#and was this projecting? perhaps. perhaps not. you will never know (:<< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[romanofftherealest]

𝔑𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔅𝔲𝔯𝔫𝔰 𝔏𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔗𝔥𝔢 ℭ𝔬𝔩𝔡

Chapter 2: Wrong Move | 5.2k

Summary: Once you were given a chance by the Ice Queen, you must not fuck it up because once you made a wrong move, you'll get killed—figuratively and literally.

Pairing: Mob boss Natasha Romanoff x Mob boss Female Reader

Tags | Warnings: +18 bickering, sexual tension, smut, switch reader & Natasha, fingering & strap-on (r), death threat, frustrated murder lol

Author's Note: 👋

⧗

"Ice Queen."

"Black Widow."

Insufferable–it had been insufferable between you two since your meeting with Dr. Bruce. Since he'd made his little comment.

"Please don't fuck in my office."

Natasha had taken the comment in stride, though she was unable to shake off the feeling of embarrassment entirely. But she couldn't afford to be flustered—she had an image to uphold.

You, on the other hand, maintained composed throughout the rest of that meeting, keeping your expression impassive and unreadable. Your gaze never averted from the path ahead, and you avoided even a single glance in her direction—the walk out of the office and the wait for your respective escorts.

The Black Widow hadn't seen you since then until today.

"You have always been ruining my time."

"I had an emergency."

You huff, "Again?"

"I'm sorry." Now, that was shocking coming from her, you didn't realize someone in your line of work is actually capable of apologizing. "How's business?" she now inquired, her voice steady despite the tension in the air. She sat across from you, hoping that her attempt at nonchalance was convincing.

"Steady." You answer shortly.

Natasha resisted the urge to tug at her tie as she leaned forward to sign some of the papers you presented her.

"How's Red Room?" you now asked, in return of respect.

This was all feeling a little too familiar—de javu. The redhead gulped, glancing up. It proved to be a mistake, she realized as you tucked your hair behind your ear that exposed a hint of your cleavage, the soft fabric of your dress gently pressed against the edge of the desk. Your movements were deliberate as you signed the document. You two had a business to sign together after Bruce had set you up, but if you actually weren't in that room together that time, and he did not make that comment of his, there is no business to sign right now. And you wouldn't take the blame being in the room with her, she was the one stealing your time of appointment.

Natasha finally gave her tie just a little tug. "Quiet."

As she took the paper from you, you couldn't help but notice her usual rolled-up sleeves, revealing the ink-adorned sleeves on her arms. But something was different today—the tie. Normally, her top was slightly unbuttoned, highlighting the intricate designs that crept up towards her shoulder. Today, however, the top few buttons remained firmly done up, leaving you wondering how extensive her tattoos were, and how much of it was simply golden skin.

Despite your attempt to be subtle, your eyes remained fixed on her. Natasha could feel your gaze, a heavy weight on her skin. But she made no comment about it, instead choosing to remain silent. Perhaps she was trying to be a gentlewoman, although knowing that being a gentlewoman hadn't worked out so well for her the last time around.

Natasha has the kind of sculpted physique that came from countless hours of training, complemented by the intricate ink that adorned her flesh. And her face? It is capable of morphing from a radiant smile to a deadly glare in a mere second.

While you possessed your own distinct image, a counterpoint to her rough edges. With your carefully crafted lace, the shimmering satin clothing that hugged your form, and the cold, stoic demeanor you projected, you cut a striking figure of elegance.

Then there was the ever-present knife strapped to your thigh.

Natasha's gaze followed your every move as you adjusted your shawl, her eyes tracing its soft trail as it covered your delicate skin. She found herself missing the bare sight of your skin, the way the white fabric clung to your form. She tugged her tie again.

"What are you wearing that for?"

"What?" you rolled her eyes. You weren't one for unnecessary words, let alone small talk. But you just wanted to know, so you had asked. "I have never seen you wear a tie in all the years you've been in town."

"I've worn ties before."

"Not unless it's to conduct business." You scoffed at her quick retort.

"This is business."

"I am not a mark." You narrowed your eyes at her like a cat watching its prey. "There is no need for formality."

She huffed through her nose, and you looked just as affronted as she felt. She gripped the knot, "I'll take it off then, Ice."

"I didn't say you had to take it off."

"Then why'd you bring it up?"

"All I did was ask." You huffed and stood from your chair, uncrossing your legs and resettling your shawl again.

Natasha finished her last signature in a rush, tugging her tie looser and looser. What was with her? "There."

"Pleasure doing business," you offered the typical and polite placation at the end of any business dealing in your line of work.

You walked over to her, your lace around your shoulders, caressing its way down your arms and then just brushing your hips on its way down. It was like an embrace around you, teasing and beckoning all at once. Your dress had a slit to allow the room to cross your legs when sitting. It revealed a slim, pale calf and killer stiletto heel.

Natasha managed to drag her eyes back up the leg and to her offered hand somehow. She grasped it in her, always making sure to be soft with it. She knew that you wouldn't like knowing she was trying to be careful with you, but…she couldn't help it. Your hand was so small—so light—whenever she got to hold it in you.

Not that she looked forward to it or anything.

"Pleasure."

You averted your gaze as Natasha raised your hand, her lips gently planting a kiss to your fourth knuckle. You knew she was intentionally skipping over your rings, choosing to kiss your bare skin. You made sure at your best efforts to conceal the shiver that occasionally ran down your spine whenever she did this, not wanting her to know how it affects you.

"Pleasure indeed."

Fuck. You were aware of your own allure and sexiness, it's something that was impossible to ignore. You know that you are driving her crazy—you just had to.

Natasha tugged at her suit jacket and her tie, attempting to distract herself from the effect of the woman in front of her. The same woman who can kill her with just a slip of a knife, she had to remind herself.

"Well," Natasha managed to snap herself out of her trance-like state, clearing her throat. She was unable to resist the urge to continue tugging at her tie, untying it completely and letting it hang loose around her neck. She looked at you, her gaze lingering for a moment before she spoke again. "Until next time, I guess."

"Leave the tie at home."

"Okay," she snorted in response, still keeping the tie barely on and popped open the stiflingly tight collar. She turned to you with a confused frustrated glare, a hint of curiosity in her eyes. "What's your problem?"

"My problem?" you growled right back at her.

She let out a smirk, that familiar smirk that always seemed to get under your skin, like when she called you, Printsessa. "Flustered?"

"Why would I be?" Cold as ice.

"It was your fault, you know, Banner's little comment."

"My fault?!" Oh, there it was–the Ice Queen's temper. All the frostiness is gone and is now replaced with a fuel raging fire. "You were the one trying to kiss me!"

"Okay, fine," she shrugged, and you froze back up again. That easy? She would concede that easily? You didn't expect that from the Black Widow at all. For all her reputation, the one and only bounty hunter conceded herself to the Ice Queen. You were expecting her to argue that it was you trying to kiss her, but she didn't really care who was trying to kiss whom. It was you who'd gotten pretty close all on your own as you'd stormed over to her, she just moved a little closer that time—not even an inch. "So?"

"So?" your jaw tightens as you shake your head, trying to keep your composure in front of her. You were caught off guard by her sudden surrender, let alone for it to be about that.

You couldn't stop replaying that incident in your mind, over and over again—each time so that you'd be able to defend your innocence to the end, adamant that you didn't initiate the kiss. You didn't lean in, you didn't reach out to pull her closer, you didn't allow her intoxicating scent to cloud your judgment and all your reservations and up until you get home.

And you definitely didn't think about fucking her in someone else's office, you didn't. Not at all.

Natasha let out a soft moan when you firmly gripped what was left of her tie and pulled her in closer. She had been yearning for this moment, her mind consumed by the thought of her lips meeting yours. She even started keeping tulips on her desk at her office, their sweet scent reminding her of you. No one dared to ask her about the change, and she would have been too embarrassed to confess that they were there simply to bring back memories of the Ice Queen's fragrance.

You couldn't help but gasp as Natasha moved swiftly, her tongue lightly tracing your lip in a silent request for more. In that moment, your defenses crumbled and you granted it, perhaps a bit too early, eagerly and willingly. But there was no room for overthinking or analysis now, because it was already happening. She was a damn good kisser, and you found yourself lost in the intensity of the moment.

You tossed her tie aside, your fingers deftly unbuttoning her shirt as if you were on a mission. Natasha refused to be outdone—didn't want to be found lacking. Her hands moved with grace and gentleness as she eased the delicate lace fabric away from your skin. She wound it around her hand, only to release it, replacing its tender touch on your skin.

As her hands glided over your frame, tracing a path from your shoulders to your arms and finally coming to rest on your waist, you found yourself involuntarily gasping her name.

"N-Natasha…" without any visible effort, she effortlessly hoisted you into the air. Your arms instinctively wrapped around her neck, seeking support. Despite the considerable size of your hands, they couldn't find a firm grip on her muscular shoulders. She has incredible strength, like a wall of muscle against which you feel both secured and at her mercy.

A moan of pleasure escaped Natasha's lips as your tongue tangled with hers. She spun you around with effortless strength and lowered you onto the edge of your desk, her focus now on your exposed neck.

Your breathing grew heavy as Natasha continued her ministries, successfully banishing any coherent thoughts from your mind. Her mouth relentlessly explored the sensitive skin of your neck, while her hands began to delicately loosen the straps of your dress, letting the fabric slide down your shoulders. At the same time, her fingertips traced a teasing path down your spine, gradually heading south.

Natasha's voice was a low, possessive growl as she pressed her lips to the flat plane of your stomach, her hands hurriedly tugging and rearranging the shimmering fabric of your dress, exposing your thigh holster in the process. Her touch was firm but gentle as her fingertips skimmed over your inner thigh, tracing an intimate path that sent shivers down your spine—and you cannot hide that shiver this time. She lifts her gaze to meet you, her eyes filled with admiration and something deeper.

"Do you have any idea...how beautiful you are?"

Despite the rush of sensations coursing through you, you resisted the urge to let out a gasp as Natasha released your holster, letting it fall to the floor. Unexpectedly, her fingertips were incredibly soft and tender when she gently massaged the area where the holster's clip had left marks on your skin, soothing the redness. The contrast between her touch and the ruthless image of the Black Widow intrigued you. It awakened an unexpected fondness within you, something you couldn't help but find charming about her that is entirely against your will.

"No."

"No?" Natasha chuckled softly, not condescendingly. Her head dipping lower to press a gentle kiss against the sensitive skin of your knee. She knelt down at your feet, her gaze locked on yours, her eyebrow arched in an amused manner. "Shall I show you then? My Queen?"

Your face flushed with a combination of desire and irritation, and you avoided her gaze, pressing your heel against her shoulder in a subtle attempt to maintain some control. You refused to give in to her attempts to fluster you, but God she did, and you think she already knows that.

"Ah, ah," Natasha issued a reprimanding retort, catching your heel between her fingers before you could even touch it. She delicately and teasingly unfastened the strap, using her teeth to extract it from its securing position. Glancing back up at you, "let me work, your Highness."

Pleasure coursed through you as Natasha's tongue followed an intimate path up your ankle, lavishing kisses on the back of your calf. She left a lingering lick on your knee before continuing and you felt yourself becoming increasingly disoriented, the papers beneath your fingers crumpling due to your trembling grip.

She gripped your hips firmly, helping to ease you as she pressed soft kisses to the mark where your holster had been placed. Her fingers trailed up along the seam of your dress slit, running them along the sheer edge between your legs, her touch light yet deliberate.

As you bit your lip again, trying desperately to hold back a whimper, Natasha's fingers slipped beneath the fabric of your panties. She rubbed slow circles over your clit through the thin material, feeling how wet you were already. You tried pushing her by the shoulders again when she soothed her fingers up and down where you needed the most, but at the same time you were more ready to wrap your legs around her and lock her in place until you were good and finished.

"More."

What the Queen wants, the Queen gets.

She was the commoner, worshipping at the altar of your body, her Queen. Each moan and whimper from your lips was like a royal decree, commanding her to continue serving your pleasure.

Without hesitation, Natasha pushed your panties to the side and her tongue quickly delved between your folds, pressing flat and firm against your clit just as she had promised. Your hips lifted off the desk involuntarily as she held you steady with one strong arm wrapped around your thighs, keeping them spread wide open for her mouth's access.

"Fuck!" your screams turned into incoherent pleas as she pushed you right to the edge of pleasure. Natasha doubled her efforts, adding two fingers to the mix while her tongue continued its relentless assault on your clit. She curled those fingers just right, hitting that magical spot inside you over and over.

She closely observed your responses, attuned to every subtle movement and reaction your body betrayed. Her grip on your thighs was firm but tender, so that it would keep them from crushing her head completely. Not that she really minds you wanting and needing to crush her head because that is some way to die and she would thank you, the Queen, after it with what remains in her dying breath.

"Natasha…" your whimpers and pleas grow louder and more desperate. She loved the sound of her name on your lips, loved how your voice cracked and broke as she pushed you higher and higher. "Please, oh-yes!"

And finally, you reached the high of your throne. And Natasha held your trembling legs with a gentleness and possessiveness, feeling like the most fortunate commoner in the kingdom. The Queen had given her the chance to taste her sweet nectar, and Natasha was drinking it up greedily, savoring each drop as you shook and moaned on the desk.

Natasha moved slowly, savoring the taste of your pleasure still on her lips as she carefully put your legs down. "You good?"

Oh, you were so much more than good, that word is a freaking understatement. But she could never ever know that, ever! You nodded, not trusting your high self to speak just yet. It was bad enough that you were going to have that glow after not having a release like that in God knows how long and Natasha could ever know that one either.

Natasha, from what you've heard, is ruthless in business and deadly in combat. But she is a good lover, that was for sure…and you didn't hear that one…

You experienced it first hand.

Natasha carried you effortlessly to the plush couch in your office, ignoring your half-hearted resistance to being held close. She sat down first, then pulled you onto her lap so your head rested naturally against her chest. Her fingers carded through your hair absently as she let you catch your breath.

Her breath hitched slightly as she felt your fingers deftly working at her shirt buttons. She had to admit, your sleight of hand was as impressive as it was seductive as she even realized you'd started until her shirt was half-unbuttoned and slipping from her trousers.

"Ready for more?"

"I don't leave debts unpaid."

"I don't—!" Natasha gasped as you suddenly sank your teeth into her earlobe, biting down with a playful intensity that made her arch against you. The immediate soothing lick and gentle kisses down her neck had her melting into your touch, realizing you were mirroring her earlier actions. Fuck.

"Sh," you breathed against her skin, letting her sweet time get nice and riled up. If she has turned you into an absolute mess, then you are going to melt her into a puddle of desire. Completely wrecked in your hands.

"Y-you." Natasha's voice came out as a guttural moan, her hips rising instinctively to meet your touch. She was utterly at your mercy now, every fiber of her being focused on the exquisite sensations you were creating.

The Black Widow, the deadly assassin, was now reduced to a whimpering mess beneath you.

"Let me," you whispered against her skin, your lips brushing against her collarbone as you traced the intricate patterns of her tattoos. Your hands unbuckled her binder revealing more colors of tattoos on her breasts, you pinched and swirled your tongue on her nipples before you moved down and down and down…until you felt an unexpected bulge.

"The Black Widow indeed," you purred into her ear, your voice low and sultry, as you watched the flush of red spread from the base of her neck up to her cheeks. It was a heady sight, knowing you had reduced the formidable Black Widow to this state of arousal. Her eyes fluttered closed as you unbuttoned and slipped your hands inside her pants, finding the strap-on she had been wearing. "Do you want this?"

"Yes," she choked. Her hands immediately returned to your hips, gripping them tightly as she guided you closer. The heat between your legs was unbearable now, the tip of strap-on pressing insistently against your core.

You leaned in, kissing along her jawline until your lips found hers again. Your eyes locked onto hers as you played teasingly with the tip of her strap-on, rubbing it with your entrance just enough to make her shudder.

"Do you want me?" you asked with your hooded lustful eyes.

"Yes." Her whisper came out breathless, needy—a sound far removed from the ruthless mob boss she usually played. Her hands moved with purpose, pulling you close as she arched up to meet you. The strap-on pressed firmly against you now, and she could barely control herself.

"Y/N."

Natasha gasped your name, the sound escaped her lips in a beautiful, almost reverent tone. But you yearned to hear her stripped of words, reduced to nothing but breathless moans. You wanted to see her utterly undone, rendered incapable of forming a single syllable, let alone your name. So you began to move in her lap, your hands roaming over her back and your lips finding their way over her cheeks and down to her neck, Natasha's body responded beneath you. You could feel the firm muscles of her pecs tensing and flexing with each of your movements, the contact between you growing increasingly delicious.

"Fuck, you," she panted, enjoying herself entirely as you moved on bounced of her.

"Tell me how much you wanted me."

"So bad," Natasha panted in response, her lips eager to find the little spot between your jaw and neck again. "Fuck, so bad. Y/N, please…so bad."

You gasped, your nails digging into her shoulders. "Tell me you want me now."

"More than anything," she growled, her hands snaked over your back for the purpose of supporting you but then, she finally—finally! found the hidden zip of the dress and she immediately pulled it down. "I want you, I need you."

Your eyes flew open as Natasha swiftly dragged the zipper of your dress down, tearing the fabric literally and letting it fall to the floor in a heap. You pulled away from her lips, a low growl escaping your own as you watched the remnants of your dress being discarded without a hint of remorse.

"You—!"

Natasha withdrew, you gasped, caught between the conflicting emotions. She swiftly lifted you off her lap, effortlessly flipping your position so you now lay across her on the expansive sofa. "I'll buy you a new one."

"That's not the point!" you barked at her. You weren't angry about your dress being torn apart and discarded. You were frustrated about the way she'd stopped fucking you just to manhandle you, flipping you over just to change position. And you were deeply irritated with the way she had sat up and away from you just to stare. "What?!"

Natasha ignored you, running a hand through her hair as she took a few breaths, both of you in your naked glory under your office light. She ignored you, taking a moment to run a hand through her tousled hair as she caught her breath. The soft glow of the office light casts shadows across your naked bodies.

Fuck, she is beautiful. You watched as her chest rose and fell with each breath, the light accented the shadows and angles of her muscles, and all of the human curves in between.

"Do you always stop in the middle of fucking just to catch your breath."

She looked down at you like a wife who was nagging her about something. So she kissed you like she was trying to prove a point—that she could still dominate you even when you were being mouthy. Her fingers tangled in your hair, pulling and pushing it around as she liked, just like how you pulled her by the tie.

"No, but I do want to savor every minute of making love to you."

God, this woman thought she was so cute–she thought she was so charming. So you kept kissing her, so she wouldn't see the look on your face as you felt each flutter of the butterflies.

She tore her lips away from yours, enjoying the pout that formed on your mouth as you tried to follow hers. She left one last kiss on your lips before trailing kisses over your cheeks to your ear.

"Are you ready for me, koroleva?" (Queen)

You pinched her thick arms, wondering if it actually hurt her but whatever, you had been ready before she interrupted the two of you just to use some sappy line on you and change positions.

"Right away," she chuckled, her breath on your neck as she pushed the strap-on into you again, "your Majesty."

"Natasha!" you let out a deep, guttural moan as she started moving again, your legs instinctively wrapping around her waist. Your hands gripped her shoulders tightly before dragging down to the thick muscles over her sides, fingers digging in as she thrusted against you.

She buried her face in your neck, kissing and biting the sensitive skin as she continued to move against you. She nuzzled closer until she could kiss you again, "Shit, baby, you gotta come soon."

Oh, you were much closer than she thought you were. Your whimper was almost silent, but she heard it. She just made love to you now like how she called it, but she knows that sound. Her thumb found your clit without warning, pressing hard circles that matched her thrusts. She captured your bottom lip between her teeth.

"Natasha, I-I'm so close…" you were completely lost in sensation, your back arched, legs trembling around her waist. Your hands clawed at her back, leaving red marks. You were making those high-pitched whines that always drove her wild. She knew you were right there, so she did something she knew would push you over. She knew you were a hair trigger right now—no filter, no control.

And just like that, you shattered. Your mouth fell open in a silent scream as your orgasm crashed over you like a tidal wave. Your body convulsed, legs shaking violently as you came undone in her arms. She felt your inner walls clamping down on her fingers, pulsing with your release.

You clenched your eyes shut, allowing a few moments for clarity to slowly return. Eventually, your office ceiling came into clear focus, and you became acutely aware of the weight of Natasha's body pressing against yours, your limbs wrapped around her body like intimate vines. A part of you wanted to just walk away.

Cold as ice.

You couldn't even if you really wanted to, your mind was still hazy, and your body was utterly spent. Your knees trembled, their stability compromised, and you knew you wouldn't be able to move for a few precious minutes.

Natasha's head gently turned, her mouth finding its way to the sensitive skin of your neck. With soft, tender kisses, she made her way up until her lips found yours once more.

"Hey."

"Hey." You took a deep breath, trying to steady yourself as your body slowly came down from its high. Natasha didn't give you much time to recover though—her kisses were insistent and hungry, like she couldn't get enough of you. Your hands found their way back into her hair without hesitation.

"So?" her voice was soft but with a hint of playful tease. She kept one arm wrapped securely around your waist, her chin resting on your shoulder. Her other hand slowly started smoothing down your mess of hair, deliberately avoiding your bruised lip.

You peeled your eyes open, doing your best to glare at her for interrupting your tranquility. You raised a brow at her bright grin, practically giggling with glee. "So what?"

She was even more undeterred by your prickliness, though. She traced your cheekbone with her thumb, gently smoothing away a smudge of make-up. "Do you know, now? How beautiful are you?"

She thought she was so fucking charming–damn this woman, and that heart of her. You allowed her one more kiss, soft and slower. You were beginning to think she liked kissing you or something.

"After one round?"

"One and a half," Natasha corrected you urgently, her pout deepened into something almost childlike—adorable even though she'd just wrecked every inch of your body. "And I thought they were pretty good."

Oh, they were amazing. Maybe the most amazing you'd ever had in your life. But she could never ever know that, ever.

All of a sudden, you bit the inside of your cheek, trying to hide your expression when your gaze went down on the discarded strap-on on the couch. Does she wear that all the time? Were you the first one she used that on? Because if you fucking weren't you better get yourself tested, that's for fucking sure. So now you had to ask to make sure if you had to get an appointment, and definitely not because you wanted to know if she had been with someone else.

"Do you wear that all the time?"

She chuckled softly, her smirk growing wider and now you're beginning to hate that look and what she's about to say.

"Yeah, so whenever I see a woman I'd like to fuck—"

"Get out." You won't let her finish or else you will finish her.

Her face fell completely flat, the cocky smirk disappearing as she registered your actual anger when you tore away yourself from her. "Hey, hey—" she stood as well, missing the warmth of your body together, "Wait, koroleva, I was joking."

Oh and you weren't.

"Get. Out."

She looked like a scolded child—all that confidence and swagger gone. As soon as you started walking towards her again, she scrambled to gather her jeans, binder, and top. She fumbled with the buttons of her jeans, while you stood there naked as you walked her towards your office door. She was terrified—not of the naked woman in front of her, but of your sudden coldness and the fact, that you can kill her with your bare hands.

"Detka, please wait, wait—hey, hey…" but you didn't listen, she was clearly trying to calm you down, but you are so calm in case she missed that because you haven't thrown her the knife you had been toying in your hand. You continue to walk her out while she stumbles backward, staring at you and the sharp thing you're playing. "Koroleva, I was joking!" she pleaded once again.

"Call me stupid nicknames and this knife will go straight to you, Black Widow."

Oh, Natasha didn't like that at all. Back with the titles again? After everything that had happened just a couple of minutes ago? Clearly, Natasha is now aware of the wrong actions she did and in the next few seconds, she's about to make one again…

"But, detka—"

You threw the knife straight at her and if Natasha wasn't able to grip the doorknob and get out fast, that knife would've gone straight to her left eye. She didn't even realize she is now outside breathing hard, the buttons of her top not in the proper places—while your guards, with their big guns, looked at her soul like they're ready to kill her as well. Luckily, Kate and Yelena was fast to get to Natasha to mediate the situation, kind of.

She turned to the door and knocked desperately while fixing her top buttons, "Y/N, please!" All the shame, all the title was long forgotten now as she beg for you.

"The hell happened?" Yelena, her sister asked while Kate eyes the guards carefully, not provokingly.

And you surprisingly opened the door.

All eyes were on you, but your guards immediately turned their backs as if they already knew what to do, as if they had already seen you like this before.

"Oh fuck." Kate drops her mouth at the sight of you, still naked.

"Goryachiy ad." (Hot hell) Yelena mutters before she turns around. When she sees that Kate was still gawking, she immediately hissed at her practically drooling for you. "Belova!" the tall girl groaned at the sight of you for the last time before she painfully turns around.

While Natasha really fought herself to grab your whole body so she could hide you from all the eyes that are solely on you. Or maybe tear the eyes away from the skull of those people who had already seen you like this. She just couldn't stand the thought of people seeing you this way, maybe some did—already did, but they would never make you feel what she made you feel just moments ago. She wants to hide you from the world and keep you in a place where she and only her can see.

"Y/N..." she fought her very best not to call you russian petnames, "I-I was..." she trailed off when her eyes went to your hands, holding the harness of her strap-on. She also fought her very damn hard best for her gaze not to go further down—she almost did, but the sound of you retrieving the knife from the doorway made her flinch and return her gaze on you.

Your eyes were killer and sharp, and so is your knife. You didn't tear your angry orbs away from her while you cut her strap-on harness with your knife in front of her, you threw the remaining ruined pieces on her feet before shutting the door close.

Nothing Burns Like The Cold: Masterlist

[vera-deville]

I am here with but one simple request, jack with a non-confrontational, socially anxious reader! it’s such a contrast with his own confrontational manner and lone-wolf nature that I think would be quite interesting to explore (๑>ᴗ<๑)

love your writing, keep up the good work ^_^ ♡

Louder Than Words 05/03/2025

Pairing: Jack Howl x Reader Word Count: 1,104 Warnings: N/A Gender: GN Tags: @qaxdea, @katzline Notes: Thank you so much! I really needed to hear that, and I'm so happy you enjoy my writing! Masterlist

You had always known that group projects were simply another nook of purgatory established to make life that much more devious to get through.

The very idea of them gave your stomach leeway to twist into anxious knots, constricting like a boa until you couldn't breathe anymore. It wasn't that you didn't like people (okay, perhaps a little), but it was more so that you didn't know what to do with them. The talking. The awkward "who's doing what" conversation. The silent tug-of-war when nobody wanted to take the lead, and everyone kept glancing around, waiting for someone to volunteer. You'd rather write five essays alone in a cave than do one group project with three strangers who barely remember your name.

So when Professor Trein announced a four-person Herbology research project, you nearly curled up under your desk and died on the spot.

And of course, fate - cruel, ironic fate - put Jack Howl in your group.

Jack, with his gruff voice and stone-faced demeanor. Jack, who didn't care if someone got upset when he said what he really thought. Jack, who had no problem walking straight into confrontation like it was a warm summer breeze.

You were going to die. Or cry. Possibly (most likely) both.

The rest of your group was rounded out by a loudmouth from Savanaclaw named Yulan, who had opinions about everything, and a sleepy Octavinelle student who you were 90% sure was just in it for the grade. That left you, nervous, anxious, and wouldn't-say-boo-to-a-ghost you, trying desperately to keep things from going up in smoke.

The first meeting went about as well as expected.

"I'm just saying, if we're talking about magical soil composition, we have to include the variant growth properties from the Scarabia greenhouse. That stuff is wild."

"Yeah, but that's not what the assignment's asking for," Jack cut in, arms crossed. "It says we need to focus on herbological integration in real-world applications, not theory."

"I am talking about a real-world application!"

"Not if you can't prove it," Jack said flatly.

Yulan slammed a notebook on the table. "You wanna bet?"

You could practically feel your soul saying goodbye to your body.

"Um...maybe we can, uh, do both?" You squeaked, almost whispering.

Neither of them heard you.

"Alright, I'm done arguing," Jack growled, standing up. "If you want to waste your time, go for it. But I'm not failing because someone can't read a prompt."

Yulan bristled. "Who're you calling someone, dog boy?"

You slid a little further down in your seat.

And yet, even after the shouting and the note-slinging and the pure chaos of that first meeting, Jack stayed behind when the others left.

You hadn't said a word in the last fifteen minutes. Just scribbled things in your notebook and tried not to look like you wanted to evaporate.

Jack leaned against the table, arms crossed, looking almost...thoughtful.

"Hey," He said. "You okay?"

You blinked. "Huh?"

He nodded toward your still-white-knuckled grip on your pen. "You looked like you were about to bolt."

You flinched. "I...I don't really do well with conflict. Or people in general."

Jack's ears twitched. "I could tell."

You braced yourself for the judgement. The teasing. The "well, toughen up" speech.

But it never came.

Jack looked away, scratching the back of his neck. "Didn't mean to snap like that. I just hate when people don't listen. It's not personal."

You blinked again. Slowly. "You...weren't mad at me?"

He snorted. "You didn't do anything."

That shouldn't have made you tear up the way it did.

"Thanks," You said softly. "I, um...I wanted to say something, but I didn't want to make it worse."

He looked down at you, golden eyes narrowing slightly. Not in judgement. In...curiosity?

"You always like this with people?" He asked.

You nodded mutely.

Jack grunted. "Then I'll talk to them."

"What?"

"I'll keep the loud ones off your back. You focus on the research stuff. You're good at that, right?"

"I-I guess so. I mean, I like organizing and writing..."

"Good," Jack said simply. "Then you do that. And if Yulan tries to start another debate, I'll shut it down."

You blinked. "Just like that?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You want me to not help you?"

"No! I just...I'm not used to people being that direct."

"Guess that's why I'm here," Jack muttered. "Balance."

From then on, Jack didn't just participate in the project - he managed it. Not in the way most people would simply take over, but rather by smoothing out the chaos so that you never had to. If Yulan got too loud, Jack would glare at him until he quieted down. If the Octavinelle student slacked off, Jack growled until he did something useful. And whenever it came time to present your findings to the professor, Jack always, always deferred to you to start the presentation.

"You did most of the writing," He'd shrug. "It's only fair."

You couldn't remember the last time someone had made you feel...capable. Protected, even. But never belittled.

It wasn't just about the project anymore.

Jack started walking with you to class after your meetings. He'd slow his pace to match yours, quietly adjusting his long strides so you didn't feel like you were trying to keep up. When he asked you questions, he actually listened - ears twitching every so often as you spoke, tail swishing thoughtfully behind him.

"You talk quiet," He once said, "But you say smart things."

You flushed all the way to your ears.

Eventually, you even got comfortable enough to sit with him at lunch. Jack didn't talk much, but you didn't feel like you had to either. He liked the silence. He thrived in it. And now, so did you.

"Can I ask you something?" You mumbled one afternoon as you sat underneath a tree, papers spread between you.

Jack nodded.

Why do you go out of your way to help me? I mean, I'm not...strong. Or brave. Not like you."

Jack looked at you for a long moment, then snorted.

"You ever try doing something when your heart's about to leap outta your chest? Walking into a room full of people, talking even when your throat locks up?" He shook his head. "That's strength, too. Just a different kind."

You stared at him.

Jack rolled his eyes. "Don't look at me like I said something poetic."

You laughed. "Sorry. You just surprise me sometimes."

He shrugged. "I like people who are real. You don't put on a front. You just...are."

Your chest swelled with something warm and unsure and a little fluttery.

Maybe group projects weren't all bad.

Author's Note: I've been in a bit of a rut lately, which I was really sad about, because a couple of months ago, I had a really good streak going, and I was churning out fics at a rapid rate. Unfortunately, I just kind of fell off that streak for a while. I'm trying to get back into it, and I also plan on opening commissions soon! Please be on the lookout for more information regarding that, and I hope you enjoyed this fic!

[kaddyssammlung]

The third one is from their US tour in 2023 Fans believe that it's between Vessel and mask. (makes the most sense but was never said)

First part:

Mask: They think you fake it. Vessel: What do you mean? Mask: When you cry on stage, they don't think it's real. Vessel : That's a reasonable assumption Mask : Do you fake it? Vessel : No, I don't. But it is something I do consistently, so if I was a member of the audience I would probably assume that it wasn't real. Mask : Do you ever see them crying? Vessel : No, I can only ever see them smiling. That's good, I want them to smile. Mask : Do you think they want you to cry? Do you think they like it? Vessel : Not as such, I think they just want to know that I am feeling something, feeling what they are feeling, perhaps. Mask : Do you think that this amount of crying is healthy for you? Vessel: I don't know. But at least I feel something, if I don't feel anything than why would I even do this?

Second part:

Mask: Why am I here? What is my purpose in all of this? Vessel: Your purpose is twofold. You protect me, from them, and you also protect them from me. Mask: How is it that I serve to protect anyone from anything, that makes no sense Vessel: In order for all of this to work there has to be a certain boundary in place. They need to be able to project themselves onto this, without anyone else's identity getting in the way. In turn, I need to be able to show my true self to them in a way that does not compromise their ability to connect. Mask: So that's what I am? A boundary? Vessel: Yes. Mask: I don't believe you. I believe there is more to it than that. I believe you are afraid of something. Vessel: We are all afraid of something, are we not? Mask: What is it you are so afraid they will see? Vessel: That I am exactly like everyone else.

Third part:

Mask: Are you afraid of me? Vessel: Sometimes... Mask: Why? Vessel: I think I am afraid of becoming you. Mask: What does that even mean? Vessel: My life is becoming gradually consumed by you. Before long, all that I am will be contained within you. Then, one day, when I no longer wish to wear you, there will be nothing else left. Mask: It seems you have forgotten who you are. Before you had me you were nothing. All of this artifice, all this pathetic conjecture about your identity, it is nothing but a manifestation of how short-sighted and solipsistic you have become. I lifted you from misery and obscurity. You would be better to become me. You are nothing without me. You always were nothing without me.

Last part:

Vessel: You. Are. Wrong. In the end, my fractured sense of self was only another piece of fuel for the fire that burns in the eyes of these people before us. They too are pained. They too not know who they truly are. They are each stood alone on a stage of their own. And yet, they are here. United by that sense of never truly belonging. They see something beyond their own bleak horizons. And they reach for it. Together. So let us join now. to reflect their joy and to serve as a conduit for their anguish. To swallow their fear. To Worship.

[cooking-with-hailstones]

Murderbot 1x08 thoughts

Literally so much happened. What the actual fuck. Wow. I have so many feelings. I'm literally about to rewatch the episode and I'll write down my thoughts as I go (obv spoilers under the cut here. I am also going to preface this by saying I'm slightly high writing this. Anyways here we go!)

(Now, I am not 100% sold on this because we know Secunit likes escapism, buuut also we know Secunit is a very unreliable narrator, and perhaps its watching this entirely going "haha, wow, so wild and unrealistic. How do humans come up with all these crazy ideas?? Anyways I'm gonna rewatch this scene with the navbot for the 168th time. For no reason.")

WOOHOO ANOTHER SANCTUARY MOON COLD OPEN

They are really hamming it up with this whole thing with the Navbot being a Secunit stand in that Secunit will never ever admit its projecting onto. The whole thing about not trusting a reconditioned unit? The whole "machine" monologue?? "When you inducted me into this hideous religion called love, you took away the only human who has ever shown me kindness" - I wonder if we're going to get a callback to this scene and if it's going to fuck me the fuck up.

HELL YEAH It's Graycris namedrop time! We seem to be setting up the same conclusion as ASR, so this is gonna be fun!!

Ratthi, never change. (Except do change. Please. Secunit is going to be very sad if you don't develop slightly more of a sense of self preservation)

Mensah jokingly calling secunit seccy did melt me a little bit SORRYyy

Murderbot's little snort is so endearing.

Gurathin: "this is how it started" about surgical painkillers? WOW.

It's not an episode of murderbot if there's not a teensy bit of body horror! :D

GOD. This entire scene... going to be chewing on this for MONTHS.

A while ago I said that this show delights in doing double dutch with campy comedy and heart-wrenching drama. This scene is now the crux of my hypothesis (along with watching SM with Mensah, and singing at the GC secunit)

What a day for every single person who enjoys murderathin bondage and feed exchanges (SOMEONE in that writers room has read Enemies, Closer)

"I didn't see it on Sanctuary moon. I saw it on MedCentreArgala" LMAO SCREAMING

Uh.

Uhmm

"Why can't you love me back" OKAY WHAT. SKARSGARD I LOVE YOU FOREVER FOR THE WAY YOU DELIVERED THAT I'M GOING TO CHEW ON THAT FOREVER. God Mensah's faaaace!!!! (also the visual of her dancing? looking generally beautiful? SO lovely)

"Did I just say something?" "NO YOU DIDN'T"

"One moment" OH SHIT OH FUCK OH SHIT OH DAMN!!

Gurathin crying while looking at the footage... I am... wow. Once again hats fucking off to Dastmalchian and Skarsgard.

Muderbot looks so fucking scared and hurt!!! "Don't. Don't!! DON'T!!!" HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BE NORMAL AFTER THIS???

Desperately grasping at straws to explain everything. "It could have been an implanted memory, or, or someone... maybe there was a combat override module involved."

"Yes. Maybe." GOD. FUCK. IT REALLY BELIEVES THAT. IT IS SO FUCKING SCARED OF ITSELF

AMANDA JONES you are amazing. The music in this episode is superb.

I'm not gonna say anything more about this scene. I am going to rewatch it a bajillion times though. You should go watch it too.

"It is not! your pet!" Mensah!!! I fucking screamed!!! Thank you for saying it!!!

Woohoo exposition about alien remnants, Graycris, the Company, etc. First time we get Mensah as planetary leader officially mentioned! Honestly, that was A LOT of exposition, and they did that very effectively. High five, writers!

Again, Amanda Jones. I love you, I am metaphorically kissing you. You're amazing.

"I HAVE A PLAN!!"

Hmm, woweee murderbot, your favourite episodes of Sanctuary Moon all center around constructs and the nature of personhood?

. Which could mean nothing.

...

"I have a... plan..?"

"Fuck"

Cue me, dying.

OVERALL:

I mean, I've rewatched all the murderbot episodes at least once, but this is the only one I've rewatched immediately upon finishing. This is so good, I am having so much fun and also legitimately moved. Alexander and David, you both made me tear up during The Scene. Fuck it. I'm gonna go watch it again right now!!!

OKAY and a few critiques:

I am legit unsure of how I feel about them making Sanctuary moon so... not escapist? Like I know they've been very intentionally using SM as some exposition for MB but this felt too on-the-nose. (Idk, because I also totally get it from a TV standpoint because scenes from this show is the only way to actually show the audience what Murderbot is feeling (it sure as hell won't share that itself). Also there's no point in doing all the work (and $$$ spent) that they've done for SM for it not to be advancing the plot. Okay I think I've talked myself out of this critique. CONCESSION GRANTED TO THE REQUIREMENTS OF DIFFERENT MEDIA)

The skill gap between different members of the cast continues to grow more and more apparent. I'M SORRY they are all doing their best but their bests are... different bests. MUCH LOVE TO ALL OF THEM I ENJOY THEM ALL But Alexander, David, Noma and Tamara are kind of blowing the throuple out of the water.

And another awkward Throuple scene. Okay. It was sweet and kinda funny, but feels very tonally out of place.

"The rogue secunit who betrayed its clients!" aight, writers, come on now. Don't make me retract my earlier high five. This just feels like you're trying to bait the tv audience and irritate the book audience.

[authenticcadence18]

I know you probably got flooded with fic requests, but maybe phinbella 20?

20. “…on a scar.”

AO3

Kiss Prompts

…

Phineas’s heart hammered, breath coming in ragged gasps as he ran, past happy reunions and celebrating rebels and droids offering complimentary cups of meiloorun cider to the newly-freed.

“One more hanger bay….”

He reached the doorway and allowed himself a single moment to stop, gather his bearings, and then keep going.

The final hanger bay was full to bursting. Pilots and fighters fresh from the Battle of Endor waved as they exited their ships, offering words of gratitude and excitement to Phineas as he passed.

(Though the Rebellion tried to keep it under wraps as a means of protecting him, it was no secret Phineas’ technology had been a key aspect in winning the battle—and the rebellion itself, it seemed.)

But Phineas had little interest in basking in his achievements right now.

He reached the final row of ships and…and…

Panic, razor sharp and suffocating, spiked in Phineas’s chest, nearly causing him to double over.

Because how could everyone celebrate right now. How could everyone be happy when Phineas’s world was falling apart, when so many worlds must have been falling apart.

He took off, running away from truth and triumph and toward the only place he’d had ANY semblance of control in this godforsaken rebellion.

Most of Phineas’s loved ones were accounted for.

Candace, Buford, and Baljeet had been in the second hanger he checked, Ferb the third, Perry the sixth. With each familiar face spotted, each comrade embraced, the knot in his chest loosened a little.

But now that he knew they were all safe, not in need of his worry, well, his mind went haywire over the one friend he didn’t find.

Phineas managed to hold it together until his workshop—the decently sized space where he kept tools, smaller projects, and parts for bigger repairs—came into view.

Tears blurred his vision as he slid open the slightly ajar door, entire body quivering as he sank to the ground and clutched at his temples.

“Maybe she had to rendezvous with another ship!!” he reasoned. “Or—or maybe she’s still in the air!!! maybe she had another mission maybe she had to tie up a loose end or rescue someone from the surface of Endor or maybe—maybe….”

He choked back a sob.

”…maybe……”

He pressed a hand against his mouth with a whimper.

“Maybe. She spent one second in that hanger bay and had to get out of there. Too many people.”

Phineas inhaled sharply.

He shot his gaze upward and—

There she was. Perched on his favorite stool. Elbow propped up on his work table. Turning a hexdriver he’d neglected to put away over in her hands.

“What do you call these things, again? I can never remember.”

One moment Phineas was on the ground and the next, he was at Isabella’s side, scooping her off the stool and into his arms.

“Isabella!! Isabella….. Isabella… ”

He tried to say more but any words beside her name caught in his throat, didn’t seem to matter, would never be able to convey everything he felt.

“…hey, Farmboy,” Isabella whispered back, a small smile tugging at her lips.

She typically wasn’t one for hugs but.

Well.

She made an exception for her Farmboy.

“I thought….I thought you were……I mean I checked every hanger!!! I found Ferb I found Candace I found everyone but you I couldn’t find you or your ship I must’ve missed it?? How did I miss it???? Oh I’m just. So happy you’re okay.”

(He hadn’t let go of her yet. In a minute, perhaps. Or two.)

“You didn’t miss it,” Isabella said, lightly patting his shoulder in an attempt to be comforting. “The Centennial Chihuahua didn’t make it. Another squadron bailed me out at the last second. Actually I wouldn’t have made it out at all if it weren’t for the heavy duty blast shields you installed last year so. Thanks for that. ”

Phineas leaned back as she spoke, though he took care to keep holding her. “Oh…Isabella I’m so sorry.”

Isabella shrugged. It felt foolish to mourn the loss of a ship, when so many others had lost a great deal more, and yet.

The Chihuahua had been her only true home for as long as she could remember.

It was hard not to feel a bit sad.

“I’ll build you a new one!!!” Phineas promised. “With all the modifications you could ever want. Or not!!! It can be exactly the same as it was, or I can build it just how it was before we met, I’ll literally build anything and everything for you just say the word and—and….”

His voice trailed off as he actually took a moment to properly look at Isabella and…

A cold chill went down his spine.

“Isabella…..”

Phineas’s hand rose of its own accord, hovering just above her chin, above the faded scar that pierced the corner of her lip and ended in a jagged line on her cheekbone.

“….what happened?”

Isabella glanced at his hand, eyebrow narrowed, and he quickly drew it back, as if she were still freshly wounded and he might hurt her.

“Oh, you mean this?”

She gestured to her scar with a halfhearted grin.

“It was awhile ago!! Firestar Girl stealth mission gone wrong, I spent THREE WEEKS in a med bay, oh it was horrible. Too many people.”

“How long ago is awhile ago??” Phineas demanded.

Isabella shrugged.

“Well, it was right after you souped up my hyperdrive, actually. So…”

“…six months.”

(Six months, one week, and four days, to be exact.)

“Yeah.” Isabella glanced off to the side, picking Phineas’s hexdriver back up and spinning it on the table.

“That sounds about right.”

Phineas just blinked at her, fingers twitching, an unfamiliar rage flickering to life in his chest.

Rage at the Empire, who’d caused Isabella and the entire galaxy so much pain, so much suffering. (For THIS rage, at least, justice had finally been served. That helped a little.)

Rage at the Rebellion, who’d kept him from being at her side for any longer than sporadic handfuls of hours dedicated strictly to repairs, kept him from even knowing any more than the most basic details of her exploits as a matter of security, kept him tucked away because he was “too valuable” to go into the field.

Rage at himself, for involving her in his ragtag mission to return the Death Star plans four years ago, for getting her involved in all this in the first place, for never breaking protocol to help her outside of officially-sanctioned repairs.

And, illogically, rage at Isabella, who, for all her “devil-may-care” attitude, hadn’t bothered to break the rebellion’s protocol by asking him for help aside from said repairs.

“….this must’ve been how Ferb felt.”

That thought was enough to snap Phineas back to reality. Rage wouldn’t do him any good at this point.

So instead he asked:

“Does it still hurt?”

Isabella shook her head. “Nah. I mean sometimes my lip feels a little weird but I’m used to it. And it’s really not a big deal! Rebels get injured all the time.”

She puffed out her chest and added, “And NOW I look extra cool.”

Phineas couldn’t help but chuckle. “Well, I can’t argue with you there.”

He gestured to her scar and asked, “May I?”

“Knock yourself out,” Isabella replied.

She tried to ignore the way her pulse spiked as he gently cupped her face in his hand, to ignore the way she blushed as he gingerly traced the path of her scar with his thumb, starting with her cheekbone and then lingering at her lip.

For a long moment he just stared. At what?

At her lip? At her scar? At her?

Isabella swallowed.

“….so. are you gonna kiss me or what?”

This was a bluff, of course. Meant to tease him.

Phineas had never initiated a kiss with her.

Frankly they hadn’t kissed much at all the past four years, save for a handful of quick thank you pecks on Isabella’s part that always left him stunned.

There simply hadn’t ever been time—or privacy—for that sort of thing.

(And maybe it was easier for Isabella. To treat whatever this was as casually as she could. To pretend her affection for Phineas didn’t expand with each infrequent visit. It wasn’t as if she thought about him constantly in the field, wasn’t as if the only reason she could sleep some nights was knowing he was safely tucked away where she could always find him.)

So. To say she was surprised when Phineas actually drew her close and found first her scar, and then her mouth with his own was an understatement.

He kissed her with such intention, such reverence that, well, Isabella couldn’t help melting into his embrace, draping her arms over his shoulders and reciprocating with equal measure.

Warmth blossomed in her chest as seconds ticked by, familiar and yet new too.

When Phineas drew back, Isabella blinked at him with a wry grin, arms still tangled around his neck.

“….well! That was some kiss!!!! You’ve been holding out on me, Farmboy.”

Phineas didn’t smile back, gaze so severely impassioned Isabella almost had to look away.

This couldn’t have been the same boy who’d nearly fainted if she so much as pecked his cheek.

What was going on in his head?

“I fell in love with you the day we met, Isabella.”

And for a moment, it WAS that day. They were just kids again, tucked into a cantina booth, blasting into hyperspace aboard the Chihuahua, kissing for the first time over a barrel.

“I know that’s crazy. Call it The Force, call it a trauma bond…but I did. I fell in love with you the day we met and….I’ve been falling ever since.

“I don’t want to go back to how things were. I want more than this.”

Phineas gestured to his workshop with one hand before bringing it back to cup Isabella’s cheek.

“We’ve spent four years fighting and we might’ve finally won we get to make new futures and I just. I want a future with you, Isabella. I want to go wherever you go. And I want to spend time with our— er, my friends and family too, of course we don’t have to spend every single moment together but. I can’t lose you. I can’t go back to only seeing you twice a year, if that. I spent four years worried I’d lose you and. I just. Want to be with you. Maybe that’s what I’ve been fighting for all along.”

Isabella just gazed up at him.

“….our….” she finally whispered.

Phineas cocked an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Our friends,” she repeated. “Our family. At least…I’d like them to be ours. To be mine too.”

She took a deep breath before continuing.

“Before I met you, well…people never stuck around. Not like you have. You were my first real friend, and…..and I don’t want to lose you either, Phineas.”

There would be time for Isabella to express herself more clearly.

To reveal how deeply she admired his kindness, his tenacity for inventing, his loyalty.

To admit what she’d barely admitted to herself, that she’d been fighting for him this entire time too.

To confess she loved him and wanted a future with him as badly as he wanted it with her.

But for now, well. That was enough. Right?

From the way Phineas’s eyes shone, beaming at her as if she was the most wonderful, incredible marvel he’d ever seen, she figured it had been enough.

“Should we go find them, then?” Isabella asked, gliding her hand down his arm until it met his and twining their fingers together. “Our friends, I mean? They’re probably gearing up for a celebratory musical encore as we speak.”

“We should!!” Phineas replied. “But first…..”

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with a smile so soft it made Isabella’s “devil-may-care” heart ache.

And when he pulled her in for one more kiss, she was more than happy to kiss him back.

Isabella could get used to this.

…and she intended to.

…

Thanks for reading! I looooved writing this, I love Star Wars phinbella so bad. And this was highly inspired by my friend @palizinhaindanville’s pnf Star Wars fics, I highly recommend!!

as always, reblogs and tags/comments are never expected but always appreciated😊😊😊

[ameliapodcast]

I am kind of bored and about to make it everyone else's problem (Matt's problem, I mean).

Do you have some hyper specific headcanon about the Amelia Project Staff?

Me, for example, am a firm believer that Joe has a chipped front tooth and that Salvatore and him were baptized in the same church, attending the same Sunday catholic school. They have matching rosaries.

Arthur and Alvina like the same chocolate liqueur brand.

Arthur and Amelia are the worst drunks EVER. They will tend to the worst imaginable ideas ever while drunk. Terrible ppl to be taken care of.

What about you, Intern?

Oh dear, the can of worms you just opened. A few dumb headcanons by my molten brain, while I wait for my washing machine being done. None of this is canon, I am just jumping on the train wagon here...

Arthur and Alvina like to judge "fake deaths" from movies, tv and books. Why? Because I played Genshin, and there was a 10/10 dramatically faked death, but the guy then wanted to end up solving his own murder. Zero stars for *that*. Or that, uh, one TV show where- *sunglasses*. ANYWAYS.

Kozlowski has the weirdest music taste. I do firmly believe that he likes a few specific songs by David Kushner though. Dance Battle with himself in the basement, perhaps?

Alvina introduced Arthur to the Sims2 for Nintendo DS, especially the hotel one from 2005. The had to take it away because he got absorbed too much. Also, he thinks that Honest Jackson faked his death in an awful manner - not believing anyone it was a bug.

They gave Kozlowski Nintendogs. Nobody knows what happened to them (Mia and Jackie get confused when he suddenly takes out a pink Nintendo DS Lite and feeds the dogs though. He's good at this).

Amelia hates popcorn. Don't ask me why.

Arthur once chased Alvina with a broom for cocoa reasons (nobody knows where he got the broom from)

Alvina steals pens from everyone and everywhere. Can never have enough pens

why do I think that all the case files are written on fancy Midori paper

Again, nothing is canon here. Just. Does this help?

ANYWAYS, send headcanons! Please! I LOVE and ADORE!

[marielle555]

Thank you so much! Everything you said is spot on. And helped me realize, what it is this feeling that at one time specifically ruined the perception of BG3. Metagaming. I'm a big fan of DnD and RPGs as well. Before I met BG3, I'd had the great pleasure of going through both Pathfinder games and a few other interesting games before that and they gave me quite a few amazing hours of immersion in a fantasy world. BG3 also first gave me that immersion, and then threw me out of it, making me become for a while an exceptionally sad average person from real life, sitting next to a PC screen and writing feedback, in which behind the “wall of text” hid the same meaning: "***! What the ***! Fix your *** in the game!" A unique gaming experience and a uniquely striking contrast, the likes of which I couldn't have imagined if I hadn't encountered in person - an amazing, truly extraordinary character - Astarion, who makes you fall in love with him so much, that you simply don't want anyone else, that I didn't want to give up on him “without a fight” after patch 6, and such, to put it mildly, “ flaws” in his romance, that if someone had told me about it in advance, before I had time to get attached to the character personally, I would not only never touch this game, but even the studio itself with any other projects I would probably avoid it like the plague. But thanks to this interaction with a real player, I learned a lot of new information - what a non-con is, what modern game-therapy approach to healing trauma is, how bad it is to sexualize game characters, and that “all modern vampires,” it turns out, are “tragic”…

Why should I even care what they have going on with “modern” vampires? I bought BG3 because I adored the BG series games, I need Faerûn to be there, my character needs to be a resident of it, and she fell in love with a vampire on Faerûn. This world exists separate from all this “modernity”, therapy language, all this ‘'sexualization’' stuff, some rules of ‘'healthy/unhealthy relationships’' and whatever else is fashionable at this particular stage concretely in Western culture. This world has its own lore, its own rules by which it exists. This idea of “vampire fetishization” that “should” bother a vampire-Astarion, living on Faerûn, completely spits on DnD's lore. And that "There's nothing more desirable in the world than a vampire, is there? “, which completely defies logic, and is in irresolvable contradiction with realistic and actual: ”People don't trust vampires - perhaps understandably - so I needed to get someone on my side“, makes Astarion cease to be Astarion, and become a signboard for those, who for some unknown reason wanted to declare vampire romance as something ‘bad’ and ”unhealthy". And replace it with a healthy sexualization of bears to “improve society”, no other way…

Up until Act 3, the game was going great. There were some rough edges and “stumbles” that didn't kill, but somewhat spoiled the immersion, like the inability to tell the companions trying to seduce Tav, that you are already in a relationship with Astarion. The first sense that you're not the hero of the story comes in the dialogue with Halsin, when that line about you already being in a relationship comes off as completely obnoxious, as if you're okay with Halsin's proposal despite Astarion's love... And you're no longer the heroine of the story, but a boring monogamous heterosexual woman, who has to realize that being monogamous isn't cool or modern. Okay, here I can still imagine that the heroine of the story, unlike me, is a slight-talker, and isn't going to spend any more time on Halsin than it takes to say one word: “No” and move on. But in Act 3 it's just not possible anymore, when you can't pick a line in a scene because they're all no good, but you have to poke your mouse at something or the game won't continue, it's a really awful feeling. And yeah, without spoilers we can't know for sure, without spoilers I honestly assumed that “I want your body” was also some other modern day bullshit, like “it's cool to talk frankly about sex” because the game itself is unabashedly sexualized, with everyone hitting on Tav all the time, including illithid. It was just done poorly, but without spoilers I didn't realize it was done intentionally.

And after the check with mind-reading and “you're degrading yourself...”, to which it is impossible to react, for the first time in my life I had an acute desire for negative interaction through “kinetic discussion” directly with the author of the scene, especially because of the combination of these rails with the ‘possibility’ of “kicking him in the balls”. Why was such an abomination added, filmed, and no normal reactions? I generally find it disgusting that the game has such an “opportunity” and the only way to justify it in and of itself would be if it was possible to hit everyone, absolutely everyone in the game in cutscenes - Karlach, Jaheira, Wyll, Shadowheart, Gale, Lae'zel, Halsin, Mystra (in Gale Origins), only then would it pass as an opportunity for roleplay. This kind of feeling seems to be due to a side effect of Welch's desire to constantly interact directly with the player rather than the character, the player also starts thinking about “Who wrote this?!” instead of enjoying their favorite escapism.

The only thing that makes the situation better and allows you to continue enjoying the game is the mods and the realization, that Astarion can't think you helped him ascend just because you're thirsty for vampire lords. I used to not be very fond of mods, even cosmetic ones, so as not to disrupt the original story in any way or bring something into the fantasy world that couldn't be in it. BG3 was an exception - mods become a “magic pill”, modders are amazingly talented and, what is especially nice, mods do not break immersion, but, on the contrary, help it, making the story better and more realistic.

I agree with you, and I can't say that Baudelaire Welch is a bad writer. It's entirely possible that they are a good writer. They are a bad scriptwriter for RPG games. A player character in an RPG should not be any kind of “narrative tool”, much less one with emotions spelled out by the author. Even Tav's inappropriate facial expressions at many plot points are annoying. This would be fine in a game with a pre-made character, who already has their own appearance, personality, and backstory, but in a game, where you create your own character, it spoils the game. And it could easily be avoided by simply moving the camera more often to companions or NPCs at times, when the PCs' emotional reactions might be different - the player knows how they feel about it, and besides, looking at a companion while talking to them is much more realistic than looking “at yourself”. And when you're a character in someone else's fanfic, why doesn't the game description say FPG (fanficplay game)? It would be better to invent a new genre than to cheat fans of a genre that has been around for a long time. And the very idea of inviting a fanfic author is really bad, since the script should be written by a professional screenwriter. Wouldn't Stephen Rooney, a professional screenwriter, have written the entire Astarion's romance on his own? A screenwriter of that caliber, who clearly doesn't need anyone to “help” him with his writing at all. Fane's romance in Divinity 2 was perfectly written, and if I'm not mistaken, there was no “special writer” for the romances when Larian did Divinity 2, and there were no major problems with the romances in Divinity either. The fanfiction community has always been perfectly fine gathering around any interesting game setting, people were perfectly fine realizing their fantasies using RPG plots written by professional screenwriters. And among the authors of Astarion fanfics there are people, who write better than Baudelaire Welch, Larian could at least organize a fair contest, if they wanted to add a fanfiction author to the scripting team....

And the anti-AA “fandom” is made up of people who don't understand a damn thing about roleplaying, RPGs, or DnD. Astarion “loses his soul” (I think that even sounds ridiculous to any DM or relatively experienced DnD player), then he has “textbook signs of abuser” (you can take a textbook, find signs of abuser in anti-AA themselves, find signs of abuser in Tav in the UA route - it's not hard, but I'd really like to do without textbooks at all, which can't be written on Faerûn).  “Your Tav feels this or that, your Tav is ‘”asking for freedom“’, right down to multiple statements about real players really '”wanting a hot vampire daddy“, ”gooners", and so on. Maybe some “media literate” people need someone to write everything for them, including reality, need authorities to tell them what to think, what to say, and who are the ‘'gooners’' here, but I would hate to be forced to apply my own media literacy to games, figuring out what's the reason that my game is being ruined, what's the “agenda” and what's the preaching in honor of. When in the real world you need this very media literacy to be able to separate facts from lies, in a game you want to take a break from it all. The very essence of escapism is a temporary escape from reality. People whose level of “literary literacy” is at the level of a middle school student, when it is necessary to memorize from the textbook “what the author wanted to say”, to mumble it or write it in an essay and get praise for it, are probably attracted by such simplistic stories about “the cycle of abuse”, “power corrupts” and they accept the metagame and the author's attempts to “teach them”, the main thing is that it was clear, what button to press and how to sexualize someone correctly, so that they could write “good person” in their notebook for it. But I personally buy a book, when I want to read a book, and watch a movie, when I want to be a spectator, and the main pleasure of RPG is the possibility of immersion, the possibility of being inside these events, personal interaction with the characters. If you don't like a book, you can easily drop it, if the series has gone downhill, you can just stop watching it and find another one, but when your character in an RPG is replaced by a doppelgänger created by the author and you can't do anything about it - it's a completely different feeling. And when they try to force you to part with your beloved character, your LI, who looked at you through the screen and interacted with you and not with the heroine of the series - that's a completely different feeling too.

In Daeran romance (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous) there is a moment, where you can kill the character Liotr, who has learned his secret. Daeran can also kill him himself, you can persuade Liotr, and not kill him. Funny thing is, I found out about the fact that you can choose not to kill him after playing the game by reading the guide, I also found out that it's killing a story NPC, turns out to be a very bad thing, “doing evil for Daeran's sake” according to some people. And I seem to have gotten what is considered his “evil ending” or not, I don't know, the ending was great and very happy, was too lazy to dig further on the internet to find out what it was called. The main thing is that the authors didn't try to “teach” me at all, there was no “very bad” in the game, immersion wasn't interrupted for a second. Pathfinder is perfectly playable blind, without requiring a single spoiler or any guides during the first playthrough. You can read the guides afterwards to marvel at the possible branching of the scenario and the thoughtfulness of the plot and wonder: “Wow, it was possible even that way!” I would never have thought, “being inside the plot”, that it would be possible to let someone who knows such a terrible secret of my beloved person live, and killing Liotr feels like a necessary decision. Yes, an evil act, but an evil act in a “do what you have to do” kind of way, sometimes you have to get your hands dirty, and I wasn't even robbed of the alignment of chaotic-good for that act. In Daeran's romance, there's a line for the PCs, “I will always support you” or “I will always be on your side” (not verbatim) that you choose, and interestingly enough, it's a non-alignment line - love has no alignments, it's something more important than '‘good’ and “evil”. In BG3 for Astarion, we don't have anything like that after he Ascended. Although there was a similar answer in one of the dialogs before that, in the dialog when Astarion wants to find the other spawns. Where did that intention then disappear to? In the same dialog with Daeran, next to this main line, there was also a line leaning the player's alignment “towards good” - something about “you can always be a better person”, something in memory directly giving away the waibes of the UA route. And the line “towards evil” - something about Daeran being a tool for you. When such a line is just there - well, maybe that's how someone roleplays, it doesn't get in the way. In a good RPG bad lines are not noticeable, you just slip a glance and choose another, “your” line, and they can not be called bad, when they are not imposed on anyone, when it is one of many options. In Daeran's romance, it's one “evil” line. In the dialog after the ritual, it's ALL lines. “I want to become a vampire” and “I want your body” - Astarion is seen as a “tool” for Tav + two lines for lecturing and scolding.

After I killed Liotr, Daeran didn't think I was “sexualizing” him. When Daeran says “freedom at last” and you ask him why, he says: “because it's the most beautiful thing, except life itself, and many fail to appreciate it”. The Ascended Astarion would probably think the same thing, not that I “lust for him as a vampire”. When I asked Daeran “does he feel lonely around me” in the romantic dialog, he said “no, especially after you got your hands dirty for me”. And Astarion has instead “You're degrading yourself by staying with him...”  And one really gets sad for such a unique and wonderful character like Astarion, when you compare the writing of his romance to Daeran's romance, which was written by professional screenwriters.

“Escapism is the main point of any roleplaying game” - thank you, and I'd awfully like to see studios that produce roleplaying games have a sign with that inspirational phrase hanging in an office somewhere.

I often read that Astarion has two authors, Rooney and Welch. I'd be interested to know what influence Welch had on the AA story. Some also say that his story was "watered down" by Larian. Objectively, though, only Tav's facial expressions changed, so I don't know what else would have changed in his story. Thanks for your answer.

Baudelaire Welch, a former “the companion character designer lead” who has been working on Baldur's Gate 3 as “the romance feature lead”, in their own words, “wrote quite a few of the Astarion romance dialogues in the later period of production”. Unfortunately, this author's work, their views, and their personal perception of how game romances affect real-life romances have been largely a bad influence on the romance of Ascended Astarion. It was Welch's view that the Ascension was a “bad ending” for Astarion that was subsequently hyped by AA haters (Stephen Rooney, the author of Astarion, himself corrected this by saying that the Ascension was not Astarion's ‘bad’ ending, it was his “evil” ending). Their somewhat twisted understanding of romance and desire to make the players feel like failures was expressed in this one:

Article: "Baldur's Gate 3 writer's explanation of Astarion's 'bad' ending is a wake-up call for players lusting over RPG characters".

This kind of insult to the audience, the portrayal of players as sex-crazed (which was later used heavily against Astarion's fans) goes a long way towards explaining where this single mind-reading check in the game came from, which is impossible to react to, and provides no additional options for interaction. The author “wrote” a certain sex-crazed player, creating scenes without the possibility of any roleplay. Accordingly, the scene of dialog with the worst lines (“I want your body”, etc.) and the same impossibility of roleplay, also belongs to Welch's pen. As a player I can only reply: "I failed to see a good RPG in the third act. It's beyond my understanding of classic RPG games". These lines and this check have already been criticized and discussed many times, but the essence of the logic of this narrative is best conveyed here:

(Picture taken from Larian forum, author Ametris, was published on the forum during the period of active indignation of players after patch 6)

How the author managed to ascribe such motivation to the players is, of course, a mystery, as is where the theme of sex is traced during the Ascension ritual, why Astarion can be helped without having romance with him, and why sex can be refused (the romance is preserved). And of course, for submitting to this imposed narrative, the player who leaves Astarion a spawn forever will be rewarded with sex. But without the cutscene. As for the post-Ascension sex scene itself, Welch claimed she didn't know it existed.

Thank you so much to Larian's animation team! You are the best! We can roughly conclude from this that the Welch's authorship of the scene of the night after the Ascension may only include the lines. I even suppose that the very notes of the developers for this scene could belong to Stephen Rooney himself (but this is only an assumption, it is impossible to find information about who wrote these notes).

These developer notes clearly describe how Astarion and Tav love each other and how Astarion is powerful and free. So, thanks for everything we love about this scene, to the animators and to Neil and his beautiful acting. And if you compare the lines for the player, you'll see a strong difference in the quality of writing compared to other scenes of Astarion's romance - Act 1 scene (this scene is written by Stephen Rooney and it's great) everything is fine with the roleplay, Act 3 is a scene of 4 bad lines, it's just impossible to make a choice while maintaining immersion. You can even just compare Tav's facial expression in act 1 scene (when you offer Astarion your neck and he bites you) - the facial expression is adequate to the situation, it's real, as it should be - a smile, you can see that Tav is enjoying it, and in act 3 they imposed a stupid frowning face, and the surprise is as if it's the first time Astarion bit you, and in general everything is bad and Tav just tolerates it. One is left to fantasize about how great the romance could have been if Stephen Rooney had written the entire story of Astarion and every line in it by himself. “A Gentle Line” would have been beautiful for sure. But these are dreams, and in reality, unfortunately, the post-Ascension scene was regularly made worse starting in patch 4:

(From Larian Forum, author Ametris)

Also in this interview with Welch and Schick: “Baldur's Gate 3 Writers Break Down the Craft of Video Game Sex and Romance” you can learn more about the writers' approach to romance. Interesting that:

“In contrast, romance was baked into Baldur’s Gate 3 from the beginning, and Larian developed its dynamic animation system to account for characters having to hug and kiss.” As a result, we have one hug in the Act 2 scene (and that in this scene for confession of feelings for me this action seems too weak, compared to the possibility to open the mind, which I find more serious and sincere). Except it's possible to regularly load a save just to hug Astarion, but within the story Astarion wasn't hugged once until the mod.

“It used to be set up so that the only way that romances could begin was this one night in the party, where you could only pick one character,” Welch says, “And then basically, that character would end up being your love interest for the whole rest of the game.”

This locked fans into dating the same character simply due to a few choices made toward the start of the game. As a fan before coming to work at Larian, though, Welch wished players could experience love triangles and multiple partners.”

It's unfortunate the resources went into this. I was honestly rather saddened to learn that BG3 was originally intended to be a good classic RPG with a romance with a single companion. I can imagine how rich the romance could have been, if all the resources wasted on bears, cheating, “choices between the two” and whatnot had been shared between the romances with LI. For Act 1 there's 2 hours of extra content created for all those triangles (including lines, scenes, and companion reactions), but a hug for Astarion - no, not even in the epilogue, just as there's no kiss in the epilogue, nor is there any opportunity for a “gentle” romance.

And to this:

“People often write fanfiction that is deeply about conflict, about angst, about actual challenges that are being overcome in a relationship,” Welch says. “There are quite a lot of really heartbreaking break-up scenes that happen in Baldur’s Gate 3. That’s the thing that people don’t necessarily consider being an important part of romance.”

I think there's a reason people don't consider breakups an important part of romance. Games are about escapism and fun after all. There's no way I'd pay $70 to get frustrated and get something as unpleasant as a relationship breakup in a game. Fine, let it be, if someone likes it, as an extra option that doesn't get in the way and doesn't take a lot of resources away from the main romance line. I believe that romance in the game and lines for the player should be made for those players, who love the character, and all this side stuff like breakups and fights can be added as an option for those, who want to break up the romantic relationship, but not in the amount of tons of nasty lines for Tav for more than half of the content with no possibility to say “I love you”, hug and kiss gently (which is unfortunately the case in the Ascended Astarion romance). The possibility of a breakup is a common sideline for romance, yes, it should exist in RPGs, but to give it so much importance, to define the romance by it, is ridiculous. But the haters really fucked up AA fans with their “you can't break up with him”. And it's worth pointing out the hypocrisy of praising “Endless Thirsty Fan Art” and sex speedruns on the one hand, and on the other - note the very title of the article, “Baldur's Gate 3 writer's explanation of Astarion's ‘bad’ ending is a wake-up call for players lusting over RPG characters.” Players are being insulted and called gooners for… Wanting to help their beloved character in a plot quest! Just to prevent a tragic outcome for him with “Astarion will remain a spawn forever” and a finale that looks and is essentially a poorly executed quest for an evil companion. And I'm not at all against the first one, I fully support diversity and providing different options in games so people can fulfill whatever sexual fantasies they want without any judgment, but just without this kind of hypocrisy and trying to insult and ruin the game for a portion of the audience who paid the same price for the game as everyone else.

In the game Baudelaire Welch seems to have decided to “shame” fans of vampire romance - in the dialog of non-romantic Astarion after meeting Oblodra in Act 2 we can hear his line: “There's nothing more desirable in the world than a vampire, is there?” and their favorite “degradation” (“It's degrading that people like her fall for it”). This gives haters the opportunity to compare fans of the Ascended Astarion to this very same Oblodra. In order to learn about Oblodra's attraction to Astarion one must play through the game without having a romance with him. Otherwise the meaning of the insult slips away (as it did for me the first time I saw such a comparison, thanks to Arachnomancer for commenting on my previous post with detailed lines). How unrealistic this line sounds in the world of Faerûn, where vampires are feared and clearly not “desired”, well, it's a pretty well known phenomenon that when the agenda comes to the forefront, the lore of the world, realism and other things of little importance to preach cease to matter. It's possible to imagine that Astarion might have encountered something similar in the past, but in the rest of the game, except for this place, attitudes towards vampires are shown differently. In the romantic dialog, Astarion can say, “People don't trust vampires - perhaps understandably - so I needed to get someone on my side. And seducing you was easy, frankly.” He needed protection, because people don't trust vampires, which sounds logical. And the motivation to seduce Tav for the sake of that protection made sense too. Astarion admits that Tav was his first (in terms of a bite, the first person to voluntarily give him their blood, and Astarion took it as a gift “This is a gift, you know. Thank you - I won't forget it.") And he definitely was hiding the fact that he was a vampire, when he was forced to seduce victims for Cazador. The Curse of the Vampyr book (the first of which is literally right in the first tomb) - also illustrates how vampires are treated in the world of Faerûn. Companion reactions after the bite scene. The girl in the sewers (whom Petras has invited, in order to drink her dry, celebrating what he thought would become his freedom), we can tell her that the guy she's waiting for is a vampire, and she'll be scared and completely unwilling to stay waiting for the most desirable lover. Astarion also didn't want to risk stirring our desire too quickly and hid the fact that he was a vampire, early in the adventure. What fans of vampire romance got was preachy, and RPG fans got degradation. The degradation of the genre, when in Act 3 you suddenly get an RPG novelization.

And it's funny how with one hand, bestiality is added to the game (Baudelaire Welch also authored the infamous bear scene, which they say was done for the sake of some “horny shitposting” fans who do it with their friends on Discord, you can see more about it in their “Romance Design in Video Games” lecture below, and game magazines have also written about it, “A sort of shit-eating grin was on my face when I was pitching it”), and the other hand is an accusation for players who like vampire romance. Well, okay, they don't accuse all vampire sexualizers (if you don't let Astarion Ascend, he won't stop being a vampire, but he is allowed to be sexualized), they only accuse players who like healthy vampire romance (when the vampire is healthy, not burning or starving), and try to claim that we're “experiencing the pleasure of degradation”.

But, the main thing is that Larian did not force players to finally break up with the game and changed Tav's facial expressions in the kisses to adequate ones. The animations of the D/s scenes for Ascended Astarion's kisses were filmed separately, and the words “scared, sad and pained”, (were discovered by the modders in the game's code) were used in order to draw the facial expressions of a rape victim on the faces of the player characters as a “Valentine's Day gift”. There is no confirmation that this was the entire studio's idea. Stephen Rooney, sadly, left Larian before patch 6 was released and he had nothing to do with these disgusting scenes. Patch 7 fixed this, and most likely led the kissing to the version of the content that was previously intended as fanservice. During Larian's appearance at PAX West 2024, when answering a question about sexuality in BG3, Adam Smith mentioned that they purposely added "kinky" sexual scenes into the game to make things more authentic, and that they consider that a good thing that they're proud of. He said, "We wanted it to feel authentic... I don't think sexuality should be controversial; different kinks, arousals, fetishes, whatever it might be... I think it's okay for things to be sexy.” Larian positioned the romance in BG3 as a dating simulator before, and by including BDSM romance, they chose Astarion for the dominant role because he's best suited for it. And the horrible faces for the player character is like Welch's attempt to “finish their novel” (as their fans used to threaten that “the novel must be finished”) at the expense of a wonderful character written by Stephen Rooney and at the expense of cheating players (patch 6 in regards to Astarion's fanservice was a fraud and consumer deception - given that the genre of the game purchased was RPG and the roleplay in the romance line was absent and replaced with low quality fanfic). Unfortunately, these scenes were also triggering and triggered PTSD in many people. (“New Astarion kisses in Baldur's Gate 3 have a disturbing effect on fans and here's why”).

Perhaps Mx Welch thought this was some kind of uniquely innovative approach. In his lecture Romance Design in Video Games:

Welch presented a list of what they think will make romances in games more interesting for players (and what I would call “A Practical Guide: How to Make a Player Unhappy in Your Game with Romantic Relationships.”):

It seems like the disgusting “kisses” designed to victimize the player by stripping them of agency and painting horrible faces on their characters was a failed attempt at realizing point 6. And the haters “fandom” with their “Cazador 2.0”, “soul loss” and other nonsense that is based on nothing is a realized point 5. So seeing gaslighting in a BG3 game definitely succeeded, albeit not in the romance of the game, but in the fandom. In AA romance, there's an opportunity for a roleplay of a toxic partner, all the negativity goes through Tav - lines for Tav (like “You're like Cazador”), imposed facial expressions, no opportunity for roleplay there, where it might have elicited some particular deep emotional reaction from Astarion (you can see the potential of AA's romance in chatbots, even in hater's chatbots, how much he loves and reacts if the player has the opportunity to write their lines, but, in the game, alas, we have a scene of 4 negative lines). Plus “mind-reading” with “degradation” is an imposition on the writer's (Welch's) position. It's a tricky screenwriting move (but “tricky” in a bad way) - the line reflects Astarion's inner state, combined with his character, his inner pain and his self-esteem because of his trauma, and that's what Welch used. But combined with the inability to do anything about it, we get trapped. We have to validate this self-perception of his, while at the same time allowing the author to stigmatize ourselves and fit us to their narrative, as in the tale of the Little Mermaid, who gives her voice to the Witch to save the prince. Plus it gives an opportunity for someone to take that line as if Astarion sees Tav as inferior to himself, or twist it to favor their propaganda. The dialogue scene before this is also a deliberate violation of all laws of the RPG genre - it's purposely done this way, in order to make the player look like a “sexualizer” and give a “feel bad ending”. I believe Welch's contribution is primarily Tav and the lines for Tav (yes, and all those relationship-breaking lines). Of course, Welch did some good stuff ("Aeterna Amantes. Lovers forever, until the world falls down” is their line, according to their fans, the scene of Act 2 is also good and very touching). Exactly what other Ascended Astarion lines belong to their pen is probably unlikely to be known for sure. I've read that Stephen Rooney wrote the epilogue and Astarion at the party after the epilogue, but I have no confirmed evidence of that. But it seems true - the adorable animations of Astarion at the party - the bat, the costume, the way Astarion throws the cup, plays with daggers, etc. seem to me to match Rooney's writing. And the lack of hugs and kisses just for us, just for our fandom, just for our Astarion is more like Welch's solution. Although, considering that even after Welch left, even though they changed our faces, none of the other requests were fulfilled, perhaps the blame for the deterioration of Astarion's romance also lies with those who officially own the rights to the BG3 characters - Wizards of the Coast. Shortly before Patch 6, Wizards of the Coast had mass layoffs of people, many of whom had worked with Larian and interacted with them about the BG3 game. At the very least, don't blame it solely on Welch, there were probably other individuals willing to shove this trashy preaching to players in romance and label Astarion as an “abuser”.

I would also like to call attention to this quote from the Baudelaire Welch lecture:

“In this dialogue, I directly wanted to make the player feel bad for having learned the mentality of click-the-right-dialogue-options-to-get-sex-in-video-games, as that's kind of been baked into us as romance players of previous generations of RPGs. In this scene, it's you click the sex options and you'll further traumatize a traumatized person.”

Yes, this is referring not to the Ascended Astarion romance, but the heavy and rare scene where Tav can force Astarion to have sex with them during the act 2 confession scene. Yes, it's a hard scene, I watched it on video, Astarion is really painful to watch. But… Where has the esteemed author seen players with this “mentality,” who will actually click on lines with a hint of sex in any situation? Specifically this scene in BG3 is only experienced by game testers, with the desire to check all of Astarion's reactions, to watch maximum content, and they choose every possible option to get to know the game and the character from all sides. Well, or post a rare scene on their youtube channel. Even the very first line that leads to this scene, “I was hoping that as a reward for my support you'd throw yourself to me” is for a roleplay of an extremely weird character, to whom a headshot won't damage their brain. And even though the scene itself is strong, heavy and tough, but no one sees it, “roleplaying themselves” and choosing what they want to choose. Treating the players like idiots, that will actually choose this and wanting to “teach them something”? Again, there's no problem with that in this scene, it's not in the main playthrough, you can watch it from youtubers, you can play it yourself in “test mode” to analyze the character and learn more about Astarion. But, ahem, isn't the same attitude shown already in the main story scenes, like the dialog after the Ascension and the attempt to show/impose something through a check that you can only agree with? I really wish that authors of games in the RPG genre, where player agency and choice are supposed to be present, would realize that players are mostly adults and are not going to “learn” anything in games, much less dislike any kind of “preaching” towards them. And if you consider the audience to be idiots, it might produce bad writing, and the audience, in turn, will certainly judge the quality of such writing and criticize it. True wordsmiths may influence the audience, but they don't try to “teach” or “force”. They tell a story - logical, coherent, with room for roleplay and choice. You probably need to be a genius and a master of manipulation to introduce some ideas without being noticed, but it's very difficult, it's better to just write a good script.

Baudelaire Welch is also very fond of fanfics:

“The last part of how do we make our romance feel better for players? Wish fulfillment is forgettable. Players who go to write fanfiction are just as interested in hurt as they are in joy. Hurt is something to analyze. Hurt is a dilemma, and behind it is a moral choice.”

“I know because I was writing fan fiction about Baldur's Gate 3 before I worked on it”.

“It feels like a watershed moment in gaming history, where the fanfiction community felt like we were not a subculture within a fandom, but the majority audience that the game was catering to”.

Well, it doesn't take a statistical expert to realize that the main audience is still just playing the game and not writing fanfics. And those who do write, write completely diverse plots and completely varying quality. There are quite a few beautiful, strong and interesting works written about Ascended Astarion, but there are also some nausea-inducing “abuser” fantasies. Patch 6 was only suitable as a video insert for this, rather disgusting, mediocre and very far from the real image of Astarion category of fanfics. It's not the best option to take a small fraction of the total number of players (those who write fanfics at all), from them choose an even smaller fraction - those who write crappy fanfics, and make a romance for them, screwing up the story for the main consumer - those who bought the game according to its genre (RPG) and with faith in the already known Baldur's Gate setting.

Welch is also known to have worked on Dark Urge and on Astarion's dialog for Dark Urge:

The post with this message has been removed from Reddit. An Imgur link with a screenshot of the post was saved by one of the commenters. The quality is poor, so here's a reprint:

"It was me! So thank you! I am the Dark Urge writer, but I worked on writing for Astarion for several months during crunch. Because I had the opportunity to, I added a lot of extra interactions between the two characters. That’s why Astarion gets a bunch of I dialogues for the Dark Urge, and none of the other characters do. I'm sure we would have liked to have every character repeatedly check in on the dark urge, but there wasn't really time/budget for it. I just was working on the two characters at the same time and wanted to squeak in him being super supportive and worried about you throughout the game.

Neil absolutely killed it, though. I'd totally forgotten I'd added the scene where you try to break up with Astarion because you're worried about endangering him, and he absolutely doesn't let you.

But the Neil delivery of those lines have now totally burned that moment into my brain endurindly, he's just so sweet and anxious for you there".

Baudelaire Welch was selected for the role by Swen Vincke himself because their "mother worked partially on the script for Silence of the Lambs, the movie". (source: "The lead writer of Baldur's Gate 3's Dark Urge was extremely squeamish at first, which shows you can do just about anything if you set your mind to it.")

In general, that's the major of what I know about Baudelaire Welch's contribution to AA history (I apologize for the occasional digression in the form of my own assessments of this or that aspect, but it affected me a lot as a player at the one time). And about what you said about “the story was watered down” even though it was really only the expression on Tav's face that changed - the player character (!), a character that in RPGs has always belonged to the player and the job of a good writer is to provide enough choices and reactions for the roleplay so that the player can find a suitable option and make their own choices - that's a good point. Haters constantly claim that we were demanding a “rewrite of AA”, whereas we were demanding a return of agency, actually, something that has always been there in the same wonderful old games that Mx Welch criticized for supposedly superficial romance. These games didn't have such superb motion capture as BG3, thanks to that and Neil Newbon's superb play Astarion and his romance was so beautiful and clingy, and of course thanks to Stephen Rooney for creating Astarion (a character like Astarion hasn't been in any game before either). But the romance in these old games was written perfectly. I never had such problems with roleplaying as in BG3, in any RPG game I've played, I always had enough lines and reactions, so it can't be called some kind of picky or inflated requirements, if all other games of this genre were fine with it. In interactive novels, where you play as some ready-made character with their own prescribed personality, who act independently in some scenes, and somewhere you can choose options/replies for them and these options are limited - this approach is perceived normally and will not be an imposition, you may not like the character, but it happens. But for an RPG, having the player create their own character/self is just bad writing. As if you “have to” feel, perceive events the way the author demands. No, it's authors who have to write in such a way that immersion is not interrupted. And those whining about “rewriting AA” basically wanted the PCs to be part of their “story” and Astarion had nothing to do with it. By the way, Astarion himself is really great in the romance, I love all his lines, so for the lines of Astarion that were written by Baudelaire Welch, I can only thank them. But not for “Tav.” In general, the very idea of forcing a reaction and trying to fit the PC to “their own vision” is a big mistake. I'll make my decision to buy the next Larian game based on whether they'll treat Tav as a “storytelling tool” or make an RPG with enough roleplay and choices. And whether they'll listen to some next bunch of haters who want other players' beloved character to “not have a happy ending”. After patch 6, Astarion's “romance” looked like this:

(From Larian Forum, by Ametris)

Fortunately, this “novel” was not completed, and player agency is now present in the game, at least for those players who are fans of D/s romance. Modders have returned agency to the rest of us (at least PC players).

And yes, if someone starts “accusing” me and other people who gave negative criticism of Welch's work of “hating”, I would ask them to first find out the difference between “hating” and evaluating the author's work. Well, and evaluating the author's attitude towards the audience, based on their statements (it's pretty weird to spit at an audience and expect the audience to take it enthusiastically). Baudelaire Welch is currently no longer at Larian, and I wish them every success in their future endeavors.

[deviouz]

Jason with a chubby! fem readerrr pls pls pls!!

Him admiring her as if she were an angel descended on earth and being genuinely surprised and confused that she doesn't really see that much appeal in her body like he does, but he has a way of showing his sweetheart just how beautiful she is (he may or may not has bought a floor length mirror and positioned it riiight in front of their bed <33)

Xoxo

thank you for indulging in my chubby chaser jason fantasies <3

if there’s one thing jason is good at, it’s making you feel beautiful. hell, beautiful might be an understatement with the way he worships the ground you walk on and gazes at you with nothing but pure love and devotion.

sometime’s he can see you staring longingly at outfits while out shopping, and he’s all to quick to force those negative thoughts out of your head. he’ll encourage you to try them on, narrows his eyes when he knows you’re about to say something rude about yourself, and insists on buying it because all he wants is for you to see yourself the way he sees you — drop dead gorgeous and utterly perfect.

truth be told, jason loves his partners to have a little more meat on their bones, so to speak. there’s something about the way your eyes widen and face gets all flushed when he picks you up, sometimes completely out of the blue, and spins you around like you weigh nothing.

“jay, put me down! i’m too—”

“don’t you even think about finishing that sentence unless you’d like not being able to walk for the rest of the week.”

he’ll put you up on the counter and slide his hands under the sundress he had bought you, fingers gripping into the plush of your thighs until they’re parting to make room for him. you’re still too flustered to look him in the eye, lips curled into a slight pout and cheeks all puffed up.

“come on, sweetheart, don’t give me that look. you and i both know that i could easily bench double your weight without breaking a sweat.”

you can’t really fault him there, especially not when he’s slinging you over his shoulder and waltzing off to the bedroom. the asshole even has the audacity to laugh at your incessant demands to put me down! and the so-called-punches you threw at his toned back.

another thing jason todd was particularly good at was fucking those mean thoughts right out of your pretty little head.

ever the adventurous one, you and jason have tried your fair share of positions in the bedroom, though his favorite had to be reverse cowgirl. he loves having you perch on his lap right at the end of the bed, hands roaming your naked form with fervor, all the while he has you gaze into the mirror hung on the wall just across from you both. it was tall and expensive and oh-so-perfect to gaze at the sheer size difference between you and your boyfriend.

“so fuckin’ pretty, baby,” jason whispers, rough hands grabbing at the fat of your hips with need. “so perfect for me.”

you’re already at your wits end, throbbing with need around all eight inches of his cock nestled deep in your cunt, lips swollen from the way you kept tugging them between your teeth. it was hard to keep still, hips itching to move, but jason kept you from doing so.

“jason, please—”

“ah, ah, ah. you know the drill.”

giving a desperate whine, you threw your head back against his shoulder and rolled your hips. “you’re the worst.”

one of jason’s hands trailed up to grab at your neck, lips pressing a soft kiss to the crown of your head as he gave a soft chuckle. “don’t be a brat and maybe i’ll give you what you want.”

“maybe?”

“mhmm. i’m sure if you said it sweet enough i could be convinced otherwise.”

huffing out a puff of air, you turned your gaze back to the mirror. jason’s hand trailed from your neck to your chest, giving your breasts some much needed attention while you stared at the reflection, embarrassment trickling into your nerves.

“i… i’m beautiful.”

his hand slowly slid down to your stomach, sharp eyes staring at your own in the mirror. “and?”

“and pretty.”

“and?”

“…gorgeous?”

“and?”

“and if you don’t fuck me within the next two seconds, i’m gonna—”

before you could even finish your sentence, jason gave a sudden thrust of his hips, forcing his cock all the deeper — deep enough to have the tip brushing at an all-too-sensitive spot and your eyes start to roll back.

“yeah? what are you gonna do, princess?”

his thrusts didn’t stop after the first. if anything, he was just getting started.

“gonna go try to get yourself off?”

“n-no, jay!”

the sound of skin-against-skin soon filled the room, coupled with his teasing words and your pleasure-filled noises.

“you sure ‘bout that?”

the quick nods from your head had him smirking, hands grabbing at the plush of your hips with a possessive touch. he held you tight and fucked up into you like an animal in heat, like he was desperate to leave a mark on you to show everyone else who you belonged to — who he belonged to, too.

“promise, i swear,” words were becoming harder to form with the way he relentlessly pounded up into your warm heat, “no one— ah! fucks me like you!” your arousal was more than evident with the way slick began to coat your inner thighs, a creamy white ring appearing around the base of his cock with every thrust.

“that’s my good girl.”

[ifindus]

1660 - Cavalryman - Several wars under Denmark against Sweden.

1697 - Gunner - pre-Great Nordic War under Denmark against Sweden.

1774 - Skiing Soldier - pre-Theater War under Denmark against Sweden.

1785 - Infantryman - pre-Great Northern War under Denmark against Sweden.

1808 - Coast Guard Officer - Napoleonic Wars under Denmark.

1845 - Infantryman - pre-First Schleswig War under Sweden against Germany.

1855 - Infantryman - during the Crimean War (Sweden-Norway debated joining the UK and France against Russia).

1905 - Hunter - preparing for wars of independence against Sweden.

1914 - Engineer Officer - First World War.

1940 - Infantry Officer - Second World War.

[greenerteacups]

hi GT!

Lionheart had me the moment you kicked it off with “it’s a nice day to start again.” Might i ask why you chose that particular line?

And, if you havent already answered to this emoji:

❄️

P.s: you have my eternal gratitude for creating the most brilliant piece of writing i’ll ever read. I shout about it from the rooftops, share it on my socials, requested my spouse to read it so we may discuss it together (in lieu of a present for my 30th birthday), et cetera.

I see from your URL you are a fellow lad of taste.

There's a couple things going on in the epigraph for Book 1. On one level, it's a lyric from the first muggle song I picture Draco listening to on his walkman at the end of the book, so there's a cute full-circle thing there. The second layer is the theme of change and redemption, which, in Lionheart, doesn't so much come from major moments or self-sacrifice, but from the slow, grueling, everyday work of living, and living better. It's a nice day to start again because every day is. You always have the opportunity to start making better choices, no matter what lies behind you. That's the thesis of any Draco redemption arc, right? You have to imagine that he could have chosen to be better.

And then thirdly, there's the audacity of doing a full Hogwarts canon rewrite, a good 30 years after the original books came out, millions upon millions of words of fanfic later, and basically asking everyone to read the same story they did the first time around, only different. So it's a kind of winking entreaty. It's saying to readers, many of whom are understandably wary of doing it over, zeroing out the characters to starting positions, and starting from the beginning with 11-year-olds all over again. It's going: "hey. That was fun, right? Why not do it again?"

[nidstiniens]

yeah i wanna rewrite maimed and do it better now that i'm not as afraid of it

[thatstormygeek]

This is where MAGA has succeeded, in allowing reality and history to disappear in the face of glorious denial. And it is an awful road with awful consequences. What we must do is pay attention and remember. Every day, especially in circumstances like this mayoral election, we are given glimpses into the true nature of power. Giving a creep like Cuomo your support, whether you’re a politician, a pundit, or a personality, tells us exactly who you are, as does clicking your heels and getting in line with Trump because of an illegal war your diseased warhawk heart has always desired. Here, the truth is revealed: these people are not your allies, their “principles” were never real, and, for all of the continued insistence, they do not value the things they purport to.

Former president Bill Clinton, who has been haunted by allegations since he was the governor of Arkansas, decided it was necessary to endorse Cuomo and has been campaigning for him in the final days. Perhaps no one has benefited from cultural and political amnesia than Clinton, so it should tell you everything you need to know that he’s willing to be seen standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Cuomo. Mamdani, after all, represents a total existential crisis to the Democratic Party. If he were to win…god forbid!…it would mean the ascendance of a differently-minded Democrat to a place of power. And then, can you even imagine? The party might have to actually acknowledge that their base and the American public in general wants something beyond the tried and failed Neoliberal centrism that the party has offered and been rejected because of. But it’s not just Clinton. We’ve seen Libs of TikTok sound the alarm regarding Mamdani. George Santos took some time between corruption trials to signal his support. Mamdani and his gasp desire to maybe create better public transit is such a giant threat that it’s bringing together foes from across the aisle! And what does this tell us? Simply that, in a time of rising authoritarianism, what matters most is not the relentless assault on our rights, protections, and liberties, but that no one, no matter what, is allowed to gain power if they are so much to the left of Ro Khanna. A simple victory, just one isolated victory, means the difference between continuing the same failed political project and having to deal with the possibility that some things might have to change. This is the secret of politics: all of the fighting, all of the brawling, and all of the pleasant sounding rhetoric and strongly-worded letters hides the fact that there is a political class dedicated to the wealth class and that is driving impulse behind all of this. As I’ve discussed, there has been too much money and too much violence spent on dismantling even a semblance of a “Left” around the world to allow it to have a breath or even inkling of hope. This tireless snuffing out of Leftists or reformers, which has taken the form of coups and ethnic cleansing and assassination, was about creating an environment in which there was no organized voice against the continued consolidation of wealth and power. There could be simulations of “leftist” ideas. You could have liberal party that offered little besides means-testing and targeted assistance, all the while eschewing any necessary reform or progress, but to give actual voice to what the people want is much too dangerous. This is why when “the Squad” came to power there was an overwhelming defensive freezing out by figures like Nancy Pelosi and other rank-and-file Democrats. Their victories were seen failures of the party to maintain cohesion. The members seen as intruders or infections to be dealt with. And the desire to maintain control of the party, and more importantly the billionaire donors and corporations that make up their support among the wealth class, was always more important than actually fighting battles to change things for the better. The former, after all, was the much “safer” bet.

[note: this article was published before the election]

Mamdani’s win is also a defeat for the gang of crooked dinosaurs known as the Democratic establishment, which went out of its way to humiliate itself in this race. A parade of elected officials, well-connected unions, and political machers, all of whom had demanded that Cuomo resign the governorship just a few years ago, stampeded shamelessly to get behind him this time around. Cuomo wheeled out endorsements from party grandees like Jim Clyburn and Bill Clinton, neither of whom has any real connection to the city. None of it mattered. Voters looked at this panoply of power and recoiled. Cuomo and his cronies were a symbol of everything ordinary people currently hate about the political class, and they failed. So did the city’s moneyed elite. Billionaires like Mike Bloomberg and Bill Ackman poured tens of millions of dollars into Cuomo’s Super PAC, which drowned New Yorkers in a vast sea of apocalyptic anti-Mamdani propaganda. (Judging by the endless number of Mamdani-bashing mailers I received, there’s a small forest missing somewhere thanks to these bozos.) The New York Times editorial board, which had vowed to stay out of the race, reversed course, warning readers to leave Mamdani off their ballots. They will all be licking their wounds this morning, and that is wonderful. Most importantly, Mamdani’s victory is a seismic defeat for the forces of anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim bigotry. Cuomo and his backers ran one of the most nakedly racist campaigns I can remember seeing, even darkening Mamdani’s beard in one mailer to make him look more like a stereotypical Scary Muslim. And they went all-in on weaponizing his support of Palestine, smearing him relentlessly as an antisemite who would all but send the city’s Jews to the gas chambers. New York’s equally ossified media joined in, framing Mamdani’s opposition to Israel’s apartheid and genocide as “troubling” and peppering him with questions about whether he’d visit Israel as mayor. (Meanwhile, Cuomo’s decision to literally join the legal team fighting to keep Benjamin Netanyahu out of the Hague went completely unaddressed.) And it didn’t work. The voters in one of the Jewish capitals of the world said no. They sent the message that standing up for equal rights and an end to mass slaughter doesn’t make you a danger to the world—it makes you the kind of person who should maybe be the mayor of New York City. That has huge implications for the politics around Palestine and Israel more generally. What more evidence do you need that people don’t want a blank check for Israel than New York City voting for a Muslim, socialist, pro-Palestinian mayor? That is earth-shaking stuff—and, amid the never-ending hell in Gaza, it is a cause for some hope.

[bendover-productions]

Sorry if you've already been informed of this, but in case you haven't, I just want you to know that Sam still has the teal pom pom hat! He said on the podcast that he misplaced it almost immediately and thought he had lost it, but that he found it in his bag once he got back!

NO!!! no one told me!!! 😭😭 thank you so much, that teal hat is incredibly important to me and i am delighted he still has it

^^^sam in that hat. to me tbh <3

[errruvande]

People who make notes while reading, how do you do it? I mean, what the book has to say for you to go "welp need to make a note for this"?

I mean, obviously except for the Silmarillion/The Count of Monte Cristo etc when author throws at you 500 names you should remember so you're making notes on the names lmao

[gu6chan]

Sometimes I think about my very short-lived experience watching Happy Sugar Life and how the only real potent "message" i got from it was through the fanbase with the realisation "wow okay so we are NOT past the 'women can't be paedophiles' narrative huh" because i remember so gleefully checking the comments only to be hit with shit like "they didn't have sex so i don't think it's paedophilia" or "given her past i don't think she INTENDED paedophilia" or the time i saw an rp blog for the mc like "I interpret it as platonic :)))" like mc wasn't dressing an 8 year old up in a wedding dress, grooming her, doing vows, kissing her on the mouth and making plans for how they'd elope and marry each other

Like okay, you're entitled to your interpretations ofc but at what point does it stop being an interpretation and start turning into cope because this is NOT the topic you want to do that with!!!!!!

[sochilll]

kleinsen + sentimental?

Kleinsen + 6. Sentimental

(Send a character/pairing and a number and I’ll write a drabble)

“Hey,” Evan’s roommate stuck his head into Evan’s room. “You got mail.”

“Kay.” Evan didn’t look up from his laptop.

“Seems like a birthday thing,” his roommate pressed.

Evan frowned. His mom had given him his present last weekend when they went to dinner. His roommate had presented Evan with his gift at 12 am on his birthday, two days ago.

“Who else would send me a card?”

His roommate grinned. “It’s not a card dude.”

Evan was intrigued. He walked into the living room and found a large package on the coffee table. It was addressed to Evan. He didn’t recognize the return address and there was no name attached.

He took the box to his room to open. He didn’t want his roommate watching. He wasn’t sure why exactly. Possibly some part of him thought this was a prank. If it was, it was a very heavy prank.

Evan sliced through the tape and pulled the flaps open. He pulled out the blue tissue paper and tossed it on the floor. Then he stared in disbelief at what was inside.

The typewriter was a smooth, shiny black. There were a few scratches but overall it looked well cared for. It had faded, off-white keys. There was already paper sticking out of the top, with a single typed line.

Happy birthday Evan. Go write a book or something.

Evan stared. He felt scared to even touch it. Not because it was a typewriter, he actually really loved typewriters. He’d taken a class his freshman year of college where the professor had them each type a short story on one and he’d fallen in love with the clunky machine. But they were expensive and impractical when you already owned a laptop. So Evan had never seriously considered owning one.

What scared him was that he knew exactly who sent it. The only person who knew about Evan’s interest in typewriters. The only person who knew that while, yes he’d studied ecology, he’d always hoped that when he finished school he’d be able to write a book. The only person who would have the audacity to do this to him.

Evan fumbled for his phone and typed the number from memory even though he’d never had the heart to delete it from his contacts.

He answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

“What the fuck is this?”

“A birthday present,” Jared’s voice was smug as ever.

“Jared!”

“Did you open it?”

“Yes I opened it. What the fuck! We haven’t spoken in two and a half years and this is what you-how much was this? Take it back. What the fuck Jared?”

“Well I can’t take it back because I inherited it from my great grandfather and he’s dead.”

Evan faltered. “I’m-oh. I’m sorry.”

“Kidding,” Jared snickered. “Found it at a thrift store. Crazy good condition right? Took me forever to figure out how to get the paper in there though.”

“Why did you mail me a typewriter Jared?”

“Because it’s your birthday,” Jared said slowly, like Evan was stupid.

“You know what I mean. You haven’t even texted me happy birthday for the past two years. Why this?”

Jared was quiet for a minute. “I dunno. I saw it and I thought of you.”

And Evan knew that sentiment was maybe the closest he’d ever get to hearing Jared say he missed Evan.

He folded the box flap back over and checked to return address. “You still live in the city.”

It wasn’t a question but Jared answered. “Yeah. Better apartment but yeah.”

“Do you… would you wanna get lunch or something? Like this weekend?”

“With you?”

Evan rolled his eyes. “Yes. God. You’re so annoying.”

He could hear the smile in Jared’s voice when he said, “Sure, I think I can fit you in.”