#btw i hate this system for this reason you can never have endless fights because some of the bosses are fucking weak af

[megafreeman]

Okay so something about new SR I love-hate is its notoriety system. Idk how much yall played, but when you get max notoriety level, the game spawns a mini-boss for you to fight, and once you kill them, that scares away the rest of the gang fighting you and causes them to flee in fear and wipe your notoriety. This makes sense for the gangs right? I mean they send the biggest guy that their faction gave their best resources to, and you destroy them like a wet paper, ofc they'd be scared shitless

What's funny, is that this system also applies to the Police/National Guard. When you reach max notoriety, National Guard will start spawning, with one giant tank in the middle. If you destroy the tank or kill its driver, that will cause the entire National Guard (or cops if they didn't despawn) to flee in fear from you and wipe away your notoriety.

And that's so damn absurd and funny to me. You commit the crimes after crimes, and level half the city with your cutting edge weapons, but if you manage to destroy one tank (which all it takes is one RPG rocket you can buy as soon as you get in game), it will cause the Santo Ileso Police Department to drop all criminal charges against you for doing a bare minimum of carrying one RPG and knowing how to use it

[bibbykins]

can u give us a glimpse into what arguing w/ the princes would be like? love ur work btw!!

You bet! I actually had something written about this ages ago but never finished it so I’ll paste it here and add some more!

Warnings: 18+ (just like my whole page and all my works are)This is where the toxicity and unhealthiness of these relationships show, manipulation, yelling, lying, mentions of sex, mentions of rough sex, mentions of various sexual acts (cunnilingus, fellatio, exhibition) I beg of you to not put up with any of this shit irl let fiction stay in the fictional world yknow? I always ramble in my fics about this but I figured I should add it here for good measure

Jin:

Where the other boys rarely ever just “argue” and it is either a fight or nothing, you guys just argue sometimes, never rlly fight

This ties back to the fierce honesty policy you have between each other, but you both are so stubborn so arguing does happen

You both usually start by saying snarky things until one of you breaks and says what is really bothering them, which doesn’t take long at all

If you cry, congrats, you automatically won bc Jin not only does not know how to deal with a woman’s tears, he cannot fathom his one true love crying

Although you usually try to continue explaining your reasoning bc you don’t wanna win by crying, you wanna win bc you’re right

Jin, similar to Jimin, respects you a lot, so the other girls seldom ever catch him acting like a clown’

His downfall is just being bad at expressing his feelings bc he thinks you just know, like you read minds or something

Jin usually apologizes by asking what you want after he forfeits his pride so if it’s a gift, he’s on it, sex? say less. 

He usually prefers to pamper you for a night, not even cumming during sex unless you tell him to

You’re the one who threatens the other fellas when they’re disrespecting their s/o, intentionally or not, and boy are they frightened. You rlly have a way with insults

Yoongi:

Bickers with you, but doesn't fight and everyone does not understand how bc he’s so standoffish to everyone else

Bc your relationship has the most public eyes on it, gossip columns are floored when they cannot find flaws or rumors of fights, and most are too intimidated by Yoongi to just make them up

You both read each other like a book, so the only time anything comes up is if you don’t like what you’re reading at that moment and vice versa, then a fight might start but it is shockingly rare

If he makes you cry, the fight is over, he lost. Yes, this is a running theme among the guys bc they are all whipped dummies

Very perceptive of your feelings, so never really worries about fighting with you or you hiding anything from him

You know how to get him to fess up so it's not the worst system of communication (still not healthy in the slightest but that’s the yandere life here)

He doesn't really try to lie to you or hide anything since you're also pretty bonkers so if he destroyed someone’s career bc he thought they looked at funny, you just roll your eyes and tell him he’s silly

You are the one that Jungkook and Taehyung are terrified of (It’s just about all the hyungline gf’s they are rlly scared of)

You’re usually so bubbly and energetic, but if you get pissed off, you’re as frightening if not more frightening than Yoongi

I should add Yoongi prefers to make up by marathon eating you out, at some point, it feels like he’s getting a kick out of it, but you’re in no place to complain tbh

Hoseok:

Not a lot of fighting here tbh bc you are still healing and your talent is in deescalating situations and telling people’s feeling

Your job is literally a behavior analyst so you will just deadass be like, “I can tell you’re getting frustrated to a point where effective communication won’t be possible, so how can I help calm you down?”

Makes him go silent real quick and reevaluate everything he has ever thought or done

For this reason, he just sighs and apologizes, genuinely bc you can absolutely tell when he’s just saying it to shut you up

He is the only one that will allow you to leave (the room, not the house) not that you want to leave the building considering the dangers you know are out there

Once you both cool off, you’ll have him state what he thought about and vice versa

You give advice to all the girls on how to do this, but not all of them are brave enough to try

So you go full mama bear mediator and step in when you feel the need

You genuinely frighten these guys bc you have this innate ability to make them feel dumb as fuck

Namjoon:

No fights rlly but misunderstandings happen that makes Joon go manic

You get frustrated bc he does this instead of just talking to you, but he’s learning little by little

The moment you aren’t smiling or trying to make a light joke with him, fight over, you won, he is worried

Bc he knows if you’re not smiling, you’re almost definitely going to cry and when you cry, he cries

You actually implement Angel’s tips and see some improvement with communication as time goes on

Namjoon’s love language in making up is grand gestures, so he’ll rent out a whole restaurant, or take you on a shopping spree to an art supply store, anything that will bring a smile to your face

You intimidate the other guys when they fight with their darlings bc you keep a smile the whole time you are threatening them and holy fuck is it eerie. You usually try to distract the upset girls post-argument with a craft or fun art facts

Jimin:

What makes the relationship work are your selfish tendencies working in tandem with his more sinister ones, but it can’t always work that way

You both test each other all the time despite agreeing on almost everything because the relationship is not a fight for dominance, but control-control you usually win 

The closest you get to real fighting is rough sex, most of the time you have disagreements that you resolve with conversation

It's the most “healthy” (it’s not all that healthy tbh) thing about the relationship and it blows everyone's minds, but it only happens bc Jimin has always respected you, and he genuinely knows that you don’t need him as much as he needs you

But on the extremely rare occasion there is a fight it is never in front of anyone and all hell breaks loose: screaming, yelling, slamming doors, it all seems like endless hell bc you both are too stubborn to say when you’re wrong

Until you cry

He really can't stand the sight of you crying, bc you rarely ever cry. He sees you as really tough and his whole perception of the world shatters once he realizes he’s the cause of your tears

Making up includes, you guessed it, sex. Like calling into work bc you can’t walk sex (Jimin cries during this sex bc he feels undeserving but by round 2 he stops)

The girls come to you post-argument to rant bc you live to talk shit with them to vent

Taehyung:

Rarely ever fights with you, because he absolutely despises doing so and you typically do what he says without question

But when you do fight, it always ends with both of you crying and hugging

During the argument though, he can say some seriously out of pocket shit, bc he lacks impulse control and you take that shit to hear bc who wouldn’t 

The fights are nightmarish and hard to watch bc at some point it just becomes Taehyung losing his mind while you cower until he realizes how much of an asshole he’s being or until you try to leave mid convo

Bless him if he were to ever make you cry in front of the other MC’s, my guy would be ripped to shreds bc the other girls do not fuck around

Hates to ever be the cause of your tears so you both are very quick to makeup and he can spend up to weeks making up for it

I’m talking gifts, money, food, dates, clothes, he is basically your personal assistant that pays you when he feels bad

The girl’s come to you after an argument for quiet time or some cute embroidery time

Jungkook:

You don't fight often, but when you do it's disastrous bc he is wildly paranoid and you are wildly insecure

You almost always go into a panic attack, fearing he'll leave you and he immediately loses all fight in him and feels like shit

And he is absolutely crushed seeing you hyperventilate or clutch your chest while he's yelling so he just stops like mid yell will just close his mouth and take a deep breath before going to you 

Immediately apologizes when it happens

Usually cries with you while he holds you

Another fella that will get torn to shreds by the other girls if they even catch a whiff of him being anything other than sunshine and rainbows to you rip jungkook tbh

He makes it up to you the same way Taehyung makes it up, by shutting his mouth and doing whatever you want, and giving you whatever you want

When the other girls get into an argument with their guy, they come to you for a hug and some quality time distraction

[authorgeek]

...Well, at least I’m Vaccinated, right?

The American Healthcare System is deadly. This is another health/life update.

As I write this, my mother is making phone calls on my behalf, just as she has my whole life. I got out of the ER yesterday and from picking up my medications at the pharmacy, to canceling my counselor today because of a sudden drop in coverage - the reason I didn’t want to/hesitate to pursue mental healthcare in the first place - every moment for the last four years have been overshadowed by my chronic illness. The last year more so than ever as I continuously say no to gatherings and meetings and leaving my home. A constant reminder of what we’ve been through, about how it impacts me specifically, and another round of the negative energy that comes from having those same conversations in an endless cycle. 

1) I am flaring and very much tied to my own home and our restroom. This last trip to the ER a few days ago put me on yet another round of steroids and soon enough I should be feeling physically better in a while after rest (hahaha), gentle diet, and time. Goodbye spring break, hello IVs and 3am blood draws. My nurses were angels btw. Thank you to all the healthcare providers who stepped in to begin getting me back on track.

2) Scheduling my last classes of Zoom Uni and drs is still hell. I have Zoom calls on top of Zoom calls between class and therapy (at least up until now) and trying to establish and create relationships with new Dr.s, a process that has made my and my family’s life a living hell since moving from campus and back, insurance battles, address and paperwork changes, prescription and test orders - something has been overly complicated, slowed down, held back...etc at every step of the way.

3) My mother - bless her - to sainthood - has been fighting on all our behalf at EVERY MOMENT. But she should NEVER have to put herself through this. I hate watching her do this, sit on calls, listen and watch as we get juggled from one department to another over and over like a carnival ride because no one will stop and help us. It is so painful to watch, and it is so endlessly frustrating to pick up and begin again and again day in and day out. She constantly tells me its her job and that she’s going to keep it up as long as I need - but I still know she never should have to go to bat for me like this and I hate it. I really really hate it.

4) Stuck at home, hospitalized, med changes, this all feels like I’ve time traveled a bit back to the very first days while being diagnosed. I feel a lot of old emotions coming back, a lot of unhealed childhood trauma I was never allowed to properly work through because life, and all its other crisis got in the way one at a time. As far as my mental health has been going, I haven’t felt this way since I was a young teenager, just entering high school after being housebound for 7th grade because I was too sick for a conventional school setting. It’s been crushing, and heavy, and I just feel...guilty...that other people have had to put up with me while I fight through this fog and watch. There is very little they can do, and it’s always awful to know the people who care about me feel as helpless to be there for me as I feel in general. Of course, these are the kinds of things I’ve been talking to my therapist about. Even while I am writing this, we are in  the process of leaping over that particular hurdle on the long racetrack we’ve been running. I wanted therapy. I need mental health assistance. And we’re going to fight to keep this same provider and keep jumping through all the right hoops.

5) All this to say - I’m not the only one dealing with this and that makes it worse because NO ONE should. And if something doesn’t break? If something isn’t radically changed, it’s going to result in loss of even more lives of people like me. Possibly me. I know people hate to hear this and I hate to say it - but “COVID only impacts the elderly and those with preexisting conditions” is complete and utter Bull. All you’ve said is that you don’t care about those communities of people. About my community. About me. These clerical errors, working from out of office, communication breakdowns, have ALL been exacerbated by a global pandemic that was so horribly mismanaged it’s resulted in this mess. I wonder how much higher the death toll would be if we calculated the lack of mental health resources, errors made on the admin. side due to these circumstances - how much bigger a number would we be looking at, and what do we do to change it - and to put in preventative measures against it ever happening again.

A fantastic way you guys can support me right now - if you’re wondering after reading all of this - is through my redbubble shop, even just sharing the link to the page means a lot. I’ll hopefully have some new designs up to share with you all soon. I’m going to try my best to go a bit radio silent for a while. I’m going to continue reading, painting, gardening, and doing classwork because that’s my current capacity. That’s me running at MAX, and while that may not sound like much it’s all I’ve got right now. I’m tired beyond words, I don’t really even want to keep writing about this any more. So, if you guys are messaging/trying to get a hold of me, thank you in advance for your patience. I may not be able to respond right away. The new term just started and I spent most of my break in the hospital so I gently ask that I take some time alone, for me. Thank you all - for your encouragement and love you’ve sent my way during this year, and for forever. I love you all for it.

[mattgambler]

Phoenix Point and why I want it to live

No TLDR this time. I said in the past that I could write pages over pages about this. I guess its time to see how many pages we are actually talking about here. Phoenix Point is currently rather mediocre. From the soundtrack to the many bugs and rather rough implementations, the missing features that were envisioned in the kickstarter campaign, the 5 scheduled DLCS, the epic store exclusivity, the inferior graphical polish in comparison to Firaxis’ XCOM reboot, the inferior complexity in comparison to Longwar, probably even the inferior Idontknow in comparison to the very first XCOM games from way back when, I didnt play those. If you are looking for something to hate in this game, you dont have to look too hard, there is something here for everyone. The reason Ive been a determined defender of Phoenix Point is not simply because I have a different taste in games than the mainstream however, but because I feel there is a way deeper underlying problem at work here. I’ll come back to that later. Btw starting now, when I say XCOM, I mean Firaxis’ XCOM. Personally I want more games like XCOM. More games like Battlebrothers, Mordheim: City of the Damned, Invisible Inc, hell, even Bloodbowl, even though I dont dig the sports angle. Games with permadeath, nameable characters, dynamic overworld systems and missions and situations that are created ideally by circumstance, not by simply playing mission 1, then mission 2, until you reach what the devs decided to be the last one they would make for the game. I thoroughly enjoy that concept of progression and many turnbased strategy titles just dont do it for me because they are too linear, even when they are otherwise nicely crafted experiences. Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest is a nice example of this, the game looks nice, sounds nice and is very well made, but it lacks the one thing I enjoy most in all the games I mentioned earlier. Along comes Phoenix Point and the moment I look at this game I know that it is all about scratching that specific itch. Not only that, it also brings with it a variety of creative features to even improve the established turnbased squad tactics formula. I didnt lie when I said I think that it is in many ways better than XCOM. Just that... WHAT?!?! ...the overall game doesnt compare well if we look at the sum of their parts at the moment. YOU CANT BE SERIOUS!!!!! About Phoenix Point being better in many ways? Sure, let me make a list. 1) Aiming In XCOM you aim, you have an x% chance to hit, you either hit or you dont. While widely accepted because of the quality of the overall games, its a pretty simple system that becomes especially frustrating when your guns model on screen is touching the enemies forehead and you still manage to miss. Or when a flashbanged and suppressed sectoid crits you in full cover after rolling a natural 20. In Phoenix Point bullets get simulated and trace a path from the barrel of your gun to a target that they then either hit or miss. Smaller enemies in Phoenix Point are hard to hit not because the game designers arbitrarily decided so, but because smaller enemies are simply smaller. In comparison, in XCOM you roll dice. 2) Modular enemies Similar to Battlebrothers, Phoenix Point has you encounter the same brigand thug (crabmen) over and over again. The enemy itself doesnt matter as much, its more about the number of different variations you can encounter. Brigant thugs can come equipped with simple helmets and/or armor as well as different weapons that have different abilities. They also have different faces on top of that. They are by far not the only enemy in the game, but even if they were, by the time you encounter the exact same thug a second time you wont be able to tell anymore because you have seen so many others inbetween. The same goes for most enemies in Battlebrothers (with a few exceptions), it becomes way more about your opponents equipment than about his actual type or class. Phoenix Point goes for the very same approach, but falls short because of  a variety of reasons. To name just one, the first time you encounter New Jericho as a faction, you fight four New Jericho soldiers and all four of them have the same armor, the same weapon and even the same face. To hammer it home the mission also always takes place on a variation of the exact same map. It is an absolute travesty. The ambition is there and in random encounters on the map you can see where it is supposed to go, with every enemy type in the game being designed in a way that allows for as many variations as the devs can think of, from paralysis tentacles and bloodsucking arms to mist generators and everything inbetween. The possibilities are endless and from the standard crab to the giant bosses every enemy is designed with this modularity in mind. In XCOM in comparison, you have a variety of different enemies, but for the entirety of the first month (what is that, 3-7 missions?) you only fight the sectoid. Or maybe the drone too, I havent played vanilla in forever. Longwar tries to spice that up by using preexisting models and assigning new abilities to them, making some models bigger and giving others new abilities, but at the end of the day the sectoid looks the way the sectoid looks. I love what it looks like btw. But modular enemies are decidedly cooler. 3) Scale In XCOM you control 4, later up to 6 soldiers at the same time. In Longwar it goes up to 8, or 12 in that one mission. In Phoenix Point you start out the same way, but to my knowledge you can bring as many soldiers to any mission as you can get there via aircraft. Meaning that as soon as you get a second manticore you can theoretically have up to 12 soldiers in a mission, or 18 with a third. Naturally you would probably want to split your forces instead and be in 3 places at the same time (and you can), but this sort of thing being possible, both the 18 soldiers in one mission as well as the 3 different squads doing missions in 3 different places of the planet, is something XCOM simply does not offer.  4) Other features Be it vehicles, giant enemies, diplomacy or the amount of control you get on the overworld map, Phoenix Point does (or attempts to do) a huge number of things that in XCOM are simply nonexistant. In XCOM you dont get to decide were to fly, missions are simply spawned in popup fashion, the skyranger is on autopilot, “diplomacy” is managed by talking to top secret bald guy representing the council and by sometimes fulfilling a councilrequest. The only opposing faction apart from the aliens is EXALT which can be regarded as more of a separate mission type with human enemies and not really as a faction that contributes in any diplomatic way. Dont get me wrong, I dont think XCOM needs diplomacy in order to be good. XCOM is already good, fantastic in fact. But if we compare based on features alone and not the quality of their implementation, then Phoenix Point is doing A LOT of things that XCOM never even touched. This is in no way me trying to trash XCOM. I love XCOM, especially Longwar. However for the sake of an at least somewhat fair comparison the only games we should compare Phoenix Point to at this Point are XCOM Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2, both at launch. Bringing Longwar into the mix is something I do for the sake of providing a third angle, not because I am blind to the fact of how ludacris it would be to compare a newly launched game with an extensive overhaul mod that was in the making for years after the vanilla game and even its expansion were already released. As I was saying, along comes Phoenix Point doing all those very ambitious things. And it gets DESTROYED. To quote Beaglerush, the probably best known XCOM streamer out there: “But honestly, for anyone with experience in the XCOM genre, anyone who likes XCOM games, and anyone particularly who likes XCOM games at a harder difficulty or likes to obviously, like, play well, I do not think it is possible to enjoy this game unless you are getting a big paycheck and you are a good actor.” To be clear, I didnt watch the entire footage that made him come to that conclusion and I dont want to comment too much on what “playing well” means, but i have played Longwar on the highest difficulty in ironmanmode for 2000 hours (without beating it, but also always with Training Roulette active) and I have beaten XCOM 2 on highest difficulty in ironman mode. I do consider Longwar as one of my favourite games of all time and I do consider myself as someone who has experience with the genre, likes games and likes to play them “well”, or at least on highest difficulty. I dont agree with Beagle (duh), but I can of course see where he might be coming from. In its current state Phoenix Point is not finished. Playable, but even for an early access game its still pretty rough, with many mechanics not or only sometimes working (leanout, aim and aimsnapping, end turn, details, you get the point), features missing, performance issues, lackluster soldier customization, lackluster diplomacy options, a rather simple skilltree, questionable balance, etc. Don’t look at me like that, if I wanted to I could jump that hatetrain any time! But if I was to do that, where would that leave us? The XCOM genre, as Beagle calls it, is a niche genre at the best of times. Not only regarding the playerbase but also regarding game developers willing to invest time and money into creating something new. Xenonauts 2 is a year or more behind its originally panned release date with not much news to speak of, Terra Invicta is a distant memory of a game that will maybe one day still be released and Im still waiting for the XCOM 3 announcement and who knows if it will even come. Especially after we, the players, completely demolish Phoenix Point to the point where I would just cancel the 5 planned DLCS right now if I was in charge of the devteam. The main reason I defended Phoenix Point was not because of what the game currently is but because of what the game could be after 5 more DLCs. Ive played every backerbuild of the game and statements like “the game is still what it was 2 years ago” are simply and factually false. Especially between backerbuild 4 and 5 there was a huge jump in quality and between 5 and the release version that same jump has ocurred again - with an entire game that is now playable and completable. Yes, it could have more voiced lines instead of text, yes, it doesnt have the sexy “alerted sectoid” animation sequence when you run into a new enemy pod (pods dont exist in PP but you get me) and sure, the epic exclusive sucks I guess and I dont care much for the soundtrack. But after Backerbuild 5, who knows where the game will be after the next DLC? And the next? If you compare XCOM Enemy Unknown with XCOM Enemy Within, the difference was breathtaking. And here we have a game that has so much work already done, so many assets created, so much code already in place, and we, the players, punch them in the face and shout “NOT GOOD ENOUGH!”. You wanna go back to the drawing board, have somebody else start fresh on something that could be better in a year or two if we are lucky? Ive been looking for a game like XCOM for literally years. Battle Brothers was the closest I found. Tens, if not hundreds of others inbetween failed hard, from “Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus” to “Legends: Viking” to “Wildermyth” and basically everything inbetween. And here we have a game that seems to have the right idea, the right amount of ambition and a good amount of the work already done and we are bitchslapping them left and right just so we can go back to getting hyped about the next mediocre linear story experience. Sure, them releasing already is a shame. But if I was the one to decide, I would give them the same amount of money again and triple it and tell them to finish the job instead of spitting in their face when they come to us and lowkey tell us that they ran out of money. And I would send them flowers and tell them that Im sorry. Anybody can polish a game with extra cash, but getting the core idea right is something that even Firaxis almost failed to do with XCOM 2, as far as Im concerned. I said earlier, that there was a deeper underlying problem here and that I would come back to it and here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Modernday gamers are an ungrateful, hateful bunch of whiny spoiled brats, who think they are entitled to only the best of the best while in fact they “deserve” nothing. The entire concept of a kickstarter campaign is that you provide funds and trust so a bunch of people can try to realize their vision. If you dont like the outcome, then that doesnt mean they betrayed you, it means you have poor judgement. Notice how I say judgement and not taste. You dont have poor judgement because you dont like the outcome, but because you gave them money in the first place. I should maybe add at this point that my anger is mostly directed towards the public reaction and the phoenix point subreddit and not towards my own viewership. (hello) Phoenix Point is not the first game that has had me feel like the entire gaming landscape is slowly spiraling out of control. 5 years ago I thought quality means sales. At this point Im worried that a high marketing budget means sales. And I dread the possibility that 5 years from now I might be convinced that a high marketing budget means quality. Some of the best games this year were literally destroyed by players. Artifact wasn’t only boykotted, but actively brutalized, with people at some point purposefully streaming porn and torture under the Artifact tag on Twitch. Pathologic 2 had the devteam almost go bankrupt after poor sales and unfavourable reviews by people that barely grasped the basics of the game. All the while people feed money to the ginormous immortal that is Magic The Gathering and praise Hideo Kojima for his “unique vision” for Death Stranding. I didnt play Death Stranding and Magic can be pretty fun, but does nobody see the smothering double standards in play here? Im not saying that Phoenix Point has no problems right now in terms of quality. Some of the issues player encounter are in fact inexcusable, at least longterm. But XCOM 2 also had a bumpy launch with long loading times and tons of bugs and then they were fixed and today there are people that think XCOM 2 is better than Longwar. Incomprehensible to me how anyone could think that, but time and some postlaunch fixes did clearly change peoples minds. I think the main reason Phoenix Point got so much hate on launch in comparison to XCOM 2 (which also released 3 DLCs ,or was it more) is because its drastically different and more ambitious in many ways, not because it is half as bad as people make it out to be. XCOM is just like Phoenix Point, just dumbed down I guess. Kappa. (I hate it when people use the term “dumbed down”. This is a joke. Ffs why do I have to explain this)

[bellsblake-archive]

the butterfly effect

happy stydia positivity week @hufflepuffkira!! i’ve loved talking to you about stydia this week, and i hope you enjoy this! :D (btw this is kind of a “what might happen if the plot of 6b never happened and everyone was just able to go to college and live their lives” kind of fic)

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere. In other words, a tiny cause can create a catastrophic and unpredictable reaction. When Lydia was first learning about chaos theory, one of the articles she read used the example of a butterfly flapping its wings in California and, days later, causing a hurricane in Japan that formed from the smallest air currents produced by its wings.

In the life of Lydia Martin, Stiles Stilinski was the butterfly.

Or: Lydia reflects on all of the tiny causes that led her and Stiles to the place they are today.

word count: 3255 words

Lydia wakes in the tiny bed in Stiles’ dorm, her face pressed against his chest and his arm flung over her body.

Lifting her head slowly, she removes herself from beneath his arm carefully, trying not to disturb him. His arm drops gently to his side, his hand landing right next to his mouth, which is smushed against the fluffy pillow that’s muffling his soft snores. This is a common occurrence, Lydia waking up before Stiles; she’s always been an early riser, while Stiles could probably sleep through an earthquake without even rolling over.

She studies the sharp planes of his face, the way the light coming in from the window paints him in shades of gold. With a light touch, she traces the hollow of his cheek, the shadows under his eyes, the slight upward curve of his nose; he doesn’t even stir. 

Three months, she thinks, a little wistfully, as she looks at him. Three months, nine months.

Three months of love. Three months of having him by her side and being able to call him her boyfriend when she introduced him to people. Three months of kissing him on the cheek just because she could, and swinging their hands when they walked, and making out in the back seat of his Jeep. Three months spent curled against his side watching cheesy movies, and talking about random things at three in the morning when they were supposed to be asleep, and sleeping in the shirts he’d leave behind in her bedroom (the soft fabric always smelled like him). 

And then, a week ago, they’d left on this epic road trip to Washington. Well, it was really just a trip to drop off Stiles at George Washington University before she headed to MIT, but they’d made it as epic as possible. Sightseeing and ridiculous photos and stays in slightly shitty motels that felt a little like home and making out in every state they passed through, from the west coast to the east. It was one of the happiest weeks of Lydia’s life. For once, they weren’t running or fighting. They were just living.

But starting tomorrow, she would be en route to MIT, and Stiles would be here in Washington D.C. and preparing for his start in the pre-FBI program on Monday. They’d be apart for nine months, the length of the school term.

Nine months of separation. Nine months of Skype calls and text messages that would certainly make her face light up with happiness, but would never hold a candle to the feel of his hand in hers or the way he holds her. Nine months of an empty space beside her where he should be. Nine months of counting the days until they’re together again.

She knows she’s strong and capable and can manage to be away from her boyfriend for a little while. But it’s the last thing she wants. 

Even before they got together, Stiles was a constant in her life throughout most of high school. She’s going to miss him so much, more than she already misses her friends back in Beacon Hills, because he’s different. She realized that when she was sixteen and kissed him on the floor of the locker room and just knew.

If someone had told her a year before then that one day she’d fall in love with Stiles Stilinski, she would have laughed in their face and carried on with her day.

But there she was, fallen. Here she is, fallen. Still falling, every day.

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere. In other words, a tiny cause can create a catastrophic and unpredictable reaction. When Lydia was first learning about chaos theory, one of the articles she read used the example of a butterfly flapping its wings in California and, days later, causing a hurricane in Japan that formed from the smallest air currents produced by the momentum of the insect’s wings.

In the life of Lydia Martin, Stiles Stilinski was the butterfly.

For a long time her life was this incomplete puzzle. Most of the pieces fit together, but there was always one missing piece, one that wouldn’t fit into place no matter how many times she turned it. 

Stiles ended up being that missing piece. He was the one who completed the puzzle, who pulled everything together. He was the butterfly who created the hurricane, a hurricane that whirled through her life and made her into someone stronger, someone real.

Sometimes, she wishes she had realized it sooner.

Sometimes, she wonders if their story would be the same, if she had.

(She wouldn’t trade it for the world.)

By the time Lydia reached high school, she had lost herself. She was already hiding the true extent of her intelligence, sacrificed on the altar of popularity. She was falling into the trap of parties full of booze and dancing - because maybe, if she threw the best ones, people would like her. She was dating Jackson, devoting almost her entire life to please him and then letting him turn around and treat her like shit. And she was miserable, more miserable than anyone knew.

All she wanted was for people to like her more than she hated herself.

It didn’t start that way, but that’s where she was when it ended.

She knew she was spiraling out of control, into a life she didn’t want, but she didn’t see a way out of the endless cycle of hate. Jackson made things worse, and every time he verbally abused her, and compared her to other girls, and told her that she wasn’t pretty enough or good enough and threatened to leave her, she wondered, why is this what I want?

And then, she met Stiles.

All of a sudden he stumbled into her life, dragging Scott and their supernatural drama with him, and saved it. He saved her life, in more ways than one.

Even before she knew about the supernatural - before she knew that she was supernatural - Stiles and Scott were always trying to protect her. She never understood it; she hadn’t been friends with them since elementary school, and she mostly ignored their existence for a long time. Stiles, especially, always seemed to be there when she needed encouragement, which was a lot of the time.

Lydia vividly remembers the day she sat in her car sobbing about Jackson and Stiles stood at her window and tried to comfort her. She remembers when Allison set them up to go to the school dance together - god, Allison always knew what was best for Lydia - and Stiles told her she was beautiful when her own shitty boyfriend wouldn’t. And she remembers the fear she felt, the excitement she felt, when he accused her of being the smartest girl he knew, because she wondered how he could be so perceptive when he barely even spoke to her. But someone knew the real her, and that was enough.

She remembers being fully sucked into the supernatural, remembers the hallucinations and delusions she experienced as the occult grappled for a hold on her. Somewhere along the way, she realized Stiles was in love with her.

Of course, Lydia didn’t know what to do about that. She wasn’t convinced that she liked Stiles as more than a friend, and she was already so far gone with Jackson that breaking up with him wasn’t even an option in her mind. She still continued to fool herself into loving him, even after everything.

But she remembers the way Stiles looked at her as he stood in her bedroom, a nasty scratch on his cheekbone and conviction in his eyes. The tremble in his voice as he told her that if she died, he would lose his mind. 

He saved her he saved her he saved her

She’d thought about death before. On a particularly bad day, a day when Jackson told her she was a waste of space and she felt like her true self was lost forever and she had been crying in her bedroom for hours, she’d considered swallowing a bottle of pills and ending it. The only reason she hadn’t gone through with it was because she didn’t want her mom to have to find her; they’d already lost her dad.

And now, Stiles was standing in the same bedroom and telling her she had to live.

She never thought about death again - only about running from it. To fill the gap, she thought about Stiles.

Days spent holding her tongue and nights spent between Jackson’s sheets began to fade away, replaced by nights spent sitting in the back seat of Stiles’ Jeep discussing literature, mathematics, psychology, politics, the supernatural, and any other subject they could think of until they were blue in the face. Years spent with a fake smile plastered on her perfectly painted face gave way to genuine bursts of laughter - the first in a long time - that Stiles managed to coax out of her by cracking stupid jokes at two in the morning, when they were both already half delirious.

She remembers long days spent in Stiles’ bedroom while he rearranged the yarn on his detective board, as she liked to call it. She’d lay on his bed and read and offer some occasional input. By the end of the day, they were on the verge of solving the next supernatural mystery. Their minds fit nicely together, she thought.

If Allison was her best friend, Stiles was her platonic soulmate. He understood her in a way that no one else did, and he loved her unconditionally even after she internally decided she didn’t have a romantic interest in him. They fell into something easy, and casual, and special, and real. When she was around him, she didn’t have to put her mask on.

Lydia finally felt like a human being again, not a porcelain doll about to shatter.

As the seasons collapsed into each other, she and Stiles only become closer. And she was happy. For the first time in months, in years, she was so genuinely happy.

When she kissed him to stop his panic attack, she never thought it would mean something to her.

Of course, he meant something to her. He was the first person she had truly been herself with, and he liked who she was in a way Jackson and all of her fake, popular friends never had. 

But she’d decided he didn’t mean this to her.

This: the soft press of his lips on hers, the way her entire body broke out in goosebumps when she realized what was happening, the warmth in her chest, the stars in her eyes. He held onto her like a lifeline - and she hoped that was what she was to him, because it was the only way she could ever repay him for being her lifeline, once upon a time.

As she kissed him, she was terrified.

Terrified because she hadn’t been in love since Jackson, who was now long gone. Terrified because last time, being in love had almost ruined her life, even with as forced as that love was. Terrified because even the quiet beginnings of love could be enough to destroy her.

She wasn’t strong enough yet to fall apart all over again.

Her head knew Stiles wouldn’t do that to her. Her head knew Stiles loved her more than his own life.

Her heart said, this is dangerous.

When she pulled away and opened her eyes, he was staring at her with a mixture of shock and awe, an expression she was sure he saw mirrored on her own face. Something was tugging at her, a tiny stirring in her chest. (A butterfly, perhaps, flapping its wings in her rib cage. Ready to cause the catastrophe.)

Dangerous.

She wasn’t ready to give her heart away again, not after she’d spent so long trying to pick up all the pieces that Jackson broke. She decided to hold onto her heart for a little longer, to nurture these stirrings of a feeling, to be rational about all of this before acting. 

(Later that day, she found out that she and Stiles shared an emotional tether. If she’s being honest, she wasn’t even surprised.)

One day, she finally let her love for Stiles consume her, until she was going down in flames.

She was laying on her stomach on his bed, bare feet and faded red lipstick and layers of her hair falling out of their pins, wrapping a piece of red string from his detective board around and around her fingers. And she was upset, because she’d had a false banshee premonition that got Stiles in trouble.

When Stiles noticed how upset she was, he walked over from the board and knelt in front of her. He told her not to doubt her abilities, and that he’d go back to school and search all night to prove to her that she was right.

And in that moment, her heart swelled with love for him, and she allowed it to overwhelm her. He was looking into her eyes, wonderstruck, as if she’d hung the moon and painted the constellations in the sky, and she knew that he had to be the one for her. Their lives didn’t intertwine like this for nothing.

Oh, she thought, her hands trembling a little as he carefully unwrapped the red string she’d looped around her fingers. Oh. This is what it feels like.

Like falling. Like flying.

Maybe she was the butterfly now. 

For a while, Lydia thought she’d lost him completely.

After Allison died - unexpectedly, horrifically - and Lydia felt the pang of it down in the tunnels, and she held onto Stiles and screamed and screamed until her throat was hoarse, Stiles became distant. Lydia knew he felt responsible for Allison’s death, and she knew that guilt manifested itself in nightmares and panic attacks. She shoved her confusing feelings aside, telling herself she’d deal with them at a later time, and tried to be there for Stiles the way he’d always been there for her. But every time Lydia tried to reach out to him, he seemed to push her farther and farther away.

She spent many a night curled up in bed, hugging a pillow to her chest and sobbing until her eyes burned. She’d lost Allison, and now it looked like her other best friend was lost to her, too.

And then Stiles started dating Malia, and Lydia couldn’t help but wonder why he’d allowed her into his life and not one of his best friends. She buried her feelings deeper and deeper until she thought they’d finally shriveled away. She made her peace with the fact that Stiles wasn’t the same thing to her anymore.

When she was locked in Eichen House, she wasn’t even sure if Stiles would come for her.

But then there he was: her salvation, her destruction, hurricane and hope all wrapped into one body, and she realized she still loved him despite everything. Dimly, as he unhooked her from the bed, she thought, Is this it felt like for you, all those years you loved me and I didn’t love you back?

He saved her, again. He was always saving her.

After Eichen House, Lydia finally regained some of her old friendship with Stiles. A little distant, a little awkward at the start, but soon they were falling back into old habits. She found herself in the back of his Jeep again, but now instead of talking about academics, they were sharing nightmares. 

Stiles talked to her about Allison, whose blood wasn’t even on Stiles’ hands, and the chimera boy Donovan, whose blood actually was on his hands. He talked about the way he thought he saw them everywhere, out of the corner of his eye, and about the panic he felt when he did. And she talked to him about Eichen House, about the experiments they tried to perform on her, and he’d listen quietly and hold her and stroke her hair over the scar the Dread Doctors drilled into her head.

It wasn’t as easy as it was before. Back then they were children; now, they were broken, and it took a while before their jagged edges fit together just right. But for Stiles, it was worth the extra effort. 

And then Stiles was taken by the Ghost Riders, and she felt like there was some crucial piece of her soul missing and she had no idea what it was. Like someone had taken a knife to her heart and carved out a little piece to keep without her noticing. She’d stand by her locker, waiting for someone to walk her to class who never came. She’d remember loving someone, but when she tried to think of his face, she drew a blank.

A little lost, a little unmoored. Determined to find him and remember him and bring him home.

And when she finally did remember, it was while replaying their story in her mind. Everything came filtering back, piece by piece, but it wasn’t enough. She was searching for the memory that would open the floodgates. She was searching for the butterfly that would cause the hurricane.

She wandered away, led by some inexplicable force to the locker room - significant, although she didn’t know why. And then she saw herself, sitting on the ground beside a boy weighed down by anxiety and fear and guilt and sadness - all of the things she’d been weighed down by before he stumbled into her life - and she saw herself kiss him.

She saw the light dawning on her own face - he saved me, I love him - and then it all came flooding back.

Remember I love you.

In that moment, she knew she was right not to ever give up on him.

When she woke from that hazy dream, she woke with tears in her eyes, sobbing  to Scott that she never said it back, and Scott understood because he’d watched them dance around each other for three years. He’d watched his best friend love her for nearly ten. And Lydia was also crying because it was still hard to believe she was that special, so special that Stiles suffered through an unrequited love for her for ten years when loving him for two had almost killed her. It was hard to believe that the lost girl she’d been could be so lucky.

And when she finally reunited with him and kissed him again, and she realized he’d loved her all along, she finally had the good sense to think, to know with all certainty, this is what I want.

When she finally stops reminiscing, she notices that Stiles has woken up and is blinking at her sleepily. “What are you thinking about?” he mumbles.

The corner of her mouth turns up, just a tad, and she leans down to kiss his lips. “You,” she whispers, like a prayer. “Us.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she hums. “And I’m going to miss you so much when we’re at different colleges, but I know we’ll be okay.”

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “You’ve been so worried about this all week, and now you seem like you’ve made your peace with it. Why?”

She smiles. “Because of the butterfly effect.”