dark-haired boy behind it. Instead, there's Marlene and Dorcas.

"Hot damn," Marlene says, in lieu of a normal greeting. "You look like you're trying to stun someone."

Dorcas snorts at that. "Let me guess, he's about yea tall, plays professional Quidditch, perpetually has sex hair, name rhymes with Hotter?"

Lily flushes at the call-out.

Arguing with her would be entirely useless - Dorcas is completely aware of how much she'd come to fancy James in their last few months of Hogwarts.

"You're going to succeed, you know," Dorcas tells her. "Potter could barely keep his eyes off of you in Hogwarts robes, much less this. He'll be goddamn speechless."

"I'm honestly surprised this is the first time you're seeing him since graduation," Marlene adds. "Quidditch training can't be that time-consuming, can it? You two were practically attached at the hip by the last month of school."

Lily shrugs, trying her best to keep her face impassive. "I dunno, I guess it's just a big adjustment for him, getting used to the whole professional athlete life."

"Yeah, I suppose."

But the truth is… she doesn't fully get it either. She's written to him five or so times since graduation, asking about life and training and casually suggesting that maybe they grab dinner and catch up with each other, if he's got a free night any time soon? And yet, every time, her owl has returned empty-clawed. He's not responded to her once. She knows full well that he was always terrible at responding to his mum's letters at school - he got more than one half-hearted Howler about his lack of response - but… five times?

She supposes she can ask him about that when he gets here today. Or, at the very least, decide on a better form of communication where he'll actually remember to answer her.

Because despite all of the letters going unanswered, she knows he'll be here today. This is different from a short blurb of a letter - this is a party they'd all had planned since the first of September last year. A reunion party when the Hogwarts Express left King's Cross for the first time without any of them on it. They'd talked about it constantly all year.

She combs back through her memory of seventh year, through the many, many times he said he'd be here today - he wouldn't go back on that.

Her little flat is decorated perfectly for the occasion - red and gold balloons all over, just like their House colours, and lots of sweets available, just like the ones the trolley witch always comes around with. And the, of course, a fair bit of alcohol, which is decidedly not just like the Hogwarts Express, but seems to be a necessity at a post-graduation party.

Marlene and Dorcas sit on her couch, poking through the candy selection on the table in front of them, and Lily's just about to join them when there's another knock.

It's Remus this time, and he gives Lily a big hug as soon as she opens the door for him.

"It's so good to see you, Lil," he tells her.

She beams at him. "You too."

"I keep feeling like I've forgotten something," he laughs. "Shouldn't we be on a train right now?"

"Shit, I'm supposed to be running a prefect meeting right now."

"I'm sure they're all awfully lost right now, without either of their Heads," Remus replies.

"Oi, Lupin, stop talking about school and come pour yourself a drink!" Marlene yells from the other side of the flat, and Remus' attention is diverted.

"McKinnon, you haven't changed one bit."

"Well of course I haven't," she answers reasonably. "It's only been three months - how much can someone change in three months?"

"Hey Marley," Dorcas says to her, "remember that summer you left Hogwarts straight as an arrow and came back loudly announcing to everyone you knew that you were 'gay as hell'? Because I'd say that's a pretty big change for three months."

"I was never 'straight as an arrow'," Marlene retorts. "I was just heavily closeted - there's a difference."

Dorcas shrugs, then throws her arm around her girlfriend. "Fair enough."

"Evans!" Through her still-open front door she hears the all-too-familiar voice of Sirius Black yelling her name - she briefly entertains the hope that James will be walking up to her doorstep with him, but when she turns her head to see him, it's just the one.

"Black," she replies with a grin - even though she's disappointed that James isn't here yet, she's undeniably excited to see Sirius as well.

He spins her around in a tight hug as soon as he crosses the threshold into her flat - honestly, she can't believe a full three months have passed since she's seen him. He gives damn good hugs.

"I've got to say," he says, appraising her after he sets her back down, "you pull off Muggle clothes infinitely better than wizarding ones."

She's got a whole closet worth of elaborate and increasingly risqué wizarding dress robes that would likely beg to differ, but Sirius can't know about those (because he'd surely ask how she's managed to get her hands on all of those, and that's a question she absolutely cannot answer for him), so she just laughs and agrees with him.

"I never did much enjoy Hogwarts robes."

"Neither did I, Evans," he replies with a grin. "Neither did I."

Then he turns his attention to Remus, who's still standing on Lily's other side. "Moony, long time no see," he says, and there's a slightly devious look in his eyes that makes Remus flush.

Lily makes a mental note to figure out what that's all about eventually.

Mary arrives a few minutes later, then Peter after that. Everyone pours themselves drinks and makes themselves comfortable all across Lily's living room, stealing chairs from her kitchen or sitting on the floor as they all trade stories and memories.

"Remember our first train ride to Hogwarts, Evans?" Sirius asks her. "Remember what little shits James and I were?"

Lily thinks back to that day, back to that exchange in the train compartment where she'd so passionately defended Snape to an exceptionally obnoxious James and Sirius. It's a strange memory to think back on, purely because of how tainted it's become. The boy she'd protected turned out to be a closeted blood purist who called her a nasty slur and condoned attacks on her friends, and the boys she'd been yelling at grew up to be the good ones, and the ones she's actually friends with now.

"We were all little shits," she clarifies.

"Speaking of Prongs," Peter chimes in, "where is he?"

Lily's almost glad someone else brought up James' absence - she's had her eyes on the door almost constantly for the past fifteen minutes or so, just waiting for him to walk in. She hopes no one has noticed that, but knowing her friends, at least one of them has.

Sirius shrugs. "No fucking clue. He's usually late, but he's not usually this late. Not to mention that it's, well… "

"It's Lily's party, and James's ability to be on time only exists specifically for her?" Marlene finishes, none-too-subtly.

"Yes, exactly that."

Lily tries to act more nonchalant than she feels. She's not going to acknowledge the sinking feeling that's started in her gut, not going to give it any power over her while she's supposed to be enjoying time with her friends. He's just running later than usual, that's all.

"It's fine," she tells them. "He'll get here when he gets here."

She's greeted with more than one slightly suspicious look, like they don't believe she's as casual about his tardiness as she seems, and she immediately feels the need to turn the attention away from herself. They're all acting like she's made of glass or something, and she doesn't like that one bit.

"How has James been lately?" Mary asks. "I haven't heard from him once since graduation."

She's looking at Lily as she poses the question, like she's expecting Lily to have seen him more recently. Lily doesn't want to admit that she hasn't heard anything from him either, if only because acknowledging that means coming to terms with the fact that maybe she's no different from Mary in his eyes.

But maybe no one's heard from him. Maybe he's just stopped talking to Sirius and Remus and Peter as well and it's just an everyone thing as he adjusts to his new training schedule.

"He's doing pretty good," Peter answers, not picking up on the fact that Mary's question was aimed at Lily and not him. "He spends most of his time training or with his teammates though - I've only seen him like four times all summer."

Four times. Peter - and presumably Remus and Sirius too - have seen James four times since graduation. She hasn't seen him once - hell, she hasn't even gotten a single letter. And clearly, yeah, he is busy, but he's not too busy to see his other friends.

She'd really thought, after graduation and that last night before they left Hogwarts, that they were in a good place. That his feelings for her were the same as hers for him - he'd certainly made it seem that way, at the very least. After all of that, why would he decide to stop talking to her - and just her?

"He's too good for us now," Sirius says, and the smirk on his face says that he's being sarcastic, but his words hit Lily with full force.

She hadn't really let herself consider that option before, the idea that James would somehow move on - move past - his school friends, ditching them entirely for a new life. He'd never made any sort of indication that he was planning on doing that at school, had never said anything that would make her believe he thought himself above the rest of them after signing his Quidditch contract.

She doesn't want to believe he'd be that person.

But time is ticking, and he's still not here.

***

The hours pass by, and Lily's trying her best to enjoy herself, sipping at a butterbeer and laughing along with everyone, but really, she just wants to be alone.

She looks around the room - everyone's talking and laughing, but it's still obvious that there's one thing missing. That there's one person missing.

And in that moment, the truth finally sinks in.

Despite his promises and the fact that all of his other friends are here today, James isn't coming today. Something has changed between the two of them, a total about-face from their last interactions, and he's decided to cut her out as a result.

Sirius's earlier sarcasm was a thin mask of the truth - James is probably too caught up in his new glamorous professional Quidditch lifestyle to give a damn about some girl from his Hogwarts days anymore.

And as usual, she's put her faith in someone who's decided that the best option is to crush it under their heel.

She feels a tightness growing in her chest, and suddenly, the desire to be alone becomes a need. "I'm going to the loo," she says abruptly, interrupting whatever conversation that she was only halfway paying attention to her, setting her bottle down on the table in front of her and leaving the room as fast as she can without acting suspicious.

She goes down the hallway and closes the door behind her.

There, in the bathroom, she tries not to fall apart, fingers gripping at the edge of the bathroom sink tightly. She stares at them, watching her knuckles go white.

"He said he'd be here," she says hopelessly, to no one but herself, her voice barely above a whisper.

She knows it's stupid, because he said he'd be here months ago, and things change, and he's incredibly busy with Pride of Portree. But he'd told her, with her hands in his and a look of utmost sincerity in his eyes, that he wouldn't miss this party for the world.

And like a fool, she'd believed him.

She looks back up at the mirror, at the single tear running down her cheek, and her jaw sets. She should've known better than to let herself care this deeply about someone again. She shouldn't have given James this power over her, the power to cut her this deeply over something as little as blowing off a party.

Fuck. She swore, after Snape, that she wasn't going to give anyone else the potential to break her like that. She wasn't going to let herself fall for anyone's stupid tricks or lies anymore.

And… maybe that's the problem. Nothing about James has ever felt like a trick, or a lie, or like he's ever anything but what he appears to be. That's one of the things she likes best about him, the fact that he's unapologetically himself and doesn't waver from that.

The idea that he's changed so much in three short months - from the boy who'd become one of her best friends and trusted her with all his biggest secrets, to someone who wants nothing to do with her - feels like such a sudden and unexpected shift. Especially when, as Marlene had pointed out just a few hours ago, it's not like the rest of them have changed much since school ended.

But it seems that's exactly what happened - she really can't think of any other plausible explanation for all of this. And really, she should've realised it a while ago.

She curses herself, again, because why the fuck did she not see this coming? Why did it take three months, multiple unresponded letters, and a no-show at a party for her to realise James doesn't really care about her the way she'd let herself believe he did? Why did she let herself get blinded by affection and feelings and rose-coloured glasses, only to get herself hurt again?

Petunia, Severus, James. She's been through this shit three times now.

And this time, she's done with it - she's had enough. She's done letting people in, letting them have such a profound piece of her heart, because clearly even the people she thinks are somehow different and better turn out to be exactly the same as everyone before.

She wipes the tears from her cheeks, determined not to let herself continue to cry over someone who doesn't deserve it.

There's a soft knock at the door and Remus' voice comes through from the other side. "Lily?"

"Yes?" She wills her voice not to crack - and it doesn't. If nothing else, her Order work so far has really done wonders for her acting abilities.

"We just - I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Of course. Despite her best acting, James's close friends have always had a bit of a sense on when something's really wrong - her abrupt departure from the party seems to be no exception. She's willing to bet more than one of them followed her down the hall.

She gets confirmation of that when she opens the door and is face-to-face with both Remus and Sirius. "I'm brilliant," she tells them, hoping like hell that it's not too obvious that she was crying just a few minutes ago.

"Evans, I've got no clue why he didn't show today," Sirius says. "I mean, we've definitely talked about it recently, so it's not like he just forgot about it."

Lily doesn't miss the subtle elbow from Remus at that, a small jab of you're not helping.

"It's fine," she lies. Even though it's not.

But what else is she supposed to say? That the one person whose presence meant the most to her is the one who didn't show up, and that it's finally shown her just how much he doesn't care about her anymore?

"No, it's not," Sirius argues back. "It's real shitty of him to just not show up to something we've all been planning for a year with no explanation to you whatsoever."

And secretly, she agrees with him. But she also refuses to let him know that she cares that much.

"It really is," she tells them, brushing her hair over her shoulder. "He's got his Quidditch career to pay attention to now, and like you said, he's too good for us - too good for me - now. That's fine, I really don't care."

She'll keep saying that out loud until she starts to mean it.

If not letting herself care about anyone is the way she stops getting betrayed, than so be it. She'll be a heartless ice queen if that's what it takes.

Both Remus and Sirius just look at her, slightly aghast, and Lily thinks to herself that, at the very least, a shocked look is better than a pitying one.

"Lily - " Remus starts.

"Let's get back to the party, yeah?" she says, and the nonchalance in her voice feels less faked this time. "I want to watch Peter get his eyebrows get burned off in Exploding Snap for the thousandth time."

***

The next morning, after everyone's left (because of course everyone else ended up getting too plastered to Apparate home and ended up crashing on the floor of her tiny one-bedroom flat), she goes about the process of cleaning up the apartment from the mess they'd made the night before. She's long since abandoned the yellow party dress in favour of an oversized T-shirt and pajama shorts, and she waves her wand and watches as the empty bottles and cups pile themselves in the bin, the balloons deflate and follow suit, and all her cushions right themselves again.

Then she sets down her wand, because she wants to do this next part by hand.

When she'd moved into this flat, she'd covered the walls of her living room with pictures of her Hogwarts years. The room is filled with images of her laughing and smiling with friends - and somehow, James is a nearly constant fixture in all of them.

And so, one by one, she removes every single one of them from her walls. Every single photograph with his stupid face gets put into a pile of memories she no longer wants to be confronted with every day.

But as much as she just wants to get rid of them permanently, she can't quite convince herself to part with them just yet. So she summons a small black storage box from her closet, piling them all inside and closing the lid neatly on top. Locked up in a box, just like she's locking them all away in her mind.

She carries the box into her bedroom, shoving it as far under her bed as she can manage. It can stay there and collect dust for… Merlin knows how long. And maybe one day, when she truly and completely stops giving a fuck about James Potter, she'll find it and laugh and shove it into the bin for real this time.

The rest of her Sunday is spent deep-cleaning the rest of her flat, writing an update to Dumbledore, and perusing the Sunday edition of the Prophet for anything interesting. The sun is low in the sky when an owl comes knocking at her window, bearing a tiny, rolled-up scroll.

She opens the window for just long enough to take the letter from the owl, before sending it on its way. She unfurls the note, revealing one messily-written line in black ink.

I'm sorry I didn't make it yesterday. -J

She looks at the letter - if it can even be called that, it's barely even a sentence - and answers it aloud with words she'll never send.

"Yeah, I'm sorry, too."

#hp fanfiction #jily fanfiction #jily #james potter x lily evans #angst #jily angst #jily fic #harry potter fanfic #and when you get me alone it's so simple #that's the series tag for all these things related to this one novel and all the one-shots that have spiralled out of it #because i have no self-control and this universe has run away from me

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jeanvaljean24601 · 4 years

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P-Valley Season 1 Review: Belly and Legacy

After being jailed for fighting with Patrice, The Pynk's O.G. found herself potentially stuck in a cell with her mother for the weekend on P-Valley Season 1 Episode 5. Her jailer was Jesse, a man with whom she had gotten into a disagreement at the club. So he wasn't inclined to help her out. Poor Mercedes. Unlike many of her peers, she had set up a path to respectability and was carefully following it. She should be admired for that.

She wanted to be the coach of her own dance squad, to bring accolades to Chucalissa. Based on what's been shown of the town, the question of why comes to mind. The upshot of that plan was that Mercedes's biological daughter, Terrica, was on her squad. Also, once Mercedes was running her own business, she would stand a better chance legally of regaining some form of custody of Terrica.

However, that plan went awry when Terrica started flaunted her body on social media on P-Valley Season 1 Episode 3 and her stepmother pulled her off Mercedes's team as a result, viewing Mercedes as a bad influence. So now Mercedes can't even see Terrica anymore.

Even worse, Mercedes forgot all about their checkered family history (much of which came to light) and trusted Patrice with her money.For a bright woman, that was sure a dumb choice. Patrice managed to rip off both Mercedes and the church which she felt had wronged her.

Patrice felt unappreciated by the men in her church. So she took Mercedes's money and used it to buy the building Mercedes wanted in which to establish her church.

The money they can't afford to drop at The Pynk would instead be spent at the casino. The town treasury would probably get a cut and Mayor Ruffin undoubtedly would be getting a kickback. But the residents, unless they end up working there, would be no better off.

Instead of her triumphant departure from The Pynk, Mercedes, in her new performance outfit, got perp-walked and treated like a piece of meat by the men (and some women) jailed there.

Jesse, the jailer, felt bad enough for her that he offered her his jacket so she could cover herself. Mercedes did the right thing turning down Clifford's offer of bail because she knew he had much bigger financial problems on his hands.

Give Gidget credit. Despite being miffed with Mercedes, she still attempted to put together the bail money. If only Mercedes hadn't dug herself such a deep hole legally.

Why did Autumn bail out Mercedes, despite their rivalry? She was probably just being opportunistic. She couldn't use her fake identity any more to transfer funds electronically, so she needed someone desperate to become her new partner in crime.

But maybe she sensed a kindred soul, someone else who had lost a daughter. Why else would she share her history which she has kept secret since arriving in town? In any event, it could prove a mutually beneficial arrangement. Autumn needs money to keep running and Mercedes just needs to replenish her stacks.

But Autumn's abusive boyfriend Montavius, from whom she's running, has arrived in Chucalissa. And he somehow seemed to be able to track her transfers as well. So Mercedes may be in trouble as well. Also in trouble was Uncle Clifford. If she's been falling deeper and deeper in the hole financially for months, even years, how is she supposed to come up with $55,000 in two weeks?

Why was she was at all surprised? It was clear that Mayor Ruffin had it for her. Trading The Pynk for the casino, which is his legacy project is a win-win situation for Ruffin. Ruffin is a truly despicable character who is looking out only for himself and uses people when it benefits him. Once he referred to Andre as his godson, it became apparent why Andre has had anything to do with him.

Chucalissa is proving to be a place where strange partnerships blossom. Unusual, beneficial relationships formed on P-Valley Season 1 Episode 6, all of which promise intrigue over the season's last two episodes. My favorite, even though it hasn't fully formed yet, was the last one, developing between the strangest bedfellows -- strip-club owner Uncle Clifford and holy-roller Patrice.

It was based on that oldie but goodie bit of wisdom by Sun Tzu: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."The enemy, in this case, would be the proposed casino, which Andre and the mayor are seeking to build in Chucalissa.

In Clifford's case, he was trying to preserve his family's legacy. What a great addition his grandmother Ernestine was this late in the season! It's a good thing Starz has already renewed the series for a second season.Blind Ernestine, who lost her sight to "the sugar," helped to fill in The Pynk's storied if sordid history. So Ernestine was involved with The Pynk, which was first a brothel, saved by God if you believe her, then a juke joint.

Then Clifford took over the club and its debts, changing it into a shake joint while adding to the debt. Is it any wonder that the respectable people in town resent The Pynk (except when they are there)? Let's count Patrice among those people. However, she is going to hate the concept of a casino even more. After all, people losing their money at a casino couldn't contribute to her new church.

At least those who go to The Pynk on Saturday night will donate to the church out of guilt on Sunday morning, paying for their sins.So the club is the lesser of two evils. I'd wondered why Clifford had seemed catty to the mayor's comely assistant Eloise.

So it turned out that Eloise was a Pynk alumna who had done Maite's job before her. No wonder Clifford was unhappy about being blindsided with the foreclosure notice. Both the sheriff she pays off and former employee Eloise failed to give her any advanced warning. But Clifford knew how to lay on the guilt after "running into" Eloise at her weekly nail treatment. That proved to be the move she needed to make.

That was because Eloise resented the mayor and his cronies even more than Clifford did. And she knew that Clifford needed to bring the secret project into the daylight for the public to consider. Who better to recruit for this effort than the self-righteous, and what better representative of that group than Patrice, who had been waiting to be bailed out of jail for nine days?

Clifford hadn't made his proposal by episode's end, but the writing was on the wall, to put things in Biblical terms.How can an alliance between those two be anything but uneasy? And what will Mercedes think about Clifford teaming up with the woman who ruined her life?

Mercedes was too busy learning the ins and outs of identity theft to give much thought to Patrice. She was trying to get back on her feet financially after Patrice ripped off her life savings. Watching Mercedes and Autumn do their Thelma-and-Louise routine, in a variety of different outfits, you had to wonder why the two never hit it off previously. android tv box

It was probably because Mercedes had it in for high-yella newcomer Autumn, who wasn't giving proper deference to O.G. Mercedes.But Mercedes needed to replenish her stacks, and Autumn required Mercedes's local connections so that they could come up with sufficient IDs for Autumn's electronic-transfer scheme.

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my-rae · 5 years

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303 |Lee Byounggon|

When Byounggon has a crush on his next-door neighbor and friend but doesn’t even know their name.

Words: 2.8K

Genre: fluff

Warning(s): an awkward neighbor! Au + mentions of alcohol + idk I just hope you like this kdjsk + stream movie star peeps!!

This is a part of a silver boys series I’m currently writing. Find the masterlist here!

Feedback is very appreciated!

“Pleeease.”

"No.”

“No.”

“Gonie, please.”

“Those puppy eyes don’t work with me, Seunghun.”

Seunghun rolled his eyes and pouted as he talked to his best friend.

“I can’t see why you don’t want to do it, there are only advantages! Look: we get some credits for our grade, we make friends, we-“

“We get less time to study, we look ridiculous since nobody would join and people from other clubs will make fun of us... Do I continue?”

That time, Seunghun frowned and gave his best friend a friendly punch on the shoulder. It had always been like that: Seunghun, the main dreamer; Byounggon, the realistic dreamer. It was obvious that Seunghun was going to be benefited by that stupid theatre club he wanted to create, after all, he majored in acting and he was basically raised inside a theatre. But for him? He’s majored in music, production of music to be accurate, how’s that going to help him apart from the credits?

“I’m not helping you this time, I’m sorry.”

That was a few months ago. Now, he finds himself with a notebook and list of the ones that are already inside the club.

“Bang Yedam and Kim Doyoung.” He reads out loud. “Why are some high schoolers joining the club? Isn’t it for college students only?”

“Haven’t you realized that the dance club began being only for students but some people of all ages ended up joining? It doesn’t really matter who joins, college students are the only ones getting some benefit though.” Seunghun explains and Byounggon nods, he is surprised at how his friend seems to be taking it seriously.

“Lee Midam.” He continues reading. “Noa Kazama, Kim Junkyu.”

“Our first member and dearest friend Jeon Woong.” Seunghun smiles fondly when he reads Woongs's name. He was the first person that joined and Seunghun will always be thankful to him. “And these two girls... Oh, let’s stop reading here.”

“Aren’t you like half dating one of them?”

“Shut up. She dropped, there’s only her friend in the club, I forgot to remove her name.” Byounggon decided not to comment anything else. After all, he seemed a bit down when talking about his girlfriend’s relationship with her friend. Byounggon didn’t know what happened, but he doesn’t know if he wants to know.

“Anyways, let’s keep this tomorrow okay? I think you have a class to plan and I have some things to do.”

“Okay friend.” Seunghun stood up from his bed, where he was sitting, and guided Byounggon to the front door to say goodbye properly, as he always did. Byounggon smiled at his friend and made his way to his apartment slowly.

He doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s glad he has an apartment for his own. He won’t be able to become a real artist if he isn’t 100% focused on his music, and he doesn’t want to bother anyone with it, as well as he doesn’t want to be annoyed in that process. When he’s on his creative phase, he’s super energetic, but nobody is able to see it since he locks himself until he creates the song that matches his idea. After that, everything is happiness. However, when he’s going through a drought, is better not to talk to him until his mood is a bit better.

That’s probably another reason why he lives alone.

“Come on, Bx, you have this.” He tells himself. Right now he wishes he could write something, but with all the subjects to study, all the projects he has to create for class, and the fact that he is worried about Seunghun, he can’t really focus, and, as written before, he’s a bit unbearable.

He opens the door that guides to the balcony and he sits there on a chair while holding his guitar. He begins to play something, maybe that way, with the cold air of winter caressing him and with nobody to listen to him at sight, he can focus better. He tries, again, and again, and again, but fails to find something to inspire him to create a good track for his teacher. He begins to create a melody he likes but stops suddenly when something doesn’t match.

“Why did you stop?” He turns around to the sound of a very well known voice for him. He finds you sitting on a chair while having a cup of hot chocolate and your laptop in front of you. “I liked it.”

“I didn’t, that’s the problem.” He answers you.

Being honest, in spite of becoming unbearable when he has no inspiration, he wouldn’t talk to their neighbors like that, but he knows you well enough to talk to you openly.

“Are you going through another crisis, 301?” You ask the tall boy. He rolls his eyes, but when they meet yours, he knows he can’t lie to you.

“I am, I can’t really focus on my school projects because I have no inspiration and then I don’t know how to help my friend with the club I told you the other day.”

You listen to him carefully, as you use to. This is how your dynamic works: you could be freezing out there in the balcony, or melting under the hot summer sun, but you have created a bait to talk about your life and give each other a piece of advice when needed.

Funny when you don’t even know each other’s names, you just name each other after the apartment you live in.

“What’s wrong with the club? It isn’t working?”

“It’s going better than expected, Seunghun is happy already, but I know he wants more, and I want to help.”

“301, I’m going to give you my honest opinion, as I have always done.” You say. Byounggon begins to draw simple figures on a piece of paper to avoid looking into your eyes. “I think that you shouldn’t overwork yourself. Focus on what’s important now, because I see you’re already pretty overwhelmed with all the assignments you have to do. Talk to your friend and try to find a way to promote the club! As a marketing student, I can give you an example of flyers to hang around or to spread but just do me a favor and don’t try to carry all the weight of the situation, okay?”

He thanks God he’s looking down because he can feel his cheeks burning up. That’s your effect, he always thinks his heart is about to explode every time he talks to you as you’re always making sure he’s fine and giving him the best pieces of advice ever. He does the same to you, yes, that’s what friends are about, but he doesn’t think about you as just friends.

“Once again you’re right, 303, I’ll try to listen to you, thank you.” You smile and look at the time.

“No problem 301, I’ll bring them tomorrow if you want to.” You focus on your laptop again and sigh, that’s when he knows you’ll be complaining. “I have to finish this for tomorrow but this is so long 301. I went outside to talk to you and get some fresh air, but I’m afraid this will take longer than I expected.” You shiver when you finish and hug yourself.

“Are you cold?’“ He asks.

“A bit, but my roommate has all the blankets because I told her I didn’t want them.” You shake your head, thinking how dumb were you when you let her take all of them.

“Take my hoodie.” He suddenly says. “I’m not really cold, you can take it for tonight if you want to.” At first, you didn’t want to take the poor boy’s hoodie because he would freeze, but he is a very persistent person, so you end up wrapped around his hoodie and smelling his cologne.

You will mark this night on your calendar because you don’t know how you’ve ended up sleeping with his hoodie on.

“Seunghun I’m cold.” The brown-haired boy tells his friend when they get into the giant room where they plan everything about their club.

“Why didn’t you bring a hoodie? It's literally February, are you dumb?”

“I forgot I washed all my hoodies at the same time, and I lent 303 the only hoodie that isn’t wet.”

“You lent your crush your hoodie?”

“I did.” Seunghun smiles at how Byounggon didn’t even try to deny the fact that you’re his crush. “Oh god, Seunghun I really lent them my hoodie!”

“Congratulations on realizing mate.” He teases his friend, knowing how embarrassed he is. “You’re a step closer, now all you have to do is to ask their name!”

“I will, someday.”

Seunghun shakes his head in disapproval.

“Make up an excuse and talk to them! Don’t be a coward!”

Byounggon rolls his eyes, but he knows his friend is right.

“They said they were going to help me with the promotion of the club and was going to give me some flyers to spread and stuff.”

“They’re so nice!” Seunghun has stars in his eyes. “Haven’t they helped us already giving you some ideas?”

“They have.” You were the one who helped to design the sign and also spread it around your university too, that’s how close you are to Byounggon.

“Of only you confessed Bex, if only you confessed.” Seunghun has the theory that you like him too, but Byounggon thinks he is completely wrong. You would have thrown a sign already, right?

“Nothing will happen if I confess. We have a special neighbors relationship, I’ve been the fool that caught feelings here, they have nothing to do.” Seunghun rolls his eyes, but decides not to mention the topic again, he knows his friend doesn’t like to talk about it.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. By the way, are you coming to Chan’s party?”

“I haven’t been told about any party.”

“Yes, it’s in two days, Friday night, Woong said it last night on our group chat.” Byounggon curses at himself for being so distracted, he should talk more on their group chat.

“I’m not sure, I'll tell you later."

He saw it clear Thursday night when he got home. He began working on songs and lyrics that didn’t satisfy them as much as he would like to. Besides, you said you were going to show up, but you didn’t appear that night.

“What a shame.” He thought to himself. “I really wanted to talk to them today.” It’s the main disadvantage of not being completely close.

To: Pompompurin

So, party tonigh?

He sent the message to his friend before going to the university and his answer didn’t take long to come.

Pompompurin(4)

I can’t believe we’re going to a party.

FinaLLY.

I was feeling bored already.

Hyunsuk will be there too!

He sighs, Hyunsuk is also one of his best friends, but he’s not the right person to party with right now, he knows it the moment his friend offers him a cup with more alcohol than soda to equilibrate it.

“What are you drinking, Hyunsuk?” He asks his friend right when he comes into the party as he takes the cup from him so that he doesn’t drink much more. He has heard from Seunghun that he’s having some difficulties in his relationship and apparently the only thing he does now is going to parties.

“S fine friend.” Hyunsuk answers as he slur words.

He ends up drinking two more cups to prevent his friend from drinking that much, but he forgets that his tolerance to alcohol isn’t as good as Seunghun’s or Woong’s, so we can say he’s not drunk, but maybe a bit tipsy.

“I’m bored.” He tells Seunghun. “I don’t want to drink more from Hyunsuk’s cups, he’ll end up making a cocktail out of the water inside the vases.”

Seunghun laughs.

“Wait here, I’ll go pick up my coat and we’ll leave in a few minutes, okay?” But Seunghun shouldn’t have trusted a tipsy, bored Byounggon. He’s never an irresponsible person, but he becomes one when he’s in that state.

Byounggon ignores Seunghun’s calls, who thought he was still inside the party and was looking for him like crazy. On his way home, he thought of something he could do now that he could blame it on the alcohol, so instead of opening his door to come into his lonely apartment, he knocked at your door.

“301? What are you doing here?” You ask sleepily.

“Hi 303, I thought I’ll see you yesterday.” He says casually.

“Are you drunk?”

“Just tipsy.” You have only seen your neighbor drunk once, and the only difference was the strong scent of alcohol and that he was more flirty than usual. You know it’s bad to listen to drunk people, but when that night he opened his front door for you to come into his apartment and literally begged you to put him to sleep as he explained to you his life detail by detail, you could feel your heart warming up.

You know everything about Byounggon, but he forgot you know the following morning. You guess he thought it was his friend Seunghun and that’s why he asked no questions.

“Just tipsy? Are you sure?”

“Stop teasing mee.” He complains and laughs it off. “No, seriously, I’m perfectly fine, just more confident than usual.”

“That’s good. Do you want to come in?” You don’t know why you’ve asked him that, the boy you are absolutely crazy for? Half drunk? At your house? Without your roommate to be seen? Dangerous.

“I actually do. Someone told me they were going to show me some flyers, but didn’t appear yesterday.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“I missed you. I have been so worn out, I needed your light.” You feel your heart sinking and you have to remind yourself that he’s drunk.

“Okay, let me show you the flyers.” You do what you’re the best at, running away to calm your stupid heart down. You come back with a huge variety of flyers with colors and shapes and take a seat on the couch. He decides to follow your example, but he’s closer than you expected

He looks at the flyers amazed and you begin to rant about this one and that one and their stories behind. At some point, his eyes are not on the pieces of paper anymore, and they’re completely focused on you.

“Do I have something on my face?” You ask him when you realize.

He shakes his head.

“You’re just very cute, 303.”

“Oh shut up.” You try to ignore his compliments, knowing he has a flirty personality when drunk.

“You are cute, but I’m tired of this.” Your heart stops.

“You’re drunk 301, let’s talk when you’re sober, okay?”

“I already told you, I’m not drunk, just braver than usual. That’s why I finally have the guts to say that I have like a huge crush on you.” You are completely shocked to say the least. Did you hear it right?

“Like a huge crush on me?” It is all that you can say.

“Okay, actually I really like you but it’s weird I mean, I don’t even know your name.” The fact that the Byounggon you use to know becomes a little child when he’s nervous and with alcohol in his system hits you when you realize he’s both, nervous and drunk, at this moment.

And, as you are nervous too, the only thing you can do is laugh it off.

“Don’t laugh at me!” He pouts. “I knew I shouldn’t have drunk to say this, I should have guessed that you weren't going to take me seriously.”

“You drank so you could confess?”

“At first that wasn’t my purpose but let’s say it ended up like that, yes.”

“God, you’re an idiot.”

“I know, I know, let’s not bring me down even more, okay?” You then realize that this is the moment, you must say what you feel now.

“Does the fact that I love you back makes you feel a bit better?” You ask the question smoothly, almost as if it wasn’t something that concerned you, but the truth is you were even more nervous than him.

Everything fades away when he smiles widely, happily. Your heart skips a beat, he’s defenitely the closest person to perfection in your eyes.

“Can I kiss you?”

“I’ll let you kiss me tomorrow, if you remember everything that has happened this night.”

“How can I let you know? Do you want me to kiss you right when I see you tomorrow?” The way he says it makes you blush, how can he take it like that when you still haven’t recovered?

“Please no! I’ll be so embarrassed.”

“Then what?”

“Call me by my name.”

“And what’s your name?” He asks, approaching you dangerously.

“Y/n.”

“Sounds nice.” He’s still getting closer and closer, but you don’t feel the need to move away. “You’ll always be my 303, though.”

You may or may not have finally kissed more than once that night.

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