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of-tatooine · 4 years

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for the record. | chapter 1 - alpha

off-duty time would not last you for too long.

After all these years, the world never ceased to remind you that rules never changed.

While the players of the game always rotated along with the enemy and the friendly alike, this dangerous life that many chose to lead had undeniable constants - etched onto your brain in a devout mantra, something to remember in your darkest or most fleeting moments.

Kill, or be killed.

That was the first thing that they taught you, at the beginning of those long and arduous days of training in the barracks. Scout out the situation and if there is any sign of remote danger, pull your gun first, or you will end up with a bullet in your head. Sometimes, it was better to shoot first and then ask questions - if you were still alive by then.

Though in your line of work, the learning phase never ended. Warfare shifted and changed constantly, forcing you to adapt. It was something you had to just come in terms with. At that point in your career, as sad as it was to think about it from a civilian’s perspective, it was all more creative and effective ways of getting confirmed kills. New weapons, new tactics brought with them new problems - along with new ways of dealing with them. Technology tackled advanced aircraft and armor, adding up to your arsenal.

One thing remained the same.

It all added up to the big stirring pot of the everlasting recipe - mass destruction.

And with destruction came in the casualties. The aftermath of modern combat. The rivers of blood on pavement, hands clawing at the burnt metal, scathed bodies crawling out of the smoky debris. Sights and sounds and screams you wanted to erase from your memory for a lifetime. The pain coarsing through the body after the penetration of a bullet. Sickening roars of helicopter engines giving out.

Yet, as a soldier, all you could do, all you were authorized to do was to bury them deep down - so you could live to see another day. Another day to fight for the flag. For peace, for honor and for the sake of lives.

The lives of many against your only.

The warm mug a welcome distraction in your hands, your eyes would wander around the busy Regent Street of London, people walking around in the usual hustle and bustle of the shopping district. The smell of freshly ground beans from the cafes scattered around, mixing in with the pleasantness of the gray post-rainfall. A spectrum of vibrant colors of shopping bags and clothes pleasing your eyes - it had been a while since you had gotten to enjoy a couple of hours all saved for yourself. The book whose pages were between your fingers moments ago then closed, as your conscience lost itself within the faces creating the sea of people.

The lives you were sworn to protect. Sometimes it felt like remembering another life, far far away - that you had been one of them. A civilian. Who needed protection in times of immediate danger.

Some were smiling and laughing, without a care in the world, radiating energy and happiness which had been a blessing in the usual London gloom. Some were in professional attire, their strides just a bit faster and their expressions harboring that of stress, concern and exhaustion. Not too long ago, you had been one of them - but your brain did not let you dissociate from the constucted reality you had left just yet.

None of those troubles mattered when snipers left and right rained bullets on you. The stress of studying for a big test was nothing compared to being caught in blast radius, fearing to look around you so you do not see your friends dead and gone.

The echoes of your last name originating from an accented, deep voice reached your ears, rippling inside the busy cafe you had chosen to visit for the day. Coming closer and closer until they associated with a couple thuds of heavy feet and finally, a face, as you turned around to face whomever was looking for you.

Out of all places, Captain.

It did not take you too long to get to your feet out of respect and sheer habit, offering him a nod in an attempt to hide your surprise. “Sergeant,” he would greet you with your rank, the commanding voice he used on the field to lead dampened - yet still powerful. It even had a small smile attached to it too, which was not unusual.

It made the thumping of your heart slow down. A civilian visit from your Captain usually meant bad news and noticing his mouth curl up under the beard calmed you down more than you ever thought.

“Captain Price,” you greeted back, arm gesturing to the seat right in front of you across the marble table, inviting him. “Please.”

The man, whom you had become so used to seeing in the famous military green was dressed in the simple and casual combination of a black jacket with jeans. It was a welcome change - not often did you see your commanding officer at a coffee shop in the heart of the city. Consequently, the air had been a bit awkward - just like how it felt when you felt the need to always show your best self, like there had been no room for mistakes.

That did not mean you could not try to get on his better side.

“Can I get you anything, Sir? Tea? I doubt they have a good pint here.”

That was when he looked directly in your eyes.

They said all soldiers had this blur in their eyes wherever they looked at. That no matter how happy they had been, no matter how much sparkle covered their worn-out irises, the dusty haze that veiled them was ever present. His familiar blue glint was subdued by some unknown, yet not lifeless. Not soulless. There was some sort of drive fueling him, the origins of it unbeknownst to you - the only thing you could discern was that it must have been for some good, judging by his chuckle and the slight shake of his head.

A file stamped with the all-too-familiar red confidential sign slid across the white marble along with him as he got settled in the chair, leaning his elbows slightly over the top.

“Raincheck, Sergeant, but I do have something that you might like.”

And with that, his fingers pushed the rather thin file over to you, blue eyes gazing around the shop as he undoubtedly made sure everyone was minding their own business. Here at London, he knew he had been safer than most places and yet you could only attest to the cautiousness of the man.

An eyebrow slightly raised as you leaned a bit forward, the initial welcome surprise slowly yielding to apprehension of what was inside the document. Another mission assingment had been the last thing you wanted to see after the literal living hellhole of the battlezone you had last been to. A part of you did not want to open up that cover but the other half of you yearned desperately to.

With a quick look to confirm, once you got his nod, you yielded to your other half.

And with every second spent looking at the papers containing profiles and overviews adorned with the faint Crusader shield watermarks, your eyebrows would furrow even more in confusion. Towards the bottom of the page, you could spot the one-liner character profiles for soldiers - some you had recognized and worked with, some names ringing no bells at all.

Then there it was. It was a mystery to you why it had taken you that long to find it. Right under the line occupied by a certain “John ‘Soap’ Mactavish” was your full name, with a old picture of you that belonged to one of your earlier days of training.

What the hell kind of a name is Soap?

“Now, I know you’re on the reserve for the time being,” Price spoke, breaking you out of your silent concentration as your head snapped up to divert focus into him. “But your skills in combat were not unnoticed.”

That made you proud inside, yet on the outside - it manifested in a subtle way of a simple yet courteous nod as you waited for him to continue. Closing the file for the time being, you felt the air shift as he leaned in towards you - voice dropping lower and tone growing grave.

“We have a huge war looming in the horizon, Sergeant,” he said, piercing orbs staring right into your soul. The kind of stare that could have the toughest of soldiers crack and break down, that could stop the bullet in trajectory.

“Millions of lives are at stake. You saw what happened in Urzikistan - you were there, on the frontlines.”

The mere mention of the place made your jaw clench and a gulp run down your throat, the memories of utter bloodshed still fresh in your mind.

“It is going to happen again.”

“How can I help?” slipped out of your mouth before your brain could control it, completely forgetting the fact that you had been granted off-duty time and was currently on it. Forgetting that you had to worry about taking care of your own demons in your head first, before jumping right into a war you thought you had just ended.

“I want you to be on my team,” he simply said, a look of reassurance thrown your way as he folded his arms on the table, head tilting just a bit to gauge yur reaction. His finger reached out to gently tap on the folder, gently opening the tab and pointing to the list of soldiers including yours truly.

“You will be working with handpicked warriors, the toughest of them all. Undertaking the most covert and dangerous operations - changing the world as you do it.”

There was this tone of finality in his voice that made it feel natural for you to follow everything he was instructing you to. Of course it was - he was your commanding officer, yet what he was asking out of you this time was much more than a simple recruitment for an operation.

No, what he made it sound like was that his team would be something akin to a ghost - working behind enemy lines, not alerting a single soul. It honored you that he had included you along with the names of seemingly renown soldiers, selected for off-the-grid duty due to your previous success. But was there really a need to add any additional danger to your already-risky life? It was a miracle you had not died yet and you were not so sure if another covert operation team would help with your chances. These kinds of operations only ended in either of the two ways - your mutilated corpse in a body bag or carrying your friend’s instead.

There probably also would not be many other occassions where Captain Price, one of the most trusted officers in the Services, would approach you with such an opportunity.

As your mind raced in crazy thought traffic, the sounds of the outside world and the otherwise peaceful cafe had been muffled. It was only you, him, and that little paper file you grazed your fingertips on, in order to maintain at least a slice of reality. Decisions like these had never been easy to make, especially when they would completely change your life and possibly your entire outlook. They never would be easy - there was not much “easy” associated to your line of work.

And yet going into it in the first place was something you had willingly chosen.

After all of that blood, sweat and lead - how could you say no?

Taking a deep breath as your lips moved to echo your determined voice, you spoke sofly with a nod. Chest loosening as you let out a breath you had no idea you had been holding for so long.

“I’m in, Sir.”

The ghost of a smile turned into a real one as his hand extended itself over the table, an almost proud nod as you shook it as firmly as you could.

“Welcome to the 141.”

next chapter

#here we GOOOO #lmk what you think!!!#john mactavish x reader #john soap mactavish #soap mactavish x reader #cod #modern warfare #cod reader insert #lets goooooo #john price #captain price #mw #mw2

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steve0discusses · 3 years

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Yugioh Season Zero: The Yo-yo Crimes of Jounouchi Pt 2

OK, last we left off, we were in a different Youtube video. This one I grabbed off of 2 different videos (you’ll see their watermark in the corner change) and it makes me appreciate the quality that our other episodes have been, honestly. A little bit of compression going on in these, just to give you even more of that nostalgic feel of watching a bootleg anime from the 90′s your brother got from his weird high school friend’s Napster account.

Because this is done with subtitles on, it takes more caps to cover it. Part of why I rewrite the dialogue in these recaps is to help abridge stuff, and so consider yourself warned...there’s a lot of caps in this one. For most of you, that’s probably not much of a problem. But I’m just letting you know because...I sure wasn’t expecting it to be over 40 caps for half an episode, and I’ll probably just type less to make up for that. (Tumblr keeps Erasing All My Words anyway, so this is for the best, but that’s a tech issue I already went into in another post.)

(read more under the cut)

So, to start off, Yugioh and co. walk up to a bar like a really weird version of a bar joke and are like “do you know where we can find the yo-yo gang?” And, much like a video game npc, the bartender was like “I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about, and I heard every part of their intimate conversation. Let me give you all the details, children.”

Hey, PS, there’s an entire Wikipedia entry about the bar joke. And that is wild. Apparently the first bar joke was from Ancient Sumeria, and Wikipedia was like “Here is the Sumerian joke, but we Do Not Get it. Please don’t try to get it.”

The joke being: "A dog walked into a tavern and said, 'I can't see a thing. I'll open this one'."

Damn. I can’t believe the Sumerians were onto meme humor before we ever invented memes. They were in the Galaxy brain over there in the land before time, holy crap. Depositing their memes knowing that 7,000 years later mankind would look at the world’s first joke and be like “I don’t get it!” while all the millennials and zoomers with our MB of nonsense memes on our phones are like “No. I get it.” Good on you Sumerians, that is freakin the best joke ever made. 7000 years to get to the punch line of confusing the hell out of all us. Bless.

They promptly tell Miho that everything was resolved and that she should go to bed and she was like “Cool!” and exited stage left. Bye, I guess. Anzu also went home, but she didn’t have to be tricked into doing it, she just went the hell to bed.

(PS, I just realized that if I want to write less...I should probably not look up Wikipedia articles about the world’s first ever bar joke. But y’all, habits die so freakin hard, and I just feel like it’s very pertinent to this Yugioh recap, although I know it’s really not.)

Yuugi and Honda decide to visit the warehouse and harass Jounouchi. In the context of the show, they’re going out of their way to pull their best friend out of society’s systemic downward pull of a life of crime and most likely turning into exactly like his Father. But, the way that it’s storyboarded makes it look a lot like these kids just show up out of the corner and this gang was like “Damn it, again? OMG small children, please leave us alone!”

Honda hands over the symbolism sash, to which Jounouchi symbolically says “Nyeh.”

And Honda didn’t take it very well.

After tending to his kidneys for a little while, Honda decided to go back at it again at the Krispy Cream and do some sort of insane parkour over this completely ordinary fence.

Ah, the very first instance of real duel law where you duel over a relationship. In later seasons duel law is invoked for things like Mai’s marriage and the right to date Tea (and then just kind of forgetting you ever won the right to date Tea twice). But to think the very first time was Honda dueling for the right of Jounouchi to be part of nerd gang because Jounouchi had fallen to the dark side yo-yo gang across the street run by some 40 year old man with blue hair.

How many times is Honda gonna fight with a broom? Like are they just magnetized to his location? where are they even coming from?

Freakin janitor powers over here, put him in a Final Fantasy style RPG. I want to see what his limit break would be.

Not like it matters, because Hirotani very quickly explains why these yo-yo’s are at all a threat.

Which honestly shouldn’t be...so lethal? Seems like the weight is all you need, not really the spikes. But it’s at least stronger than Honda’s janitor stuff.

Unfortunate for Honda that he just destroyed an antique.

So with lightning reflexes, Yuugi does what he does most:

The death yo-yo ricochets back and does this little itty bitty scrape to this guy’s face and he’s real bothered by it. Although it’s like...well dude, you’re a 50 year old high schooler, I don’t think people will notice the scrape compared to everything else falling apart in your life.

And so then the Yugioh Season Zero team was like “oh shoot is it time to torture Yuugi???” and they got hella excited.

Like I thought it was just Yuugi’s class that were a bunch of disturbing criminal disasters, but I guess it’s the whole city. Like...was Yuugi’s class the good school?

I mean, it can’t be, there’s no way...

but like...is there a good school in this universe? How does anyone survive till graduation? If you so much as disgrace a yo-yo, you will get the torture treatment that I sure did expect in Yakuza games, but not so much in Yugioh, tbh.

Just a reminder: This is the third time we’ve beat up Yuugi this episode. Within the first meeting of Yuugi and Hirotani, he beat the tar out of Yuugi within eye shot of Jounouchi. So like...Jounouchi was reallllllllllllllllly lax on that deal, right? Like...he took his toot sweet time to realize “yeah this just ain’t ever gonna happen.”

And then the yo-yo wars begin.

Just like Solid Snake crawling through the radiation chamber.

Hirotani throws his Fyper-yoyo, Jounouchi intercepts with his Eireboy, and Hirotani’s completely terrible yo-yo just flies off the string again because Hirotani should have just sticked to using his fists. No wonder they wanted to recruit Jounouchi so badly, their yo-yo game is so off.

We never get a door to darkness in this episode, dipping our enemies into mind horrors. Instead, we get home-alone style traps. But, this makes sense. Not only do the show makers have to make Yuugi avoid solving problems with magic in front of Jounouchi, they also have to make it Jounouchi’s choice to leave Hirotani behind. If Yuugi did it for him in like...some sort of duel law situation...then that sort of leaves out Jounouchi’s choice in the equation.

Not like this ever really comes up in later seasons, since who even follows through with duel law and marries Mai? But like, it does feel like Season Zero calls out the later Seasons a bit in this regard. Honda got beat up because he tried to win Jounouchi back by force (or game, I guess.) That was just another form of coercion on the heels of Hirotani’s. What Jounouchi actually needed was to make his own decision to leave.

...most other anime I’d be like “I’m sure that’s just a translation error” but not this one.

So Yuugi runs to the roof where Jounouchi will never see this.

My audible sigh reading this line about fight club roof.

These stupid gang members went into Yuugi’s native territory, not just a fight club roof, but on a warehouse? They were dead before they arrived.

This was like maybe 3 frames of animation in just rapid succession, it was pretty silly and good.

Reminder that like 4 minutes ago, Yuugi was about to get like executed on a meat hook.

Speaking of getting executed on a meathook:

Hope you like the idea of glass in your eyes, because this anime’s got it.

They chase Yuugi around, in a sequence that was done mostly to conserve frames, so you rarely saw the ground until this shot:

Lots of falling down this episode, but unlike Tea, who fell from a warehouse ceiling once and just kind of rubbed her ass after and was like “ah damn it.” these guys won’t come out of it virtually unscathed.

Also, Honda is here now:

Jumping off of his symbolic sash trapeze, he decides to do in Hirotani for good.

Hey so like...walk the dog is a fairly gentle walk that a yo-yo does slowly on the ground right?

Just pointing out how sensitive Hirotani’s fingies are.

And he...didn’t appear to be dead, so I don’t have to add to the bodycount...but it’s gonna be a real long road for recovery.

And now, with the gang back together Jounouchi is back at school knee deep in make up assignments he’ll probably completely ignore since we know that in a years time, these fools are going to be trapped on Pegasus’ island, and at that point school will be just that place you talk about when you try to remember why you’re friends with Bakura.

---hey aren’t those chairs attached to the desks?

Because...holy crap, Anzu.

Honestly this is what you see before you die, but I guess Jounouchi died off screen after the episode ended, so I don’t have to add him to the deathcount (again). RIP.

Alright! That took like...8 tries to get Tumblr to save this one, but it managed! (well...I guess “managed” isn’t the word you’d use for a typing program that takes 8 tries to save)

Next time, we’ll be back to S5, for an arc I’ve heard is kind of boring. We’ll see. If it truly is, I can condense episodes into fewer posts. Or maybe it’s a secret gem? I guess we shall see.

And if you just got here this is a link to read all the Season Zero recaps from the start:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yuugi-muto/chrono

(there’s also a link to read all the Yugioh posts we wrote from the start in chrono order but straight up, this file won’t freakin save, and I just can’t even will myself to look up that link again. It’s on the home page of this blog on the right.)

#YGO #yugioh #yu gi oh #Yuugi Muto #Jounouchi #Honda #Anzu #Miho #yo yo gang #Hirotani #Yuugi and the gang do serious property damage

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kutemouse · 4 years

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Buzzed (Part Two)

Disclaimers: I did not create the gorgeous edits in my header, but I did edit them together into the frames, add my title, and my name. Credit for these amazing edits (from left to right) go to @jixio, @yeonkiminsgirl, and @kookbite. I did not touch their edits in any way, and their watermarks are intact. Please check them out, they do great work.

Age Recommendation: 21+ (Not just a recommendation, kuties!)

Genre: Bartender AU w/ Jungkook, Angst, Smut

Warnings: Mentions of consumption of alcohol, swears (duh), Jungkook taking his damn time, making out, dom JK if you squint, hickey giving/receiving, breast play, oral (f. receiving) on the FLOOR (dId ShE vAcUuM tHo), no penetrative sex tho! Saving that for later.

Word Count: 1.6k

Masterlist

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Buzzed (Jungkook One-Shot, Smut, Angst) Part Two

As I led Jungkook up to my apartment, I realized just how light I felt. Maybe things would be okay. After all, I had a smokin’ hot guy ready to fuck me into oblivion with a glimmer of hope for more. Between the way this day started and the way it was going to end, I began to realize that maybe my break-up wasn’t a bad thing. What’s that saying again? One door closes, and another one opens?

And boy, was this door definitely opening. Jungkook couldn’t even wait to begin, sliding his large hands up and down my thighs and over my ass, pressing himself into me as I unlocked the door. Anticipation shot shivers through my skin, raising goosebumps and causing a rush that had nothing to do with the alcohol I consumed earlier. I sighed into his touch, enjoying the way his nimble fingers played with the hem of my shirt, grazing over the skin of my navel. “Stop,” I giggled. “That tickles.”

With a smirk, Jungkook did no such thing, continuing to tickle my waist even as we stumbled through the door. I laughed harder, swatting his hands away, his grin growing wider and wider until it practically filled the room.

We fell onto the couch, and the tension in the air switched over from lighthearted fun to something more sensual. Jungkook just looked at me for a moment, brushing my bangs away from my face, his dark eyes wide and bright as he looked up and down my face. “What’re you looking at?” I murmured.

“You,” he replied simply.

He stroked his forefinger down the skin of my cheek, making me swallow hard. “What about me?” I whispered.

Jungkook looked straight into my eyes with his, prying my soul open with every second his stare bore into me. His tongue darted out of his mouth, momentarily distracting me with the way it prodded that perfect cupid’s bow. I looked back up, his pupils blowing as my gaze snagged back onto his eyes. So slowly I almost didn’t realize what was happening, Jungkook’s eyelids fluttered shut and he leaned in, pressing his lips to mine with an intensity that made my head spin.

His kisses started off slow and sensual, his tongue erotically slipping in and out of my mouth. I tasted the spice of whiskey and moaned. He broke apart from me to let out a cocky chuckle. “Good girl,” he murmured, leaning back in and devouring my mouth with his.

The sound of his lips colliding with mine combined with his deep, approving grunts was making me feel some type of way. I suddenly became very aware of the way his body fit in between my legs, the way a couple layers of clothing were the only things separating us, and the way moisture seeped into my panties at the thought of what was to come.

As if he could smell my arousal, Jungkook let out a growl and ramped things up by feverishly pressing hard kisses to my lips, each one getting more and more sloppy as his tongue worked wonders. I came into this feeling mostly sober, but now I was sure I was drunk again.

I grabbed onto the collar of his leather jacket, practically ripping it from his shoulders. Jungkook complied, tossing it onto the floor behind us. The thin, white shirt he had on underneath followed, and I ran my hands all over his newly naked torso, appreciating the muscles that rippled up and down his sinful body. Jungkook stopped ravaging my lips only to nip at the skin of my neck, leaving behind red stains that I knew would fade to a nice, dark purple.

His fingers once again played with the hem of my shirt, raising it above my navel, and I shuddered with pleasure as the bare skin of his stomach touched mine. Jungkook let up wreaking havoc on my previously flawless skin only to raise the shirt over my head and toss it next to where his leather jacket lay. With a heaving chest, he looked me up and down, his dark eyes catching on the curve of my breasts. “Take it off,” he ordered.

Slowly, teasingly, I reached behind me and unclipped my bra. Dragging the straps tantalizingly down the skin of my shoulders, I smirked as his mouth parted open and his pupils widened once more. I held the fabric over my body for a tense few seconds before finally letting it drop to the floor.

Jungkook closed his mouth and swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. “Fuck,” he groaned. “This is what you were hiding underneath those clothes, and that asshole still let you go?”

He shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know any guy in their right mind who would choose some bitch over this fine-ass body.”

As he spoke, he stepped close and cupped my breasts before gently tweaking my nipples, causing me to throw my head back and groan from the pleasure he was inciting. “That’s right, sweetheart,” he murmured, an approving smirk sliding across his lips. “Moan for me.”

Jungkook’s hands slid downward, and his fingers slipped through the belt loops of my jeans before he yanked me close. My skin ran flush against his skin, my breasts pressing into his pectorals as he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me once more, his tongue feverishly invading my cavern with an unstoppable force. In turn, I also wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him as close as possible… Yet, I still wanted more.

In one swift, bold move, I dropped to my knees and began fiddling with the button on his jeans. “Uh uh, sweetie,” Jungkook scolded, dropping to his knees as well. “You can suck my dick any other time, but tonight? Tonight is all about you.”

I nearly whined at his denial, but stopped when I saw the look in his eyes. Obediently, I lay on my back, the carpet itching the sensitive skin of my back. Jungkook skillfully popped open the button on my jeans before leaning down and kissing my breasts. His tongue laved at my right nipple as he squeezed and pulled at my left with practiced fingers. Continuing his ministrations down to my navel, Jungkook flicked his tongue over my belly button, making my breath hitch in my throat.

He finally reached my jeans, and I propped myself up on my elbows, curious as to what he would do next. What I didn’t expect was for Jungkook to take my zipper between his perfect, white teeth and drag it downwards, drawing out a loud moan from between my lips, his eyes never leaving mine. He chuckled softly at my reaction. “You like that, sweetheart?”

I could do nothing but nod, my ability to speak impaired by the aching need between my thighs. Grasping the hem of my jeans, Jungkook slid them off me, taking his time with each inch of fabric, relishing in the way I gasped when my skin finally met air. He dragged a finger between my legs, over my folds, and showed me the slick moisture he gathered. “I haven’t even taken off your panties yet and you’re this wet for me,” he said. “Imagine how you’ll be when I get around to fucking you.”

Even more moisture dripped out of me at his words. Deciding he teased me long enough, Jungkook tore the panties from my body and buried his face in my folds. I gasped and moaned, he groaned in response, and the wet sounds his tongue made as it fucked my hole caused fluid to practically gush out of me. “Tastes so good,” he growled before delving back in. This time, his tongue swirled around my clit while his middle finger pushed in and out of me, curling up to hit just the right spot.

“Oh god!” I gasped, arching my back. “Jungkook, I’m gonna… I’m gonna…”

He merely groaned and finger-fucked me faster, his tongue flicking over my clit so fast it was almost painful. I came all over his face, my cum painting his cheeks as ripples of pleasure shuddered through my body. My moans became wails as my muscles continued contracting, Jungkook’s masterful tongue not stopping until I collapsed backwards, all my strength leaving me entirely.

Jungkook lay next to me, sucking on his fingers and running his tongue around his arousal-coated lips. “You came so hard,” he said, surprise tinging his voice.

“Well,” I chuckled, my breath still coming out more as wheezes. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had good sex.”

“What do you mean?”

I grew quiet for a moment before answering. “Obviously my ex was getting his jollies elsewhere, so we hadn’t had sex for months.”

Jungkook scoffed. “Wow. What a scumbag.”

“Indeed.”

Before the moment grew too awkward, I rolled over and kissed him softly. “Then again,” I murmured. “The sex was never nearly as good as what you just did.”

Jungkook chuckled and clambered on top of me again, kneeing apart my thighs to rest his body between them before kissing me deeply then pulling back. “You ready for round two?” he asked, one of his eyebrows cocked.

My eyes widened. “R-Round two?”

Jungkook smirked. “Oh, baby… I’m gonna fuck you so good you won’t even remember that asshole’s name.”

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noorengels · 4 years

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How to make GIFs on iPhone

First thing I want to say is that I have an iPhone 7 so this might not work if you have an older model (however you should be fine as we’re mainly going to be using apps easily accessed from the app store).

Part 1: Retrieving the video you want to GIF

Always aim for 1080p (highest quality video) as the quality will always get worse throughout the process as you manipulate the video.

The apps you’ll need are:

Youtube - to get the link to the video

Aloha Browser - to download the video

MEGA - only if the video is unavailable on youtube and you have the links ! (otherwise this app is worthless)

Steps through YT route:

Find desired video and check the maximum quality.

Copy the link.

Open Aloha Browser (when you first get the app insert this link which will appear as default whenever you open it) and paste video link.

Once done press ‘télécharger le fichier,’ ‘download here’ then the arrow at the bottom.

Download video.

Steps through MEGA route:

Get link to videos.

Press three dots.

Save to Photos.

Part 2: Cropping video to GIF duration.

Apps you’ll need:

Photos/Camera Roll

iMovie - i don’t recommend it bc it lowers the quality of the video drastically but it’s a good alternative if you want to slow videos down + crop videos to be under one second.

Press the video camera at the bottom to crop video. (I recommend 3 seconds maximum or the file will become too large, one second is best as it’s the minimum amount and ensures all your gifs are in sync.)

Images show how to crop video to remove watermarks (essential or they’ll look ugly idc it’s my pet peeve).

ALWAYS SAVE VIDEO AS NEW CLIP! It means that you can come back to the original video to create more gifs from it!

By the end you should end up with unedited gif sized (duration) clips!

Part 3: Colouring/Sharpening

Apps you’ll need:

ColorStory - allows you to color videos + batch edit so you can edit them all in the same way at the same time (most helpful when the same scene is used bc lighting is the same)

Photos/Camera Roll - best for sharpening, also good for quick lighting adjustments if you don’t want to colour the clip just enhance it.

Vont - to add text. Do this after colouring or it will affect the text as well.

Open ColorStory, select the video(s) you want to edit.

Play around with the features at the bottom! Do whatever your heart tells you to do!

If you liked the way you edited a previous gif but can’t remember how, don’t worry! ColourStory saves the recipes for the previous 10ish or you can save it to keep it forever!

Open photos after saving and sharpen your gif.

Here’s my before and after (not my fav but i wanted to show how you really cAn manipulate colours not just enhance the gif):

Part 4: Converting vídeo to GIF

Apps you will need:

Google/Safari - i use a website!

Files - this is where the website saves your GIFs!

I made a shortcut bc i’m too lazy to always look up that url so there’s the recipe and here’s the link to the website.

Follow the steps then retrieve your GIF from files.

Here is our final GIF:

#how to make gifs #how to gif #how to gif on iphone #how to make gifs on iphone #resources #gif resources #long post

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elletromil · 4 years

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Collect moments, not things

So some of you might remember Love is a fabric which never fades, that fic where Harry was dragon and pining after Eggsy.

I was always supposed to write this fic too, where instead of Harry being a dragon, Eggsy was the dragon with the hoard. (And a third one where they both are dragons and hopefully this one won’t take 5 years too xp). And well, inspiration and motivation have slowly been coming back to me this week and I managed to finish this one :D

I hope you all enjoy!

Collect moments, not things

When he finally figures out what Eggsy’s hoard is comprised of, Harry feels a bit like an idiot.

Not that it’s particularly obvious at a first glance, but they have been living together for a few months now. And yes, they’ve both been sent on a couple different missions during that time, but that’s still no excuse to how unobservant he has been.

He’s supposed to be a bloody spy. He should have picked up on Eggsy’s habit sooner than he did.

And it doesn’t soothe his pride that it only truly registered when Eggsy asked him for a pen one evening after the one he was using ran out of ink.

The worse is, he can only blame himself for taking so long at figuring out what was Eggsy’s hoard.

Not only is Eggsy not hiding it in any way, he has also made it very clear that he was comfortable answering any questions Harry could have about dragon culture. Or if he wasn’t, that he wouldn’t hesitate to tell him to fuck off.

Whatever hero-worship Eggsy once had for him is long gone and quite frankly, Harry much prefers it that way.

However in Harry’s defense, there is also a perfectly sensible reason why he didn’t want to ask Eggsy about this particular thing.

While his friendship with James had not made him an expert on dragons at all, he’s still picked up on a few things over the years.

Especially on the romance side given the fact that James had very publicly courte Richard and Richard, while not a dragon himself, had taken it as a challenge, one he was very set on winning.

Considering the two ended up married within a year of being introduced to each other, he’s certain Richard did consider himself the winner.

Much like James did.

All this to say, he’s very much aware of just how important a part a dragon’s hoard plays when it comes to such things as courting.

And he very much wants Eggsy to not only feel like Harry accepts and welcomes every aspects of his heritage, but that Harry loves him for it.

After all, it is part of what makes Eggsy, well, Eggsy, just like his gaudy vests and winged shoes or like his liking for medical dramas or like his unwavering loyalty to someone once that person has earned it.

So yes, Harry wants Eggsy to know that Harry is willing to learn. That he is willing to put in the work to make their relationship work. Which, admittedly, he would have done exactly the same had Eggsy been simply human like him, but since he’s not, Harry can’t just ignore that part of his lover.

And hoards… Well hoards are a damn essential part of being a dragon.

It’s their most prized possessions. They can go to war over one.

There’s not bigger honor than to be trusted with any part of it. Or be included in it in any way.

So while he really wasn’t expecting Eggsy to hoard paper of all things, who is he to judge? It’s not the same thing, but Harry does collect dead butterflies and other bugs.

So now he’s got to think of a suitable addition to Eggsy’s hoard, one that would remind him of Harry and hope that Eggsy will accept it.

Because even if Harry doesn’t wish to be married within the year, he would be lying if he said he wasn’t thinking about it already.

***

As he looks over the newest addition in the hidden space of the sitting room, Harry is suddenly stricken by the fear that maybe, this is a bit much.

After all, he’s not even sure Eggsy will accept the first part of his gift and now he’s also trying to change where Eggsy will keep his hoard. It doesn’t matter that this new fireproof safe is one the best on the market, it’s really not Harry’s place to tell Eggsy how to protect his hoard.

Of course that’s the precise moment Eggsy comes home.

Slightly panicked, he close the door to the safe over what really is his gift, but doesn’t have the time to do anything about the fake wall before Eggsy finds him in the room.

“Didn’t know you were getting a new safe,” he safe in lieu of a greeting, pressing close to his back, arms wrapping around his waist. It would take a stronger man than Harry Hart is to not lean back in him.

“Actually, this is for you,” he admits after turning into the embrace just enough to press a kiss to Eggsy’s cheek.

“Oh?” Eggsy lets him go and steps closer to take a better look, but he doesn’t seem angry or insulted, merely curious, which is kind of reassuring. “Fuck me, Harry! That’s like the latest model on the market. It cost a fortune!” Not entirely accurate, but Harry will agree that if it wasn’t for Kingsman more than generous salary, he probably would never have considered that particular safe. “Not that I don’t appreciate,” Eggsy adds quickly, “but you know the one you let me have in the office does the job too?”

He still doesn’t look mad in any way, just slightly confused. Harry can work with confusion.

“Well yes, but also no, considering what you’re keeping in there. The safe in the office wasn’t made with fireproofing as the main characteristic. This one was. And well, it’s considerably bigger and you were bond to run out of place sometime soon.”

He hasn’t checked of course. While he certainly could, what with Eggsy’s current safe being Harry’s first and his training as a spy, they both respect each other’s need to keep some thing private from the other.

But Eggsy has never tried to hide the papers he put in every night and so Harry doesn’t feel bad about making that educated guess.

Eggsy doesn’t seem to mind either if his pleased smile and the sweet blush spreading on his cheeks is any indication.

And as if to prove Harry just how stupid he had been for worrying about him not liking his gift, Eggsy steps on his tiptoes so he can kiss his cheek. “Thank you Harry. That’s- that’s one of the more thoughtful thing anyone has given me.”

He’s still standing close so Harry is the one to wrap his arms around him this time and hold him tight. They stand like that for some time, enjoying the peaceful moment.

Then Harry remembers that the safe wasn’t even originally part of the gift he had planned to make and slowly walks them close enough that he can open it.

Or at least, attempt to open it. The endeavour is slightly hindered by the fact that Eggsy is refusing to step out of his embrace. And to be honest, Harry doesn’t truly want to let go either.

After longer than his pride could take it if not for the quiet chuckles Eggsy unsuccessfully muffle against his shoulder, the safe is opened once more.

Eggsy stops laughing as soon as he glances inside, gasping softly. “It this-” He doesn’t finish whatever he was trying to ask, his hands reaching towards the safe before he stops himself, fingers clenching into fists.

Harry presses a kiss against his temple before taking hold of his hands and laying them on the first colourful pile.

“This is for you, yes. All of it.”

Carefully, with something akin to reverence, Eggsy takes the first sheet to inspect it closer. It’s one of the simpler paper Harry has bought him, a very light blue without any texture. What makes it deserve a place among all the different papers he’s been buying for Eggsy over the last couple of weeks however is the subtle golden watermark of a butterfly at the bottom of the page.

Eggsy notices it immediately of course and trails a gentle finger over the design.

“I’m… I’m not sure if this is okay. I hope it is. That you will accept this gift even if it’s a bit selfish of me. But I really want you to have a little part of me in your hoard.”

Whatever reaction Harry was expecting from Eggsy over his gift, it wasn’t for him to burst out into laughters. It’s a good thing for his ego that he can tell there is nothing mocking in it, but he’s still not sure how he should take it.

Thankfully, Eggsy doesn’t laugh for long and after putting the sheet of paper back in the safe, he turns around and tugs Harry down into a deep kiss.

“I love you so much Harry,” he says after they’ve caught their breath again, “but you’re an idiot if you think you’re not already part of my hoard.” Only the kisses he peppers along his jawline prevents Harry from feeling insulted.

“What do you mean, I’m already part of it?” Try as he might, he can’t think of any instance he gave some kind of paper to Eggsy. Not even a post-it note or a grocery list.

“You think I’m hoarding paper right?” Eggsy annoyingly answers with a question of his own.

“Aren't you?” Two can play the game and Eggsy snorts with amusement at how petulant Harry sounds.

“Nope, not really.” It’s more devastating than he thought it would be to find that that he was mistaken about that. To realise that he obviously doesn’t know Eggsy as well as he should. Before shame can get a good hold on his heart heart however, Eggsy cups his cheeks in his hands and presses their foreheads together. “But even dragons would have made the same assumption you did. And the only reason it’s not really my hoard is simply because I learned very young it was best not to keep anything physical.”

He frowns at that, partly in confusion, partly because it wakens an old guilt in him, the one he will carry to his tomb for having failed to protect Eggsy as he probably should have after Lee’s passing. Eggsy must feel it because he huffs in mild rebuke before letting him go.

“Come on, let me show you.”

Harry lets himself get dragged upstairs to their shared office without protesting, consciously pushing back the guilt as he tries instead to figure out what exactly could be Eggsy’s hoard if it’s not really paper. The ink maybe? But that’s physical too…

Then Eggsy puts a few sheets of paper in his hands.

“Come on, read them.” His expression is a worrying mix of dread and excitement, but there is also the familiar set in his jaw that means he won’t budge from his position and so Harry doesn’t try to tell him they don’t have to do this now. Or ever really.

There doesn’t seem to be anything special about the paper in his hands. He thinks he can even spots a few napkins inside the safe before he refocus his attention on the words that are written on the pages he’s holding. Eggsy told him to read after all.

Each sheet has a date and a few sentences neatly written over them.

July 27th

Came back from a mission in the middle of the night. Harry was fast asleep. But when I got into bed, he still rolled over to hold me without ever waking up.

November 2nd

Harry ordered from the new Indian place tonight. Best food ever.

November 16th

Went on a walk with Harry. I forgot my gloves. Harry gave me one of his and then we hold hands the whole way.

March 4th

Harry and Daisy made cupcakes. There was flour everywhere. I am never leaving them unattended in the kitchen again.

They all read like journal entries.

Like short capsules of happiness that happened on a particular day.

“Eggsy?” He’s not sure what he’s asking because he fears that he’s only seeing what he wants to see.

“Memories,” Eggsy answers anyway in a quiet voice. “That’s what I’m hoarding. All the happy ones.”

There’s something shy to his smile now, so very different from his usual confident grin and Harry simply has to kiss him.

And as Eggsy all but melts into the contact, Harry swears to himself that every day they spend together will bring so many happy moments to Eggsy that he won’t know what to do with them all.

#harry hart #eggsy unwin #hartwin #kingsman #established relationship #fluff #dragon in human form!eggsy #fanfic #me

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jamaisjoons · 4 years

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gfx commissions

hello, i’ve decided to official open up commissions for bts fanfic banners, masterlist banners and tumblr mobile headers! if you’re interested, please read the post below and consider applying!!

note: this is a long post, so please ready everything carefully before applying for a commission. additionally, if you’d like more information, please feel free to check #asks: commissions, or ask me!

Applications are currently: OPEN

❥ Rules

⤑ commissions will be completed in order of applications, meaning, that they are completed on a first come, first served basis! ⤑ please be patient and wait for me to message you about your commissions once you’ve applied! ⤑ for commissions, i will be accepting payment through paypal only. (fnf or gns. if gns, please make sure you pay the fee) ⤑ all price are in GBP/£/British Pounds. I will only accept payment in this currency!!

❥ Payment:

⤑ please do not pay me for the commission until i have messaged you and spoken to you about your commission and confirmed whether i will be accepting it or not ⤑ before i start the commission, i will ask for a downpayment of 50% of the initial price. upon confirmation of payment, i will begin creating your request ⤑ the first three hours of the time take to complete the commission is included in the initial price. any additional hours are priced at £3 per hour. (this is for the graphics that take additional time) ** ⤑ once i have completed the commission, i will send you a screenshot of what the graphic looks like. if you’re happy with it, I will then collect the rest of the payment. only upon confirmation of the final payment, i will release the graphic to you in full. ** i will try to keep the time taken to edit for commission at a maximum of 5 hours (though it will rarely be this long). if it goes over five hours, i will stop and message you so we can discuss how to proceed!!

❥ Graphics & Pricing:

⤑ please remember that these are initial prices. the first three hours of the time taken to complete the commission is included in the initial price. any additional hours are priced at £3 per hour.

⟶ Fanfic Banners:

⁂ Type 1: simple banner made from a photo with basic editing - £5

⁂ Type 2: moderate banner made from one member* edited onto another background + basic editing - £10

⁂ Type 3: advanced banner made from one member* edited onto a texturised background + advanced editing - £15

⟶ Masterlist Banners:

⁂ Type 1: simple set of 8 - 10 banners (one for each member + masterlist + 2 additional of your choice if you’d like) made from a set of photos with basic editing - £10

⁂ Type 2: moderate set of 8 - 10 banners made from members edited onto another background + basic editing - £15

⁂ Type 3: advanced set of 8 - 10 banners made from members edited onto a texturised background + advanced editing - £20

⟶ Tumblr Mobile Headers:

⁂ Type 1: moderate banner made with one member* of your choice edited onto a background + basic editing - £8

⁂ Type 2: advanced banner made with one member* of your choice edited onto a texturised background + advanced editing - £10

for examples of types of banners, please see the end of the post!

⟶ Extras:

⁂ Tattoo edditing: +£5 per member

⁂ Adding GIF Overlay for animated graphics: +£3

⁂ *Adding additional members: +£2.50 each, capped at 2 additional members. If you’d like OT7/Units of more than three, then this can be discussed and negotiated!

❥ Credit Rules:

⤑ if commissioning a fanfic banner, you must credit me for the banner in your fanfiction post with an @jamaisjoons. if it’s for a series, you must credit me in each post you use the banner in (masterlist, each chapter, etc.) ⤑ if commissioning a masterlist banner, you must credit me for it in your masterlist post with an @jamaisjoons ⤑ if commissioning a tumblr mobile header, you must credit me in your blog description, about page/post, and or your navigation post ⤑ please do not make any changes or corrections to the edit yourself. if you’d like something changed, just ask! ⤑ additionally, i will be storing all PSDs in my cloud (for up to a year/until it gets full). thus, if you have any URL changes, please just ask me ⤑ if you choose not to use my edit, please just say so! i won’t mind at all!

❥ Disclaimer:

⤑ please understand I won’t create fanfic banners for stories with content I’m uncomfortable with (we can discuss these privately upon contact) ⤑ please understand that on tumblr headers and masterlist banners, i reserve the right to add a faint watermark in an unassuming spot on the graphic (in case they are stolen from you) ⤑ please understand that I have a right to accept/deny commissions as I see fit

❥ Apply:

⤑ reblog this post using the blog you’d like me to contact you on initially ⤑ apply here ⤑ if i have too many commissions going on at once (capped at max of 5), i will close applications, and then reopen them when they’ve been cleared. ⤑ i will only be accepting commissions through the google form. however, if you have questions before committing to a commission, please feel free to drop me a DM/ask!

❥ Examples:

⟶ Fanfic Banners/Masterlist Banners Type 1:

⟶ Fanfic Banners/Masterlist Banners Type 2:

⟶ Fanfic Banners/Masterlist Banners Type 3:

⟶ Tumblr Header Type 1:

⟶ Tumblr Header Type 2:

#commissions

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jlf23tumble · 4 years

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Top 10 Niche Interests

Fixations? Obsessions? This is incredibly hard because I have wayyyy too many niche interests, so instead of stressing about it, I tried to channel the 10 things that immediately speak to me and maybe aren't so obvious from what I post here, like how much I'm obsessed with wigs, doll furniture, incredibly specific blogs, all forms of clothing with pockets, swimming pools, whimsical bus stops, over-the-top bathrooms, etc. etc Instead, I opted for some specifics that feel a little more evergreen and long tailed, like, so LIFE-long tailed that it's tough to nail down when or how they became part of the national psyche. I thank @alienfuckeronmain for the initial tag, and I'm tagging her AGAIN for round two because I know she has a billion additional niche things, and she'll post them, and I'll scream because it'll trigger five other things I neglected to post here, and I'll probably post my own round two, arggggh, insert aggressive sighing. Anyway, I tag ANYONE who wants to do it, just tag me so I can see!

1. Indoor Trees

I have no idea why this concept PULLS so hard because houseplants are kind of meh to me, but you want to plant an entire-ass TREE indoors, in the place where you live? Me, too, and I'd add a conversation pit plus a combo gold/red bathroom, among other things, and, bam, we're in my imaginary dream home, which I have literally, constantly ALWAYS mentally constructed from the time I was about six or so. (If you're curious, it has multiple themed rooms, and the closest I've seen to it recently is the outstanding Dita von Teese AD feature, but Amy Sedaris’s apartment comes close, too). There are two (2) 1960s houses in Long Beach with magnificent indoor trees, but I can't find them online, so have this modern interpretation and cry with me about how I can't visit the multi-story fake tree inside Clifton's Cafeteria for a good long while:

2. Conventions of Fans of Any Kind

One thing that I don't think I'll ever lose is how much I *love* people who are fans of SOMETHING, people who have a passion and create something about it or cosplay it or simply gather to celebrate it and connect to other people through it. The Internet provides in all kinds of ways, but I'm talking specifically about IRL conventions and the way my heart pitter pats when I first walk in those doors, SWOON! And it doesn’t matter how big the convention is or how random, I've been to smaller events like CatCon and the My Little Pony convention all the way up to biggies like WonderCon and Comic Con, and I have yet to be disappointed. I might know jack shit about what I'm walking into, but I want to see the merch, hear about the panels, and check out the people who are fucking PUMPED to be there. Sadly, I think it's gonna be a lonnnnng time until these come back, but I can live vicariously through my old photos, sigh:

3. Dutch Wax Fabrics and African Fashion

I'm not the snazziest of dressers, but textiles, colors, and patterns have been an obsession that has soothed my visual soul for as long as I can literally remember. Wax fabric marries all three of those touchpoints, plus throws in a healthy dose of style, and I count myself lucky to have seen two big exhibits on the subject (this was one of them), oh, how I wish there were more! For sure, there's a fucked up underlying colonial/imperialist history here, but there's also humor and color and vibrancy, a reclamation of sorts, and multiple levels of fashion that take my breath away. I cannot do the different patterns justice at all, but the fan motif is one of my faves:

4. Hearst Castle vs. Madonna inn

These two fall into my #home tag because they're where I'm from, and they speak to me as equally sublime and ridiculous, camp and kitsch writ large and small, different (yet similar!) versions of Xanadu that two rich white men built as shrines to their own personal "taste." And the irony is that a lot of people shit on Alex Madonna for being tacky (the Madonna Inn is...uh, something else), yet praise WR Hearst for all the high-class art and architecture, most of which is fully lifted from desperate churches between and after world and yet they're both more or less the same concept (lodging for weary travelers, self-aggrandizement, questionable taste-mixing). Hearst Castle edges out slightly for me because it's bigger and has spectacular scenery and history, plus it gives me doses of LA noir thanks to the way Hearst killed a guy in a jealous Charlie Chaplin-related rage and Hedda Hopper covered it up, all kinds of old Hollywood shenanigans happened up there, etc. But I'm low-key an expert on both houses of the holy, I'm OBSESSED with both, and we can leave it at that. I mean, come on:

5. Snow Globes

I had to cull my personal collection slightly just to fit it all on the dedicated shelf in my bathroom, and I seriously need to refill all the water lines, but nothing beats a snow globe in terms of memorable souvenir, especially when you put it in a bathroom. The majesty!!! The jewel of my collection is the one from Sherwood Forest because WHY NOT celebrate a historic place and moment in the basic way?? He robbed from the rich to give to the poor, and the gift shop about 100 feet from the tree he hid in does the same! The circle of life! The irony of all the watermarks on this blessed image...protect:

6. Highly Specific Museums

Look, we can all agree that the more venerated museums in the world are a form of garbage in terms of what they represent, what they've done, and who runs them, but I'm here for the museums that collect and celebrate things that tend to get overlooked. There are too many to list that I love that are still thriving, so I'm going to say goodbye to four recently departed faves. RIP to the Pez museum, I'm so glad I saw you and purchased your stale candy souvenirs. RIP to the museum of terrible food, you were a pop up when Phoenix and I saw you, and I will forever think about the worker describing people literally vomiting during their visits. RIP to the currywurst museum in Berlin, I've had currywurst exactly once and it was not for me, but I respect the Journey you took me on, including obscure east German TV shows that helped make you so popular (??). Finally, RIP to the velvet painting museum, there's no way to mince words, the person who owned you was crazy AS FUCK and had zero clue how to run a business, but I'm so glad I saw you multiple times and purchased my own velvet treasure (not this exact one, but remarkably similar):

7. Liminal Spaces: Grocery Store Edition

Confession time for those who don't know me all that well, I'm a big time voyeur, and nothing fills my heart with joy like a walk at 7 or 8 pm, the witching hour when people haven't pulled the curtains, and I can scope out their decorations/furnishings without it being "weird." Another confession is how much I unabashedly adore grocery stores in other countries and will spend at least an hour wandering aisle by aisle, falling in love with how much everything is different yet completely the same:

8. Agatha Christie Novels:

As a child, I was a fairly compliant reader--I had to read something for school? Okay! For my mom? Sounds good! But the books that sparked the initial fire for me to read something purely for myself were second-hand (probably fourth- or fifth-hand, judging by cover art) Agatha Christie short story anthologies, which were the gateway drug to full Agatha Christie novels, then other mystery novels, and so on. But getting back to Agatha, I obviously loved all the stories, but every decade spawned incredibly good cover art (like, exceptionally good), and this particular artist's are right up near the top for me (I go back and forth on a lot of the '50s and '60s ones):

9. Scopitones

I link my obsession with scopitones both to my love of music videos in general and a shop in Austin, TX, that sold DVD compilations of them in particular, but either way, they're underappreciated and kitschy all in one! Francoise Hardy and the rest of the ye-ye's are my forever girls for this medium, but seemingly every country cranked them out, both actual set videos and "live" performances? If you don't know what they are, scopitones were machines that played music videos in French cafes in the '60s (??), so it was sort of your proto-MTV way to see your faves sing and dance. Oh, Francoise...so moderne!!

10. Cover Songs

I have so much patience and love for cover songs of any stripe, the more genre-bending and/or surprising, the better! My only minor beef is the trend in slooooooooowing down songs to make a point, but even those ones have a special place in my heart if they're effective. Live Lounge feeds my hunger the best, but my meta fave for representing this concept is Pulp's Bad Cover Version, which was already lyrically INSPIRED, a song about bad cover versions in terms of relationships, but then they did a video that was a visual "bad" cover version, with actors lip synching over an audio "bad" cover version, and all of it just worked? The cover for the single is someone in the band as a boy, making his own bad cover version of a Bowie album cover, it's meta meta meta, and I love love love, here's the video, if you're curious. In the more sublime cover category, I'm absolutely addicted to all of Orville Peck's covers, I truly hope he officially releases them sometime soon, but I wholeheartedly support any artist who does it:

#tag games #niche interests #god i have a few

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bitsandbobsandstuff · 6 years

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A love that never leaves (11)

Summary: Sometimes when you go looking for the past, you find things you never expected. When an accident brings him face to face with something he never knew he lost, Bucky Barnes begins to understand an age old truth – it’s so easy, sometimes, to love the things that destroy us.

Characters: Bucky Barnes x Reader Warnings: Bad language. Descriptions of depression. Some pretty heavy sads.

A/N: Flashback time. Grief can be all consuming and overwhelming. This time, we follow her while she tries to learn how to live again, before a night in 1946 changes everything.

And again...I am sorry.

Links don’t work, so if you want to access the full ALTNL Masterlist, just click the MASTERLIST header on my blog.

Previously...

In her hand, is a ripped piece of faded blue cloth, with a familiar gray patch sewn into it; smudgy rust-red splotches color the edges like fingerprints.

Wings. Gray wings. Nostalgically familiar, because back in the war, each of the Howling Commandos wore one on their left sleeve, a mirror image tribute to the one painted on Steve’s helmet.

Including Bucky. Who wore one on the left sleeve of his coat.

The left sleeve of his blue coat.

Now, he stares uncomprehendingly at the piece of cloth. “What - “ he starts, but his voice fades. Small shivers are running through her body as she watches him, her face filled with dread. Taking a shaky breath, she whispers.

“There was one other time we met.”

*****

February 1945

The telegram informing her of Bucky’s death, written in Steve Rogers’ messy, cursive scrawl, sits on her kitchen table for a week. Across the creamy white paper are crinkled watermarks and trickles of black ink, where the paper swallowed her teardrops and bled out the sorrow of Steve’s words. One night, in a fit of anger, she tears it to shreds and feeds each piece to the hungry flames licking up the stone wall of her fireplace. There is immediate relief at the words disappearing, but even without their physical presence, the grief always returns.

March 1945

The plush wool feels soft in her hands. A week after his last visit, she saw the bundle in a storefront and bartered two of her old dresses for it; the color was a simple heather gray, but she knew it would look perfect against the deep blue of his coat. Every evening, she would knit until her fingers ached, but in a few weeks, she had a thick wool scarf, one of her old hair ribbons tied around it for a bow. She thought she would keep it as his birthday gift. Now, on what would have been Bucky’s 28th birthday, she wraps it around her neck and crawls into bed. Sleep doesn’t come, but every memory of him arrives like a fresh bullet, punched clean through her chest.

May 1945

Over! The war is over! Relieved cries reverberate through the town when VE Day arrives, children running down streets screaming with excitement, mothers and widows weeping joyously in the streets. Healing will take decades, but with those words, the world begins to plan for what comes next. Life is breathed back into the village and in the crowded town square, she lifts her face to the sunshine and closes her eyes. Fingers the chain around her neck holding the St. Michael medal Bucky gave her for their engagement, and wonders if she will ever be warm again.

July 1945

Wildflowers grow in riotous bursts of yellow and red and purple, filling the space behind her chicken coop with color. Laying amid the blooms, she sits in the baking summer sun, tracing her fingers over the colorful images on the postcards Bucky gave her. She thinks about traveling. About visiting those places, seeing them with new eyes, free from war. When she looks at the Brooklyn postcard, she wonders about visiting his family, but then she sees the crooked hearts he drew on the back, and she knows it would be too much. She puts the cards away.

September 1945

Leaves begin to fall, carpeting the grassy bank near the stream. Going through the motions, she dumps clothes from her basket, dunking them in the gurgling water, scrubbing them clean under crystal clear moonlight. Humming under her breath, she sings to pass the time, but the only words she can find are the ones she sang the first night Bucky found her by the creek and walked her home. We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when. It hurts too much, so she just stops singing.

October 1945

Soldiers have been returning for weeks. Gaunt and haunted, new men arrive every few days, and do their best to pick up the threads of their old lives. One Saturday morning, she walks through the stalls of the market, examining produce and talking with the vendors. A young soldier steps aside to let her pass, quickly pulling off his hat and smiling. Offering a quiet hello in response, she finishes her shopping and leaves; the soldier jogs after her and nervously asks, could he perhaps walk her home? The earnest look in his eyes is so familiar, it makes her sick. She gently tells him no.

December 1945

Taking a sharp kitchen knife, she goes into the trees and cuts an armful of pine boughs. She spreads them through her house, taking deep breaths of the sharp, piney scent. In the white vase on her table, she tucks them carefully in place and adds a small sprig of holly, the red berries shining brightly. Curled in the armchair beside her fire, she drinks tea and listens to the staticky crackle of Christmas hymns on her new radio. It’s a daily battle, but it happens. Life really does go on.

February 1946

Coming home late one evening, she unlocks her back door and hangs her coat in the hallway. Rubbing chilly hands together, she walks into her kitchen and turns on the light. She skids to a stop. Filling the small space, are two hulking men dressed in black. One steps forward and quickly grabs her arms, while the other plays with a length of rope and smiles at her. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you. Someone wants a word.”

There’s a cursory struggle, but she doesn’t fight hard. She thinks to herself, if they kill her, maybe she’ll see Bucky on the other side.

That thought makes her smile, before the world goes dark.

*****

For the second time in her life, she awakens in a cold cell. Stretching her aching limps, she knows immediately this most certainly isn’t heaven.

Hell has a very specific look to it. One she knows far too intimately by now.

The small cell is clean, containing a lumpy bed and a worn blanket; in the corner is a pitcher of water and a bucket, and high on the wall is a small window letting in slivers of light. Her hands are bound in front of her, rough pieces of rope looped so tight around her wrists, the skin has rubbed itself raw. Blood soaks into the bristly rope fibers, staining it with streaks of black.

Where is she this time?

Leaning back against the wall, she blows out a long breath and there’s a strange satisfaction in her realization.

She just doesn’t care.

*****

Hours or maybe days later, her door creaks open. Outlined in the doorframe, is a tall Hydra guard dressed all in black, a mask over his face, a pair of reflective goggles covering his eyes. When he sees her, the gun in his hands trembles the slightest bit, before it steadies once more.

So, she thinks. Here it comes.

Motioning with the gun, the guard indicates she should stand, but she mutinously stays on the bed. If she has to go, she will be defiant to the end.

Stepping forward, he hesitates briefly, before grasping the rope and jerking her to her feet. Balancing his gun at the back of her neck, he pushes her forward.

Down a long hall they go, moving through a set of wooden doors. With a mute resistance, she refuses to walk, forcing him to physically drag her instead. Finally, he simply picks her up and throws her over his shoulder, stalking down the hallway with a series of breathless grunts.

She kicks him the entire way.

When he arrives at a heavy oak door, he bangs three times and throws it open.

The room is surprising. This is no torture chamber, filled with metal tables and metal chairs and the metallic taste of electricity on her tongue. It is warm and cozy, a roaring fireplace on one wall, armchairs strewn casually around, tall shelves lined with books.

In the middle of the room, stands Colonel Richter, a glass of whiskey in his hand.

“Please, come in,” he says cordially, laughter in his voice. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

The guard dumps her in a sprawling heap and departs. In the flickering firelight, she struggles awkwardly to her feet and readies for battle.

“You again. What do you want? You know I won’t help you,” she snaps, her eyes roaming around the room, searching for threats.

Richter looks amused. Sipping his whiskey, he comes slowly closer until he is only inches from her face.

“First things first. Before, when you stole away in the dead of night - that was a bit rude, don’t you think?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

The quick crack of his backhand sends her stumbling sideways. The heavy ring he wears rips open a fat gash on her cheek and she instantly feels blood begin to ooze.

“Such language for a lady. Did you learn that from him? Let’s try again, shall we? I have a story for you and I’d like you to listen,” he says. “A few months ago, we were working on him and in the middle of one of his delirious rants, I hear something interesting. Can you guess?”

Glaring at him, she remains silent.

“No guesses?” he grins, raising his eyebrows. “Alright then. Through all the screaming and crying, I hear him say your god damn name. Imagine my surprise.”

The first prickles of confused fear skate up her back. “What the hell are you talking about?” she spits out.

“It took some digging, but we managed to trace the path he and that wretched group of assholes from his unit made the last couple years of the war. I sent a few search parties out, and low and behold - here you are.”

Bucky told her once, how he and Captain Rogers parachuted from an airplane. She remembers him laughing about the free-fall, how it made his stomach swoop in a million directions. That feeling of free-falling sweeps over her now, turning her blood to ice.

“What do you mean? Who?”

Richter smiles widely, his eyes gleaming. Grabbing the bloody ropes around her wrists, he yanks her forward and pushes her into the shadowy corner of the room.

“Wait here. I have a surprise for you.”

Outside the door, she hears voices arguing. The scuffle of feet and the sharp bite of an angry voice. Suddenly, the door swings open and four guards enter, dragging a fifth man.

From the dark shadows, she muffles a scream.

Bucky looks exhausted. Dressed in a long-sleeved green shirt and ragged brown pants, he’s thinner than the last time she saw him. Rings of black circle his eyes, the vibrant blue now dull and listless. All his beautiful dark hair has been buzzed short and she can see bloody sores scabbing over along his temples. The left sleeve of his wool shirt is empty, pinned up at his shoulder and his right arm is tucked behind him, a leather strap looped around his wrist and stretched across his chest, keeping his good arm immobile.

“You didn’t tell me it was a party,” he rasps mockingly. “I would’ve put on my fancy clothes.”

One of the guards grabs a fistful of his shirt and drags him closer. “Jesus Christ, I am so fucking sick of your fucking mouth,” he sneers and Bucky shoots him a cocky grin.

“Sweetheart, you’re adorable when you’re mad,” he stage-whispers. In the blink of an eye, the guard draws back his arm and smashes his fist into Bucky’s face. Dropping to his knees, Bucky’s mocking laugh turns into a rattling cough that comes up with a spray of blood and he spits strings of red on the floor. “Like being kissed by your mom,” he says weakly.

Swearing ferociously, the guard moves to kick him, but Richter holds up his hand.

“For god’s sake, every fucking time. You know he does this, why do you let him get to you?”

The guard is visibly furious, but he says nothing. Instead, he grabs Bucky by the back of his shirt, hauling him roughly to his feet. Bucky sways precariously, before he finds his balance. Taking several deep breaths, he fixes his mouth back into that mocking smirk and lifts his chin.

“Evening boys. What the fuck can I do for you today?”

Richter gives him a congenial smile. “We have a visitor tonight. I thought perhaps you’d like to meet her.”

Bucky barks out a hollow laugh. “I sincerely fuckin’ doubt that.”

Richter’s smile grows impossibly larger. “Well, let’s see, shall we?”

Pulling her from the shadows, he throws her forward and she stumbles into the light.

Here’s the thing.

Bucky Barnes is so weak, he can barely stay on his feet. For the last five days, he’s eaten nothing more than a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water. When he walks, he greatly favors his right side, still unbalanced by the loss of his left arm even a year later, and when he speaks, his voice has a perpetually guttural sound, his vocal cords shredded from months of screaming. Sprinkled across his shaved head, are a mess of pink scars where the dull razor blades they used bit cruelly into his scalp.

He looks exactly as one would expect. A prisoner of war.

For weeks, he’s been on the verge of collapse, but the moment he sees her, none of that matters.

Horrified disbelief fills his face and his eyes flick from the tears on her face, to the trickle of blood down her cheek, to the blood-soaked ropes around her wrists.

With a feral howl, he lunges toward her.

Throwing off the shocked guards at his side, he head-butts the man in front of him, sending him flying back. With a well-aimed kick, he knocks the legs from under the fourth guard and the man falls hard, before Bucky levels a savage kick to his head.

Richter laughs delightedly as he watches the show, until Bucky rushes for him. Lifting his gun, he sets it casually against her temple and cocks it. At the click of the hammer, Bucky skids to a stop, his mouth still twisted in a vicious snarl. Sweat dripping down his face, blood dripping from his busted lip, his chest heaves furiously.

“You god damn motherfucking cocksucking piece of shit, you let her go. Let her fuckin’ go, or I’ll fuckin’ gut you.”

“I thought so,” Richter says smugly. “So, our Soldier has something to fight for. How utterly inconvenient.”

“You’re god damn straight I fuckin’ do,” Bucky hisses, staggering under the rush of adrenaline. “Hurt her and I swear to god, I swear to fuckin’ god, I will slit your fuckin’ throat.”

With a dramatic sigh, Richter keeps his eyes on Bucky and bends down to speak in her ear.

“Apparently this one’s special, fights harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. Every time we wipe him, every memory comes back in a couple days. I don’t know what Zola did to him, but his brain fixes it too fast. Basically, he just won't fucking stay down.”

“Fuck no I won’t,” Bucky interrupts.

“See what I mean? You know what happened last time,” Richter says softly, his breath hot in her ear. “I don’t care if he is Zola’s little pet, he’s a wild fucking animal and I’m not above putting him down. So here we are. You fix him or I kill him. Your choice.”

“What the fuck is he talking about,” Bucky asks, looking directly at her now. “What - darlin, what the hell does he mean?”

Looking into his eyes, she thinks about that lovely blue. For the rest of her life, she knows she will see it everywhere. In everything.

Behind him, the guard he head-butted lumbers to his feet and manages to get his forearm locked around Bucky’s neck.

Richter stands behind her, waiting. Against her skin, he presses a light kiss and she shudders at the hideous feel.

“Come now. You love him, don’t you? Do the right thing.”

Clasped in a tight chokehold, she can see Bucky’s face turning red as he splutters for breath.

“No,” she chokes out. “I won’t. I won’t.”

Cruel fingers dig into the back of her neck and he hisses in her ear. “If you say no, I will put him in that chair and fry his fucking brain every single day for the rest of his life and I will make you watch. Even if he heals fast, he still screams like a baby. Trust me on that one.”

Bucky is still fighting, his throat working uselessly as he tries to draw a breath.

Every scenario, every choice, every possibility, flies through her head. Trying desperately to come up with a solution, with a way to save them both, she thinks and thinks and thinks.

And she comes up empty, because the answer is simple.

There is no solution.

Then what choice does she have?

She remembers the parade of men from before, the sound of their screams as the chair rocked bolts of electricity through them again and again. The thought of Bucky strapped in that chair, his body convulsing as the electric currents wrack his body, as he screams for her to help him - it is inconceivable. She knows what she has to do. She knows.

What choice does she have?

“Yes,” she sobs, her eyes filling with tears. “Fine, yes, I’ll do it, please just - let him go.”

Motioning to the guard, Richter points at the floor. The man releases his death-grip on Bucky’s throat, kicking his feet from under him and Bucky falls hard to his knees. Wrenching herself from Richter’s harsh grip, she rushes to catch him before Bucky’s face hits the floor.

“You have one minute,” Richter warns, fading into the shadows of the dark room. “And then you do it. If you leave anything behind again, I will kill him.”

After everything, here they are. Together.

Kneeling in front of the fireplace, the warm light cocoons them in their own world, one last time.

Bucky rests his head on her shoulder, closing his eyes when she cradles his thin frame against her. In the quiet room, his short, shallow breaths echo raggedly. Carefully, she runs her fingers soothingly up his neck, over the spiky tufts of dark hair and his body wilts in her tight embrace.

Sighing wearily, he picks his head up and touches his forehead to hers. Cupping his face, she brushes her fingers over the scratchy stubble lining his sunken cheeks and he gives her a rueful smile.

“Hey, I’ve been thinking. You okay with a one-armed husband?” he breathes. “Promise I can still love you just as hard.”

Tears streaming down her face, she returns his smile. “I love it. It makes you look dashing.”

“That’s exactly what I said,” he replies, pushing his nose against hers. Precious seconds slip by as they sit in silence, breathing each other in. Both trying their damndest to remember everything about the other, before they lose it all. Finally, she whispers her favorite words in his ear.

“I love you, Bucky.”

He hums contentedly and smiles. “I love you too. Don’t ever forget it, okay? I know I won’t.”

It takes every last drop of willpower for her not break down. Because he will forget. He will forget, and she will make certain that he does.

Rubbing her cheek against his, she presses her lips to the shell of his ear, giving him one more thing that the rest of the world cannot take. Something that is theirs, and theirs alone.

“You’re everything for me, Bucky Barnes. You’re the love of my life,” she murmurs, and he leans his head against her. When he opens his eyes, she finds an endless ocean of sadness pouring from the blue depths and he speaks quickly under his breath.

“Listen to me. Whatever happens, I need you to do something for me, okay?” The desperate urgency in his voice makes her heart skip. “No matter what happens, don’t you dare stay here. I can see it in your face honey, don’t you stay here, stuck in this room inside your head, thinking you could’ve done something different. You understand me?”

Swallowing hard, she tries to answer, but he cuts her off. The words are full of fear, holding a message he needs her to accept. “Please, I’m begging you. When you get out of here, you find a way to go on. Find a way to live.”

Losing him again will break her. That fact is as certain as the sun rising in the east.

There’s no way she can do this again, but in her heart, she knows that’s not what he needs. He needs her to agree, he needs her to try, and if she has to send his mind into a graveyard of buried memories, at least she can do this one thing for him.

She owes their love that much.

“I will,” she says. “I promise, I will.”

“That’s my girl,” he whispers with a tired smile. Staring into his eyes, she does everything she can to memorize the love she finds there, before Bucky gives her a crooked smile and tells her one more secret. “You know what? I don’t regret anything that happened. If I had to do it all over, I wouldn’t change one damn thing. It all led me to you, and I’ll remember every piece of us to the end. Because this kind of love, it never leaves. Right?”

“No, it never leaves,” she echoes. Placing her hands on his cheeks, she kisses him full on the mouth, tasting blood and salt and love, trying with her whole heart to carve even a small bit of herself into his bones.

Breaking the kiss, her heart plummets at the sight of his sweet smile.

Blinking away her tears, she takes a deep breath.

And then she tears her entire world apart.

Surprise fills Bucky’s face when he feels the heat begin to pulse from her hands, when he sees the soft glow of white light from her fingers. Watching her in confusion, his lips part as though he wants to say something, but no words come. Concentrating harder than she ever has before, she gathers everything, all those beautiful memories that make Bucky Barnes the man he has become and she wipes them all away.

All his stories about the Howling Commandos. That spring day he caught a foul ball at a Dodgers game. Steve Rogers’ floppy blond hair shining in the summer sun at Coney Island. The way his mother sang while she baked, and the fairytales he read his sister before bed. How he felt looking in the mirror the first time he put on his uniform, pale and scared to death. Watching a brilliant red sun sinking in the ocean, the day he sailed for England. Every memory he has of her. The thrill of their first kiss and the way she held his arm when he walked her home from church and the first time they made love and how nervous he felt asking her to marry him.

How god damn much he loves her.

Every colorful memory he owns, she siphons away. Nothing is left behind, because this time, she can take no chances.

The white light burns hotter, so bright Bucky squeezes his eyes closed and still she watches him through it all, until finally, finally, finally -

She lets go.

Bucky slumps unconscious, his chin tucked to his chest. Pressing one final kiss to his forehead, her silent tears splash to the floor. She wants to stay forever, to be there when he opens his eyes, to force herself back into this new life, to make him remember her. To make him remember who they are together.

My god. Oh my god, what has she done.

Before she can say a word, the guards rip him from her arms. Dragging him away, his head lolls to the side and the last thing she sees, before they exit the room, are Bucky’s eyes beginning to flutter open.

“Wait -“ she says, panic filling every last cell in her body, “no, please wait, don’t - please, where are you taking him?”

“He has work to do,” Richter says dismissively.

Sick with heartbreak and drowning in regret, she remains kneeling on the floor, and every last piece of her soul shatters.

*****

Day later, there’s a screech of metal, and her door bangs open.

Richter saunters in, a length of cloth folded over his arm. Behind him, is the Hydra guard who escorted her from her cell last time, his gun cocked and aimed.

Caked in dried mud and an obscene amount of blood, the bright blue of Bucky’s Howlie jacket is nearly unrecognizable. The left arm is mostly torn away, the thick material hanging in ragged strips below the elbow. With a grunt, Richter tears away a piece of fabric at the shoulder and tosses it at her.

“Here. Thought you might want this,” he says coldly.

At her feet, the cloth looks dark and dirty, but in the midst of grimy blue, she sees the gray wings Bucky had sewn into his jacket sleeve. She remembers tracing her fingers over them, asking what they meant. Bucky had grinned, his chest swelling with a bit of pride, before he wove tales for her about the Howling Commandos. He glossed over their missions and focused on the men instead, and she remembers how wonderfully he could tell a story. The small bits of humor he found amid the bleakness of war painted a bright world for her to see.

Now, she picks it up, touching the rusty-red smudges lining the edges of the wings. She looks up at him.

“Why?”

Richter says nothing, but a grim smile pulls at his lips. He draws out the pause, savoring the expectation in her face, before carelessly dropping a bomb.

“Zola lost him during a routine experiment. He coded on the table. Guess we haven’t made our soldiers as durable as we need just yet.”

This bomb, it finishes the job Steve’s telegram began. For the second time, she learns the love of her life is dead and now there is nothing but cold emptiness where her heart used to be.

“We no longer require your services. We have a new machine that should work just fine,” he tilts his head, looking down at her. “But thank you for your help.”

Spinning on his heel, he shoves the remains of the blue coat at the guard still waiting in the doorway.

“Burn it,” he orders. “And leave her here to rot.”

The door bangs shut and the lock clicks with a sickening finality.

*****

No food. No water.

For two days, she hears footsteps marching back and forth in front of her door. Something seems to be happening, but through it all, no one pays attention to the woman locked in the cell at the end of the hall, waiting to die.

In her dreams, she sees Bucky strapped to a table exactly like the one they used for her. Was he scared? Did he go willingly or did he fight? Did it happen quickly? Did it hurt? Did he realize what was happening before his heart stopped?

Was there any part of him, maybe buried deep down, that loved her to the end?

She dismisses that last thought. No, of course there wasn’t. She made sure of that fact.

In a strange way, she finds a perverse relief in Bucky’s death. At least this way, he will never know how she betrayed him.

Perhaps if there is an afterlife, someday she can find him there and beg his forgiveness.

On the morning of the third day, sunlight flows through the rectangular window near the ceiling and she waits on her bed. For someone to come. Anyone. To save her. To kill her. Either would work, she’s not picky. Watching the slow crawl of sunlight move across the floor, she counts the minutes, until she notices something peculiar.

Silence.

Sitting up takes a massive effort and rising to her feet almost knocks her out. Knees wobbling dangerously, her sweaty hand presses to the wall for balance, and she stumbles to the door.

“Hello?” she croaks, but it comes as nothing more than a rough whisper. Wrapping her fingers around the bars of the door, she rests her forehead against the cold metal. Summoning her strength, she tries again. “Is anyone there?”

Silence.

No one answers. No lights illuminate the hallway. There is no hum of electricity, no sound of a distant radio playing, no raucous laughter. There is no one there.

So. They left her to die then.

Angry tears fill her eyes, and she bangs a weak fist on the door. Without expecting a solution, she grabs the door handle and rattles it, hot tears spilling over and streaking through the dirt on her cheeks.

But miraculously - the door opens.

Stepping cautiously into the doorway, she scans the hallway and finds nothing. Perplexed, she looks down and her confusion grows. Outside the door, a cloth bundle is propped against the wall. Crouching down, she hesitantly pulls at the loose knot and it falls open, revealing a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, two apples, and a cracked leather canteen full of water.

Common sense screams at her to think, but she throws caution to the wind. Grabbing the canteen with trembling fingers, she flips the lid and chugs the cold water. It has a dusty, alkaline taste, but she cries with relief. Tearing off a hunk of bread, she stuffs it in her mouth, her eyes drifting closed at the taste. It hits the hollowness in her belly so fast, she almost retches, but she manages to keep it down.

The rest, she wraps up in the cloth sack and hugs it to her chest.

She walks down the hall. Through a small office, down another hall.

With every step, she expects to be stopped. But nothing happens.

At the end of the hall, is a heavy black door. When she opens it, sunlight spills in and she takes a deep breath of fresh air.

From the outside, the base looks like a series of old buildings, but there is literally nothing else. No people. No vehicles. Nothing but the peppy chirp of birds warbling in the trees. For one brief moment, she stands in the morning light and thinks about giving up. Such a soothing thought.

But then the sound of Bucky’s voice fills her head.

Find a way to live.

The years that follow will be filled with devastating sadness, but beneath it all, she will hold these words close to her heart. She can do this for him.

So, she starts walking.

Down the ruts of the narrow access road leading away from the building, one foot in front of the other. She anticipates bullets hitting her from behind, but nothing happens. On she walks, through a forest of trees, one step after another. Into the open, where the access road joins up with a small country lane. She turns left and keeps going. Five slow miles she traipses along, until a town appears.

On the edge of the main street, she sees a small grocery store and walks inside. Covered in grime, shivering from head to toe, she tries to speak, but instead, she collapses. An older woman looks up from behind the counter, and her curls of thick black hair bounce when she rushes around the front counter shouting in Italian for help.

For two weeks, she stays there recovering, but no one comes.

In that sleepy Italian town, she finally understands.

After everything she has done, after everything they stole from her, after they broke her one last time - it appears that Hydra really was finished with her.

With freedom should come relief, but that is an emotion reserved for saints, not sinners like her. What she has done, she can never undo.

She will live with that fact, from now until the end of her days.

*****

Next Chapter

*****

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky #bucky fic #altnl

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ghostboy-gamedev · 4 years

Text

Learn Log #2 - Pixel Art Basics 2

This week I continued learning the basics of pixel art and ended up making some pretty alright-looking RPG items. The topics covered this week were colour, shading and dithering and you can read about them below.

Colour

To understand colour in pixel art, you first need to understand colour. Colour theory explains the existence, and relationships, between the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) and the secondary colours (green, orange and purple). These colours and everything in between appear on the colour wheel, which we’ll get to in a second. What’s important to know is that these different colours can contrast against each other, complement each and give off different moods. I’m not going to go into depth but having some understanding of colour theory is essential in creating any artwork, including pixel art.

Anyway, that colour wheel I mentioned is vital to pixel art. Every digital art program you use for pixel art will include some form of the colour wheel which will allow you to select colours for your artwork. Below I’ve made a rough image of a colour bar with the very left pixel starting at hue 0 and the furthest right being hue 360 (each pixel increases hue by 15).

You’ll notice that hue 0 and 360 are both the same red. This is because a revolution around the colour wheel has been completed and we’re now back at square one. Remember that even in bar form this is a colour wheel – this information is key to utilising the colour wheel.

Now, looking at these colours, your eyes might start to tear up a bit. They’re very bright and harsh. If we put two contrasting colours, such as green and red, next to each other, this would only get worse. This limits our creativity and makes our games a bit irritating to play. So, if we lower the saturation and value of the colours a bit, it can make our pixels pleasant.

You’ll see here that I’ve reduced the value by 10 points making the colours a little darker and more comfortable on the eyes. You can also see the saturation decrease the further down the image the pixels are. Desaturation can also make your pixels less harsh. However, keep in mind that adjusting value and saturation will affect the mood of your game. Lighter, brighter games give off a friendly vibe while darker, desaturated games will give off a more serious vibe. You can also use these techniques on black and white pixels if you replace the white with a highly desaturated yellow and the black with a desaturated, dark purple as shown below.

Finally, if you’re looking for what colours to use in your pixel art piece or video game here’s some advice. 1) Make a colour palette – this will serve as a constant reference for what colours you’re using in the art. 2) To develop a palette, make a mock-up of your art – this will help you pick colours that work together and create a cohesive mood. 3) Remove unnecessary colours – keeping your colour palette simple or simplifying it as you go will make animation easier and make the art less noisy.

The final thing I’ll say is; use the HSV (Hue, Saturation and Value) measures and forget about RGB (Red, Green, Blue). I used RGB before this week and it pails in comparison to HSV. It might take some time to get used to, but it is crucial for nice shading, which I’ll explain later on.

Shading

To discuss shading, we’ll be using this box and this sphere. Of course, they don’t really look like a box or sphere without shading, but we’ll get to that.

Someone starting out with pixel art, like myself, would usually just adjust the saturation and value measurements of the colour to achieve a brighter or darker tone. A lower saturation will give off the impression of brightness even if the value is at 100 by moving closer towards white. Meanwhile, decreasing the value moves the colour towards black making it darker. These new colours would be applied as shadows and highlights and often with gradients moving between the colours.

However, there is a much more interesting method of shading called hue shifting. In an environment, we will have a light source which may not be 100% white light. With hue shifting, we move towards the hue of the light source for brighter colours and for darker colours we move away from that light source (typically towards the opposite colour). This is why it is so important to ditch RGB and remember the properties of the colour wheel. Below are some examples of the different types of shading: the first image is of standard shading, the second is of hue shifting, and the third is a comparison.

You’ll immediately notice hue shifting is a lot more colourful and nicer to look at than standard shading. You’ll also see some colours seem a bit off (yellow, for example, shifts too far green and orange. This is because I simply followed the numerical values of the colour wheel. When using hue shifting, DO NOT do this. It can help a bit if you need guidance, but if you strictly follow the numbers, you’ll end up with weird colours. Go with your eye and what looks best.

Now let’s apply hue shifting to our box and sphere.

Looking much better! You’ll also notice I added another highlight to the sphere. This is because the sphere is also receiving indirect light bouncing up from the ground.

The formula for hue shifting goes:

Lighter = Hue Shift – Saturation + Value

Darker = Hue Shift – Saturation – Value (you can instead add saturation if you want brighter shadows)

The extent to which you manipulate these values will be part of your art’s style.

Dithering

Another method of shading used in retro machines that can still be used today is dithering. Dithering is used by alternating between colours in a pattern to trick the brain into thinking that the colour present is a combination of two different colours. There’s a couple of different ways to dither such as:

Uniform dithering – alternating each pixel between the colours

Pattern dithering – making a pattern transition between the colours

Random dithering – scattering the pixels randomly

Dithering is useful if working with limited palettes and works great with larger pieces. However, dithering between similar colours might not make a difference, and too much dithering can make an image noisy.

Week 2 Practice

I wanted to make some fantasy RPG items for this week’s practice following HeartBeast’s and Davit Masia’s videos on item and gem icons. The first thing I did was create a colour range, as shown below. To make this, I picked out the six primary and secondary colours on the colour wheel and adjusted them to a tone that fit what I wanted. Next, I hue shifted them to create two brighter and two darker tones each.

This range allowed me to easily pick and choose colours for my colour palette. If I felt any of the colours from the range needed to be different, I just adjusted them in the palette. I decided on working with a small palette for the twelve items I was making and choose 16 colours as I was working in a 16x16 space. Within the palette, there are fifteen grids with the colour white and fourteen others. The sixteenth colour used was the black outline surrounding the palette.

I based these colours off a list of ideas I had which include health and mana potions, currency (coins, a bag of coins, gems), and weapons (bombs, sword, shield, spell scroll). To test out the colours I’d picked for my rough palette, I made line art of the items and roughly coloured in each item (Note: the grey background was not part of the colour palette).

I assessed what I had and realised I wasn’t going to use green anywhere. I removed both shades of green from the palette giving me two spaces if I needed any new colours. I then proceeded to add more detail to the icons, including shading, and outlined each object so they stood out from the background. After a while, I realised that I needed some more brown tones as the coin bag and sword lacked some necessary shading. I used the new two spots in my palette for a lighter tone and a darker tone and finished my items.

Now that I felt happy with my items, I quickly added a small shadow beneath each of the items I’d consider ‘pick-ups’ and animated them into a little GIF (apologies for the watermark). This was where I completed the piece.

Reflecting on the piece, I think the items look pretty good. The form of the sword could use some work – the addition of the outline made it a bit big, turning it into a toy sword. Also, the shading of the coin, bomb and shield could all be a bit better, but I feel like I did an ok job with the limited palette.

The End

So, that concludes this week’s learn log. Next week I’m moving away from learning the basics and starting with GUI pixel art including logos, fonts, buttons and cursors so follow my blog if you’re interested.

My learning and this blog post wouldn’t have been made possible without these amazing resources. Go check them out if you wanna learn some stuff about pixel art!

Pixel Art 101: ‘Colour Palette’ by Pixel Pete

How to Colour Pixel Art by TutsByKai

How to Pick Nice Colours by MortMort

Pixel Art 101: ‘Shading’ by Pixel Pete

Hue Shifting in Pixel Art by Brandon James Greer

Dithering and Pixel Art by Armitage Games

[Let’s Pixel] 18x18 Item Icons by HeartBeast

How to Start in Pixel Art by Davit Masia

#pixel art #pixelart #video games #learn #learning #gamedev #game dev #pixel #art

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ageless-aislynn · 5 years

Video

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tumblr

“How Soon Is Now?” (Sawyer/Kate/Jack, Lost)

Created in 2005

STOP THE VID FROM AUTO PLAYING UNTIL YOU READ THE WARNINGS.

WARNING LIEK WOAH FOR FLASHING EFFECTS AND QUICK CUTTING. SERIOUSLY, THERE ARE SOME HARDCORE STROBE EFFECTS IN THIS BECAUSE I APPARENTLY THOUGHT BLINDING PEOPLE COUNTED AS ART, LOL.

ALSO, THE MUSIC SEEMS ESPECIALLY LOUD SO GUARD YOUR EARS IF YOU’RE WEARING HEADPHONES. ;)

Heh, this is a genuine Blast From The Paaaast, lol! One of my very earliest of vids, made with the basic Windows Movie Maker that allowed me to do 2 things and 2 things alone: fade one clip into another (if I got creative, I could TRY to make it look like one clip was overlaid onto the other but none of them were, they all were just ridiculously long fades) and add one audio track. I couldn’t even add a watermark, lol. Dude, I couldn’t even do a fade in/out to black or white. All those you see in the vid were me fading a plain black or plain white still picture into the clip to try to mimic a fade in/out, lol! (That’s why they’re so harsh.) But, in my effort to put my own spin on things, I used my Paintshop Pro and Animation Shop to try to get my freak flag flying, lol!

It was just funny to see this again (I was trying to remember which version I’d used of this song and figured the fastest way to find out was to check the vid - it was by t.A.T.u. ;) ). I think I’ve come a long way in vidding in the 14 years since I made this but I think I’ve also lost some things, too. That “necessity is the mother of invention” spark that had me painstakingly and lovingly creating lightning out of Paintshop’s lightning stamp tool thing so I could animate it and try to get the motion in the vid that I felt it needed. And I should mention, I had to create that lightning as a GIF then import that onto the single video track. I couldn’t time it directly on the video track, so I had to make a MILLION GIFs with different frame properties to try and get the timing right, lol! EVERYTHING that isn’t just straight-up moving scene from the show was a still picture animated effect.

It’s much easier to vid things like this now and, yeah, this looks heckin’ low-tech and, dare I say, low-brow, even. The quality is trash because I only had tiny clips to work with and WMM hardly could render in HD, lol. (I don’t think HD was actually a thing at that point in time? I don’t know. I know WMM basic didn’t have it, that’s for sure!) But I remember how satisfying it was to FINALLY get that lightning timed in. I remember how many people asked me what effect I’d used in Vegas to do that silver metal flashing effect over their faces (that was all a bazillion still pictures lovingly prepped and animated) and how good it made me feel for them to be all, “Wow, that was a LOT of work, cool!”

It was a different time to be a vidder, then. There was a strong sense of community where people loved sharing tips and techniques and hey, would even give you a hand by creating a section of video for you to use in your own video if you wanted (I made people some goofy animated things, mainly causing people to disappear, that they didn’t have the means to do themselves). I was nowhere near professional at it but it made me so happy to be able to make something that people seemed to appreciate being able to use for their own vid.

The nostalgia is strong tonight, wow. ;) Anyway, don’t know that anybody cares to watch this or read my supa-long ramblings about it. I just felt like posting it and rambling, I guess! ;) If you watch, I hope you’re not temporarily blinded or anything because, dude, I loved the INTENSE FLASHING THINGS back then, lol!

Enjoy if you watch. I understand if you don’t. ;)

PS - If this still manages to autoplay and mess up your dash, let me know and I’ll take it down. I ABSOLUTELY don’t want to hurt anybody with this. Please let me know, okay?

#lost #sawyer/kate/jack #trigger warning: flashing lights #strobe lights #aislynn's vids #blast from the past

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blacky-nikki-art · 5 years

Photo

TFAC - Steel Plate

I disagree to use MY OCs as yours at any RP, Instagram account and any other social media. If I'll know you do it without any warnings I report you. Sorry for the not nice start but I had a problem with art thief a few months ago. I would like it not happens again well when I'll draw any TF OC I gonna add this info + my watermark at the place where is impossible to delete or avoid. Okay, here we go. Like probably you know most of my Transformers OCs belong to my Universum TF Autobot City (Universum TFA but much later). Last time it's slowly dying what just makes me unhappy. I love fandoms of Warframe and Transformers but also I need a bit my personal space where I don't have to care about the lore of Universum. I start to dislike one of the main character Steel Plate. From another hand she was still my fav well I look for a solution to this problem. Probably like you remember I made a tons versions of her look but much later I finally understand it was not the real problem but her personality. I don't want to have a cry baby OC as one of OCs who I like the most. Well, here she is - a new Steel Plate what you see at this picture. Of course, she needs a new story and I have to change much stuff or EVERYTHING at her story and character + the story of Universum TFAC will be changing too. But I'm sure peoples not really care about what happened at my AU well I will do it slowly. Just for myself. Thx for reading!

#blacky try draw #tfac #transofrmers oc #transformersoc #tfoc #tf oc #mccadams #my oc #steel plate

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spideyxchelle · 7 years

Text

so, zendaya and tom holland were at the oscars this last weekend. and so, uh, this happened. because they looked incredible on the red carpet. mood music

tw: some implied sexual activity

when peter gets into USC for film he cries. that is the home of Spielberg and Lucas, the halls where Ron Howard walked. it makes directors.

he had always wanted to be a director. from the time he was a little kid he sat behind his shitty camera that he dumpster dived for and made dumb movies with his friends. and some of those dumb movies got a bit of a production value jump when he joined the AV CLUB in high school. and some of those dumb movies were good enough to be submitted to USC. and some of those dumb movies were good enough to get him in.

when peter stops crying long enough to breathe, the oxygen that rushes to his brain shocks him into reality. he is going to be going to LA to study film. and maybe, just maybe, one day he’ll be a director.

the four years at USC are gruelling and exhausting and wonderful. everyday is better than the last. he’s surrounded by movie magic.

and then graduation breathes down his back and he’s suddenly terrified because he’s made some high quality students films at USC (the amount of money the film school has is criminal) but students films don’t make him a director. they make him a dreamer like everyone else in Hollywood.

and for some unknown, maddening reason, the closer they get to graduation the more and more it looks like everyone he knows has a plan for post-graduation except him. they have PA jobs, or have lower-level work at studios, or have internships. its like he missed the memo on how to make his dreams into a reality.

which is why he starts writing Until I Fade Out. it’s a character driven film of his own creation. in all his time at USC his writing classes were always a burden to him. he had to take them to graduate but he never liked them. he never felt like he had a voice, like he had something to say. and now all he has is the anxiety and the pressure of making a name for himself by 25 and the horrible nightmare of failing to succeed on paper compared to his classmates.

Until I Fade Out is refreshingly frank and honest and precious to peter. it becomes his refuge to talk about his fears. he graduates and keeps writing. and all of his friends start their industry jobs. and he keeps writing. three months after graduation its done. and he has blown all of his savings on the cost of living. he is jobless.

but he has a script and a vision and his passion is reborn. so he calls Ned, one of his buddies from school that took a job at WB after graduation. he is some executive’s assistant. but he was also one of the best writers he went to school with. he passes the script along to him asking for notes.

and he hears nothing for three weeks. until Ned shows up on his doorstep with a printed out copy of his script. “this, jesus-” he says without a hello, “you have to make this, peter.” and peter exhales. there is some traitorous anxiety he has been holding onto since he finished writing that finally withers away and dies. the fear that his work sucks. that no one would love it or want it. but Ned likes it.

and so, with Ned’s help he gets a relatively young producer to finance the film. and its not a lot of money at all. but people on indie films never have a lot of money to work with anyway, peter reasons. and all peter can hear when he gets the news that he’s been financed is that he gets to make his movie. the particulars don’t matter.

the very next thing he does is call Cindy. they went to school together. she was the cinematographer on all of his student films. and she is doing PA work for some freeform show that she hates. but the money is consistent, shitty but consistent.

so she isn’t convinced quitting her job to work on a three month indie shoot is a good idea. in fact, she tells him she adores him but she doesn’t want to shoot herself in the foot and get blacklisted in hollywood. so he tells her to read his script. and then decide.

and that’s when it happens. when Michelle Jones finds out about the project. Michelle Jones is a relatively popular young Hollywood actress. but she is at the teeny bopper stage of her career. nothing “serious” will look at her. and she happens to be one of the series regulars on Cindy’s crappy show.

and, as fate would have it, Cindy leaves peter’s script on the Kraft services table during lunch. and Michelle picks it up and takes it back to her trailer. she reads it. she loves it. and the watermark on the script has Cindy’s name on it so it isn’t hard for Michelle to find her and approach her about it.

Cindy has been looking for the missing script all afternoon when Michelle hands it back to her, “looking for this?” Cindy exhales and then gets immediately star struck, “uh, yes. Thank you.” “what’s this?” Michelle asks. Cindy is alarmed by a starlet of any caliber talking in her direction, “my, uh, friend Peter’s movie. just got financed by some guy at WB. but, like, its not a WB film. it’s a little indie film. like, the producer put his own money in it. I’m sorry, I, uh, didn’t even know you knew my name.” Michelle smiles warmly, “uh, you get my coffee for me, like, five times a day. I’d be a dick if I didn’t. besides, there are practically no women on this set so I make it a habit of learning all their names. so, why do you have the script?” Cindy gawks, like she cannot believe this whole day is happening to her, “he wants me to be the cinematographer on it.”

without blinking, Michelle advises her, “do it.” Cindy sputters, “excuse me?” “its good,” Michelle glances down at the script in Cindy’s arms, “and tell your friend, Peter was it? tell him if he’s looking for someone to play Tisha, well, I’ll make the time.”

when Cindy recounts this story to peter, all three of them (cindy, peter and ned) all freak the fuck out. and then, almost immediately peter comes to the conclusion that she was just being nice or whatever. because there is no way michelle jones is going to sign to his nothing of a movie.

except that is not what happens. when cindy goes to work the next day to quit because she has a little film she wants to be the cinematographer for, michelle stops her on her way walking off set. her hair is halfway done and she’s out of breath. “fuck,” she groans, “you move fast. I’ve been calling your name for like two whole minutes.” Cindy stares at her, “um. Sorry?” “no,” michelle shakes her head, “its cool. look, I saw you leaving and I have to ask. are you doing that movie?” cindy nods. Michelle grins, “that’s good. great even. I’m happy for you. and uh, hang on, take my number. if he can’t find anyone for Tisha…please…call me. I’m in the middle of shooting the season but I’d shoot on the weekends or late nights. whatever. just, keep me in mind. don’t forget.”

and peter hardly believes it. but he does forget about the Michelle Jones encounter. because they have two and a half months of preproduction that have to happen. they have to hire crew and scout locations and rent equipment. and all on a tiny ass budget. but once it looks like the movie is actually going to happen, peter remembers he needs to hire actors.

because he needs to put people in front of the camera and, for some stupid reason, he can’t help but remember michelle. its been nearly three months. and shooting for her show should be going on hiatus soon. the thought of her actually working on his movie sounds…feasible.

so he does something recklessly stupid—he calls her.

the first conversation he has with Michelle Jones is awkward. because she is immediately on the defensive. when she picks up he says, “michelle?” and she snaps, “how did you get this number.” he flushes and tries to correct his mistake, “no. uh. I’m peter. peter parker. you know cindy. I mean gave cindy your number.” “who?” “Cindy- nevermind. look, she was a PA on your show. and you read my movie. and you told her you were interested in being in it. and I just…I shouldn’t have called.” he goes to hang up but she nearly shouts, “no, wait. I remember now. I remember your movie. Until I Fade Out.” “yeah.” “yes,” she says. “oh sorry, of course, yes.” “no,” she laughs and his heart stops, “I wasn’t correcting your yeah. I was saying I still want to do it. if that’s why you’re calling.”

he must black out for longer than five seconds because she starts repeating his name until he snaps back to reality. “I’m sorry,” he laughs, “did you just say you want to do my movie?” “yeah,” and he can hear the smirk in her voice, he can almost imagine it, too, “I go on hiatus in two weeks. if you can wait that long.” “yes,” he immediately says. and its not exactly true. they start shooting in five days. but he’s the director. and even if the rest of the crew hates him maybe they can adjust the schedule so they shoot scenes without her for the first week or so.

like he is in a city of dreams (because maybe he is), he makes plans with michelle jones to be in his movie. ned is going to have to help him with the legality of it. she’s union, after all, and she warns him that her agent is going to be furious. but she is going to be in his movie.

and her agents are not the only people that are furious. his crew is furious that he is moving the shooting schedule around to accommodate an add-on. and the friend of his from school that thought she was going to play Tisha is not thrilled either but these are the decisions a director makes.

oh fuck. he’s a director.

that really hits home when he walks on set the first day. and its barely a set. there are lights rigged and a camera set up in someone’s living room. but there are twenty people that all look at him like he’s the boss and that means he must be.

peter pulls off his baseball hat and smooths back his hair, “hi everyone.” they all smile at him. and he feels the same pressure he imagines every director must on their first day. but he pushes through those nerves and keeps it brief, “thank you all for joining me on this adventure. now, let’s make a kickass movie.” and just like that, he is directing a movie.

and Cindy makes every shot better than he could have ever imagined. her vision, her eyes, give every scene a heartbeat. he nearly kisses her at the end of the first day. instead, he buys her a drink and makes a toast between the two of them, “to our movie.” the smile she gives him back makes him feel like he can do this, they can do this.

after nearly a week of shooting, the crew already feels like a family. there is a lot of work that goes into every shot. people in hair and makeup have made it a fun little game to try and swipe glitter on the back of peter’s neck at the start of the day. the whole crew gets on the joke.

he loves his life.

and then, michelle jones shows up on set. she drives to the house they have been shooting a majority of the interior shots in. and when she steps out of her car, peter can hear his heart beating. he wonders if the rest of the crew can, too. it is early, she hasn’t been in HMU (hair and makeup) yet, so she looks like anyone else. if they were crafted from diamonds. “hi,” he nearly chokes, “I’m peter.” she grins from ear to ear and shakes his hand, “mj.” “mj,” he raises his eyebrow and stupidly keeps shaking her hand. she has to awkwardly pull her hand out of his, “yeah, no one really calls me michelle. at least not my friends. and we’re gonna be family the next three months so—” his chest melts, “lemme introduce you to everyone.”

and the crew loves her. it takes her exactly three shots for her to pick up on the put glitter on peter game. except she sucks at it. because every time she touches him, his flesh tingles and so he knows it was her. without even having to look.

as an actress she is receptive. as a member of the crew, she is a delight.

and peter waits only five days before he groans into his pillow and admits to himself that he has a major crush on her.

the movie is goes well. better than he could have ever imagined. the scenes are clicking. the crew is bringing to life his vision. and he starts to dread it being over. because nothing could ever be better than these three months. it makes him feel at home. they feel like home.

after shooting one night three days before the end of the shoot, michelle invites everyone back to her house. she lives in the Hollywood Hills. Ned makes a joke about her being afraid of the fires in the mountains. she raises her eyebrow and dares him, “you scared?”

everyone packs into cars and goes to address given. it is not a surprise to anyone that the house is incredible. not needlessly opulent but large and open, like it was always waiting for the crew to fill it with their love.

peter sits next to Cindy and she leans against him. when everyone is drinking and laughing and swapping stories, she whispers to peter, “thank you.” he looks down at her, “what?” “this experience has changed my life. I’ll spend forever chasing this, these moments.” peter sucks in a breath and squeezes her hand. “so thank you,” cindy adds. Peter shakes his head, “no, thank you. you’re behind the camera. I could never…I could never have done this without you. and I never want to. if we…if we get lucky enough to keep doing this…we should do it together. me and you. partners.” Cindy sits up and blinks at him in awe, “you mean it?” he nods, “you’re my eyes, cindy. I can’t work without my eyes.”

the moment is magic.

like, if he has cindy on side he could hold onto this kind of magic forever. he knew from the beginning she was the key. whatever he was looking for in his writing. she was the key to getting it filmed.

he catches mj’s eye across the room and she smiles. he becomes eternally grateful to cindy in that moment, too. because he brought michelle into his life.

he squeezes cindy’s hand and she gives him a knowing smile as he crosses to mj. michelle ducks out of the room and heads to the balcony overlooking Hollywood. he stands beside her and they are both quiet.

peter tries to come up with something meaningful to say but standing her with in silence is more than enough. he takes her hand on the railing and she sucks in a breath.

neither of them look at each other.

michelle speaks, “I’m glad I read your script that day.” “you mean when you stole it?” he jokes. he does not look at her but he knows she rolls her eyes, “agree to disagree on specifics.” he squeezes her fingertips, “me too.” she is breathless when she says, “isn’t this cliché? the director and his leading lady?” he finally does look at her. and she looks scared. it startles him. because mj is always so fearless. this is the same girl who, on set, tries to learn every department when she isn’t shooting. the same girl that has a secret handshake with the gaffers. she is michelle jones.

and she looks afraid. “what is it?” he whispers. “it won’t always feel like this,” she whispers, “we spend every day together but set isn’t like real life. when the movie ends you’ll…forget about me.” “no,” he shakes his head. she nods, “you will. and whatever this feeling you think you have now will fade. this is your first movie. you can’t tell the difference yet. but you will.” “mj, I won’t. I…you…I mean, wow.” she smiles sadly but unlocks their hands and heads inside without another word.

devastated is not a strong enough word for what he feels. but he has three days left to shoot and, damn it, he is going to do it. he is a professional. and if it hurts to look at mj sometimes, well, that is just the price of making art. your heart should always be in danger of being broken. otherwise it never matters, its never true.

the last shot they film of the movie, is a scene halfway through the script. Tisha and Bill, his protagonist, are just talking. they sit beside each other on the front steps of a house. and Bill talks about feeling stuck, about how he looks around at all of his friends and they all seem to have life figured out and he is desperately behind. these are peter’s words. the scared boy that wrote them just after graduation is now a man a little less than a year later. and he remembers how the words used to scare him, but they don’t anymore.

he watches michelle the entire last shot. he knows he shouldn’t. he should be watching for a hundred other things, but she captures him. and when the scene is done…he does not speak.

the whole crew looks at him. the actors stay in the moment, suspended and confused. and then, peter remembers himself and yells cut.

when he watches playback, cindy is crying and she wraps an arm around him. he squishes her back. their movie. they did it.

with a heavy heart, he looks at the crew and shrugs, “well, that’s a wrap.” and everyone applauds loudly.

they didn’t have money in the budget for a wrap party. so they turn set into their farewell. someone starts playing music and someone, he suspects wardrobe, pulls out drinks. and the night is nothing short of perfect.

once the set is broken down and everyone is spectacularly drunk, there is nothing left to do but say goodbye.

he saves michelle for last.

she approaches him for a hug and he eagerly complies. they cannot seem to let the other go. and he takes the moment to whisper in her ear, “thank you.” when they pull out of their hug she looks so startled it makes him smile. but only for a moment because then she is smiling back and knocking into his shoulder, “you did good, Parker.”

and in the next few months in post, he learns, fuck, he did. the movie is incredible. Abe, another friend from school, puts together a small post-production office. and with the help of that team and cindy, they cut together and mix a wonderful film. when they show it to their backer, the small time producer named Happy Hogan, he cries. and he asks for a copy to send to his boss, TONY FUCKING STARK.

Peter knows that the movie is more than a little special when Tony Stark calls him after he screens it to schedule a meeting with himself and peter. peter, of course, brings cindy. and it takes only fifteen minutes before tony tells him he wants to personally finance sending it to the festival circuit. Cannes, Sundance, AFI.

he calls to tell michelle but gets her voicemail. her show is shooting again. and she is suddenly impossible to reach. or at least for him. he knows she picks up cindy’s calls. he tries not to take it personally. but he fails.

and then, they attend their first festival. AFI.

and he does a little press. but its only a few interviews. until his film screens. and all of the sudden all people can do at AFI is talk about his little movie. it wins Movie of the Year and shit explodes.

they take it to a dozen other festivals and it begins to win a plethora of awards. and then, people outside the festival circuit begin to talk about his little movie. and they want to talk to him about his little movie.

by August, the public is frothing at the mouth for his movie. they want to see it. so, Tony gets it to have a limited release in select cities. and the internet explodes. they love it. they’re fascinated by him.

they are, no surprise, in love michelle. The New York Times says her performance is, “played with dauntless and sometimes reckless charisma, Michelle Jones proves to be one of the, if not the, formidable actors of her generation.”

and the interviews don’t stop. in fact, there is one. one that hits him like a pile of bricks. it is the first interview he does with michelle when she joins the press tour.

“I find it rather remarkable,” the interviewer gushes, “that there is no love story in this film.” peter opens his mouth to speak but mj beats him to the punch, “I would disagree.” “so you think Tisha and-“ “no,” she shakes her head, “the movie is about learning to love yourself. about waking up and trying to be better than you were the day before. my generation, every generation, somehow thinks they have to be a roaring success at 25. that’s just not true.” the interviewer smirks, “but both of you are under 25 and experiencing an insane amount of success.”

“but,” mj counters, “this was our path. it doesn’t mean everyone else will have the same journey. nor should they. if you spend your time worrying about being better than someone else you forget to better yourself.”

peter loves her in that moment. maybe he always did. maybe he did that first moment she stepped out of her car on that first day. but he knows in this moment. he knows because she knows him. and all anyone can ever want from love and life is to be known. truly and deeply.

the interviewer looks to him. and peter shrugs, “I have nothing to add to that. she said it all.”

if he had more time, he might have also added that there are different kinds of love. and they are all important. there is love in his movie. and it’s a love between two friends. he loves Cindy but he’s not in love with her. and her friendship makes him better. maybe, he thinks, he wrote this movie about himself and their friendship. and ode to selfless and supportive platonic love.

after that interview, the buzz for his movie turns into charming festival movie to Oscar worthy buzz. and Michelle freaks out. because she has worked since she was thirteen years old to be seen as more than some dumb kid on some dumb show.

it all becomes terrifyingly real when the Golden Globes nominations come out.

they’ve won awards all year round. small awards, festival awards, but the golden globes are mainstream.

they are sitting in Tony’s office waiting for the announcement to be made, peter’s entire team, when the phone rings. peter is alarmed but tony picks up the phone. they are five minutes out from the official announcement. the stream has barely begun.Tony hangs up and looks severe. peter tries not to be crestfallen. he needs to keep it together for his crew. he is the director after all. Michelle grabs his hand. “what?” Peter asks. Tony shakes his head and gestures to the screen, “watch.”

and one after the other awards start to be announced. and one by one he hears his movie’s name. from editing to music to cinematography. peter drops michelle’s hand to embrace Cindy when they hear her name. he is jumping up and down and celebrating when they get to best screenplay and in the recesses of his mind, he hears his own name. a golden globe nomination. he’s a golden globe nominee.

he is frozen. his team, his friends, his family, all crowd him and begin to shout. embracing him, shouting. he can’t believe it. until mj kisses his cheek. and the world is real again. and then, best supporting actress in a drama comes up and they say Michelle’s name. and the room starts to shout, people begin to pour drinks. they are too busy celebrating to notice that Peter gets nominated for best director (he’ll read that shell-shocked on the internet later) but he does hear Best Motion Picture. and the noise stops.

it all stops. because, fuck, they did it. THEY DID IT! and suddenly, their movie is a nine time golden globe nominee. and peter realizes they could be Oscar nominated. the rest of award season is a blur. he vaguely remembers going to Colbert and Fallon. and he sort of recalls doing lots of photo shoots and interviews. but what does know with perfect clarity is that he gets to spend almost every day with mj. the award circuit means every day is with her. and he’s so, so happy.

because he missed her. because he misses her when she isn’t in the room. because he knows she said he would feel differently in a year but that time has passed and he’s still crazy about her. when they’re getting ready for the globes, Peter decides he likes his t-shirt, jean and baseball cap look a lot better than a suit and tie. Michelle walks into the room and nearly kills him. she looks...wow.

his mouth dries. he licks his lip, “you, I mean, you look, its great. nice dress.” cindy snorts and peter shoots her a look. it is not a pleasant look. “you don’t look so bad yourself,” mj smirks, and casually adjusts his bowtie. his heart leaps out of his chest. and he knows that she knows what she does to him.

they walk the carpet together. well, sort of. they care more about michelle than him. but occasionally someone will see him and ask for a photo as well. because he’s a director. and that means he’s important to pictures but not movie-star important.

when they get inside the first thing he realizes is their table has alcohol. and it feels like a great and terrible idea. because his crew looks like they could all use a drink but he’s not sure its smart.

in the opening monologue, peter gets name checked for being the baby of the directing category. and everyone laughs. and peter’s chest warms. because he’s accepted. because he’s acknowledged enough in his industry to be the butt of a joke. because he’s a golden globe nominee. michelle must understand what the moment means to him because she grabs his hand under the table. and they lock fingers.

he turns to look at her. and they lock eyes. and he misses the camera on them. but the internet does not.

and the internet does not miss when he wins for best original screenplay and the whole table, michelle included, toss him around for cheek kisses. and the internet does not miss when michelle wins the way peter leaps to his feet and tugs her into his arms. and the internet does not miss when peter loses best director the way michelle rests her head on peter’s shoulder. the internet does not miss a thing.

the following morning peter wakes up to a million texts of congratulations because he’s a golden globe winner. and he is linked to about nine million articles about him and michelle. and its mortifying.

because those looks, the way he looks at her, belong to him, to them. they were their moments. and now they belong to the world. and he sort of hates that his privacy is on display for the world to pick apart and scrutinize.

so he texts her about it. and michelle calls him thirty seconds later. “this is the job,” she says when she picks up. “no,” he argues, “my job is to go to set and direct.” he sits up in his bed when she talks, “peter, you’re a public figure now. golden globe nominee. they don’t care how you feel. and they especially don’t care about the fact that you want your feelings for your leading lady to be a secret.”

peter’s jaw drop, “mj-” he doesn’t want to do this on the phone. he wants to talk to her. he wants to look her in the eye when they have this conversation. mj quickly cuts him off, “we don’t have to do this now. but soon.” he exhales and agrees, “soon.”

except soon does not actually mean soon. because its award season. so they don’t have the time to talk. and, okay, fine, honestly? he’s terrified.

and then, by the time the oscar nominations drop, peter and mj still haven’t spoken. but unlike the golden globes, peter and mj decide to watch the nominations privately. at his house. its not like her house. not nearly as big. but since all of the press and success of his film he’s been able to get something modest. and respectable. in an area that isn’t exceptionally dangerous.

michelle cuddles up on his couch and, fuck him, she looks so at home there. on his couch. in his home. and he wants her to stay.

he takes his place beside her on the couch. and tentatively wraps his arm around her. she smiles and turns her head slowly to him, “what are you doing?” “nothing,” he shrugs. she snuggles into his arms, “is this soon?” peter rests his head on hers, “it can be.”

michelle sits up and pivots to look at him, “okay, then. here it is.” michelle grabs his hand and looks at him in a way that makes him feel like whatever hope he is holding onto might be misplaced, “you don’t care about me. this is just...awards season. its intense. and you think you--”

“okay,” peter cuts her off, “i know you said this is a cliche, then. i know you’ve said that this is awards season or whatever the fuck that means. and you said then that i would feel differently in a year. and you’re saying now I’ll feel differently when this is all over, but, cards on the table, i don’t and i won’t. you’re still the best part of my day. and i spent every day in post-production watching one of the dailies of you. cindy tells a joke behind the camera and you, just, you smile. and it killed me. i watched it every day. and i missed you. that was my life before the movie took off. and now that i get to spend time with you again i never want you to go. this isn’t because i’m the director and you were my leading lady. this is because you’re you and i’m me. and you make me feel strong. like i could do anything. please, please don’t give up on us. not before we’ve even begun.”

she blinks at him and he suddenly feels super embarrassed. because he’s put his heart out for her and she isn’t talking to him.

the television starts to play the nominations and he awkwardly turns back to look at the television. the room is heavy. he hates it. they talked about it. and she rejected him. or whatever silence means. silence feels like rejection.

their movie gets a few nominations in the technical categories. even, cindy. peter makes a mental note to call her after. and then, just before they get to writing, michelle turns to him. “peter?” he doesn’t respond, so she tries again, and he can hear the lip tremble in her tone, “peter, please.” so he reluctantly turns and she wipes at her eyes, “please don’t be mad at me.” “i put my heart on the line and you didn’t even respond. you couldn’t even say you didn’t want me.” “that’s because i do!” she insists. he rolls his eyes, “please.” “no,” she grabs his hand, “i do. i just...when I’m not your leading lady...i’m afraid you won’t want me anymore.”

he shakes his head, “why would you say that?” “because i’m your muse. i’m your movie. and when award season ends and you start on your next project because...you’re gonna be so famous...you’ll move onto your next muse. and you’ll forget all about me. and i can’t handle that heartbreak.”

he cups her face, “you beautiful idiot. you aren’t my muse. i wrote that movie before i ever met you. and i just...love...you....” he whispers that last bit. he pulls down deep for some of his strength. “i love you,” he says again, more proud, “and i want you. and you Mi-”

“Michelle Jones,” the television set says. the two of them, their eyes bug open. they look at the television and there it is. in black and white. for best supporting actress. michelle jones. for their movie.

he pulls her into a bone crushing hug. “holy shit,” he whispers into her shoulder. she starts to cry, “holy shit.” they pull apart and echo together, “HOLY SHIT.” and then, the laughter comes. sudden and bubbly. because she is an academy award nominee. its best supporting actress just like the golden globes which is bullshit. but its the academy awards. and technically his lead is a man. but, like, FUCK.

and then, the laughter stops. and they are breathless and staring at each other. and the moment crackles over.

the last year is present in the room. and tension cannot hold. it will always break. and it does.

they crash into each other. their mouths eager and desperate. he has wanted her for so long. and now, he can taste how long she has wanted him. and it tastes like that first day on set.

it gets intense immediately. they have no time for foreplay. peter groans deeply into her mouth. and she whimpers back. they move their clothes out of the way just enough to couple.

and when he is inside her, the pair of them shutter. and it is so cliche, like a hollywood movie, but they fit. it is like he was always made for her and she him.

and they are so wrapped up in each other, the comforting rock of their love making, that peter doesn’t hear his name for best screenplay or director. he doesn’t hear that his movie gets nominated for best feature film. he doesn’t hear any of it.

the academy has nothing on michelle.

after, they take a minute to look up the nominations. and, well, they have to celebrate two more times.

its only the following morning with michelle tucked up in his arms do they talk about what it means for them. what this means for them. and they both decide-- everything.

the night of the academy awards mj stuns him in brown and he barely looks acceptable in a standard black suit. but he is the director and she is the moviestar. so he supposes, that logic checks out. on their way out the door she gives him a brief kiss and tells him, “you hit the jackpot, tiger.” the smile that puts on his face is present in every photo.

they keep a respectable distance from each other because peter tells her late one night that he doesn’t like the world knowing his business. he wants this to be theirs. he doesn’t want to share their moments. and she crawls on top of him and seals that promise with a kiss.

but its much harder to keep it respectable during the actual awards. because he’s so goddamn nervous. he knows he’s young. incredibly young. and he has his whole life ahead of him to win these kinds of awards but it feels like a sign. like, if his movie wins tonight then the universe is rooting for him and michelle.

she keeps their knees against each other for the entire night because she can’t hold his hand. and he appreciates the contact. it calms him down.

and soon, the relief starts to pour through his body. they lose. a lot of things. but Cindy wins for best cinematography and she was his eyes, after all. she is his eyes. his partner in making movies. and if she is the only one that goes home with an award tonight he’ll be happy.

and then, best supporting actress comes up and michelle’s nervousness boils over. she can’t help but hold his hand. and he sends a silent prayer that the internet will think she is leaning on her director for support.

she wins.

she wins and everyone, including michelle, is shocked. she’s young. crazy young. and it is her first nomination. and it takes some jockeying from peter for her to start to walk toward the stage. she is absolutely floored.

when they hand her the statue, she blinks back tears, “oh, wow. i can’t believe it. i just...can’t believe it. to, um, to my parents. thank you for loving me and supporting me and telling me that a little movie with a script that i loved was worth doing simply because i loved it. thank you to our entire cast and crew. this movie is a labor of love and this award belongs to all of us. thank you to Cindy Moon who lost the script to this beautiful movie. i thank god everyday i picked up that script and read it and gave it back to you. and thank you to Happy Hogan who believed in this movie and Tony Stark that helped get it off the ground so everyone could love it as much as I did. and lastly, peter, our fearless director, you wrote a movie that dared to say hard things and spoke to people’s souls. it spoke to me. and i am so thankful you put your trust in me to speak your words. thank you. thank you. just, thank you.”

when the applause fills the hall, peter knows she did it. she won the award. and she thanked him. forever, michelle jones thank you speech at the academy awards will include his name. and he feels like the universe might be on his side.

she comes back after fifteen minutes and one musical number. when she sits in her seat with oscar in her hand, he checks the area for a camera pointed their way and when he feels safe, he kisses the side of her head, “i am so proud of you.” he wants some moments to be just theirs.

then, the screenwriting award comes up and he loses. he loses to a war film that he heard was lobbying pretty hard for some awards. it stings but he will have his shot at other awards some day. he counts himself out for director.

and rightly so. he loses that, too. michelle grabs his hand and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that he is going home with the real prize tonight. the academy is second to michelle.

until something ridiculous happens.

they win best picture.

everyone on his team is shocked. they didn’t win the golden globes. but the oscar? wow. even the audience is shocked. there is a really rude gasp that ripples through the crowd. but when the presenter repeats the result they all jump to their feet and begin to hug and kiss and rush to the stage. peter and happy and tony are all handed awards. he is an academy award winner. or, well, his movie is. and peter supposes that still counts.

happy and tony speak first. they talk about producing the film and distributing it. and thank all of their families. and then, they look at peter. like they expect him to speak. that is when he remembers. he is the director. that means he is the person that lead the ship into harbor. he is the face of his little company.

he approaches the mic and shakes his head in shock, “when i wrote this movie i didn’t feel like i had a future in this business. i wrote this movie because i was lost and felt like everyone around me knew what the heck they were doing. i felt like a failure and like i would never accomplish my dreams. and so, i want to dedicate this award to everyone that has ever felt that way. and i want to tell you that amazing things do happen and you are not a failure. keep doing what you love. and thank you to my incredible cast and crew. you are my heart. to michelle who did a movie with a bunch of nobodies with no guarantee that anyone would even see it, let alone like it. and to my aunt may, for everything. thank you.”

he turns around and opens his arms and his entire team, his family, floods into them.

they drink and party and celebrate all night long. and at the end of that night michelle and peter go back to his house with two oscars in toe and they celebrate another way.

the news gets out the next day. there is a picture of them going back to peter’s house at the end of the night. the paparazzi are vultures on oscar sunday. and he is furious. because he wanted it to be private. he wanted it to be theirs.

but michelle patiently kisses his nose and tells him that he’s an idiot and that just because they can’t hide that they’re together anymore doesn’t mean that they have to tell anyone anything. so when he does his post-oscars interview and the interviewer asks about michelle he cooly says, “i’d like to keep my personal life private, thank you.”

mj is less patient because the media is sexist. they insinuate sleeping with the director to get the roll. which is ridiculous because a year ago he was a nobody fresh out of school. she rolls her eyes and kindly tells a different reporter to ask her anything that isn’t “blatantly sexist and invasive when it comes to my private relationships, okay?” and peter loves her so much its an actual ache.

then, the buzz dies down. the oscars are over. the world moves on. and peter and cindy start to discuss their next project. ned wrote them a film. a good film. a great film. and WB is going to back it this time. not just happy or tony. the entire studio.

and michelle decides to leave her show at the end of the season. she is an academy award winner. and she wants to be a superhero. or, well, play a superhero. Disney calls and tells her they want her to be the lead in a new female superhero movie. and she does look great in capes.

when peter shows up to set for his new movie nearly six months after the oscars (pre-production takes time before filming actually begins), he puts on his baseball cap and feels strange. the crew is mostly the same, he made sure of that, and cindy is right at his side but there is something missing. it takes him until lunch time to figure it out.

he goes to the bathroom and calls his girlfriend, “mj?” “peter, what’s wrong?” “i miss you,” he says. he can hear the exasperated tone of her voice, “you saw me this morning.” “i miss you here,” he corrects, “i miss you on my set.” “i can’t be in all of your movies, baby. and you can’t always cast me. people will say your biased.” “i am biased,” he grumps. “i love you. and i’ll see you tonight. go do your job.”

and, somehow, those words snap him out of his funk. because he did it. he’s a director. this is his job. so, he walks out of the bathroom, takes his place beside cindy and turns to his crew, “okay, let’s get to work.”

#headcanon ask #spideychelle #hollywood au

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