#cus we certainly didn’t play the same game and honestly? I’ve seen people just straight up admit they haven’t. they’re in it for the twins-

[archersgaymerblog]

Regarding Volo at the moment, but also in general with any hardcore villainized characters, I certainly get the sentiment behind wanting to not woobify antagonistic characters too much, but also like. I think for me, when the primary fandom take away is that a character is HARDCORE IRREDEEMABLE, NO GOOD QUALITIES IN THIS ONE!!! it’s almost like… an act of balancing out. Yes, I get Bad Man did Bad Things, I’m a person with a brain, but when it seems like EVERYONE is talking about how the Bad Man did Bad Things and needs to be, generally, physically harmed for the Bad He Did, it just feels like an act of balance to say,

“Okay but why don’t we explore this line where he said he’s experienced trauma before? And how he instantly backs away from talking about it under the explanation he gave himself that everyone must experience trauma to that degree?”

Or, “Hey, the guy has three friendship evolution Pokémon, two of which notably will leave their trainers if they don’t like them. Why do people extrapolate from that that he must be an abusive trainer?”

Or, gods fucking forbid, “Hey. Why is this character, who’s notably got indigenous roots to the setting, constantly being made the villain in angsty stories for the two white twins?”

Idk man, again I get not wanting to woobify too much, not wanting to strip a complex character of their complexity and the like, but if your takeaway is that any sympathetic or nuanced takes on a heavily villainized character is “woobifying,” like… idk, touch grass as the kids say. Who’s going to stop me, the Anti-Wooby Police?

[megaphonemonday]

prompt: Mike/Blip/the team's reaction to the video of Ginny's dunk into the pool.

This is a kind of/sort of prequel to right between the ribs from Mike’s POV. Both fics can stand alone, though.

it’s sinking in | ao3

Mike rolled into the clubhouse later than he’d been in weeks. If his hangover of pretty epic proportions weren’t sufficient as an excuse, the fact that he’d spent last evening in the company of first his pissed off pitcher and then his ex-wife plus her current fiancé—in the house where Mike had once dreamed of starting a family—more than made up the difference. 

That he’d also had to drive all the way back to La Jolla from the dinner party from hell, painfully sober and replaying the way Rachel’d lingered in his arms, smelling so familiar and like everything he’d once wanted, hadn’t helped. Maybe if he hadn’t had those two interminable hours to himself, mulling and obsessing over every detail of the night and how he couldn’t seem to keep even one woman in his life, Mike wouldn’t have gotten home and immediately raided his bar to drown his sorrows and uncertainties.

But he had, and now he was stuck nursing both an ugly hangover and the usual parade of regrets.

And a few new ones.

Stalking through the bowels of Petco, sunglasses firmly in place even in the low lighting, Mike tried to shake Amelia’s parting shot to him, but his mind was like an echo chamber.

You know, your head wasn’t really in it, anyway. You should figure out where it’s been.

Well, he knew the answer to that. With Rachel. It was why he’d gone over there, after all. 

Wasn’t like Ginny’d miss him from her ridiculous party with all her fawning fans, anyway. In fact, she hadn’t seemed to miss him, or their evening chats or their morning workouts or their ability to exist in the same space, at all. 

Which didn’t matter because Mike still wanted Rachel back. 

She was the only one he could want. Back. She was the only one he could want back.

With great effort, Mike shut off that train of thought and tried to start coming up with retorts for all the ribbing he was bound to endure the minute he walked into the clubhouse, late and clearly worse for the wear. It wasn’t that he’d stopped loving his grand entrances, but maybe he could admit that showing up with more than enough time to suit up and stumble onto the field before BP was helping his game. It’d been a while since he’d cut it so close. The sudden reappearance of his old habits was bound to stir up some shit. 

Which was why it was more than a little bizarre to walk into the clubhouse and have his presence go completely unnoted. Never mind the comebacks he’d crafted that now had no outlet. He was their captain, god damn it! His arrival should mean something. 

That was definitely not the case today. His team of lazy losers all had their noses practically glued to their phones and tablets, either couched out at their lockers or gathered in little knots around the clubhouse. 

All of them but one. 

Blip sat with his back to the room, shoulders hunched and a worried pucker denting his forehead as he methodically rolled a bat between his palms. He didn’t even look up at Mike’s approach.

Not until he huffed a grouchy, “Hey,” that was.

That startled the center fielder out of his thoughts and got him to at least acknowledge his friend and captain. Rather than say anything about his tardiness, though, Blip demanded, “Man, where’d you disappear to last night?”

Taken aback, Mike lied, “Had to pick up some of my stuff from the house,” and threw his bag in his locker and dropped his sunglasses on a shelf. He couldn’t help but wince at the glare from the overheads. God, he definitely should’ve taken more aspirin this morning.

Blip seemed doubtful, but was apparently willing to let it slide, which was absolutely a first in their friendship. What the hell was going on today? “Well, we could’ve used you,” was all he replied, like that made any sense, and went back to warming the barrel of his bat. 

Mike just rolled his eyes, slumped into his chair, and started unbuttoning his flannel. Used him for what? No one at that party was remotely interested in his presence. Certainly not whatever “we” Blip meant.

“Yo, Lawson!” called… someone.

Honestly, he was too fucking exhausted to care who it was. Still, he grunted his acknowledgement, continuing to change out of his street clothes and get ready for warmups. Was it too much to wear both eyeblack and sunglasses? Considering the way the soft incandescents in here were stabbing into his brain, the San Diego sun was going to be murderous. 

He almost missed the follow up question in his deliberations.

“You seen what Baker got up to last night?”

What?

Mike swiveled his chair around to face the room as a whole. If Stubbs, who must’ve been the one to ask considering how close he was, startled back at the forbidding frown on his captain’s face, that wasn’t high on Mike’s list of priorities. 

“What d’you mean, ‘What Baker got up to?’ She was at her party.”

“Nah, man,” replied Sonny, from all the way across the room. “Girl went rogue.”

Suddenly, Amelia’s texts last night, long after he’d left the Nike shindig, made much more sense. He’d ignored both the, Have you seen Ginny? and the follow up, ??? five minutes later in favor of trying to pick apart his wife’s fiancé. Now, he wished he hadn’t, and not just because he hadn’t managed to ruffle any of David’s feathers. He should’ve realized something had actually gone wrong if Amelia was actually reaching out to him. 

Not that he would’ve been able to do anything if he had. Certainly not with how pissed Baker’d been at him last night. After she walked away from him on the step and repeat, she hadn’t let herself come within five feet of him all evening. And it wasn’t like she’d’ve taken his call, not if the past week had been any indication. 

Okay. Maybe she’d been pissed for longer than just last night. 

Still, that didn’t do much to ease the guilt settling in his gut. He could’ve tried to call.

(He had, in fact, stared at Ginny’s contact information in his phone for a long time last night. Had been this close to calling her, begging her to let him back in. But, moody and drunk as he’d been, he hadn’t been stupid. Mike still knew she wouldn’t pick up. He’d tossed his phone away and opted for more bourbon.)

Sweeping his gaze around the clubhouse, it wasn’t lost on Mike that everyone was very interested in his response. The next chair over, Blip was very still.

He played it cool. 

“Rogue, huh? Now this I’ve gotta see.”

Immediately, three phones were shoved in his face, all with the same video cued to play. 

Mike took the closest one and watched the scant minute of footage: all the way from Ginny bouncing eagerly on the mini trampoline, her quest for shoes, the grinning banter with someone off camera, the superhero leap and dunk, her burst through the surface of the water, crowing, “What else you got?” before falling back, a feral grin on her lips.

He watched it all. 

(Right up to her clambering out of the pool, nimble fingers already reaching around to tug down the zipper of that god damn, dress. That dress that clung even more stubbornly to her after its impromptu soaking.)

He flung the phone back at its owner before he could see more and tried to come up with something, anything, to say that didn’t hint at the roiling in his gut which suddenly had nothing to do with last night’s drinking.

“Well, boys, looks like Baker can wipe the floor with you on the court, too.”

His (weak) joke seemed to open the floodgates. Immediately, the clubhouse filled with excited chatter that Mike made himself wade through. 

“Told you! Girl’s got mad hops!”

“She’s killing it on twitter. There’re at least three trending hashtags devoted to that dunk!”

“Kinda funny she couldn’t find a pair of Nikes, though.”

From what Mike could tell, the team consensus was largely positive. The few holdouts on the Ginnsanity front could admit that she knew how to blow off steam like a real major leaguer. The rest of the team was absurdly proud of her poolside antics. Her dunk was their dunk. It didn’t matter that this was all the press would ask about today and probably for the rest of the week. With one leap, Ginny’d proven she had the balls to hang with them. 

Mike, however, wasn’t so sure. 

In the nearly two months that he’d known her, he’d come to realize that Ginny’s calm, unflappable facade wasn’t just an act. She wasn’t a robot, felt things acutely, in fact, but she was pragmatic, too. Why waste all this energy losing her cool at every slight provocation? Sure, she knew how to stand up for herself, but most of the time, she picked her battles wisely. Better to buckle down and prove that she deserved every opportunity that came her way. Let her success speak for itself.

But that Ginny was nowhere to be seen in the video he just watched.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t the same person, though. It was still Ginny Baker, just gone off the rails. 

Which was when it occurred to Mike that maybe they’d been heading to a blowout like this for a while now. Maybe Ginny could be calm and unflappable because she’d known there were people who had her back. She had her friends and the team. She had him. She had Amelia. 

But maybe that was hard to believe when he and Amelia suddenly had each other. 

Fuck. 

Without a word, Mike pushed to his feet, fully intending to set the record straight.

“I doubt she wants to see you, dude,” came his center fielder’s voice. When Mike turned, Blip had his arms crossed over his chest, a frown on his face.

“I’m her captain,” he rumbled. “Doesn’t matter if she wants to see me. She’s gonna.”

Blip’s eyes narrowed and he came in close, though it was more likely an effort to keep anyone else from putting their nose where it didn’t belong than an intimidation tactic. 

“She’s already had a long day, Mike. She doesn’t need anyone ragging on—”

“I just need to know she’s okay,” Mike interrupted, trying to tamp down on the indignation burning in his chest. Like he’d actually go rub her nose in whatever bad decisions she’d made last night. Like he could judge. “That’s all.”

Blip evaluated him for a long moment before offering him the barest of nods and stepping away. 

Still, Mike was fully aware of the other man’s eyes on him as he stopped outside Baker’s door and knocked. 

It was a good thing, he told himself, that Ginny had such good friends on her side. He’d feel better, though, when he could count himself among that number again.