#these are reports that are shared. with the entire company. What

[homierotic]

coworker who hasn't responded to three of my other emails just called me to complain because i sent an email to her + one of her on-staff managers and she thinks i should have emailed them separately

[felassan]

Jason Schreier for Bloomberg reports: 'Inside the ‘Dragon Age’ Debacle That Gutted EA’s BioWare Studio'

The latest game in BioWare’s fantasy role-playing series went through ten years of development turmoil. The failure of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, released in October, led EA to gut BioWare

[note: article is below cut after these tweets]

Jason Schreier: "NEW: What went wrong with Dragon Age: The Veilguard? Why was the writing so tonally inconsistent? Why did it feel so shallow? Why were there so few choices? Really, after ten years of turbulence, it was a miracle that anything came out at all. This is the story [link]:" [source]

Jason Schreier: "The fatal flaw for Dragon Age: The Veilguard wasn't just that it pivoted from single-player to multiplayer and back again. It was that after the second pivot, the team was forced to keep going rather than hit the reset button and take the time to create a new plan." [source]

Jason Schreier re: this old tweet from Casey Hudson: "Fun fact: when I first reported at Kotaku in 2018 that Dragon Age 4 was rebooted to become a live-service game, BioWare studio head Casey Hudson wrote this on Twitter. But it was not entirely truthful. In reality, the game was being designed around cooperative multiplayer, replayable missions, etc" [source] Casey Hudson's old tweet from 2018: "Reading lots of feedback regarding Dragon Age, and I think you'll be relieved to see what the team is working on. Story & character focused. Too early to talk details, but when we talk about "live" it just means designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story."

Rest of post/article under cut due to length.

(bold in the text below is mine for emphasis)

"In early November, on the eve of the crucial holiday shopping season, staffers at the video-game studio BioWare were feeling optimistic. After an excruciating development cycle, they had finally released their latest game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and the early reception was largely positive. The role-playing game was topping sales charts on Steam, and solid, if not spectacular, reviews were rolling in. But in the weeks that followed, the early buzz cooled as players delved deeper into the fantasy world, and some BioWare employees grew anxious. For months, everyone at the subsidiary of the video-game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. had been under intense pressure. The studio’s previous two games, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, had flopped, and there were rumors that if Dragon Age underperformed, BioWare might become another of EA’s many casualties. Not long after Christmas, the bad news surfaced. EA announced in January that the new Dragon Age had only reached 1.5 million players, missing the company’s expectations by 50%. The holiday performance of another recently released title, EA Sports FC 2025, was also subpar, compounding the problem."

"As a result of the struggling titles, EA Chief Executive Officer Andrew Wilson explained, the company would be significantly lowering its sales forecast for the fiscal year ahead. EA’s share price promptly plunged 18%. “Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played,” Wilson later said on an earnings call. “However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.” Days after the sales revision, EA laid off a chunk of BioWare’s staff at the studio’s headquarters in Edmonton, Canada, and permanently transferred many of the remaining workers to other divisions. For the storied, 30-year-old game maker, it was a stunning fall that left many fans wondering how things had gone so haywire — and what might come next for the stricken studio. According to interviews with nearly two dozen people who worked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, there were several reasons behind its failure, including marketing misfires, poor word of mouth and a 10-year gap since the previous title. Above all, sources point to the rebooting of the product from a single-player game to a multiplayer one — and then back again — a switcheroo that muddled development and inflated the title’s budget, they say, ultimately setting the stage for EA’s potentially unrealistic sales expectations. A spokesperson for EA declined to comment."

"The union between BioWare and EA started off with lofty aspirations. In 2007, EA executives announced they were acquiring BioWare and another gaming studio in a deal worth $860 million. The goal was to diversify their slate of games, which was heavy in sports titles, like Madden NFL, and light in the kind of adventure and role-playing games that BioWare was known for. Initially, it looked like a smart move thanks to a string of big hits. In 2014, BioWare released Dragon Age: Inquisition, the third installment in a popular action series dropping players in a semi-open world full of magic, elves and fire-spewing dragons. The fantasy title went on to win the much-coveted Game of the Year Award and sell 12 million copies, according to its executive producer Mark Darrah — a major validation of EA’s diversification strategy. Before long, Darrah and Mike Laidlaw, the creative director, began kicking around ideas for the next Dragon Age installment — code name: Joplin — aiming for a game that would be smaller in scope. But before much could get done, BioWare shifted the studio’s focus to more pressing titles coming down the pike. In 2017, BioWare released Mass Effect: Andromeda, the fourth installment in a big-budget action series set in space. Unlike its critically successful predecessors, the game received mediocre reviews and was widely mocked by fans. A few months after the disappointing release, the head of BioWare stepped down and was soon replaced by Microsoft Inc.’s Casey Hudson, an alumni of BioWare’s early, formative years."

"Like much of the industry, EA executives were growing increasingly enamored of so-called live-service games, such as Destiny and Overwatch, in which players continue to engage with and spend money on a title for months or even years after its initial release. With EA aiming to make a splash in the fast-growing category, BioWare poured resources into Anthem, a live-service shooter game that checked all the right boxes. One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whisky. The next Dragon Age sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game — a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved. “I wish that pivot had never occurred,” Darrah would later recount on YouTube. “EA said, ‘Make this a live service.’ We said, ‘We don’t know how to do that. We should basically start the project over.’” Former art director Matt Goldman replaced Laidlaw as creative director, and with a tiny team began pushing ahead on a new multiplayer version of Dragon Age — code name: Morrison — while everyone else helped to finish Anthem, which was struggling to coalesce. Goldman pushed for a “pulpy,” more lighthearted tone than previous entries, which suited an online game but was a drastic departure from the dark, dynamic stories that fans loved in the fantasy series."

"In February 2019, BioWare released Anthem. Reviews were scathing, calling the game tedious and convoluted. Fans were similarly displeased. On social media, players demanded to know why a studio renowned for beloved stories and characters had made an online shooter with a scattershot narrative. In the wake of BioWare’s second consecutive flop, the multiplayer version of Dragon Age continued to take shape. While the previous games in the franchise had featured tactical combat, this one would be all action. Instead of quests that players would only experience once, it would be full of missions that could be replayed repeatedly with friends and strangers. Important characters couldn’t die because they had to persist for multiple players across never-ending gameplay. As the game evolved over the next two years, the failure of Anthem hovered over the studio. Were they making the same mistakes? Some BioWare employees scoffed that they were simply building “Anthem with dragons.” Throughout 2020, the pandemic disrupted the game’s already fraught development. In December, Hudson, the head of the studio, and Darrah, the head of the franchise, resigned. Shortly thereafter, Gary McKay, BioWare’s new studio head, revealed yet another shift in strategy. Moving forward, the next Dragon Age would no longer be multiplayer."

"“We were thinking, ‘Does this make sense, does this play into our strengths, or is this going to be another challenge we have to face?’” McKay later told Bloomberg News. “No, we need to get back to what we’re really great at.” In theory, the reversion back to Dragon Age’s tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game’s fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible. This strict deadline became a recurring problem. The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed a few months, at which point they’d be stuck with those old decisions with no chance to stop and reevaluate what was working. At the end of 2022, amid continually dizzying leadership changes, the studio started distributing an “alpha” build of Dragon Age to get feedback internally and from outside playtesters. According to people familiar with the process, the reactions were concerning. The game’s biggest problem, early players agreed, was a lack of satisfying choices and consequences. Previous BioWare titles had presented players with gut-wrenching decisions. Which allies to save? Which factions to spare? Which enemies to slay? Such dilemmas made fans feel like they were shaping the narrative — historically, a big draw for many BioWare games."

"But Dragon Age’s multiplayer roots limited such choices, according to people familiar with the development. BioWare delayed the game’s release again while the team shoehorned in a few major decisions, such as which of two cities to save from a dragon attack. But because most of the parameters were already well established, the designers struggled to pair the newly retrofitted choices for players with meaningful consequences downstream. In 2023, to help finish Dragon Age, BioWare brought in a second, internal team, which was working on the next Mass Effect game. For decades there’d been tension between the two well-established camps, known for their starkly divergent ways of doing things. BioWare developers like to joke that the Dragon Age crew was like a pirate ship, meandering and sometimes traveling off course but eventually reaching the port. In contrast, the Mass Effect group was called the USS Enterprise, after the Star Trek ship, because commands were issued straight down from the top and executed zealously. As the Mass Effect directors took control, they scoffed that the Dragon Age squad had been doing a shoddy job and began excluding their leaders from pivotal meetings, according to people familiar with the internal friction. Over time, the Mass Effect team went on to overhaul parts of the game and design a number of additional scenes, including a rich, emotional finale that players loved. But even changes that appeared to improve the game stoked the simmering rancor inside BioWare, infuriating Dragon Age leaders who had been told they didn’t have the budget for such big, ambitious swings."

"“It always seemed that, when the Mass Effect team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way,” said David Gaider, a former lead writer on the Dragon Age franchise who left before development of the new game started. “But Dragon Age always had to fight against headwinds.” Early testers and Mass Effect leads complained about the game’s snarky tone — a style of video-game storytelling, once ascendant, that was quickly falling out of fashion in pop culture but had been part of Goldman’s vision for the multiplayer game. Worried that Dragon Age could face the same outcome as Forspoken — a recent title that had been hammered over its impertinent banter — BioWare leaders ordered a belated rewrite of the game’s dialogue to make it sound more serious. (In the end, the resulting tonal inconsistencies would only add to the game’s poor reception with fans.) A mass layoff at BioWare and a mandate to work overtime depleted morale while a voice actors strike limited the writers’ ability to revise the dialogue and create new scenes. An initial trailer made the next Dragon Age seem more like Fortnite than a dark fantasy role-playing game, triggering concerns that EA didn’t know how to market the game. When Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally premiered on Halloween 2024 after many internal delays, some staff members thought there was a lot to like, including the game’s new combat system. But players were less impressed, and sales sputtered."

"“The reactions of the fan base are mixed, to put it gently,” said Caitie, a popular Dragon Age YouTuber. “Some, like myself, adore it for various reasons. Others feel utterly betrayed by certain design choices.” Following the layoffs and staff reassignments at BioWare earlier in the year, a small team of a few dozen employees is now working on the next Mass Effect. After three high-profile failures in a row, questions linger about EA’s commitment to the studio. In May, the company relabeled its Edmonton headquarters from a BioWare office to a hub for all EA staff in the area. Historically, BioWare has never been the most important studio at EA, which generates more than $7 billion in annual revenue largely from its sports games and shooters. Depending on the timing of its launches, BioWare typically accounts for just 5% of EA’s annual bookings, according to estimates by Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. Even so, there may be strategic reasons for EA to keep supporting BioWare. Single-player role-playing games are expensive to make but can lead to huge windfalls when successful, as demonstrated by recent hits like Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3. In order to grow, EA needs more than just sports franchises, said TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz. Trying to fix its fantasy-focused studio may be easier than starting something new. “That said, if they shuttered the doors tomorrow I wouldn’t be totally surprised,” Creutz added. “It has been over a decade since they produced a hit.”"

Article by Jason Schreier. [source]

[tbaluver]

Husband/ Father Headcanons- The Love And DeepSpace Men

order: xavier x fem! reader, zayne x fem! reader, rafayel x fem! reader, sylus x fem! reader, caleb x fem! reader genre: fluff fluff a/n: hihi lovelies! i apologize that my reqs are coming supa late but i should finish and post them so soon after my school semester ends! i literally have so many in my drafts (╥﹏╥) i usually overthink my reqs which is why i take super long but here's some husband material to feed you all for now i hope ( ◡̀_◡́)ᕤ talk to you all so soon mwah (∩˃o˂∩)♡

⋆｡‧˚ʚ♡ɞ˚‧｡⋆

Xavier:

He loves doing simple things with you like going to the supermarket. He’s read somewhere on the internet that that's what married couples are supposed to do on earth.

Morning routines with Xavier are always so warm and sweet. As you both get ready for the day, he’ll take your hand, carefully adjusting your wedding ring before giving it a soft kiss.

Whenever your newborn baby starts crying just as you’re both about to eat, he always prioritizes you. He’ll reassure you that you can go ahead and eat without him and enjoy your meal, promising you that he’ll take care of the baby.

You and Xavier share a special inside joke just between the two of you about the cute sounds your baby makes. Whether it’s the random babbling or their adorable squeals, always brings a smile and laugh to the both of you.

Xavier loves hearing and seeing your child laugh and will do absolutely anything to make them smile whether it’s through tickling, playing peekaboo, pulling silly faces, or using a high pitched voice

Lots of snuggles with you and your baby. You’d have your little one nestled safely right in the middle of the two of you as you all fall into deep slumber. He especially loves having his child rest on his chest while you snuggle up beside him.

Zayne:

Whenever your baby girl starts walking or crawling, he’ll consistently clean the floors of the house multiple times to keep the floor clean for his baby girl and to also have a clean house in general.

Your daughter has her own little kitchen playset because she loves watching either of you cook. Sometimes, while Zayne’s busy with his patients reports, she’ll run up to him with a plate of her plastic food to share her ‘cooking’ with him. He loves to play along to see her adorable smile, pretending to savor it and tell her how delicious it is.

Whenever it’s a quiet time between the two of you, enjoying each other’s company and doing your own thing, Zayne often reaches over to gently rub his thumb against your wedding ring, often reminiscing about the day you two got married and a small smile curling on his lips.

Anytime you ask him to grab something for you while he’s out, he always goes the extra mile and adds a little something extra for you- and for him as well especially if it’s something sweet. If you ask for the next series of your favorite book you love, he’ll just get the entire collection so you can binge-read it right away. He’ll even pick up a copy of the book you’re currently reading so he can talk about it with you.

Rafayel:

Everyday being married to you feels like a blessing from the gods. He wakes up in the morning to see your beautiful sleeping figure right beside him, wearing the wedding ring on your finger that ties you both together forever. Rafayel always greets you with something cheesy when you wake up like, “Hello my beautiful wife.” with a big smile on his face.

Rafayel flirts with you as if you haven’t been married for a couple years now and often says “I love you” with any chance he gets. “Heyy my lovely gorgeous wife, before you come home, do ya think you can pick me up some extra brushes? I think our little glub glubs hid them again...oh and by the way I love you!”

He always wears his ring. He can’t help but fidget with the ring whenever he starts to miss you, smiling as thinks about the day you both exchanged your vows.

After a long day at work, you can always find your lemurian children running up to greet you with your husband. Sometimes they like to show off their artwork they’ve all made together and most of the time it’s all just for you.

However he can always tell when you’re exhausted and drained, so he’ll gently excuse the kids, assuring them you’ll spend time with them later. For now he’s happy to entertain the children so you can get your rest. He’ll make up a random activity to keep the children busy so he can do small things for you like running a bath or preparing some meals for you

Sylus:

Anytime Sylus and his baby girl are shopping, he’ll always ask her what she wants or what she prefers. He treats her like a princess just like her mommy.

“hmm....pink! no, red!...pink!”

“how about....we get both dear?”

and there’s something so adorable seeing her so happy that makes him feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

Sylus does not mind in any timeline or universe if you’re comfortable being provided for. He can afford it and nothing can hurt his card even if you tried.

As years go by, he’ll make sure your wedding ring isn’t getting worn out or has any chips in it. Not that it would ever get worn off from its high quality. If it does have any problems, he’s quick to get it fixed, making sure that your ring will always shine with you.

Before you both unwind for the night, he’ll gently kiss the back of your hand where your wedding ring rests, before slowly slipping it off for the night.

Anytime you’re home from a long day of work, he’s already outside waiting for you to take out things in your car so you don’t have to carry anything.

After a long shift, you can always come home to find a warm dinner waiting for you with your favorite drink. The house would be clean and your baby girl is already tucked in. He’ll sit by you at the dining table, a glass in his hand, sharing stories about his day or simply listening as you tell him about yours.

Caleb:

Caleb absolutely treasures being a father. He became the father that he wished he had, present and involved in every moment. Whether it’s cheering from the sidelines at their games or helping with their homework ( without yelling and making them cry at the kitchen table ), or just listening when they need to talk, he’s always there for his kids. He’s just as devoted to you, always making sure you feel as supported and loved.

Caleb is the type of husband that would wake up early or stay up late to make sure your lunch is ready for work the next day. He knows exactly how you like your meals, carefully preparing each dish and packing it with everything you need. He does the same for his kids, packing their lunch boxes the night before with their favorite snacks and an apple.

Playtime is a must with his kids. He believes in letting his kids experience the joy of childhood to its fullest. The living room is always filled with the sound of his laughter as he lifts them high into the air, making airplane noises or chasing them around the house from their made-up games. He would also make sure to keep track of their growth, marking their heights on the wall.

Once all the kids are tucked in bed and actually asleep, he’ll swoop you in with a kiss. His kisses were always so hungry and sweet and he seriously cannot get enough of you, always wanting more.

“We have food at home” type of father but your kids never mind because he always cooks them whatever they’re craving. His home cooked meals always HIT. The house would be filled with delicious smells that make everyone feel right at home. His love is always served in each and every dish that makes his cooking way more special than going out to eat.

Your home is filled with many memories of your marriage but Caleb has a special place for his favorites. He keeps them up in your shared bedroom so when he wakes up beside you with the cool metal ring around his finger is a reminder that brings him back into reality that he’s married to the love of his life and there is always an escape from his nightmares.

[rika-mmendmethings]

Interdimensional Epiphany l Rafayel

CHAPTER 1

Chapter 2

Summary: A fortnight of compensated leave from your company was supposed to be a rejuvenating experience. Things take an unexpected turn when Rafayel, your choice of ML, starts becoming self-aware. His love knows no bounds, not even interdimensional ones.

Warning(s): Subject to change as we progress further into the story. For the prologue, currently none. Though story has major character deaths, subdued manipulation, heavy angst with a happy(?) ending, slight yandere themes, fluff, did I mention angst?

Word count: 1.9k

Playlist coming soon.

Notes: This series is something I wrote after being inspired by Error 404 by @ittybittyfanblog. It circles around the idea of a self-aware Rafayel and the worlds he'd cross to be with the reader. This series is my spin on what could've happened with the deleted Reddit user and their self-aware Rafayel from chapter four of Error 404. However, keep in mind the plotline is entirely different. Lmk if y'all want me to add you in the tag list for this.

The multiple keys in your keychain jingled as you hurried to unlock the door to your apartment. Once inside, with the door securely shut behind you, you let out a triumphant whoop and began dancing in celebration. A wide grin spread across your face as you kicked off your heels, nearly tripping over your own feet as you made your way to your couch. When your back hit the soft plush you exhaled a euphoric sigh, feeling an overwhelming rush of dopamine fill your senses.

The reason for your happiness? A whole sum of two weeks granted as compensatory leave to your department. You and your colleagues had been working your butts off the entire march. With the financial year coming to an end, your procrastination was also forced to come to an end as you stayed up for hours preparing yearly, monthly, quarterly, and god knows how many more reports. But alas, your efforts paid off and the higher-ups were impressed by your teamwork and immaculate results and awarded your entire department a two-week reprieve.

You couldn’t even bring yourself to worry about the work that would inevitably pile up upon your return. All you knew was that in the present moment, you were practically given a corporate boon and god forbid if you don’t live it up to the fullest. You squealed again, kicking your legs like an ecstatic newborn. You stood up, stretching your arms above your head before skipping to the kitchen.

As you poured yourself a glass of juice and grabbed some leftover takeout, your mind wandered to how your life might begin to mend itself again. Not that it had ever been truly broken, but the past month had been hard enough to make you feel as though you were constantly on the edge. You loosened your tie and sank back onto the couch, blissfully relaxed, your legs casually draped over the table in front of you.

March, you concluded, had been the most unlucky month of your life. The first week had started with a quarrel with your parents when they demanded you book an immediate flight and come to your hometown immediately. You understood their feelings — they hadn’t seen their only daughter in five years — but you couldn’t just abandon everything and disappear. You had responsibilities, and no matter how much you missed your mom’s homemade pickles or your dad’s clueless grocery runs, you couldn’t drop everything for a visit. That’s what you told them, but it only led to their anger.

The second week of March brought more frustration when you were handed the work of an employee who had left the company abruptly. Internally cursing him and taking an oath to meet him in hell, you ended up shouldering his share of projects as well.

In the third week, an issue with your Sodexo meal card arose, and while you reported it to your manager, you knew it wasn’t going to be a priority for him, considering the mountain of tasks he already had to juggle at year-end.

But the final week of March truly tested your patience. In addition to the looming deadlines, your boyfriend of two years, Tyler, was giving you a migraine. He knew how packed your schedule was and had seen how much the month had already drained you, yet he still managed to pick fights over matters you thought had been long settled.

Love and Deepspace.

When you and Tyler had first committed to each other, you had sat him down and clearly explained how your love for otome games wouldn’t interfere with your relationship. What you sought in fiction was vastly different from what you needed in real life. As a self-identified "men-are-disgusting" type, you had always trusted your parents to help you understand the difference between right and wrong, and to guide you toward the right kind of person. When Tyler came into your life, he seemed to check all the boxes: good-looking, smart, organized, and a great companion. So you took a chance on love.

But over the past few months, things had taken a turn for the worse. You began to notice how inconsiderate Tyler could be toward your feelings, and how little effort he seemed to put into the relationship. On top of that, he began to criticize you for being a “merch-collecting freak” and for not knowing how to invest your money. The irony wasn’t lost on you, especially since the only "merch" you collected were plushies and a few rare 4-star banner posters — things you bought with your hard-earned money, and that you had every right to spend as you pleased. You dismissed his behavior for a while, but it all came to a head one day when you came home to find him tearing up your posters in a fit of spite.

You confronted him, demanding to know why he had destroyed your things, and his response —“You don’t need otome games when you have me”— was the breaking point. In that moment, you realized that you couldn’t even keep your own interests around him without facing ridicule. That day, you made a wise decision. You slapped him across the face and, with the help of some neighbors, you kicked him out of your apartment, officially ending the relationship once and for all.

You didn’t regret your decision one bit. Aside from the moments with him that were genuinely worth feeling sad about, you surprisingly didn’t miss him much either. It seemed that, subconsciously, you had been prepared to leave him the moment his behavior began to shift. Setting your empty utensils aside, you sprawled out on your stomach, unlocked your phone, and opened the app that had, in many ways, saved you from what could have developed into a toxic relationship.

“Some long for longevity… before fading to dust. Some long for eternal sleep…” you belted out the theme song, singing at the top of your lungs as you pressed enter. You recited aloud the random information on the white loading display: “Lemuria is an ancient, marine civilization recorded in legends. Its unique, advanced technologies are difficult to use.” You paused mid-sentence, tilting your head slightly as a thought struck you. “Does that mean Lemuria’s technologies would be far more advanced than ours if it actually existed? I’ll have to ask Reddit later.”

The game opens with a silver-haired man rubbing his chin in thought, donning a brown sweater and black slacks. It seems Sylus has decided to greet you today. He’s recently become your main choice after Rafayel in the game, but the others hold a special place in your heart as well, so you always ensure to include them when selecting who you want to meet at Destiny Café. You quickly navigate to the agenda to claim your night-login stamina before it expires. However, when you return, you’re met with a ‘failed to connect. Retry or return to login’ pop-up. You press ‘retry,’ glancing over your shoulder to check if your router’s LED lights are blinking as they should.

This time, when the game reboots and you log back in, you’re greeted by the purple-haired man who somehow manages to climb his way onto the first place among your lead choices even after new releases. You are one of those players who had been in the fandom just some time after the game released officially and Rafayel has been your choice of ML ever since, though you do get bias-wrecked by Sylus every so often. You smile, not at all bothered by the shift in characters, and admire his ‘asymmetrical romance’ outfit, paired with a big, vibrant red bow. Rafayel suddenly closes the distance between you and the screen, leaning down so that his eyes meet yours although it feels far from mere programming.

His mystical eyes are wide, holding a strange clarity, as though he’s uncovered something. His soft features are lit up with eyebrows arched and full lips drawn in a small part. He tilts his head, seeming momentarily stunned. You wait patiently, suspecting the devs may have added a new update for how characters interact with you. You would have missed it had you not been paying close attention, but you distinctly hear him whisper "beautiful," clear as day.

A soft pink blooms on your cheeks, and you flinch slightly, caught off guard by the timbre of his voice and the unexpected compliment. You wonder why the word didn’t appear in the captions but brush it off as a possible glitch. Unable to resist, you flick some stray hair away from your face and respond cheekily, “I know, right?”

You could have sworn you saw the faintest quirk of his lips as he stepped back, but then again, your brain is frazzled from overwork, and you wouldn’t trust it for opinions at this moment. You still have a daily task remaining, so you select "Quality Time" and set the timer for 30 minutes to work with him. You position your phone upright, supported by a cushion, and gather the utensils to take them to the dishwasher.

After putting your overcoat, bag, and other items in their proper places, you shake your shirt off your shoulders, deciding to freshen up for the evening. Had you been more observant, you might have noticed an unusually flustered Rafayel, his eyes fixed on you as you walked past the living room and toward your bedroom in just your bralette and pencil skirt.

When you slip out of his sight, he sets down his fountain pen and leans toward the screen once more. His iridescent irises, the color of dusk, shift around your living room, watching with a kind of unrestrained curiosity. They take in the unfamiliar world with the weight of a thousand unspoken questions, their intensity hidden behind lips that are pressed in quiet contemplation. Long, pale fingers, hesitant yet deliberate, tap softly against the unyielding glass that separates him from whatever lies beyond it.

He listens, the faint sound of your footsteps growing nearer, and in an instant, he straightens up. With a swift motion, he grabs his pen, resuming his drawing as though he had never strayed from his post. Later, he tells himself. Later, when you aren’t around, he will unravel the mystery of what this all means.

You emerge from the bathroom, hair damp from your shower, and sink into the sofa, still wearing your pajamas, a packet of chips resting on the table in front of you. His gaze drifts to you every now and then, some sort of fascination blooming in the quiet chambers of his heart for how your existence goes against everything he knows. You sometimes catch his gaze and before you start to ponder about it, he unwillingly utters words that feel like metal on his tongue — words that you’d consider entirely normal — words that would show in the captions. He clicks his tongue in distaste, not liking being pressed into speaking phrases that don’t truly belong to him — just empty lines, part of some programmed response. Yet, despite this reluctance, it doesn't stop him from continuing to steal glances at you, as if something distinct about you holds his attention despite himself.

And for the first time in months, he lets his phone beside him ring, despite the familiar caller ID—his miss bodyguard’s. The world around him — around you — seems to fade into the background, and for a fleeting moment, he is wholly, silently present in this strange, ordinary space that feels anything but ordinary.

Check out my other works if you liked this ♥

[wilwheaton]

Hey man, I could use a few talking points to help convince a friend that Musk is horrible. I'm reading 'Think Again' by Adam Grant (good read btws) and he says to help convince people to come to your viewpoint that it can be good to have 2 or 3 strong points instead of 10 mixed points. The counter argument I get from people about Musk being good is that he did spacex and tesla, and without him we'd be decades behind. Maybe, but I don't have good ammo. Please help as I get too angry tobe critical

Well, listen, the fascism, the transphobia, the chaos, and the unwavering support for autocrats all over the planet really ought to be enough to outweigh anything else, if you ask me. It sounds like you know some people who got excited about the companies he threw money at, and they are having a tough time updating their feelings due to current events. Or maybe they share his values and don't want to admit that.

But I'll try to offer some simple facts.

He did not do engineering with Tesla or SpaceX or even PayPal. He is a fraud. He walked into these existing businesses, where people had done actual work and engineering, threw some of his Apartheid money at them, and took credit for their work. He claims, over and over again, to be a founder of these companies, and that's just straight up a lie that is easily disproved.

He literally did nothing except throw money at people and take credit for their work. Look at every Tesla up to the (chokes back laughter) Cybertruck. Those Teslas look like cars, because they were designed by engineers. Look at the Cybertruck. When you stop laughing at what a joke it is, know this: that's what happens when Elon Musk is in charge. It's like a ten year-old with some crayons drew it on a menu at Denny's.

All of the things his weird fans claim he made possible, are things that would have happened, and were in the process of happening, without him. He literally did nothing to advance the technologies or engineering. In fact, SpaceX whistleblowers have told reporters how they had to keep Musk occupied with bullshit, so they could do the real work without him fucking it up all the time with his incompetence.

But even if he were telling the truth, even if the myth were fact, it would not outweigh the damage, the pain, the chaos, and the suffering he has inflicted on millions and millions of people, all over the world with his lies, his spread of misinformation, and his incitement of angry incels.

Also, don't forget, when Ukraine was trying to defend itself, he turned off Starlink access when they could have decisively ended Russia's aggression. A lot of people have suffered and died as a direct consequence of that action, which he took to support his buddy and fellow autocrat, Vladimir Putin.

That's more information than I think your friends will be willing to hear. Studies indicate that people who are heavily invested in the myth of a person will fight hard to hold onto the myth, and reject truth and facts, because it's so jarring to them. Musk has built a cult of personality, and maybe your friends are stuck to it.

I'd gently encourage your friends to consider one key fact: he has lied about his entire origin story, he has lied about his contributions to Tesla and SpaceX. He lies about everything, except when he posts on Twitter like a 12 year-old edgelord, because that's who he is, emotionally.

Finally, and this is for you, specifically: if your friends insist on supporting a fascist, a racist, a misogynist, or a bigot, because they think rockets are cool, maybe it's time to look for new friends.

I hope this helps.

And fuck Elon Musk.

[formulafanfics13]

Three Fingers and a Fucking Problem - LN4 & MV1 🔥

masterlist

Request

The press room smelled like hot lights, cold coffee, and tension. Five drivers. One row of chairs. Cameras flashing like lightning. Lando. Max. Lewis. Charles. Oscar. All dressed in team gear, all pretending to be professionals. But only two of them looked like they were about to start swinging. And the entire media team knew it.

The girl? She wasn't there. But her name lingered in the air like perfume.

Toto Wolff's daughter. Brains, beauty, a smile that could end careers. And a history, private, intimate history, with more than one driver on the stage.

Lando tapped his foot. Max cracked his knuckles. The entire front row of reporters smelled blood. Then it came.

A voice from the back of the room: "Max, last night, you were photographed at dinner with Toto Wolff's daughter. Anything you want to share?"

The silence hit hard. Even Lewis blinked. Charles made a sound halfway between a cough and a Jesus Christ. Oscar lowered his mic and visibly turned his head to stare. Max didn't flinch. He leaned into the mic, voice low and almost bored. "We had a nice meal. She's excellent company."

Lando made a noise. It was tiny. Barely audible. But every journalist caught it.

Max's eyes flicked sideways. "You got something to say, Lando?"

Lando didn't look at him. "Nope."

"Sounded like a scoff."

"I just choked," Lando said sweetly, eyes fixed dead ahead. "Thinking about how many people have had 'a nice meal' with her."

Oscar shifted uncomfortably.

Charles audibly muttered, "Fuck's sake."

The PR rep cleared her throat. "Next question-"

But no one was listening anymore. Max smiled. "You seem tense, mate."

Lando smiled wider. "You seem obsessed."

And that was that.

The rest of the conference passed in a blur, fake laughs, vague answers, a few soundbites for Sky Sports. But as soon as the last journalist filed out, and the cameras were off, the atmosphere cracked wide open.

Max was the first to speak. "You still seeing her?"

No one moved.

Lando didn't blink. "None of your business."

"That's a yes," Max said.

Lewis stood slowly. "I'm not listening to this."

"Sit down," Max said. Lewis raised a brow. "Please," Max added. Lewis sat.

Oscar sighed. "This is going to be awful."

Charles put his head in his hands. "So awful."

Max turned fully in his seat now, eyes on Lando like a fucking hawk. "You fucked her?"

The room dropped ten degrees. Lando didn't move. "Yeah."

Max exhaled sharply through his nose. "When?"

Lando grinned, slow and venomous. "Last week."

Max's jaw clenched. "Did she like it?"

"She came."

Oscar groaned. "Oh my God."

Max wasn't done. He leaned forward, voice lower now, vicious with jealousy masked as curiosity. "How many fingers did she let you use?"

Charles made a sound like he'd just been shot. Lando licked his bottom lip. Met Max's stare. And said "Three."

Max didn't breathe. Didn't blink. Just smiled, not nicely. "Only three?" he murmured. "Hm."

Lando narrowed his eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Max leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms like he had a crown on. "Means she's still holding out on you."

Charles stood. "Nope. I'm out."

"Same," Lewis muttered, grabbing his water bottle.

But Max and Lando were locked in. No escape. "You think she gives you everything?" Max asked.

"You think she hasn't?"

"She moans louder when she's on top," Max said casually.

"She scratches deeper when she's on her back," Lando shot back.

"She bites my neck when she's close."

"She rides me until she's close."

Oscar looked at Charles like he was about to pass out. "Are they... are they in love with her?"

"I think they're about to start biting each other," Charles whispered.

Lewis just sighed. "We should've let the journalists stay. Would've made better TV."

The room was quiet now. Too quiet. Just five men in a post-press conference haze, surrounded by empty chairs, discarded water bottles, and the lingering scent of media stress. But the tension between Max and Lando? It had solidified into something physical. Something dangerous.

Lewis, Charles, and Oscar were still sitting on the same sofa, one long bench of varying shades of fuck-this, too uncomfortable to leave, too nosy to stay out of it. Max sat with his arms folded, eyes locked on Lando.

Lando lounged sideways in his chair, like he wasn't three seconds from getting socked in the jaw. And it was silent. Until-

"She lets me pull her hair," Max said, tone casual, like he was discussing tyre pressure.

Lando scoffed. "She begs me to."

Max raised an eyebrow. "She calls me sir when she's on her knees."

Lando tilted his head. "She calls me baby when she comes."

Charles made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. Oscar looked straight ahead like a soldier trying not to hear war crimes. Lewis rubbed both hands over his face. "You two need therapy."

"Don't speak unless you've fucked her," Max snapped without looking away from Lando.

Lewis held up both hands. "Didn't say a word."

"I didn't just fuck her," Lando said, eyes gleaming. "I kissed every single freckle on her back. I made her laugh mid-orgasm."

Max sat forward slowly. "I fucked her on her dad's balcony."

Charles clapped a hand over his mouth. Oscar choked. Lando blinked. "You didn't."

Max's grin was lethal. "I did. After she argued with him on the phone. She dragged me outside and said she needed to feel like herself again."

Lando opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Max didn't wait. "She scratches. You know that, right? Not just the skin. The soul. She'll fuck you until you forget your name, and then she'll laugh while fixing her hair."

Lando recovered fast. "You ever watch her touch herself?"

Max narrowed his eyes.

Lando smiled. "She looks at me when she does it."

Oscar whispered, "I am not old enough for this."

Charles nodded solemnly. "None of us are."

"She calls me when she's lonely," Lando said, cocky again.

"She calls me when she needs it," Max shot back. "There's a difference."

"She likes my hands."

"She lives for my mouth."

"I've had her in my car. Twice."

"I've had her in Toto's office."

Lewis got up. Left the room. Didn't say a thing.

Charles leaned in toward Oscar. "You keeping count?"

"I stopped after the third time one of them said come."

"I'm invested," Charles whispered. "I want to know who wins."

Oscar stared straight ahead. "The girl wins. She already won."

They turned back to the scene like they were watching the last act of a Shakespeare tragedy. Max was on his feet now, pacing slowly, hands clenched. Lando leaned back, legs spread, smug.

"She told me I feel like safety," Lando said softly, deliberately. "She told me I was home."

Max's jaw clenched. "She told me she'd never felt that scared."

Lando's smile faltered. "What?"

Max's voice dropped. "She told me I made her lose control. That she hated it. Loved it. That I scared her because it was too much."

Silence. Charles shifted awkwardly.

Max kept going. "You made her laugh. Cute. But I made her cry. Not from pain. From feeling."

Lando stood. "You're so sure you ruined her."

Max stepped closer. "I know I did."

They were nose to nose now. Breathing hard. One second from throwing punches. And then,  "She let me keep her underwear," Lando whispered.

Max didn't blink. "She wore mine on a plane."

"She wears my hoodie to sleep."

"She wears my bruises in the shower."

Charles stood up. "Okay. That's enough. That's enough. You're both unwell."

Oscar looked like he might pass out. "I need to go to church."

Max didn't move. Neither did Lando. The air between them crackled. She wasn't even in the room. But she was everywhere.

Lewis found Toto pacing near the Mercedes garage. Calm on the outside. Bluetooth in one ear. iPad in hand. Reading telemetry or God, or maybe both. "Hey," Lewis said casually, trying not to sound like someone who just walked in on a verbal threesome and wanted to vomit.

Toto looked up. "Something wrong?"

Lewis hesitated. Then exhaled. "You should probably head to the press conference room."

Toto's brows pulled together, instantly alert. "What happened?"

Lewis rubbed the back of his neck. "Let's just say... you might want to go put your daughter on a very short leash."

Toto froze. Silence. Then a blink. "Excuse me?"

Lewis just nodded once. "Trust me."

And walked away. Toto didn't ask any more questions. He turned. Walked. The kind of walk that people in the paddock got out of the way for. Measured. Heavy. Deliberate. Like he could sense something was rotting in the walls and he was going to cut it out himself.

It took him exactly two minutes to reach the press room. And thirty seconds to realize Lewis hadn't been dramatic enough. He opened the door. And froze.

Lando and Max were still standing in the center of the room, flushed, panting, shirts tugged, faces millimeters apart, mid-bicker, their voices loud and explicit.

"She came when I said her name," Lando was saying.

"She came when I bit her thigh," Max growled.

"She told me I was her favourite."

"She told me you were the warm-up."

"Yeah?" Lando snapped. "Then why did she ride me for forty minutes and beg me to come inside-"

"ENOUGH."

The room went silent. Not quiet. Silent. Every breath vanished. Oscar nearly fell off the sofa. Charles physically flinched. Max blinked. Lando's throat clicked.

Toto Wolff stood in the doorway like the fucking grim reaper, six foot five and made of steel, his gaze flat, cold, murderous. No emotion. No confusion. Just nuclear fury barely hidden beneath Austrian restraint. His voice, when he spoke, was low. Controlled. Deadly. "I suggest," he said softly, "you both shut your fucking mouths before I make sure you never sit in a Formula 1 car again."

Max looked away first. Lando followed. Toto stepped inside, letting the door shut behind him with a final click.

Charles and Oscar were still frozen on the sofa, backs ramrod straight like they were waiting to be drafted into war. Toto didn't speak again. Not at first. He just looked at them. One by one. Max. Lando. Oscar. Charles. Back to Max. Then Lando again.

Then finally, his voice like ice,  "Someone explain. Now."

No one moved. No one breathed. Until, in the smallest voice he could manage, Oscar said, "They were... having a disagreement. About... um."

"Who's... uh..." Charles coughed. "Who's better with your daughter."

Toto blinked once. "Better... at what, Charles?"

Charles's soul left his body. "Sex."

Silence again. Dead, cold, career-ending silence. Toto stared at the ceiling like he was praying for divine intervention or a meteor. Then he turned slowly toward Max. "You fucked my daughter?"

Max's jaw clenched. "Yes."

Toto turned to Lando. "You fucked my daughter."

Lando nodded. "Yeah."

Toto exhaled. Closed his eyes. Held very, very still. For ten seconds, he didn't speak. Then, in a tone that sounded terrifyingly reasonable: "Why. In. God's. Name. Are you discussing her orgasms in a press conference room?"

Lando opened his mouth. Max cut in. He asked how many fingers I used."

Oscar audibly gasped. Charles slapped a hand over his mouth.

Toto stared at Max. Just stared. Then said, in a whisper so quiet it hurt, "I am going to kill you."

Lando stepped forward. "Okay- hang on- we weren't trying to be disrespectful-"

Toto turned to him with a look. "Lando."

"Yeah?"

"Shut the fuck up."

Lando immediately shut the fuck up. Toto pinched the bridge of his nose, breathing through it. "I have managed some of the most difficult drivers in the history of this sport," he muttered. "I have stared down team principals, sponsors, fucking governing bodies. But this?" He gestured between them. "This is fucking insanity."

No one spoke. No one could. Then quietly, Toto asked, "Does she know?"

Lando blinked. "Know what?"

Toto's eyes bored into him. "That she has both of you acting like goddamn teenagers in a locker room? Measuring dicks? Using her name like a fucking trophy?"

Neither of them answered. Toto shook his head. "She deserves better."

Max's jaw clenched. "She's not yours to protect like that."

"She's my daughter," Toto snapped. "She is exactly mine to protect."

Then softer. More tired. "And clearly, she needs it." No one dared speak. The room hung in it. Until Toto said, like the sound of a sword being unsheathed, "If I hear one more word about what you've done with her, to her, or inside her, I will end you."

And just like that, he walked out. Leaving four drivers and one corpse in the shape of Lando Norris behind.

[xiaq]

Did you ever work in customer service? You give off been-in-the-trenches-and-are-better-for-it vibes.

Hi, this is slightly unhinged, but thank you!!

Now you're going to get the story of how I was offered a job on the spot for the first ever position I ever interviewed for (which was, indeed, customer service).

Okay, so, I'm 15, my birthday is in two days, and HEB (Texas grocery store) is hiring baggers for $7 an hour and cashiers for a whole whopping $10 an hour. Cashiers have to have prior experience OR have to work as a bagger for a year first. But I am full of teenage verve and I want that cashier position. I want it now.

I show up on my motorcycle, so I'm in my "professional" outfit but carrying my helmet when I enter the hiring manager's office, which really sets the tone for how things proceed.

The interviewer is like, "how old are you?" and babyface mcgee me, five foot tall and all of 90lbs says, "Fifteen. But I'm sixteen in two days."

And he's like, "...we can't hire you if you're fifteen."

And I'm like, "bet, but you can get the paperwork started now, yeah?"

And he says, "wait, how did you drive a motorcycle here if you're 15?"

So the first 5 minutes of the interview turn into me showing him my license, explaining DMV rules re 15-yr-olds and permitted engine size for motorcycles and pointing out my bike in the parking lot.

"Okay," he says, clearly trying to rally. "So you have a method of transportation, that's great, but we can't consider you for the cashier job if you don't have experience. We can only consider you as a bagger."

I'm prepared for this. I lay out my most recent report card, as well as copies of the sports and academic awards I've achieved in the last year. I give my "I'm a fast learner, I'm a hard worker, and you'll benefit more from me working as a cashier, interacting with customers, than a bagger" speech. I've been buying groceries at this store my whole life, so I know that cashiers are ranked by how many 'Item of the Week' they manage to hawk at checkout (typically batteries or soda or chips). "I'll be top of the ranking for Item of the week, just you wait."

I think he is reluctantly charmed by my bull-headedness. "Okay,” he says, reaching for the can of coke on his desk. "Fine. Sell this to me, then. Right now."

This man is mid-forties. He has bad handmade artwork hung up on his office wall.

"Do you have kids?" I ask, already knowing the answer.

"Two," he says. "Boy and a girl. The girl is just a year younger than you, actually."

"Ah," I say, "is it getting harder and harder to connect with her? Monosyllabic answers? Spends all her time in her room."

"...yes," he says.

“I was the same,” I say somberly. “Until, one afternoon, my dad came into my room and handed me a Coke.”

I tap my fingers on the Coke in front of me.

“He told me to come share a drink with him while he grilled on the back porch and that once I’d finished my Coke I could crawl, hissing, back to my room, but he wanted company until then. And see, I did, actually, want to spend time with my dad. I just didn’t know how to initiate it, and my teenage hormones made it difficult for me to express that. So I took the Coke and stomped my way outside but once I was there, I drank it slowly. And I answered his questions about school and cheerleading and asked him about work and we planned a weekend father-daughter motorcycle trip into the hill country. And ever since then, every few days, he’ll come to my room and offer me a Coke, and I’ll spend half an hour drinking it in his company.”

I slide the coke across the desk to him. “Might be an approach to try with your daughter, what do you think?”

He catches the Coke automatically. He sighs.

"Yeah, alright," he says. "Cashier job is yours. Come back in two days when you're actually sixteen and we'll get your paperwork sorted out." I worked there for the rest of high school and I was, typically, top of the rankings for selling Items of the Week the entire duration.

Entirely unrelated, I hate coke. I don’t drink soda, and the only beverage my dad has ever shared with me on the back porch is a margarita. But he didn’t need to know that.

[thatbadadvice]

Help! I'm A Private Person!

Neil Gaiman, Journal.NeilGaiman.com, 14 January 2025:

Over the past many months, I have watched the stories circulating the internet about me with horror and dismay. I’ve stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation. I've always tried to be a private person, and felt increasingly that social media was the wrong place to talk about important personal matters. I've now reached the point where I feel that I should say something. As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.  I went back to read the messages I exchanged with the women around and following the occasions that have subsequently been reported as being abusive. These messages read now as they did when I received them – of two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships and wanting to see one another again. At the time I was in those relationships, they seemed positive and happy on both sides. And I also realise, looking through them, years later, that I could have and should have done so much better. I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been. I was obviously careless with people's hearts and feelings, and that's something that I really, deeply regret. It was selfish of me. I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people's. I’ve spent some months now taking a long, hard look at who I have been and how I have made people feel.  Like most of us, I’m learning, and I'm trying to do the work needed, and I know that that's not an overnight process. I hope that with the help of good people, I'll continue to grow. I understand that not everyone will believe me or even care what I say but I’ll be doing the work anyway, for myself, my family and the people I love. I will be doing my very best to deserve their trust, as well as the trust of my readers. At the same time, as I reflect on my past – and as I re-review everything that actually happened as opposed to what is being alleged – I don't accept there was any abuse. To repeat, I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Some of the horrible stories now being told simply never happened, while others have been so distorted from what actually took place that they bear no relationship to reality. I am prepared to take responsibility for any missteps I made. I’m not willing to turn my back on the truth, and I can't accept being described as someone I am not, and cannot and will not admit to doing things I didn't do.

Dear Neil,

You, sir, are nothing other than fundamentally misunderstood — indicated in every sense by this, a smart and good post that you published on the whole-ass internet for literally the entire world to read.

The important thing is that you're learning! And you deserve infinite credit for that. Not nearly enough people appreciate how much you've learned about yourself in the course of ~ allegedly ~ committing sexual assault against multiple, probably crazy, women and the aftermath thereof. Less enlightened men would disregard the experiences of women who have highly specific and detailed accounts of being sexually abused, but you are open to the idea that the women who foolishly believe you assaulted them were simply mislead by your interminable charm! For which you cannot be held responsible! What a gift you are, friend; your generosity and open-mindedness are unparalleled.

Truly, whomst among us has not been where you find yourself now? Come, enjoy the company of friends who understand the brutal loneliness that results from being misunderstood by hysterical bitches who fail to appreciate the privilege of having your masterful fingers shoved up their asses without notice!

Again and again, women love men like you too much. They want you to be emotionally and sexually available! And that is just so, so much to ask. You have a lot going on! It's not a ding on them — of course they find you irresistible, being as you are an intellectual titan — and they may find themselves confused and intimidated by your sexual prowess, unaware that you exist in a world beyond pedestrian notions of consent. That is what makes your work so particularly meaningful and powerful.

You write about a man who does a bad thing, but you do the other good thing! You do a good thing, but in your work, a man does a bad thing! This is the stuff of sheer brilliance, capturing the sturm unt drang of the human condition — or, at least, of the humans whose conditions matter most, which is to say, men of your creative stature.

The sorry truth is that despite your best efforts, no one understands you, the author of 40-plus years of written work in which you had every fucking opportunity to emulate literally any character of your design who was not an unrepentant rapist. Whomst among us has not struggled with such quandaries? Whomst among us has not wondered: Should I rape women in the presence of my child, or should I just the fuck wait a minute and destroy my marriage by other means? Should I order a cinnamon bagel, or an egg sandwich? These are the questions men such as us must grapple with in a world where cancel culture has run rampant, and where people are liable to believe anything they hear from over half a dozen unbridled harpies (story idea! make sure Katee Robert doesn't see this, she seems like a bitch with designs) whose indeterminate fantasies have been aggressively fact-checked by risk-averse media legal departments.

You're right and everyone else is wrong, and that's exactly the take-away that everyone will have from reading this thing that you posted! Great work, great instincts, great writing. It's like Stardust, but hotter. You know what I mean.

A+ all around, no notes other than: you should share this with more people directly so they have the clearest possible idea of where you're coming from. Don't hold back, bud!

[thedensworld]

Don't Touch Mine | Y.Jh

Pairing: ceo!Jeonghan x secretary!Reader

Genre: romance, friends to lovers, angst, smut

Words count: 1k

Summary: Jeonghan had hid his feelings for you, but he had been in denial. Then, an unexpected event occurred, and everything changed.

Joshua nudged Seungcheol, subtly signaling towards their best friend, who had been casting his gaze across the entire ballroom. The two of them exchanged glances, sharing an inside joke known only to the trio, including the man himself, Yoon Jeonghan.

"Looking for Y/n?" Joshua chirped, his voice lightly teasing. It seemed to slightly irk Jeonghan, who promptly redirected his attention towards his two closest companions. He raised his glass, taking a sip of the wine that had been resting there.

Seungcheol let his eyes wander and easily spotted you standing with none other than Chwe Hansol, a budding businessman bearing a striking resemblance to the young Leonardo DiCaprio.

"Absolutely not," Jeonghan mumbled, offering a smile to the other guests who passed by and recognized the three of them.

"Then you should be alright with Y/n talking with Chwe," Seungcheol remarked, motioning towards you and Hansol. From Jeonghan's perspective, you two seemed a bit too friendly.

Jeonghan swallowed hard, a lump forming in his throat. "She's my secretary. It's my responsibility to ensure she doesn't make a fool of herself," he explained, eliciting chuckles from Joshua and Seungcheol.

"She's the one who saved you from that. Remember the charity ball at Jeon's group?" Joshua reminded Jeonghan of a minor chaos he had caused last time.

Jeonghan closed his eyes, trying to push away the sudden surge of old memories. Blame his low alcohol tolerance that led him to take an unplanned dive into the pond in the middle of the ballroom. He was thankful that the event had been private, sparing him from any media scrutiny.

"I hope everyone's forgotten it, like I've tried to," he sighed.

Seungcheol suddenly cleared his throat, nodding towards your location. "Kim Mingyu is approaching them," he said, an alert tone in his voice. That was enough to snap Jeonghan back to attention.

Jeonghan turned his body, observing how the casanova attempted to flirt with his secretary. Could he blame the guy? He wasn't sure. Or should he blame you for looking absolutely stunning tonight in that black dress that hugged your figure little too tight? Since he'd seen you step into his office before the ball, Jeonghan hadn't been able to shake off the effect.

"Look at that guy, he's got such a cheap stare," Jeonghan remarked to his friends, his distaste evident on his face as he observed Kim Mingyu.

Joshua playfully elbowed him in the stomach. "Alright, you're being a bit too loud, but I agree, man."

Seungcheol chuckled softly. "But the guy does have a certain charm, you've got to admit." His comment earned an eye roll from Joshua. "Are you on his side or Jeonghan's?"

Jeonghan turned to Joshua, a protest forming on his lips. Joshua simply shrugged and continued, "To make Y/n yours?"

Jeonghan scoffed, "She's already mine," he declared, before striding away from his best friends.

*

As you drove back to Jeonghan's home after the event, he couldn't help but ask, "What were you discussing with Hansol and Mingyu?"

"We were talking about our latest ad project for the release. Hansol expressed interest in a collaboration," you explained, opening your iPad to show him Chwe Hansol's company profile.

Jeonghan leaned in, genuinely intrigued by the conversation, engrossed in the work that C.Creative had accomplished. He instructed you to delve deeper into the company's projects that could potentially be worked on with Hansol and compile a report.

As you diligently took notes, he suddenly inquired, "What did Mingyu talk to you about? Is he bothering you?" You shook your head, reassuring him.

"Absolutely not. He just had some questions about our app, which I already addressed," you reassured him.

Jeonghan's brow furrowed, curiosity piqued. "What did he say?"

"Um... Just about our system on Nevitech and... some personal matters," you replied.

"Did he ask you out?" Jeonghan's direct question caused you to bite your lip, and with a hesitant nod, you confirmed it.

Jeonghan sighed, his concern evident. "Do you want me to talk to him? I can make it clear if you're not interested..."

You interrupted him, "I am actually interested in him."

Jeonghan was taken aback, blinking in surprise. He leaned back in his seat. "Oh... I didn't know you liked him."

"Like is a strong word. I'm just open to the possibility of dating... you know, it's been a while," you explained, trying to be reasonable.

Jeonghan had to admit, your dedication to him and the company was commendable. It was one of the reasons he always tried to keep you low-profile or shielded at business gatherings, out of concern that someone might try to recruit you. It spoke volumes about your potential as his secretary.

He still remembered that you had a boyfriend when you first joined the company, but after a few months, he noticed the absence. Jeonghan was never one to cross professional boundaries, especially at work. But when he finished his work and saw you waiting for him, he felt a pang of guilt. It was a Friday, and you should have been spending time with your significant other.

"You're not home?" he inquired.

You shook your head and replied, "I was waiting for you, sir."

Glancing at his watch, Jeonghan realized it was well past dinner time. "Have you had dinner?" Another shake of the head from you.

That night, you both shared a meal, and it was during this time that he learned about your breakup due to your busy schedule. He also discovered you were from the same high school and that you were his junior.

"You should call me by my name, Y/n," Jeonghan suggested casually, not expecting that this casualness would lead to whatever he was feeling these days.

"Jeonghan..." Your voice saying his name brought him back from his reverie. Those were simpler times, when nobody knew you, and he had you to himself.

"Jeonghan, we've arrived," you informed him. He turned to you, realizing you were now in the basement of his penthouse.

Nodding, Jeonghan stepped out of the car. You gave him a respectful bow before he started to walk away. Just as he took his fifth step, he turned back to you. "Y/n... Could you come in for a bit? There's something else I'd like to discuss."

You glanced at your watch, then nodded. After grabbing your belongings, you followed him inside.

*

Jeonghan awoke with a pounding headache, his reminder of his abysmal alcohol tolerance. However, he couldn't forget everything that transpired the night before.

"Y/n, I like you. A lot.'"

Immediately, he sat up, surveying the disarray he had left in his wake. He cursed himself, realizing he hadn't bothered to put on any clothes, and now you were gone. As the memories flooded back, he buried his face in his hands, anxious about how to handle the situation with you after what had happened.

A confession had led to a heated night that Jeonghan never anticipated. He berated himself, trying to dismiss any foolish thoughts, and checked the clock on his nightstand. It read 7 am, meaning he'd see you in the office in an hour. What should he do? Act as if it never happened? Apologize and insist it was a one-time thing? Jeonghan took a deep breath, resolving to go with the latter option. He was your boss, and you were his secretary. A romantic relationship between you two was impractical. It was definitely a one-time occurrence. You wouldn't see him as a man, would you? He reasoned that emotions had gotten the best of him last night, and you had been intoxicated.

That's all it was.

"Yeah... Right there... Please... J-Jeonghan..."

He groaned in frustration.

Walking into his office, he saw your silhouette already seated at your desk. He tried to steady the pounding in his chest and let out a deep sigh. He swore he'd never felt so on edge before. When he stepped into the office, you promptly stood and gave him a respectful bow. He paused in front of your desk, debating whether he should broach the subject of last night.

He gave you a nod before walking into his private room, finally able to breathe a bit easier. The knowledge that you were just meters away from him was torturous. He set his things down and sat at his desk, only to be jolted by a sudden knock. Acting out of character, he permitted you to enter with breakfast in hand.

"You got this for me?" He asked, puzzled. You blinked, as this was the usual routine every morning.

"I-I mean, you... you were gone this morning... to get this for me?" He stammered, audibly swallowing.

You nodded, "yes, please enjoy your breakfast," you calmly replied, bowing, and started to leave the room.

Jeonghan cleared his throat, "Y/n..." He hesitated, "whatever happened last night was a mistake. I'm sorry for that. It's so unprofessional of me," he began.

Your gaze met his, a pregnant pause hanging in the air. Slowly, you nodded and turned away, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

Days melted into weeks, the air between you and Jeonghan growing fragile. With a major project on the horizon, you both became engulfed in a whirlwind of activity, leaving little room to address the events of weeks past. Jeonghan found some solace in this.

But there was a noticeable shift. You weren't as talkative and lighthearted as before, which tugged at Jeonghan's heart. He cherished your jokes, a beacon of levity during the exhaustive whirl of meetings and paperwork. Now, your words were dominated by work, a change he couldn't help but take note of.

After a meeting with a foreign client, all Jeonghan yearned for was some respite. You both traversed the hotel corridor, you leading the way to his room.

"If you need anything, you can call my room," you offered, and he nodded, promptly entering his room.

As Jeonghan settled in for some rest, the night wrapped around him. It was nearly 10 pm when he ordered room service for dinner and summoned you to join him. When you knocked on his door, he welcomed you in, preparing the table. Just as he was about to pour the wine, a wave of memories crashed over him, stalling his hand. You looked at him with curiosity, but Jeonghan shook it off and poured the wine.

"Please, enjoy," he said to you as you both savored the meal.

The dinner continued with a brief discussion about the next day's schedule, as Jeonghan had several engagements in Singapore.

"What about the project with C.Creative?" Jeonghan reminded you about the upcoming project with Chwe Hansol's advertising company, currently working on their new release.

"I contacted them yesterday, and they're working on the proposal. When do you want them to present it?"

Jeonghan wondered, checking his schedule on his phone. "I think Friday would be great." You nodded and quickly jotted it down. "I'll email them tomorrow morning."

"Did you bring the MoU for tomorrow? I want to double-check," Jeonghan asked for the MoU file with the Singapore client to be signed the next day.

You reached for your things. As you searched for the file, an envelope labeled 'Resignation Letter' flew to Jeonghan's attention. His brows furrowed. Before you could retrieve it, Jeonghan quickly snatched it and opened it.

"You're about to resign? Why?" Surprise painted on his face, he inquired seriously.

You glanced around, avoiding his eyes, still searching for the reason you hadn't fully formed.

"I... I think it's been a while since I started working for you. I need a new experience, a new challenge to develop myself," you explained.

Jeonghan didn't seem entirely satisfied with your answer. He looked at you again and said, "Is it because of the salary? Do you want a raise? How much?"

Your eyes widened. "No, Jeonghan. You pay me more than enough. It's not about the money," you clarified.

Jeonghan tilted his head, a tinge of concern. "I don't find it reasonable for you to quit, Y/n. You know better than anyone that being my secretary in this industry is quite challenging."

You sealed your lips and let out a sigh before revealing the real reason. "I don't find it enjoyable anymore, working with you, Jeonghan."

Jeonghan felt a small twinge in his heart at your words. He slowly prodded further, "Is it... because of what happened last time?" He asked cautiously.

You nodded slowly. "I know you made it clear it was a one-time thing. But, I think it's changed a lot, between us," you said, finally expressing what was on your mind.

Jeonghan took a deep breath. "Then what's your plan?"

"Kim's Property has sent me a proposal to work for them."

Kim's Property? Kim Mingyu?

"Wait!" Jeonghan began, "You want to quit because you find that we've been unprofessional, but you want to work with Kim Mingyu? The guy who's been hitting on you?" A sudden surge of anger filled Jeonghan.

"I'll be his father's secretary, so we won't work directly with each other."

Jeonghan couldn't help but chuckle, finding it rather perplexing that you were willing to work with Kim Mingyu despite the perceived unprofessionalism. He felt a sense of injustice in this situation.

"Why? What's the real reason you don't want to work with me?" Jeonghan pressed, feeling that your previous explanations were merely excuses to distance yourself from him.

"We're being unprofessional, Jeonghan. I don't think I could continue working with you," you asserted.

Jeonghan scoffed, frustration and confusion coursing through him. "Tell me the exact reason, Y/n! You don't like me anymore? Suddenly you don't enjoy working with me?"

"It's because I do like you."

Jeonghan's mouth hung open, stunned by your candid admission.

"I've liked you since you took me to that dinner five years ago. And when you finally confessed that you liked me that night, I was over the moon. But the next morning... you said it was just a one-time thing, a mistake, and I... I couldn't look at you the same way again. I'm sorry..."

"What?" Jeonghan's voice was barely above a whisper. He rubbed his face, finally connecting all the dots from the strange tension between you two in recent weeks.

You took a deep breath before continuing, "I hope you can understand, Jeonghan," and with that, you rose from your chair and headed towards the door.

As Jeonghan saw you walk out, he immediately pulled your arm and landed his lips on yours. He pushed your body against the wall while his other hand reached the nape of your neck to deepen the kiss. The kiss lasted for seconds before he pulled away. Jeonghan looked into your eyes before pulling you into another kiss. In this moment, you raised your hand to cling to his neck, savoring the intimacy you shared in the room.

"I like you. No, I love you, Y/n," Jeonghan whispered in the midst of your shared kiss.

He pulled away from the kiss and looked into your eyes, "that time wasn't a mistake. It was stupid of me to say that."

You stared at him and felt tears welling in your eyes. Your heart pounded so much when Jeonghan pulled you into another kiss, but this time with so much passion and lust. His kiss slowly trailed to your neck as his body pressed you against the wall, almost enveloping you. He tapped your thigh, motioning for you to jump on him, and you hugged his waist with your legs. His hand roamed your figure, and his other cupped your cheek.

"May I?" He asked, his gaze never leaving yours. You nodded slowly as he took your shirt off and unclasped your bra. He kissed your chest as one of his hands went to one of your breasts.

"You're mine, Y/n. You're mine."

*

Jeonghan's eyes wandered across the ballroom, searching for your figure as Seungcheol spoke to him. "Are you even listening, Yoon Jeonghan?"

Seungcheol's words pulled Jeonghan's attention, causing him to turn his head towards his friend. He hummed in response, nodding as if he had been listening. Seungcheol chuckled at his best friend. "Looking for Joshua?"

"Yeah... Is he late? He said he'd be here in ten." Jeonghan muttered, glancing at his watch.

"There he is," Seungcheol said, motioning towards Joshua, who was approaching them.

"Alone?" Seungcheol asked Joshua. Joshua shook his head. "She was talking to someone earlier," he said, pointing to where his secretary was. Jeonghan immediately turned his head in that direction.

"Stop looking for my secretary!" Joshua nudged Jeonghan's arm.

Jeonghan scoffed, "She was mine before yours," he mumbled, finally spotting you in conversation with a woman.

"How can she look that stunning?" Jeonghan remarked to Joshua and Seungcheol when he saw you in your silk red dress with your hair down.

As he watched the tall Kim Mingyu approach you, Jeonghan promptly handed his glass to Seungcheol and made a beeline for your location.

"Hi honey, you look gorgeous," Jeonghan interjected, interrupting your conversation with Kim Mingyu. The Casanova seemed taken aback by Jeonghan's bold move as his hand gently reached for your waist and he planted a sweet kiss on your shoulder.

Mingyu let out a chuckle. "Is this the reason you joined Joshua's company? Because you're together."

Jeonghan smiled at Mingyu and pulled your body closer to his, gazing at you tenderly before leaning in to plant a kiss on your cheek.

"Yeah, she's mine."

[hallelujahmeatgod]

Arranged Marriage, but make it Deadpan Overachievers

Soooo imagine this:

Sylus and the fem!Y/N are like a pair of second-eldest-only-children who treat emotions the way you'd treat a low-priority email: acknowledged, brushed off, and filed away. They're both high-functioning overachievers with no patience for romance, drama, or anything that doesn’t come with a deadline and neatly color-coded tags.

So when their parents drop the “We’re arranging your marriage” bomb, neither even blinks.

Y/N, in the middle of three deadlines and a dangerously full coffee cup, just nods. “With whom?” she asks flatly, not even looking up from her computer screen. Her assistant, already overworked, now has a new task titled ‘Background Check: Sylus. Blood type optional. Tax records preferred.’

Meanwhile, Sylus gets handed a “family photo” that’s actually MC’s LinkedIn profile. He stares. “That’s her? Cute. And she did that project? Since when are arranged marriages a win? K-dramas lied to me. Arrange me harder, Pops.”

Emotions? Who has the bandwidth. Flustered? For what. Their first meeting is peak corporate courtship:

Y/N: “Hi. I read your company’s last quarterly report. Nice cost-cutting strategy.”

Sylus: “Thanks. I liked your thesis. Wanna split a Google Calendar?”

To everyone’s horror, they become that couple. The annoyingly in-sync duo who treat romantic gestures like they’re fiscal strategies. Love language? Spreadsheets with consistent formatting.

Sylus straight up restructures his entire workflow to mirror his wife's. Templates? If they’re not in her style, he physically cannot process them. Reports? If they’re not written like hers, suddenly he forgets how to read. Schedules? If they’re not plotted like she does, he swears time itself becomes an illusion, and he will miss everything.

People expected passion or tension or at least some drama.

Instead, they got a power duo that accidentally soft-launched their love story through synced schedules, iced coffee deliveries, and the occasional “Drink this or suffer.”

They’re still burnt out. Still sleep-deprived. Still running on ambition and spite. But now? There’s late-night takeout, quiet laughter, and Sylus’s off-key humming while cooking eggs.

Marriage wasn’t a plot twist—it was a peaceful pact sealed over shared Google Docs and matching time-blocks. And somehow, without realizing it, it turned into home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm currently writing a fic based on this, ya'll! Stay tuned mehehhehehe <3 Hope you like this idea as much as I dooooo~

Let me know your thoughts??

[jiniretracha]

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠? - 𝐥𝐞𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐱 (𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬)

pairing: lee felix x fem!reader

warnings: fluff, smut, angst!!!

summary: You worked at Kim Publishing, a place you could call home since the very start. But when it faced bankruptcy, your beloved company was forced to merge with Bang Editorials an evil empire with no vision on anything that Kim Publishing represented. And that's how you met your nemesis: Felix Lee. The bane of your existence. But everything fell into place like the pieces of a puzzle when your bosses had a marvellous idea: a new position as manager director, who had to submit their report in order to be chosen for the job. And your archenemy had the same purpose as you did: get that job one way or another.

word count: 4.5k

ps: I came with a new series totally and utterly inspired/based on The Hating Game. Pls feel free to let me know if you wanna be on this series taglist !

masterlist // series masterlist // ko-fi

𝐎𝐍𝐄 - 𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠

There used to be a period of your life, when you started working at Kim Publishing, that you loved your job with your entire being. You’ve always been kind of a bookworm, often called a nerd, and as soon as you finished school, you knew you wanted a job that related to your love for them. 

Kim Publishing was your home, just like the owner, Kim Hwayoung, who felt like a stepmother to you. The company was known for its insistence on literature as art, just like you’ve always envisioned. 

But that was until last year.

Your beloved company Kim Publishing sadly faced bankruptcy and was forced to merge with Bang Editorial, an evil empire with no vision on anything that Kim Publishing represented. Basically known for ghostwritten autobiographies of sports stars with brain damage. 

That meant one thing: Bang Editorial workers had to move into the Kim Publishing building. In other words, war. 

You’ve had to suffer from having co-workers being fired in front of you because, according to Bang Seojun, the CEO of Bang Editorials, they were a waste of money and space. 

And that’s how you’ve met your nemesis: Felix Lee.

The bane of your existence. 

Your reasons for hating him were various. 

Reason One: You’ve seen him smile to everyone around you, showing kindness, except towards you. 

Why? You never knew exactly why, to be honest. The minute you met him, knowing you’d be partnered to share the same office, your desks being right in front of each other, you decided to gift him some cupcakes, feeling like making a good impression on your new co-worker. You knew you’d be spending an awful lot of time around him, the least you could do was make him feel at home. 

But Felix Lee just glanced at your face, grabbed the cupcake box and, wordlessly, walked towards the elevator, without sparing another glance at you. 

You stood there that day in your place, feeling so dumb and asking yourself what the hell had you done wrong. 

You’d ask your co-workers about him and they all said the same thing: he was lovely. He seemed to be so nice and kind and yet, he didn’t show not an ounce of niceness or kindness towards you. He was the exact opposite. 

Reason Two: He’s a control freak. 

His desk, unlike yours, was incredibly tidied. Every little thing had its place. You hated it, cause if somebody were to look at your desk, they would grimace and compare it to his. It wasn’t that yours was a mess, it’s just that his was likely comparable to American Psycho. 

You always had fun walking towards his desk when he wasn’t around and messing around with his stuff, misplacing the stapler, moving the sticky notes or turning the pens on their other side. He’d turn around and absolutely know that everything was out of its place. Borderline psychopathic conduct. 

The guy even wore the same shirts in the same order every fucking week. Who does that?

You had even memorized the pattern. 

Monday: light grey.

Tuesday: white.

Wednesday: baby blue.

Thursday: sky blue.

Friday: royal blue. 

So predictable, you always thought every time he arrived at the office with the same shirts on the same day. 

Reason Three: He always corrects any tiny mistake you make. 

You’d give him reports and he’d hand them back to you all scribbled over with a sharp red marker, to give you some sort of consciousness of your mistakes (his words, not yours). 

Reason Four: Probably the most important one. After the merger, he came up with a list of people to fire, making Bang Seojun almost come in his pants from the excitement it gave him saving money, and it included all of your co-workers and friends.

Who were kind of all of the friends you had, if you were being honest. 

It made your skin crawl just how unaffected by the whole thing he was, just flawlessly walking around with his stupid freckles and stupid black hair, always so perfectly combed. 

Felix Lee seemed like the perfect guy with his charms and freckles from the outside, but don’t let him fool you.

You were convinced he was the actual devil in disguise. 

⠈⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

It was a bright day and you only hoped it would mean no actual death threats thrown around between you and Felix. It would happen eventually, you just always hoped it would be the exception. 

When you stepped out of the elevator, you saw Kim Hwayoung, your boss (or well, one of your bosses as Bang Seojun was unfortunately one of them too) walking towards her office. 

“Good morning, Hwayoung” you bowed handing her a report.

“Good morning, dear Y/N” she smiled at you, grabbing the papers you handed to her. “Has Bang seen this?” she asked, her eyes curiously roaming all over the papers. 

“Well, I’ve emailed it to Felix so, I assume, yes” you nodded, following her. 

“Hmm, and what about that book from the actress. Did Bang turn it down like we assumed he would?” Hwayoung asked, opening the door of her office and walking inside.

You stepped inside and shut the door behind you. “Suspiciously, no. He didn’t. I’m kind of assuming he didn’t really pay attention to the long ass email you sent to him” you shrugged.

“Sounds like Bang Seojun” Hwayoung sighed, wiping a hand over her face in exhaustion. “We need to step up and make sure that girl gets a spot in our editorial. We can’t lose her to the testosterone that seems to run in this place” 

“Yeah, I’m on it” you nodded immediately, completely agreeing with her.

“That’s why you’re my favourite” she winked at you. “Would you be a darling and tell Lia to bring me a coffee on your way out? I’m not stressed today yet but I feel like it’s gonna be one hell of a day already, and please tell her to leave it by the meeting room” 

You chuckled and nodded. “Of course, Hwayoung” you smiled at the elderly woman. “See you in a few”

She blew you a kiss and opened her computer to start working. You stepped out of the office and went to the coffee area, where you knew you’d find Lia, Hwayoung’s assistant.

“Hey, Lia! Hwayoung just asked me if you could bring her coffee and leave it in the meeting room?”

“Hi, Y/N. Sure!” she kindly smiled and immediately went to make some coffee.

“Y/N! Y/N!” a familiar voice came from behind you and you refrained yourself from rolling your eyes. 

You turned around and plastered on a fake smile on your face. “Hey Soyeon. How are you?” you said, grabbing a cookie from the tray that was on the counter. 

She bit her lip and sighed. “I just wanted to ask you for a small favor” she started with a pout.

Oh my God, here we go. 

“I need more time for the monthly report, you know?” Soyeon said as she followed your walk towards the meeting room. “My nephew ate peanut butter yesterday, and he’s kind of allergic to it. I have to go take care of him at the hospital and- it’s just been so stressful” Soyeon faked being fed up with her supposed life story. “Could you please be a sweetheart and just give me a little bit more time?”

You knew she was faking. But you didn’t have it in yourself to say no to her, or anyone for that matter. Quote Taylor Swift, you were a pathological people pleaser. 

“Sure” you smiled, wanting to grab your hair and just rip it off. “Of course”

Soyeon sighed and smiled at you. “You’re the best, It will be ready on Monday… or Wednesday at the latest” she said and walked away before you could even utter a word. With a sigh, you bit at your cookie and rolled your eyes at your incapability of saying no to Soyeon. 

You were about to step inside the meeting room when you caught Felix, staring at you with that characteristic smile on his face. 

“That… was pathetic” he said. 

“Don’t project yourself on me, alright?” you grumbled, crossing your arms over your chest. 

“You know, Y/N. You could have her do her job” Felix said, stepping closer towards you. “But no… you always have to be the good guy”

“Well-” you shrugged. “It’s so much better than being the asshole, isn’t it?” 

Felix snorted and rolled his eyes with a smirk.

“Oh, and by the way” you said before stepping inside the meeting room. “Your tie is crooked”

Felix’s eyes widened and looked down at his tie. His tie, that was sitting perfectly on his chest.

You gave him a smirk and walked into the meeting room. 

He just pressed his tongue on his inner cheek and followed suit. 

“Oh, Y/N, Felix. So glad you guys are here” Kim Hwayoung greeted you as you sat next to her and Felix right next to his CEO, Bang Seojun. “Mr. Bang and I have an announcement we want to make. We’re adding a new position to the team!” she said happily. 

“Yeah” Bang Seojun nodded. “We’re adding a managing director, that will oversee each department, and he will pass that report to me”

Hwayoung rolled her eyes. “He or she will pass the report to both of us” she stated, still wearing her kind smile and Bang Seojun just nodded along. 

“The job is open to external applicants, of course, but… I would very much like to hire from within” Bang Seojun smirked at Felix. 

“Yeah, and we’re putting up an independent panel since we don’t always agree” Hwayoung eyed Seojun from across the table. “They will be the judge of it”

“You have… about a month and a half” Seojun said, eyeing his papers lying on the desk. “May the best man win!” 

“Or woman” Hwayoung pointed out, raising her manicured finger up.

“Or woman, yeah” Bang Seojun nodded and Hwayoung rolled her eyes again. 

You looked at Felix who was already staring at you wearing his infamous smirk.

You’re on, Felix Lee. You are so on.

⠈⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

“The job is mine, cupcake” he scolded you, as you made yourself tea. 

“Oh, your confidence is compelling but you forgot one tiny little detail” you said, feigning innocence. 

Felix just arched his eyebrows. “And what’s that?” he asked with a smile, amused. 

“Everyone hates you” You simply stated and turned around, walking towards the elevator with the cup of tea in hand.

“Oh, they don’t hate me. They fear me, which makes me very effective for my job” he said, following you. 

You chuckled. “You know, the day that I’ll be your boss. I will require you to smile at me at least every once in two minutes” you grumbled at him.

He walked next to you as he laughed. “When I’m your boss, I’m going to give you so much work, you’ll start using the office as your home address” he stated, firing back at you.

“When I’m your boss, I’m going to impose casual Fridays” you said and pressed the elevator button. “Hawaiian shirts mandatory”

“When I’m your boss, I’m going to implement a new dress code. No more looking like an elementary school librarian” he said, walking inside the elevator right behind you.

You scoffed and looked at him. “If you get the job, I’ll resign”

Felix pulled a shocked face on him.  “Really?” he asked, surprised. 

“Just like you will if I do” you said to him and narrowed your eyes.

“I don’t quit” Felix said to you with a chuckle. 

“All right. Then, I’ll fire you” you fired back at him. 

“Ah… but I’m incapable of giving you that pleasure” Felix smirked.

“Aww, it’s not the first time you’ve said that to a woman, isn’t it?” you asked him, with a grimace. 

Felix snorted and looked away, shaking his head.

“So we agree, then” you said with a smug smirk and he looks back at you, his eyes full of a certain emotion you couldn’t quite pinpoint. “If one of us gets the job, the other one has to quit” 

“Fine. Agreed” he said, sure of himself that he was going to be the one getting that job. 

The doors of the elevator opened and you stepped inside your office. You saw that Wooyoung, your co-worker, one of the few people that weren’t fired from the merger, was waiting by your desk with an excited smile.

“Oh, hey Wooyoung!” you smiled at him with a wave, your eyebrows raising up at his presence.

“Hi, Y/N. I’m bringing some delivery for you” he smiled at you, handing you a book.

You gasped, immediately recognising it. “Oh! The new book” you smiled widely at him. “That’s so nice of you, thank you”

Wooyoung worked in editing and even though he wasn’t technically your friend, you two had a very good relationship. Ever since all of your friends were fired, Wooyoung was kind of like the only person you found you could trust, besides Hwayoung. You tried to keep him close to you ever since the merger. 

“The designers made copies in advance, it’s not that big of a deal, so…” he shrugged, walking closer to you, trying to contain the smile that was trying to creep into his face from your words.

Felix sat by his desk and narrowed his eyes at the scene unfolding in front of him. 

You looked at the cover and frowned immediately. “Oh shit. Is this the cover?” you grimaced, showing the book to Wooyoung. 

Wooyoung let out a frustrated sigh and nodded. “Yeah, I’m sorry. Bang Seojun made us do it” he shrugged, clearly annoyed as well. 

“The book is about archeology, what the hell is this?” you stared at the book with a cover with a girl in it. “Did he even read the back cover?”

“I seriously doubt it” Wooyoung replied slowly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t”

“Do you, Y/N?” Felix asked and you found his gaze. “I mean, I was sure you didn’t even know how to read so…”

“First grader insults, great job, Felix” You said with sarcasm, give him a thumbs up. 

“Okay… I’m out of here” Wooyoung said, noticing that you were about to get each other's throats. Again. 

“Bye, Woo” you smiled.

“Bye, Y/N. Bye, Felix”

Felix didn’t reply and just grabbed some papers from his desk before sitting on his chair and looking at the now empty corridor.

“That poor sap thinks you’re flirting with him” Felix bit his lip, shaking his head. “How sad”

“The same way people think you’re flirting with me?” You asked him, raising an eyebrow. 

“Cupcake, if I was flirting with you, you’d know” he smirked, confidently. 

“I didn’t know losers knew how to flirt, but here we are” You said, typing away on your computer. 

You saw him sigh and grab a journal from a drawer, and with a red marker, scribble something inside it and close it. He left it there and opened his computer.

Your eyes shifted down to your hands and gnawed at your lip. You were now curious at what the hell was that thing where he just scribbled something random with a red marker on a journal. 

Before you could think it through, Bang Seojun came into your office with a smug smile. “Hello, my hardworking people” he said, and you knew he had to refrain from calling you slaves.

“Hi, Mr. Bang. I have a copy of the new book for you” you said, grabbing the book that Wooyoung had handed you.

“Ah!” Seojun yelped and walked towards you, grabbing the book. “Dr. Lee, you didn’t tell me it was ready” Seojun said, eyeing the book proudly. “The cover was all me, you know?” Bang Seojun looked way too proud of the god-awful cover.

“Y-yeah” you nodded, scratching your head in an awkward manner. “It’s um… it’s definitely eye-catching” you stammered, obviously finding it very hard to lie. 

“Yeah” Seojun chuckled. “Did you send the emails I told you to send, Dr. Lee?” 

“Yep. Already did” Felix nodded, without sparing him a glance. 

Bang Seojun smiled contently and patted the book with his palm, before leaving it on your desk. “Great. See you kids later” Seojun said and left the office.

“Bye… dick” you whispered that last part under your breath. 

“Did you just refer to the cover as eye-catching?” Felix said, with laughter hiding in his voice. “It looks like it was designed by a horny fifth-grader. Not exactly delivering knowing it’s a book about the diary of an archeologist, but whatever” 

You pulled your face back, taken aback by the information he had just provided. “Since when do you read the books we publish?” you asked him, narrowing your eyes. 

Felix shrugged. “I always do it. Plus, I felt the book was so boring, I fell asleep three times reading the first page” he said, placing his macbook inside his bag.

You snorted and stood up from your chair, grabbing your purse. “Well, it’s tiring to read above your level of education” you fired back. “Maybe you aren’t ready for chapter books just yet”

“It was boring, Y/N!” Felix defended himself, standing up to grab his coat from the hanger. 

“It was a masterpiece, and then Bang Seojun had to go and cut like 200 pages from it, with the sole excuse that he wanted it to be more of an ‘airport read’” you scoffed, putting on your coat and placing your purse on your desk. “Which is totally ridiculous. He’s just trying to mask that he doesn’t have enough IQ to actually interpret what the author is saying”

“Just admit it, cupcake. It was boring” Felix said, giving you a look.

“Whatever” you rolled your eyes and walked towards the elevator with your stuff, Felix following you behind. 

“So… any plans for the weekend?” He asked with a long breath. “Probably your usual right? Watching a cringey romantic comedy while eating something greasy out of a can?” 

You scoffed and let out a little laugh. “And what about the Lee’s? Drinking the blood of a virgin and then staring at each other in silence?” you arched an eyebrow at him. 

“Ugh, how did you know? We’re looking for donations” Felix said and you were both startled when Ms. Choi came into the elevator.

Ms. Choi as soon as she saw them, let out a huff. 

“Oh, hi, Ms. Choi! You look spectacular today” you smiled at her. “Love those earrings”

“Don’t even try” Ms. Choi cut you off. “I’ve got four complaints this week. FOUR. Three alone about the break room incident on Monday” she fumed. 

Oh. Yeah. 

That… was… 

MONDAY:

It was supposed to be a tranquil day that Monday, until Felix Lee had decided to give you shit for some mistakes you had made while typing the report you were supposed to send to him. He had managed to find you coincidentally in the break room… where everyone was supposed to be enjoying just that, their break. 

“Ready for our lesson?” Felix said loudly, grabbing a donut from a box, cutting it in half and showing it to you, making you gasp. “This is a coma-“ he said and then grabbed a munchkin. “And this is a period, which is a point” he mansplained to you. “Do you know how to use it? Do you?-“

“Put that donut away or I’m gonna shove it up so far up your ass, the damn surgeons are gonna have to cut you in half to take it off!” You yelled at him, banging your hand against the table of the break room, making every single person there turn their heads to look at you.

“Aww, wouldn’t you like that, cupcake?” he teased you, pouting out his lip. 

PRESENT DAY:

Yeah. So…

“Mommy and daddy fight sometimes” Felix explained to Ms. Choi. 

“Yeah, we have discussions” you smiled with sarcasm. 

“Like when Mommy has typos similar to a fourth grader and Daddy has to step up and correct her like a goddamned teacher” Felix said with a fake neutral voice.

“Or how Daddy has a cork up his ass and sometimes needs to yell at Mommy to decompress” you said between your teeth. 

Ms. Choi looked at you with a disgusted face. “Mommy and daddy? Are you two for real?” she scoffed. “You two are the worst part of my job…”

You felt like hugging Mr. Choi and apologising. 

It wasn’t her fault that Felix Lee had to be the bane of your existence. 

⠈⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

You got home at around 7 pm and about an hour later, when you were already showered and ready to make some dinner, your mother called you.

“Hey momma. How’s London going?” You asked her, sitting on the couch and crossing your legs. 

“Oh, you know… same old usual” she tried to make you feel better. 

You scoffed at her. “Mom. I’m sure London’s a thousand times better than Seoul. Less people, less flashy lights, and on top of all that, you’re there on a long ass vacation”

“Fine, fine. London’s amazing” she giggled. “I didn’t realise just how much I missed this place”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it” you smiled. “Did you, at least, buy me something nice?”

Your mother gasped. “Y/N! Of course I did. What kind of mom would I be if I didn’t?” she answered like she was offended. “I bought you a snow globe, the one you told me you wanted, and a few baby tees that you girls use nowadays with an I Love London on it”

“Great” you chuckled.

“What about you?”

“Huh?” you blinked a couple of times.

“How are you doing? Are you doing something today? You know, Friday night and all?” she asked you.

How do you tell your mom that your life is incredibly bland and dull without sounding like a pathetic loser?

“Um, yeah. It’s- I’m taking this Friday out so I can go on a full party mode for tomorrow” you lied easily. “Me and the girls are going out for drinks and then- then we’re going to a party”

“Oh, whose party?” she asked excitedly, sounding like a teenager.

Shit. “Wooyoung’s” you shrugged, thinking of the first name that came to your mind.

“I see… Any lucky guy we should worry about?” Your mother asked, knowing she was smirking on the other side of the line.

You scoffed. “Wow, you’re getting ahead of yourself!” 

“Come on, tell me! You never tell me anything!”

“No… I was seeing this guy but… we broke up like four months ago. And that’s it” You told her with a sad smile.

“Aw, my baby. I’m sure there are plenty of fish in the ocean” she told you.

“Yeah, well… it’s not that easy to find a good one” 

“What about that guy from work?” Your mom asked.

You raised an eyebrow. “Who? Felix?” you asked with a grimace, though she couldn’t see it. 

“Honey, you talk about him all the time” your mom chuckled. 

“I do not! I literally despise the guy with all my being” you said in a whiny pitched voice. “We’ve had endless conversations about how much I hate him”

“Yeah, sure, sweetheart” 

“You don’t believe me” you stated, it wasn’t a question.

“Oh, no. It’s not that I don’t believe you. I don’t think you don’t believe yourself when you say those things about Felix” she explained.

“Alright, um… I’m gonna- I’m gonna go watch a movie or something. I think this conversation is done”

Your mom let out a cackle. “Okay, honey. Make sure to call me at least once this weekend” she said.

“Yes, Mom. I will”

“Bye, I love you!” your mom called out.

“Bye, love you lots” you said and hung up the phone.

With a sigh, you rolled your shoulders back, letting your bones crack and started preparing dinner for yourself.

Once you sat down on the couch with a bowl of pasta and put on some crappy reality show to watch on TV, your mind couldn’t help but drift over to Felix and the whole deal you had made.

You just hoped to God your strategy would work, otherwise, the thought of leaving Hwayoung alone with Bang Seojun would eat you alive for life. You wouldn’t forgive yourself.

But on top of all, you wouldn’t let Felix win. You couldn’t. Over your dead body. 

⠈⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

You pressed your head on the pillow with a tired sigh. 

After a couple of minutes of trying to find a comfortable position, you kicked the covers off of you, seeking some air and comfort over your legs. 

All of a sudden, you felt a pair of hands placing themselves on the sides of your head and a body pressing itself against your back. 

You gasped and pushed back against the hard and warm body. You felt your breath picking up its rhythm as you felt a hand running over your leg. The presence felt awfully familiar. 

“You make me so fucking hard” the man said, and it made you moan lowly, recognising his voice. “You know that?”

Felix’s hand drifted over to the front of your shorts and pressed his fingers over your clit. You squeezed your legs around his hand and moaned brokenly, your feet kicking the mattress. 

Your breath became more ragged as his fingers started drawing tight circles over your clothed core.

“Felix…” you moaned, kicking your head back in pleasure. “Please…”

“Please what?” his deep and sexy voice boomed in your ears, making you clench around nothing. It sounded like a tease, like he always did. 

“Touch me…”

He chuckled and the sound vibrated all over your body. 

“Wake up, baby”

With a gasp, you sat up and looked around, feeling your heart beating out of your chest. With a few blinks, you realised that you were indeed alone in your room and one of your hands was neatly placed in between your legs, pressing against your bundle of nerves.

Your hand flew away from there and you frowned, your knees flexing so you could press your forehead on them.

Felix would not leave you alone, even in your dreams. 

You slumped back on the bed, your head hitting the pillow furiously. 

“Motherfucker…”

-

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭: @lattyjiji  @jeonginsleftcheek   @alrm02   @skzjiiiii

i apologise in advance if i cant tag you :(

[felassan]

Jason Schreier: "NEW: After the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, dozens of BioWare employees were told they were temporarily assigned to other projects within EA. This week, a twist: those temp assignments are now *permanent* transfers. And BioWare has shrunk. Story: [link] Dragon Age: The Veilguard was undeniably divisive, but to many who worked on it, it was a miraculous accomplishment to even ship a complete game after EA forced live-service into it, then reversed course. Now, their reward for the long hours and hard work is layoffs and transfers." [source]

Bloomberg article:

"Electronic Arts Slashes BioWare After ‘Dragon Age’ Sales Miss The studio has shrunk to less than 100 people following the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard Dragon Age: The Veilguard missed EA’s sales expectations by 50%, leading to cuts at the studio"

"Hi everyone. Today we’re diving into the cuts at Electronic Arts Inc.’s BioWare. BioWare magic Late last year, after the release of the new role-playing game Dragon Age: The Veilguard, dozens of employees at developer BioWare were given some staffing news. Moving forward, they were going to be loaned out to other teams within their parent company, Electronic Arts, where they would work on various upcoming games like Iron Man and Skate. The logic made sense. BioWare’s next game, a new installment in the popular sci-fi Mass Effect series, was in pre-production and did not need the entire studio. There were no other internal projects for everyone to work on. Instead of getting laid off, they would stay employed, working on other projects until Mass Effect was ready for them. But this week, the group was informed that the loans had morphed into permanent relocations, according to people familiar with what happened. They were no longer BioWare employees who were temporarily on assignment elsewhere; now, they worked for whichever EA subsidiary had borrowed them. If they want to work at BioWare again in the future, they would have to look for job openings and re-apply. This was an unwelcome development for some of the employees, who now find themselves on brand-new teams at studios they’d never planned to join. Some had come to BioWare to work on storied role-playing game franchises and found the idea of working on action or sports games less appealing. But at least they got to keep their jobs. During the same reorganization this week, around two dozen other people at BioWare were laid off, according to the people familiar, who asked not to be identified discussing nonpublic information. Writer Trick Weekes and producer Jen Cheverie said on Bluesky that they were among the veteran workers who’d been cut."

"BioWare is now down from more than 200 people two years ago to less than 100 today, according to the people familiar. A small team will remain to work on the next Mass Effect game — led by company veterans who oversaw the development on the original trilogy as well as on 2019’s Anthem — in hopes of expanding as the game gets further into production. The company announced the reorganization on Wednesday, saying it planned to “become a more agile, focused studio,” without mentioning the job cuts and the relocation of staff permanently to other studios. A spokesperson for EA declined to comment on specific numbers. It’s been a rough month for EA. Last week, the company’s shares plunged 18% after reporting preliminary holiday-season results that missed estimates and lowering its forecast for the fiscal year. The poor results were largely due to the underperformance of EA’s latest soccer game but the company also said that Dragon Age: The Veilguard reached 1.5 million players, missing sales expectations by 50%. What may be most surprising is that EA, which has a long history of shuttering studios after a failure, is keeping BioWare around. The once-revered RPG studio, founded in 1995 by a trio of doctors, released a string of beloved titles throughout the 1990s and 2000s, including the first two Baldur’s Gate games, Dragon Age: Origins and the Mass Effect trilogy. But the studio has failed to release a hit since 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition. Mass Effect: Andromeda, released in 2017, received mediocre reviews and was widely criticized for its bugs and uncanny animations. BioWare then pivoted to a live-service shooter with 2019’s Anthem, which was roundly panned and killed after less than two years. Both games were plagued by management issues, brutal deadline crunches and a belief — called “BioWare magic” — that everything would work out in the end."

"With the single-player Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which had its own turbulent development cycle and was rebooted multiple times, the studio hoped to win back lapsed fans. Despite generally positive reviews, the game proved to be divisive among players, with some criticizing the writing, art style and linear level design. But many observers and staff blame EA for the situation they put BioWare in — canceling an early version of Dragon Age in favor of one that would be required to have a “live-service” multiplayer component with recurring revenue, only to then reverse course, reverting once again back to the single-player format. It would be difficult for most game-makers to release something great under those conditions. Now, BioWare studio head Gary McKay and Mass Effect executive producer Mike Gamble are essentially looking to reboot the company as they plunge forward on their next game. It will be a long road ahead, and what emerges will be a very different BioWare. But at least for now, the studio will continue.""

[source]

[kick-a-long]

Oh NYTIMES. Never miss a chance to be dog shit, even compared to the many shitty media companies. The reporter shared the entire content of a Jews only professional work group in Australia (the place where they chanted “gas the Jews” before Israel had even fought back.) to someone that doxxed every Jewish professional in the country forcing many to leave home because of death threats and photos of their kids and vandalism of their homes and work.

[redheadfiretruckgirl]

Half of A Hundred

You work as a mid-level corporate goon while your girlfriend, Melissa, spends her days at Abbott. You have been struggling a lot at work, but have a hard time making room for your feelings at home, as you know Melissa’s job is equally as stressful.

WC: 2.21k

Taglist: @milfjuulpod (thank u for encouraging me, baddie!)

Warnings: None that I can think of? New to this, though. Let me know where I can improve.

A/N: Hi, everyone! I'm new here. I've been a certified lurker for a while but figured it was time to put my hand in and try it out myself. I haven't written a fic since I was a teenager, so I might be a little rusty, but I hope y'all enjoy this little fluffy one shot! Let me know what you might want to see in the future!

The Philadelphia sun peeks through a jungle of skyscrapers while you observe through the window-lined wall of the conference room. A never-ending brown table stretches out before you lined with the blank, greyed faces of your fellow employees, most of which, remain nameless to you. 

“Is the social media and marketing liaison ready to present?” Your boss, the CEO of a popular local liquor distribution company, says standing at the far end of the table. You remain in your trance, as the Greek chorus of heads turn to face you. “Y/N?” He repeats, louder this time.

You finally snap out of it, “Oh, yeah, sorry.” You quickly shuffle your papers and rise from your seat.

At the front of the room, about twenty other faces stare you down, each just as plain as the next. They all have a certain threatening twinkle in their eyes as if they could devour you whole over the smallest slip up. This perplexes you. It was just liquor, after all, and while your job is important to you, you feel everyone else takes it just a little too seriously.

You clear your throat, “The statistics this week were very promising. Sales have been up from the last vodka campaign we ran. I have some ideas for the new gin we have rolling out that are outlined in this file here.” You hold up a manila folder and shake it in the air. “Super cool stuff coming up.”

Your boss tilts his head to the side. “Very good, Y/N. And what about the TikTok project we discussed last week? Where are you on that?”

Your stomach drops at those words. The TikTok Project. You shuffle through the binder in front of you and then the notebook beside it. You know the truth, though. You forgot to send the crucial email to the third floor to get the project off the ground. “Um, oh man,” you start, searching for the nearest lie, “I must have forgotten to print those reports. But I will say that all involved parties have been contacted and we’re eagerly waiting for a response.”

Unimpressed, your boss rolls his eyes, “Hm, disappointing,” he smirks, “But accidents happen. You can bring those printed reports to my office personally by 4pm.”

You look at the clock: 3:37pm. Sigh.

The energy over at Abbott Elementary was almost entirely opposite. Golden light pours in through the windows of Melissa’s classroom signifying the end of the day. Melissa sits exhausted at her desk and tries to focus on replying to baseless emails, but remains on edge. She looks up from her computer every few moments expecting another interruption, but her students keep their noses deep in their books. 

The calm close of the day came after an extremely chaotic afternoon. Melissa had to deal with a total of two nosebleeds, an ugly third grade break-up, and a cafeteria tray incident…whatever that meant. Her foot taps on the tile, anxiously awaiting the moment she would be able to latch onto you for comfort at your shared home. 

After the children were long gone, Melissa packs her things slowly. Usually, she’s quick to get out and get home, but she felt as if all energy had left her body. You two joke about this, calling it “being bitten by a snail.” She stretches out her arms and legs before hoisting her bag over her shoulder and heading out.

Though she is tired, she always vowed to create the most comforting environment for both of you to come home to. She knows of your appreciation for her home-cooked meals that you could smell cooking from down the road. You always meticulously pair each meal with a different wine each night, bringing home the newest and most exclusive bottles from work. It was almost 5pm, and knowing you would be home in just over an hour, she gets to work.

Melissa revels in every solitary second she is able to spend in the kitchen, and is grateful she gets some time alone after work. She constantly worries about you only having a 30-minute car ride home to be with yourself, and bugs you all the time about finding something to do in the hour after work to wind down from your high stakes position. 

She dances around the kitchen, sliding across the hard wood floor in her fuzzy socks, and cradling her favorite bottle of cheap wine. This particular wine lives hidden in the back of the cupboards, as you would always lecture her on the importance of fine wine. She also likes to get a head start on the drinking; it isn’t her fault that school ended before corporate gooning did. 

Steam rises from the large pot on the stove where nests of pasta boil, just begging to be immersed in Melissa’s famous sauce. The redheaded beauty acquires a colander from the cupboard, as well as a baking tray for the bread. She then picks up the large pot and scurries over to the sink. The pasta flops into the colander too fast sending the boiling water to bite Melissa’s knuckles.

“Shit!” She cursed, as the pot leaves her grip, sending half of the cooked pasta onto the floor. Her private party is over. “Of fucking course.” She kicks the pot aside and drops to her knees to clean the mess.

The front door flies open to reveal you, bag in hand, with tear-stained cheeks. You throw your bag down and slam the door shut, bee-lining for the kitchen. You pause, not seeing Melissa at first, but only hearing her loud disembodied curses. “Mel?” You call out through gritted teeth, trying to hold back the aftershock of your mini-car-breakdown.

“In here, sweetheart. On the floor.” Melissa yells back. “Fucking burnt myself.”

You rush over, kneel beside her, and immediately start picking up pasta. Her bright red knuckles catch your attention, “Mel, stop.”

Melissa only pauses when you collect her hands in yours. You rub your cold thumbs over the burns and she winces. When your eyes finally meet, she notices the dark makeup gathering under your eyes and your damp, raw cheeks. She pulls back immediately.

“Oh my god, Y/N…what happened?” Her tired eyes widen.

At her words, your eyes refill. You blink a few times to make the tears go away, but they only fall faster. “Nothing. I’m okay. You’re hurt.” You reach for her hands once more, but she pulls them away.

“Nuh uh. No. We’re not doing this tonight. You need to talk to me.” Her expression is concerned, but still firm. Her knuckles glow.

“Just a stupid work thing, Mel. Don’t worry, please.” You sink back to sit on your heels.

Melissa ponders her next words. Her expression does not soften. She stands up quickly with a handful of pasta and chucks it in the trash with force. “Fine. Don’t tell me, then. I only care a lot.” She walks around you with her nose in the air and bellies up to the stove, where she quietly stirs her sauce. 

You remain on the floor, dumbfounded. Your jaw muscles clench to prevent your mouth from dropping open. You try to respond, but Melissa beats you to it, “You can take all of that bullshit to our room. Dinner will be done soon.” She blows on her injuries.

You so badly want to retort, but have no idea how. You know Melissa was already pissed off from the minor culinary inconveniences, but you were still so confused by her ferocious response. You only wanted to make the night easier for her by not unloading your problems onto her as soon as you walked in the door. You quickly get to your feet and scamper to the bedroom before the dam breaks.

Melissa looks behind her as you run away and bites the inside of her cheek. She didn’t mean to snap at you. It was difficult for both of you to Tetris your daily struggles together after work. She really cares about what happened to you, but it frustrates her to no end when you refuse to address your own problems in favor of hers. She hated the constant struggle comparison. Melissa also knows that snapping at you was the wrong reaction, and she immediately feels guilty. She chooses to give you a little bit of space, and quickly finishes dinner.

You lay on your side facing the wall in your dark bedroom. The combined smell of you and Melissa woven into the sheets both tortures and comforts you. Light trickles into the room as Melissa slowly opens the door. “Hey, Hon? Dinner’s ready.” She speaks quietly, carefully. You don’t move.

She opens the door all the way to reveal a tray in her hands with two already-made plates on it and two glasses of wine. “I figured, since we’ve both had a stressful day, that we could eat in here. Watch a movie or something. Low social obligation.” Still no movement from you. She creeps in and sets the tray on her bedside table, then plops herself down at the edge of the bed by your feet. 

“First and foremost,” she continues, “I’m sorry for the way I acted downstairs.”

“It’s okay.” You mumble, trying to get the uncomfortable part over with.

“It’s not okay. And this is what I’m talking about,” Melissa begins, “Why do you keep putting aside your feelings like they’re not important?”

“Because they’re not. I just get too emotional sometimes. Nothing that goes wrong with me is that big of a deal.” You still don’t look at her.

“That’s not true at all, sweetheart. Who told you that?” Melissa cautiously places a hand on your leg and squeezes.

“No one had to tell me,” you flip to face her, “I just know. All of the bullshit that happens at my job, it’s meaningless. I work a meaningless job. There’s actual real problems with our world and I’m getting threatened over forgetting the tiniest detail! It doesn’t matter! And I don’t know why it gets me so worked up, and I know I just have to stop being dramatic about it but…I don’t know.”

“I know, sweetie, and I get that,” Melissa scoots closer to you, “But things are allowed to make you upset, no matter how small. And that’s what I’m here for. We’re partners: in crime and in life. I just don’t understand why you don’t want to talk to me about these things. Do I scare you or something?” She crosses her arms, she realizes her thoughts as she says them aloud. A worried look clouds her face.

Those words make you immediately sit up and grab Melissa’s hands. “Absolutely not. You have ever once scared me. But take you, for example. Your job matters. You’re literally nurturing the minds of children, so when you have a stressful day, of course I’m gonna be more sensitive to you.”

“Y/N, I’ve been doing this job longer than you’ve been alive. A little bit of vomit on my shoes is going to stress me out a lot less than navigating an entirely new work setting and routine.” Melissa looks away from you for a moment, “Shit. Now I’m doing it.” She turns back to you, “Let’s just…let’s just stop comparing struggles. My daily struggles are no more important than yours and vice versa.”

“But sometimes they are…” you argue. Melissa squeezes your hands and plants a kiss on them.

“A true relationship is learning to make up for what the other person is lacking. No matter what percent one person is giving, the other should do their best to make the equal 100. I will let you know when I can contribute my full half. But if I ask you what’s wrong, it means I want to hear what’s wrong. Clear?”

“Clear,” you agree.

“When have I ever been a woman to hide what I’m feeling? I’ll serve it up to you on a silver platter. I’ll tell you when I can’t handle something.” Melissa smiles assuredly.

“No you won’t,” you giggle to break the tension.

Melissa rolls her eyes playfully, “Well, that’s just something for me to work on then. Jeez, I’m not perfect!”

You grab her face and squish her cheeks a bit. Her eyes beckon you, pull you closer to her face until your lips touch hers. You gift her with three small kisses before you pull away, “You are perfect. I will try to be more vulnerable, I promise.”

“And all we can do is try.” Melissa laughs through her exasperation. “Now turn something on to watch before this pasta gets cold. You know how I—“

“Hate cold dinner, yeah, yeah.” You laugh as you finish her sentence and grab the remote beside you. She lifts the tray and puts it in front of the two of you. Both of you have no problem with eating in bed, but you try to be civilized adults most of the time. As you quietly savor each bite of your girlfriend’s cooking, Melissa keeps a close watch on you from the corner of her eye, smirking at every chance. She wasn’t quite done with her apology just yet.

[mariacallous]

A short note here on what I’m covering and why. The political changes we’re seeing across the world are underpinned by technological ones that are now accelerating. For more than a decade, I’ve been trying to investigate and expose these forces. Since 2016 that’s included following a thread that led from Brexit to Trump via a shady data company called Cambridge Analytica and the revelation of a profound threat exploit at the heart of our democracies. But what’s happening now in the US is a paradigm shift: this is Broligarchy, a concept I coined last summer when I warned that what we were seeing was the proposed merger of Silicon Valley with state power. That has now happened. Writing about this from the UK, it’s clear we have a choice: we help lead the fight back against it. Or it comes for us next. Please share this with family and friends if you feel it’s of value. Thank you, as ever, Carole

Let me say this more clearly: what is happening right now, in America, in real time, is a coup.

This is an information war and this is what a coup now looks like.

Musk didn’t need a tank, guns, soldiers. He had a small crack cyber unit that he sent into the Treasury department last weekend. He now has unknown quantities of the entire US nation’s most sensitive data and potential backdoors into the system going forward. Treasury officials denied that he had access but it then turned out that he did. If it ended there, it would be catastrophic. But that unit - whose personnel include a 19-year-old called “Big Balls” - is now raiding and scorching the federal government, department by department, scraping its digital assets, stealing its data, taking control of the code and blowing up its administrative apparatus as it goes.

This is what an unlawful attack on democracy in the digital age looks like. It didn’t take armed men, just Musk’s taskforce of boy-men who may be dweebs and nerds but all the better to plunder the country’s digital resources. This was an organised, systematic, jailbreak on one of the United States’ most precious and sensitive resources: the private data of its citizens.

In 2019, I appeared in a Netflix documentary, The Great Hack. That’s a good place to start to understand what is going on now, but it wasn’t the great hack. It was among the first wave of major tech exploits of global elections. It was an exemplar of what was possible: the theft and weaponization of 87 million people’s personal data. But this now is the Great Hack. This week is when the operating system of the US was wrenched open and is now controlled by a private citizen under the protection of the President.

If you think I’ve completely lost it, please be advised that I’m far from alone in saying this. The small pools of light in the darkness of this week has been stumbling across individual commentators saying this for the last week. Just because these words are not on the front page in banner headlines of any newspaper doesn’t mean this isn’t not happening. It is.

In fact, there has been relentless, assiduous, detailed reporting in all outlets across America. There are journalists who aren’t eating or sleeping and doing amazing work tracking what’s happening. There is fact after fact after fact about Musk’s illegal pillaging of the federal government. But news organisation leaders are either falling for the distraction story - the most obviously insane one this week being rebuilding Gaza as a luxury resort, a story that dominated headlines and political oxygen for days. Or…what? Being unable to actually believe that this is what an authoritarian takeover looks like? Being unsure of whether you put the headline about the illegal coup d’etat next to a spring season fashion report? Above or below the round-up of best rice cookers? The fact is the front pages look like it’s business as normal when it’s anything but.

This was Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Tuesday. She’s a historian of fascism and authoritarianism at New York University and she said this even before some of this week’s most extreme events had taken place. (A transcript of the rest of her words here.)

“It’s very unusual. In my study of authoritarian states, it's only really after a coup that you see such a speed, such obsessive haste to purge bureaucracy so quickly. Or when somebody is defending themselves, like Erdogan after the coup attempt against him, massive purge immediately. So that's unusual. I don't have another reference point for a private individual coming in, infiltrating, trying to turn government to the benefit of his businesses and locking out and federal employees. It is a coup. I'm a historian of coups, and I would also use that word. So we're in a real emergency situation for our democracy.”

A day later, this was Tim Snyder, Yale, a Yale professor and another great historian of authoritarianism, here: “Of course it’s a coup.”

History was made this week and while reporters are doing incredible work, to understand it our guides are historians, those who’ve lived in authoritarian states and Silicon Valley watchers. They are saying it. What I’ve learned from investigating and reporting on Silicon Valley’s system-level hack of our democracy for eight long years and seeing up close the breathtaking impunity and entitlement of the men who control these companies is that they break laws and they get away with it. And then lie about it afterwards. That’s the model here.

Everything that I’ve ever warned about is happening now. This is it. It’s just happening faster than anyone could have imagined.

It’s not that what’s happening is simply unlawful. This is what David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School told the Washington Post.

“So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

And he’s right. The system can’t and isn’t. Legal challenges are being made and even upheld but there’s no guarantee or even sign that Musk is going to honour them. That’s one of the most chilling points my friend, Mark Bergman, made to me over the weekend.

Last week, I included a voice note from my friend, tech investor turned tech campaigner, Roger McNamee, so you could hear direct from an expert about the latest developments in AI. This week I’ve asked Mark to do the honours.

He’s a lawyer, Washington political insider, and since last summer, he’s been participating in ‘War Game’ exercises with Defense Department officials, three-star generals, former Cabinet Secretaries and governors. In five exercises involving 175 people, they situation-tested possible scenarios of a Trump win. But they didn’t see this. It’s even worse than they feared.

“Those challenges have been in respect of shutting down agencies, firing federal employees and engaging in the most egregious hack of government. It all at the hand hands of DOGE, Musk and his band of tech engineers. DC right now is shell-shocked. It is a government town, USA, ID, the FBI, the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, CIA, no federal agency will be spared the revenge and retribution tours in full swing, and huge numbers have been put on administrative leave, reassigned or fired, and the private sector is as much at risk, particularly NGOs and civil society organizations. The more high-profile violate the law, which is why the courts have been quick to enjoin actions. “So yes, we've experienced a coup, not the old fashioned kind, no tanks or mobs, but an undemocratic and hostile takeover of government. It is cruel, it is petty. It can be brutal. It is at once chaotic and surgical. We said the institutions held in 2020 but behind institutions or people, and the extent to which all manner of power structures have preemptively obeyed is hugely worrying. There are legions ready to carry out the Trump agenda. The question is, will the rule of law hold?”

Last Tuesday, Musk tried to lay off the entire CIA. That’s the government body with the slogan ‘We are the nation’s first line of defense’. Every single employee has been offered an unlawful ‘buyout’ - what we call redundancy in the UK - or what 200 former employees - spies - have said is blatant attempt to rebuild it as a political enforcement unit. Over the weekend, the Washington Post reports that new appointees are being presented with “loyalty tests”.

Musk’s troops - because that’s what they are, mercenaries - are acting in criminal, unlawful, unconstitutional ways. Organisations are acting quickly, taking lawsuits, and for now the courts are holding. But the key essential question is whether their rulings can be enforced with a political weaponized Department of Justice and FBI. What Mark Bergman told me (and is in the extended note below) is that they’ve known since the summer that there would be almost no way of pushing back against Trump. This politicisation of all branches of law enforcement creates a vacuum at the heart of the state. As he says in that note, the ramifications of this are little understood outside the people inside Washington who study this for a living.

And at least some of what DOGE is doing can never be undone. Musk, a private citizen, now has vast clouds of citizens’ data, their personal information and it seems likely, classified material. When data is out there, it’s out there. That genie can never be put back into the bottle.

Itt’s what it’s possible to do with that data, that the real nightmare begins. What machine learning algorithms and highly personalised targeting can do. It’s a digital coup. An information coup. And we have to understand what that means. Our fleshy bodies still inhabit earthly spaces but we are all, also, digital beings too. We live in a hybrid reality. And for more than a decade we have been targets of hybrid warfare, waged by hostile nation states whose methodology has been aped and used against us by political parties in a series of disrupted elections marked by illegal behaviour and a lack of any enforcement. But this now takes it to the next level.

It facilitates a concentration of wealth and power - because data is power - of a kind the world has never seen before.

Facebook’s actual corporate motto until 2014 taken from words Mark Zuckerberg spoke was “Move fast and break things”. That phrase has passed into commonplace: we know it, we quote it, we also fail to understand what that means. It means: act illegally and get away with it.

And that is the history of Silicon Valley. Its development and cancerous growth is marked by series of larcenous acts each more grotesque than the last. And Musk’s career is an exemplar of that, a career that has involved rampant criminality, gross invasions of privacy, stock market manipulation. And lies. The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently suing Musk for failing to disclose his ownership stock before he bought Twitter. The biggest mistake right now is to believe anything he says.

Every time, these companies have broken the law, they have simply gotten away with it. I know I’m repeating this, but it’s central to understanding both the mindset and what’s happening on the ground. And no-one exemplifies that more than Musk. The worst that has happened to him is a fine. A slap on the wrist. An insignificant line on a balance sheet. The “cost of doing business”.

On Friday, Robert Reich, the former United States Secretary of Labor, who’s been an essential voice this week, told the readers of his Substack to act now and call their representatives.

“Friends, we are in a national emergency. This is a coup d’etat. Elon Musk was never authorized by Congress to do anything that he’s doing, he was never even confirmed by Congress, his so-called Department of Government Efficiency was never authorized by Congress. Your representatives, your senators and Congressmen have never given him authority to do what he is doing, to take over government departments, to take over entire government agencies, to take over government payments system itself to determine for himself what is an appropriate payment. To arrogate to himself the authority to have your social security number, your private information? Please. Listen, call Congress now.”

It’s a coup

I found myself completely poleaxed on Wednesday. I read this piece on the New York Times website first thing in the morning, a thorough and alarming analysis of headlined “Trump Brazenly Defies Laws in Escalating Executive Power Grab”. It quoted Peter M. Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at New York University, “programmatic sabotage and rampant lawlessness.” It was displayed prominently on the front page of the New York Times but it was also just one piece among many, a small weak signal amid the overpowering noise.

There’s another word for an “Executive Power Grab”, it’s a coup. And newspapers need to actually write that in big black letters on their front pages and tell their tired, busy, overwhelmed, distracted, scared readers what is happening. That none of this is “business as usual.”

Over on the Guardian’s UK website on Wednesday, there was not a single mention on the front page of what was happening. Trump’s Gaza spectacular diversion strategy drowned out its quotient of American news. We just weren’t seeing what’s happening in the seat of government of our closest ally. As a private citizen mounted a takeover of the cornerstone superpower of the international rules-based order, our crucial NATO ally, our biggest single trading partner, the UK government didn’t even apparently notice.

The downstream potential international consequences of what is happening in America are profound and terrifying. That our government and much of the media is asleep at the wheel is a reason to be more not less terrified. Musk has made his intentions towards our democracy and national security quite clear. What he hasn’t yet had is the backing of the US state. That is shortly going to change. One of the first major stand-offs will be UK and EU tech regulation. I hope I’m wrong but it seems pretty obvious that’s what Musk’s Starmer-aimed tweets are all about. There seems no world in which the EU and the UK aren’t headed for the mother of all trade wars.

And that’s before we even consider the national security ramifications. The prime minister should be convening Cobra now. The Five Eyes - the intelligence sharing network of the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada - is already likely breached. Trump is going to do individual deals with all major trading partners that’s going to involve preposterous but real threats, including likely dangling the US’s membership of NATO over our heads all while Russia watches, waits and knows that we’ve done almost nothing to prepare. Plans to increase our defence spending have been made but not yet implemented. Our intelligence agencies do understand the precipice we’re on but there’s no indication the government is paying any attention to them. The risks are profound. The international order as we know it is collapsing in real time.

It’s a coup

We all know that the the first thing that happens when a dictator seizes power is that he (it’s always a he) takes control of the radio station. Musk did that months ago. It wasn’t that Elon Musk buying Twitter pre-ordained what is now happening but it made it possible. And it was the moment, minutes after Trump was shot and he went full-in on his campaign that signalled the first shot fired in his digital takeover.

It’s both a mass propaganda machine and also the equivalent of an information drone with a deadly payload. It’s a weapon that’s already been turned on journalists and news organisations this week. There’s much more to come.

On Friday, Musk started following Wikileaks on Twitter. Hours later, twisted, weaponized leaks from USAID began.

This is going to get so much worse. Musk and MAGA will see this as the opening of the Stasi archive. It’s not. It’s rocketfuel for a witchhunt. It’s hybrid warfare against the enemies of the state. It’s going to be ugly and cruel and its targets are going to need help and support. Hands across the water to my friends at OCCRP, the Overseas Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative journalism organisation that uncovers transnational crime, that’s been in Musk’s sights this weekend, one of hundreds of media organisations around the world whose funding has been slashed overnight.

It’s a coup

By now you may feel scared and helpless. It’s how I felt this week. I had the same sick feeling I had watching UK political coverage before the pandemic. The government was just going to ignore the wave of deaths rippling from China to Italy and pretend it wasn’t happening? Really? That’s the plan?

This is another pandemic. Or a Chernobyl. It’s a bomb at the heart of the international order whose toxic fallout is going to inevitably drift our way.

My internal alarm bell, a sense of urgency and anxiety goes even further back. To early 2017, when I uncovered information about Cambridge Analytica’s illegal hack of data from Facebook while the company’s VP, Steve Bannon, was then on the National Security Council. That concept of highly personalised data in the control of a ruthless and political operator was what tripped my emergency wires. That is a reality now.

The point is that the shock and awe is meant to make us feel helpless. So I’m telling a bit of my own personal story here. Because part of what temporarily paralyzed me last week was that this is all happening while my own small corner of the mainstream media is collapsing in on itself too. The event that I’ve spent the last eight years warning about has come to pass and in a month, 100+ of my colleagues at the Guardian will be out of the door and my employment will be terminated. I will no longer have the platform of the news organisation where I’ve done my entire body of work to date and was able to communicate to a global audience.

But then, it’s all connected. We are living through an information crisis. It’s what underpins everything. In some ways, this happening now is not surprising at all. Moreover, many of the people who I see as essential voices during this crisis (including those above) are doing that effectively and independently from Substack as I will try to continue to do.

And, the key thing that the last eight years has given me is information. The lawsuit I fought for four years as a result of doing this work very almost floored me. But it didn’t. And I’ve learned essential skills during those years. It was part of what powered me to fight for the rights of Guardian journalists during our strike this December.

The next fightback against Musk and the Broligarchy has to draw from the long, long fight for workers rights which in turn influenced the fight for civil rights that must now power us on as we face the great unknown. What comes next has to be a fight for our data rights, our human rights.

This was former Guardian journalist Gary Younge on our picket line and I’ve thought about these words a lot. You have to fight even if you won’t necessarily win. Power is almost never given up freely.

If you value any of this and want me to be able to continue, I’d be really grateful if you signed up, free, or even better, paid subscription. And I’d also urge you to sign up also for the Citizen Dispatch, that’s the newsletter from the non-profit I founded that campaigns around these issues. There is much more it can and needs to do.

[lecsainz]

Hi can you please do one about the Travis and Taylor rumours going around. Maybe like your Taylor’s sister dating Travis secretly for awhile now and your pregnant. And like the Taylor concert he went to he was like there with you and the football that Taylor went to she was like there with you. And it all comes out that he’s with you and not Taylor and they find out your pregnant and all and are so shocked and didn’t see it coming. Like if that makes sense 🙂

EVERYONE WAS WRONG

parings: travis kelce + swift!reader

author 🗒️’s: I missed writing smau 😭

summary: where you are taylor swift sister and there’s something with travis but everyone thinks he and taylor are dating.

✩. . . masterlist !

liked by selenagomez, icespice and 1.989.073 others

ynswift can I say I'm cheating on the eagles?

tag: @/taylorswift @/chiefs

see all 65.638 comments

taylorswift still can't believe you made me come to this game

⤷ ynswift didn't force you at all!

user6 love seeing the swift sisters together

killatrav It was nice meeting you, y/n

⤷ ynswift likewise, kelce

⤷ killatrav hope to see you girls at the next game

⤷ ynswift I need to check my schedule

user1 y/n being the cupid of tayvis

user Is it confirmed that taylor and travis are together???

⤷ user4 I think so

user2 she it's me in life: the friend who always couples people up

user5 andrea, please adopt me to be their sister!

⤷ ynswift mom said she'd adopt!

⤷ user5 OH MY GOD

philadelphiaeagles no comments

⤷ ynswift I swear we still loyal to your team

user7 I want a tayvis photo, make it happen y/n!

loading more comments . . .

Y/N and Travis had met during a The Eras concert, what seemed like a normal show turned into something entirely different. Y/N didn't expect it until she literally ran into this 6'5'' tall man. He was so much taller than her that she couldn't help but feel incredibly drawn to the unknown man, so much so that she forgot how to speak when he asked if she was okay.

Travis found the blonde girl utterly charming and just had to ask for her number. However, instead of getting her number, he received a polite but firm "no." That piqued the curiosity of the Kansas City Chiefs' tight end. With determination, he approached one of the security guards to inquire about the mysterious blonde girl. After a bit of investigating, he finally discovered that she was Y/N Swift, the younger sister of the famous Taylor Swift.

Travis couldn't help but be intrigued by this revelation. He felt compelled to get to know Y/N better, despite the initial rejection. It took him over a week to gather the courage to send her a direct message. When he did, he invited her to an Eagles game, which he later learned was the Swift family's favorite team, and having her older brother on the team made it easier to secure a private suite for their date.

As the two of them spent more time together, a genuine connection began to form. Y/N was captivated by Travis's charisma and his down-to-earth personality, something she hadn't experienced with anyone in a long time. Travis, on the other hand, was smitten with Y/N's intelligence, warmth, and her unique ability to make him forget about the pressures of the football field.

One date led to another, and before they knew it, they were deeply involved in a relationship that neither had anticipated. Their connection was electric, and they couldn't get enough of each other's company.

As the days turned into weeks and then into months, Y/N and Travis's bond grew stronger. They had shared dreams, inside jokes, and an unspoken understanding that went beyond the public eye. But their connection was shrouded in secrecy, as Y/N didn't want to overshadow her sister's fame and success.

Despite their efforts to keep things private, the media eventually caught wind of their relationship. Reports began to circulate, with speculations of a romance between Travis and Taylor Swift, not Y/N. The rumors hurt Y/N, as it seemed like her own life would always be overshadowed by her sister's immense fame.

Little did she know that amidst the media frenzy and the complications of their secret relationship, she would find herself facing an unexpected twist of fate – she was pregnant with Travis's child.

As days turned into weeks, Y/N couldn't keep the secret any longer. She knew she needed to tell Travis about the life-changing news, despite the fear and uncertainty that loomed over her. She had never been in a situation like this before.

One evening, she decided it was time to confide in Travis. With her heart pounding, she went to his house, her mind filled with thoughts of how he might react. Would he be overwhelmed? Would he want to be a part of this?

Travis opened the door and smiled warmly at her, inviting her in. Y/N took a deep breath and began, "Travis, there's something I need to talk to you about, something important."

Travis's expression shifted from curiosity to concern. "What's going on, Y/N? You look serious."

Y/N took a deep breath and began, "Travis, there's something I need to tell you. It's not easy, and we didn't plan for this, but..." She paused, her eyes glistening with emotion, "I'm pregnant."

For a few seconds, there was silence. Travis processed the information, and his eyes filled with a mix of emotions, but he didn't look away from Y/N. Then, a gentle smile crossed his face. "Y/N, are you serious? We're going to be parents?"

Y/N nodded with a soft smile. "Yes, Travis. I'm pregnant."

Travis leaned in closer, his face filled with emotion. "That's incredible! I can't believe it. I'm going to be a dad."

Tears welled up in Y/N's eyes as she saw his genuine excitement. "I'm so glad you're happy, Travis. I was worried about how you'd react."

Travis took her hands in his and looked deeply into her eyes. "Y/N, I couldn't be happier. This is a beautiful surprise, and I'm looking forward to this journey with you. We'll figure everything out together."

Y/N felt a wave of relief wash over her. She couldn't believe how supportive Travis was being. "Travis, you have no idea how much this means to me. I was so afraid to tell you."

Travis took her hand and said, "Y/N, I care about you more than I can express. In fact, there's something I've been wanting to ask you for a while now." He got down on one knee, pulling a small box from his pocket. "Will you do me the honor of becoming my girlfriend?"

Y/N's eyes welled up with tears of joy as she nodded and replied, "Yes, Travis, a thousand times, yes."

liked by taylorswift, annehathaway and 23.366.133 others ynswift & killatrav you said I do and I did too

comments have been limited

taylorswift so happy for you both 🤍 and travis you better take good care of my little sister!

austinkingsleyswift congrats sis!

jason.kelce finally, you guys announced it! I couldn't stand not being able to talk about it anymore. congratulations lovebirds!

chiefs welcome to chiefs family y/n!

donnakelce I'm so happy to have you in the family now y/n! 💕