#and the image if tumblr decided to blow it up

[porcelana-r0ta]

let the mourners come

Title: let the mourners come

Ao3 Link: Only available to Ao3 users

Word Count: 3045

Summary:

It started, as most things do with Danny Fenton, as a joke.

It ended, as most things do with Jazz Fenton, with things better than they were before.

xxXxx

When Danny finally gets a Twitter, it’s during Elon Musk’s shit show takeover. He’s able to secure a good Twitter handle thanks to people leaving en masse and fleeing to Tumblr. He knows about things that happen outside of Amity Park (he is terminally online rather than chronically, after all), but he still doesn’t think anything of using @TheJoker as his handle, even knowing about Gotham City’s clown troubles. It’s just going to be a shitpost account, anyway, one that dances in the chaos of Elon’s electronic graveyard. Nothing will come about him using @TheJoker when he’s merely posting things like, “Just grew a new row of teeth!!! very pointy but can’t go to the dentist anymore bc they might turn me in to the giw.”

So Danny honestly never foresaw The Actual Real Joker breaking out of Arkham Asylum all the way in Gotham City, New Jersey, and deciding to get a Twitter account to terrorize people online as well as offline. And he definitely never foresaw The Joker @’ing him on Twitter, demanding that Danny change his Twitter handle. But, well. Here he was. 

[Image Description: A screenshot of a Twitter reply chain, starting with the real Joker @'ing Danny's Twitter account, which uses TheJoker as his Twitter handle. The Joker, who has a verified account, demands that Danny "change your handle", and Danny replies with a simple "no" followed by red heart emoji. The Joker Tweets, "Kid you don't know who you're fucking with," to which Danny replies, "Ye I do ur some dude w/ poor fashion sense and lame jokes. Maybe try badjokesbyjeff bc originality is ugly on u" followed by a shrugging emoticon. The Joker responds, "Check your DMs." Danny then responds, "Perf [happy emoji surrounded by hearts] I've sent you a time and place. Can't wait to beat the shit out of another disgrace of a clown." Someone with the username "Gregg rulz ok" responds to Danny's last Tweet, "Bro is absolutely RATIOING the joker but the clown keeps responding [three skull emojis] embarrassing frfr too bad he's gonna die for realsies".

End ID]

Danny is quick to respond and then makes even quicker work of roasting The Joker. This soon results in The Joker DMing him his IP Address and a creative threat. Still, Danny isn’t about to cow to a clown with no respect for the art of clowning. He replies to the DM: 

Cool, meet me at the Nasty Burger parking lot in Amity Park IL on tuesday at 2am

The response from The Joker is quick:

Fourteen year olds are too confident these days

Danny rolls his eyes and ignores the influx of notifications from Twitter, and instead makes another Tweet.

Imagine beefing with someone over a Twitter handle lol acc so embarrassing for him

He blackens his screen and stretches in bed, letting his spine pop more than what is humanly possible. He runs his tongue over that second row of teeth, his lips curling into a grin. 

xxXxx

Gothamite Twitter is blowing up over The Joker’s social media beef with a faceless shitposting account. Jason, upon finding out about it, has a series of reactions: first, he looks up the shitposter and follows them. Then, he finds the actual chain between the poster and The Joker, and his vision goes vibrant green when he sees that The Joker’s profile picture is of the second Robin, beaten and swollen in an abandoned building in Ethiopia. 

When his vision clears and he can breathe without wanting to kill, he likes the shitposter’s replies, and he calls the Replacement to see if the other Bats know already.

“We know,” Tim says in lieu of a hello when the ringing cuts out. “We’re working on it.”

“What, you think anything’s gonna come of it?” But even as Jason asks, he already knows the answer. The Joker is unhinged and once he’s threatened something, he’ll follow up unless he comes up with a “funnier” option. 

Tim’s breath hitches, and he says, “I’ve hacked their DMs. Joker knows the kid’s IP address and sent it to him. He knows everything from that address alone.”

He pauses in the middle of suiting up, “Kid?”

He hears Tim swallow, “Yes, kid. He’s fifteen. And he gave The Joker a specific time and place to meet up to fight. In his own hometown.”

“Are— are you fucking kidding me?” 

“No. B is already calling Nightwing. We’re taking the Batwing to Illinois.”

“Jesus fuck. I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Hood, I—”

“Shut up, I’m already in my gear.” He hangs up without waiting for a response. 

He refreshes the Twitter feed and barks a laugh at the newest Tweet:

Jason Todd votes, and the Red Hood leaves his safe house. 

xxXxx

A commercial flight to Illinois takes around two and a half hours. In the Batwing, they get there in an hour, and don’t even have to worry about the drive from Chicago to a small speck of a town like Amity Park. They spend the quick flight learning everything they can about Daniel James Fenton, the owner of the Twitter account, and they can all sense the growing tension from (and between) Bruce and Jason.

But, well. Jason doesn’t care. Let them be uncomfortable. It doesn’t compare to being ripped back into life and finding out his dad didn’t even get justice for his death. 

When they reach town, it doesn’t take long to find the Fentons’ home. This is in part because Amity Park is a very navigable town, and because of the giant neon sign proclaiming FentonWorks on the side of the building. 

“Is that a blimp?” Dick asks. “Why don’t we have a blimp?” 

“Where would we keep it?” the Demon Brat counters practically. “Goliath takes up all of the Cave’s extra space.” 

Jason rolls his eyes and knows veins would be popping out of Bruce’s forehead if it weren’t for the cowl. 

“Let’s go,” Bruce says instead, and they all make their way to the house. 

Nightwing, predictably, goes for the front door approach. Jason rolls his eyes as he takes one of the second-story windows and finds his way downstairs.

He gets down at the same time that a redheaded girl answers the door and nearly slams it in Dick’s face. Jason has to suppress snickers at the sight. 

“Wait, wait, wait, are you Jazz Fenton? We need to talk to your brother!” 

“...We?” she asks, then tenses and turns around to see the rest of the Bats in the hall behind her. Dick takes the opportunity to step in completely, closing the door behind him. “Wha— what’s going on?”

“Where are your parents, Jazz?” Bruce makes every question sound like a demand. Jason rolls his eyes from behind his mask—way to put the teenager at ease, B.

“Why do you need to know?” Her voice has a defensive edge to it. “What do you want with Danny?” 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Nightwing comforts. “He didn’t do anything too bad, just said some dumb things online. It’s not his fault.” 

This relaxes her, and her shoulders begin un-hunching. “Oh, s-so what’d he do?”

“He foolishly challenged The Joker to a battle in a ‘Nasty Burger’ parking lot tonight.” 

“You could’ve had some more tact, Robin,” Nightwing scolds. But the Demon Spawn just crosses his arms. 

“He did what?” Jazz shrieks. “Like, The Joker from Gotham? That Joker?”

“Are there others?” Red Hood comments dryly. 

Her face goes through several different emotions—disbelief, rage, fear, and then rage again, “DANIEL JAMES FENTON! GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!” 

There’s a thumping noise, and then frantic footsteps down the stairs. 

“Wha? Who died?” asks the figure of a tiny fifteen-year-old, smaller than even Jason had been when he was alone with The Joker. He’s tiny and lanky. Zero muscle definition. Eye bags to rival the Replacement’s. Something ripples in the Pit, deep and distinct, but he can’t name what causes it.

Oh, this kid is so dead. 

“Danny,” says Jazz calmly while Danny blinks uncomprehendingly at the heroes in their hallway. She is solemn when she says, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you now.” 

“What did I do?” 

She stares at him, “Why have you scheduled a fight with The Joker?” 

“Oh, that.” He rubs the back of his neck, “Is he taking that seriously?”

“Of course he is, Danny! It’s The Joker! That’s what he does! He can’t differentiate between a joke and reality! He would tear off his own face for the bit!” 

“Oof,” is all Danny can muster. He digs his phone out and starts typing before Jazz yanks it out his hand. 

“You’re fucking TWEETING about this?” Jazz asks incredulously, and Hood’s hackles rise. She even reads the Tweet aloud, “‘Just found out @TheJ0ker is being fr about fighting me. Sad but i can take a clown.’”

“I was gonna add ‘i’ve done it b4,’ but like the letter and the number four. But yeah.” 

“You’re grounded forever.” Danny opens his mouth to protest, but the look Jazz cuts at him is so scathing that he shuts his mouth. Hood is reluctantly impressed—she had what could be cultivated into a fantastic Batglare. She pockets the phone, “You’re never getting this phone back. Taunting The Joker to Amity? Have you any brain cells? What if he brings Joker gas with him, huh? Or any of his goons? What if he starts hurting other people? Have you thought any of this through?” 

Danny’s face goes from tired to chastised, his lips drawing into a frown, especially at the mention of other people. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t think that he’d take it so seriously.”

“He sent you your IP Address.”

“I thought that was just a random string of numbers?”

“Oh my god,” Jazz despairs. “Oh my god. Grounded forever. See, I know you're lying to me. I know you're lying because Tucker, the nerdiest tech nerd to have ever been born, is your best friend.”

He rubs the back of his neck, “I tune him out?”

“You’re still lying to me?” Jazz scoffs and turns to Batman, “Do whatever you want with him. I’m not going to defend him from this.” 

“Hey!” complained her brother, but Batman just continued on, “Where are your parents?”

“They’re in Sweden for a science convention,” Jazz answers. “They left this morning.” 

Damn, Jason curses to himself. 

“Jazz, seriously. You’re not gonna let Batman kill me, right?” 

“Do you want to be cremated or buried, Danny?” Jazz asks blasély, and Danny gulps, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. 

“It’s my Twitter handle,” he mutters petulantly, and Jason can’t believe the gall of this kid. Or maybe stupidity. Audacity’s a good one, too. “If he wanted it, he should’ve gotten it first. And he gives clowns a bad name.” 

“Not the clown thing again.” Jazz digs her palms into her eyes, sighs, then turns to the heroes. “He has a whole clown thing ever since Circus Gothica came to town and robbed a bunch of jewelry stores.” 

Danny gestures wildly with his hands, as if demonizing clowns was the real problem and not the egomaniacal mass murderer who wanted to murder him for his Twitter handle, “Clowning is an art form, Jazz, and people like Freakshow and The Joker make a mockery of the very serious societal statements that clowns make!” 

All of the Bats very carefully Did Not look at Nightwing, who has made very similar rants on quiet patrols.

“You are never leaving this house again,” she says serenely. “And I’m unplugging the wifi router.”

“You would punish even yourself?”

“Oh, little brother. I would watch the world burn if it meant knocking sense into your thick skull.” 

“Okay, Christ,” Red Hood finally interrupted the siblings’ melodrama. An unyielding redheaded girl and a mouthy black-haired, blue-eyed boy? They’d fit in a little too well back at the Manor, so Jason needs to cut this shit out before Bruce’s bat-doption instincts start tingling. “Stop. Just… Christ. Stop. Is this how you always interact with each other?”

“Sometimes there’s explosions,” Danny pipes up, a cheeky grin on his face. 

Jazz doesn’t dispute it. 

Fucking hell. God damn it. I can’t. I just can’t. 

Batman doesn’t give anything away, “Robin and Red Robin will be staying here with you until Nightwing, Hood, and I apprehend The Joker. First, we’re going to check the perimeter.” 

“Oooh, I get to give the lab tour!” 

Lab?

“No lab. You’re grounded. You’ll only be in there for cleaning duty now.”

“Wh– hey! No fair!” 

“What’s this lab you two are talking about?” Red Robin asks before Jazz can rip into her brother again. 

She sighs, “Our parents’ lab. I’ll show you, but someone needs to stay with Danny.” 

“You act like I’m gonna run off and start World War III….”

“I wonder why,” she says sarcastically.

Batman nods to Robin, who nods back, and the rest of them follow Jazz out of the living room to a metal reinforced door. She types in a code—Jason catches the numbers 03-14-99. There’s an assenting beep, and she opens the door, flicking on the lights and leading them down into what is apparently a basement lab. 

A stone settles in Red Hood’s stomach, cold and heavy. 

The basement is large, likely the floor size of the entire building. There are several work tables, filled with miscellaneous blueprints and spare parts and weapons and tools. Against the farthest wall is another armored door, but what draws Hood’s—and the entire Batclan’s—attention is the south wall, where a circular hole in the wall was glowing a toxic Pit green. 

The stone shattered in his stomach, splintering into his body. Is it harder or easier to breathe? Jason can’t tell. 

“Wow,” says Nightwing. His voice is cheerful, but Jason can feel the stress beneath it. “Do I even want to know?” 

Wasn’t this supposed to just be typical Joker bullshit?

“Our parents are ectobiologists,” Jazz explains nonchalantly, walking further into the lab. “As in, ghost biologists.” She pauses at one of the work tables, picking up a green and white thermos. Pretty boring, considering the rest of their surroundings. 

“Ghosts.” Red Robin’s voice is carefully neutral. 

“Ghosts,” Jazz reaffirms. “I know. I thought they were crazy at first, too. But I can prove it, if you like.” Then, without waiting for a yes or no, she untwists the thermos, and there’s a bright flash of white, and a whole entire body sprouting out of it. 

“WHOO! I’M FREE!” cries the…being, pale and floating and lanky and entirely too big to have fit into a fucking thermos, of all the fucking things. “....And not in the Realms? Wait.” He stops stretching, descending to rest closer to the ground, but still hovering a few inches from the floor. He’s got green eyes and lifeless (ha) blond hair. He’s wearing a trenchcoat and a green skull necklace. Overall, he looks like the type of thug he’d arrest in the Bowery. 

“Hello, Johnny.” The man’s—ghost’s?—eyes flicker around each person in the room, his gaze becoming more and more confused and panicked as he takes in each Bat, before settling on Jazz Fenton. 

“Why are the fucking Bats here?” 

“The Joker’s coming to Amity,” she says. The ghost’s eyes widen. Jazz tilts her head, “How many ghosts would you say passed away in Gotham, Johnny?” 

As Jason and the Bats tense, this Johnny guy lets out a wicked laugh, “Oh, Doll, you have the best surprises. Why did we break up?” 

“You did try to have my body possessed. That ruins any good relationship.” 

“Man, but Kitty’ll love this. Thanks for letting me out of Soup Time, Doll.” He floats higher, “Any advice?” 

She throws him the phone she’d confiscated from Danny and he catches it easily, “Everything’s on here. Have fun.”

“What exactly are you planning?” Batman scowls. 

Johnny laughs, “Aww, don’t worry, Bats. Peace and love on Planet Earth, or whatever. We’ll make it quick.” Then, as the Bats leap into action as one, Johnny turns invisible, the Batarangs passing harmlessly through where he’d once been floating. 

“Where did he go?” Batman turns his scowl, angrier than ever, to Jazmin Fenton, who stares back unflinchingly. “He’s going to solve the problem.”

“You mean he’s going to kill The Joker.”

She shakes her head, “Oh, no. That’d just be asking for him to come back as a ghost. Could you imagine a Joker with powers like invisibility, intangibility, flight, and more? Johnny can be impulsive, but he’s smart. None of them will kill The Joker.” 

“Then what are they going to do?” Red Robin asks. 

“My parents are ectobiologists,” Jazz repeats from earlier. “But I am more of an anthro-ectopologist. I am concerned with the study of ectoplasmic beings’ societies and cultures. And while it is very ancient, there is protocol in the Infinite Realms—that is, where you go when you die, should you remain after death—to prosecute living criminals who have killed a certain number of Realms citizens. So you don’t have to worry about your moral code, Batman. The Joker will be tried by a much fairer court than Gotham can ever hope to have. No offense.” 

Jason stares at Jazz Fenton, who he’d pegged as the sane sibling. He’s not so sure now, but he can’t say he hates it.

“And how do we know it’s a fair trial?” Nightwing asks. 

She waves her hand, “Oh, as Gotham’s Knights, you’re key witnesses. I’m sure you’ll be summoned to testify. You will see then. And don’t worry about your secret identities—the dead don’t care much for that sort of thing.” 

“So if this is a ‘fair’ trial or whatever, The Joker’s going to be locked up forever?” Jason asks. “I mean, that’s the only option for shit like him.” 

Batman sends him a look, but he ignores it. 

“Well, there are several different punishments that could be deemed appropriate, but he’ll never be able to set foot in the mortal world again, yes.” 

Jason Todd grins, “Oh, I’m glad your brother’s stupid, kid.” 

She sighs, long-suffering, “Well, that makes one of us. Still, there’s more important things we should discuss now that you’re here.”

“More important than The Joker trying to kill your brother over a Twitter handle?” Red Robin asks doubtfully. 

Jazz smiles, sharp and dangerous, and asks, ”Have you ever heard of the Anti-Ecto Acts?” 

xxXxx

Several months later when Danny is finally un-grounded, he Tweets his last three Tweets before Twitter can become the foolishly named X: 

Imagine bullying the Joker so hard that it not only lands the Joker in ghost prison BUT it also leads to major law reform in the US lmao someone make the domino effect meme about this pls

Y’allre replying to me with thanks like i did anything other than be an internet troll. My sister literally manipulated local, federal, and interdimensional law so you should be thanking her. 

i just a babie 🥺🥺🥺

xxXxx

Thanks for reading! This is the whole fic, so pls do not ask for tags! Thank you :)

[most-tragic-character-tournament]

So,

What a wild ride, everybody.

This tournament went live on July 13th, 3023, and concluded January 1st, 2024. For a long time before, I’d been wondering if I should try my hand at running one of these tournaments, and then I realized we hadn’t had a general tumblr-wide one for tragic characters. I knew that I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I decided to bite the bullet and take the URL. The rest is history.

I didn’t have a set plan, but I figured I could take 128 entries. And then in less than a week and a half, I had ~122. And honestly, I wasn’t happy continuing with just those I’d gotten so far, and thought it’d be unfair if it closed that quickly without warning, so I decided to up it to 256 with a max 2 characters per canon after preliminaries. Only after that did I go on a mad search to find brackets that were big enough for that, and I’d almost given up before I finally found these:

Those are all the characters that made it past prelims and into the competition. Some quite unexpected results came out of these matchups, round after round, and honestly I’d consider the first round to have had the most brutal competitions, because I had tried to do the best I could to match levels of popularity with each other, as far as I could tell. (Yeah, that’s why we had c!Tommy v Jon Sims and Primrose v Jinx.). But even eclipsing all of those, as the weeks went on, we were eventually met with Antigone versus Lloyd Garmadon. Ah, those crazy kids.

At some points it was stressful, in the early rounds when I had dozens of posts, each with edited images and alt text, to prepare for every round, but I never regretted starting this. As of posting, this blog has 2,020 followers and has made over 1,000 posts. This will be the last post on this blog—any future asks I receive I will answer privately back to the asker, or cannot be answered if they are anon—but it will always remain here for posterity. The link below is to the similarly-preserved google sheet compiling every word of every submission this tournament ever received.

I’d like to take this chance to say thank you to everyone who submitted characters, supplied photos, sent in propaganda, reblogged the polls, indoctrinated their teachers into greeklitsweep, and everyone who kept good sportsmanship when their blorbos proved so tragic they couldn’t even win. Thank you to the small group of URLs whom I’ve consistently recognized in my inbox from submissions all the way to finals, thank you for letting me know when a name was messed up, and thank you for your patience in-between rounds. (Shoutout to @elemom as well for having their tiktok on the original antigone/lloyd poll blow up.)

If you’ve stumbled upon this blog weeks, months, or even years after this was posted, I would direct your attention to the tag map in the pinned post to sift through the tumblr history you’ve just uncovered. And I would also be tempted to point at the big sign next to it reciting the nuclear zone warning poem. Lastly, if anyone here or there wishes to talk to me about anything regarding the tournament, you’re welcome to DM @twilight-skies.

There were times when I said to myself this was a one-and-done thing—I was NOT dealing with this again, but….keep a look on the horizon, ya never know.

But until next time, it’s been amazing.

Sayonara you weeaboo shits.

[afrognamedfizzarolli]

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

SEASON 2 TRAILER BITCHES

I'm absolutely loosing my mind! I actually woke up to my phone blowing up about it. And I've spent the last few hours rewatching it and trying to break it down. So I'm going to share my thoughts!

Ive organized all the clips into the separate episodes I believe they are from, so lets start with The Full Moon. Here's my theory about how I think these clips line up and what the episode will be about!

So to start, I'm confident these clips with Vassago and Andrealphus take place in this episode. Probably the first part asking where Stolas is being near the very beginning of the episode. The shot of Andrealphus I'm not sure of though. (I'd like to mention how much I love how his tail comes up and makes it clear he is in fact a peacock)

Next we have these clips of Blizø and Stolas. Stolas is evidently frustrated. While this could very likely be in the later half, I have a feeling this is early in the episode, probably when Blitzø shows up for their full moon meeting. I'm guessing this is where Stolas dumps on Blitzø that he wants to actually be loved. The shot of the flower would also make sense to be in this scene as they are in the garden.

I believe this form we see attack Stolas and Blitzø is Vassago. This is tricky as far as where it goes, but I'm going to place it here as Blitzø is in his signature outfit here like he was in the last scene. Stolas has changed though

Here's where we start to see Blitzø in his outfit specific outfit. I think this is later that day or the next day, him planning to go back to see Stolas and properly express that he indeed loves him. Here I think he is telling Moxxie that he is not going to be working that day and literally dumping the work load on Mox.

I looove these clips! My guess to whats happening here is that Blitzø goes to Fizz looking for help, one of them has the idea to bring a gift to Stolas, Fizz takes Blitzø into this part of the palace with a bunch of Ozzies creations. He pulls out the absurdity large toy as an idea. Eventually they end up deciding on the "Dankee" candle, which Blitzø brings to Stolas. I also love that it looks like he scaled the wall up to the balcony while dragging this comically large candle in a sack.

Here's the part we've all been dreading waiting for... The crystal. I think here is where Stolas gives it to him, and express' how much he hates the transactional deal they have going on. Blitzø completely takes it the wrong way, thinking Stolas is giving it to him as a way to tell him to fuck off.

Here Blitzø also says the "You fucks think you can do this every time" which is alluding to again that Blitzø has experience and possibility was involved with another royal at some point. I know this isnt a new theory, but I think Vassago is a very likely candidate as its very convenient to have this line and Vassago introduced in (presumably) the same episode. This could also just be referring to higher class demons in general, such as Verosika

These next few clips I believe all take place in The Full Moon as well, but I'm not confident on their placement. The shot of Octavia maybe not, but her line what was over it, saying how Stolas doesn't love her or Stella, only Blitzø, is most likely near in this episode though.

For these 3, I think they are during the Stolitz duet, either in the very beginning or ending of the episode (I seem to remember it being said the episode will open with it, but I might be imagining that)

In the part where the images of Blitzø shatter, it's the one closest to Stolas first and then makes its way out, it's also the one closest to him where Blitzø looks the happiest and as they get further he looks more upset/distressed.

The sequence of Blitzø and Stolas' silhouettes could also be almost anywhere but makes sense during the duet. I love the detail of Blitzø's tattoo showing as a heart as a child and as an adult its a broken heart (it's hard to see in these screen shots cause Tumblr decided to nuke the quality)

In the part where Stolas is singing with the celestial imagery he is again wearing a red turtle neck under his cape which bares a resemblance to the one hes wearing when Blitzø is protecting him. I'm not sure if this means anything, but fells worth pointing out.

Again I am sorry for the shit photo quality, and possible bad grammar and spelling. I currently have the posts for the rest of the episodes nearly done so expect those in the next few hours ♡ Id love to hear any other ideas or theories about the upcoming episodes, or anything I missed/got wrong!

Pt. 1: The Full Moon | Pt. 2 :Apology Tour | Pt. 3: Ghostfuckers | Pt. 4: Mastermind | Pt. 5: Sinsmas

[mint-yooxgi]

{4} - Written in the Stars - Yandere!Idol!Yeosang X Tall!Chubby!Reader

Soft Yandere AU & Idol AU

Genre: Mature, Horror, Angst, Fluff, Slight Humor, Slow Burn

Pairing: Yeosang X Reader (ft. future Ateez and Skz ensemble)

Words: 12,502

Warnings: Slow burn. Minor fatshaming, oc gets called a bitch a few times (not by anyone important), minor assault and uncomfortable/inappropriate comments made towards the oc. K-Drama moment. I think that's all This is a Yandere story, it will contain themes such as stalking, violence, obsession, possessive natures, and just general overall creepiness and swearing. You have been warned.

A/n: It's been literally forever since I updated this omg, but I hope you all enjoy this part!! I'll edit it tomorrow after I wake up, so please excuse any mistakes. I'm super tired and not feeling the greatest at the moment because of it. Anyways, as always, feedback is greatly appreciated! Enjoy~

Also, gentle reminder that I don’t do tag lists.

Disclaimer: It's not often this chapter where this applies, but the following is important to note:

"This represents a line spoken in Korean."

"Bolded represents a line spoken in English."

"Bolded and italics represents a line spoken in Japanese."

Mini Masterlist - Part One - Part Two - Part Three

Placing the mug onto the table in front of you, you pull out a chair and sit down.

“I’m serious!” Winry laughs. “Rumour on the street is that you and Yuta are dating! After those images of him holding your hand at that award’s show went viral, it was the talk of the town.”

Letting out a puff of air, you run a hand over the top of your head. “It must not be a very popular story. Mark hasn’t said anything about it to me.”

“Maybe he’s jealous.” She shrugs, taking a sip from the mug you’ve already provided for her.

Immediately, you start laughing. “I highly doubt that.”

“Yuta is your biggest wrecker in NCT,” she shrugs casually.

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know that.” You reply.

“You told him that Ten is your bias, but not the fact that Yuta is your wrecker?” Winry quirks a brow.

“Essentially,” your shoulder lifts nonchalantly in confirmation. “Also told him that he was my first NCT bias cause he wouldn’t stop complaining about it.”

“Damn,” she breathes. “Boy must have ascended when you told him that.”

“You’re blowing things out of proportion.” You shake your head teasingly. “They’re just my friends.”

“Are you sure they think that?” She quirks a brow. 

Only, before you can respond, her phone rings. 

“I’m so sorry,” she grins sheepishly, checking who the caller is. “It’s Wyatt.”

Understanding passes over your features. “Well, aren’t you going to answer it?”

“Are you sure?” She looks genuinely hesitant to.

“Of course! He’s your significant other, after all!” You encourage her to answer by motioning towards her phone. “You haven’t talked lately cause of his business trip, right? Please, be my guest!”

A grateful smile tugs onto her lips as she stands from your kitchen table. Not even a moment later, she’s pressing accept on the call as she retreats into your living room for a bit more privacy.

You watch her disappear around the couch, noticing how she tucks herself away in the corner by the balcony. Her voice is low, so you can’t really make out what she says, but from the expression on her face you can tell just how happy she is to be talking with him. You smile.

Shifting your gaze to your hands, you pull your mug in closer to yourself. A moment later, you bring it to your lips, taking a small sip of the hot chocolate you’ve made. At least it’s cool enough for you to drink now.

Pulling your phone out of the side pocket of your leggings, you decide to distract yourself for the time being. You don’t want Winry to feel as if she has to rush her conversation with her significant other. After all, they haven’t spoken in over a week, let alone seen each other recently. With their busy schedules, you can’t even remember the last time she spoke about seeing him.

Scrolling through Tumblr, you check your notifications. 

Despite being a published author, you still maintain some of your blogs from before. The sentiment is far too great for you to give up now, and you enjoy it too much. Besides, it’s fun to post little pieces here and there on your old writing accounts. When inspiration strikes, it strikes hard.

There are only a few select people that know you still do this. Well, more than just a few. Still, it’s quite fun to see new readers message you asking you if you’re really who they think you are, only for you to reply that you are not. It’s like a huge game of detective for your followers that are convinced you are who you say you are not, but don’t have any proof. Of course, you use an alias online now, but regardless, you don’t think you could give up your blogs, even if you tried.

“Sorry about that.” Winry’s voice manages to pull you out of your thoughts.

Locking your phone, you place it beside your mug on the table. "No worries at all; I don’t mind.”

She smiles, but from the way she begins to fidget in her seat, you can tell that she has more to say.

You quirk a brow.

“Wyatt came back a few days early. He said he wanted to surprise me, but when he got back to our apartment, I wasn’t at home.” She begins.

You hum in acknowledgement.

“He said he had a surprise he wanted to give me, and that he wanted to take me out for the day.” She continues. “I told him I was spending time with you.”

You take another sip of your drink.

“Of course, he seemed a little disappointed, but he understood-“

“Winry, if you want to go spend the day with your significant other, don’t worry about me.” You reply.

“But we planned for us to spend the day together…” She counters, shoulders twitching as she fiddles with her hands beneath the table.

“I know you want to see him.” You smile assuringly. “It’s been, what? Two months?”

“Almost three.” She breathes out, whole body stilling as she stares at the top of your kitchen table almost absentmindedly.

“Then, by all means! Go! Spend the day with him!” You motion for her to stand. “We can always reschedule. Who knows when you’ll get to see him like this again.”

“Are you sure?” Hopeful eyes meet your own.

“Positive.” You nod, quite enthusiastically. “Go have fun with Wyatt! We saw each other last week, and I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon.”

It’s as if a tension lifts from her entire body. “You’re the best!”

You laugh, watching as she scrambles to her feet and towards the front door. “I know.”

“I owe you. Big time for this.” She says as you follow her to the front. “Seriously, I can’t thank you enough.”

“I need to run a few errands, anyways.” You wave her off, holding your mug delicately in your one hand. “Gives me an excuse to go do some things I’ve been putting off before tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah, your signing is tomorrow, right?” She finishes slipping on her shoes.

You nod.

“We’ll be there.” She states, rather firmly.

“You don’t have to-“

“Nonsense!” She shakes her head. “I’m coming to support you, and I’m dragging his ass along with me, too. Payback for this little ‘surprise’.”

The two of you share a small laugh.

“Okay, well, say ‘hi’ for me, and have fun!” You smile, holding the door open for her as she exits your apartment.

“Will do!” She calls over her shoulder as she heads down the hallway. “See you later!”

Waving your final goodbye, you shut the door softly. As soon as the lock clicks into place, a small sigh is escaping your lips. Well, there go your plans of spending your day with your friend.

Oh, well. It happens.

Stopping off in the kitchen on your way back to the table, you’re quick to place your now empty mug in the sink. A few steps later, you’ve moved over to grab your phone off of the top of the table, shifting to put Winry’s glass into the sink as well. 

Leaning against the counter, you scroll through your phone. You do have a few things you could get done today, but you weren’t really planning on doing them until later. Perhaps you can find a café or something when you’re finished, and get some writing done.

A sudden message from Jongho in the group chat catches your attention. It appears that they’re all at the dance studio for practice, as he’s sent a selfie to go along with it. Only, you can tell he was really sneaking a picture of the two males doing… whatever it is that they’re doing in the background.

You:Please tell me that’s some kind of elaborate stretch I’ve never heard about and not choreo for your next comeback.

You: And if it’s neither… Damn, you guys really get it on in the studio? I heard some of you were freaky, but I didn’t think you were that bad

Mingi: BAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You honestly laugh at how many emojis this man uses.

Seonghwa: Why? Are you interested in what goes on during practice?

Yunho: Wanna watch?

The side eyes Yunho sends you have you quirking a brow.

Jongho: Uh-oh, now the hot Cheeto is mad.

Another picture is sent, this time of Wooyoung angrily storming towards where you believe Jongho to be sitting. You can see both Mingi and San laughing in the background of this one while Hongjoong just looks exasperated.

Wooyoung: If you’re gonna sneak pictures of me in compromising positions to send to our sexy author friend, at least make sure to get my good side.

Jongho: What ‘good side’?

Wooyoung:Do you see? Do you see the harsh words I have to put up with from my junior everyday?

Yeosang: To be fair, he’s not the only one wondering

At the pondering emoji Yeosang uses, you cannot help but send a few laughing ones of your own.

Wooyoung: NOT YOU, TOO!

Wooyoung: First, you break my heart by giving me false hope that I’m your bias. Then, you won’t even tell me that I’m your wrecker. And now, you LAUGH at my MISERY?

Wooyoung: You are a meanie >:(

You:Wait wait wait

You: I knew that, but how did YOU know that? :0

A slew of laughing emojis are sent from a bunch of the guys, you smiling down at your phone. This short interaction has really served to boost your mood, and you cannot help the way a few chuckles escape you as you read their continued banter back and forth.

Hongjoong: You should come hang out with us sometime during practice. At least that way I know Wooyo will behave.

You can practically hear the whine Wooyoung is sure to let out in response as you read this message, and you cannot prevent the way your lips quirk upwards.

Seonghwa: Yeah! The staff seem to like you, and our manager already said it was okay.

A moment where you see a few of them typing their responses.

Wooyoung: Besides… you’d get to watch us dance~

You: Be honest, is this another one of your attempts to figure out my bias?

Hongjoong: No! 

Hongjoong: Most definitely not! 

Hongjoong: Why would you think that? 

Hongjoong: I would never!

You receive a photo from Yeosang of Hongjoong intensely staring down at his phone, his ears clearly bright red as he pouts.

Yunho:Betrayal…

You shake your head in amusement.

You: As long as you can guarantee I won’t be in the way, or be too much of a distraction… I’ll think about it.

Several various cheering emojis are sent to you by some clearly overexcited males (Wooyoung, Mingi, and Jongho), while the others are able to type out their excitement with small phrases.

San: Since we’re now all apparently taking a break… what are you up to currently?

You: Me? Well, I was supposed to spend the day with a friend, but something came up, so now I’m going to go run some errands. Might find a café of something and do some writing.

Hongjoong: Did you even get any sleep last night?

You: Hey! Of course I did! Besides, you’re one to talk. I woke up to five messages all an hour apart. You were up WAY later than I was. You need more sleep than I do!

Hongjoong: It’s not my fault I do my best work at night.

A meme is sent from you of a man in a purple shirt pointing his finger in the air while saying ‘you got me there’.

You: I swear, one of these days I’m going to knock you unconscious and FORCE you to sleep

Hongjoong: That’s rich, considering YOU are practically always awake when I am

Another meme is sent from you of a stuffed bear wrapped in a blanket burrito while laying on a bed. A knife peeks out from the blanket. The caption reads something along the lines of, ‘I will sneak into your house and replace all your drinks with sleepy time tea. You will be forced to breathe in comforting scents which soothe the mind, and as you fall unconscious, the last image you will have is of me smiling over you with a nice warm blanket tucking you in. This is a THREAT.’

Wooyoung: If this is how you threaten people, then I want IN

Mingi: Oh, oh! Threaten ME next!

You: You would not BELIEVE how many times my one friend sends me this, especially when it’s like, five am my time, and they’re just sitting down for dinner in their time zone.

Hongjoong: You drive a hard bargain…

Yunho: My god, I think he’s actually listening for once…

Seonghwa: I have been trying for YEARS-

Hongjoong: It only works if she’s the one to do it.

Wooyoung: I’d listen, too, if I had a pretty lady always telling me what to do.

San: Yeah, yeah, we all know you’re an obedient sub.

Wooyoung: LIKE YOU WERE THINKING ANY DIFFERENT!

The cackle that escapes you nearly causes you to drop your phone.

Mingi: Wooyo’s got a point…

You: Am I suddenly in the wrong group chat?

Yunho: Nope, same one. You should see how mad Jongho looks right now.

A photo is provided by Wooyoung this time of the youngest sitting against the mirrors with a frown on his face. He hugs his knees to his chest as he stares down at his phone.

Your own brows furrow in confusion, but before you can respond, Yeosang beats you to it.

Yeosang: Will you all stop fucking flirting with each other?

You nearly drop your phone.

San: Oop- we’ve gone and made Yeo mad

Wooyoung: Just cause YOU’RE not her favourite doesn’t mean you have to spoil OUR fun, Sangie.

You: Woah, woah, woah, who said he’s not my favourite?

This seems to shut all of them up for a good few minutes.

Seonghwa: Yeosang’s your bias?

Another minute of silence.

Yunho: You seem to have incited a war.

Another picture is sent. A pile consisting of Yeosang, Jongho, Wooyoung, and Hongjoong all seemingly rolling around on the floor is shown. San stands to the side with Mingi, the former attempting to pull the pile of males on the floor apart while the latter laughs.

You send some side eye emojis along with a few laughing faces.

You: You guys are really THAT desperate to know who my bias is?

Mingi: Does that mean Yeosang ISN’T your bias?

A shrugging emoji is all he receives from you in response. For now.

You: Any one of you could or couldn’t be my main bias. 

You: Like I said, you have to buy me a drink first ;)

Wooyoung: Why can’t you just tell us? :(

A sigh escapes you, thumbs hovering in the air over the keyboard as multiple of them seem to agree with Wooyoung’s inquiry.

You: It’s just a personal thing I have. 

You: I don’t mind telling other people, but when it comes to the actual people it involves, it’s a different story. I don’t know how much my opinion of each of you matters, but I’ve never really enjoyed picking favourites when that choice is told to said people. I don’t like the connotations of multiple people getting their hopes up that I’ll pick them as my favourite, only to choose someone else. I don’t like disappointing people, and I also am all too familiar with the feeling of not even being someone’s last choice. If I tell you who I bias, it will most likely be at some point when we’re one on one. If you’re still interested at that point.

You:I just-

You: Did that make sense? I can try and explain it better if you need me to.

Yeosang: We understand. Don’t force yourself to do something that makes you uncomfortable.

Wooyoung: Don’t worry! We’ll stop bothering you about it.

Yunho: Wooyoung… just agreed to stop pestering someone…

San: It’s a Christmas miracle!

Jongho: He’s still pouting about it in the corner…

A photo is received showing both Hongjoong, Mingi, and Wooyoung all standing dejectedly in the corner.

You: Damn, are you guys going to start growing mushrooms like Tamaki from Ouran now, too? I didn’t realize my opinion of you mattered so much.

You: If it makes you all feel any better, I think you’re all wonderful people. I thought that before I met you, and getting to know you all has only solidified that fact.

Quite a few typing bubbles appear onscreen. A moment later, you’re flooded by emoticons either blushing, screaming, and, or crying happily with hearts surrounding them.

Seonghwa: You’re a great friend

A soft smile caresses your features as you read his comment, a subtle heat rising up your neck. At the way the others all emphasize Seonghwa’s message, you cannot help the way your heart begins to flutter inside your chest. Truly, his words mean the world to you, and the fact the others agree with him is simply icing on the cake.

After sending a quick response to them, you decide to actually get out of your apartment for the day. It takes you no time at all to grab your one notebook, some writing tools, and your laptop, just in case. Packing everything into your one small cream coloured tote with the Skz Zoo characters on it that you got from their one concert, you head towards the door.

Slipping your shoes on, you grab your purse, slinging that over your opposite shoulder. You do a quick check in the mirror to make sure you still look okay before slipping out of the door. The faint clicking sound of the lock sliding into place is starting to become a familiar comfort to you every time you leave your apartment, walking down the hallway towards the elevators in the next second.

The ride down to the main floor is a bit slow, you focussing on your phone the whole time. Naver Maps rests open on the screen, doing a quick search of the area to find the best stores for what you’re looking for. Already, you have a mental list of what you need to get, and you figure doing that before settling down in a café to write will do you some good. That way, if you get on a roll, you don’t have to worry about cutting your time short to pick up what you need.

Stepping into the lobby, you send a polite greeting to the security guard behind the front desk before exiting the building.

The moment you step outside, you head over to the bus stop. Sitting on the bench, you wait for the respective bus to come, plugging in your headphones all the while. At least you can take your time now, and maybe explore the area a bit more when you get back. If you’re up for that, that is.

Half an hour later, you find yourself at a small shopping centre. You don’t need much, but you do need to get a few new replacement pieces of makeup. Then, you figure you can check out the bookstore before finding a place to work on your novel.

The night of the award’s show, you managed to finish off both your favourite shade of red lipstick, as well as your liquid eyeliner. Normally, you don’t wear makeup very often, but since you have a bunch of events coming up, and no personal stylist, you figure you should at least look somewhat put together. Not that that ideal will last long.

Still, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Entering a few different cosmetic stores, you search around for the best deal. The first one you went into was sold out of the liquid liner you like to use, anyways. You swear by it, as it’s application is the easiest to deal with. At least, in your opinion. That, and it dries quickly, and isn’t prone to smudging.

Perhaps you should also get a pencil liner while you’re at it…

Standing in front of the display with your favourite shade of red lipstick already held in your one hand, you look over all of the options. It appears as if this store is having a sale on their eyeliner, the words ‘buy one, get one half off’ practically glaring back at you from the sign.

Your eyes light up as you spot your favourite liquid liner. Almost instantly, your hands reach out to grab one of the last two on the shelf. Then, comes the hard part. Picking a pencil liner to go with it.

That’s when you notice another person shifting closer to you almost timidly.

Turning your head, you see a person somewhat hesitantly standing a few feet away. Their appearance is slightly androgynous, their black hair falling to their shoulders in a semi-wolf cut. Every now and then, you see their gaze darting to you almost nervously, their eyes lined with black liner.

“I like your hair,” you hum, purposely focussing on the display in front of you as you pull one of the two options you’ve been looking at off of the shelf. “I think it suits you nicely.”

Almost instantly, the person’s eyes light up despite them averting their gaze, “Thank you.”

You blink, as if realizing something.

“Oh, I’m so sorry! I’m completely blocking the display.” You step to the side, smiling politely at the person beside you.

Timidly, they smile back, taking a step in closer to the display.

Reaching your one hand forward, you pull the other pencil liner you’ve been considering off of the shelf to compare it to the other one in your opposite hand. Your brow furrows, looking over each one of them carefully and attempting to find out what the difference is between the two brands.

“I personally like this one better.” A voice from your right draws your attention, and you notice the person beside you glancing down at the liner in your right hand. “It last longer, and if you want to go for a smokey eye, it blends really nicely.”

“Really?” Your voice sounds hopeful.

“Yeah!” They smile somewhat shyly. “Though, if you don’t want it to smudge, then I would go with the other one you’re holding. It’s more of a gel pencil, if that makes sense.”

Softly, you nod your head. “I don’t usually wear a lot of makeup, but I never fuck around with my eyeliner.”

“Oh, yeah. Eyeliner can practically smell fear.” They joke.

A small laugh escapes you, and you notice them chuckling along, too.

“To be honest, I’ve never really been into makeup, but I don’t mind it every now and then.” You admit, sparing a glance down at the products held in your hand.

“I love it.” They say, only for their whole body to stiffen in the next second. It’s almost as if they said something wrong, for they glance towards you in what you can only assume is fear in the next moment.

“That’s so cool!” You grin, eyes crinkling at the sides. “I really love the way you’ve done your eyes today. It really makes them pop.”

Instantly, their shoulders relax and they shuffle a bit from foot to foot. “Thank you.”

“When I was younger, I was always obsessed with different coloured eyeliner.” You say, putting the one pencil liner back onto the shelf since you’ve decided to go with the other one for now. “Never used them, but I would always beg my mom to buy them for me.”

“I think my mom nearly had a stroke the first time I asked her to buy lipstick for me.” They voice lowly, as if sharing a precious secret. “She was a little hesitant at first, but when she saw how much I loved it, she couldn’t resist getting me more. Now, it’s like a recurring joke between us for her to get me a new shade every year for my birthday.”

“I love this for you!” You grin widely. “That’s honestly the best.”

“I’ve always wanted to work in the film industry for a few years now, but it’s quite competitive even getting a foot in the door.” They tell you.

“I can imagine.” You nod sympathetically before your eyes are widening as if you’ve just realized something. Then, quickly, you’re introducing yourself, seeing as you haven’t bothered to yet.

“I’m still working on that name stuff, but for now you can call me Zed.” They say, bowing slightly to you.

You bow back.

Ten more minutes are spent talking with Zed in front of that display. You even manage to go on your brief makeup is gender neutral rant after they express the same ideals.

“Everything is gender neutral if you’re brave enough.” You comment lowly, adjusting the strap of your purse over your one shoulder.

“Here, here.” They mock toast you with the few products held in their one hand.

“By the way, you mentioned being a makeup artist, correct?” You meet their gaze.

“Yeah, you’re correct.” They nod once in confirmation.

“This may be really weird considering we just met, but if you’re free tomorrow morning, I have an event I need to attend, and I would love someone to do my makeup for me. I’m not the greatest artist myself, and I would definitely pay you for your work!” You begin, somewhat shyly.

“Sure! What time would you need me to be at the place?” They ask.

Five minutes later, and you’ve exchanged contact information with them after explaining the details.

“I thought you looked familiar.” They mumble, almost to themselves. “I heard about that speech you gave two weeks ago, it was all over the news. I just didn’t realize that that was you.”

“Yep!” You chuckle, grinning widely from ear to ear. “That’s me!”

“Is that why you’re picking up products today?” They quirk a brow.

“One of the reasons.” You confirm. “I have the rest at home, but you’re more than welcome to bring whatever you think you may need tomorrow. I know it’s super short notice, and we just met, but I really appreciate you agreeing to do this for me.”

“Hey,” they shrug, “work is work. As long as you’re serious about it, that is.”

“Of course!” Comes your immediate reply. “You’re also welcome to message me anytime! I really enjoyed talking with you today.”

“Me too,” they smile.

“Thanks for the recommendation, by the way.” You wiggle the pencil liner held in your hand.

“No worries at all.” They chuckle. “You looked like you were struggling, and I’m always happy to help.”

You begin to make your way towards the cash line with Zed in tow. Except, you notice them holding only one liner in their hand, as opposed to the two they had earlier.

“Are you not going to get the other one, too?” You tilt your head curiously. “It’s buy one, get one fifty percent off.”

“I don’t think two is in the budget for me right now,” they chuckle, somewhat embarrassedly. “Money’s a little tight between jobs.”

You pause momentarily, turning right back around and pulling the other product they had been looking at off the shelf before grabbing the other one that’s still held in their hand.

“What are you doing?” Their voice is a little frantic as they follow closely behind you.

“Buying something for my friend.” You reply, somewhat matter-of-factly. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“You don’t have to!” Immediately, they begin to protest.

“Think of it as a small ‘thank you’ from me to you in advance of tomorrow.” You reply, stepping into line with them beside you. “Besides, I want to.”

They purse their lips slightly, shuffling from foot to foot before muttering out a low thanks.

“Don’t even worry about it!” You smile at Zed. “It’s my pleasure.”

Idly, you continue to chat with them as you wait to be cashed out. As soon as you’re done, you hand them their items while standing just outside the store.

“Thank you so much.” They breathe, almost in relief.

“Really, it’s no problem.” You smile, tucking your own items into your tote bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah! Just text me the details as soon as you can, and I’ll be there!” They reply eagerly, tucking their own products into their back pocket.

“Of course!” You wave as they begin to take their leave. “Talk to you later!”

The moment they’re out of sight, you cannot help but smile more to yourself. They were so nice, and you honestly loved every second of that interaction with them. If only more people were like them.

Adjusting the strap of your tote, you turn back to face the other shops lining the space. There’s really only one other store you’d like to check out before leaving to find a café soon.

On the way to the bookstore, you quickly text all of the information Zed will need for tomorrow to them. They reply quickly with a ‘thanks!’ And some excited emoticons.

Again, you grin to yourself, happy to have made a new friend.

Rounding the corner of the hallway, you spot the bookstore at the end of the row. The sign is bright, and you can see a bunch of people milling about the one section near the front. Despite this not being the store you’ll be having your signing in, there seems to be a large display of your books in the middle of the store. Luckily, your picture doesn’t seem to be anywhere near the table like the last bookstore you had visited.

Shuffling passed a few people, you’re quick to head over to the manga section. There’s a volume of Tokyo Ghoul in Korean that continues to elude you no matter how hard you try and find it. You really just want it to complete your collection at this point, and it has one of your favourite characters on the front.

Crouching down to look on the bottom shelf where you see the different volumes of the manga you’re looking for residing, you’re quick to scan them all. Your eyes practically light up as you see the one you’re looking for, only a sharp gasp coming from down the row draws your attention.

The sound of quick feet approaching you causes you to look up to see a girl and two guys rushing over to you.

“Hi, oh my gosh, are you the author of this book series?” The girl excitedly holds out a copy of the second novel in your first published series.

You blink up at her owlishly, “Uh…”

“You’re so cool! I really admire your work!” She squeals, drawing even more attention to yourself from the people around you.

“Thank you,” you smile politely.

“Anyways, I’m so sorry for interrupting you.” Her face immediately goes bright red as she averts her gaze. “Do you think I could get a quick picture before I leave?”

“Sure!” Slowly, you stand back to your feet.

Handing her phone to one of the guys behind her, the girl steps into your side. A wide smile is on her face as she throws up a peace sign, holding your book proudly on display. You immediately mirror her enthusiastic expression, heart warming at how happy she looks.

After a few pictures are taken, she’s turning to you once again.

“Thank you so much!” She bows lowly, nearly hitting her head on the table beside you with a full display of One Piece on it. “Again, sorry for bothering you!”

You have just enough time to mutter a ‘not at all’, before she’s giddily hopping away with the two other males in tow.

Turning back to the shelves of manga, you go to crouch down once more to pull the volume of Tokyo Ghoul off of the bottom.

“Hello, My Love.” A voice says from above you.

Figuring the person is talking to someone else, you opt to ignore them for now. Instead, you reach out to finally pull the volume off of the shelf.

A harsh clearing of someone’s throat is heard as a shadow looms above you.

“I said,”they say, much more firmly this time as they nudge you, not very gently, with their foot, “Hello, My Love.”

The sudden push causes you to stumble slightly, steadying yourself on the bookcase in front of you.

Turning your head, you peer up at the person, a slight frown tugging at your features. Quickly, you stand back to your feet as you see a male staring at you quite expectantly. He appears irritated, the corner of his lips tugging downwards, standing slightly shorter than you with his arms crossed over his chest.

“My bad, I didn’t realize you were speaking to me.” You incline your head in apology. “But please, don’t call me that.”

His brow quirks, clearly amused by your response. “Aren’t you into that shit, though?”

“Excuse me?”To say you’re caught off guard by his sudden attitude would be an understatement.

“You write about all that sappy romance stuff.” He replies.

“That doesn’t give you a right as a stranger to invade my personal space, or say something like that. I don’t know you.” You blink at him.

A puff of air escapes his nose in annoyance. “But you’re that author chick.”

“And?” Your brow furrows even further, taking a small step away from him.

“Come on, Baby, don’t be like that.” He sighs, his jaw twitching.

“You’re the one that approached me.” You counter. “And, please, don’t call me that.”

“You’re different than I thought you’d be.” He states, giving you a once over. “Bigger.”

“I’m sorry?” You recoil slightly, appalled by the sudden disgust on his features.

“I said you’re beautiful.”A sly grin pulls onto his features as he takes a step closer to you. “You’re not like other girls.”

You blink at him, quite rapidly at that in your state of shock. “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, I think you know, Petal.” His eyes are suddenly hooded as he takes another step into you.

“Don’t call me that. Please.” You manage to slip around the corner of the table you’re standing beside.

“Why are you being so difficult?”The man mutters to himself, shaking his head. 

A call of someone’s name from the side draws both of your attention, and you see two more males staring intently at the one standing closest to you. The way they wear smug grins on their faces as they give you pointed once overs says it all.

“I’m getting there.” The man before you snaps at the two others.

“Did you want something?” It’s your own voice that seems to draw his attention back to you.

“Oh, look at you! You can speak a bit of Korean!” His tone is nothing short of condescending. “That’s wonderful!”

“I have nothing to say to you.” You state, rather bluntly before move to turn away from him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Where are you going, My Dear?” The way he drawls out that nickname has a shiver of disgust running down your spine. The fact that he snatches your wrist in his hand has panic seizing your entire body.

“Please, stop calling me those names.” You yank your wrist out of his hold. “Don’t touch me, either.”

“Come on, Darling,” his eyes flash, “don’t be like that. I only want to please you. To show you my devotion-“

“Get away from me!” You begin to scramble away from him, noticing you’ve started to draw some attention from a few of the staff members working in the store.

The two other males suddenly turn and begin to head towards the exits while two staff members approach you.

“What’s wrong with you?” There is nothing but ire on his features as he spits out these words at you. “All I’m offering is a chance for you to recreate those sex scenes from your books with me. A once in a lifetime opportunity, if you ask me. It’s not like people are lining up to be with you, anyways. You should be grateful I’m even giving a fat bitch like you attention.”

“Is everything okay here?” An older gentleman with a name tag interrupts, looking between both you and the male before you.

“I’m sorry to cause a commotion, Sir.” The way you immediately incline your head in respect to the elder male clearly catches him off guard. That, and the fact that you actually answer him in proper Korean. “This man won’t leave me alone, and is making me extremely uncomfortable. He’s making rude and inappropriate comments towards me, and thinks he’s entitled to assault me.”

The woman standing beside the male gasps, recognition flashing in her eyes. Her one hand comes up to point at you, “You’re that author from the award’s show!”

This draws the attention of a few more people standing around you, whispers being heard as a few more people recognize you from the display of your books a few tables over.

Politely, you smile at the woman, nerves skyrocketing as more and more attention is brought upon you. Again, you incline your head in respect as she looks slightly younger than the man, but still older than you.

“You said this man was bothering you?” She immediately turns a sharp gaze to the person standing closest to you.

“I was just leaving.” He huffs, purposely brushing past you and bumping quite harshly into your side. “Fucking bitch.”

Eyes follow him all of the way out of the store as he rejoins his two friends in the hallway.

“Are you alright?” The older gentleman turns to look at you.

“Yes, thank you.” You once again bow to him. “I’m sorry, again, for causing a disruption.”

“It’s not your fault.” The lady shakes her head, immediately wrapping you gently in her arms and guiding you towards the back of the store. “Come with us, we’ll call security and have them escort you in case that man comes back.”

“Thank you, I really appreciate it.” You smile lightly, seeing as she sends a kind one back.

Looks like you’re not getting that volume of Tokyo Ghoul today, either.

Sitting in the staff room at the back of the store, you let out a long sigh. You clutch your tote close to yourself, purse resting between your feet on the floor. Your phone resides in your hands, and you scroll aimlessly through Tumblr while you wait for security to reach the bookstore.

Opening your messages, you’re quick to type one out.

You: Why do people feel entitled to another person?

Placing your phone upside-down on the table before you, you let out another sigh. Not even a moment later, you pick your phone back up.

Jongho: Did something happen?

Mingi:Is everything alright?

Hongjoong: Are you okay?

Your eyes widen at how quickly you’ve gotten responses, but that’s when you realize: you texted the wrong chat.

You: Shit, sorry! Wrong chat! Just forget I said anything.

Wooyoung: You message something as ominous as that and expect us NOT to be worried?

Yunho: Jongho’s already putting his shoes on.

You: Wait, does that mean you guys are done with practice for today?

Seonghwa: NO, we are NOT!

You:… you guys don’t wear shoes when you practice?

Yunho: We do, it was just a figure of speech.

San: He meant that Mingi and Yeosang are holding Jongho back from racing out the door as we speak.

You: Damn, this reminds me of my wondrous ‘protection squad’ days.

Seonghwa: Protection squad days?

You: Nevermind. Like I said, just forgot I said anything.

The door opens and in walks security. You take a few minutes to describe what happened and what the man that assaulted you looks like before the two guards are escorting you out of the store. One walks in front while the other walks behind you.

“We’ll lead you to your car, or the bus stop, and stay with you until you leave.” The one says to you.

“Thank you very much, I really appreciate it.” You bow slightly while walking.

The guard simply smiles at you from over his shoulder in response.

Once you’re on the correct bus on your way back to your apartment, you finally allow yourself to breathe a sigh of relief. Pulling out your phone, you check your notifications.

Immediately, you’re greeted by tons of worried messages from the boys, and even a few from some Stray Kids members. Looks like Wooyoung told Changbin, who in turn told Minho, Hyunjin, and Seungmin.

You: I promise I’m fine, just an uncomfortable encounter at a store.

Another round of messages are sent to you by the Ateez members, and you reassure them yet again.

You: Well, I could go for some boba now as a pick me up. Any of you know a good place in the area? The one by my house just closed for renos.

You notice a few of them typing a response before the first one comes in.

Yeosang: There’s one in the back alleys near Sinsa that’s really good. I’ll send you the address.

A moment later, a link to the Naver page is uploaded to the chat by Yeosang.

You: Thank you!!

Wooyoung: Daaaaaaamn Yeosang, you had that ready and LOADED

San: Don’t hate the man just cause he was prepared.

Yunho: Well, WE may have to prepare HIS funeral now

A photo of Yeosang being held in a headlock by Jongho is sent to you almost immediately after that message gets sent.

You laugh, a smile pulling at your features as you shake your head at your phone.

You: Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

A few more messages are sent between all of you, ending with you wishing them luck with the rest of practice. They eagerly tell you to come visit them soon, to which you reply that you will.

Twenty minutes later, and after switching buses once, you find yourself standing outside of the little boba shop Yeosang recommended to you. It has a cute little awning over the door, a soft pink in colour, while large windows line the front of the shop. It doesn’t look too busy, from what you can see, but the menu has a variety of options and you are more than eager to try them.

A small bell jingles as you enter the shop, the worker behind the counter smiling politely at you as you approach. Luckily, you already know what you want to order from looking at the sign outside, so you manage to do that fairly quickly. 

Five minutes later, you have your glass in hand as you seclude yourself in a corner seat. There’s a half-wall with plants resting on top of it to your left, while an open view of the store sits to your right. You’re directly across from the entranceway, but you cannot see the order counter, nor the worker anymore. Two more tables sit to your right, a small hallway stretching down after that towards where you’re sure the bathrooms reside.

Your tote rests on your left between your body and the wall, while your purse is on the booth beside you to your right. Considering you have a wall behind you, and there aren’t very many people in the shop, you feel comfortable enough to pull your laptop out. Once you’ve set everything up, you’re taking a sip of your drink while staring at the document you had been working on last night.

Scrolling back up to the top of the chapter, you begin.

Editing what you wrote the previous night takes some time, but by the time an hour has passed, you’ve start to write more for the chapter you’re currently on. It took a little bit of time, but you finally know how you want to end this particular scene, and you’re challenging yourself to see if you can finish it before you finish your drink.

Unfortunately for you, you’ve always been a fast drinker. Especially when you haven’t had much to drink all day.

The sound of another glass being placed onto the table before you draws your attention from your screen.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” it’s the worker you ordered your drink from before. “I saw your speech from the awards show when it aired, and I just wanted to say I really admire you. Thank you for everything you do! I didn’t want to say anything before since I was on the clock, but my shift just ended and I noticed you hadn’t left yet, so I wanted to say something before I went home.” They smile shyly, “and give you a refill of your drink. Work hard, and have a lovely day!”

“Oh, thank you so much!” You smile back at them as they clear your empty glass from the table. “That’s so kind of you!”

A nod is all you get in response as a soft blush begins to dust their features. Not even a moment later, they turn away, leaving you on your own once more.

Another hour and a half passes by with you furiously typing away at your laptop. You’d like to say that you hardly get distracted, but there seems to be this one person who has been constantly walking passed your table in hopes for you to notice them. The first few times, you glanced up, eyes being drawn to the movement given how close they were to your table, but by the fifth time, you started to ignore them.

That is, until they decided to actually approach your table.

The conversation was short, and awkward. They kept stuttering over their words, not to mention they kept interrupting you while you’re trying to work.

That’s the one thing that irritates you no matter what. Nothing is worse than being in the middle of writing a scene, deep in the flow of words, only to be interrupted or distracted by someone. Really, you know it’s not their fault, but you still cannot help your annoyance at the situation. Once or twice, you can brush it off, but the third time they do it, you’re a little blunt with them when you respond. You don’t mean to be, but alas, it happens.

Approximately fifteen minutes go by without another interruption, and you manage to finish the scene you’re working on. You’re almost done with the current chapter, and all that’s really left to do is round it out, and edit the final product. To say you’re happy with what you’ve done would be an understatement.

This time, when you notice someone approaching your table, you don’t even bother to glance up. You figure it’s that person coming to bother you again, so you opt to continue typing away at your laptop, staring intently at your screen.

The sound of two glasses being placed onto the table has your ears quirking, even more so when you hear the chair across from you scraping against the floor.

A tremendous sigh escapes you, “Look-“

Your words die in your throat as you see the person now sitting across from you. They wear a black bucket hat, strands of what appears to be newly bleached hair sticking out from beneath the material. They blink at you with somewhat wide eyes, freezing in their movement of pushing a brand new cup of boba towards you.

“Yeosang?” You keep your voice low, blinking at him in mild shock. “What are you doing here?”

He smiles faintly, resuming his motion of pushing that one drink towards you. “Practice ended early.”

It is then that you glance at the time, seeing that it’s starting to become late into the afternoon. You honestly haven’t been keeping a close track of time while you’ve been here, only truly registering how long you’ve actually been writing for.

Softly, you close your laptop. “Aren’t you worried about being spotted?”

“Not here.” He shakes his head. “It’s actually a really common spot for a lot of us. The staff are discreet, and not many people know about it.”

Briefly, that interaction with that one worker earlier who brought you your second drink flashes through your mind. You smile in understanding, “I see.”

“Are you okay, though?” He blinks a few times, innocently. “You seemed irritated when I got here.”

Your eyes quickly scan the shop, not seeing that person who kept bothering you earlier in their spot by the windows.

“Better now,” you reply, honestly. “Just kept getting distracted, is all.”

“I thought you didn’t like using your laptop in public?” He quirks a brow, taking a sip of his own drink.

“When I’m up against the wall, anything goes.” You shrug, and almost immediately, he starts choking on his drink. “Oh my god, are you okay?”

He waves you off, hitting his chest with a fist lightly. 

Soon after, he clears his throat. “I’m good.”

“Good.” You chuckle faintly. “Last thing I need is your fans coming after me for choking out their favourite member.”

“I think you should be more worried about Wooyoung.” He comments, a hint of irritation on his face.

Your brow furrows, “Why?”

“He’d be next in line.”

Your eyes nearly bug out of your head.

“I-“ you blink rapidly a few times, swallowing the sudden dryness in your throat. “Are you implying Wooyoung wants me to choke him?”

“He’s not the only one.” Yeosang replies, a slight bitterness lingering in his tone. “Mingi has spent many a night ranting about how he wants to be suffocated between your-“

Yeosang seemingly catches himself in the last second as he spares a glance at you.

Your mouth hangs open in pure disbelief, blinking at him in shock. You hands rest on the table before you, a vibrant heat rising to your cheeks. Of course, you can most certainly incur where Yeosang was going when he was speaking just now, your heartbeat thundering in your ears.

“Sorry.” He averts his gaze, somewhat embarrassed.

In the next moment, you’re shaking your head.

“No, no,” you manage to organize your thoughts, clearing your throat, “I’m just surprised, is all.”

“What? Surprised that some idols have horny fantasies, too?” He quirks a brow, slight amusement shining in his eyes.

“Oh, no.” Your nose scrunches as you shake your head mildly. “If they read my books and thoroughly enjoy them, that fact doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“Then, why do you look so shocked?” He tilts his head slightly in inquiry.

Your lips pull back in a tight smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m curious, though.” He blinks, taking another sip of his drink.

You reach out to grab the full glass, noticing how the drink appears to be the same one you’ve been drinking since you got here: matcha milk tea with pearls.

“You’re aware I am a fan of Ateez, correct?” You look at him somewhat expectantly.

“Believe me, I’m well aware.” He nods along with your words.

From the way he still stares at you, with those wide eyes, has you exhaling lowly.

“Let me put it this way,” you take a sip of your drink, noticing how the label said it had been made with soy milk. In the back of your head, you wonder if he knows you’re lactose intolerant, or if it was just a personal choice on his part. “How would you feel if you suddenly found out Emma Watson admitted to having sexual fantasies about you?”

Yeosang freezes right before your very eyes, nodding slowly as realization crosses his features. Then, as if making another connection, his brow furrows.

“You find Mingi attractive.” The statement is a bit blunt as he says this, grip tightening over his drink.

“I thought I told you that I find all of you attractive?” You quirk a brow playfully at him in response.

“Right.” He nods, seemingly in recollection before halting all movement once more. “But you desire Mingi.”

If you didn’t know any better, you’d say that hint of bitterness is back in his voice again.

“I desire many things, Yeosang,” you begin. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to indulge in them.”

“But you would if he offered?” He places his glass a bit firmly back onto the top of the table.

“Probably not.” Your face scrunches slightly as you consider his words. “I don’t know him like that. I don’t know any of you like that, and it takes a lot for me to be intimate with another person in such a way.” You meet his gaze. “Are you familiar with the term demisexual?”

The way he blinks at you blankly is answer enough.

“It means a person has to have a strong emotional connection with someone before experiencing sexual attraction.” You explain.

He shakes his head, still not quite understanding.

“It means I don’t do hookups.” You add. “Hookup culture is not for me.”

Understanding crosses his features as his lips part slightly, a soft ‘oh’ falling from him in the next second.

“On top of that, I am also demiromantic.” You continue. “Meaning the same thing, only this time it’s considering romantic attraction. It takes a lot for me to fall in love, and it takes a lot for me to be intimate with someone.”

“So, you wouldn’t-“

“No.” You shake your head, cutting him off. “I may have desires, Yeosang, but there is a huge difference between reality and fiction.”

His eyes narrow slightly at you in response, and you can practically see the gears turning in his head.

“You’ve fantasized before? About your bias?”

You nearly spit out your drink as you go to take a sip. Coughing a few times, you rub at your chest, noticing how he hasn’t torn his eyes off of you for a single second.

“I’ve fantasied more about my own characters.” You admit once you finally manage to get your breathing back under control.

“That’s not a ‘no’,” he hums, brow quirks slightly in amusement.

“Why? Suddenly curious about whether or not I’ve fantasized about you?” You turn the question back on him, noticing how he begins to splutter almost immediately.

The way red begins to slowly creep up his neck has you laughing.

“I’m just kidding.” You reach across the table to pat his hand gently. “Though, I could have sworn you were about to ask me about my Ateez bias again.”

He averts his eyes only briefly, “no.”

“I mean, if you want to know, I don’t mind telling you.” You shrug. “We are alone, and you did buy me a drink.”

You can see the sudden eager gleam in his eyes as he leans the slightest bit forward in his seat. His lips part, and you hear the breath he takes before his shoulders seemingly deflate. 

You quirk a brow.

He shakes his head, somewhat dejected. “I’d rather not.”

The way he suddenly looks tense before you has you cautiously trailing your gaze over him in response. You’re about to ask if he’s sure of not, but at the way he shakes his head, almost absentmindedly as his hand tightens around his drink once more is all the answer you need.

So, you decide to change the subject.

“How was practice?” Your soft inquiry seems to manage to pull him out of your thoughts.

You take another sip of your drink as he responds, a gentle tug of his lips upwards as he recounts the way Hongjoong had to chase Wooyoung at one point to continue learning the new choreography.

“You should have seen the way Jongho practically lunged at his phone each time it pinged.” Yeosang half rolls his eyes. “He thought it was you every time.”

Your eyebrows raise in amusement, swirling the contents of your drink around in your hand. Honestly, your heart warms at the thought of Jongho being so excited to message you that he literally jumps at his phone every time.

“I thought you guys said I wouldn’t be a distraction?” You tease. “Just imagine what it would be like if I was actually there.”

“You think Mingi’s bad for using his pelvis during concerts?” Yeosang shakes his head, almost exasperatedly.

You laugh, tossing your head back as your eyes crinkle at the sides.

Again, once you manage to calm down, you notice Yeosang staring at you exactly like he did that first day you met him on the plane. Though, again, you brush it off.

“Well, I know for a fact the Mingi Stans are not complaining.” You grin. “You should see the amount of videos my friends who bias him send me of him when he does those things. It’s fun watching them freak out over it.”

“But you don’t?” He quirks a brow.

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.” You shrug casually. “I have my own selection of videos and pictures of my biases that ruin me in the best ways.”

“Ah, so you’re not immune.” He nods in understanding.

“Oh, most definitely not.” You snort. “I am just as…” you hum, searching for the right word, “feral as some of my friends. You just haven’t seen it, yet.”

“Are you offering to show me?” He quirks a brow.

“Depends.” The corner of your lips quirk upwards deviously. “When’s your next comeback, again?”

Yeosang leans back in his chair, observing you carefully. “You know, now that we’re friends, I think you should hype us all up more.”

“I can do that.” You readily agree. “Next comeback, I’ll give you all my live reactions. Well… within reason.”

“I look forward to it.” He grins.

“If the other guys get weirded out by it, then I’m blaming you.” You point an accusatory finger at him playfully.

“I’ll take full responsibility.” He raises his own hands in front of himself, almost as if in mock self-defence.

“You better,” you joke. “I don’t wanna lose my new friends that quickly. I really enjoy talking with you guys.”

Yeosang’s lips twitch upwards faintly in the corners, almost involuntarily. “I enjoy talking with you, too.”

“Oh?” You quirk a teasing brow. “Even when we flirt in front of you? Which we weren’t, by the way.”

Yeosang’s lips part, mouth opening and closing in protest despite no words escaping him.

“Nah, I’m just kidding,” you playfully pat his hand that he still has resting on top of the table. “If I ever make you uncomfortable, don’t be afraid to tell me. Boundaries are important, especially when they’re your own.”

“I will.” He smiles faintly.

“Same goes for if I start rambling too much, or if I’m being annoying, or if-“

“You’re not annoying.” The suddenness that Yeosang cuts you off with surprises you. “Why would you think you’re annoying?”

“I, uh-“

“Who told you that you’re annoying?” His brow furrows, clear confusion on his face. There’s something else there, you can see it shining behind his eyes, but you’re unsure of what it could be.

“Just a general comment,” you smile, somewhat tightly at him in response.

“Oh.” He seems to calm down, if only slightly. “Well, don’t think that you’re annoying. You’re not. I enjoy talking with you, and I enjoy listening to you speak.”

You blink in mild shock, a shy smile pulling at your lips as you avert your gaze.

“Thank you, Yeosang. That really means a lot to me.”

“Don’t be afraid to be yourself around me.” He swirls the content of his drink around slightly. “I quite like the real, unfiltered you.”

Your breath hitches in your throat, and you cannot help the way your back straightens. However, before you can so much as thank him again, he’s clearing his throat.

“So,” he stares intently at the contents of his drink. “What’s your favourite colour?”

You think this is probably the most talkative you’ve ever witnessed Yeosang to be, and to say you’re caught off guard is an understatement. You both continue to ask each other questions, laughing and getting to know each other better as the time continues to pass around you.

Before you know it, another hour and a half has passed, and you notice that the sun is beginning to set in the distance. Though, that’s not the only thing you’ve started to notice.

For the past twenty minutes or so, you’ve spotted two girls sitting a little ways away from your own table. They constantly peer over towards you, whispering quite loudly to each other while staring between both you and Yeosang. 

You’re starting to get worried. The last thing you know he needs is word to get out that he’s been seen out with a girl. The setting could heavily imply a date, and that fact alone is enough to have you swallowing nervously. He doesn’t need a scandal, and you would hate for that to happen, especially since you consider all of Ateez to be your friends now.

“I’ll be right back.” Yeosang whispers lowly as he pushes his chair out from the table.

You find you can only nod in response, watching as he disappears down the hallway to your right for the moment.

Carefully, you observe the girls after pulling out your phone. Resting it on the table, you begin to put your laptop away, cleaning up your mess to appear as if you’re getting ready to leave. Every now and then, you glance to them, straining your ears to attempt to overhear their conversation.

“No, I’m positive that’s him.” The one says. “I saw this online forum post about how this place is common ground for a lot of idols, especially him.”

“It’s hard to tell since he’s wearing a hat, and not looking in our direction.” The other replies, not as lowly as the first girl who spoke. “Besides, why would he be out with someone like her?”

The first girl shrugs. “Maybe it was a dare, or a private contest.”

“He seems to be having a good time.” The second one bitterly mutters.

“He could be pretending.”

“He’s not that great of an actor.”

Your eyes widen slightly. Some fans they seem to be, considering how they seem to be acting right now. Still, their conversation worries you.

“We should follow them when they leave. It looks like she’s packing up, anyways.” The first one whispers again to her friend.

Your heart drops, and you find yourself grabbing your phone. You do your best to appear casual as you open your messages to send one to Yeosang privately.

You: Bad news. It looks like those two girls sitting behind us might have recognized you. They think we’re on a date, but they’re not 100% convinced you are who they think you are.

You just hope he sees your message before he comes back out.

A moment later, you see he’s replied.

Yeosang: We should leave then.

You:Great plan!!

You: Except that I overheard them saying they’re going to follow us to find out if you are who they think you are. You’re lucky you’re wearing that hat.

You: Wait, I have an idea.

You: Call me crazy, but I think we might be able to fool them into thinking that they’re wrong about who you really are.

Yeosang: What do you have in mind?

You: Keep your head down when you come back out, and then just follow my lead.

Yeosang: That sounds ominous.

You: I know. You’re going to have to trust me, though. Can you do that, Yeo?

It takes a moment for him to respond, and you cannot help the way your one finger taps at the side of your phone nervously as you wait.

Yeosang: I trust you.

You: Heads up: I’m about to get up close and personal with you real quick. I won’t purposely do anything to make you uncomfortable, I promise you that, but if we want to make this believable, we’re going to have to act like a couple.

Again, it takes a moment for him to respond, and you can feel your heart positively thundering inside of your chest. Anxiety floods your veins, and already you can feel your palms beginning to sweat. You just hope you look calmer than you feel.

Yeosang: I trust you.

You: Alright. Wait another minute and a half or so, and then come back out. Make sure all of your hair is tucked beneath your hat, too.

Placing your phone onto the top of the table, you’re quick to reach into your purse. Digging around beneath your wallet, you manage to pull out the case you’re looking for.

You place it onto the table, right next to your phone.

Turning to your opposite side, you rummage around in your tote bag. A small black box is pulled out, and you’re quick to open it. A small tube of lipstick falls into your open palm, and you toss the now empty container back into your tote.

Grabbing your phone, you make a show of using your reflection to apply the shade to your lips, making sure it’s evenly applied before you’re standing back to your feet. Then, you’re reaching over to grab your bags, slinging your purse over your one shoulder while you hold onto the tote in your hand. Once your other hand is free, you grab your phone and slide it into your back pocket before grabbing that case from on top of the table. 

Luckily, as you had been talking with Yeosang, he had already managed to finish his drink. He also took the liberty to return the empty glasses to the front, so all you have left is to give your final glass back to the worker behind the counter.

A few steps later, and you do just that, your tote hanging off of your arm lightly. You can just feel the gazes of those two girls following you the whole time, and just as you cross the small space of the boba shop, you see Yeosang appear from the back hallway. His head is angled downwards, pretending to look at something on his phone, and you notice how his hair is now completely tucked beneath that hat of his.

Purposefully, you make a show of skipping the rest of the way over to him eagerly.

“Kyungmin!” You giggle, pulling him closer to you by his wrist. A gentle kiss is placed onto the side of his exposed cheek, a red lipstick stain now painting his skin. “Let’s go get tteokbokki! I’m hungry!”

Quickly, you begin dragging him out of the shop, handing him both your tote bag to carry, and that small case held in your hands.

“Don’t forget to put your glasses back on. I know you hate them, but I think they make you look so handsome!” You purposely stand on his right side, blocking him as much as you can from the two girl’s view. Luckily, your height practically swamps him, his figure hidden quite easily behind your frame.

Yeosang is quiet, nodding faintly to your words as he walks beside you. He’s already tucked his phone into his pocket, opening up the case with your glasses inside seamlessly. He’s quick to slip them on as you step outside, wrapping your one arm around his shoulders as you walk down the deserted back alleys.

Unfortunately, you can practically hear the two girls scrambling after you once you get a certain distance down the street.

Subtly, you lean into Yeosang’s side.

“They’re still intent on following us.” You whisper lowly as you pick up your pace.

“What are we going to do?” There’s a slight panic to his voice that you notice almost immediately.

“Do you trust me?” Your eyes dart to another, more secluded alleyway you can see up ahead.

Yeosang swallows thickly before nodding his head.

In the blink of an eye, you’ve pulled him into that side alley. Your left hand rests beside his head, blocking his view from the entranceway, but also ensuring his face is covered should the two girls come rushing around the corner.

“We don’t have much time, but we have to make it convincing that we’ve just been making out.” You say, quite bluntly as you lean into him.

You swear Yeosang’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head.

“We can’t slip up now, and the staging is important.” You bring your right hand up and lick your thumb, moving to smear some of your lipstick in the next second. “I’m really sorry it’s come to this, but I think it will work.”

Yeosang’s eyes briefly dart downward, and you assume he’s now staring at the stain of red on your thumb. He swallows thickly. “I trust you.”

Moving as precisely as you can, you begin to smear some of that red on your thumb on the corner of his mouth.

“I’m really sorry for doing this, I swear to you I’m not just making you do this for the adrenaline kick.” Your words are rushed, and you swallow the dryness in your throat. “Luckily with my height I can cover you, but you’re going to have to make it look like you’re grabbing onto me. Most people are startled and embarrassed if they catch a pretty heated pda session. I’m going to bet they won’t stick around to find out afterwards.”

He nods his understanding.

“I’m going to put my knee slightly between your legs, okay?” You keep your voice low.

“Okay.” Yeosang replies, somewhat breathlessly.

Any second now.

“Grab the back of my neck with your left hand, and angle your face towards mine. Put your right on the back of my waist. Slip it lower if you think it’ll be more believable.” You instruct, giving him an impromptu lesson on stage kissing and angles. You may not actually be pressed against him, but it most certainly will look like you are, and that’s the most important part.

Instantly, his hands are on you, and you feel him pull you closer. Whether it’s subconscious or not, you don’t know. All you do know is that his right hand rests just above the curve of your ass, and your breath hitches slightly from his touch.

You squeeze your eyes shut, feeling your blood rushing through your veins as your anxiety continues to skyrocket. You just hope beyond everything that this works.

You hear the sound of feet hitting the pavement, and a sharp gasp followed by a loud exclamation of ‘oh my god!’.

Slowly, you turn your head to face the opening of the alleyway, seeing the two girls standing there. Red is clear on both of their faces as they splutter in their spots, shifting their gazes everywhere around the alleyway but at you.

Your eyes narrow, irritation shining on your features as you glare at the two girls for ‘interrupting’ you.

“What?” Your voice is nothing short of sharp as you finally speak.

The two girls remain silent, attempting to stutter out an answer.

“Do you mind? I haven’t seen him in two months, and I’d really love to spend some time with my boyfriend.” You snap, a prominent frown on your features.

“We’re so sorry!” The one girl immediately bows to you, quite clumsily. “We just thought-“

“What? You thought what?” You cut her off, shifting slightly so your head is turned more towards her while your body still covers the majority of Yeosang’s.

You can feel his grip tighten over you, but you choose to ignore it for now.

“We thought he was Kang Yeosang from Ateez.” The other girl replies, somewhat ashamedly.

“And that gives you the right to stalk us?” Your gaze narrows once more. You scoff. “Why would Kang Yeosang from Ateez be out at this time of day? Here, of all places? He’s probably at a schedule or something. He is an idol, after all.”

That’s when you realize: these girls don’t recognize you. For that, you’re grateful.

They remain quiet.

“You hear that, babe?” You purposely turn back to Yeosang. “These girls think you look like an idol! I told you you were handsome! I don’t want to hear another doubt about yourself come out of your mouth again.”

The way you’re leaning into him makes it look like you’ve placed another kiss onto his cheek. Yet, only you and he know that your lips never grace his skin.

“We’re sorry for interrupting.” The first girl bows clumsily to you again, shoving her friend back the way they came.

“I told you it wasn’t Yeosang!” You can hear the one friend harshly whisper to the other.

“You were right.” You hear the other sigh. “Besides, he wouldn’t be caught dead with an ugly bitch like that, anyways.”

The moment you hear their voices fade away into the distance, their footsteps no longer resounding against the pavement, you’re breathing a sigh of relief. A light smile paints your features as you turn back to face Yeosang, immediately moving to step away from him.

Only, the feeling of his hands tightening around you has you clearing your throat, seemingly snapping him out of whatever daze he seems to be in.

“You can let go now.” You mumble lowly.

“Oh.” Immediately, his hands retract, as if burned. “Right. Sorry.”

You notice Yeosang shifting slightly back and forth on his feet, a frown soon marring his brow as he looks down at the ground.

“Thanks for trusting me,” you smile at him, rummaging around in your purse for that pack of tissues he gave you that one day at rehearsal. “I’m so sorry for invading your space like that and subjecting you to be my fake boyfriend just now. I swear to you I wasn’t just doing that to cop a feel, or say you’re my boyfriend, or anything weird or creepy like that.”

“It’s alright.” He smiles assuringly at you. “I didn’t mind at all.”

Heat immediately rises to your cheeks from his words, handing him a few tissues so he can wipe the lipstick from his face.

“I’m just glad it worked.” You breathe a low sigh of relief.

“Me too.” He smiles, rubbing at his cheek with a tissue.

Still, he swears that he can feel the tips of his fingers tingling from where they had just been pressed against your skin. His heart absolutely pounds in his chest, and he can’t seem to erase the feeling of your body barely pressed against his. Really, he wouldn’t have minded if you actually touched him, but then again, he thinks he probably wouldn’t be able to stand right now if that had been the case.

“So,” your voice catches his attention, a light smile painting your face as you adjust the strap of your purse over your shoulder, “You hungry?”

[goszixx]

Something new

✧༺♡ ༻∞ ✧༺♡ ༻∞ ✧༺♡ ༻∞

Note ❈° ≫ I wanted to say a few things real quick but if your really horny you can skip! Thank you for all the support so far, on tumblr and AO3. You guys are so kind. Also I think I’m going to post once a week so I can stay at a steady pace and not get overwhelmed. I’ll post one smut and an update to “Cat in a Tree”. I’m working on a Vash from Trigun and Yin from mlbb. Next probably Yuji since he’s my favorite from JJK. Thank you again!

Warning❈° ≫ Blow job, Geto is impatient, maybe a part 2 depending if ppl like it, reader is dominate, handcuffs, begging, female masturbation, vibrator

✧༺♡ ༻∞ ✧༺♡ ༻∞ ✧༺♡ ༻∞

Geto peaked through the crack of your shared bedroom. His stare fixated on the beautiful body of his wife. Your legs were parted, knees bent slightly as your teeth were pressed into your lip.

A light sweat coated your face, making the dim light highlight your body perfectly. The strap of the silk nightgown fell down your shoulder as the buzz of your vibrator lingered in the air. For some reason, the image was so taunting Geto felt as if he should look away.

The blush staining your face reflected in his own, his button up shirt feeling suffocating all of a sudden. Geto pulled at his tie to allow him to swallow the lump in his throat.

“Y/n.” Geto cooed as his fingers gently pushed against the door frame. His voice made you jump, face flushing in embarrassment as your fingers fidgeted to turn off the vibrator. “G-Geto, when did you get home from work?”

Your husband peeled off his coat, “not too long ago. Having fun with yourself?” The raven asked as he folded his blazer and placed it neatly on a nearby chair. His feet graced the rug near the edge of the bed, his upper body leaning over you.

A small smirk peered on his lips as your fingers played with one another. “Yes. I was.” You admitted in a shy tone.

A chuckle came from the man’s lips, one of his hands coming up to meet your thigh. He stroked the fat of your thigh, leaning closer to feel more of your warmth.

“Did it feel good?” The man’s lips rested by your ear, his fingers tracing up your thigh. His hair sprawled across his back, his dark locks tied up in a half up half down. Your eyes flickered to your husband’s lips but decided against engaging.

Geto watched the look, becoming puzzled from your hesitation. “What’s wrong?” The man started to retract his hand but stopped when you placed the heat back on you.

You struggled to answer his question, knowing it won’t make much sense once it comes out of your mouth. “You make me feel too good, Suguru.”

The words floated in the air before the man was able to catch them. “Thank you?” He chuckled in relief. A hand pressed on his chest to gain his attention. The man went quiet as you continued.

“So good. But, you never let me make you feel good.” You uttered, pushing Geto off you with care. The man ended up sitting back in your spot, still blinking to understand what was happening.

You took a seat on his lap, hands resting on his shoulders while his eyes trailed around your body. His finger tugged at the strap of your clothing as your finger worked off his tie. “What do you plan to do with me?” Geto murmured under his breath.

His eyes were tilted down, directed at your naked collarbone and cleavage. “Have you ever thought that maybe I pleasure you because you-“ the raven’s words were cut off with a groan when you rolled your hips.

His erection twitched between the heat of your legs. Your fingers laced under his chin, his eyes meeting yours, watching confidence grow across your face. “You’re very pretty, Suguru.” You whispered, leaning closer to him to peck his cheek.

Suguru flushed at the compliment. He doesn’t take them well even after all the years you’ve spent together. “T-thank you y/n.”

“Of course.” Your fingers trailed down the man’s shirt before they stopped by his thigh. You shuffled back to work on the belt confining Suguru’s cock.

He groaned from the movements and tried to grab onto the curve of your ass but you swatted him away. “Can I make you feel better, Suguru?”

Lust stained your stare, eyes watching as Geto’s chest started to slowly rise and fall. There’s a reason as to why he doesn’t let you take the lead, but decided to not mention it. “Yes.” Your husband uttered, leaning back on his hands.

You slid off his lap to take off his boxers, however you stopped half way through. Suguru all but frowned at the stopped motion, his eyes following your alluring body across the room. Your fingers wrapped around one of the dresser drawers before pulling.

Geto adjusted his body and scooted closer to the headboard of the bed. “What are you trying to do to me?” Suguru asked with amusement tingling on his lips.

His eyes widened a bit when he saw the shines of metal along with the blue fur of handcuffs. His smirk grew. “What are you playing at y/n?”

You gave an innocent smile before straddling your husband. His head laid on two soft pillows, his shirt open and flowed down his sides. His boxers hung low on his waist as his hair painted the pillow behind him. “You can’t touch me. That would ruin the fun wouldn’t it?”

As a test, Geto pulled at the handcuffs to see if they were strong enough. They were. He placed them above his head, flat on one of the pillows he rested on. A bottle was pressed into your hands, the cap flicked off.

You sat on the bed, Geto feeling the material dip a bit as he peered down to the lube in your hands. Before squeezing the bottle, you helped Geto wiggle out of his boxers. A sigh of relief left his lips before he felt a familiar warmth on the base of his cock.

The man all but squirmed under his restrictions from the simple touch. Your finger’s wrapped around his girth, sliding the liquid all the way to his tip. Painstakingly so, your index finger rolled over the tip, sliding over the slit as precum beaded down along with the lube.

You analyzed and adjusted, your attractive wit turning to be Geto’s down fall. There’s a clear reason why he doesn’t let you take the lead, he’s impatient. He loves pleasuring you and it allows him to have control over how and when he orgasms, changing positions enough so he doesn’t disappoint you and cum quickly. You caught onto his game about a year or so ago but never mentioned it.

Though now that the curiosity has been drowning inside you, you just had to see how far it can go. “How does this feel, Suguru?”

Geto’s eyes were squeezed shut, his teeth grinding down on one another as he tried his hardest not to close his legs from pleasure. “Slow…” He mewled. You squeezed a bit at his base, feeling his erection twitch under your clutch.

The pressure declines as you slide your hand up, “Do you not like it slow?” You murmured, hearing the man choke under you. His eyes grew heavy, dazed from the pace. You continued your rhythm until Geto struggled against his restraints. His fingers dug into the handcuffs as his neck strained on the pillows.

Lube covered his cock, oozing down the base and dripping onto his sack. The husband mumbled things under his breath, trying to stiffen his pleasure as much as possible. Because of his lack of vision, he couldn’t see your head dipping down until he felt a soft flush of your tongue pressing the underside of his cock.

He shivered. “Darling pleas-e let me touch you. You win, you win.” His hands clasped around nothing, your mouth enveloping him further until you stopped about half way. A remnants of pity pulled at your heart knowing this was Geto’s first time doing anything of the sort. But you knew he could stop this entire thing if he said one simple word.

Since the safe word didn’t even think to leave his lips, you continued. Hollowing out your cheek, your tongue laid flat against the underside. Your hands worked on the uncovered half, allowing you to focus most of your attention on sucking.

Your name left his lips as he tried to thrust into your mouth for more. “Be patient Suguru.” You hummed around him, raising yourself off of him so he could understand you.

The words laid deaf on his ears from the vibration they brought on his erection. You lowered yourself and began sucking on his length, feeling it twitch more and more frequently. His thighs trapped your head, not squeezing but nuzzling against your face to bring you closer.

When your tongue laid flat against his slit, flicking across the sensitive skin with meticulous precision, Geto withered through his orgasm.

Cream painted your mouth, dripping down your chin as the man’s fingers dug into his own palm. His mouth was left open, lips quivering over words he could not yet comprehend. “Fuck.” He groaned when feeling your fingers grip around him once again.

Fingers pushed his damp bangs from his face, his pupils adjusting on your glistening face. His eyes targeted the small amount of white liquid on your cheek, “let me fuck you.” The words left the man without thinking, not like he would change them if he could.

His gaze was firm but his heaving showed how bad he needed you. “What do I have to do? I’ll do anything, just let me take the lead… please.”

“Begging? That’s new.” You hummed. You leaned down to kiss the man’s chiseled stomach, your eyes picking back to meet your husband's glare. “From now on, we take turns taking the lead. Is that okay with you, darling?”

[paluding]

Introducing... The Tattooer!

[This version is OUTDATED! Please, check the new version here. I updated the workflow, skipping a lot of unnecessary Photoshop editing. It's way faster! I'll leave this old version and files up though, for archiving purposes. But yeah I still totally recommend you use the new version!]

Finally! I’ve been working on this for so long and I couldn’t wait to share it. This is a series of Blender template files already set up to quickly bake textures from The Sims 4 to The Sims 2. Really neat for cc creators! The different Blender files will allow you to:

-Bake body textures from TS4 to TS2 (Female) -Bake body textures from TS4 to TS2 (Male) -Bake body textures from TS4 (Female) to TS2 (Male) -Bake body textures from TS2 (Female) to TS2 (Male) [Bonus!] -Bake head textures from TS4 to TS2 (Face + Scalp) [Experimental]

Check the file names to see which one is which, and the resolution of the baked texture it will give. Download! SFS / GD

Everything you see in the render above was converted using those Blender files. I only did a couple tiny edits to the eyes and lips to fix them. These templates were made mainly to bake and convert tattoos, but there’s more you can do with them if you get creative. I have to say, these are NOT perfect. Check out the eyebrows on the render above. They look a bit wonky compared to the original, don’t they? I left them as is to keep your expectations with these as realistic as possible. Results may vary depending on what you are trying to convert, so! With that in mind, this is all the stuff you will be able to convert almost seamlessly from TS4 to TS2:

-Tattoos. -Other body details such as body hair, scars, freckles, supernatural/occult details… -Body painted underwear and swimwear, as well as some other clothing that’s mostly painted on the body. -Socks, stockings and maybe leggings. -Even skintones! In some areas they will look weird, so I recommend editing and blending them with other existing TS2 skins. -Makeup. Kinda bad but hey it works! Eyeliner and anything that is around the eyes looks terrible for now, but other stuff like blush may look just okay. -Eyebrows and maybe beards. A bit of hit or miss with those. -Hair scalps. Very useful when converting some hairs! Although keep in mind part of that texture might also need to be baked on the face mesh, you know, that hairline makeup stuff.

Got your attention? Nice! Editing some of the textures from TS4 to match the UV mapping in TS2 using a 2D editing program can be incredibly hard. That’s where texture baking in Blender comes to the rescue!

It is recommended you download Blender version 2.91.0, which is the one I use. Don’t worry, it’s free! There’s also 3 Photoshop actions you will need to set up the textures for baking and then putting them back together, because unfortunately Blender doesn’t support transparencies in that baking process, so that takes a couple extra steps to make it work, but I think it’s still pretty fast and easy. And just in case Tumblr manages to blow up or something, I decided to include a pdf with the upcoming tutorial that will guide you step by step with all this process, so if this post gets deleted somehow (I really hope not!), you will still have that pdf as a backup archived.

You can download Blender here. Personally I recommend picking the fourth option, “blender-2.91.0-windows64.zip”, which is a portable version and doesn’t need to be installed. You will also need Sims 4 Studio to extract the original Sims 4 CC textures you want. As for Photoshop… I’m not going to tell you to buy that subscription service and give Adobe some undeserved money, so… yeah, there might be some other options out there to get it (very legit, yes yes).

So, before we begin, let’s clear out some questions you might have. What the heck is this texture baking thing and what does it do? Well, let’s imagine you have a projector and point an image into a blank wall. Then you pick up some brushes and start painting and copying that projected image in that wall. Texture baking is kinda like that when it comes to 3D models. You align two models and match them as closely as you can in shape and form, and once you adjust some parameters and values, Blender does the rest for you: it will give you a new texture for a new model with a different UV map. These files I’m sharing have everything already set up, so it’s a matter of plopping in that Sims 4 texture and you will get that new texture for TS2 in just a few clicks.

This tutorial assumes you know literally nothing about how to use Blender, so if you feel uncomfortable with it, worry no more! This will guide you with pictures showing where you need to click and explaining what is happening. For Sims 4 Studio and Photoshop the process might be a bit less detailed, but still this should be pretty beginner friendly. For this tutorial, I will use some tattoos as an example. Alright, enough with the rambling. Let’s get started!

·EXTRACTING TEXTURES AND EDITING THEM WITH PHOTOSHOP: First things first, you will need to extract as pngs all the textures you want to convert from TS4 using Sims 4 Studio. Once you’ve done that, open them up one by one in Photoshop and run the “No transparency” action. This will remove the alpha channel from the image, getting rid of all the transparency. Go ahead and save a png copy of it. Then run the “Make Alpha” action on those same swatches (from the beginning, make sure you’re not running the action on an already edited swatch!), which will only show the alpha channel of the image in black and white, and save another copy of that. You should have 2 textures for each tattoo swatch. For the “No transparency” action I like to name it BASE (And your swatch number or name), and for the “Make Alpha” action I usually name it ALPHA (And that same swatch number/name). I recommend saving them in different folders named BASE TS4 and ALPHA TS4 respectively to keep it organized. If you want to make this much faster in Photoshop, there’s an automation option in it that allows you to run an action through a batch of files in a folder and then saves it all. I won’t cover how to do it in this tutorial, but you should be able to find it easily on Google by searching something like “Photoshop automate batch”. It’s really powerful and will make your workflow with actions much faster. Definitely recommend learning about that!

·BAKING THE TEXTURES IN BLENDER: PRELIMINARY STEP 1: CONFIGURING BLENDER’S GRAPHICS SETTINGS: Open your preferred Blender file depending on what you’re going to bake and the desired resolution (in this example I’m going to use the AF-body-4t2-1024 file). Before we start messing around in Blender, there’s one thing you should set up. It is a onetime step, and once it’s done, you won’t need to do it again. So, does your computer have a dedicated graphics card? If you don’t know or you’re not sure, just skip to the next step. Configuring Blender so it uses your graphics card instead of your CPU will make the baking render much faster, so it is recommended you set it correctly. If your computer has a dedicated graphics card, click File (1) > Preferences (2) > and on the window that pops up click System (3) > and select CUDA and make sure your graphics card is there and tick it (4). I have an Nvidia Graphics card but your case may vary. Once you’re done, click on the tiny button on the bottom left corner and Save Preferences (5).

PRELIMINARY STEP 2: CHOOSING THE RENDERING DEVICE: Click on the tiny camera button on the right, called Render Properties (1), and on Device (2) select GPU Compute if it’s not already selected. If you’re not sure if you have a graphics card or not, just select CPU. Then select the Material Properties tab (2) and Save your changes, either by pressing Ctrl + S, or clicking File (4) > Save (5). Okay, time to get into the good stuff!

·STEP 1: LOADING YOUR TS4 BASE TEXTURE: In the Material Properties tab, click the folder icon that says Open (1) and on the window that pops up, navigate through your folders and select your first texture. For now we’re going to bake the BASE texture, so go to that folder where you saved the edited “No transparency” image. To navigate easily, the 3 buttons on the top right (2) are for the display mode. They will show your files in list mode, vertical and horizontal, and the one on the right will display the file thumbnails, pretty useful if you want to easily see your images. And the icons on the left side (3) will let you go one folder back and forward, go to the parent directory, and refresh the folder in case you just dropped something new in there. Double click on the image you need and that will load it into the Sims 4 body model, named “ts4 body”.

·STEP 2: SETTING UP YOUR SELECTION AND BAKING THE TEXTURE: On the top right of the screen, you will see the names of the 2 models in the scene. Hold the Ctrl key in your keyboard and left click on the “ts2 body” model (1). If you did it correctly, you should see “ts2 body” in a yellowish orange color, and right down below, “ts4 body” should look more like a red orange. If not, try again by clicking first on ts4 body, and then while holding Ctrl click again on ts2 body. Then switch to the Render Properties tab by clicking the tiny camera icon (2) and click Bake (3). Depending on your screen resolution, you might need to scroll down a bit with your mouse to see the Bake button. Wait a few seconds for it to finish. You will see the progress percentage down on the bottom of your screen. Don’t panic if you notice your computer fans start ramping up, that’s completely normal! As I said in the beginning, using your GPU will bake the textures much faster than the CPU.

·STEP 3: SAVING YOUR NEW TS2 TEXTURE: Once it’s finished, switch to the UV Editing Mode by clicking “UV Editing” on the top of your screen. And there it is: your new texture! You might have to scroll up your mouse wheel a bit to zoom in and see it in all its glory on the left side of the screen. We’re still not done yet though. You need to save it to yet another new folder (always try to keep your stuff organized!).

You can save it by pressing Shift + Alt + S, or clicking on Image* (1) and then Save As… (2). That will pop a window where you’ll need to navigate again and save it somewhere. Give it a proper name (3) and hit Enter to save it… well, Enter doesn’t always work for me for some reason, so if that happens just click Save As Image (4). In this case, I personally like to call it something like “BASE TS2”.

·STEP 4: GOING BACK TO STEP 1: Alright! So you have your new baked base texture, but we still need to bake the alpha channel to give it its transparency. In order to go back to step 1 and start the process once again, click Layout (1), go back to the Material Properties tab (2), select “ts4 body” (3) and click on the folder icon (4) to open and load the alpha texture you did in the beginning in Photoshop.

Then it’s just a matter of repeating the process from step 2: bake the alpha channel and save it again as a new image (watch out, don’t overwrite your previous image!). This one I like to name “ALPHA TS2”. When you’re ready to move on, close Blender without saving. If you see a small check telling you it will save some images, make sure you uncheck it, so you will be able to use it again in the future from the starting point with no issues. I don’t think it really matters if you accidentally save your progress in these files, but I like to keep it clean and fresh so I can do the process where I left it from the beginning the next time I open it. And in case you mess up and save somewhere, you can always just delete the .blend file and download the template files again.

·FINAL STEP: PUTTING EVERYTHING BACK TOGETHER IN PHOTOSHOP: We’re almost done! Open Photoshop and drop in both your 2 new baked textures, “BASE TS2” and “ALPHA TS2”. Keep both layers on top of each other and aligned. For that you can enable the snapping in View > Snap to… > All. Rename these layers so the Alpha layer is “ALPHA” and the Base is “BASE”, and make sure ALPHA is on top.

Then run the “Final Baked” action and now for real, it’s finally over! You just fully baked and converted these new textures. Congratulations!

So, to summarize, here’s a small guide with all the steps of the workflow I developed. Once you get the hang of it, baking and converting one swatch of a texture just takes a couple minutes. It really is that easy!

One small note though, some of the baking blend files save the textures with a resolution of 2048x2048 pixels, as clearly stated at the end of their file name. That’s way too overkill, because TS2 only properly supports up to 1024x1024 for most of its textures and you should always resize your final product to that max resolution. I just made those 2048 versions because there might be some really tiny and slim details on some tattoos that may look a little too blurry when baked into a 1024 resolution, so for those cases use that if you want and then resize them in Photoshop. In the Resample mode of the Image Size menu, there are a few options to choose. For the fine details, I like the Nearest Neighbor (hard edges) option, which, even if it looks a bit pixelated, it still preserves most of the texture and quality.

For anything else, I would just directly bake them using the 1024 versions in Blender.

And for the folks who feel comfortable playing around in Blender, this is just the beginning! Texture baking opens a LOT of possibilities, so feel free to move stuff around and edit the models to your liking! If you notice the baked textures look warped or stretched somewhere, or don’t like where some textures are placed in the S2 body, poke around that area moving stuff and then give it another try. The main objective of the baking process is keeping both overlapping models as close in shape as possible. You may also edit and save new copies of the templates, or make new ones from scratch using mine as a reference (keep a close look on those Baking settings and values, I think they work pretty well) and share them if you want to. Go ham, do whatever you want with them! I have plans on making templates to convert body textures from Sims 3 to Sims 2, but for now it’s not on my priorities, so we’ll see when that happens.

Whew! Hope none of this was too confusing. Need help or have any issues with these? Please ask/message me and I’ll be glad to help when I’m able to!

Credits for the CC used in the render demonstration: -Skin by Sims3Melancholic -Eyes by Northern Siberia Winds -Eyebrows by PeachyFaerie -Tattoos by xtc -Top by SerenityCC

And the Tattoo I used for the tutorial can be found here, by ValhallanSim

Last but not least, a huge, special thanks to @elvisgrace for all her help testing this for me. I’ve never shared Blender files, so hopefully everything works as intended and everyone can use them with no weird issues. Fingers crossed! And thank you for reading! Hope you have fun playing with this new toy hehe.

[sciderman]

Usaually I don't bother, but I'm writing to you because i have looked up to you for a long time. I don't need you to respond, maybe even prefer if you won't, but your last post was a big blow for me.

I'm an israeli.

I was born here. My mother was born here. Her grandmother was born here. My grand grandmother fled here after the holocaust.

And you knkw what? You don't have to agree with the israel goverment, i mean if you'd look it up you'll see that almost no one here supports our current goverment. I wish i could sit with you and talk about the conflict and explain that it's nit really black and white as tumblr would like to believe, but i don't think that's a possibility.

But writing that we are "white settlers" is just... god. It's a lie. Not even just antisemtic lie, becuase 20% of israeli citizens are actually arabs (both muslims and christians). most of jewish populations are not even "ashkenazi" jews.

The interent currently is not a very reliable source of history (like, i've seen people claim we should call tel aviv "ahuzat bait" since it is its arab name. It's not. It's in hebrew, and the name of the first street if tel aviv when it was legally bought)

And if you ask why not let all the middle east countries participate in the eurivision - actually they let them. They just decided the quit when israel joined.

Again, I'm writing becuase I'm hurt. You can dissmiss it if you want, but i wish you wouldnt. Again, you dont need to post it or respond, i just wish you will think twice about what you hear or learn about a war the happens to other people, and doesnt affect you at all (some of us - on both sides - are actually afraid of dying).

Peace, love, and mostly peace.

oh bless you anon - i hope you're okay with me posting this, because i wouldn't be able to respond otherwise. i admit entirely i was being reductive - i haven't spoken a lot about this issue here because i'm afraid of letting emotion get the better of me, when i know how morally complex this issue is. i was being reductive - and i absolutely know there are a lot of israeli-born jewish people who are native to the land. and i know there are a lot of jewish people in israel who are against the occupation. and i know there is a huge population of israeli citizens who are against their government because the government is lying to their citizens just as much as they're lying to world.

but there is an image that the leading powers in israel want to paint to the world - the one they show in eurovision and any media presence (which they pour ungodly amounts of money into) - and it's of a very western, palatably white israel. i really would like you to know that when i refer to "israel" i refer only to the ruling powers that govern it - not the citizens that live there.

israel doesn't want you to see iraeli-born jews who are critical of their government and actually have been living peacefully alongside the muslim and christian population of the land for hundreds of years before the occupation. israel doesn't want to showcase that narrative, because that would show that actually the nation could've been peaceful and have equality for all it's people the whole time (because they've been doing it for HUNDREDS of years prior) and there was no reason to expel palestinians from their homes.

in eurovision, wants to show that israel has established this land and made it pristine and beautiful and countries should invest in this cosmopolitan utopia and new western culture that is so divorced from it's native people and it's history. palatable. marketable. clean. no war crimes here.

there's an unfortunate power imbalance in the world - and that's that some nations have the money and the power to curate and maintain a spotless public image - and other nations can't afford to keep the lights on in their hospitals.

i really love and appreciate you for coming into my inbox, anon. i think it's really brave and i really appreciate your voice and appreciate people like you. i know israel is a terrifying place to be right now - particularly for people who are critical of the government, you're under threat from both sides - you're distrusting of your own military, and there's the very real threat of hammas too. and i'm so, so sorry you're in that place and in that situation. and as someone who's born there, and your family being there for generations, the question of escape isn't as simple as settlers who can come and go freely. but i really, really hope you're safe and can stay safe. i'm so sorry your family went through all that you did, and that your family escaped one horror for another. this isn't the kind of world you should live in - and i'm praying that positive change will hold the israeli government accountable, and force them to prioritise their people.

not their "image", not how much power and money and land they hold. people. people - both israeli and palestinian, deserve to feel safe and heard and have a government that will protect them. it's the duty any power in the world should have to their people. and i feel like - if we deprive israel of their magical power to appear good and pristine and progressive palatable and clean of all blood in the eyes of the media - if we rob it of that, then they'll be forced to address these real problems within their government. they'll be forced to make amends. forced to apologise, and gain the world's favour again through real positive change.

i'm praying you're staying safe, anon. i really, really hope you and your family are safe. thank you so much for your message, and i'm sending you so much love from across the borders of the world.

[imyourbratzdoll]

𝒎𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒐𝒘

week 2 - day 7 - kinktober - dubcon - neighbour lloyd hansen x neighbour reader.

warning - dubcon

kinktober masterlist

18+ only please, credit to @lilacevans for the gif and the header isn’t mine.

Warnings and Reminders - Please do not plagiarise, copy, repost/republish, adapt, or translate any of my work on any social media platforms, apps, or third-party sites. The only platforms I post my work on are: Tumblr and Wattpad. I do not own any character of any franchise (Marvel etc.) All my works are fiction and may be dark or triggering content: READ ALL WARNINGS BEFORE PROCEEDING.

The man watches the young female from behind his curtains, his pants tightening from the view he receives. There in her little garden was the small woman wearing a tiny yellow sundress, her small hands covered in gardening gloves and her hair blowing in the wind. 

His eyes land on her plump ass, her dress lifting just enough for Lloyd to see her white cotton knickers with pink hearts covering them. His tongue flicks out, licking his lips as his hand rubs the bulge through his pants. Lloyd watches his little neighbour lean over more, trying to plant some pretty flowers. If his mind weren’t full of such dark thoughts, he would’ve thought you were as pretty as those flowers and would’ve thought of taking you on dates. 

But instead, he thinks about how pretty you’d look on your knees for him with his cum covering your face or how you’d look choking on his cock and tears in your eyes. He thinks about your cute little gasps that fall out your mouth when he pounds his cock deep into you, your eyes rolling to the back of your head when he hits your sweet spot. Lloyd groans, his cock straining against his pants as the images flash between his eyes.

Lloyd watches as you fall into the dirt. He watches your bottom lip jolt out as you look down at the brown soil covering your pretty yellow dress. Even from here, he can see the big fat tears threatening to spill from your doe eyes.

He grabs a cloth before heading outside and over to where you still sit, sneaking up until he’s right behind you. “Hello” Lloyd watches you jump before abruptly turning around. Your plump lip quivers as your doe eyes are filled with tears. Lloyd crouches down, holding out the cloth and silently asking if he could touch you. Your eyes flicker down before flickering back up and nodding, watching the big man start to wipe your dirty dress.

“Hmm, we might have to go clean it inside.” Lloyd stands, his mouth watering at the sight of you on your knees, deciding to help you up. His large hand reaches out and grabs your tiny one before pulling you, causing your small form to crash into his hard body. His hands land on your hips, holding back a groan as he feels your soft breasts press against him. It also doesn’t help that Lloyd can see straight down the dress when he looks down.

“I–I’m sorry” The sound of your voice causes Lloyd’s cock to twitch. Desperately wanting to hear it scream his name, Lloyd lets you know it’s okay before he leads you to his house, ignoring your questions of why his home when yours is right there. His simple answer is that he has the supplies to remove the dirt stain. Once Lloyd has you inside his house, his mind starts screaming at him to ruin you.

“You’ll need to take your dress off, Sunshine.” He watches your eyes widen, “so that I can clean it! I can grab some clothes so you can cover up.” Lloyd quickly reassures, not wanting to scare you off so quickly. His eyes snap to your hands as they shakingly start to lift your dress up and over your head, his pants becoming tighter by the second. You shyly hand your dress over, not wanting the new thing to be damaged.

Lloyd carefully grabs the dress, holding back his desire to just grab you and split you open with his cock right then and there. Taking one last glance at your body, he quickly goes to his laundry room and chucks the dress into the machine, turning it on before going to his room and grabbing a shirt, and then he heads back. Lloyd stops in his tracks when he enters the room, his eyes widen, and cock begins to break the zipper at the sight before him.

You were bent over the back of his couch as you tried to reach for something. Now Lloyd knew you weren’t the smartest, but at this moment, he thanked the gods for it. From where he is standing, he can see the outline of your cute little pussy and your plump ass trying to break free of the little white cotton knickers with the pink hearts you have on. Dropping the shirt, Lloyd stalks forward until he’s standing right behind you.

“Whatcha doing, Sunshine.” Lloyd presses himself against you, hearing you whine as you try to wiggle away. Only to rub against him, sending pleasure through you both. Lloyd grips your hips, groaning lowly at the feeling.

“I–I’m stuck… I–I saw something shiny a–and I wanted to look….” Small whimpers leave Y/n’s lips as Lloyd continues to grind against you. He grips your hips while thrusting against your clothed core. “W–what are you doing, Mr?” A soft moan falls from her lips, not knowing why the big man was thrusting into her and why she was feeling such pleasure.

“Aww, you poor little dumb baby.” Lloyd leans back, ignoring your question while looking at the wet patch on his pants and groans at how soaked you are. “Now, look at the mess you’ve made, Sunshine. I’m gonna have to clean this up now.” Whipping a pocket knife out of his pocket, he cuts the sides of the underwear, watching the fabric fall to the ground and licking his lips at the sight of your glistening folds. He runs a finger along your lips, collecting your juices before bringing them to his mouth and having a taste. 

Lloyd’s eyes roll back the moment he has a taste of you. “My, my Sunshine. You taste as good as those treats you bake.” Deciding he can no longer wait, Lloyd quickly takes out his cock. The thick member throbbing, your whines and whimpers are droned out as all Lloyd can focus on is the new amount of slick, dripping out of your tiny hole.

Grabbing hold of the base of his cock, he lines the tip up with your entrance, listening to you babble on about something. Before he pushes in, his thick member is met with resistance, and soft cries fall from your lips at the feeling of being stretched. Lloyd leans forward, placing hands on either side of you and the head of the couch before he thrusts himself fully inside your tiny cunt. His eyes shut, a curse falling from his lips as he feels your walls pulsating around his cock wildly.

“Jesus, fuck. Sunshine, you’ve been keeping this pretty cunt from me this entire time? How rude.” Lloyd pulls back until his tip is the only thing inside you before thrusting in, pounding into you like his life depended on it. Your pussy sucks him back in every time he tries to pull out, “you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to do this, fuck. You feel like heaven, Sunshine.” Little moans fall from you, and your eyes roll to the back of your head. 

“I–I’m sorry, I–I didn’t mean to be rude.” Your tiny fists clutch onto the cushion that rests against your chest, cunt pulsating around the big man. Fat tears roll down your face as pleasure explodes inside you, “w–what are –oh– you doing, Mr? Why does it feel good?” Lloyd's jaw clenches, feeling his cock throb at your innocence. He picks up his pace, railing his cock into your sweet spot, causing Y/n to see stars and her core to clench as her end nears.

“Poor, Sunshine. Doesn’t even understand what getting fucked is. It’s okay, baby. Daddy will take care of you.” His hips thrust faster and harder, changing his angle to go deeper. Grunting as he feels his cock being squeezed. “Go on, Sunshine. You can let go.” He thrusts hard into her cunt, sending her into a blissful orgasm. Her moans and screams were music to his ears, continuing to push deep inside his girl’s cunt before reaching his end. Streams of cum fill her to the brim, leaking out of her used hole.

Lloyd’s forehead rests on the back of her head before placing a gentle kiss and slowly pulling his softening member out. Using the back of his hand to wipe the sweat that’s gathered on his forehead away, he leans over and grabs the shirt to help clean you and himself up. Placing gentle kisses along your body, whispering against your skin that you are his. 

“You okay, Sunshine?” Lloyd helps you up, steadying you as you start to wobble. Nodding, you look up at him with big eyes, biting your bottom lip, and his hand comes up to your face, thumb stroking your cheek and tugging your bottom lip from your teeth. Lloyd leans down to your height, placing a gentle kiss against your plump lips before staring deep into your eyes.

“You’re mine now, understand Sunshine.”

thank you for reading!

feedback and reblogs are greatly appreciated.

[the-s1lly-corner]

I’m hoping this is the inbox- pls help I’m used to just reading what’s in the tags on tumblr and never requesting anything 🥹

I hope you’re having an amazing day/night/whatever time of day it is for you-!!! I just found your blog and I am so happy I did!! I’ve been binge reading it but the fact that I found someone who writes for Creepypasta???? I’m??? In luv??? (platonically ofc) may I request some LJ with a fem!reader who has bpd and he’s their fp, carries his little music box everywhere she goes and always “talks” to him in public, not caring about any crazy looks she gets from people?

Also politely asking to be 🩶 anon (if you’re taking any ofc-)

Laughing Jack x fem!reader w/ BPD who has him as her FP!

UEUEUEUE im so happy to hear you love my writing sm ehehehe! always thrilled to hear people enjoying my stuff/that it makes them happy! i hope you enjoy this, i havent written a reader with BPD before so i hope this is decent! also also youre doing wonderful; requesting i mean! i dont think theres many rules against how youre meant to request (every blog is different though!!)

honestly i think hes genuinely thrilled to be taken around and about with you in his little box! usually hes sitting in his box waiting for an unfortunate soul to take it home; its been like this for... a while now... so actually being able to go around and see things is a nice change of pace! plus it makes him feel more included in your life rather than just being an "at home friend"

i think in the beginning youre going to have to ask him to pipe down a little since he might talk a little too loud... like near yelling because hes just so excited

loves helping you shop :)! quick heads up though he might beg you to buy stuff you guys dont need

general silly ideas aside, i think hed be chattering the entire time so you two probably always have a conversation going on whenever you guys are out

probably sneers at people who give you looks tbh, will probably trip them if they decide to be a little ruder and mutter something under their breath while theyre passing by you... i mean they cant prove anything! they just tripped on air! jack totally didnt swipe one of his long arms out and tug their ankle back!

the only downside is that jack cant do much outside of talking and sneaking stuff around since him just fully popping out his box might blow his cover, you know? doesnt mean he doesnt have the urge to jump out when he sees you getting a little stressed out or overwhelmed about your surroundings or when someone is being particularly cruel

though i dont doubt hes remembering faces; i mean at the end of the day hes still a clown that specializes in torment, do i really need to say what hes cooking up in his brain?

no in cases where you're beginning to struggle hes probably going to try to quietly urge you to disconnect and take a breather

keeps your favorite candies on him at all times and slips them into your hand, probably does the same to any stress/fidget toys you may or may not have.. though i do hc he can just materialize certain things and i can easily see that sort of thing falling into something he can just yoink into existence

very good at reassuring you of your worth and how much you mean to him; this is a general thing but i think he makes it more of a point if self image is something you particularly struggle with

who would have thunk it, the clown with abandonment issues is good at reassuring others that hes not going to go anywhere

[smalife1234]

HEY EVERYONE!

Big big big post (yes that was necessary)

Today might be the biggest decision of y'all's lives! Today is the day that you'll have to work every brain cell in your head to make this decision

No, no, I'm kidding ( I think). This post is to simply ask for y'all opinion/vote on which picture should be our new profile banner! Since we've been having a recycled ♻️ picture for a while! As our banner, I decided to make our Tumbler page pop!

So, I've selected 8 images for y'all to decide/discuss! Feel free to comment on which one you'll like as our new profile banner!

🚨 IMPORTANT INFORMATION 🚨

- you all have one week to make up this very important decision - the DEADLINE WILL BE ON SEPTEMBER 23RD AT 7:00 AM!

- this same Information will be on my Instagram story for the whole week to remind those of you who are not frequently on Tumblr!

Instagram handle - doc_mcstuffins_james_levine

- please vote/put it in the comments below 👇! On my Instagram story or the Tumblr post pinned to the top of the blog! Or feel free to message me! Respectfully, I'll only reply to business-required votes and discussions! By my choice, or if you have a question, please feel free to message/comment 💬!

Now feel free to view all the pictures!

Img desc #1: doc is seen at a speaking engagement wearing a short-sleeved buttoned-up white shirt a grey tie, and black skinny jeans, including black dress shoes. She is sitting near a group of fellow speakers!

Img desc #2: doc is near a brown fence near many trees. Doc is beaming with a bright smile and a white long-sleeved shirt, brown pants, and white shoes. She is in her electric wheelchair

Img desc #3: doc is seen smiling near many trees. She is seen with a bright smile and a blue long-sleeved shirt and tan/tacky colored pants. She is in her old electric wheelchair.

Img desc #4: doc and Emmie are seen in a single framed photo. Doc is seen right of Emmie smiling and wearing a black long-sleeved sweater over her white long-sleeved shirt and black dark blue tie paired with it. She has a pair of tan colored pants and brown shoes. Emmie, seen on the left of the image, is smiling and sitting in her manual wheelchair. She is wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and a blue blazer. She is wearing a pair of tan-colored pants!.

Img desc #5: doc and Emmie are seen in a wide-angled frame, and image Doc seen on the right is seen giving a wide expression on her face. She is wearing a white long-sleeved shirt brown pants, and white shoes! Emmie, seen on the left of the image, is seen looking shocked while in her manual wheelchair. She is seen in a pair of blue jeans and a white long-sleeved shirt. There are trees behind them!

Img desc #6: doc is seen in a single shot frame. She is smiling while wearing a black short-sleeved buttoned-up shirt and black skinny jeans. There is a pretty green scenery behind her.

Img desc #7: doc and Emmie are seen in a single shot frame. Doc is seen blowing a kiss while wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and brown jeans. Her Atrophied arms are resting on her lap. Emmie's head is seen on the doc's lap, and Emmie is seen smiling, wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans!

Img desc #8: doc is seen giving a wide smile to a white lab dog; Doc is wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and brown jeans! Her atrophied arms are resting on her lap.

[bluebudgie]

Oh hi. I heard it's gifs tips'n'tricks time.

View this as a little addition to this post I made a while back.

This time I thought I'd take you through my gif making process. It'll be very specific to Photoshop CS6 but maybe some of you will find parts of it helpful regardless.

And since our biggest nemesis appears to be ~The Tumblr 10MB File Size Limit~ I decided to go for the absolute worst premise for a gif: Lots of stupid wobbly particles and gw2 bloom and transparency effects. Because huge gifs love these.

Aah, a horrifying amount of those in this single scene. Perfect!

Let's start with a little timelapse video, and I'll get into the details with screenshots below then.

So this actually went smoother than expected? Not super much fiddling needed in the end, but here's how it went in detail:

Load the raw footage into photoshop.

You can do this in two different ways: What I do is simply drag & drop the video file into the program and it'll open with a video timeline and some rudimentary video editing options.

What you can also do is File -> Import -> Videoframes to Layers and select your source video, which will give you a timeline of separate still image frames instead.

It comes down to preference, I used both methods in the past but nowadays I find the video timeline more intuitive.

Cut the footage to roughly the right length.

From experience I know that most of my gifs are around 3-4 seconds long. This can of course vary depending on different factors. Don't get too attached to the exact seconds you selected, you might have to shave off a bit depending on how evil the file size decides to act.

Optional: Change footage speed

Depending on the gif and its purpose, I slow the footage down. I usually do this for the visual effect (especially nice for showing off animation details) but it also has the practical side effect that it can help with file size. Say you want a gif that loops after 4 seconds. At 100% speed your gif will move at your original framerate (in my case 60 fps); if you slow it down but keep the same length in seconds it'll logically use less frames. That's less data to blow up the size! Yey.

Crop the image.

Now this is probably one of the most crucial parts when it comes to your final file size, and your gif looking nice on tumblr. Since the tumblr dashboard displays images at a width of 540px, you want this to be your absolute minimum image width to ensure a crisp image. If I can, I'll make the gifs larger (I like starting at a minimum of 600px and then reduce the image dimensions if needed).

With that in mind.... choose your image crop wisely.

A "widescreen" image like this will be the most merciful in terms of file size, but might not always be what you want in terms of composition.

Given tumblr's very vertical nature, this kind of approach will look great in posts (if it fits your image composition of course), but at 540px minimum width tends to be a file size monster.

For the gif I'm attempting to make here I opted for a more square approach. The subjects of the scene fill out the image's space nicely, and it's still a nice size for tumblr posts overall. Let's see what the file size will say about this.

Replay your footage after cropping to make sure you didn't accidentally cut off any motion you didn't mean to cut.

Next up: optional colour corrections

I tend to crank up the saturation for gifs way, way more than I ever would for regular screenshots since I find that often the limited web palette can make them look fairly dull. But like everything else so far, this greatly varies depending on the scene you're showing.

Note that colour correction can increase or decrease file size depending on what exactly you're doing. The more different colours you have, the larger your file size will be.

Reduce image dimensions

Since my original video footage was fairly zoomed out, the cropped area only left me 575px of width to begin with. In an earlier attempt (that I absolutely did not fail to capture and therefore had to record the whole thing a second time) I tried to leave it at these dimensions, but the 10MB size limit did not like that so now I knew better and immediately reduced the width to 560px.

Note: After you've changed the video's dimensions it won't let you edit the speed anymore (for some reason), so make sure you've got that settled.

After all the adjustments are done it's time for the moment of truth...

File > Save for Web...

This beautiful window will open and...

Aww almost.

But honestly? That's not bad at all. I've had completely different disasters to deal with in the past (starting somewhere in the mid 20MB, good luck trying to make use of every size-reducing trick you've got up your sleeve).

Before I do any adjustments to shave off the last few KB though, I preview the gif to make sure it loops correctly. I want the Chak to sway seemlessly. Turns out it didn't, so I back out of the window to remove a few frames from the footage. And when I open the "Save for Web" window again....

Well that's anticlimatic. Apparently those few frames were enough to get the file size where I need it. (Note: Sometimes Tumblr likes to be a little b* and pretends your file is too big when you're this close to the 10MB limit. It be like that.)

While my gif journey theoretically ends here, I want to at least show you a few more things that could have helped if I had needed to get the file even smaller.

So this dithering thing I keep making a big deal of...

It can make or break a gif. In my experience this is so, so crucial to the final file size and quality of the gif.

In my own very amateurish words, dithering is a way to emulate colours that aren't actually part of the images colour palette. This is especially needed for in-game transparency effects like fog, glowy stuff, or smooth gradients. And that is part of why I chose this hell scene of all the ley line glow and the typical gw2 bloom that's particularly bad in this area.

PS CS6 offers you three different kinds of dithering techniques: Diffusion, pattern and noise.

My go-to is diffusion dithering, which has adjustable quality levels.

In my opinion it's generally the type of dithering that's often the least noticeable and creates the smoothest looking images. Unfortunately, it's also the one that creates by far the largest file sizes. Another downside is that it doesn't work super well with heavy DoF/fog etc. effects and is prone to really ugly banding, especially visible the more you decrease the quality. It looks awful for this particular scene. (Look at the glow around my asura's headpiece if you don't know what I'm talking about. Or... just the entire background.)

Both noise and pattern dithering will get you smaller file sizes, luckily.

I've never used noise so far (it tends to look messy in my opinion), but pattern gets the job done! Especially for gradient heavy gifs it's a lifesaver. It's definitely more noticeable than the diffusion dithering on static parts of the gif, but it absolutely makes up for it by not having any ugly banding effects. This is also what gave me the neat little 9.99MB file size in comparison to the diffusion dithering's 15.31MB.

Last but not least, if fiddling with the dithering or image dimensions doesn't help you get below that magic 10MB mark...

Limit the colour palette

You can either manually colour edit your image to use less colours for a more artistic approach, or you can let Photoshop limit the palette to its best abilities.

Additionally you can double click each individual colour to replace it how you see fit. (I've done that in the past when Petthri's yellow eye colour got erased and I had to bring it back manually.)

In this gif's example, reducing the palette from 256 to 128 colours has brought the file size down from 9.9 MB to about 8 MB. It can have a big effect, but doesn't always in my experience.

SHOW US THE GODDAMN GIF ALREADY!!!

Not the best quality gif we've ever seen on tumblr, but given the extremely unfavourable source material I think it turned out alright. I have to admit I'm actually surprised it worked at all.

Oh well! This got long (once again). I hope this was at least a little bit helpful to someone out there. Happy gif making!

[highmarc]

Big family – big problems with (f)MC

For Liz. My friend who requested it a week ago (or so). I'm sorry if I got your idea wrong. Sebastian and Ominis here.

Sebastian

3 kids – I see a boy and two girls (Yes, I’m tumblr version of Sybill Trelawney).

The two girls are constantly fighting, while their brother mimics their father (you know in which way).

MC and Sebastian are too busy working. Complete chaos type of family.

First daughter: It’s mine!

Second daughter: No, daddy gave it to me!

First daughter: No, you stupid sleazeball head!

*the sound of a book being ripped in half*

Second daughter: Look what you’ve done! Stupid-

*the fighting between the two starts*

Sebastian walks in, yawning, with five o’clock shadow and red-eyed.

Sebastian: These two will be the death of me…

The girls pay zero attention to their dad.

And that’s why the only way to calm them down is levioso.

Sebastian: Now what is this about? *points at the book*

First daughter: It was her! She took the book from my table!

Second daughter: No, it wasn’t me!

Their brother walks in, holding a single page from the very book which now lied ripped apart.

Son: Daad. Daaad? *sees the mess and smiles*

Sebastian: Weren’t you the one looking after them?

Son: I-

Sebastian: What?

*hides the page behind his back*

Sebastian: Accio page! *takes the page and looks through it* Those are not the spells for a second year, you know.

Son: But daaad!

Sebastian: Now be off to your room. We’ll talk later.

Later that day.

Sebastian: These children are giving me migraines.

MC: *giggles* Says Sebastian Sallow, a family man.

Sebastian: These two are always fighting over anything – books, toys, sweets. And our precious boy is quite something, too. Looking through a 6th year spellbook and nearly blowing the house up, because “I thought it was perfectly safe!”.

MC: Mhm. He reminds me if someone I know.

Sebastian: That Weasley? Garreth?

MC: No. He is just like you. The spitting image. In every aspect.

Sebastian: Noo, I wasn’t like this. Ever.

MC: Oh but of course. Wait until he learns of the restricted sect-

Sebastian: Merlin’s beard. Can we homeschool him?  

MC: Sebastian, no.

Ominis

I think he would make a perfect stay-at-home dad. MC would be that workaholic mom.

4 kids (3 boys and a girl) would keep him busy for sure.

Ominis: *finally decides to take a break*

Daughter: Daddy, daaad! *runs screaming*

Ominis: What is it? *legit scared*

Daughter: There’s a talking snake in our garden!

Ominis: *shakes his head* Sunshine, snakes don’t talk.

Daughter: This one does! It says there are rats in the cellar.

Ominis: What?

Daughter: And it asked if it could eat them.

Ominis: How polite of it.

Daughter: Is it a snake prince? Can I bring him home?

Ominis: No, you can’t. It can be dangerous.

Daughter: But it’s a talking snake!

Ominis: Snakes don’t talk-

Daughter: He heard that too! *points at her brother*

Ominis: *sighs* Where was that snake? Let’s pay it a visit.

Later that evening.  

Ominis: Darling?

MC: Mm?

Ominis: Our children have brought a snake to their room.

MC: They wha-

Ominis: I know. They think I didn’t notice.

MC: Shall I talk to them or-

Ominis: No, no. It’s harmless. It considers our little one.. a friend. That is a part I’m wary of.

MC: I don’t know what to say.

Ominis: I’m shocked too. I thought this wouldn’t pass down to them. How careless of me.

MC: Are you going to tell them about you-know-what?

Ominis: Not now. Maybe later. Later later. Perhaps when they finish school?

MC: You think they won’t find something out on their own?

Ominis: I don’t know.

MC: Did they choose a name for their… friend?

Ominis: You won’t believe how hilarious it is.

MC: Surprise me then.

Ominis: She named it Daisy.

Bonus:

How they reacted each time a child of their was born

Sebastian

First one:

I what? I’M GOING TO BE A FATHER??? *goes ferally happy*  

Wait, is it a boy? SEBASTIAN JUNIOUR THAT IS!

Second one:

Sebastian: Oh, I guess Sebastian Juniour is going to have a company?

A girl? ANNE JUNIOUR

MC: Sebastian, no.

Sebastian: Sebastian yes!

Third one:

Sebastian: As if those two weren’t enough *tired as hell* Maybe it’s time to stop…

MC: Yes, I think so. *tired as hell too*

Ominis

First one:

Oh, I’m going to be a father? Pulling my leg again, aren’t you? *laughs it off and thinks of it as a joke*

WAIT YOU’RE SERIOUS? *faints*

Ominis: Is it a girl?

MC: No, Ominis. A baby boy that is.

Ominis: All right, what are the casual boy names? I guess I’ll have to name you Sebastian.

MC: As if having one Sebastian in your life wasn’t enough. *giggles*

Second one:

Ominis: It is a girl?

MC: Twin boys.

Ominis: WHA- *faints*

Third one:

Ominis: Is it a girl?

MC: It is.

Ominis: *grabs the baby* CAN I NAME HER NOCT-

MC: Ominis, no.

Ominis: *sad face*

MC: Argh. As a middle name – maybe.

[k-fangirledits]

APPRECIATION POST ヾ(＠⌒ー⌒＠)ノ(*/ω＼*)

Special Shout Out To My DOAK aka Diary of a Wimpy Kid PEOPLE

I appreciate all of you so much! Thank you again for noticing the posts and just interacting with my blog in general. It's been a few years since I've made gifs and have been active here and the fact that y'all still use my gifs in your RP's or your fanfictions or your headcannons etc. that just absolutely blows my mind that you still interact with my blog somehow even though I hadn't posted in a couple to a few years!

I am so so so grateful to see how many stories my gifs have been chosen to be put into and I will actually take the time to go back and read them once I find them and book mark them! I am just mind-blown that y'all are still able to search gifs and mine still pop up!

It seems silly but I really have such bad imposter syndrome with anything and everything I do and it takes me a while to process everything and to be able to do posts like this.

Also yes I went through my activity list within the passed couple of weeks for this year (2024) to be able to make sure I got everyone tagged. In a different post I will be going through all the gif sets and making another appreciation post to those of you that have supported and interacted all of the DOAK gif sets and posts that I have made over the years. You guys are all so flipping awesome and I can't believe I still get interactions on gif sets I made YEARS AGO to this very day! It's so crazy how active this fandom still is but I am so proud that it's still active!

If you guys want more gifs or want to be included in taglists for future gif sets of anyone in DOAK as the characters (or cast) or anyone else (in general) let me know. I do take requests for fanfictions, role plays, etc. whatever you need gif images for I'll do it. It might just take me a bit of time but I will always make sure I get to it.

You all have made my absolute year just for interacting with my small little blog so it does make me absolutely sentimental. You are appreciated even if you think it was just a small or automatic thing to like or reblog or comment etc. I just wanted to show y'all how much I appreciate every single one of you.

Now before I go, I gotta get through all the other fandoms as well that have been interacting with my blog since I decided that this week is gonna be my appreciation week for everyone that has interacted with my blog since I began to become more regularly active again.

Thank you again loves... and I hope you have a wonderful time of day or night that you see this post. Also please never be a stranger, I am always willing to make new friends online. It's kinda hard in young adulthood to figure out how to make friends ngl... but yeah, comment, dm, like, reblog, etc. I would like to interact with y'all too only if you're comfortable with that though, and if you're not that's okay and hope you aren't too weirded out by my extremely sentimental appreciation post towards y'all.

Taglist from 2024 Activity Notes as early as March

Likes & Interactions Taglist:

@luluartpop | @studiotriggerfan397 | @elevatorkissesxoxo | @loadeddiperdrummer | @crystical33 | @shaybot12 | @some-good-juju | @alexkorn | @slayerfxx | @rejectedbat | @chillbaby666 | @1h3yad0r3m8m8 | @rodrickruleslmao | @riddlbot | @avvidarkfem | @heffleyzzn

Reblogs Taglist:

@loadeddiperdrummer | @heffleyzzn

Added to Blogs Taglist:

@ch9rm thanks for adding my gif to your headcannon blog post! I'm happy that out of all the gifs on tumblr you decided mine was like good enough to add into the post. it seems silly and small but it does mean a lot. also oof, the NSFW part... I DIED. NGL, agh! definitely seems on brand for Rodrick!

@myobsessionishockstetter thanks for adding my gif of rodrick to your post from a few months back! I know there's a lot of gif creators out there that honestly can probably make better quality images- anyways, just wanted to say that I appreciate the fact you were able to find use for my image in your blog post! love the meme images you have there lol because it's so true. How did he never pull any of the hottest girls or anyone in general in the movies. The world may never know. like he is too attractive to not have pulled anyone but I guess movie writers needed to keep those things outta the storyline since it is all about Greg and not Rodrick... but still! other family/kids movies have an attractive older brother that was able to pull a lot of people in general and somehow still make it family/kid friendly.

@solaceofacube thanks for adding my gif of Rodrick to your blog post a while back ago. I haven't played the game, but from the image of the character that was added to the post that you reblogged a while back ago I mean it's an uncanny resemblance in my opinion. DOAK Devon Bostick/Rodrick Heffley definitely would be a great Andrew Graves! I can't unsee it!

@takenbypeter I commented on your story but honestly, since I am doing an appreciation post for everyone that has actively somehow interacted with my gif images and blog in general this year, I just wanted to thank you again for adding my gif to your prompt story/imagine! It's so flippin' good every time I read it! Also, yes I tend to go back and re-read it at times, it's just a masterpiece. SO CUTE AND THE FEELS! AGH I LOVE IT!

@lydiaxdd thanks for adding the drummer gif to your blog post that I made! ahaha I don't blame you for wanting to date anyone that looks like Devon Bostick/Rodrick Heffley. He is extremely attractive!

@cxsmiclore Thanks for adding my gif of Rodrick to your fanfics taglist! it's just really cool to see which images people tend to prefer of Rodrick for certain blogs and things of that sort.

@minawritesfanfic I know I commented on your story already as well but just wanted to say thanks again for adding my gif into your fanfic! I am in the middle of reading part 1 since things got a bit hectic while trying to read up on everything, and when I left the app it refreshed on me. But I really am excited to see what all leads up to Part 5 of Backyard Boy.

BONUS: Here is the masterlist to all of my TMR Gif Sets if y'all want to request any of the 3 movies for me to add, let me know and I will scrape some time to do that. Thank you again so much for all the support on the blog and these gifs. Y'all are awesome!

[srmcd1]

*blows dust off my tumblr*

So a long time ago, a fan floated the idea that the late David Collings (known for a varied career across British television, particularly as Silver from "Sapphire and Steel") would've made an excellent Doctor Who should Tom Baker have for some reason decided to depart the series earlier than his canon 7 year run (something Baker himself admitted he probably should've done, but hey-ho, hindsight is 20-20).

Sidenote: the fan in question is kind of horrible, so I'm not going to name them, but I agreed with them on this, so I figure I may as well give them credit.

AU for Dr Who (the David Collings Years 1978 - 81) below:

AU for Dr Who: What would prompt Tom Baker to leave earlier than in real life? Perhaps the departure of executive producer Phillip Hinchcliffe, who'd been with him since he first started. In reality, Hinchcliffe was forced out after Season 14 for making Dr Who "too scary". In my reality, instead of just forcing him out immediately, the BBC decide to be a little more reasonable and tell him, "Look, we'll let you do Season 15, but after that, we think it's time for you to move on." Hinchcliffe has said in interviews he had plans for S15 that would've been similar to what later became Indiana Jones, so we'd enjoy a season of that at least. The downside is "Robots of Death" and "Talons of Weng-Chiang" wouldn't look as impressive because Hinchcliffe wouldn't have gone over budget out of spite over getting the sack, but such is life.

We would still get "Horror of Fang Rock" and "Image of the Fendhal" as those still fit the Hinchcliffe/Robert Holmes motif before transitioning into whatever other stories they choose to make that year. With both producer and script editor departing, Baker -- wanting to make his Dr Who movie "Dr Who Meets the Scratchman" with Ian Marter -- decides to leave as well after four years -- one less than Pertwee. Louise Jameson initially plans to depart as well, but she's persuaded to at least do half of Season 16 so as to help "bridge the gap" between the two Drs, much like Lis Sladen did before her.

How Tom's Doctor meets his end in this canon, I'm not one hundred percent certain, but I like the idea that he faces off with either the Daleks (giving him a serial where they aren't overshadowed by Davros) or the Master (still played by Peter Pratt -- although maybe less rotted than in "Deadly Assassin).

I imagine the casting of Collings as the new Doctor would convince Louise Jameson to stay for the entirety of Season 16. She and Collings were great friends in real life after he played Poule in "Robots of Death". She convinced him later in life to do the convention circuit. She was one of the few to tweet a remembrance of him when he passed in 2020. I totally think she would've stayed for another season for the chance to work with him after a turbulent tenure with Baker.

And so, Graham Williams takes over as he did in real life, having a much better time working with Collings than he would've with Baker. K9 is added to the cast. Leela is given a much better sendoff in the finale. I like to think Dr Collings would join forces with Mary Tamm's Romana to find the Key to Time (although part of me loves the idea of Joanna Lumely, his S&S co-star, playing the part). He fights Daleks and Movellans, goes to Paris, fights vampires and finally meets his end at the end of Season 18, regenerating into Peter Davison's Doctor, and we're right back on schedule

Just an idea, but I enjoyed thinking it up

[lobautumny]

Alright, this toy has decided to make a big, singular post detailing the entire Predstrogen situation to the best of its ability because it hasn't seen one that's up to date and wants to have something convenient to link to bring people up to speed. Apologies if there are mistakes in this explanation. It is difficult to round all of the information up concisely.

So, the first thing to mention, up-front, is that this all centers around a trans woman named Rita. This toy will primarily be referring to her by name, as this centers around several blogs and a Twitter account that all belong to her and have different handles.

So what the hell happened to Rita?

Well, after losing a couple of blogs (the first due to doing sex work on a side-blog and the second due to a harassment campaign from lolcow forums), she formed the Predstrogen blog, which stuck around for a while and became quite popular. However, the harassment campaign never ended.

Rita's posts on the Predstrogen blog received masses of false reports for untagged NSFW (or outright ToS-breaking) content while she and people who followed her or incidentally reblogged her posts were flooded with hate and misinformation about her. Rita tried to get into contact with Tumblr support over this harassment campaign and received nothing. Rita also contacted Tumblr support to ask about some images that she was unsure whether they fell within community guideline compliance or not, and was directly told that she was fine to post them.

Eventually, completely-SFW images (such as a transition timeline that was just two pictures of her face) on her blog started getting taken down because of the false reports. Rita reaches out to Tumblr again, this time to try to get the images back, and starts spreading the word about how fucked up this situation is and how the site's staff have been either incompetent or actively malicious towards her by allowing this organized hate campaign to go completely unchecked. As this starts blowing up, the Predstrogen blog gets banned for community guideline violations that never happened over alleged adult content.

Support finally gets back to her about the harassment campaign she'd been the victim of, and said that they found nothing that breaks Tumblr ToS so even if they wanted to do something, they simply couldn't. Put a pin in that.

So, she makes another blog, this one named Avewy. She starts doubling down posting about everything that's happened to her so far, and her harassers keep sending misinformation about why Rita was banned in bystanders' asks, abusing the fact that they aren't able to check the Predstrogen blog anymore to control the narrative about her. Eventually, when asked why Rita was banned, Matt (Tumblr's CEO) responds, giving the reasoning that it was for harassment (which she never did) and threats of violence against Tumblr staff.

Now, let's talk about that last point. What might he be referring to? Well, luckily for us, he cites one (1) piece of evidence! Several months ago (at least, this toy's pretty sure it was several months ago, the screenshot does not have a timestamp), Rita made a post on the Predstrogen blog in which she said, "I hope photomatt dies forever a painful death involving a car covered in hammers that explodes more than a few times and hammers go flying everywhere." That's it. Matt threatened to "work with police and FBI" over her wishing he succumbs to a Looney Tunes-ass fate. If she made any other more serious threats, Matt has never specified any of them, and it's impossible to go through her blog to check, so we have to assume that this is the only such instance.

Also, we know the whole "Predstrogen was banned for harassment" claim was a blatant lie, by the way, because the specific way Predstrogen was banned (all images from her posts were scrubbed from the site) is something that only happens for adult content violations.

Naturally, the Avewy blog also gets banned. There's no official reason given for that one, but we don't really need one at this point. After this, Rita simply makes yet another blog (by the name of Cyprederone), makes a goodbye post giving her final thoughts about Tumblr and everything that's happened to her, and linking all of her other social media accounts and her Discord server. So this is where the story ends, right? Like, surely, her finally being pushed off the platform for good is the last thing that happens in this series of events, right?

Right?

Matt, the very reasonable and level-headed man that he is, stalks Rita's Twitter account and starts harassing her there, and breaks data protection laws (according to Maia Arson Crimew, at least, and this toy will take its word on that) by listing off all of the usernames to her private alt accounts as some kind of gotcha when she reposted her transition timeline on that site and called it "too hot for Tumblr." He must've either realized or been quickly informed by his legal team that that post was probably illegal, because he quickly deleted it.

And that's approximately where we are right now. Once again, this toy might be getting some details wrong (it's mostly worried that some events are in the wrong order), and it apologizes if it does. Once again, unfortunately, it's hard to iron out the exact sequence of events when the blogs that Rita was documenting the sequence of events on have been deleted, and the whole situation was very hectic so it was difficult to internalize an exact timeline while everything was actually going down.

Some extra things to note:

Matt, in his response to Rita, refused to refer to her with she/her pronouns. Instead, he mostly referred to her as "they," and eventually edited his post to dehumanize her to "the account" because he was "unaware of pronoun preference and [didn't] want to misgender anyone." This is an interesting claim, considering he certainly had no trouble tracking down Rita's Twitter account, which has her pronouns in the bio, to harass her. At one point, Matt straight up referred to her as "it."

It's very telling that Matt made a big statement about how he now understands what targeted harassment feels like and will be looking into better moderation because of his experiences being harassed immediately after his staff denied that a trans woman who has been subject to a targeted harassment campaign for years was actually being harassed.

Rita's harassers made a point of it to especially target transmasc users with misinformation as a form of recruitment tactic.

This is far from the first instance of Tumblr's staff/moderation being discriminatory against trans people, nor is it the first time that bigots have gotten the auto-mod to ban a minority by mass-reporting their account. It's simply the instance of this happening that has generated the most attention.

The harassment Rita was receiving was painstakingly documented and literally included TERF accounts admitting to harassing her and organizing mass false reports. Despite simply lacking the resources to determine that users who were bragging about breaking ToS were, in fact, breaking ToS, staff have certainly been able to be very proactive in tracking down and punishing users who are a little bit too mean to Matt lately.

Despite Matt claiming that Rita was banned for her horrible, vile, evil, totally-not-a-joke death threat and talking about how serious these kinds of things are and how you simply cannot say them, this toy sees much more serious death threats and people earnestly telling each other to kill themselves on this website on a very frequent basis, and they always go completely unpunished, and it's certain that's not for a lack of reports.

If anyone has anything to add on or correct, this toy actively encourages you to do so.

[naavispider]

Could you do a one-shot between Quaritch and Spider about a thunderstorm? Spider is frightened from the loud bangs caused by the thunderstorm and has a hard time falling asleep. Spider shrieks from fear and Quaritch hears it and notices it coming from his son. He comforts him and both fall asleep together.

This is very similar to another ask I got, which I was typing my response to but TUMBLR decided to DELETE it instead of saving as a draft 😤 (lesson learned, never type long answers straight onto tumblr)

Spider had experienced his fair share of storms. The thunderstorms in the forest had been rare but terrifying. He remembered that one really bad one that flooded sector C of Hell's Gate - the science guys were totally freaked out, though they'd tried not to show it to Spider. He'd huddled in his room, plugging in his music as loud as it could go while the wind and the rain pounded against his window. The noise couldn't drown out the booming claps of thunder that could shake Spider down to his bones. He used to close his eyes against the lightning, wondering every time if this was the final blow - if Eywa had finally had enough of the human base on her planet. Surely this was her retribution against them. Spider couldn't think what else could possibly cause weather as terrifying as this.

So when the first rumble of thunder echoed around the demon ship, Spider froze. They were on deck, and the recoms had been saying for a while that a storm was brewing. They'd seen it on the satellite data, and the ship's crew were all preparing for the assault. Quaritch reassured him that the ship was built to weather conditions like this, but Spider hadn't missed the look he gave Wainfleet immediately after.

The clouds had darkened to a deep grey, and the choppy water reflected the anger from above. When the wind began to pick up, Quaritch called the squad together to retreat down below. They packed up their makeshift camp on the deck, and brought everything inside. As Spider had nothing, he mostly watched, but he made sure that Quaritch had packed the ukulele.

"Get in there, go," Quaritch spurred him on, gently pushing Spider into the airlock just as the first real boom sounded from the heavens. Spider didn't say a word as the squad made their way to the rec room - the largest indoor room that could easily fit all of them - while staying out of the way of the crew who were going to have their work cut out.

"Well this is gonna be fun..." Savine remarked as she plopped herself down against the side of the couch, bringing out her tablet. "Do we know how long it's gonna last?"

Lyle had opened his own tablet. "Looks like a few hours," he muttered, scanning the moving, colourful swirls on the map. Spider could see the data too, and despite not knowing anything about weather patterns, it didn't look good. This was going to be a big one.

Quaritch handed him the spare tablet. "Here, kid. Amuse yourself however you see fit - and buckle down."

How reassuring.

Spider took the screen and made his way over to the gap between two of the nailed in couches. There was a space just big enough for him to slide into, and he wriggled his way in, bringing his knees up to his chest and resting the tablet on them. He scrolled through the shows on the only app that didn't require iris scanning to open, finally deciding to try a new one called Pinky and the Brain. For a while, the colourful images were enough to distract him. He liked the story, although Pinky did seem a bit dumb. The Brain was definitely his favourite character so far.

When the rain started to patter the tiny windows, Spider began to tense up, and found it even harder to concentrate when the pattering slowly increased in ferocity, eventually morphing into sheets of water that hammered the sides of the ship. The noise was almost loud enough to drown out the cartoon. The recoms were having to raise their voices just to be heard as they sat it out. Spider glanced around anxiously, taking a small amount of comfort in the fact that nobody seemed to be panicking.

Unfortunately, Quaritch caught his eye. "Relax, kid," he said, his eyes raking over Spider's tensed up form, his slightly widened eyes. "You look like you're about to be eaten."

Spider glared at the man. He returned his gaze to the cartoon, but it was no longer enough to distract him from the rain and the now howling wind that was beginning to sway the ship. He grasped a shaky hand onto the side of the couch that he was wedged between, trying to steady himself as the floor rocked upwards, then down again. He breathed out slowly through clenched teeth, trying to relax.

"Shit!" he jumped as another clap of thunder roared through the room.

The rest of the recoms were either laying down chatting, or still attempting to get some admin done on their tablets. However, even the most determined of them had to give that up as the rocking of the boat increased and they were forced to steady themselves as best they could.

"If anyone vomits I swear to God I will throw you overboard!" Savine called.

Fuck, what was happening? Spider knew Quaritch had been very reassuring about the strength of the ship, but this seemed crazy. Spider knew how big these storms could get, and they were bad enough in the forest - sheltered by the canopy and not in imminent danger of sinking. Out here? On the ocean? Spider didn't want to think about it. What happened if the ship sank? What happened if they were struck by lightening? Dread pooled in his stomach as he tried to push down the nausea accumulating at the back of his throat.

He was going to die.

"You're fine," came a low voice in front of him.

Spider opened his eyes.

Quaritch was on the floor next to him, and reaching a hand out to place on Spider's leg. The recom's face was earnest - sincere.

"The ship's prepared for storms like these, this ain't its first rodeo. It's gonna pass, all we have to do is wait it out."

Spider swallowed, torn between his existential fear and something that felt like embarrassment. He didn't want to seem like a scared little kid.

"I'm f-fine," he stuttered, but his whole body was tensed up, including his jaw.

"Uh-huh," Quaritch said, appraising him.

"Piss off," was what came out of Spider's mouth. Wait, he didn't mean that. Why did he say that?

Quaritch raised his eyebrows in a surprised and questioning stare.

Spider felt the urge to apologise. But no, he hadn't lost all of his pride - not yet. "Just... just tell me when this will be over," he said.

Quaritch waited a moment before replying. "Probably a few more hours yet, kid."

Fantastic.

His face must have betrayed his hopelessness, because Quaritch squeezed Spider's knee. "I promise, it's alright."

Spider looked up at the man, unconvinced, but didn't reply. He didn't want to open his mouth in case something unintentionally rude came out again.

Quaritch removed his hand from Spider's knee, and reached back across the floor to pick up his own tablet. However, for the next two hours he stayed on the floor next to where Spider had braced himself. Spider wasn't sure if this was a coincidence or not, but he was grateful for it anyway.

With Quaritch beside him, he knew there was no reason to fear. Quaritch was not a stupid or naive man. He couldn't see the Colonel sitting idly by while a life-threatening storm tore up the ship. If there really was any danger, Spider knew that Quaritch would evacuate them, or come up with a plan.

And that night... That night Spider finally realised that he trusted Quaritch.