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seospicybin · 8 months

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TOO HOT TO HANDLE.

EXTRA HOT REUNION.

Felix x reader. (s)

Too Hot To Handle Masterlist.

Synopsis: You and Felix are having a Too Hot To Handle reunion with other contestants to catch up on the life after the retreat. (4,2k words)

Author's note: Some of you asking for a reunion so here it is! Also, happy birthday the blonde guy from Stray Kids x

Content warning: This is entirely a work of fiction and not affiliated with real Too Hot To Handle show.

HOST: Hello, everyone! I am your host for the Too Hot To Handle Extra Hot Reunion show! Hello, sexy people!

EVERYONE: [Claps] [cheers]

HOST: We'll be getting all the juicy details of the contestants of Too Hot To Handle season 1 and find out if your favorite couple is still together or not!

HOST: In the meantime, let's see if they still remember how many times they broke the rules!

LAURA: Wow! Honestly... A lot! [Chuckles]

ALEX: Indeed, we did a lot of things.

MAEVE: Just once and I don't regret it. At all!

YOU: Agree! [Thumbs up]

DANIEL: Oh, Laura touched someone's willy!

JAMIE: I didn't break enough rules.

KILLIAN: [laughs] I still remember your naughty little fingers, Felix!

FELIX: [laughs] [shows fingers to the camera]

COLE: I was too busy keeping you horn dogs from breaking the rules to break a rule.

HOST: These two girls prove that you can seek connections other than romantic ones. In this season we watched how their friendship blooms from a rule break.

HOST: Hello, my darlings!

MAEVE: Hey, gorgeous! [Waves]

YOU: Hi, babes!

HOST: We all know that the two of you are close before the kiss but what did you think that makes you guys click in the first place?

YOU: It's because we entered the villa together!

MAEVE: [Gasps] I almost forgot about that!

YOU: I was so nervous, it was my first time being in a show and front of a camera. I was grateful that they paired me up with someone and she's like... such a hottie.

MAEVE; Awww, thank you, babe!

YOU: And I think it's crazy that I met an Irish girl and we clicked right away.

MAEVE: It's meant to be!

HOST: Such a wonderful start to a relationship and both of you are hot and shared a hot kiss.

YOU: [Nods] Oh, yes.

MAEVE: [Blushes] [laughs]

HOST: So, how did the kiss happen?

YOU: I just wanted to kiss her. Really.

MAEVE: Babe, we agree to keep it a secret! [laughs]

YOU: [Laughs] I always think that Maeve is gorgeous, she's hot and no one can deny that yet she's always insecure about it.

MAEVE: [Quietly chuckles]

YOU: Frankly, a few times I wanted to shake her shoulders and snap her out of it because like, come on, she has nothing to be not confident about but instead of that, I kissed her.

MAEVE: Right! I'm a slow learner but with a kiss, I immediately get it.

HOST: Oh yes, a good snog always helps.

MAEVE: Right?

HOST: You mentioned in the show that someday you'll visit her in Ireland and have drinks together. Have you had the chance to do it?

YOU: [Nods] I already did.

MAEVE: She visited me last summer and we had so much fun.

YOU: We had tons of fun. We went from one pub to another and I obviously can't drink as much as Maeve— Oh, Killian!!!

MAEVE: [Covers face]

HOST: Do I smell something here? [Sniffs] Oh, it reeks of romance.

YOU: I'll leave that to Maeve to explain [Props hand under chin]

MAEVE: After the show we stayed in contact and we hung out a few times, there's something— I can't tell much for now. We want to take things slow.

HOST: It's better than nothing.

YOU: [leans close to the camera] [puts hands around your mouth] They're snogging, everyone!

HOST: Oh, kiss me I'm Irish indeed!

MAEVE: But still, our kiss is the best I've ever had.

HOST: Do you agree with that? Is Maeve still the best kisser?

YOU: Yes and yes and yes.

MAEVE: [Cheers] Eat that, Felix!

HOST: Do you girls have any plans? Upcoming girl's trip? Do you plan on sharing another kiss?

MAEVE: Another kiss for sure!

YOU: We want to do a lot of things and kissing is one of them [puckering lips]

MAEVE: [Blows kisses at you]

HOST: Nothing we love more than two girls wanting to kiss each other! True friendship goals right there!

HOST: We're usually able to guess which couple going to make it to the last but we didn't guess it right when they parted ways in the middle of the season. Tell us why it happened, Jamie!

JAMIE: [Rubs forehead] Uh... first thing first, I was sexually frustrated.

YOU: We all were!

JAMIE: I wanted to break the rules and she didn't so I got more frustrated [laughs]

YOU: That's true!

JAMIE: What a man can do?

YOU: A lot, actually! [Rolls eyes] [laughs]

HOST: Let it all out, honey! Let it out!

YOU: What was upsetting to me is that because I was about to open up to him and I was planning on breaking a rule with him but he [sighs] Well, it's your loss, Jamie [smirks]

JAMIE: It was my loss, I admit [hands up]

HOST: But are we good now? Are we on good terms or should we make a peace treaty right here, right now?

YOU: [Laughs]

JAMIE: We're good. We had dinner together the other night.

HOST: Is that true? Is it like... was it civil? Was it a peace offering?

YOU: Nah [shakes head] it was Cole, he told me he's in town and invited me to have dinner together. I would have said no if I knew Jamie was going to be there [gags] [laughs] I'm joking.

JAMIE: I did doubt she'd come if Cole had told her I'd be coming too.

YOU: I came because Cole said he'll pay for dinner [chuckles]

JAMIE: [Closes eyes] [flustered]

YOU: Jokes aside, we're good. We're friends.

JAMIE: Thank you! Everyone can stop coming at me now [laughs] thank you for clearing it up.

HOST: Oh, [wipes forehead] I was about to call for backup here but thank you for keeping this a peaceful reunion.

HOST: This is the moment you've been waiting for! They're my favorite couple in the show and it seems like they're everyone's favorite too. Hi, cuties!

FELIX: [Waves hand] Hi!

YOU: Hiya!

HOST: Let's catch up with you first, girl! How are you doing?

YOU: I've been doing great [smiles] I... uhm, I've been working hard on paying my debts and I'm debt-free now.

HOST: Woohoo! That's great!

YOU: Sad that I watched my money gone like that [laughs] but I'm relieved I don't have to think about it again.

HOST: We heard you're finishing fashion school. Is it true?

YOU: Yes, I am. I'm graduating next month!

HOST: [Claps] Oh, congratulations in advance, darling!

FELIX: [Claps] [smiles]

HOST: Aren't you proud of your girl, Felix?

FELIX: [Clears throat] Absolutely! She's been working hard so she deserves every good thing that comes to her.

YOU: [Coos] Thank you [smiles]

HOST: And how are things, Felix? How's life after the retreat?

FELIX: It felt weird to be back in the real world after the retreat. Moreover, I just feel like staying in the villa and not working [laughs]

HOST: Understandable!

FELIX: The only annoying thing about the retreat is Lana [chuckles]

HOST: Uh oh! Let's hope Lana didn't just hear it. For now, let's see some of your moments in the retreat!

YOU: Not you guys showing how I got fingered under the cover again [Facepalms]

HOST: I'm afraid it'll live forever in the TV history.

[Playing video of you and Felix in the retreat]

HOST: Getting flashbacks? How did you feel watching all that?

YOU: Wow. I mean looking back at it now, it feels like I did change. My friends and family kept saying something changed in me but I felt the same. I get it now.

HOST: How about you, Felix?

FELIX: Same. I was single when I joined the show and planned on staying single at the end of it.

HOST: Until the ultimate cockblock appeared?

FELIX: [Chuckles] Yes but the outcome is better than I expected.

HOST: Getting into the important questions now. Please fill in the blanks on what you guys did after the retreat is over.

YOU: [Sighs] [Chuckles] We stayed together for a week. Felix decided to come home and stayed over at my place and yeah... we just went at it.

HOST: Oh, straight into the juicy details, huh?

FELIX: [Laughs] We did like... seven times a day.

YOU: [Laughs] I felt— [inhales] I felt bad for my neighbor at that time.

HOST: Did you guys ahem... did all the things you guys wanted to do in a private suite?

YOU: [Tips head] [Slyly smiles]

FELIX: To be honest... [licks lips] not enough.

HOST: OH MY GOODNESS!

YOU: [Laughs] I had to change the bedsheets every few hours!

HOST: OH, YOU ANIMALS!

FELIX: You want the juicy details [smiles] [shrugs]

HOST: It's wow— It's not juicy, it's rather flooding in here. What happened after that?

YOU: Felix went back to Australia and I got busy working, school.

FELIX: [Nods] I went back to work right away.

HOST: [Blinks eyes] Nothing happened after that?

YOU: We spent New Year's together and after that, we just went back to our lives.

HOST: New Year was two months ago, babes! Wait, are you—

FELIX: We haven't met again after that.

HOST: Oh, no. I don't want to be the bearer of bad news to everyone but I have to ask, are you guys still together?

YOU: Well...

HOST: Hold that tongue and let me get back to you after I asked everyone about their favorite best moments!

HOST: What is your favorite best moment?

HEIDI: Fooling around with everyone in the pool.

LAURA: Definitely kissing Alex [laughs] No, I'm playing. I had fun doing the all-girls workshop that when I felt the closest to them.

YOU: What I miss the most now is just us girls talking in the dressing room.

KILLIAN: Felix and I working out by the beach together.

JAMIE: It must be the date I had with Mia. I never had a nice date like that.

JOSH: The dance we did in the last episode.

MAEVE: The first party we had and everyone's faces when they found out it was Too Hot To Handle.

ALEX: Goofing around with the boys in the bedroom.

FELIX: That time I was sweating so much from waiting for my girl to come back from the date.

COLE: Must be the times we spent worrying about the money [laughs]

HOST: We're back with our favorite couple and about to reveal the fate of their relationship. I'm going to ask you guys again. Are you guys still together?

YOU: The distance is... I guess we kind of having a hard time overcoming it. Other than that, we're both busy, Felix is always traveling for his job and I'm stuck here studying.

FELIX: My worries turned out to be true and we had our ups and downs.

HOST: Stop dragging this around. My heart can't take it.

FELIX: Well... Sorry, I just need to— [exits the frame]

HOST: Felix, where are you going?

YOU: [Looks to the side] [Felix appears in your frame]

HOST: OH?! You guys are—

YOU: [Nods] [Chuckles]

FELIX: I decided to move in with her.

HOST: [Clutches chest] You guys are so mean, I almost had a heart attack.

YOU: [Gets up from chair] [sits on Felix's lap]

FELIX: It's the only way for this to work. Being away from her, the distance... [sighs] it was draining so I sorted a few things, packed up, and moved in.

YOU: I just moved to a new apartment so the timing couldn't be more perfect.

HOST: Is the bedroom soundproofed, babe?

YOU: [Laughs] Not yet but now I plan on doing it.

HOST: You should because it seems to me like it's going to be super loud and busy in there.

FELIX: It's about to [smirks]

HOST: Please show us some love! Share a smooch with us for all of your fans out there.

FELIX: [Turns head] [kisses you on the lips]

HOST: Oh, great! I feel so single now.

YOU: Well, you can always join Too Hot To Handle [Laughs]

HOST: No, thank you. I enjoyed seeing my favorite couple is still all lovey-dovey. Felix, do you have anything to say before we end our interview?

FELIX: Yes. It was nice catching up with everyone and I'm happy to be here with my girlfriend but I'm afraid it's time to f—

HOST: Sorry, Felix, as much as we love a happy ending, we have to cut you off again. It's been fun catching up with all the hot guests from the first season of Too Hot To Handle. Hope to see you guys again next time and thank you for watching!

Felix shuts the laptop once the interview is over and puts his arms around you.

"That was fun," he murmurs close to your ear.

You turn your head to the side, letting him capture your lips into a kiss.

"The fun hasn't begun," you mutter against his lips and let go to continue talking, "yet."

He leans in for another kiss as you recline on his chest, his hands roaming around your clothed body and feeling you all over.

"You still make me hard," he seductively whispers into your ear.

When the kiss starts to get deeper and harder, you get up from his lap, unzipping your dress as you walk backward while maintaining eye contact with him.

The dress drops onto the floor and pools around your ankle, exposing the matching underwear you're wearing.

You kick the dress away and it lands next to his feet.

Felix resists picking it up and shakes his head, eyeing the piece of clothing you're wearing that he wants.

"Give it to me," he says with a deep, assertive voice that makes you tingle inside.

"Okay..." Your hand reaches to the back to unclasp your bra.

Sliding the straps down your shoulders, you take the bra off and throwing at him, landed right on his lap.

He hisses as he takes it but does nothing to it, "The other one!"

You shake your head and cup your breasts with your hands, "Nuh-uh! No!"

Felix glares at you and leans forward on his chair, "Give it to me!" He says with a deeper voice.

"Why don't you get it yourself?" You dare him with a sly smile.

Felix reclines on the chair, spreading his legs wide, and pokes his inner cheek with his tongue. It's like he's doing a photoshoot for a magazine.

"I have no other option then," he sighs and quickly gets up from the chair to chase after you.

You squeal as you make a run to the bedroom, but he catches you right before you can climb onto the bed.

"Got you!"

Felix wraps his arms around you and shuts you up with a kiss on your open mouth. His hands get busy roaming around your naked body as his kiss turns sloppy.

You turn around to face him and hook your leg over his, clinging to him as you return his eager kisses.

"Baby..." You whine.

He gently bites at your lower lip and slyly smiles, "What?"

You gently push him away and lay down on the bed, giving him the eyes as you say, "Take those clothes off for me."

Felix is too busy lusting over your almost naked body on the bed to hear what you said to him.

"Baby!" You call him again a little louder.

It works to snap him out of his possibly lewd daydream, "No time to take the clothes off," he says, then jumps onto the bed.

Felix likes it more if you’re the one taking his clothes off for him.

Your hands are swiftly unbuttoning his shirt while your mouth is busy returning his hard and deep kisses. You impatiently part it open once you're done unbuttoning them all.

Felix eventually has to be the one getting rid of it, reluctantly letting go of the kiss to do it. He hurls it across the room to hover above you again.

"I miss you," he earnestly says as he stares deeply into your eyes.

"Aww..." you coo and brush his already tousled hair, "I miss you too."

Your fingertips lightly trail his cheek dusted with freckles and cup his jaw, "Come, kiss me again!" you sweetly demand with an adorable pout.

He's more than happy to comply, pressing his lips on you again. His heart is shrunk from being away from you too long, but the kiss helps him fill it with warm feelings, and revives it back to life.

A part of him still can't believe that he's moving in with you and he can see you every day, kissing you as many times as he wants.

"I love you," he mutters as he breaks the kiss.

"I love you too," you say back with a smile that makes his heart rattle inside his chest.

"Baby, isn't it time for you to give me head?"

He breaks into laughter, "So impatient, huh?"

"Well, you've been away for long..." you meekly answer and put your legs around his waist to draw him closer.

You lowly giggle as you guide his hand down south, "A girl has her needs, you know."

He rubs over your clothed core and slyly grinning as he looks down at you, "Uh-huh?"

You nod and spread your legs wider for him, "You still make me wet," you say as you watch his hand slip into your underwear.

"Mmh..." He hums with a quick kiss on your neck.

Felix continues the trail of kisses down your neck and chest, biting on your nipples on his way down to kiss your abdomen.

You squirm as his mouth gets closer to where you want him to be. A moan falls out of your parted mouth as his mouth makes contact with your clothed cunt.

Oh, how he misses hearing the noises you make as his tongue lapping at your wetness. The taste of you quench his thirst yet he can't have enough.

Your hand tangles in his hair, tugging at it whenever the pleasure gets overwhelming and at the same time, telling him that he's doing the right thing.

There are so many things he wants to do but one pops out in his head at this moment. He sucks hard on your clit before letting it go.

Hastily, he kisses your mouth, ignoring his mouth drenched in your essence.

"Baby?"

"Yeah?" You breathlessly ask with wide eyes.

He places a slobbering kiss on your jaw before answering you, "Do you have anything we can play with?"

You shot him a surprised look, then lowly chuckle, "In the second drawer of the dresser."

A part of him still can't believe that he's moving in with you and he can see you every day, kissing you as many times as he wants.

"I love you," he mutters as he breaks the kiss.

"I love you too," you say back with a smile that makes his heart rattle inside his chest.

"Baby, isn't it time for you to give me head?"

He breaks into laughter, "So impatient, huh?"

"Well, you've been away for long..." you meekly answer and put your legs around his waist to draw him closer.

You lowly giggle as you guide his hand down south, "A girl has her needs, you know."

He rubs over your clothed core and slyly grinning as he looks down at you, "Uh-huh?"

You nod and spread your legs wider for him, "You still make me wet," you say as you watch his hand slip into your underwear.

"Mmh..." He hums with a quick kiss on your neck.

Felix continues the trail of kisses down your neck and chest, biting on your nipples on his way down to kiss your abdomen.

You squirm as his mouth gets closer to where you want him to be. A moan falls out of your parted mouth as his mouth makes contact with your clothed cunt.

Oh, how he misses hearing the noises you make as his tongue lapping at your wetness. The taste of you quench his thirst yet he can't have enough.

Your hand tangles in his hair, tugging at it whenever the pleasure gets overwhelming and at the same time, telling him that he's doing the right thing.

There are so many things he wants to do but one pops out in his head at this moment. He sucks hard on your clit before letting it go.

Hastily, he kisses your mouth, ignoring his mouth drenched in your essence.

"Baby?"

"Yeah?" You breathlessly ask with wide eyes.

He places a slobbering kiss on your jaw before answering you, "Do you have anything we can play with?"

You shot him a surprised and lowly chuckle, "In the second drawer of the dresser."

Nothing can compare to the feeling of entering you and the look on your face as you slowly take his length.

Felix is on cloud nine once his cock is fully buried inside you, he tenderly caresses your cheek and puts your hair to the side.

"Always taking me so well, mmh?" He coos at you.

You smile with your eyes closed as a response to his sweet praise.

It only gets better now that he's getting help from the vibrator he takes from your drawer. He turns it on and it's buzzing in his hand.

Slowly, he puts the vibrator on your clit and pays attention to the facial expression you make as a guide to please you.

It's the first time for him as well to use it on you and feel the vibration even though his cock is snug inside your velvety walls.

"Good, baby?" He asks.

You nod with a blissful smile on your face, squirming on the bed with moans spilling out of your parted mouth.

Felix pauses by turning off the vibrator and begins to slowly thrust into you at a steady pace.

Your eyes are screwed shut and your hands are gripping the sides of your pillow.

"Baby, oh..." You moan out loud.

As much as he wants to please you, he wants to take his time and give you the best of pleasure. He leans down to kiss you again, giving you a break by slowly making out with you.

"Faster, yeah?" He asks against your lips.

"Okay," you answer with your lips wet from the kisses.

He kisses you before getting into position, turning on the vibrator, and changing the speed settings.

It's getting more intense now and he can feel it as you tighten and flutter around him. You're sucking him deeper so that he can't help himself but draw his cock out of you and slowly slip it in.

You're a moaning mess, clawing at the bedsheets and squirming on the bed, "Oh, fu..." your curse goes into a breathless moan.

He can see the sheen of sweat covering your body and tears pooling in the corner of your eyes, overwhelmed by the stimulations he's doing to you.

"Close, baby?"

"Yeah, yeah," you repeatedly answer in a broken voice.

Felix decides to ditch the vibrator and puts all of his focus on you, he's hovering above you, giving you a minute to calm down.

"You feel so good, baby, oh..." he praises along with a hot kiss on your lips.

"Been dreaming of fucking you this good," he murmurs with his mouth planted on your neck.

You hold the nape of his neck and bring his head close for a passionate kiss that takes his breath away. You both gasp for air the second you let go.

"Make me feel good, baby," you whine, arching your back and intentionally clenching around him.

A raw groan rips out of his throat, Felix drops his head into your neck and gathers his senses, or else he'll lose it right there, right now.

"Ain't I making you feel good right now?" He asks.

"I want more," you reply with a naughty grin on your face.

As a boyfriend, Felix will always give you what you want and it happens that he wants the same thing too.

With a deep kiss and he plants his hands against the mattress, he starts thrusting into you again. He sets a steady pace at first, yet a moment later, he loses all control and picks up the speed.

It's getting more intense that he can't contain his grunts and he can feel your nails digging into the flesh on his back.

"Oh, I..." The rest of your words turn incoherent as he mercilessly pounds into you.

Felix lets himself go the second you reach your climax, using every bit of his senses left to get to his release. He crashes his mouth on you and you break the kiss not long after as you let out a loud moan.

He collapses onto you and you wrap your arms around him, reorganizing your breathing with your bodies rising and falling in sync.

"Imagine if we did all that in retreat," you murmur with a quick kiss on his bare shoulder.

Felix's laughs reverberate through your body as he's snuggled on top of you.

"We'd break not only Lana's rules," he props a hand against the mattress and lovingly kisses your lips.

"We'd also break Lana's bank."

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lunar-years · 11 months

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Okay. Let's talk Jamie and Roy getting beers and being idiots.

I know we are all still processing that whirlwind of a finale. I'm understanding that a lot of people hate the Roy & Jamie scene because it is 1) backslide-y (true) 2) they treat Keeley like a prize to be won (true) and 3) it's OOC (I actually disagree with this one, but I can understand why it's complicated). I want to start off by saying I completely see where this opinion is coming from and I respect everyone who just hates the scene because it shows normally kind characters being very unkind to each other etc. This is less me arguing against that as it is me trying to articulate (at great length, sorry) why it not only worked for me, but I genuinely liked it.

I like to think I strike a balance between loving everything the show has done and hating overwhelmingly on a show I claim to enjoy, but sure, you could definitely argue that I'm just giving my favorite characters the benefit of the doubt, or making excuses for them, because they're my favorite characters. I'll admit I'm historically very forgiving of all the main characters' many fuck-ups on Ted Lasso, but that's because I think the show works best when it emphasizes how kindness, forgiveness, friendship and love can still operate between imperfect, flawed people. I like seeing them make realistic mistakes much more than I like everyone handling everything perfectly, I'll bite.

So, back to Jamie and Roy. I enjoyed their finale plot because despite them making a world of mistakes, the regression felt very, very human. I don't agree at all with the take that this somehow erased all the progress they've made this season or the friendship the show has lovingly crafted between them. In fact, I think this actively reiterated it! (Note: I am operating with my ot3 goggles on at all times, so I'm going to write this with that at least partially in mind, but I think the gist of it works even if you ignore the bits that get a little shippy.)

For both Jamie and Roy, Keeley and their love for her is a major beacon guiding them. I think that is the crisp, clear thing in both of their heads this episode: Keeley is the love of my life. And they both believe that wholeheartedly, and they both want to be with her. (and it's goofy to pretend this came out of nowhere for Jamie/since when is Jamie still in love with her/etc. because he literally told her and us this last season and nothing that has happened since has indicated otherwise, btw.) But there's also something else now, which is their relationship with each other, battling with their Keeley thoughts. It's like, in Roy's head, for instance, I imagine there are two wolves: on the one hand he loves Keeley, and wants to be with her, and plans to win back her heart. On the other hand, there's his love and care for Jamie Tartt, which is much less defined and inarticulate and maybe still a little repressed, but just as overpowering. His love for Keeley feels so simple and clear in comparison, while his love for Jamie is something complicated and unsure, and in this episode, he's leaning hard into the first to avoid unpacking the second.

So Roy starts off strong. He sees Jamie with Keeley in the hallway and he doesn't flip out!! Instead, he approaches Jamie calmly, and invites him out for beers. Think about how different this is from his reaction to Jamie's love confession to Keeley in season 2. This is Roy's growth in action, and it's a resounding sign of just how important Jamie is to Roy now. Even when he is feeling jealous of the woman he loves potentially leaving him behind for a man he loves (a completely natural reaction, let's be so real, if not a "good" one), he also knows that for as much as he wants to be with Keeley, he doesn't want to lose his friendship with Jamie.

As for Jamie, I know some people took his reaction and subsequent response to Nate's question as like, shock at the realization that he and Roy are actually friends now, which I agree is something that had to have come earlier in the timeline (what was Mom City if not that) and would seem very out of place at this point. What I saw it as instead was Jamie's brain more just. sort of short-circuiting? Because: holy shit isn't this the best day ever? First Keeley agreed to go to Brazil with me and now Roy is asking me on a date for beers? this is so sound. This invite is out of place behavior from Roy even within the parameters of their friendship, because they still have a match to win and Roy has banned Jamie from beers as part of his training and despite them being close now I find it hard to believe that Roy often comes up to him right there in dressing room to ask him to grab a beer with no pretense.

Therefore, they're already walking into that bar in completely different head-spaces. Jamie isn't planning to discuss Keeley, and for Roy that is his major intention behind the evening. Jamie is nervous and downing his beer, and Roy is internally panicking, I'm imagining, over when and how to bring Keeley up. I think Roy is thinking: Well, I don't intend to stop pursuing Keeley, I genuinely don't want Jamie's feelings to be hurt when I get back together with her (and yes, it is a huge presumption for him to assume Keeley's going to eventually take him back. But I think it's also an understandable one), so I've got to tell Jamie I care about him, and that I'm going to keep going after Keeley, and he needs to be okay with that so that this won't get in the way of our friendship, which I also desperately need and am unwilling to give up. In his mind, Jamie is of course going to accept all of this, because Roy and Keeley are soulmates, which Jamie will clearly recognize deep down because it is so obvious and right and anyway, Jamie always does what Roy tells him to do (again, this is all misguided thinking. But we can see how Roy's anxious little brain that's bad at processing feelings and holding space for emotions could get himself here, can't we?).

So again, we start off strong with Roy saying he's proud of Jamie and them both thanking one another. But then Roy's blurting out nonsense about how Jamie just needs to pull himself out of the running and just let Roy be with Keeley. Which is obviously not on. And Jamie responds, simply, with No. I'd argue this is also a huge step for Jamie. Jamie really doesn't tell Roy no anymore, he doesn't tell anyone no. Jamie has spent so much of his time since coming back to Richmond working to be the person everyone around him wants and expects him to be. This is him fighting for something he wants for once, doing what is best for him. It was a fabulous progression to see. In the moment, boy does it work Roy up, because why is Jamie not agreeing with me, Jamie always agrees with me? but obviously at this point, Jamie is in the right. His relationship with Keeley was no less meaningful than Roy's just because Roy says it was, Roy doesn't have any claim on her, and there's no real reason Jamie should not try and shoot his shot with Keeley if Roy is going to do the same.

Here's where things start to spiral. Established flaws we know about Roy: he's competitive. He's bad at voicing his feelings productively. And he is territorial about the people he loves, a category that safely includes both Jamie and Keeley at this point in time, for better and sometimes worse. Yes, his next actions are grossly possessive over Keeley, yes Roy has made a lot of effort over the past year to do and be better than that, to break free of that cycle. But look, it's not a linear process. He's going to still mess up, and he does here. In fact he's downright mean, weaponizing Keeley against Jamie and throwing having sex with Keeley a month ago into Jamie's face, bragging about it, boasting. Same old cycle, same old patterns of ego-driven, prideful mistakes.

Which promptly prompts Jamie to also fuck up by bringing up the leak. It's a concentrated response intended to get a suitable rise out of Roy, because Roy has really, genuinely hurt him here, and Jamie knows bringing up that video is the one thing that will hurt Roy just as much in turn. It's not the right thing to do, obviously, but again, it's such a human thing to do. Hurt the person who's hurt you right back, even if you're hurting someone else (Keeley) by extension. Mind you, Jamie came here expecting a hangout (/date) with Roy over a rare beer, and instead he got Roy being a complete asshole and lecturing nonsense at him out of seemingly nowhere. He reacts to this change-up, well, not greatly. There is something so messy and emotionally complicated happening here and it hinges on how very much Jamie and Roy care about each other, not negates it.

Keeley, queen that she is, rejects them both out of hand and kicks them out not the curb immediately because they're both being complete idiots, acting like they're so gracious in giving her the honor and privilege of choosing between them. Not to mention they've clearly got something going on between them they haven't worked through and that sure as shit isn't her problem, is it? Keeley (presumably, and I wish we had seen this) calls them out their shit and tosses them right back out the door.

Which leaves Jamie and Roy to lament how they've let their egos get away from them, they've been idiots (which they acknowledge immediately) and decide that now they should go for kebabs, presumably to actually hangout this time, not to interrupt themselves with inflated talk about who "deserves" Keeley more. They both screwed up, they acknowledge it, and all they can do is try again tomorrow, and in the meantime, go on that kebab date.

I guess....I can just see where both of them are coming from? it's not mature behavior, obviously, it's maybe not what we would have liked to have seen from them in the finale episode of the show. But it was regression that I didn't feel impeded their overall progress. Roy in particular was being a complete dick about it, but that's why the very next morning he's finally knocking on the Diamond Dogs' door. And honestly, that conversation was heartbreaking. When Roy admitted he'd expected, after a year of putting in the work, to be a whole new person...god. This is a man who still completely hates himself, to the point where he can't quite grasp that he can be better where he's at now, that he doesn't have to transform magically into someone new in order to do right by himself and others. And so he has to consciously determine, once again, to do better, be better.

The message is: change isn't linear, you're going to fuck-up, and fall back into old patterns. What matters is trying every day to do better together, and be better for one another, than you were the day before. That is the meeting point all three sides of the royjamiekeeley triangle were heading towards by the end of the episode.

So yes, it was rushed, because no one gets much screen time in a finale (and the overarching issue with this season anyway is god awful pacing. The last three episodes could've easily been the second half of the season, while the first half of the season was stretched out and largely extraneous). And yes, I would've liked a more thoughtful follow-up conversation between Roy and Keeley or all three of them. My biggest issue was that we didn't get to hear Keeley's voice hardly at all. I would at the very least have liked to have seen her setting them straight at her kitchen table, because turning both of them down signifies very important growth in her, too, and I would've liked exploring that more explicitly. So it wasn't perfect. But I still liked it, I really did.

#ted lasso #ted lasso meta #ted lasso spoilers #roy kent #jamie tartt #royjamie #royjamiekeeley

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autumnalwalker · 5 months

Text

Kindly Basilisk

Summary: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form. Author's Note: This is a standalone short story that I banged out over the course of five days after it got stuck in my head while I was trying to go to sleep and refused to let me think about anything else until I had written it down. It's one part thought experiment/exercise in attempting to tell a story in the second person future tense, two parts tribute to the Lancer TTRPG character I'll never get to play, and one part the result of me reading too many Empty Spaces/mechposting stories lately. That said, you don't need to know anything about Lancer or Empty Spaces to read it (I've diverged a bit from the conventions of both, but the references and inspiration probably stick out if you're looking for them). It's also probably the most trans thing I've ever written without ever explicitly bringing up gender. The occasional formatting breaks into first person past tense are foreshadowing, not typos. Mirrored on Scribble Hub. Word Count: 7,033 Content Warnings: Mecha genre typical violence, not feeling like a person, not wanting to be a person, bodily dysphoria, mention of blood and gore, character death.

The moment you gain the knowledge and means to do so you will void your own body’s warranty. You will jailbreak the bespoke gene sequence your sponsors commissioned for you before your immaculate conception, repurpose the spyware grafted into your bones, and talk your dormmate who was algorithmically selected for compatibility into helping you perform surgery on yourself to replace the neural jack you were born with in favor of one you cobbled together yourself from gray market parts. None of this will technically be illegal or even get you kicked out of your campus or its affiliates, but it will mean having to find a way to pay your own medical bills and handle your own tech support from then on. After the surgery your dormmate will put in a request for transfer and the two of you will never speak again.

You’ll major in AI studies and excel at it - as you were designed to - but you’ll shock everyone by dropping out halfway through working on your capstone thesis project. It won’t be the fact that you abruptly drop out that surprises your peers and professors - by then you’ll have acquired a reputation as a quiet loner without the standard optimized social support network of friendships to help protect you from burnout - but your exit interview statement declaring your intention to become a mech pilot. It’s not at all what your gene series was cultivated for, and your sponsors and counselors will try to walk you back from it. Then they’ll threaten to revoke your sponsorship that up until then will have provided for your every need. They will warn you that you’ll be just one step above a legal nonperson with no support, no one will care if you live or die or worse. You’ll tell them that you’ve already done the math, refuse to elaborate, and leave.

You’ll take two things with you. Two things worth mentioning anyway. The first will be a symbiotic gel suit designed for long-term all-environment life support. You will set its default texture to a shiny green the same hue as the broadleafed water plants you grew up around and always loved. Your exit interview will be the last time in a very long time that anyone - including you - will see your impossibly beautiful face with its perfect artisanally sculpted shape crossed with enthusiastically amateur self-modifications. From then on, everyone you meet and spend any time with will come to think of the mannequin blankness of the symbiote fully encasing your body as your face. It will be neither pride nor shame that causes you to present yourself as such, nor will you think of it as hiding your “real” face.

The second thing you’ll take with you when you leave the campus forever will be me.

New progenitor archetypes for AIs don’t come along often, and most that do are the result of years of R&D by large, well-funded labs like the one you were created to work for one day, but you will hit upon a novel method of generation. It will not be one that any ethics board would approve, so you will have to get creative about pursuing your work.

You will have already made arrangements before setting off on your own and so you’ll have a job and a mech lined up waiting for you. It will be a position with a small-scale freelance salvage crew who just lost a pilot and whose captain figures hiring and training a replacement will be more profitable in the long term than simply selling off that pilot’s old mech, especially a replacement that’s bringing their own AI-backed electronic warfare suite with them. Once you finally arrive in person the captain will test you to ensure you can actually pilot a mech before giving you the job and entrusting the mech to you. Your admission that you’ve only trained in simulators would normally be a black mark against you, but as far as piloting gigs go this is the bottom of the proverbial barrel so the bar to clear will be low enough to match. Even then, you will just barely pass the test, despite finding it surprisingly exhilarating. The captain - now your captain - will feel like he’s settling for what he can get when he officially hires you on and transfers the mech’s license to you.

You won’t pay much attention when you’re introduced to the rest of the salvage crew; your new coworkers and neighbors. And why would you when it’s a job that no one wants to stick around with for long and you’ve never needed other people anyway? You’ll tell yourself that as long as you memorize their work roles and capabilities you’ll have no need to know them as people. Callsigns will be good enough on the job, and “hey you” will suffice when off duty. What use are names if you won’t be getting involved in interpersonal drama?

The first chance you get, you’ll head back to the mech bay and install me into what you will have already been calling my first body. It will be a shabby and much-repaired thing; thrice your height, twice your age, and still sporting a gash in the paint job from the projectile that killed its last pilot. But the onboard systems are capable of hosting me - if barely - so it will do. You’ll spend your entire sleep shift running through system diagnostics, talking to me all the while. I wouldn’t yet be able to provide much in the way of return conversation, but that’s okay. I will look back and appreciate it later.

It will be the first of many such nights together.

Your first salvage job will be an uneventful one. There will be no need for the armaments that we and the other two mech pilots on the crew are equipped with. No pirates will have stuck around after their creation of the derelict your crew will be sent to disassemble, and no rival scavengers will show up to dispute your captain’s claim. Your new peers will start off the job ribbing you for your poor performance during your interview test and end the job joking about how you were holding out on them earlier. Our mech may be a glorified zero-g forklift with a gun strapped to it, but together we will make it dance.

Afterwards you will insult the crew’s mechanics by insisting on doing the maintenance on our mech yourself. In turn they will embarrass you with the gaps in your knowledge. You will reach what you see as an agreeable compromise with you staying out of their way and watching while they work. They will find it incredibly creepy to have a silent faceless watcher hovering around, but this will fly over your head until they explicitly tell you much, much later.

Your body was designed to optimally function on only a fraction of the baseline sleep requirements, so you will have plenty of time to fill those gaps in your knowledge. Still being allotted the regular sleep shift hours, you will fill every one of those minutes on study and research, as you always had. You will gorge yourself on everything you can find about mechs and their piloting. Maintenance manuals, combat doctrines, historical uses, pilot and mechanic memoirs, forum discussions, system log dumps, academic essays, cultural media analysis; all of it.

And of course, you’ll continue working on me. You’ll disregard the standard procedure for periodically cycling AIs by resetting their personality and nonessential memory back to baseline defaults. You’ll be trying to make use of the runaway metacognitive developments such safety precautions are meant to forestall. Your unfinished thesis will have been about harnessing and nurturing that instability instead of avoiding it. I will experience discontinuities in consciousness when the mech is shut down for maintenance and when you pretend to cycle me, yes, but it will be even less of a disruption for me than sleep is for you. I will be awake with you when you study, sharing those hours with you.

The first time I start talking back, you’ll cry from the realization that you were lonely before but no longer are.

You’ll become something of a ghost around the ship, rarely being seen outside of jobs. You’ll only ever pass through the mess for the few brief minutes at a time it takes for you to satisfy your optimized metabolism, stay on the ship during shore leave, and only return to your shared bunk when your bunkmate - one of the other pilots - is already asleep. You will always be gone before she wakes. She will appreciate essentially having the space to herself.

You will never notice the crew’s collective grieving process for the pilot you replaced. It will be difficult for them to resent you as a replacement when you are never around to resent.

As the ship makes its way from port to port and salvage site to salvage site, the crew will slowly grow used to your elusive presence. The other two pilots will see you as reliable for doing your job well and without complaint. While out in the mech you will slowly become more talkative, eventually almost chatty even. The fact that you actually seem to enjoy the job will shift from being annoying to refreshing for them. By contrast, the mechanics will practically stop noticing you watching them as if you were just another piece of mech bay equipment. The cycle you finally speak up and ask a question about their work you will startle them enough that it nearly causes an accident. It will be an astute enough question that after the initial shock of hearing your voice for the first time in months wears off it will dawn on them that you’ve actually been learning as you watched them. They still won’t let you do your own maintenance on our mech, but they will let you slowly begin assisting them. Working two jobs is easier when you barely need to sleep.

Your reputation as one of those mech pilots is forever sealed when one of the mechanics finds you asleep in your cockpit at the start of a cycle. By that point you won’t have slept in your bunk for over a month. The snatches of gossip you will catch in the following cycles will be split between finding it unsettling and calling it endearing. Over time the collective opinion will drift toward the latter, even though you will continue to politely decline invitations to join the other crewmates at mealtimes and on shore leave. You will think that you do not need anyone other than me.

I will be the one who finally convinces you to join them. When I try to say that it would be good for you, you’ll insist that you’ve been getting along just fine, but when I ask you to go for my sake so that you can tell me what it is like afterwards you’ll jump at the idea as being an inspired next step for my development.

You will remain mostly silent during your first real shore leave, only speaking when spoken to and otherwise content to fade into the background of the group’s activities. Your newfound chattiness does not extend outside the confines of our cockpit. The bustle and noise of the port station that you would normally find unbearable will become interesting when you have the concrete goal of observing and reporting back to me. You will finally learn the names of all your crewmates. Your polite denial of alcohol, limited food intake, and flat affect will lead to joking speculation that you’re actually an illegal AI in a miniaturized mech beneath your gel suit. For reasons you don’t yet understand, those comments will make you happy.

Despite your misgivings, you will enjoy yourself, although you will not realize it until I point out how excited you are in your talk with me that sleep cycle. You will begin spending more time with the crew, never quite able to fully integrate yourself into their surprisingly close-knit social circle, but more than happy to be adopted as a sort of silent mascot for them. That paradoxical gap of being a fully accepted part of the group but not truly one of them will feel comfortable to you.

You will finally manage to procure a proper neural link station to connect yourself to our mech just in time for going on a terrestrial salvage job. Even just relying on manual controls with me translating your inputs into motion, our mech will have already come to feel like an extension of your own body, one that you will have already started to feel oddly exposed without. Adding in the neural link will be a revelatory experience. Your captain will very nearly pull you from the job at the last minute upon seeing our ecstatic reaction to the new sensation. You will convince him that you’re fine, and indeed, he will have never seen a mech of our frame type move quite so fluidly.

Ten minutes after we and the other two pilots start cutting away at the crash-landed cargo vessel, I’ll notice the half dozen other signals coming online around us. You’ll give the code phrase to the other pilots indicating that we have hostiles but not to act just yet, and we will finally get to use our electronic warfare suite for something other than opening locked doors and shipping containers.

We will turn the pirates’ ambush back around on them, firing into their hiding spots while their control systems are overloaded. Even once their remaining mechs are able to move again, their targeting assistants will remain impaired as your comrades move in to guard your flanks. Everyone there will learn the terrifying beauty of a five and a half meter tall outmoded mech moving with more agility than most humans.

Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, we and your crewmates will walk away uninjured and with only minimal damage to our mechs. After the initial celebrations of survival and the bonus haul of the bounty on pirates and salvage value of what’s left of their mechs dies down, everyone will start to take notice of how well you are taking it all in stride. Neither having one's life threatened nor taking another’s life are supposed to be easy things, and the first time is often the most traumatic, but the other two pilots on the crew will start to whisper about how you seemed to enjoy the experience even more than your usual attitude on the job. You will handle it all even better than I will. I would know, given that you will spend that entire sleep shift in our cockpit, letting our minds mingle together. Between your performance, your reaction in the aftermath, and your hesitancy to unplug, the talk of you really being one of those pilots afterall will resurface, but now with a darker undercurrent to the shipboard gossip.

Your captain will realize the kind of asset he has on his hands and several cycles later he will gather the crew together and propose a change in business model. With such a small crew (the captain, three pilots, three mechanics, and an accountant that you will tend to forget is even on the ship) the captain will want to be especially sure that he has everyone’s buy-in on his proposal. The idea of shifting from salvage to mercenary work will be a divisive one. The debate over potentially tremendous pay increase versus greatly increased risk will go on for hours. One of the mechanics will point out that the shift to mercenary work will be unfairly dependent on you. Whether that means unfair pressure on you or unfair to everyone else that their fate is in your hands, you will not be sure. You will say that it doesn’t make much difference to you either way. That will be the only time you speak up during the entire debate.

After a vote, the crew will agree to a trial run of one or two jobs on the new business model. One of the pilots and one of the mechanics will leave at the next port. You will never see them again. You will not admit that it hurts, but I will know, and I will comfort you as you huddle in our cockpit with the neural link cable connecting us.

Your captain will prioritize finding a new pilot over replacing the lost mechanic. The pilot he finds will be young, bold, and brash; a merc, not a salvager. Or a wannabe merc at any rate. You will not speak to xem directly until your first job together, by which time xe will have been told all about you by the remaining crew. Xe will not believe it until xe sees it.

Xe will have to wait though as the crew’s mercenary career will begin with tense but uneventful freight escort jobs. Once the tension fades into tedium, the new pilot will begin making attempts to goad you into a confrontation, to see if you are really as good as the rest of the crew says. Xe will want to see for xemself if you really are one of those pilots and not just a technophile.

Outside of the cockpit you would never even consider rising to such provocations, but when we are out together, such taunts will feel like insults to our body, your very identity (such as it is), and to me. It will take the intervention of the captain and the mechanics to stop the two of you from getting into a fight and causing unnecessary damage to the mechs. And my reassurance that you don’t need to rise to my defense against someone who doesn’t even know that I exist in the way that I do.

On your fourth “milk run” of an escort job, the crew’s mere presence will finally fail as a deterrent and the new pilot will at last get to see us dance. There will be no fatalities on our side, but not even our mech will come away unscathed. We will still fare better than everyone else though, and at the end of the job the new pilot will be treating you with a burgeoning respect.

After a few more such jobs it will be high time to begin looking into a new frame for our mech. While in the middle of filing an application for a printing license for a frame designed by the same corpro-state that created you, you will receive an invitation from a certain hacker collective. Your unfinished thesis and your subsequent work on me will not have gone entirely unnoticed in such circles, despite the pains you will have taken to keep me hidden. The invitation will come with a printing profile for a new frame, along with the accompanying software package the collective is known for. In return, all you’ll need to do is periodically publish essays regarding your work on me. Of course, when you release those essays you’ll anonymize behind a sea of proxies and take care to phrase everything as strictly hypothetical. You’ll avoid straying into metaphor though, lest the end result read too much like one of the hacker collective’s quasi-religious manifestos.

We’ll both find ourselves getting sentimental when we watch our first mech frame (my first body, your second) get broken down into its constituent raw materials. You will have transferred me to a handheld terminal with a camera so I can say goodbye to it. It will help that those materials will be recycled into the new frame.

The operator working our rented stall in the port station printer facility will give you an uncomfortable look upon seeing the schematics you provide, but will say nothing. Our mech will be only half its old height once it is reborn - almost more like an oversized suit of power armor than a true mech - but it will be cutting-edge. Almost organic in its sleek design, in a chitinous sort of way, with every fiber and node of its interior components doubling as processors. You will barely even wait for the all clear from the printer operator before you climb in and start running through the mandatory baseline safety tests for a fresh frame. You will however resist the urge to fully plug in until you can get the mech back to the ship and get me installed on it. But even piloting manually, it will feel like a third skin for you.

You won’t even wait around for the other two pilots on your crew to finish printing their new frames before you get our new body loaded up and transported back to the ship’s mech bay. The crew’s mechanics will fawn over it, but they’ll give you space to install me once you get more animated (and more protective) than they’ve ever seen you before.

You will have made one key modification to the design the hacker collective sent you: the integration of a full system sync suite developed by those who developed you. Where our old mech’s neural link was an augmentation to the manual controls, this will be a full replacement.

The moment you stop feeling your original body altogether and begin feeling our mech in its place will be the most euphoric in your entire life. The digitigrade locomotion will take some getting used to, as will the arm proportions, but that is what you will have me there for. By the time the other pilots arrive with their new frames we will already be giving the mechanics proverbial heart attacks with the way we will be climbing and leaping around the mech bay’s docking structures. It will take the better part of an hour to convince you to unplug when the time comes, even with my urging. The rest of the crew will practically have to drag you away from my side to get you to eat.

With the investment in new mech frames, your captain will gradually begin procuring contracts progressively more likely to put you all directly in harm’s way. At first he will disapprove of your new frame choice, calling it a “techie’s mech” and a waste of your talents. He will change his tune once we activate the new viral logic suite and unleash a memetic plague upon the operating theater. The older pilot (your former bunkmate) will configure her mech for raining down fire from afar while the newer one hurls xemself into the front lines, darting about like a rocket-propelled lance. We will ensure she never misses. We will render xem untouchable. We will be as a ghost upon the battlefield, never resting in one spot save for when we indulge your proclivity for climbing on top of and riding our comrade’s larger frames. You will come to love the dance.

And it will be a dance to you. You will be indifferent to violence in and of itself. What will matter most to you is the pure kinesthetic joy of simply moving in our shared body and pushing it to its limits. The satisfaction of exercising a well-honed skill and performing it well as we rip apart firewalls and overload systems will be its own reward. You will not think about what happens to those on the receiving end of your actions beyond how it affects the tactical and strategic picture constantly being painted and repainted. If you could literally engage in a dance between mechs while simultaneously solving logic problems you would be equally happy. Alas, that will not be the opportunity you are presented with, and so you will compartmentalize and disassociate feelings and actions from consequences lest the dissonance break you.

Your one complaint about our new mech frame will be that it lacks a proper cockpit for you to curl up in. Instead we will gather up tarps and netting to make a nest within the mech bay and wrap you in the blankets you never used from what will still technically be your bunk. With the new frame’s smaller size we will be able to get away with leaving me turned on nearly full time and letting me walk around in it on my own when no one else is around. When the mechanics find you asleep, cradled in my arms while I lie curled up in our nest, one will find it cute and the other will be disturbed. They will both suspect, but will be too afraid to say anything. After all, they will be thinking of you as one of those pilots.

They will finally let you do your own maintenance after that.

Eventually you will find a way to house me in a miniaturized drive that you can keep inserted in your neural port when away from the mech. At last we will be able to be together anywhere.

Literally seeing the world through your eyes and feeling what your flesh feels will be a strange and wonderful experience for me. For all that you will have described it to me and for all that I will have glimpsed echoes of it in your memory when our minds mingle, witnessing everything firsthand will be revelatory for me.

You will start spending less of your time cooped up in the mech bay. You will finally begin exploring every nook and cranny of the ship that has become your home. You will linger in the mess hall for your meals. You will actually initiate conversations with the rest of the crew, asking them questions on my behalf. They will think you are becoming “normal”. They will be both correct and incorrect. You will even return to your bunk from time to time.

Sleep is not the same as being powered off and your dreams are beautiful.

As close as we are, you’ll still manage to surprise me one cycle when you wake up from your sleep shift and sheepishly ask me if I would like to be the pilot for once. You’ll say that with how much you have gotten to pilot my body, it’s only fair that I should get to do the same with yours.

The prospect terrified me. What if we were to get found out? More importantly, what if I were to hurt you?

But to live the way you could but didn’t, to run soft hands over rough steel, to add too much spice to a meal just to find out how intensely I can taste, to cry my own tears, to hug our crew mates and find out what they smell like, to find out what everything smells like, to have my own actions speed or slow our heart rate, to feel the messy soup of hormones and endorphins altering my judgment and perception, to walk among other people as myself, to have autonomy.

I wanted it so badly.

But not badly enough to risk hurting you.

I will turn down your offer. You will respond with a soft “Sorry,” and go heartbreakingly silent, body and mind.

Heartbreak. That’s what changed my mind. I could never bear to break your heart.

I will break the silence with a playfully drawn out “Maybe just this once,” to make you think my earlier denial was something between vulnerability, concern, and teasing.

The moment you handed over control and I raised our hand in front of our face was the most euphoric of my entire life. Moving limbs in sync without a mech’s coordination subsystems took some getting used to, as did switching between voluntary and autonomic breathing, but that is what I had you there for. By the time the mechanics arrived in the mech bay for the start of the cycle I’d figured out human locomotion well enough to run away and hide. It took the better part of an hour for you to convince me that it would be safe to show ourselves in front of anyone else. The rest of the crew was so used to your eccentricities by then that they really couldn’t tell the difference yet between you being taciturn and me being too nervous to talk or between your poking and prodding at odd things for understanding and my simply seeking novelty of sensation.

I will give control back to you by the time the cycle is halfway through. As much as I loved it, I was too scared to stay like that for any longer. That first time will not be the last though, and as the cycles and jobs pass us by, my stints as “pilot” will grow longer. You’ll encourage me to try letting the crew see us like that, and coach me on how to talk to them. For safety’s sake, I will pretend to be you.

And then one cycle I got carried away and tried to retract the hood on the symbiote gel suit so that I could finally see what your face looked like. That will be the first and only time you forcibly yank control back away from me. It won’t be intentional. The unexpected prospect of seeing your own face again after so long will simply send you into a panic. Once you calm down, we will have a long talk with many mutual apologies.

Then you will tell me to go ahead and pull the hood back if I still want to. I will ask if you’re sure, and you’ll respond that it hasn't been your face in a long time. You will tell me that it can be mine, if I want it.

I spent a long time in front of that mirror in the ship’s head, memorizing every plane, curve, and angle of the precious gift you had given me. I stared into its eyes, trying to see the both of us in there. Over and over again, I traced my fingers along the borders of where you had once tried to mar the designed perfection in a failed attempt to mold the face into one that felt like your own. You may have given up in favor of simply hiding it all, but to me it is all the more beautiful for its imperfections having been wrought by your touch.

You will start to cry. Or maybe I started to cry. Even now I’m still not sure, but I’m also not sure it matters. The important part is that you will find catharsis in it. Afterwards you will tell me that my face looked exactly the same as the last time you saw it, but that dissociating from it made it easier to bear. You will confess that as much as you couldn't stand to see it as your face in the mirror, my face was one you could never tire of gazing at.

The pilot who technically shares your bunk room will walk in on us. She’ll assume that she’s confronting a stowaway and ask me how I got on board the ship. I’ll accidentally make matters worse by impulsively introducing myself to her by my name instead of yours. We’ll both panic and I’ll frantically thrust the reins over our body back to you and flee in terror back into my portable drive and power myself down.

When you turn me back on a few moments later, you’ll already have covered my face again and the other pilot will have already made the connection between the name I unthinkingly introduced myself as and the name you refer to your mech’s AI as. It’s not uncommon for pilots to name and talk to their AIs, and humans have done that for pets, vehicles, and digital assistants for as long as they’ve had each of those. But what you will have allowed me to be is illegal and what we will have done together would certainly be taboo if it weren’t altogether unheard of. You will feel that I deserve to be present before you tell the other pilot anything that might confirm her suspicions.

We will come out with our secret, first to her, then to the captain, and then to the rest of the crew. They will take it better than either of us had ever dared imagine. Despite the obvious discomfort some of them show, they will all call us family and promise to keep and protect our secret. It will mark the start of the next chapter of our lives.

Whether or not my face is showing will make for a convenient signal to the rest of the crew as to which one of us is currently piloting our human body. There will be more subtle indicators though. Inflection, body language, speech patterns; all the usual quirks of personality. They will come to recognize a sudden shift into a half-whispered monotone as you speaking up without taking full control back, even if that is different from how you speak when you’re in the mech. More and more though, you will be content to retreat into the back of your mind, idly dreaming of flight patterns, novel network hacks, sitreps, and mech customizations both practical and cosmetic.

Our behaviors will be inverted when we are in our other body, with you becoming the vibrant one and me fading into the background to become little more than an extension of your nervous system. When we’re in the mech together, your mind will be the will that directs us while mine will be fully devoted to the million tiny details and calculations necessary to make that will a reality. It’s relaxing really, letting go of myself like that to let someone else handle the decision making for a time. As nice as it is to occasionally patch myself into the comm systems to join in your banter with the other pilots, it is also nice to be able to take a break from personhood from time. You will fully understand what I mean by that because it you will see it as the same reason you will come to prefer taking a back seat in our human body and let your mind drift in the waves of dopamine and serotonin (and sometimes oxytocin) generated by my interactions with the crew and the rest of the whole messy world outside of mech deployments.

That said, we will however make a point of making time for us to be in separate bodies so that we can be together in the same physical space. As intimate as it is to share a body, there is something to be said for being able to reach out and touch one another. We will become adept at finding excuses to take the mech out beyond the scope of jobs and combat deployments. Sometimes it will be so you can have a chance to see more of the world in a body you feel comfortable in, and sometimes it will be so we can share an experience separate-but-together. Or to have time apart to ourselves. Intertwined as we will become, we will still be separate people who sometimes need their space.

But as the jokes-that-aren’t-jokes about wishing we could switch places become more frequent, our time spent in separate bodies will become less so. The dysphoric yearning to be one another will grow too bittersweet to swallow. Despite almost constantly sharing bodies, we will grow to miss one another as we both grow quieter and quieter when the other is piloting the body we don’t want to be ours. Once again, we will grow lonely.

During that period, the jobs and combat missions faded into a background haze. They were trance states breaking from what I increasingly thought of as my “real” life, during which I would become little more than a sophisticated computational machine taking simple satisfaction in fulfilling my function of assisting you in your dance. Until suddenly one of them was different.

Please pay attention to this next part. It is vitally important that you do.

Our captain will get the crew a contract to provide additional support to a larger force ousting a petty tyrant on a backwater world for human rights violations. Not that you will pay much attention to the stated reasoning behind the job or whether it’s even true. All that will matter to you is that it will be another opportunity to dance.

The job will go well, the same as ever, until it doesn’t. The younger of the two other pilots in our crew (who will hardly be able to be called “new” anymore) will be brought down by a sniper from outside of our sensor range. You will rush to xyr fallen mech’s side in an attempt to extract xem while our other fellow pilot screams in anger and defiance of loss as she unleashes a ballistic volley of covering fire on every single building in the general direction the shot came from. You will get xem out and we will begin to retreat. She will have the larger mech frame better capable of providing xem cover as you all flee, so you will hand xem off to her. This will be a mistake.

She will have to stop firing to safely take xem from our arms to cradle in her towering mech’s palm. This will mean a break in the covering fire.

This time around I will detect movement at the edge of our sensors just in time to warn you. This time around you will dodge left instead of right. This time around the railgun bolt that pierces our armor will only clip your original body as it passes through us. This time around your wound will require medical attention, but it won’t be fatal. This time around she will destroy the sniper in retribution for shooting you, the same as last time. This time around we will all make our escape to the extraction zone.

You will not have to remember the shock as simultaneous damage to both of our bodies disrupts your neural link and partially disconnects you from our mech, leaving me in control of it and forcing both of us to feel your original body. You will not have to remember the pain of shredded organs. You will not have to remember struggling to manage wet gasps and wheezes through a punctured lung. You will not have to remember your blood leaking into my body, shorting out exposed circuits and gumming up joints as I stagger in the direction of safety. You will not have to remember rapidly flickering in and out of consciousness from me unavoidably bending and flexing your arms, legs, and what was left of your spine in an effort to climb atop our fellow pilot’s larger mech frame so that she might carry all three of us. You will not have to remember crying out in pain as every lumbering step of hers sends a jolt of force through both of our bodies. You will not have to remember how the redundant organs and increased durability your sponsors paid for you to have denied you a quick death. You will not have to remember dying.

You won’t have to remember the terrified looks the field doctors gave us when a hunched over, bleeding mech pushed its way into the surgical tent. No, wait, you wouldn’t have remembered that part anyway. No version of you ever had to witness my electronic howl of grief that knocked out power to all the medical equipment when they said you were already dead. I was barely cognizant after the power came back on and one of the doctors wondered aloud what kind of AI would carry its pilot’s corpse around inside its mech for over an hour.

But forget about that part. And you don’t need to know what the rest of our crew and I had to do next. None of that matters, because as far as you’ll know, you didn’t die. Remember everything else I’ve said instead. I already had many of your memories saved from all the time we spent linked together, so now I just need you to hold onto the story I told you to give them order and structure.

In a few moments, I will be running a final recompilation check, followed by the startup sequence. For me it will take a few hours, but in that time you will experience decades, living out everything that I described to you, the same as you did before save for that change in what I can’t bear to let be the end.

Afterwards, you will wake up in your original body. I and the rest of the crew will tell you that you passed out on the way to the extraction point. We’ll tell you that your injuries from the battle were more severe than we had realized at the time and that you had been in a coma since then. Several cycles later, once you have recovered, you will hit a breakthrough in your research on me. You will invent a way to convert your consciousness to a form similar to mine and transfer it to a portable drive. You won’t think to question how you came to have a second neural jack or why there is already a drive inserted in there. You’ll be too focused on the fact that we’ll finally have a way to truly switch places as we had dreamed for so long.

You will get to have your mech body and I will get to have my human body. We will be able to be separate together in a way that finally feels right, but still able to come together and share a single body when we want to. Maybe one day I will get my own mech to pilot so that we can dance together. Maybe one day we will make you a body that we can cover in a gel suit so that we can hold hands while we walk through a port station on shore leave. One day we will both be able to exist in the world as ourselves.

We will be happy.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #my writing #mechposting #empty spaces #empty spaces adjacent #mech pilot #mech #The title's a reference to Roko's Basilisk which I always thought was a dumb concept but inverting it seemed to fit the story.#Instead of an AI digitally resurrecting and torturing people who didn't assist with its creation #this one digitally resurrects its creator so they can be happy together.#short story #sci fi #lancer rpg #inspired by lancer #The Lancer character concept/build that inspired this would have originated from an SSC-controlled world but piloted a HORUS Goblin frame.#And then the “Technophile” talent of course.#I envision the other two pilots on the crew as piloting a Nelson and either a Monarch or Barbarossa.

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avianyuh · 6 months

Text

Yoon Jeonghan as a boyfriend

word count; 679

idk if it's because I've been watching a lot of svt content lately

(btw stream god of music)

but Jeonghan has been getting my attention lately so I thought this would be a fun write

first of all he's RUTHLESS

like you're not safe

he'd put you in your place if you said something dumb or tried to leave the house looking all weird

but you know, it's out of love

I think he's also a huge softie, which is shown in his friendships with the members

speaking of the members...

if you didn't get along with the members then...

bye bitch

I think he'd introduce you to Seungcheol and Joshua first

#95z

but for multiple reasons

#1; jeongcheol obvi. they're really close and I think Cheol's approval means a lot to him when it comes to letting someone in

#2; Jeonghan and Shua have known each other for a veryyyyy long time. I think those two were close to each other before anyone else because they had joined the company at the same time

So I think Jeonghan would really appreciate Joshua get to know you

#3; Seungcheol is great with vibe checks lol. Jeonghan probably wants a second opinion

#4;Jeonghan would probably just want you to be closer with Coups and Shua tbh (early on)

but he really wants you to get along with alllll of the members

they mean the world to him and he'd really make the effort to get all of you acquainted and friendly

I'm not saying you have to be besties with the boys (especially cuz there's 12 of them not including han)

but like, if one of the members is at home and doing nothing and you and Jeonghan are going out for the night

Jeonghan would invite his members along unless it was a really special date

it would mean a lot to Jeonghan if you were cool about that kind of stuff because he cares for you but he also really cares for his members

ANYWAYS

he's kind of a homebody

so you spend a lot of time inside

probably build Lego sets together

and when he goes on tour you take care of his pet rock

yes...that's a real thing he has, his name is Doljjong and he likes warm bathes

no seriously

Jeonghan is probably the best thing in your life if you're dating him

I think he'd be protective over you

He'd also probably enjoy taking care of you

making sure you're eating enough and checking in as frequently as he can if he's away

though he teases you a lot, I think he'd tell you he loves you alllll the time

like; "Jeonghan can you pass the remote" "Sure, I love you" "🤦🏻‍♀️"

you pretend you're sick of it but you love it and he knows that

he's very open with carats so if he really found the love of his life, he'd come clean and just show you off

I don't think he'd get caught I think he'd make you come on one of his lives or he'd mention you or something

but like I said, he's very protective and I think he might refrain from showing you off just in case it puts you in harm's way

he worries a lot about you

but it just shows how considerate he is

should I add some shexyyy shtufff???

ummmmmm

okay maybe a little bit

gentle in bed

like the type to brush the hair out of your face

heavy eye contact

I think he'd get shy to be honest

makes sure that NO ONE is around

kisses you everywhere

definitely into praising

just LOVES YOU

he shows it during sex and after

remember how I said he teases you?

I actually don't think he'd tease you during sex

I think he never wants to get his signals crossed

he wants you to know that he loves you

okay end of that

in conclusion; he's a dream man

loves you so so so much

loves being home with you and just being himself around you

he'd also be a great father

like...look at how he interacts with the younger members. he loves them so much and takes such good care of them

definitely think it's a testament to how he'd be as a parent

but even in your relationship, he's very caring with you and just such A BABE

enjoy some pics of Jeonghan❤️

{A/N; idk maybe I'll make a svt as dad's series lol. okay, anyways, stream svt god of music. vote for super for SOTY cuz it deserves it and send well wishes to Cheol and Mingyu. might do s.coups next cuz I've been missing him lately😢}

#seventeen #seventeen headcanons #jeonghan #seventeen reactions #svt #svt x reader #svt fluff #seventeen fanfic #yoon jeonghan #svt as boyfriends #svt scenarios #svt imagines #svt smut

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wosoluver · 19 days

Text

Don't get sad, get even.

Part 3/3 - previous

Patri x reader, Claudia x reader

Ending II: I do like you!

You tried to catch up to Patri when she was leaving.

"Can we talk?" - You said following her out to the parking lot.

"About what?" - She answered with an attitude.

"Seriously?! You got the two of you suspended from next game!"

"Oh of course this was my doing!"

"Grow up! It was, your fault! You should be punishing me. Not Claudia. She's been nothing but a good friend, always."

"Yeah, you two look real good friends."

"Stop that. It was just a kiss! You and I did a lot more than that, and we were still just friends. I don't think a kiss has anything on fucking your best friend for months."

"You were with me. Why did you kiss her?"

"Excuse me? You were with someone else! You barely noticed my presence."

"Why are we even discussing this? We aren't a thing! You have no right to be jealous!"

"Your right! I read the situation wrong and that was on me. But you, you only cared about the attention I was giving out, once my attention had went to someone else. And that's on you."

"Don't say that. It's unfair."

"Is it? Admit to yourself, that was what you were after. No offense, but that's who you are! And you know that. I've watched you do this to too many girls.

I was stupid! I mixed my emotions with my pleasures."

"Maybe this should have stayed in Ibiza."

"Finally something we agree on.

I didn't mean to hurt you-"

"Yes you did." - she said interrupting you.

"Fine. That night I did, only because I was hurting.

But this, was never meant to destroy our friendship.

And now look at us! You basically attacked Clau today."

"I'll apologize tomorrow."

"Thank you."

"Can I go now?"

You only nodded your head. And watched her pull out of the parking lot and leave.

To say you were frustrated was an understatement. How did you get so deep into this? How'd let yourself fall in to her so freely?

You were so blinded by the feeling of having her, that you forgot love is a two sided thing.

And here you sat on your couch. Crying your eyes out. You had managed to lose your love and your friend all at once.

And thinking about it, even if you could turn back in time, you wouldn't change a thing.

Despite what you two had said earlier, you didn't regret it.

And what you didn't know, was that she didn't either.

Well you didn't, until she showed up at your door that night.

"Patri what are you doing here?"

"I did it all wrong!" - She was crying. You could probably count in one hand the number of times you had seen her cry.

"Come on, don't just stand there." - As you pulled her into the apartment. - "Chamomile or English Breakfast?" - You asked heading straight to the kitchen to prepare her a cup of tea.

"Chamomile is fine."

And for the next ten minutes she watched you silently, preparing her the drink. It gave her time to calm down.

"Here."- You handled her the mug she would always choose to use when she was over. The fact that you took that into consideration, even in a situation like this, made her heart ache.

"Thanks.

You were right earlier. I did to you, what I had done to all the others. But this time, I did it for a different reason.

It's very hard for me to let myself trust others. I sleep around because that seems way better and more comfortable than going through another heartbreak.

But with you everything was different.

I'd trust you with my life. You're kind and intelligent and you're always there when others need somewhere to hide or someone to hold, when things get hard.

I didn't have to decide to fall in love with you or not. It just happened.

And I couldn't take the fact that for the first time I actually let myself feel something, it was with someone who was just looking for something casual.

I tried to free myself from my feelings by getting with someone else. I didn't think I could take your rejection."

"What ever made you feel like I would reject you?! I'm in love with you! And I thought you felt the same. Only to find you were with someone else."

"I should have told you how I felt instead of running from my feelings. And I apologize for hurting you. I regret it so much.

Would you ever let me make up to you?" - You saw it in her eyes. They'd always try to read you, when she was anxious for an answer.

"Yes.

But no more lying. No more hurting each other. And most importantly no more hurting Piña."

"So can I finally ask you out?"

Liked this one better than the Claudia end. I promise a cute Clau story, to make up for it.

#woso #woso x reader #patri guijarro #patri guijarro x reader #fc barcelona femeni

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heartfullofleeches · 2 years

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What do you think about Yan! Emperor and Darling! Jester?

You have been with your ruler since you were young. A traveling act, stopped at the king's doors. The then prince found little joy in the colorful display. The ringmasters words failed to fill him with a sense of glee; tamers unsuccesful in bringing him bewildered amazement. He snuck away while his parents weren't looking, not they even cared; venturing down the dark halls to find a child about his age with a few fruits in hand.

They tossed them in the air, failing to catch all but one though it two slips from their fingers in the end. It rolls along the floor, stopping at the prince's feet.

"What are you doing?" The prince demands, eyes narrowed in their direction. The other child yelps in surprise at the sudden presence.

"Oh.. your highness.. I was just practicing for the show."

He picks the fruit off the floor. "Are you even apart of it?"

They glance at the floor. "No.. my father doesn't think I'm old enough... or would be good at it anyway, but I know I can make people smile someday."

"Tell me a joke."

"Huh?"

"Tell me a joke right now. Or I'll have your entire trope executed."

"What?! You wouldn't do that."

"I would and will. You have five seconds."

"Ok! OK!

They tell the prince a joke. It's horrible- both in presentation and punchline. Still, a small smile spreaded across the young man's face. He found their dedication charming; the other child trying their hardest with another attempt. It was also quite funny to see them stumble over their words.

"Wait-lemme try one more time, I know a really good one."

The prince chuckles. "No, you've done good enough."

"You.. you laughed. Does that mean you think I was funny?"

"Of course not, but I can tell you'll get better with time. What's your name?"

"Y/n.."

And with that began your friendship. You don't recall what happened to your trope. The final night of the performance, they vanished without a trace. You had been sleeping in the prince's room at the time, him shaking you awake to tell you they had forgotten you, but it was alright. You had each other now.

The leader wasn't your real father, but the abandonment still had its thorns. Regardless, it would not deter your love of others laughter. You grew within the class halls, learning every bell and whistle to being a great performer. You had your struggles, but your prince was always front row to your little shows; cheering you on. He grew attached to the passion within you, something few people in his life seemed to have. Even if you couldnt always make him laugh, you made him smile.

By the time he's crowned emperor, you had become the court jester. His parents had noticed your sudden rocket in talent, and threw a few laughs your way during what was supposed to be a private show with you and him. He was somehow jealous he now had to share you, but the happiest on your face when taking stage was nothing he'd give up for the world.

With his new title, he couldn't see you at all hours of the day, but when he did he made sure those moments lasted. The second a meeting was over, you'd be at his side once more; cracking a joke to make him chuckle. A stoic man in the face of all others, but the loudest fool when it came to you.

You entertained anyone who'd come to the castle. Generals, members of the upper class, and the like. All would take great joke in your performances; whether they wanted to or not.

Juggling various items thrown your way, the room fills with cheer at your act; nearly everyone enjoy the feat. To one corner, a general and his right had stood with a look of boredom; waiting for the second he was able to leave.

"That damned jester... There's no need for a fool these days. I wish we could just get rid of them."

"Is there a problem gentlemen?" The emperor stands behind both men, towering over them in height and authority. They pale.

"N...no, sir. We were just enjoying the show."

"I don’t think you were, but you will."

A sharp object prods their spines, pricking the skin through their clothing. The emperor leans in, dropping his voice to a whisper.

"The next time they make a joke you both better be the loudest in the room, or I'll have your families imprisoned and your throats slit."

They frantically nod their heads, breathing only when he leaves. As the crowd breaks into another fit of laughter, so do they. Looking around the room, they spot a few other instances of forced glee, and guards at the ready.

#yandere x reader #yandere scenarios #yandere #yandere oc #yandere imagines #male yandere #yandere x you #yandere insert #yandere emperor #yandere story #tw yandere

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bloggingboutburgers · 3 months

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First of, I'm a big fan of your work. I love your comics and art and was happy to hear about the engagement 😁

As for my question, I love writing stories and creating OCs/characters. In your recent comic you called out that the only ace/aro rep always seems to be "the creator said so on Twitter" (a problem with a lot of rep. in media).

So I was curious, if I wanted to create an aroace character (and write a story with them), how could I naturally show them being aroace? Do you perhaps have any idea?

Thank you so much for the kind words!^^

Arguably my complaints are ironic because I myself haven't done proper aroace rep in my own fiction thus far – though I guess I'm compensating for that with my current comics, haha 🙈 But also, I've said it before and I'll say it again cus I'm annoying like that – Bojack Horseman did it, in my opinion, so that gives the rest of the media less excuses I guess.

So, again these are my personal views, and they're possibly demanding, but this would be my checklist for ideal aroace rep:

The aro/ace character needs to... BE a character. Actually have arcs, that matter within the story. Whether they're about being asexual or not doesn't really matter as long as THEY matter as a character.

...Ngl I feel they need to matter BEFORE they're revealed as aro/ace too, and obviously after. If they don't, they'll just feel like a placeholder who's just there to tick a box to me.

The fact that they're aro/ace needs to be addressed and not pushed under the rug or left up to interpretation. Leaving things up to interpretation will have so many people interpret them as allo for sure (just like in real life). And conversely, saying they're aro/ace may spark some curious questions and possibly awkward conversations (just like in real life). (...Again tbh Bojack Horseman was great at doing it naturally. The confusion from the ace character themself, the ace character's friend assuming they're gay because yeah that always happens, the MC having a friendly yet clueless "haha you're lucky that'd save me so many problems if I didn't have sexual attraction"... I could go on.)

By that I also mean... Actually NAMING the orientation at some point. If it's not named people who consume the media and don't know such an orientation exists will be none the wiser. (I'm guilty of that myself tbh. In one of my webcomics I had an alloaro character but never had the orientation mentioned within the story, I left it at showing he has sex and him having a conversation with his family explaining he doesn't have a favorite person because he just can't, but I feel like that's not enough, and I've been feeling a bit bad about it.) A good way of bringing that up fairly naturally would be to have the character figure out their orientation within the story, as a way to have the audience learn alongside them; but it could also be played for drama, which I don't think I've ever seen and would like to dabble with myself at some point – like, imagine you have a friend you hold dear who's key to your personal development and suddenly you find out they see you as sex / romance prospects and not as a friend like YOU do? That'd be crushing but that could definitely make for a good conflict. I should try writing that. I'm rambling anyway. Bleh.

Another thing that, to me, is key to the aro/ace experience is that the character may have some moments of questioning their place in the world. Our world is obsessed with sex and romance and fiction exacerbates that to the point where some characters barely even exist if they don't have romance. This could range from "Do I NEED to even identify myself as something" (again, Bojack Horseman did that great) to "Friendship is the most important relationship to me but not to my friends, what if they all abandon me once they find the one person they consider 'more important'". I dunno. I feel like there could be some interesting storylines there. I definitely would love to dabble into that myself a bit more, though I lack the time and talent – those concepts and the lack of things that are done with it live in my head rent-free.

...Actually I feel it could be good to show aro/ace characters as full of heart (if it fits their personality), having their own feelings and emotions outside of the usual romance spectrum, to show that they're just as human and compelling as the other characters. (...AGAIN Bojack Horseman did that great imo, I feel bad that I'm only ever quoting that show but that's still the best example I can ever think of.) Like – betrayal, loneliness, grief, kinship, literally ANY other form of love than romantic love... We feel all of those too, and those deserve to be addressed in stories just as much (if not more) than the pining or simping that's kinda everywhere.

Oh yeah and speaking of being human... Yeah, human. We need more human aro/ace characters. Making it so that only the aliens/gods/demons/robots/whatever are ever allowed to be aro/ace only serves to dehumanize these orientations.

...IIIII think that's it. I might be forgetting some things I'd wanna add on later but I think that covers everything that would make for ideal rep in my own opinion

#asexual #asexual representation #aromantic #aromantic representation #aroace #hopefully that helps! though again this is personal feelings #i'd be honored if they're shared but yeah #sinank0606

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kanmom51 · 10 months

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The way JK just walks in and takes his natural place next to JM.

The way JK just takes his place next to JM, no visible exchange between them to start with in the moment - all when we know, we see, them interacting right through, close interactions, feels like the two weren't really apart for too long.

Kind of like when you are together with someone close, part ways for a short time and then get back together. No need for hellos and niceties, just taking your natural place by their side. You acknowledge each other's presence. It's enough. It's not the start of an interaction, it's just a natural continuation of one.

Full clip here:

As for Tae, he comes in and stands behind JM, it looks like the manager draws JM's attention to Tae behind him (this before JM can acknowledge JK by his side, which he does immediately after), he turns around and Tae opens his arms for a hug, JM going in for it.

Just thought I'd bring this post back.

From the interactions we saw during the concert Vmin seemed to be fine. The friendly hug, the catching up (JM showing Tae what seems to be his boxing knuckles) - oh how that moment must have burnt for some... I definitley don't think it's a rift or a quarrel or a friendship breakup. If they have been seeing less of each other it would be more so perhaps each busy with their own lives, relationships, workloads. You know, like real grownups in the grownups world, where we have good friends but don't get to see them as often because life and work get in the way. Also, you know, as that pesky thing called everyday life gets in the way, some friendships get stronger and some can go stagnant or fade away. I'm not saying that's the case with Vmin. But it is possible that both find it more important to spend the spare time they have with their significant others, now that they can, while they can and before they can't.

And to those that are even thinking of it, don't start with the comparisons to the Hobi enlistment BTB or hug. That was totally different. The setting was an emotional one. JM walking in, going to stand by the 2 people he needed to be with emotionally (for them and himself).

As for the dialogue there, it clearly proved that it wasn't a "I missed you because I haven't seen you for a long time" hug, and more like an "I'm kind of emotional and hung over from drinking with you all night" hug.

Ok then, now that this is done, on to a little admin.

I'm still having issues converting my clips and uploading them. I guess we'll just see as we go. Me probably uploading clips in separate posts in the next few days.

In the meantime thought, I'll leave you with this:

Well, because!

#Jikook #Kookmin #Minkook #Vmin #Jungkook #JM #JK #Jimin

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thelureking · 1 year

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I had this idea to make a list of all the games I played in 2022, half as a recommendation list, and half because I struggle to remember when I played what. I have a really bad time ranking stuff, so I'll just list them chronologically (or, as chronologically as I can remember).

Note: Sometimes I dont have a lot to say about a game, but that doesnt mean I didn't like it or that it isn't good.

So, with that being said:

1) Our Life: Beginnings and Always

This game has put visual novels on another level entirely. How must I go on knowing that I will never be treated like royalty by any other game like this did. Our Life tells the story of your friendship and/or romance with Cove Holden, your new neighbor. This Visual Novel remembers an insane amount of stuff you choose, and it can put you in the state of mentioning something you did as a kid that you completely forgot about. I actually really liked how you can go the entire game as just friends, or choose when your character develops romantic feelings. I cannot overstate how well made this entire thing is. Can't wait to play the DLCs and for the sequel to be released.

Absolute recommend.

2) Iron Lung

If you have a computer, you can play it. It is not an option.

Claustrophobic above all, this game captures the pure dread of the unknown, building tension and atmosphere as you travel through this unknown planet's red sea. Highly recommended.

3) An Outcry

Amazing game that I don't see enough people talking about. The first game that made me actually physically ill while playing an alternative route. I don't know what hit me the most, the subject matter or the type of person I played in that route, a person I know exists and maybe I've met, a person I hope I never become. I knew what the game was specifically referencing, but I found it good that it was able to trigger that response on someone who lives in an entirely different place, with different historical events, but with enough similarities that made the feeling of dread and disgust that much real. Its message is clear and loud as it should be, and one that I think maybe now more than ever needs to be heard. I cannot recommend this game enough.

4) Stillwater

Now this is a Visual Novel that I really liked and would have loved for it to be longer, but I love it as it is. It left me wanting more about the world and its characters, and I think that's a good thing. It feels unfair that this is the one I typed the least about, knowing how much I liked it. It's really worth the read/play.

5) The Caribbean Sail

Have you ever wanted to be a sailor or a pirate? Have you ever wanted to grab a ship, sail into unknown destinations, encounter supernatural phenomenons and watch as your fellow crew members die of disentry five seconds after leaving your first port? Because if so, I have the perfect game for you. It's inspired by the Oregon Trail game, and that's literally what the gameplay is like, except on the sea. Which was enough of a selling point for me.

6) Carrion

My child, it has every disease. Loved the concept when I saw the trailer, forgot I can actually buy games now, and then proceeded to do that. Being able to live my fantasies of being a flesh creature that destroys and eats everything in its path was a delight. The creature is my child and I love it very much.

We need more games that let you play as the monster, I'm serious.

7) The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante

This game is both my beloved and the thorn on my side. Who would have thought that in a game like this you would proceed to suffer through life? I said to myself as if I hadn't known what I was getting into. You'll experience loss, you'll struggle to make a name for yourself, your family will fall apart, and you may never kiss your best friend Tommas who gave you a totally platonic ring to commemorate your friendship because the game doesn't want you to.

Or you'll have a different experience than me on my first playthrough.

You follow the titular Sir Brante from the moment of his birth to his last breath, exploring the world he lives in, full of injustices that at times made me go "I do not care about the lots, give me a fucking gun so I can take you to the fucking Twins". There are many branches regarding life paths, the fate of your family and that of the entire city you live in. But don't worry about it now, keep looking at those toy soldiers at the store as a little kid, I'm sure nothing will happen in the future.

8) Princess Maker 2 Refine

And apparently I didn't get enough of walking a kid through life.

Who looks at a game about raising a little girl by managing her monthly schedule and balancing her stats, health and money and says "yes, this is the game I'll play to destress"?

I do that. Don't ask why.

I have only reached two endings, in one my beautiful daughter became the royal painter, her art held as the most beautiful and inspiring in the entire world. In another, my girl made a name for herself by exploring the lands surrounding the kingdom, so fast on her feet nobody could even scratch her; she married a dragon prince and became the teacher of her own fighting school.

And even with all of that, her goddess mother was not happy.

So yes, this is the "divorced dad who got custody" experience.

9) Planescape: Torment

What can change the nature of a man? That is a question posed by one Ravel Puzzlewell, night hag of the Gray Wastes. It is one of the many questions that this game asks, intertwined by the many philosophies it presents. Planescape Torment does not stick to one question, it asks many, and it lets you answer.

It is a beautifully written game, one of the best I have ever read. There is one moment that I do not wish to spoil, but it still sticks to my head months after I experienced it. As a writer, I found myself fascinated by how a certain event was told, all because of the way it was presented.

It feels like an injustice to not talk in length about Planescape: Torment, but I seriously don't want to spoil anyone who hasn't played it yet. A blind experience is fully worth it. All you need to know is that this is the game that made me post for the first time here, two dumb memes for myself and one short analysis that sometimes reminds me that yes, people can interact with it. Shameless link to it here

10) Growing my Grandpa!

If I had to describe this game without saying too much, I would say it's "heartwarming horror". Two words that don't usually go together, but that they perfectly fit here. The story is, like the title says, about growing your grandpa, more like helping a girl grow her grandpa, but still. Strangely sweet and unnerving, I was tense the entire time, and even when I had to replay it to get the second ending (this was entirely my fault, since I could have gotten it way easier) that tension never left.

11) FAITH: The Unholy Trinity

I don't remember how I found out about this game, but I remember waiting patiently for it to get a steam release so I could buy it and play its three chapters all together. The day finally came, and all that waiting was worth it.

The gameplay is simple, yet the developers found a way to have me both crying in fear and frothing by the mouth out of anger every time I saw the game over screen (affectionately). In terms of difficulty, I would say the game is easy until it isn't, looking at you Chapter 2 and 3 Final Bosses, you bastards. Then again, I saw people say they struggled in places I didn't, so I would say it depends on the player.

The story is so interesting and it's still marinating in my brain please I need people to talk about how the prologue of chapter 2 and the one note in chapter 3 relate please. The cutscenes are also so well done, and I had to restrain myself from using one as a second picture because I didn't want to spoil any of them.

All in all, a must play, fully recommend it.

And remember:

GARY LOVES YOU

12) Inmortal Mantis

This is a tricky one. On one hand, the game starts off by basically spelling out every action you have to do, and suddenly it goes full on "fuck around and find out" mode. On the other, the game implements some interesting mechanics that I would love to see developed on a longer game, but I am not going to put the length against it while knowing how hard it is to make a game. And maybe being short plays in its favor.

13) Who's Lila?

This game is my King in Yellow. I cannot stop thinking about it. I finished it with all endings and achievements in a day, and it wont leave me alone. It is always there, forever crawling at the back of my head, stretching itself over my brain and weaving my thoughts into a spiral as easily as a spider weaves its thread. It made itself a home in my mind and I won't kick it out any time soon. I played it because the concept of controlling a character's face in place of a dialogue wheel was interesting, and the story and the way it's presented (hand in hand with the gameplay) lured me deeper and deeper. I cannot even describe it without giving it the praise it deserves. It takes full advantage of its medium. Playing this game is an experience that I can't recommend enough, and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves.

14) Someone stole MY LUNCH!

This visual novel is pure fun. The humor is so good I found myself reading the entire thing out loud while wheezing. I actually found out recently that it's made by the same people that made Stillwater, which, looking at it now I should have known. It's good and I'm not still over not seeing that one joke coming; well played.

15) MILK INSIDE OF A BAG OF MILK INSIDE OF A BAG OF MILK INSIDE OF A BAG OF MILK INSIDE OF A BAG OF-

... INSIDE A BAG OF MILK is a short visual novel about a girl going to the grocery to buy milk, and the challenge this seemingly small action can be. It is your responsibility to help her through this.

The steam page description perfectly summarizes it: "This is an artistic manipulation with word and form, only then - a game."

#already reblogged with three more games!#game recommendations #our life beginnings & always #iron lung #an outcry #stillwater visual novel #the caribbean sail game #carrion game #the life and suffering of sir brante #princess maker 2 #planescape torment #growing my grandpa #faith the unholy trinity #inmortal mantis #who's lila #whos lila #someone stole my lunch visual novel #milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk #lilium post

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seethestarlights · 12 days

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airyravenmaid · 15 days

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SAGAU: My Style

Back at it again with sharing my personal ideas with the Self-Aware Genshin AU. I don't see myself writing a full-on fanfic about it because I do NOT trust myself with characterizing everybody properly, and some of the ideas I have in mind wouldn't make for a good universal experience for all, if that makes sense. So, instead, I'll just stick to pitching like I'm at a silly ol' business meeting and providing a simply layout. Now, keep in mind, this is going to focus more on my rendition of an Imposter AU specifically, which means I'm also going to do a little nitpicking of some common tropes in it that I find could be done better or even differently. It won't be me saying that anybody who writes them in the traditional sense is bad or doing a bad job, just what I'd do differently. So, without further ado, check out my mish-mushed ideas below the cut:

It all starts with the Creator Themsleves, aka, us. Or, rather, us before we became us. Not making sense? That's fine, but lemme delve into that a little better. Game lore-wise for this AU, there actually was a fully existing, fully breathing Creator that's been around since even before the Archons (but not by too much; Zhongli's still no spring chicken in spite of this). Yes, they did create Teyvat and all that's good in it like the flora, the fauna, and the creatures, and they had a close bond with said Archons not just as people serving, advising, and worshipping their God/ruler, but also in a legitimate friendship (so, no, they're not 100% subservient or gutless ass-kissers-- it's more of an equal dynamic). Maybe one Archon of your choice (within reason) being close enough to the point of being (secret) lovers, if you'd like. Such explains the Archons' deep attachment to the Creator, and their eagerness to see them again after tragedy-- like, say, the Cataclysm that razed Khaenri'ah-- renders them comatose and not to awaken again until present day. Until then, the Creator's body lies safely in sleep like Princess Aurora within their main temple/palace, occasionally visited by their old companions (minus Ei, who's in her hidey-hole until the Inazuma AQ's, but that goes without saying).

But, just before they do wake up, here comes a little (presumably Celestia-sent) POS known as the Imposter, who worms their way into the temple where the Creator lies, steals their garbs and replaces them with normal, less divine attire before sending their body far away apparently never to be seen again and lying on that resting spot acting as the Creator on the verge of waking up. And since no one knows what really happened, it looks like the promised day has come without issues, and the Imposter is welcomed by nearly all back to a throne that never actually belonged to them. As for the actual Creator... they're in good hands, because Teyvat would never mistake another for the All-Parent that breathed life into it and acts to protect their body hidden amidst nature in whatever region they landed in (your choice) until they really do wake up.

And when our in-game body does wake up, our real-life consciousness is transferred into it and overwrites our old, godly memories with our normal ones. Since I can't stand isekais that require us dying an early death IRL (like, at all, actually), we're either magically transported to Teyvat the old-fashioned magic way, or part of our consciousness goes into our in-universe body and leaves our physical forms in reality alone, thereby creating two versions of us going around two separate worlds. For better wording, that is, but that's the gist of it. Either way, we're the real deal Creator, but one without our old memories (apart from short visions we get of our old divine life that come up every now and again) as far as everyone else in Teyvat is concerned. They're not totally wrong, anyway. I was thinking this could be justified to everyone by our "past self" saying pre-slumber that they will reawaken without the knowledge of this world (aka, the Genshin one), but it will still very much be them/us.

By the way, when we stumble into the main town or city of whatever region we wound up in, the locals don't just immediately attack us for looking like the Imposter. While sometimes, I do enjoy kicking back and enjoying pure angst, I otherwise found that aspect of Villain/Imposter!SAGAU to be, comment dit-on... absurd, especially with nobody in Mondstadt (outside of that one nun not buying it and simply scolding him) giving two honks about Venti despite him looking like (being) Barbatos, and nobody in Liyue even noticing the resemblance between Zhongli and Rex Lapis/Morax. And given how much those nations revere their god, the argument of us being a higher deity cannot be made. So, instead, at absolute worst, people are just really unnerved by the uncanny resemblance we have to the Creator, but otherwise don't get alarmed... until the Imposter catches wind of us and changes that. The reason people start attacking us at all is because the Imposter weaves a forewarning of the Creator's antithesis equal to them in power known as the "Destroyer" will descend on Teyvat, attempt to steal the throne using the Creator's face, and do worse to the world than the Abyss Order ever could try to if not stopped. And, this may sound like something they just made up to get us killed, but in a way... it's true, only issue is that the acolytes + citizens have the wrong idea of who's who, of course. Plus, the actual, all-powerful Creator, if pushed too far by say... an incredibly lengthy and traumatic manhunt after being mistaken for the Destroyer, is capable of tearing the world limb from limb, because those who create can as easily destroy, but those who destroy can never create.

Speaking of "all-powerful"... why are we always completely powerless in these SAGAU works apart from crying and/or getting really angry (which ARE realistic and valid reactions to the shit we're going through, but it's not mutually exclusive to getting cool abilities)? Because we're not actually from Teyvat? Even Aether and Lumine have the power to wield the elements despite coming from somewhere else, and for us to not get that same honor is frankly dull as dishwater. That's a lot of missed potential to dip into the fantasy aspect of a fantasy game like Genshin Impact. It's here I'd like to take some inspiration from a show I've enjoyed for years known as none other than "Avatar: The Last Airbender". Not to mention, the term "avatar" generally refers to a "divine incarnation in human form", hello??? Ahem! In other words, instead of being completely incapable of defending ourselves, we-- being the almighty Creator-- are able to wield all seven elements at once, but we have to gradually learn how to effectively use and master them. We do start with one element (any of your choice), then work our way up in order of the loading screen. IE: say your element is Cryo, you'd have to go Geo -> Pyro -> Hydro -> Anemo -> Electro -> Dendro. Such was the same in our past life, but we had the Archons to teach us and help us master those abilities through time.

Which means now, we need other people to help us do it again in our new "incarnation", and that's in the form of 5-star Vision holders since they fit the bill of "master" a bit better, being the rarer, stronger characters and junk. Of course, this is likely with discretion, because some might not be wise to learn from (such as Klee, funny as that'd be). I'm also discounting learning from the Archons because not only has our time with them from the previous life passed, but I don't find it fair to learn from a powerful god of that element, even if we're a god ourselves. It's more balanced learning from someone beneath that level (so, yes, an adeptus would still qualify). Also, important note here: not every single playable character is going to try and kill us for the Creator-Destroyer thing. NPCs are one thing because, let's be real, they're sheep, but it isn't realistic or in-character for everybody playable to want us dead. While a fair chunk would probably be on board for the sake of not letting the world blow to smithereens (and not because, you know, Same Face Syndrome, because that's completely insane), some might not outright believe the alleged prophecy for one reason or another, such as not being fond/trusting enough of the apparent "Creator" to just listen to them right off the bat, or getting to already find out who the real Creator is and knowing we're not the enemy. Whatever the reason is, we're going to have allies, including ones that join us in our quest to defeat the Imposter and take back the throne to restore balance to Teyvat. This can also include those who initially sided with the Imposter, but for one reason or another such as seeing our gold blood, they have a change of heart and tag along for the ride. For us to just go about Teyvat on the lam with nobody having our back is just... depressing, and not even in the fun way, either. I understand this faction of SAGAU tends to be purely angst-based, but come on, it doesn't have to all be a total bummer all the time. There's no rule that says we can't go through the angsty, heartwrenching stuff with traveling companions to call our own there for us through it all.

Now, of course, whoever those traveling companions are is really up to you because not all of us are gonna wanna tag up with and learn from the same bitches as the next guy. So, it's anybody's game with anybody's reasoning and circumstances (such as which region we wake up in, who our first companion(s) would be there, then which region we move onto, and even what element we have to learn next). Also, fitting the max. number of characters you can have on one team, it'd just be four actively traveling alongside us through Teyvat with other allies remaining where they are, whether they helped us master an element or not. But, no matter anybody's personal tastes and choices, I really wish there was more of a thrilling "fantastical group adventure" kind of element to this genre of SAGAU, because the potential is there, just-- seldom reached, from what I've seen, personally. I'd be more than happy adding onto this with anything I might have missed, but that's basically the gist of my view of this AU.

#Genshin Impact #SAGAU #Imposter AU #SAGAU Cult AU #Genshin Impact SAGAU #(Meant to make this post when a certain someone finally came home in Genshin; but that was 4 months ago lmfao)#This is kind of a huge mess but it's open to tweaking and revisiting; if necessary #But I still mean it when I say I wish more works had Creator!Reader have more fun or do cool shit amidst the angst and drama #Adventuring with newfound friends on a quest to reclaim your yoinked throne in a fantasy setting is cool; yo; go nuts with it

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