#ooh new poll idea

[im-not-a-l0ser]

I feel like the comedy of "Paul is talking about how he'll never be in a musical, but TGWDLM is a musical" is increased when you realise that TGWDLM is also the first starkid show that Jon Matteson is in.

[raynavan]

it is finally here!! the winners of the @ultimate-submas-tournament first round!! this is. verrry long as I have a bit of (lighthearted!!) commentary on the winners. said commentary is not meant to be offensive, but i just poke fun at the Au's in the running. of course- i highly suggest checking some of them out! all the polls (and therefore the au's in that poll) are linked in the first word of the message beow it. and with that, doodles under the cut.

the Ingo Bracket!

behold the subway boss Ingo! taking down statues! ah... but aren't gargoyles supposed to ward off evil spirits..?

eh, im sure it fine! nothing quite like an never ending cycle ammirite?

dad instincts activated. it was super effective (thank goodness another ghost was there, its pretty hard to punch them) ((though ah... perhaps a bad idea to beat up your dead self..?))

The Actual hero of courage!! purging the land of all poison! even his alternate's poison!!

man actively bleeding out beats up fox man, more at 11.

T-posing (the "T" stands for table) ((joke was made by @/thesilverinfinity thank you!!))

fire beats electricity!! villains for the win!!!

a... fae. a fairy type. destroyed by a... prince that commands (used to command) a dragon... perhaps there is a reason fae Ingo hides in the human world...

who was going to tell him that LTOT ingo isn't even a pokemon technically

bro respawn already you leaks are leaking everywhere- at least the Woodsman can continue his never ending task of gathering oil!

oh right... kid kinda... had the favor of a few gods... good luck ingo!

oh uh... i suppose even lord zoroark isn't immune to pets... (hope warden Akari doesn't find out-)

ooh... probably should have checked you type advantages buddy... at least wormgo knows we all love him even if he's a worm <3

The Emmet Bracket!

the power of sweaters

one might be the eye avatar after looking for answers, the true detective turned out on top!

tfw your just a train conductor in the far past with trauma (and brain trauma) and you get beaten up by another you that is friends with a god.

GET 'EM WITH THE LASER EYES (that you definitely have) (hope grovyle doesn't find you)

beach vacation in the past beats present Unova any day. (unless the Pelipper are looking for a snack)

jellyfish stings!! not even Gift's wonderful cosplay of his bother as enough to avoid the beast's wrath... no respect for cosplayers these days...

even though normally Ingo is the one to deal with unruly passengers, it easy to forget that robot Emmet has tasers for hands... o7 host emmet.

mans under the effects of CST (Chad stasis Twin effect) he is currently unbeatable.

wow the plushy has some power! uh... what do you have there Emmie..? why are you... looking at me like that...

air tight suites will not protect you from toons. take note. (though im sure he'd be pretty helpful with those hoards of monsters!)

congratulations! don't worry about the blurry Emmet, im sure he wasn't protecting anyone or anything, haha!

good job Emmet! you beat someone in a hospital bed! /lh

that's the last of it (no i am Not doing bracket 13 i Cannot draw them all differently hgeirpohgnolp) wonderful job everyone! i definitely heard of some new Au's that i have greatly enjoyed! im verrry excited to see where this competition continues!

bravo to everyone moving on to the next round, and for all those who didn't, thank you for sharing your Aus!! here's to another fun round, and also to the amazing aus and stories everyone here has created!!

SUPER BRAVO!!

[wren-writes-things]

Hii wren <3

1, 8, 10, 28 for soft asks :3

Hey Pixel! How have you been?

1. What song makes you feel better?

Well music just calms me down in general, I’ve always just really enjoyed the piano and singing. So you can probably get me to listen to just about anything and I’ll probably be happy.

But let’s see… New Discovery by the Crane Wives and Meteor Shower by Cavetown both have a really nice imagery to them and I appreciate that. Also my roommate writes music and I always love hearing what she’s working on because I know she puts a lot of work into them.

Oh the BotW soundtrack. My absolute adoration for that game might provide a bias but I love it so much.

8. Tag someone (or multiple people) who make you feel good.

I had things to say and it got out of hand, this is not my fault. Also I realized partway through this that a surprisingly large percentage of my mutuals are trying to kill me with their fanfics. “Guys, you have to stop, I can only take so many emotions,” they say, as if they don’t choose which fanfics they read.

@liminal-lesbian | You’ve always left really supportive comments when I posted stuff about my AUs and you’re just a really nice person. It also makes up for the fact that your last fanfic inflicted permanent trauma on me. (Joking on that last part but seriously if you haven’t read her fanfics drop everything you’re doing and go read them now. You could be literally trying to save the world but this takes priority.)

@the-god-of-chaos-himself | You might have an evil alter ego trying to murder me as I type this, but you’re an awesome person to talk to and I enjoy our conversations. (Yes this does imply Dalex is trying to stab me and I’m just typing on my phone, I have ADHD what do you expect?)

@kiwibirb1 | I was so excited when we became mutuals the other day the other day, you’re just a very cool person and I’m always excited to see what new ideas you have.

@detentiontrack | So we do not talk much and I legitimately did not know you were aware of my existence, but you said I was nice the other day and it just made me really happy. Plus I just find your blog really interesting.

@sars-wulf | While you’re definitely trying to murder my emotional stability with your writing you are very cool. I really just enjoy talking to you.

@aspynnwoofs | You’re really exciting to have boop wars against, also you’re just a really nice person! We do not talk a ton (because I’m pretty sure we’re both bad at conversation initiation), but I really enjoy seeing you.

@meowlphibia | You’ve successfully become the most reasonable one in the adoptive family of Marcy Wu, but only because everyone else is completely unhinged. Congratulations on this award. Honestly though you’re just a really cool person to talk to.

@heart-wit-strength | The joy that I experience every time I notice you in my notifications is astounding. You’re just a really cool person with really interesting Amphibia takes and AUs. Also you gave me claws one time via polls and I wish to assure you that I have made the best use of them.

10. What's something you’re excited for?

Ooh! I have an example that isn't Amphibia related for once. Epic The Underworld Saga is coming out soon, which yes I am aware you know (because you're the one who cursed me with this interest, and I mean that positively) The music is just so well done and I’m really looking forward to it. The Art of Amphibia is coming out and I need it! Oh also Stardew Valley updated and I’m really looking forward to when the update is available on the switch.

28. hugs or hand-holding?

Hugs, they’re just really nice.

[kusuguricafe]

Baby Don't Stop

A/N: A little something for Izuku's birthday!! I've been putting this one off for awhile—it was one of the options from a poll I did awhile ago (right before polls became a thing on tumblr lmaoo)

Summary: Izuku and Bakugou are messing around when Izuku discovers something about himself...

Inspired by this song

English translation of the lyrics (I mean come on, you see what I mean, right?? it literally says "I'm gonna knead your body" like what)

Characters: lee!Deku, ler!Bakugou

Warnings: not sfw! tickling kink; characters are aged up

tagging @otomiya-tickles because she seemed excited when I mentioned this idea before 😅

“You baked me a cake!?” Izuku’s eyes sparkled at the hand-frosted All Might. “I-I love it,” he said as he started to tear up.

“Oi! Don’t cry, nerd.”

Izuku was having one of the best birthdays he’d ever had. He had been spending time with his husband all day, a rare occasion as the two were always busy with pro hero work. Katsuki had been preparing for weeks to make sure Izuku got the day off.

“You already made me katsudon, and now this?? Thank you so much, Kacchan!”

Izuku enjoyed a goodly amount of cake while the two started a movie. Once he had finished eating, Katsuki grabbed him and wrapped his arms around his chest from behind. They gradually intertwined their legs together. Izuku was now effectively trapped.

“Hey,” Katsuki murmured into Izuku’s ear, “we haven’t done this in awhile, have we?”

“Haven’t done-whaAcchan! Th-that tickles!”

Katsuki snuck his fingers up Izuku’s t-shirt and skittered them across his lower abdomen. He chuckled in his ear, “You’re so ticklish, it’s ridiculous.” He moved his hands up to Izuku’s ribcage and vibrated his fingers in between his ribs with vigor.

“PFFTAAHAHA NAHAHAHAHAHA!” Izuku laughed, shaking his head cutely. He tried to squirm away, but Katsuki had him fully trapped.

“Try as you may, you’re not getting away from me. Tickle tickle, Deku.”

Katsuki trailed downwards, giving Izuku’s hip a quick squeeze to make him shriek, but not staying there for long. He began kneading his upper thighs near his v-line.

“AAAIEE YAHAHA STAAAHAHAAAA!! THAHAHAHAHAHAT’S S-SOHOHO BAHAHAHAD!”

“Aw, does it tickle? Does it tickle really badly?”

Izuku desperately wished he could kick his feet, do something, anything to lessen the sensation. Not being able to move away made it tickle so much more. The teases right in his ear were not helping, either.

“YEHEHEHEHEHES!”

Katsuki slowed down a bit, the kneading turning into lighter squeezing. Izuku continued to laugh happily, no longer paying any attention to the movie. Feeling bold, Katsuki slipped a hand up Izuku’s loose shorts and began scratching at his inner thighs.

“EEK!! KahAH! KahahahaAAhahacchan! Hnng aha, aaah~”

“...Was that a moan?”

Izuku flushed a deep red. Was it??

“I-I uhuhum, Kahaaaa~ Kahahacchan! S-stahahahahap thahahahat!”

“What, this?” Katsuki lightened his touch even more, wiggling a single finger against his inner thigh.

Izuku shuddered. “Aahaha-sta-mmn, wha-whahat aaahh, what are you dohohoing!?”

“Really turning you on, apparently.” Katsuki gently fondled the tent in Izuku’s underwear.

“Aaah w-wait, don’t, don’t stop…”

“Hm?”

“Please don’t stop!”

“Ooh, you like this that much, huh? You want me to tickle you more?”

Izuku nodded eagerly.

“Ohoho, we’re gonna have some fun with this new discovery.” Katsuki hoisted Izuku up off the couch and carried him to the bedroom bridal style, the movie forgotten. Katsuki plopped Izuku down onto their bed. He grabbed ahold of the waistband of Izuku’s shorts. “May I?”

Izuku nodded again. Katsuki stripped Izuku down to his underwear. He laid down on top of him.

“Time for your real present, birthday boy,” Katsuki whispered in his ear.

“Give it your all,” Izuku challenged.

Katsuki’s eyes widened. “Oh, you’re in for it now. How dare you think The Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight wouldn’t give his all in absolutely destroying you, haah?”

And with that, Katsuki dug into Izuku’s bare armpits and showered his ears, face, and neck with ticklish kisses.

“EEEeehehehehe!” Izuku giggled. His legs were once again immobilized by Katsuki’s.

Katsuki grabbed Izuku’s wrists and pinned them above his head. He massaged his ribs and Izuku laughed harder now that he was completely stuck again. After a few minutes, Katsuki switched up the pace. He flicked his tongue over one of Izuku’s nipples as he gently tickled a particularly sensitive spot just above his armpit.

“GaAAhaha! Ehehe nohoooo!”

Katsuki laughed and Izuku felt the vibrations throughout his whole chest. Getting impatient, Izuku began thrusting his hips up into Katsuki’s.

“Alright, alright, I hear ya.”

Katsuki sat up and stripped off Izuku’s underwear. He repositioned himself so that he could still hold Izuku’s thighs down with his own. He began tracing Izuku’s v-line. Izuku closed his eyes and whined, his erection becoming painful. Katsuki’s hands moved down to tickle Izuku’s inner thighs with the most delicate touch.

“Aaaahh, K-Kacchan, please, plehehehehease! AAAHA n-nOHohohoho aaahaAHAHA!”

Katsuki’s hands began to gently tickle Izuku’s cock, driving him up the wall. When he got closer to the head, Izuku began banging a fist against the bed, his other arm covering his eyes.

“Ohoho my GOHOD I CAhahAHAHAN’T! PLEASE I’m gonnaA DIHIHIEE!”

“You asked for this, you know.”

“SohOHOMEWHERE EHEHEHELSE!”

“Hmm… Oh, I know!”

Katsuki laid back down, now holding Izuku’s legs down with his forearms. He grabbed Izuku’s hips.

“W-w-wait, wait wait waAIHAIHAIHAIT!! WhaAA!?”

Katsuki started to knead Izuku’s hips, when he suddenly deepthroated his cock, not stopping the onslaught of tickles on his worst spot.

“Y-you—aaAAHh f-fuck! Fuck fuck fuuhaaahahahahaHAHAHAHA NAHAhahaaaa-pLEASE-AAHAHAahahhaAAHAHA!”

Izuku could barely process this new sensation. He felt like he was going to explode. Just as he was about to cum, Katsuki slowed down the hip tickles, lightly skittering his fingers across his hip bones, and began flicking his tongue all over the head of Izuku’s cock. It tickled like hell.

“GaaAAhaha, s-stohop, baby, don’t stop!”

“D’you want me to stop or not?” Katsuki said sloppily.

“Don’t stop, Kacchan, don’t stahahahp!”

Katsuki’s hands moved from his hips, to the base of his cock, his balls, his thighs, and back to his hips, all while giving Izuku the best head he’s ever had.

“P-p-please, h-harder, pleEEAAAHAHAHAAAA! THAT’S NAHAHAHA! THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEHEHEHEHEHEANT!!”

“Too bad, nerd, it’s what you’re getting.”

Katsuki went full force on the hip tickles, digging his thumbs in at just the right pressure to make Izuku scream. Izuku was laughing, crying, blushing like mad, legs trembling, so close, so very close.

“You’re gonna make me come if I have to see you like this any longer, Deku.”

That did it. “Aahaaa, Kacchaaaan!”

“Fuuck, Izuku!” Katsuki came untouched. Guess he enjoyed that more than he thought he did.

The two basked in their orgasms for a moment.

“...Did, did you—?”

“Shut up, nerd!”

Izuku sighed contentedly, happy knowing his Kacchan enjoyed that (almost) as much as he did. “Yokattaa.”

“Happy birthday, Izuku.”

[haveyouheardthiskpopgroup]

Hi, may I request an extra poll that's not related to any specific artist? Just a general check-in to see if anyone who's been voting here has discovered/started to listen to any group/soloist they now like because they've seen them in a poll here?

(I'm particularly curious if any nugus have been getting extra push/promotion/audience or if it's just hopeless for them 😅)

Thanks!

Ooh I love this idea anon! As the blog runner I can tell you I've discovered a LOT of awesome new artists because of this blog so thank you to everyone who has sent artists in <3

[blueberry-gills]

//GILL WATCH OUT GILL NO

Anyway. Enjoy more drawings and rambles under the cut 👍

The funny thing is that you can tell how my idea for Gill’s hair evolved throughout the drawings- the height comparison drawing was the first one, followed by the fullbody of him walking, then the tax evasion, and then the thought bubble. nifty

(Also I know the jacket here is a different color than the jacket in the drifloon picture.. forgive me I didn't have time to change it 😔)

I knew I WANTED Gill to get a new Pokémon for his birthday, but I didn’t know what. For a while I was like ‘ooh Dreepy!!” but then I had the mental image of Gill a few months down the line riding on a Drifblim and it stuck JADGFJLSAGDF

I always wanted Gill to have something to do with a Ghost Pokémon- there was one event Idea that I rotated constantly in my head where she went to Unova, got lost in Relic Castle, and ended up getting attacked by a Cofagrigus (I actually wrote a whole ass short fic for that one) but it lost all the polls I put it in </3 (Twas the dishwasher and the 🏜️⚰️🌚 options in my previous event polls)

ALSO FUN FACT: The Drifloon (name pending) has a Destiny mark! So she’s Drifloon the Chosen One! :)

Also uhh the intro post was edited again gang >:) the mountain did something to her (<- made her realize that it was literally okay to tell anyone other than Rye that she like She more than He)

DAMN I didn’t lie when I said I would ramble. That’s all. Sorry. arghhhh. goodbye 😎👍 hope I wasn't too annoying lmao

[ardeidaze]

ooh new poll idea listen up amphibia fans

[mariacallous]

To Westminster, district of the damned, where the Conservatives are plotting to commit leadercide yet again. They’ve dispatched so many over the past few years that it’s possible they regard Harold Shipman as the real opposition. You certainly get the feeling he could poll higher than them.

This morning, hot-mess chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng landed back in the UK, ready to drop the corporation tax cut in a joint announcement with Liz Truss, the new prime minister, whose central leadership pitch it was. Long story short: former Rishi Sunak-backer Jeremy Hunt is now chancellor and Truss has given one of the worst press conferences in the entire history of the genre, shortly after sending Kwarteng a letter “deeply respect[ing]” his decision to get knifed by her. Even Kwarteng’s predecessor, Nadhim Zahawi, held the office longer.

Ooh, hang on – chief secretary to the Treasury Chris Philp is also out. Fast food outlets currently have a slower turnover rate than the Treasury. Only yesterday, at the International Monetary Fund meeting he later fled, Kwarteng was declaring: “I really enjoy the Treasury. I really enjoy No 11.” Glad he took time to smell the roses. They blow up so quickly.

For some time now, it has been impossible to listen to Truss babbling about being “in lockstep” with her chancellor without imagining her being cut off by Agent Smith from the Matrix with the grimly brusque words: “No, prime minster, your chancellor is already dead.” In fact, it was over two weeks ago that Kwarteng suffered the fate of various movie villains. He may have appeared to be intact since then, but he had actually been very cleanly sliced in half, or delay-killed with a forbidden martial arts technique known as “the kiss of the markets”. Ironically, he departs the stage just as his mini-budget is finally becoming worthy of its descriptor. At this rate of U-turn, it will be so mini that the only thing left in it will be some opening remarks.

Will Hunt coming on for Kwarteng be enough to save Truss for 15 minutes or so? It’s not great when your first throw of the dice is also your last. Still, let’s take the temperature of the Conservative party’s restive MPs. According to their own heroic off-the-record testimony, the mood this week ran the gamut from “funereal” to “unspeakably bleak”. “We are being offered the choice of a shit sandwich,” one MP explained, “or a shit sandwich with extra shit.” Righto. When this was being said on Thursday, Truss had been prime minister for precisely 37 days. Coincidentally, that’s the exact number of days that elapsed between the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and Britain joining the first world war – whose outbreak was arguably the only chain of events in modern history involving worse human error.

With only 9% of them holding a favourable view of her, it’s fair to say the public have got the ick with Liz Truss – and you don’t come back from the ick. Apparently keen to help, Jacob Rees-Mogg has had another date with density, spending much of the week trying to use his culture war playbook on the markets. Which is a bit like trying to have an Oxford Union debate with gravity. Things went from worse to worser after Truss’s Wednesday night appearance before the 1922, which you might know is that weirdo committee where they bang the desks and honk in-group gibberish like it’s Hogwarts for grownups and their house has just won a flying pensions-crashing match. Having to pay regular attention to things that happen at this cursed convocation has been one of the many, many indignities of British life over the past six years of chaos.

But there are always more indignities in the post. Take repeated attempts to make the idea of “Grant Shapps, party grandee” happen. Earlier this week, a plan was actually floated to install a man who once had multiple online aliases as a “caretaker prime minister”. Sorry, but what? I honestly wouldn’t install Grant as caretaker at the Overlook Hotel. Even Newcastle United hasn’t had caretakers that bad. Furthermore, if the UK wishes to hang on to its last remaining shred of dignity, it should be made clear that the position of “caretaker prime minster” is not an actual thing. Having the most important job in the country placed in the hands of a caretaker really is giving up: a signal that we should be moved out of the “declining” category and reclassified firmly in the “declined”.

The Shapps plan seems now to have been overtaken by a ruse to install Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt on a joint ticket. An anonymous briefing to the Times on this matter is here reproduced in full. “Rishi’s people, Penny’s people and the sensible Truss supporters who realise she’s a disaster just need to sit down together and work out who the unity candidate is,” this MP breezed. “It’s either Rishi as prime minister with Penny as his deputy and foreign secretary, or Penny as prime minister with Rishi as chancellor. They would promise to lead a government of all the talents, and most MPs would fall in behind that.”

I mean … I’ve been staring at that quote for some time, trying to work out what precisely it is about it that has sent me to the brink of fatal apoplexy. On balance, I think it’s the chirpy high-handedness in the face of vast destruction. Like getting to the end of the second world war and writing the peace on a napkin: “Germans exiled to Madagascar; French have to live in the ruins of Germany for collaborating; Brits get France for second homes and wine supply. Bish-bosh. Sound OK to you?” On the one hand, I guess I’ll take it. On the other: IT’S A BIT MORE EFFING COMPLICATED THAN THAT.

As for the people who got us here, I must say I think of them increasingly often – those 81,000 Conservative party members who voted for Truss, and who are out there somewhere, right now, keeping their little heads down. But they walk among us. Maybe one of them is at a water cooler or a Zoom meeting near you.

It’s yet another of those situations where the right to electoral privacy has been prioritised over your right to scream, “What the hell have you done, you massive idiot? We’re all neck-deep in this crap because of you! Are you happy now? WELL, ARE YOU?”

The thought of things happening in the same way again, ever, is simply too much. Ideally, these triennially calamitous Conservative leadership contests will henceforth be run like one of those international elections in a fledgling democracy, when voters’ fingers are dipped in indelible ink. That way when you’re having drinks after work and Steve from HR is feebly going, “Yeah, what a mess” but not quite meeting your eye, you can look down at his stained forefinger and deal with him accordingly.

[silvermuffins]

Okay so. Here we go! God I am. So checking hyped. Oh man. I can barely make myself get started. Little bit nervous since the person whose liveblogs made me want to do the same follows me now (hi!) but eeeeeeeeeeee

Y'all gotta understand p3 made me who I am. It has been personality-defining in several ways for ten years. I have rarely felt quite as loved as the day the announcement leaked and like four different people independently came to me like Letty did you see

In the true spirit of Akihiko Sanada, I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS

Okay let's dive in,,,,,

New theme song! I'm gonna miss the toast but i will give this a chance.

New visuals, stellar ones, really driving in that shit's fucked

Idk how that poll is gonna end so I'll start with just Some Thoughts at a time and then we'll see where we're going

Oh shit difficulty... Let's do normal to start. Fuck no I am not doing merciless. But I want some challenge.

Oh the opening movie is a little different....and they're letting me play already!

They are doing my boy right so far,,,, but yukari may take some getting used to. Also they pronounce iwatodai different and that will DEFINITEly take getting used to. Definitely some iykyk in there.

I am examining EVERYTHING. My guy walks fast tho goddamn. Can no longer run with hands in pockets. RIP hand/pockets.

If y'all could hear the noises I am making,,,,

THERE HE IS! THE BOY!

Shit do I have to enter the name in eastern order or is western fine? /Google/ Reddit says western! Minato Arisato walks again.

They did that contract-with-spooky-child scene pretty well despite it not still being an anime cutscene. I can accept it.

Oh she didn't point the gun at me this time. Which is less dramatic but DOES make more sense overall. I can accept it.

Once again the Noises I am making. Y'all. I am living. Checked in on that poll, so far one big post later on is winning so I'll keep at it for now!

How does this rewind thing work exactly...? Is it for like, if I fuck up a social link?

Menu looks like diving into water. All my water associations for Minato have been justified. Got he's so beautiful I'm gonna cry. "My reflection looks tired" yeah I bet it does you depresso espresso you.

Apparently there is or will be dlc of some sort! I will almost certainly obtain it.

Starting school! Wow they expanded that cutscene. Eeeeeeee. Yes I like this. It feels like home got a fresh coat of paint. It's gonna take me forever to get anything done. God. I'm. Okay give me a little while to just run around doing nonsense.

VOICED SOCIAL LINKS CONFIRMED it already was but I'm thrilled anyway

My boy is already curious about sewing. Don't worry, Minty, we will be spending so much time with a certain someone. Ooh, seems he has a decent sense of smell... Aha, there a certain someone is! So very French...

Okay, game, you win, I'll make progress. Hi, Toriumi, yes I have a tragic backstory.

Minato just `why are people keep talking to me`. Suck it up boy we're gonna meet EVERYBODY.

New VA for Junpei is great so far. I'm so glad. The previous one was a case of how truly unfortunate it is that garbage people can be good at things. But so far, the characters are sounding great!

Yukari you are not subtle. Here I am trying to cover for you and you just give Junpei the wrong idea.

"No one takes rumors seriously, anyway." Stares directly into the camera. Stares in P2 familiarity. Stares. I do not remember if this line was in the original but S T A R E S.

Getting junpei's two cents on everything and. God it makes me so happy every time a familiar song kicks in.

Doodedoo, 'splorin.

Mmkay back to the dorm. We can actually explore the kitchen? Fridge space? Can't use the kitchen yet? DO I GET TO MAKE COOKING MINTY A REALITY?

I don't have tons of commentary right now that isn't best expressed as a bunch of vague satisfied noises and squeals in a higher range than the human ear can detect. Or by wiggling furiously, which doesn't come across well in text. Know that I am wiggling furiously. Everyone looks so good. Everyone sounds so good. I'm so happy.

Okay so it's not fully fully voiced. But still! So happy.

I know it's just Like This but the game just railroading me slightly feels like AGH STOP TAKING AN HOUR TO DO ANYTHING well stop having do much to examine them (please don't stop)

Ikutsuki is here! And oh his voice,,,,,

Weeps in playing as IC as possible demanding skipping a question. Ah well. I know how I interpret my boy and that brings me joy.

Time for stuff to get creepy! Eeeeeeee. Guys I cannot wait for how they're going to show some of the freakier things. ...oh well. This cutscene with the guy going all gloopy and collapsing definitely loses a little something by being in-game rather than fully animated. Damn the way they showed it in the original was so much scarier. Ah well, can't win 'em all, I guess.

Aaaaaa is that Yukino being referenced on TV? Was she on Who's Who before? Yukino <3

It's tiiiiime for the first full moon. Come on, Reload, you can't drop the ball on this one...! Come on, wow me! Blow me away!

Oh hey justification that sleep is probably less effective during the dark hour to go along with the standard stamina drain. Neat! Love getting my head canons confirmed. That said, also enough room for other interpretations. You love to see it.

Really like this just collapsing on the bed thing. Shaking it up! Ftr it's like super creepy that they have a camera and what looks like fucking heart monitor on Minato. But I am here for the creepy. And there goes the attack and Akihiko getting hurt and Yukari sent to escape with me.

Ohhhh please let me swap weapons around. Don't lock me into just swords. I want hammer.

I know it's all panic and scary RN but that kind of just makes it hilarious that I can still examine everything. Poor Yukari just dealing with Minato not being freaked at all.

HNNNNNN THEY DID NOT FUMBLE. I didn't think they would because like, out of everything, they've gotta get the Awakening right! But still! Hoodamn!

BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY

Oooh so the tutorial mara DID split off as scraps of the Magician! Huh so this is the battle interface...ngl I kinda miss the revolver menu, that was good shit. And now we go splat.

Igor: STOP BEING A BAG OF SOGGY POTATO CHIPS AND MAKE FRIENDS

One week later,

Backstory storytime with Yukari! I am a protagonist and thus a designated therapist. I am absolutely the person to pay your parental issues on. Never mind that Persona 2 firmly established the existence of actual therapists in this universe.

God. I'm gonna cry. My beautiful boy,,,,, I missed this so much. I'm a goddamn broken record. I said numerous times that I'm completely incapable of being normal about this. Fuck I'm tearing up.

Yes, Junpei. An upset stomach. That's definitely what kept me out of school for a week.

Mr. Ono just wants to talk about his special interest and he is so valid. Please tell me everything about samurai.

Real talk there had to be so many rumors and gossip about Minato. New transfer student - already a hot topic. Walks to school with Yukari on his first day, to stir the pot. After like three days he's suddenly absent for a week. Like, there's no way people didn't talk, right?

??? THAT's new. "Twilight Shard" on my bed making me feel like Legend of Zelda came to visit. Unless that's what we're calling plumes of dusk now.

I think they've given Ikutsuki even more puns. I join the team with very little convincing because supernatural danger isn't something to be leery of at all.

Nor are spooky little boys no one else can see who appear to me in the middle of the night bearing cryptic warnings of impending doom. I give him a good ol' doudemoii and go back to sleep.

Junpei joins the team! We support a guy willing to admit he was crying on the ground.

Trying to remember to report what's actually happening in the game, too. Don't wanna assume everybody is already familiar. I do wanna convince anyone who isn't to become familiar though. Anyway yes Junpei this is a thing we don't talk about. Except when we do, out in public.

Ooooh please don't fumble this bit! Tartar sauce! I am almost through the intro! ...wait I don't think THIS happened before? What's going on? Why are we delayed? ...oh. Oh that's, uh, bad. So for those who don't know, death and suicide are major topics of discussion in this game. You have been warned.

People jumping onto the tracks is not something I recall though... Maybe they're just driving in Apathy Syndrome as a major problem? Or I just plain forgot since, y'know, ten years. But I have reviewed since then... Junpei I would love to secret late night menu with you but we have an intro to get through.

Okay! Tartarus! ...they could have made that weirder. Less euclidean. But I can accept it. Wheeee dungeon crawling time! Oh fuck the menu is so stylish. I love it. Okay, time to kill things. Oooh, Tartarus looks good! Hate-love how it almost looks like it's breathing or something, real uncanny. Love the falling black feathers.

I wonder if they're keeping the condition system... I guess I'll find out! Oh, All Our Attacks are so nice.... We get finishing touches! Done and dusted! ....shuffle time doesn't do any shuffling anymore? Ohhh I guess Twilight Fragments are basically keys...

Doodedoo more tutorials. Someday I'll be free. I am getting kinda tired though...

Drags Junpei all over town to examine everything. Meanwhile the bgm sings "my life will turn out to be so cruel"...yeah because Junpei stops me from going to every restaurant. Hm, based on these police station offerings, I think I might be stuck with just swords, which is a little bit bullshit. Unless versatility is something I unlock later?

Come to think of it, Kurosawa probably has a heck of a story, if he knows shit's fucky but not what's going on... What are these personal connections of his? And how did the kirijo group get in touch with him?

....wait what's this about only the track and field team accepting new members? I know it makes the most sense, but I wanna swim! Are they going to force-track me?

Hm... I thiiiink I'm gonna just study in the library. I have no money to put toward anything else, and if things are the same academics is a bitch to max out.

It is now 3 am and my head hurts, so I'm gonna wrap it up here for tonight!

[johntorrington]

I'm really enjoying your polar explorer poll and I think it's an amazing idea, but I'm a bit sad I only found out about it after it started and couldn't submit French explorers like Charcot and Paul-Emile Victor which I think would have made good additions !

ooh! tbh i’ve thought about running it again after this bracket finishes, because i keep learning about new people that i wish i could’ve included

[practically-an-x-man]

Ooh, angel, maleficent and museum for the wip list asks!

Ahhh so sorry I didn't get to this earlier! I honestly wasn't expecting any asks for the wip ask thing, I'm currently on a band trip so I'm typing this from my phone in a hotel lmao

"Angel" is the nickname for my fic A Love Once New. I'd link it, but I have no idea how to do that from a mobile browser like this, so just go to my pinned post and you'll see it. It was one of my first X-Men fics, started about two years ago, and now it's over 200k words. I have a feeling it's because it stars my all-time favorite character: Mr. Warren Worthington III of Archangel fame, of course. I will admit, some of the writing towards the beginning is maybe a little choppy, since it's older, but it improves drastically as you move along.

"Maleficent" is the nickname for a fic idea I have for a story set after the events of Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. Maleficent isn't actually the main character: Borra is, alongside an OC I created named Sable. I started writing the first few chapters a while ago, deleted that, rewrote a bit of the first chapter, and haven't touched it since. I still plan to write it, though! It'll jump back between the present and Borra's childhood, and I'm eager to write Sable's side of the story... It's pretty unique, I think. But since it's a smaller fandom and a WAY underappreciated character, I've kinda been holding off on really writing it. I think my next one is going to be a Bullet Train fic (based on the poll I did a week or so ago), since people seemed to pull towards that one a little more and I crave feedback lol

"Museum" is the nickname for another currently-running fic of mine, Who Waits Forever Anyway? Same thing as before, typing this on my phone so just go to my pinned post if you want the link. It's set shortly before Night at the Museum 3, and travels through the movie before eventually moving into a bit of my own plot. And maybe a sequel... but we'll get to that. It's mainly centered on Ahkmenrah and my OC Katherine, but I've introduced a TON of Egyptian history and mythology that wasn't present in the original movies. I... have gone a little feral with this one. Or really I go feral with all of them, I tend to get really invested in what I write

(and friend can I let you in on a little secret? These may not be your fandoms but I have ideas for Loki, Bucky Barnes, and the Moon Knight boys too, they're just hidden in my writing masterlist right now. If you'd like to ask about any of them, since I know you write for them too, I'd be happy to talk to you about those too! I actually have a ton of ideas that I haven't put in separate documents yet)

[chattegeorgiana]

You keep insisting that the ending Naruto pairings are the reason Boruto's sales are nowhere near as great as Naruto's, yet how come Boruto Naruto the Movie has brought in far more income than both RTN and The last combined? The Boruto Movie has gained almost 40.000.000$ while The Last only 20.000.000$ and RTN only around 17.000.000$. The reasons boruto is not as popular as naruto was is because the plot sucks, the anime has too many garbage fillers, the artstyle in the manga sucks, the new gen characters suck, and the manga wasn't even written by Kishimoto until recently. It has nothing to do with pairings. Hell, if NS became canon, people would've hated it even more, considering how hated Sakura was, and you even admitted she is the most hated character. And you also contradict yourself. First you say she's the most hated, then you say SP missed a marketing opportunity with her... like girl make up your mind? She's the most hated character in the franchize, in a poll she was chosen as the most hated by both male and female, even Kishimoto went out of his way to say girls came at him and said how much they despised Sakura, most people don't give a shit about her, using her as marketing strategy would've done more harm than good. She's even more hated in Japan and other Asian fandoms than she is in the western fandom, and that already says a lot! You're really arrogant to assume that the "silent majority" you speak of are all NaruSaku fans. I guarantee you it isn't. In fact, most people don't even care about ships that much. NaruSakus, you along with the SNS fans, SS fans, NH fans are part of the vocal minority that has nothing better to do than bitch about ships all day long.

But did I ever say that they were THE ONLY reason they are bad? They are an integral part of it yes, but not the only one.

Just because you saw some asks of mine here on Tumblr, you just throw these things around, like this is the only place I talk about the story of Naruto and this is the only aspect I do.

Yes, here on Tumblr I might do it through the virtue of the asks I receive, but that doesn't mean it's the only space I address these matters.

I have other social media channels as well where I discuss other aspects as well. Ya know, how like Boruto is nothing more than a tweaked "cooler" wanna-be version of Naruto, with no real substance whatsoever, a story that doesn't truly leaves a message behind, a morale, with characters that are the shells of their former selves or mechanics that are skewed and "free of" any logic.

But sure, make it as if that's the only aspect I talk about if that makes you sleep well at night.

As for the reason Boruto made so much? Well, I'll tell you why: because it had NaruSasu. Because they knew they messed-up with The Last, so they did the next best thing they could to try and keep the fanbase engaged.

Focused on the biggest portion of the fanbase that gathered around both shippers and non shippers by the virtue of focusing on Sasuke and Naruto and their offsprings. You know why? Because this way they catered to two human emotions: familiarity/comfort & curiosity.

Aka familiarity via having NaruSasu and curiosity to see the new gen kids.

Which yes, had momentum and seemed to have a perfect recipe: no focus on the ships that initially brought he whole mess (Sakura and Hinata were close to non-existent in that movie), and "repaying" the fanbase that was initially pissed at the fact that people thought this was gonna be a T7 movie because of the heavy Kakashi and Ssuke advertisement when they were there to be found for onlyyy few seconds, lol.

But you see, in the test of time, Boruto failed because of the aforementioned reasons.

You say that people would've hated the ending if NS would've been canon, yet curiously enough the number of people that are even non shippers and agree to the idea that NS should've been canon has been increasing over the years. Which in a really curious way was surprising to me too as an NS fan that returned to the fandom after so long.

So you see, I am not sure exactly about that aspect there. Not to mention, since when does a story has to do what the fanbase dictates it? The story should follow its course and intended narration and that's that.

Yes, Sakura was hated, but that's not a reason to not have Naruto end-up with her because within the story mechanics we had many proofs that indicated that they should've ended together, regardless of how people felt about them.

Kishimoto didn't say girls came at him, he said girls sent him letters, which are two different things, because to his face no one truly said that, minus the editors who kept pushing Hinata forward and their bias as well.

Lol at you saying that using her as a marketing strategy would've done more harm than good when she's the only female character being marketed right now via figurines and all those other things.

So reality seems to be contradicting you a bit on that side.

Not to mention, you say that she's the most hated even in Asia and Japan? LOL, where did u even take out these lies?

The hate phenomena has always been a western fandom thing, not an Asian/Eastern fandom one.

You say that the pairings ripped with Sasuke and Naruto as well (funny how NaruSaku isn't dead even after years of being supposedly dead tho), for a character that should've been hated??

This whole hate thing was always a western fandom mirage, sadly, but in Japan and Asia she's always been loved. Like where did u even pull out that information from?

Also what I always said about a NaruSaku ending was that they could've taken a RTN route where they could've had ALL the pairings shown within a parallel universe, but sure, nice way to twist my words and make it like "I can't decide".

There are slight nuance differences which you either purposely not address or you don't know how to do the difference. The truth in this case only you know it.

But stop trying to act that high and mighty coming here on anon making it seem like ooh, I contradict myself and spread nonsense, just because you read a faction of all the ideas I discuss over my social media.

And now to address the silent majority argument. I never said silent majority are ONLY NaruSaku fans. That's what you assumed. Silent majority included NaruSaku fans yes, but also other fans who ya know, have some common sense within them and see how the story has been butchered for the sake of poorly treating a certain aspect of Naruto, which was the romantic one.

Which btw, you say that it wasn't a big deal, yet it was the no. plot included within the story, being presented as early as chapter 3, because chapter 1 and 2 revolved around Naruto wanting to become Hokage for people to acknowledge him and create bonds.

You say that the pairings aren't such a big deal in the fandom, yet guess what, SJ and SP directed a movie on that specific subject. Makes you wonder why now, doesn't it?

And it's a normal aspect to care about if you think about it for a manga that has been focused on BONDS. The romantic plot gets weaved in within the one about bonds really easily, because at the core of it it's about relationships.

And this whole world that we live it it's a relationship: between the body and the spirit, between then heaven and the earth, between friends, between relatives. EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD HAS A RELATIONSHIP BASIS: atom interacts with atom and here we are, living, breathing beings.

But sure, come to me and paint me in this way you're trying as if talking about relationships and their quality is a bad thing.

Mhmm.

Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

You're free to have your opinion, sure.

I just happen to not agree with it.

And that's that.

Have a good day or night or whatever.

[nitewrighter]

Hey :) i kinda miss your prefall Gency fic... Do you think you can write some more ? Take care ♥

I’m still thinking about the canonical existence of Overwatch Propaganda Cartoons that we saw in that preview of Hero of Numbani.

...can you tell I watched old GI Joe opening theme songs specifically for this fic?

Also credit goes to @apocryphist for coming up with “underhand” which really should be the only name for villains in the Overwatch universe.

-----

Genji drummed his fingers on the conference room table as he rested his chin in his other hand. Mercy sat to his left, nonchalantly tapping out some correspondence on her tablet as they waited. On his other side, Tracer was bouncing her knee with her fingers interlaced on the table in front of her, doing her best to at least put forward the semblance of a strike team leader despite her fidgeting. Winston sat stiffly next to her, apparently trying to scroll through lab results on his own tablet but clearly too nervous to stay focused. It was a bright and slightly breezy afternoon in Zurich, and normally Genji would have been gracefully slashing his way through the training grounds at this time, but instead they were all here.

“I can’t stand it when they don’t say what the meetings are about,” mumbled Winston. 

“It’s probably a top secret mission!” said Tracer.

“’Secret?’” said Winston, sounding even more nervous, “I’m... I’m not exactly good at ‘secret.’”

“Is it unrealistic to hope we got more intel from Doomfist?” said Genji, glancing at Mercy.

“I wish,” huffed Mercy, “But from what debriefings I could get my hands on, he hasn’t given us anything useful.”

“How is that possible?” said Genji, “After all the internal damage he did to Talon’s internal power structure, shouldn’t they be scrambling without him? Shouldn’t there be a power vacuum?”

“I don’t know any more than you do...” said Winston, readjusting his glasses. 

“Honestly I thought you’d know more about it, what with the Blackwatch stuff,” said Tracer.

“Still benched,” said Genji, folding his arms.

“Officially,” said Mercy with a slight side-eye.

Genji gave her an amused “Hmph,” before saying, “Either way, Reyes pushed me out of the loop now that I’m on your strike team... not that I paid that much attention to the loop befo---”

The door opened and everyone perked up at the sight of Jack Morrison and Sojourn walking into the room. Jack seemed uneasy, but honestly Mercy couldn’t really recall the last time he seemed at ease.

“Okay, before we start, I want all of you to keep an open mind with this,” he said, looking across all of them.

“...Very encouraging, Strike Commander,” said Sojourn, with slightly sardonic amusement. She put her hands on her hips and turned to face Tracer’s strike team, “As you all know, when you’re recruited into Overwatch, you sign a waiver allowing us to use your image in... all sorts of stuff. Press releases, scientific publications, training videos for new recruits---”

“Posters,” said Mercy, already skeptical.

“Posters, too,” said Sojourn with a smile, “However, back during Omnic Crisis Reconstruction, we were using the images of heroes for a lot more.”

“Heroes?” Genji repeated quietly as Sojourn produced a remote control from the pocket of her jacket and hit a button. The venetian blinds tilted to shut out the sunlight and the lights of the room dimmed as the wallscreen lit up behind Sojourn. The screen lit up in bright colors and red and yellow explosions as a trumpeting fanfare started playing. Tracer’s face lit up as a young cartoon version of Jack Morrison appeared on the screen, pumping his fist in the air. 

“The world needs heroes!” said the cartoon Jack Morrison, “Are you with us?” 

Genji glanced at Jack who was very clearly cringing at his cartoon self.

“Oh yes!” said Tracer, her eyes bright, “It’s been years since I’ve watched this! You guys know the song, right?” she said looking at her teammates, “..No?”

The theme song was already playing, and Tracer was singing along with it eagerly.

There’s no need to fear

Overwatch is here!

Saving all we hold dear!

Mercy made a ‘I really hope this meeting isn’t going the way I think it’s going,’ face at Genji and Genji suppressed a chuckle, but Tracer seemed absolutely thrilled and even Winston was humming along with the theme song. The theme song kept playing and even introduced different members of the old Overwatch Strike team. One of the animators clearly had fun lavishing a lot of attention on Ana Amari’s hair whipping around from the force of an explosion behind her. A still-blonde cartoon Reinhardt brawled fist-to-fist with some kind of black and neon green robot. Cartoon Morrison jumped a motorcycle off of an aircraft carrier with cartoon Reyes wielding a missile launcher in the sidecar. Torbjörn and Liao were working side by side in a lab before the camera panned out to reveal they were in a bright blue tank-like vehicle Genji safely assumed was entirely made up to sell toys, firing off RPG’s with even more explosions. Sojourn chuckled watching her cartoon self fire two submachine guns at black and neon green helicopters while parachuting out of an exploding jet. There was, all in all, a frankly ridiculous amount of explosions. It finally ended with one last massive explosion and fanfare and cartoon versions of Sojourn and the entire original strike team all pumping their fists in the air with Morrison in the center. 

Sojourn hit another button on her remote, the wall screen blipped off, the venetian blinds opened and the lights came on, leaving everyone sitting at the conference table blankly.

“Ahh! Still just as good as when I was a kid!” said Tracer, excitedly.

“Now, I know what you’re going to say--” Morrison started.

“Propaganda,” said Mercy, “You want to put us in propaganda.”

“You’re already in propaganda,” said Sojourn, flatly.

“This is propaganda aimed at children!” said Mercy.

“Do you know how young Talon is recruiting?” said Sojourn.

“That doesn’t mean we should stoop to their level!” said Mercy.

“Wars aren’t just won by strategy and firepower, they’re also won by ideology, by public support,” Winston suggested.

Mercy remembered something Moira said and it sent a shiver down her spine. 

The true struggle is for the superiority of ideas.

“Thank you, Winston,” said Jack, “It’s not necessarily about convincing them to join, it’s about convincing people that we have their best interests in mind. Which...” Jack gestured, “We do.”

“Those bad guys didn’t look like Talon,” said Genji.

“Oh, it wasn’t Talon!” said Tracer excitedly, before dropping into a dramatic narrator voice, “Underhand is a Ruthless Criminal Organization determined to rule the world!”

“Uh--Underhand?” said Winston. Jack said nothing but somehow managed to look more dead inside.

“...Overwatch and Underhand...” Mercy repeated incredulously.

“So--we’re going to be in a cartoon?” said Genji. For some reason, his armor seemed to feel tighter, pinching, constricting around him.

“Well, we did some polling after the Doomfist fight and ran some algorithms through a handful of popular forums and social media,” Sojourn explained, “It turns out you’re all very popular with the younger crowd. Winston and Tracer pull the biggest numbers, but you, Genji, are incredibly popular with boys aged 6 to 14.”

“I...I am?” said Genji.

“Shining armor,” said Mercy, smiling at him, and steam vented from his shoulders.

“And Mercy has a death-grip on the ‘Girls aged 3 to 11′ demographic,” said Sojourn.

“So... more girls are getting into STEM?” said Mercy.

“I’m.. not sure about that, but they seem to really like the fact that you’re pretty and you can fly,” said Sojourn, flipping through the report on her own tablet. 

Mercy’s face dropped and she shook her head. She pursed her lips and thought for a few moments. “I’m not sure about this...”

“If we’re all over the news already, it could help to put stuff out there that gives us more control over our image,” said Winston, he scratched the side of his head, “It... would be nice to show people I’m more than just a gorilla...”

“Genji?” said Mercy, looking over at him. Genji was running his thumb over the knuckles of his prosthetic hand and he seemed to snap out of some particularly stressful train of thought.

“Oh...um... well... it would give you a chance to talk more about Overwatch as a peacekeeping organization?” said Genji, “And if you’re talking about it to children...” 

“They might be less inclined to carry on the conflicts of previous generations!” said Mercy, her eyes brightening.

“Like we said, ideologies,” said Jack.

Mercy inhaled thoughtfully. “If--if we’re going to do this, I want my likeness used responsibly. I don’t want to advocate for violence in any form.”

“...yeah I figured you’d say that,” said Jack.

“And, even if we’re going through fictional conflicts, I don’t want it... glamorized and sensationalized like the old cartoon. We don’t need all those explosions---”

“You did pull Genji out of that explosion a few weeks ago though,” said Tracer.

“Well that’s different--! That’s--!” Mercy huffed, “I think we should push more of Overwatch’s scientific and humanitarian efforts. Show that making the world a better place is more complicated than just.. shooting at bad guys.”

“We could have a science corner!” Winston chimed in, “’Winston’s Science Corner!’”

“Ooh! And maybe I should say something about friendship and teamwork at the end!” said Tracer.

Genji was shrinking a little where he was sitting, unconsciously sliding his wrist plate back and forth.

“What do you think? Edu-tainment?” said Sojourn, glancing back at Jack.

“Could go over easier than a purely fictionalized narrative,” murmured Jack.

“Aw, I wanna fight Underhand, though!” said Tracer.

“Well in any case, you can expect more correspondence from our PR department as we move forward in this project,” said Sojourn. 

“You might not be fighting Talon in some far-flung corner of the world, but make no mistake: this is an important part of the fight,” said Jack.

“And who knows,” said Sojourn as an assistant hurried in with a cardboard box and set it on the conference table, “You could end up some kid’s best friend.”

Tracer and her strike team all stood up from their seats to look into the box.

“Oh commander...!” Tracer looked about to burst with excitement as she reached into the box and pulled out an action figure of herself, “I love it!” She turned over the action figure in her hands and saw a button on the back. She pressed it.

“Cheers love! The Cavalry’s here!” said the Tracer action figure.

“That’s my line!” said Tracer, delighted.

“It’s quite a stunning likeness,” said Winston, taking his own action figure out of the box. He pressed a button on the back of his action figure. 

“Primal Punch!” declared the Winston action figure and Winston chuckled.

Mercy took both the Genji and the Mercy action figures out of the box and chuckled a little. 

“Yours is so pretty, Doc! They even got the wings!” said Tracer as Mercy fiddled around with the action figure’s wings.

“Yes, ‘pretty and flies’ indeed.’ I might be more inclined if she comes with a lab coat accessory,” said Mercy, giving a skeptical glance to her action figure’s bust size. She pressed a button between her action figure’s wings and scoffed a little as the action figure said, “Heroes never die!” 

She held Genji’s action figure out to him and he hesitantly took it. “What do you think?”

Genji turned the action figure over in his hand and looked at the button on the back. He pressed it, but the figure said nothing.

“Oh we um... didn’t really have a ‘catchphrase’ for you yet,” said Sojourn as Genji gingerly ran the finger of his prosthetic hand up the blade of the action figure’s sword clasped in his little plastic hand, “We were hoping you could put in a word for it. These are just mock-ups, really.” 

You’re incredibly popular with boys age 6 to 14...

Genji moved the arm of the action figure up and down, the figure striking downward with its sword, and he thought of young boys playing with this miniature him. Running with the action figure clutched in little hands with white knuckles, playing out battles, having the action figure swing its sword at all those foes, imitating his own swordsmanship, fighting their brothers with sticks, punching each other, kicking each other---

“No,” Genji said on reflex.

“What?” said Sojourn, glancing up from Tracer chattering about her own action figure.

“I--I said no. I shouldn’t have an action figure. I shouldn’t be in the show,” said Genji. His voice was tight.

“Genji...” Mercy started.

“...is it about how you look?” said Sojourn, “Because Genji, I can tell you, seeing people like us on the screen means the world to kids with prosthetics---”

“No--” Genji was stammering, “It’s not about that, it’s--”

“Genji, you’re a part of the team,” Tracer tried to reassure him, “It wouldn’t be the same without you--”

“Children shouldn’t want to be like me!” Genji blurted out, and there was a small plasticky snap. Genji glanced down and saw that he had unthinkingly broken the arm off of his own action figure. The entire room had gone silent, staring at him. He set both the action figure and its broken-off arm on the table and exhaled. “I’m-- I need to think about it,” he said, pushing up from the table and walking briskly out of the room.

“Genji, wait--” said Mercy, standing up. Her eyes flicked to the broken Genji action figure on the table and she picked it up, tucking both the figure and the broken off arm in the pocket of her lab coat. The door slid shut behind Genji but she quickly walked after him, leaving Morrison, Sojourn, Tracer, and Winston alone in the room. A long quiet pause passed between the four of them.

“Maybe just web shorts?” said Winston, “Just.. um... just the science corner?”

“Winston--” Tracer huffed.

“Right--sorry,” said Winston.

“...well, they did keep an open mind,” said Jack, “Mostly.”

“Don’t make me break out your action figure, Jack,” said Sojourn.

----

It was a known fact that if you broke visual contact on Genji, you had a pretty low probability of finding him again unless he wanted to be found. Still Mercy spent more of the remainder of the afternoon looking for him than she was readily willing to admit. The fact that he was able to disappear from the hallway that quickly made her assume he had taken the window (very mature, by the way, Genji, she thought with an eye roll) but she checked all of his usual spots and even went to his room before finally huffing and returning to her lab.

It was about 11 at night when the door slid open.

“Genji, we’re beholden to the UN. I know that was an uncomfortable situation, but... there are still protocols,” said Mercy, not even looking up from her screen.

“I know,” his cybernetically reverberative voice hummed from the other side of the room.

“I don’t know how... informally Reyes maintained his meetings, but we can’t--” Mercy looked up from her screen and read his posture and expression. Her shoulders slumped. She pushed up from her desk and walked across the lab over to him.

“I’m sorry, I know. I just shut down,” said Genji as she closed the distance between them, “I don’t even know where it came from, ever since I joined Tracer’s strike team, I thought I’ve been getting better but--” he cut himself off as she hugged him. He stood there for a few seconds before returning the embrace. A part of him wanted to take his faceplate off, breathe in the smell of her hair and the smell of coffee on her, but he tamped that down. They had embraced before, after Gérard Lacroix’s death, and had broken out of it, both of them muttering about it being inappropriate and messy, but after missions together on Tracer’s strike team, there was no such shame in taking comfort in each other like this. She loosened the hug slightly to look at him.

“What you said... about you and children...”  she trailed off.

“I...” Genji sighed, “I’m an assassin.”

“You’re an agent,” said Mercy.

“Whose skills all come from the fact that he was raised to be an assassin,” said Genji, “What I went through as a child---I don’t want another child to go through it. And I don’t want children to think that’s what they want because it’s not.”

“They won’t have to,” said Mercy, putting her hands on his shoulders, “The Shimada Clan’s practically collapsed! You get to decide who you are, not them! You get to choose what you do with your skills,” one of her hands trailed down his arm and clasped his organic hand, “And you choose good. You’ve been choosing to do good.”

“...kids shouldn’t want to be like me when I don’t even know what the hell I am,” muttered Genji.

Mercy gave a helpless chuckle, “Join the club. ‘Mercy’ is easier to be than Angela. People listen to ‘Mercy,’ except not really, because she’s just pretty and she flies and at the end of the day, she’s just a bloody idea, so no one actually listens to her because she’s not real---”  she caught herself, “God, they’re really going to turn us into cartoon characters, aren’t they?” she said, pushing her bangs back from her face, “As if things weren’t already weird enough.”

“Cyborg ninja. Angel doctor. Time traveler. Gorilla from the moon. It really makes no difference at this point,” said Genji with a shrug, looking over her shoulder, he noticed a small figure on her desk. “Is that---?” he broke out of the embrace and walked over to the desk to see his action figure standing there. The arm had been glued back on, the seam of the break barely visible. He picked up the action figure. “You fixed me? It--It-- I mean it. You fixed it?” he said glancing over his shoulder at her.

“Well I couldn’t just leave you like that,” said Mercy, chuckling a little. 

“’You’ve rescued me again, Doctor Ziegler!’” said Genji, making the action figure bob with his words. They both snickered. “Maybe that can be my catchphrase,” said Genji, a smirk in his voice.

“Absolutely not,” said Mercy, giggling.

[apopcornkernel]

marichat may—day 9: cone of shame

AO3 link here | marichat may masterlist

previous day | next day

summary:

chat noir promised to visit her again.

the thing is, he got a liiiittle busy, and it kinda... slipped his mind?

totally unrelated, but marinette makes a little something for him. (人 •͈ᴗ•͈)

prompts: @marichatmay

———

a.n.

welcome back to your regularly scheduled fluff 😁

...jk :)

also please answer this chat noir vs. cat noir poll we must prove the cat noir stans wrong

———

Marinette stared up at the ceiling, bored out of her mind.

(More accurate adjectives would be “lonely” and “heartsick”, but she would die before she admitted that.)

It had been approximately two weeks since Chat had last visited. Since Chat had promised to come again.

She had been half-asleep when he had said it, but she just knew he had promised to return.

And yet, when she stayed up all those nights, straining for the sound of boots landing on her balcony, there was not a thing to be heard.

In short, she hadn't seen hide nor hair of him at all. Even as Ladybug.

Which, she thought, scoffing, was quite frankly a miracle. Because for once, Hawkmoth had been considerate—well, as considerate as a supervillain could be—enough not to create any akumas in the past fourteen or so days.

Oh, don't get her wrong. She was immensely relieved that she hadn't had to mis any classes, group outings, and such. But she missed her kitty. Quite a lot. Even though she as Ladybug always told him the opposite.

Marinette scowled at the ceiling. "Why is it that whenever I want him to be there, he isn't? But when he isn't welcome, he's there! Ugh!" She slammed her fist onto the mattress for emphasis. "Stupid Chat Noir!"

Tikki floated up to her level, cookie in hand. "Oh, come on, Marinette," she giggled. "He isn't that bad!"

"Ha. As if," she said grumpily, flopping sideways and cuddling her pillow. "He's such a dork."

Marinette sighed, her gaze glossing over her room from her vantage point above. "I wish he’d come visit," she said, feeling melacholy all over again, "Why hasn’t that pesky cat come visit yet?"

“Maybe he has a busy schedule?“ Tikki suggested, tilting her head at her wielder.

She snorted. “He wouldn’t know what a schedule was, even if it punched him in the face.“

“If you say so...“

Marinette sighed. What reason could Chat have for neglecting his promise like that?

Tikki suddenly plopped down on the mattress near Marinette's face, the girl crossing her eyes as she tried to focus on her. "Why don’t you get back at Chat Noir, the next time he visits?" Tikki said, her tone light and joking. "You could use one of those white cones on him!"

Marinette jolted upright, staring at her kwami with new eyes. She could almost see Chat's reaction to such a thing.

Ohoho. That cat won't know what's coming for him.

When she finally spoke again, her tone was reverent.

"Tikki, that is evil." She rubbed her hands gleefully. "Ooh, I think I have some cardboard lying around here somewhere... this is going to be perfect!"

Tikki's eyes widened. "Wait, you're actually doing it?"

She cackled as she zipped down the ladder, rushing around to gather her materials. "Of course I am! Thanks for the idea, Tikki!"

"But... I was just kidding..."

The kwami’s weak protests were largely ignored whilst Marinette hastily assembled what she dubbed the Chat Cone.

"And... there!"

Made out of white cardboard and glue, the Chat Cone™ looked like an oversized version of your typical cat cone. Thanks to her time spent with Chat Noir as Ladybug, she had been familiar with the size of his head. So, with that in mind, she had made sure the wide cone would be tall enough to blind him. Why? Because why not, duh. Anyways, Marinette never did things halfway. And that applied here, too.

She surveyed her work proudly and felt a wave of vindictiveness wash over her.

"This is going to be fun."

———

Two days later—two days. Two days! Why did it take him so long to finally drop by?—an unsuspecting Chat Noir finally remembered to visit his “favorite civilian”.

She heard her skylight open, and discreetly reached for the Chat Cone™ that she had been keeping in reach for this very moment.

She heard a familiar, infuriating voice start speaking from behind her.

"Well, hello there, prin— mmf!"

Marinette immediately whipped around and tackled him, fire in her eyes as she struggled to secure the cone around his neck. "TAKE THAT, SUCKER!" she yelled when she finally succeeded, quickly crawling back from his flailing form on the ground.

"What the heck was that for?" Chat yelped, confused, as he tried to pry it off. “Get it off me!”

She stuck out her tongue childishly, standing up. "It's what you get for not keeping your promise!"

She watched as he tried to rise, then fell on his behind. "Ow." His head, out of reflex, jerked forward. The huge white cone around it glanced off his slightly raised knees, and he recoiled on impact. "Double ow."

Marinette smirked vindictively. "Who knew a simple cardboard contraption could easily defeat the oh-so-awesome Chat Noir?"

"Princess— Mari— What did I do?" he asked, struggling to rise. She watched as he felt around blindly for the sofa, then used it to haul himself upright.

"You're annoying, that's what," she said, crossing her arms in a show of irritation. She took a good look at him, then, now that she wasn’t trying to tackle him.

Chat looked hilarious, what with the huge cone around his head. She could barely see his hair from the top of the white device.

He groaned as he slumped on the lounge chair. "Come on, you can’t be serious,” he said, trying—and failing epically—to put his head in his hands. Chat sighed as the pesky contraption. “And why did it have to be the cone, of all things?"

"Why not?" she shot back, reaching for her phone as she tried to hold in a giggle. To quote a certain Chloé Bourgeois, he looked ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.

Marinette rapidly swiped through her lockscreen, tapping on the camera app.

Click!

Chat froze. As a model, he had become very accustomed to that sound. And right now? Right now, it meant bad news. His eyes widened (not that Marinette could see it, though, seeing as the cone she had made obstructed everything.).

“You didn’t.“

She grinned viciously. “I did.“

“Come on, princess!“ he whined. “What did I do to deserve such punishment?“

And that immediately caused the roaring wave of emotion she had desperately been trying to hold back crash over her.

“What about you, chaton?“ she said, her voice cracking. “What about you?”

She stepped closer, and watched him go still.

“Why didn’t you come back?”

Her voice shook as she tried to keep her emotion under control. As she tried to lock away the sadness, the loneliness, the irrational fear that he would never come back. She took another step. He looked away, the cone moving with him. She forced him to look at her, shaking his shoulders.

“Why didn’t you visit?”

She was on the verge of tears, but she tried as best as she could to keep her voice steady. She removed the ungainly cone, placed it on the couch and leaned closer, watery eyes holding emeralds in a nigh unbreakable gaze. 

“Why didn’t you keep your promise?“ she whispered in his ear, finally letting a tear fall.

His eyes widened in realization. “Oh.“

“I was so lonely without you, you know,“ she said softly, moving away from him as she sat on the lounge, near yet so far. “I heard you promise to come back, and you didn’t. For sixteen days.“ She swallowed, and stared at the floor. “I missed you, chaton.“

She waited for a response as she averted her gaze and continued rambling. “I— I’m sorry. I know that the thing with the cone was totally uncalled for, but I was just so sad and frustrated, and I ended up taking it out on you, and I know I’m not entitled to your visits, I’m sorry, I just— “

Marinette suddenly found herself engulfed in his warm embrace. “Princess. Princess, I’m so sorry,“ Chat said, holding her close. “I just got really busy, and my m— job got more hectic. I’m sorry, so sorry.“

She sniffed. Even now, when she was overreacting, he was so kind. She didn’t deserve him, really. “No, it’s not your fault,“ she said. “Sorry, I just— sorry. I’m sorry.“

“Don’t be,“ he said, pulling her closer. “Don’t be.“

They stayed entwined for what felt like forever, Marinette silently weeping as Chat stroked her hair gently.

“Chat?“ she croaked, after her tears had run dry. “Thank you.“

He smiled. “Happy to help, princess.“

After a second, he said, “Does this mean you’ll delete the picture?“

She laughed into his chest. “In your dreams.“

previous day | next day

[izzy-b-hands]

Such A Boring Day...(And It’s Mine)

Written for my DL server Bingo Card prompt: Great Depression.

Now, I know it meant the time period, but that wasn’t happening no matter how much I pressed myself to make a fic out of it, and according to Merriam-Webster, depression can mean everything from being depressed mentally; to a reduction in activity such as with economics, physical activity, etc; a tropical depression re: meteorology; and more. 

So I decided to go with the definition of it as a reduction in activity. Particularly, a slow day on tour, a day where everyone is in a rather rough mood because...there’s just nothing to do. They can’t leave yet for the next city, but there isn’t enough time to go do anything in the city they’re already in, and the hotel has gone from ‘ooh fun new place’ to ‘I think this is the most boring hotel in existence.’ And it’s up to the gender neutral reader in this fic, as a member of the road crew, to help keep everyone else happy and entertained, while also trying not to die of boredom themselves. 

My love to all who read/like/reblog!

“You have a cup of tea,” you said gently.

“S’cold,” Roger mumbled. 

“Did you forget about it?” you asked sympathetically. 

“No,” he sighed, sounding utterly despondent. “Just let it sit there, I guess.” 

You frowned, and picked up the cup. “Let’s try that again, hm? Give you a chance to drink it this time.” 

“I could make it myself,” Roger said, but he didn’t move from the bed he was stretched on. 

He was rooming with John, who had found perhaps the best way to beat the boredom of waiting until they could get on the road, and was passed out on the other bed, on his third nap of the day. He’d woken up only for the bathroom and to eat a sandwich you’d brought up for him. 

“Would you like to do that, or shall I continue?” you asked Roger. 

He sighed deeply, and rolled over onto his stomach. 

That was an answer enough for you to finish up the new cup, setting it on the end table near his bed before leaving to check on everyone else. 

Normally, there wasn’t downtime like this, but a combination of venue issues, transportation issues (the van was very dead, and at the local mechanics), and the discovery that someone had written out the wrong time table for the next day meant you had three hours. 

Not enough time to do much exploring of the city, not in the way the lads wanted to, but just a bit too early to get on the road (if you wanted to avoid arriving at the next hotel way ahead of check in time.) 

And it was killing everyone. 

In the next room, Freddie and Brian were sat on one of the beds in their room, frowning over a game of Scrabble. 

Not a single new word had been added to it since you’d checked on them a half hour earlier though. 

“Bad tiles?” you mused. 

Brian shrugged. “No. It isn’t doing the trick. We only pulled it out because we couldn’t think of much else to do.” 

“Could read, maybe?” you suggested, taking a quick peek around the room to ensure they were fully packed up and ready. They were, which meant you couldn’t use that as a suggestion to alleviate their boredom. 

“No,” Freddie sighed, and slumped against the pillows. 

“I made Roger some tea,” you tried again. “I could get you two something, if you’d like anything? Food, drink...” 

They both shook their heads and sighed in unison. 

“Poor things,” you said softly. 

“You aren’t just as bored?” Brian asked.

“Why do you think I’m running around trying to help everyone?” you asked as a reply. “I don’t know what else to do with myself, and I feel...useless. A bunch of energy and nothing to do with it.” 

“All dressed up, and nowhere to go,” Freddie muttered. 

You nodded. “I’ll be back in a bit, I guess, to check on you. If it helps, we’ve got only-” 

You checked your watch. 

“Two hours left!” 

They sighed deeply, in unison, again, and you left them to their unending but unmoving Scrabble. 

In the room next door, most of the road crew had gathered. In part because the other rooms had all been packed up already, so there was little point in laying about in them, but also because they were as bored as the band, and the idea had been that maybe being bored together would be more fun than being bored alone. 

“Look who’s back!” Crystal crowed. “How was that rotation round? Do anything interesting?” 

“Made Roger another cup of tea, John is still sleeping, and Brian and Freddie may be beyond any suggestions I can provide,” you grumbled. “And it only killed off an hour.” 

“What now then?” Crystal asked you. 

“I don’t know,” you replied. “I need to find something for all of us.” 

“You don’t have to,” one of the other techs said. “But it’s kind of you to try.” 

“Someone has to,” you said. “We’re just wasting away in here, and it’s the worst, and I don’t like it.” 

Crystal checked his watch. “Well, your complaining knocked off another two minutes.” 

You laughed and dropped onto the bed near him. “Should I continue, see if I can kill another hour with complaining alone?” 

Before he could reply, in stalked Roger, dragging a half-asleep John with him. “We thought maybe you lot would be doing something exciting.” 

You all looked around the room at each other, all sat on the floor or beds or perched wherever else there was a spot, doing nothing except sitting and talking. 

“Oh well,” Roger mumbled. “We’ll stay anyway.” 

He plopped himself down in your lap, and you watched as John settled onto the floor, impossibly yawning.

“How on earth are you still tired?” you had to ask. “You woke up today only to spend all of it sleeping!” 

John shrugged. “I think I’ve circled back around now. I’ve slept so much today that I made myself tired, so now I actually do need to nap.” 

“Not a bad idea,” Crystal said.

“What, napping?” you giggled. “Just a big pile of us in here, passed out?” 

He nodded. 

“Shall I go get Freddie and Brian to join us?” Roger suggested. 

“You would have to get off of my lap to do that,” you teased. 

“I am quite comfortable,” Roger mused. “Crystal-” 

“I’m going, hush,” Crystal interrupted, dragging himself off of the bed and out into the hall. A few minutes later, he returned with Freddie and Brian in tow. 

“I don’t know that I’ll actually be able to fall asleep,” Brian admitted as he settled onto a spare section of floor. “But I’m willing to try. I can’t take anymore of just...sitting.” 

Freddie nodded as he dropped down near John. “Nothing better to do.” 

There was a bit of a delay as everyone tried to get comfortable, to make room for each other (including Roger, who in all fairness, was owed using you as a mattress, as you had passed out in the van on his shoulder not but a few days prior.) 

---

The knock at the door that woke you was a panicked and loud one. There was no way to shove Roger off of you without waking him, but before you could, Freddie stumbled to his feet and answered it. 

Just as quickly, he slammed it shut and started to shake everyone awake. 

“How late are we?” you asked as he made his way to you. 

He only winced, and gestured for you to hurry. 

Sure enough, outside was the repaired van, that according to the hotel staff, had been waiting for all of you for the last three hours. 

“So,” you sighed after everyone was loaded up and safely sat down as the van took off. “We can take a formal poll now: what’s worse? Bored and waiting, or sleeping and late?” 

There was silence as everyone, a good few still half-asleep, thought. 

John finally emerged with the definitive answer, followed by nods from everyone: “Both.” 

[honeymoonjin]

런닝맨 방탄 - Running Man Bangtan

PART TWO OUT! READ IT HERE

A/N This is an AU where the reader, as well as the seven members of BTS, are on the popular South Korean show Running Man. Running Man is a little similar to Run BTS, but with much longer episodes and more elaborate games and tasks. If you want to get an idea of what Running Man is like, all their episodes are free to watch on Viki.

This is part 1, it’s just under ten thousand words, so I’m going to have this one-shot be in two parts. I’ve got all the storyboarding complete for the second half, it just needs to be written out. I’m also considering a sequel with smut, probably a threesome. I know who it’ll be with but I don’t want to spoil the ending of this one-shot, so I’ll put an A/N at the end of the second part that will give more details.

The eight of you were lined up in front of a production team, huddling together slightly against the sharp bite of the brisk autumn breeze. It was that time of the week where you began a new episode of your show, and as always, there was a hum of anticipation in the air. It was the 100th episode of Running Man, and coincidentally also your 50th episode as the eight member of the show. After almost a year of shooting, producers had decided a female amongst all that testosterone would make for some interesting television, and sure enough the ratings had skyrocketed after that.

The fans had been voting on a poll on social media for the theme of this anniversary episode, and the eight of you had yet to find out the result. You were secretly hoping for the relaxing vacation option, but the lack of suitcases and your current location in a public park made it seem unlikely. Besides, fans of the show certainly seemed to enjoy watching the eight of you suffer.

You were currently near the middle of the line-up, waiting patiently and rubbing your reddened nose as the loyal crew dutifully set up all the cameras and fiddled with sound systems. To your left was Yoongi, fidgety as he always was before shooting, and to your right, the ever-energetic Hoseok, bouncing back and forth as he fought to stay warm.

The red hoodies you all had to wear looked a lot more insulated than they were, as by the end of each shooting day you were sure to work up a sweat. Unfortunately it meant the stirring of wind went straight to your skin, and it was clear all of the members were feeling the chill.

“Alright,” announced Producer Lee, breaking the focussed silence, “we’re all clear to begin.”

The eight of you lit up like Christmas trees, eager to finally get going.

The gesturing of a finger and a blinking red light were the familiar signal that the cameras were rolling, and Producer Lee switched into his more authorial announcer’s tone. “This is Running Man’s 100th episode, and Y/n’s 50th episode as a member.” He broke off to let you all react to this, and you feel your cheeks heat up as the members give a whoop, Hoseok leaning over to give your shoulders a squeeze. Lee continues. “The fans have decided how they want you to celebrate this occasion. The theme for today’s episode is…”

As if rehearsed, you turn in unison to the poster board that has been set up behind you with a paper sheet covering it. One of the crew members walks up to it and strips away the cover, revealing the title for this episode. 8 Missions in 8 Hours.

The eight of you ooh and aah at the title, the excited energy rising. Episodes tended to get more views when they were objective-based, and this seemed like it would probably be a multiple-part episode as well.

Lee waits for the group to settle again before he explains. “The eight of you have eight hours to complete 8 different missions. If you complete all eight missions within the given time, you will be given a reward. However, one of you is a spy,” he breaks off for the inevitable gasping and accusing looks passed back and forth among the members, “and will try and prevent the team from completing all the missions. If the spy wins, all members but them have to do a penalty. If you manage to complete the missions in time and work out who the spy is, the spy will miss out on the reward and do the penalty instead. You will only be given the instructions for the next mission once you have completed your current one. Here are the instructions for the first mission,” he finishes, holding out a card.

Jimin rushes forward to take it from him and reads it aloud. “In the fountain behind you are 50 coins with a question mark and a number on them. Each member has to find one and bring it to the microphone and answer a question about that episode. Only one member can look for a coin at a time.”

While the group process the rules, you turn around and stare at the fountain. It’s a wishing fountain, filled with probably several hundred coins of different currencies. This will take forever if you can only do it one at a time. And surely the spy wouldn’t find it so hard to drag it out; they could just pretend to not know the questions, or not find any coins. As you pondered this, along with the rest of your team, still frozen in your line-up, Director Lee lets out a laugh, before changing back into his serious voice. “Your eight hours have already started.”

“Oh!” Jeongguk, ever the competitive one, runs and leaps into the fountain, not even bothering to take off his shoes and socks or roll up his jeans. You can tell he regrets it from the high-pitched yelp he lets out, water splashing up as he wades knee-deep in the water.

“Is it cold?” You tease him. “Too cold for little Jeonggukie?”

He begins to retort with a piercing glare but Jimin is shouting at him to start looking.

Energy begins high as you all crowd around the fountain and cheer him on as he desperately rakes through the layers of coins, his grey jeans almost black with water and his red hoodie covered in splatters, and it takes him less than two minutes to find a coin, stamped with the number 17 on it, and leap out of the fountain over to the microphone, still panting.

A crew member with a book of questions by episode number reads one off. “In Episode 17, which dish did Taehyung have to cook for the members after losing a penalty?”

Jeongguk frowns, slowing his heaving chest as he considers.

You think back to it. Suddenly it comes to you. “Producer Lee, can we help other members answer?”

He shakes his head, but while Jeongguk is searching his memory, Taehyung gives you a disbelieving stare. “You know the answer? You weren’t even on the show!”

“I still watched it,” you shoot back defensively. “Why, can’t you remember your own cooking?”

He narrows his eyes at you. “Wh- That isn’t the point! Were you a fangirl or something?”

Yoongi, currently the only one not hyped up by the action, calmly drawls a response. “Do you really think she would apply to be on the show if she didn’t even like it?”

Tae is rendered speechless, and you turn to Yoongi, partway across the fountain from you. “Thank you, oppa.”

At this point Jeongguk has given up and gone back to looking in the fountain for a different-numbered coin. Jeongguk, arguing desperately with Tae after he gave up on the question, was making enough racket that Yoongi has to make his way around the fountain in order to keep talking. He faces away from the action and leans against the fountain edge. “So which one of us is your favorite, then?”

Although most of the cameras are focussed on the action in front of you, both your and Yoongi’s cameramen are dutifully sitting a few feet away with their cameras trained on you both. “I don’t think any of you are particularly impressive,” you jibe.

His remark dies on his lips as Jeongguk lets out a hoot, rushes over to the microphone and correctly answers his second question. He groans in relief and yells out for someone else to go.

You take your chance to avoid the awkward, too-close-to-flirting conversation and pull yourself over the edge and into the freezing water.

Too late, you realise you made the exact same mistake Jeongguk did by not taking off your shoes and socks first. Luckily you’re wearing a pair of gym shorts, so you don’t have to worry about soggy pants, but the squelching of water between your toes is very uncomfortable.

Once you’ve gotten over the initial shock of the water, and the bubbles stirred up by your entry dissipate, you realise how tough this task really is. It feels like there are about a million coins and none in your immediate scan have a question mark.

Instead of adopting Jeongguk’s technique of desperate thrashing, you kneel upright, avoiding getting the seat of your shorts wet, and sift through a handful at a time. You try and block out the raucous chatter around you as your team members cheer you on, some a little more aggressively than others. Finally, a coin with a question mark comes up.

Leaping out of the fountain, you waddle over to the microphone stand in your waterlogged sneakers. Flipping the coin over, you shout out the number: 84.

The same crew member from before hurriedly flips through the book to find the appropriate question. “In episode 84, which member cheated in the final game by spending his own money?”

Your head tilts back in thought. Episode 84 was only a couple months ago, and around that time there weren’t that many episodes where money played a key role. You think back to when the producers announced a member from the other team in a four-against-four challenge had spent their cash instead of the money given to them. “Namjoon?” You guess your answer, but the pleasant jingle that sounds out lets you know you’ve got it right.

“See, Jeongguk!” Jin exclaims. “It’s not that hard! Why did you take so long?”

“You go next, then!” Jeongguk shouts in mock outrage.

Jin kicks off his shoes and socks and hitches up his sweatpants and jumps in. Unfortunately for him, he has even worse luck than Jeongguk. While he finds the coins fast enough - 4, 77, 94, 18 - all the questions leave him dumbfounded.

Jeongguk, who would find it extremely validating were you not on a time constraint, starts kicking at him each time he runs back defeated. “Yah, hyung! Do you really not know any of the questions? It’s suspicious that you’re so bad!”

You laugh as many of the others agree. “It’s just that all of the questions are about things you guys did!” Jin defends himself in a dragged out whine.

“Oppa only pays attention to himself,” you tease, “he just needs to get a question that says, ‘What did Jin eat for breakfast in episode 65?’ and we’ll be fine!”

“Exactly!” Jin affirms, half-distracted by his constant fossicking, before pausing, hunched over in the water. “Wait, hey! No!”

Yoongi returns to your side, resting his elbows on the edge as you take your place around the fountain. The staff had brought dry changes of clothing for you all, as well as towels, but luckily all you needed was to warm up your feet and put on some dry socks and sneakers, so you kick off your wet footwear and wrap up your bare feet, red with the cold.

Yoongi’s quiet, but you know he’s just enjoying the camaraderie of the team. Both of you, when sharing late-night chats or quick moments between shoots, had talked about how wonderful it was to feel like you were spending every day with these people who felt like family. You tuck your arm around his and lean onto the edge of the fountain beside him. You are quite happy to sit and watch the antics of your friends, but Yoongi breaks the silence.

“You better not be sucking up to me if you’re the spy,” he drawls, lip quirking in a suppressed smile. As tough as he likes to play, Yoongi has always been a sucker for snuggling.

“If I was the spy, I certainly wouldn’t tell you,” you counter.

You feel his shoulder shrug under the weight of your head. “That sounds like something a spy would say.”

“Well, then, what would a person who wasn’t a spy say? I’ll just say that.”

He goes quiet for a moment. “That’s also something a spy would say.”

You scoff.

Once Jin finally receives a question about himself (Where did Jin and Jeongguk go for their reward in episode 9?) the rest of the members get done pretty quickly. It’s been almost thirty minutes because of the two slowpokes, but finally there are only two left: Namjoon, currently running circles inside the fountain like a manic, and Jimin.

You jolt up away from Yoongi, accidentally elbowing him in the side as you do it, when Namjoon slips on a bit of algae on the bottom. Although the fountain’s water level only goes up to his knees, when he slips, he goes down.

The enormous splash causes a racket amongst the group. Jin, Hobi and Jeongguk laughing hysterically when Namjoon finally sits up, clothes drenched, hair dripping down his face.

There’s a lull as he clenches his eyes shut and squeezes his lips together in a tense smile - did he hurt himself when he fell? - and a sudden burst of joyous cheer when he raises a single stamped coin. He hauls himself out of the water, sloshing over the side and onto the grass, and heaves himself to the microphone. It’s a question from an episode only two weeks ago, and he answers immediately.

Jimin, already barefoot, makes a show of ripping off his hoodie before leaping into the water in a plain white shirt and jean shorts, but your attention has been caught by the shivering Namjoon.

Being so late in the game, he doesn’t have a change to get fully changed, so you wave him over to you, pulling up a chair so he can sit while you dry off his hair with a fresh towel. He’s taken off his heavily drenched hoodie, and another towel is clutched tightly around his shoulders.

“Ah, oppa, you should be more careful,” you chastise. He bows his head and apologises but judging by the way Yoongi shakes his head with a bemused grin, Namjoon definitely didn’t take your warning to heart.

You muss up his hair with the towel, tugging his head back and forth a little with it, determined to make sure he doesn’t catch a cold. The relatively short time it takes Jimin to find a coin with a question he can answer is spent drying off Joonie’s hair, periodically carding your fingers through it to break up any knots.

Once victory for your first mission is achieved, the lot of you crowd around the front of the fountain again and await the results. Producer Lee tells you all that it took you 42 minutes to complete the first challenge, and therefore you have seven hours and 18 minutes left.

Still shivering a little, you record for a while longer, throwing accusations back and forth about who the spy is, and why the slowest members took so long, before they cut the camera feeds.

Now comes the movie magic, or, you suppose, television magic. The eight of you are driven back to the dorm, take your time having hot showers and getting something to eat, putting on fresh, dry versions of the same clothes, and are driven back to the same spot again, where the timer is turned on again. Very rarely do you ever film an episode without breaking various times, as most of the things you did involved getting messy or dirty at one point or another. An associate producer lines you up in the order you were in before, and a stylist concurs with the camera crew to make your your hair styles and clothes look the same as they did before you paused shooting.

When shooting resumes, it’s just to announce that the second mission takes place at another location, and so you bundle into the van, already outfitted with cameras at every angle, taking off for the second stage.

In the very back row are Yoongi, Taehyung and Jeongguk; you’re sat in the middle of the second row with Hoseok and Jin on either side of you and Namjoon and Jimin are in the row behind the driver’s seat.

Most of the group are on their phones or taking quick naps. Generally when the place you had to go was more than ten minutes away, you would chill out for the start and make an effort for some good content in the last few minutes. The cameras would stay on the whole time, as was usual, but unless anything happened, they’d just delete the footage.

You let out a yawn, wriggling around in your seat to lean your back into Hoseok’s side. Automatically, his right arm snakes around you and links back up with his left, forming a secure hold to keep you from rolling around with the movement of the car.

In many ways, the Running Man cast really were like a family. You would even go so far as to say you were closer than that. You had worked with the same seven men five days a week for two weeks shy of a year now. Shooting days were always fun, but so were the ones were you all sat around a boardroom, brainstorming with Producer Lee about what future episodes you could do, which special guests you could invite on for cameos. When the cameras were off and you were allowed to act completely naturally with the men who were like your brothers. Well, maybe the relationships you had with some of them weren’t really sibling-like relationships, but that was just a side effect of the extremely close quarters you held.

Speaking of close quarters, just as you were drifting off in the secure warmth of Hoseok’s embrace, you feel a steady prod on your cheek.

“Jin-ah!”

“Why are you sleeping?” He whines.

“I’m dreaming of your beautiful face, oppa.”

You try your best not to crack a grin when you hear his bitter ‘humph’. “But my beautiful face is right here, Y/n. Why don’t you open your eyes and look at it now?”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

Giving up in a dramatic sigh of defeat, you feel the car seat shift as he turns around in his seat to start talking to someone else instead. The weight of Hoseok’s chin comes down to rest on the top of your head, and you hum in contentment.

All of you are surprised when it’s a primary school that you arrive at. Producer Lee refuses to answer any questions as you’re all led into a classroom fully rigged with shooting gear.

It’s a pretty basic classroom as far as things go, and this kind of setting, with the blackboard and the school-desks, is a pretty common one for variety shows. You wonder what it is exactly you’ll be doing here.

Finally, everything is ready to go, and the crew start rolling. “Your second mission is to sit a high-school entrance exam. Students take this paper at the end of their first year in high school. They are given 90 minutes and must get 65% of the questions right to pass. You can take as much time as you want to answer the questions, but you only get one chance to answer each question and you have to get 80% right to complete the mission.”

You each sound off various groans of disappointment at having to sit an exam, except for Namjoon, who remains enthusiastic with a chance to show off his smarts.

As you each get into your positions at the desks, Producer Lee goes on to explain that there are 50 questions, and you need to get 40 right to get the passing grade.

The desks you are placed at are very fitting with your personalities, as the eager Namjoon as well as Taehyung and Jimin are up the front, and you, Hoseok and Jeongguk are sat in the back row. Yoongi and Jin sit in the middle, both looking rather put out by this challenge.

“First question:” Producer Lee announces, “what are the stages of the water cycle?”

You let out a groan and let your head flop on the table. You weren’t going to be much help with this mission.

An hour and fifteen minutes later, you only have three questions left. Unfortunately for the team, you’ve already got 10 questions wrong, and another would mean failing the mission.

Jeongguk’s competitiveness has outplayed his disdain at the mission format, and although he hasn’t answered a single question thus far, his butt is hovering ten centimetres out of his seat as he awaits the third-to-last question.

“Question 48: if a triangle has a length of 12 centimetres and a height of 5 centimetres, how long is the hypotenuse?”

You stare hopelessly into the camera closest to you, expressionless. What kind of genius children they were raising here, you didn’t know.

Taehyung gestures in the air, trying to visualise it. The others, assuming he must know the answer, wait with bated breath. He nods slowly. “…It’s gotta be more than 12 centimetres.”

“Wh- Okay. Okay, it’s longer than 12 centimetres. What’s the formula?”

Taehyung stares blankly at Jimin, who’s jumped up from his seat to start scratching out a diagram on the board. Jimin’s drawing is of a wobbly triangle, which although is marked with 12, 5, and ? respectively, has sides of roughly the same length.

You let out a bark of laughter. “Jimin, that’s not in proportion at all!”

“Okay, Albert Einstein,” he shoots back, “you tell us the answer, then.”

“I’m as bad at math as you apparently are at art, buddy.”

“Unnie!” He whines. “I’m trying my best!”

He turns towards you, puffing out his cheeks in a pout. His eyes glitter, and although you know he’s not so childish as to bring out the waterworks, your heart breaks anyway.

“Yeah, unnie!” Taehyung repeats. Soon all of your team are hounding you about being mean to Jimin, and the volume rises and rises until a quick ‘hey!’ causes everyone to pause.

Yoongi holds up a notepad of scribbles. “Thirteen centimetres?” The affirmative ding goes off and he smiles proudly to himself, unaware that the attack on you was about to be shifted.

“Wait a minute,” Hoseok begins, “you knew how to work it out that whole time?”

“Yeah.”

“And you just let us bumble around like idiots while you solved it for yourself?”

“…Well, it doesn’t matter who gets the answer, we just need to get these next two right.” Yoongi blinks innocently at the rest of you.

Hoseok stares at him incredulously. “What if one of us had given up and said a random number as a guess?”

You see your chance to get back at Yoongi for accusing you earlier. “We wasted our time and potentially could’ve failed the mission because you didn’t tell us. That seems like something a spy would do.” Throwing his words back at him, you wiggle your eyebrows at his exasperated glare.

“Uh, guys?” Jeongguk ventures. “We still have two questions to answer before we complete the mission. Shouldn’t we try and solve these two as fast as we can to make up for this time spent arguing?”

Producer Lee decides it’s a good time to speak up. “Question 49: what is the planet third closest to the Sun?”

“Earth!” Namjoon calls out, and you all breathe a sigh of relief when you get the question right, and can move on so quickly.

“Finally, question 50: What year did the Korean War begin?”

You were a bit of a history buff when you were in school, and so you tell the rest of the team that you’re pretty sure it’s 1950.

“Are you sure, Y/n?” Hoseok swivels in his chair to face you. “I thought it was 1948.”

You frown. Was it 1948? You would hate to be the one who made the team fail the mission. Just as you were about to concede to Hoseok, Jin speaks up.

“No, Y/n’s right, I think.” A couple of other members agree with him, and so you submit 1950 as your answer. It’s correct, and after an hour and 22 minutes, you’ve completed your second mission.

“You now have 5 hours and 34 minutes left to complete six more missions.” You scrunch your face up in worry. You had roughly an hour per mission, so the team was already beginning to fall behind. “Your third mission also takes place in this classroom. Each of you has to spin round in a circle ten times before picking up a bowl of water,” he gestures off-camera to the row of plastic bowls that were being set up on the front desk, “and trying to fill a jug that another player is holding. The combined volume of the water must exceed one litre for you to succeed in this mission. However,” he trails off dramatically, “the individual that contributes the most water gets a hint about the identity of the spy.”

And just like that, the third mission is a-go. Jeongguk, eager to impress after his lack of help in the last round, goes first. He twirls around with his finger to his nose, and after a little stumbling manages to tip in 180mL.

Hoseok stands up next. “I can do better than that any day!” Hoseok, who was a street dancer before starting the show, has excellent balance. Unfortunately for him, he also has terrible aim, and misses the bowl almost completely.

“35mL,” a crew member announces.

“Yah, Hoseok must be the spy to do that badly,” Jimin insists as Jin begins taking his turn.

“Am not!”

“Well, then, why would you tell us you’re great at something and do terribly?”

Hoseok, not responding so well to the ribbing, throws his hands up in the air in emphasis. “It’s not me, seriously! Look, Jin did a rubbish job, too!”

“65mL,” Jin declares matter-of-factly. “I did twice as good as you, Hoseok.”

“We still need…720mL,” Namjoon calculates, and heaves a big sigh as he steps up and begins twirling round in front of the desk. He slows to a wobbly halt when you all call out the tenth turn, and stumbles towards the bowl.

Knowing how clumsy Namjoon can be at the best of times, you all shuffle back a little to avoid getting splashed, but amazingly, almost all of it sloshes into the bowl. He collapses into a chair, and lets out a satisfied sigh when the water level is read off at 210mL.

“Woah, hyung, that’s amazing!” Jimin enthuses. “We can do this, guys!”

You have four people still to go, and just over half a litre left to pour in. It’s your turn, so you hook one arm around the other, finger on your nose, and close your eyes while spinning as you listen as the guys chant a count to ten.

On ten, you are surprised just how dizzy you are, and suddenly it doesn’t seem so easy to grab the bowl off the table. With the ground lurching beneath you and your knees knocking together, you fall forward a couple steps until you lean onto the table, using the solid object as support when you lift the bowl.

In your fuzzy-minded state, you lift up the bowl, feeling the water sloshing down your sleeves, and tip it in the general direction of the clear plastic measuring jug at the far end of the table.

It’s impossible to see anything when your surroundings are jerking back and forth. Totally unaware of how well (or poorly) you did, you lose your balance leaning towards the cups and your elbow slips off the side of the table, falling ungracefully onto the floor.

Strong hands help you sit up and you lean against the front wall of the classroom, blinking slowly. “How much did I get?”

Hoseok holds up a jug with about two centimetres of water in the bottom and gives you an unimpressed glare. “How come when I do a bad job, it’s all, ‘oh, Hobi, you’re the spy’ but when Y/n does even worse than I did, you guys are fawning over her, making sure she’s okay?”

“I did even worse than you?” You ask incredulously. “Man, I’m sorry guys.”

“Wait, wait!” Taehyung, who had been quietly observing thus far, runs over to the line of jugs. “Some of the water splashed into another jug, see!”

You look up in hope. Tae’s right; you may have all but missed your jug, but Namjoon’s water level has raised by quite a bit.

Producer Lee quickly confers with the team. “Because you need a combined score to win, it will count. However, it won’t be counted for either of your individual scores.” You nod, satisfied.

Next up is Jimin, who gives an average performance of 80mL.

Taehyung goes second-to-last and manages 200mL. He’s clearly proud, but slightly miffed he didn’t get more than Namjoon. When they read off the amount, he clenches his eyes together and pinches the bridge of his nose.

When Yoongi walks up to finish off the game, the producers remind you all you still need 180mL to complete the challenge. You all circle around Yoongi in nervous anticipation as he spins, hunched into a low crouch.

Jeongguk and Jimin start a chant of “hyung, hyung, hyung!” as he breaks out into a wonky dash towards the table. With amazingly steady hands, he grabs onto the bowl and slowly tips it over into the final jug on the end of the desk.

Barely spilling anything, Yoongi pours out the last of the water and then gives the camera a smug nod, holding out his arms with a cocky grin on his face.

Jeongguk rushes forward to read off the water level. “No way, hyung, you got 230mL!”

Your expressions are a mix of stunned and impressed, and the producer announces that you’ve completed the third mission, with Yoongi, of course, being the one who gets the hint.

“Here is your hint. You may choose to show it to any of the other players or keep it to yourself. There will be two more hints throughout your remaining five missions.”

You hold your breath as Yoongi walks forward, opens the envelope handed to him, and reads the hint. He looks up at each one of you with an inscrutable gaze.

“What’s the hint, oppa?” You ask.

He tilts the note away from the other members, showing it to the camera. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yeah, actually, I would!”

“I guess you shouldn’t have done such a terrible job in the mission then, Y/n.”

You narrow your eyes at him, ready to egg him on some more, but the producer cuts you off. “For your next mission, we’ll be heading to a restaurant. You currently have 5 hours and 8 minutes left to complete five more missions.”

Luckily, the restaurant wasn’t far away, and the car ride was spent placing bets on who the spy was, even though nobody except Yoongi had any idea. Once you arrived at the sleek, modern restaurant, you were led to an industrial kitchen in the back, and lined up behind a bench in the middle of the room.

On the bench were eight mini electric frypans, each with their own bottle of oil, fork, and a single egg. After you all got in place, they brought out bowls of bibimbap and placed one in front of each of you.

“Your fourth mission,” Producer Lee begins, “is to fry an egg and place it on the bowl of bibimbap without breaking the yolk. You can’t move the pan and all you can use to move the egg is a fork. To complete this mission, five of you have to succeed.”

This time, you were lined up in age order, and Jin and Yoongi both fried their eggs and deftly lifted them onto their bowls without breaking the yolk.

Hoseok and Namjoon were next in line, and just as expected, both fail. Hoseok almost gets there, you and Jeongguk cheering him on as the egg slowly cooks in the pan, but when he leaves it in too long the pan gets too hot and his yolk bubbles up and explodes. Namjoon, on the other hand, cracks his egg open with a little too much force and fails straight away.

You start heating up your pan, trying to go slow and steady. “Third time lucky,” you declare, pouring a small amount of oil into the pan before delicately cracking your egg. Once it cracks, you lift it up closer to you so you can wiggle your nails into the cracks and slowly pull it open. It cracks open faster than you were expecting, and everyone sucks in a unified gasp when the egg drops into the pan from your chest level.

Mouth open, you lean down to inspect the yolk, but it sits perfectly intact in the middle of the egg white, which is slowly turning opaque. The pressure is on, and you use the fork to flick at the edges to make sure it doesn’t get stuck. The real difficulty would be the transfer - making sure the egg didn’t flop off the narrow fork, or that the tines didn’t pierce through when you lifted it.

Once it was cooked (you admit, you left it to cook a little longer so the yolk wasn’t so runny) you held your breath and slowly manoeuvred the fork underneath the yolk. An idea strikes you, and you pause.

“What?” Jimin, standing to your left, hunches over to see if you’ve broken it already.

“We only need the yolk, right?” You confer with Director Lee, and after he nods you wiggle out the fork, only to cut away the egg whites from around the yolk, leaving a much smaller surface area for you to pick up.

Leaving the cut-off whites getting overcooked in the pan, you lift up the yolk easily and delicately set it down in the bowl.

“I told you, third time lucky!” You turn to your left at the three men left to go. “Come on, guys, we need two of you to succeed.”

Jimin, ever the perfectionist, manages to fry his egg and move it into the bowl without having to cut off the edges like you did, and the proud smile he sends you when you congratulate him warms you heart and sparks something off somewhere else, too. Trying not to blush, and avoiding his dreamy gaze, you lean over to Taehyung.

“You can do this Tae! Just don’t stress out too much and take it slow!”

The advice doesn’t help. He cooks the egg okay, but the second he puts his fork under to lift it, he pierces through and the yolk dribbles out around the pan, congealing and bubbling.

When you see his heartbroken expression, you quickly reach out and latch onto his hand, giving it a consoling squeeze. Tae was one of the members you first started spending time with, and really the only one of your three dongsaengs that you felt like an older sister to. The feelings you had for Jimin certainly weren’t family-friendly, and Jeongguk, although quite a bit younger than you, was your partner in crime more than anything else.

The crinkle between Taehyung’s eyebrows ease and his pout lifts.

“It’s okay, hyung, we weren’t really expecting you to win anyway,” Jeongguk teases, and starts oiling up his pan. “Let’s get it!”

The golden maknae is, unsurprisingly, very good at this challenge, and he stays calm under the mounting pressure.

The rest of you are tense, knowing that this is what this whole thing rides on, and to fail halfway through would be particularly embarrassing. Jin decides now is a good time to crack a joke and ease the atmosphere a little. “If the maknae became an author, what would he write?” He pauses for effect, nobody bothering to try and guess but just waiting for the punchline. “A Kookbook.”

Jeongguk has his egg draped across the fork, hovering over the bowl, but as he laughs the juddering of his shoulders causes a wobble, and just as he begins to lower it down into the bowl, the skin splits and the yolk runs off the fork.

Chaos erupts. Jeongguk begins complaining to Jin, Hoseok and Jimin are trying to convince the director to give them another chance, and the rest of you grumble and whine in disappointment.

“Okay, alright,” the director budges, and everyone goes silent in newfound hope, “we’ll let you pass this challenge if you sacrifice one player to the penalty, since you missed the goal by one.”

Namjoon ponders this. “So even if we win and get the reward, someone still has to pay the penalty?”

“Correct.”

Namjoon turns to the rest of the team. “If we lose now, we all do the penalty, but if we take the chance then maybe only one of us will. I say we take it.”

The rest of you agree, and you are allowed to move on to the fifth challenge.

Before any instructions are given, the director calls for a break, and the timer is paused while various staff members check cameras, clear up, and start preparing something else in place of the frying pans.

Your team is asked to leave while they set up, so you file out of the restaurant’s kitchen and take a seat at a round table in the middle of the room.

Tae’s cheered up since finding out that you were allowed to continue the game (that sweet boy always took losing so hard when he felt like he was letting others down) and he sits down with Jimin and Jeongguk on either side of him as they dig into the now-completed bibimbap from the previous challenge, slightly lukewarm but still apparently good enough to scoff like animals.

Namjoon and Jin sit together on Jimin’s other side, and you sit beside Jin, with Hoseok and then Yoongi filling up the table. Apart from the three youngest, the rest of you eat slowly, knowing it can take a while for the challenges to be set up depending on what’s needed, and there’s really nothing else to do while you wait.

You fall into conversation with Jin and Namjoon, unaware of Yoongi’s gaze on you as he ate quietly and tried to pay attention to Hoseok’s chatter.

“So, Y/n, how does fifty episodes feel?”

You wrinkle your nose at Jin. “Half as good as one hundred episodes, grandpa.”

He lets out a peal of laughter, leaning back in his seat with the force of it. You swear, you could read the weather forecast to Jin and he’d still see the humour in it.

“Anyway, Y/n,” Namjoon cuts in, “I was thinking a bunch of us should go out for drinks to celebrate. Hoseok knows this place downtown that has really great cocktails apparently, so maybe we can go on the Friday night.”

You push your mouthful of rice to one cheek as you reply, holding the back of your hand to your mouth to avoid any spillage. “Depends on what these rewards and penalties are, though. Didn’t they send you guys to Busan once?”

He shook his head. “When they do stuff like that, they have to warn us in advance that we might be needed on the weekend so that we don’t make plans. Besides, it gives us more incentive to survive four more missions. Hwaiting!”

You chuckle. “Did you see the timer before we left?”

Jin, breaking off a conversation with the youngest, leans back in. “Four hours twenty-something. I reckon they must have some long ones planned if we have so much time left.”

The thought of four and a half hours of filming to go triggers a yawn, and suddenly the contagious reaction is going around the table. Facing inwards again, you gradually all fall into one single conversation: drinks on Friday night.

You haven’t all been out drinking as a group before, as most of the time when you hang out it’s either all eight of you at home, or a few of you at a time going somewhere. It was difficult planning group activities outside of filming, and now that there was a good cause to celebrate, the group was buzzing with excitement.

“So, Hoseok, you must be quite the party animal if you know exactly where to go for the best cocktails,” you tease, elbowing him in the ribs. “And I never took you for a cocktails man.”

“Hey, don’t knock it til you try it! There’s one that’s got chocolate milk and vodka and you can’t even taste the alcohol in it. It’s like you’re drinking a milkshake one minute, and the next minute you’re fucked up, singing Christmas carols in April.” The group fell into laughter, sharing stories about things other members did while completely wasted, and the next half an hour passed in the blink of an eye.

Soon enough, you were back in the kitchen, gawking at the impressive set-up. The same frypan stations were on the long kitchen island, but this time each one was blocked off by a tall partition. They were high enough so that even the tallest member couldn’t peek over to the station beside him. Along with the electric frypans, there were a pair of tongs, a salt and pepper shaker, the same bottle of oil, a single sheet of instructions, and a slab of meat on a plate.

The order doesn’t matter this time, as you’ll be cooking at the same time, so the eight of you slot yourselves into the spaces. Although you were in a relatively large room, the feeling of being blocked in on both sides made your heart race with claustrophobia. It is a weird sensation, too, suddenly not being able to see any of your teammates, and you wish this challenge goes quickly.

The director starts rolling and reads out the instructions for the challenge. At least six of you had to cook a piece of steak to medium well-done exactly, using only the instructions given. Unfortunately for you, the instructions described how the meat should look when done, but not the time needed.

The challenge starts soon enough, and although the eight of you banter back and forth, you don’t remember ever being so uncomfortable and awkward during shooting before. Even being alone doing a penalty was preferential to being stuck in a narrow place, knowing your friends were there but not being able to really interact with them.

The challenge goes by in a miserable blur, and when it comes to taking down the partitions, revealing the doneness of each member’s steak, and getting a chef to come judge it, you are desperately trying to hide from the camera and your teammates how upset you are.

As the minutes go on, and whichever members are on either sides of you accidentally bump the placards closer and closer in on you, it’s all you can do to bite your lip and focus on the delicious smell of cooking meat.

There is a relief when they take away those awful white plastic sheets and you can see your friends again, but you can feel your eyes stinging, your stomach wobbling and your hands shaking. You clench them into fists and rest them on the bench, going uncharacteristically quiet for the judging section, letting the other team members do the most of the joking around for a while.

You force yourself to smile and relax a little when you manage to succeed in the challenge, with only Namjoon having the meat too overcooked, and keep up an airy persona while the director gives away a hint to the team, not that you hear a single word. It’s not until he calls out to cut that you let your chest sink down onto the table and you bury your face in your hands, letting your cheek press onto the cool marble bench-top.

You try and take a deep breath, but now that the pressure is off to smile for the cameras, you can’t help the tears that spring to your eyes, and the uneven pounding of your heart makes you feel sick.

A couple of the guys had started joking around once the cameras switched off, but once Yoongi, the first to notice that you aren’t okay, starts reassuring you in a hushed voice and trying to ease you into a standing position, the other six fall silent and crowd around you.

Your whole body is seized up with tension in an effort to stop from full-on sobbing, and Yoongi’s hands are gentle but insistent as they pull your arms away from your face and cradle your head into the solid, secure span of his chest. You can feel one arm around your back, thumb rubbing small circles into your shoulder, the other hand on the back of your head as he rocks back and forth slightly and shushes you.

You can hear the other members hovering around you, discussing what’s going on, voices dampened with concern, as well as Jimin’s voice in particular arguing with the director about why he would do a challenge like that.

When you had signed up for Running Man, you had filled out a form like all the other guys had, saying what things you were completely uncomfortable doing - things that were hard No’s if you were to be employed on the show. Being put into small spaces was one of those things. You didn’t blame the director at all; he had never made you go in a cave, or be stuck in a closet, or any of the things that sometimes other members would do. You were sure it never occurred to him that this would be a problem, and if you were honest, you weren’t really expecting it to be as bad as it was.

But still, it felt nice to have the comforting hold of Yoongi around you while Jimin defended your honour and the rest of them muttered sweet nothings to calm you down.

You took deep but shaky breaths, fingers clutching onto handfuls of Yoongi’s hoodie, and you felt the damp patch of fabric you were currently crying into.

After a couple minutes, he muttered to you in his natural Satoori, something he always avoided from using on-camera, that he was going to walk you outside for some fresh air.

You settled down enough to nod slowly, but made no effort to detach yourself from his grip as the manoeuvred the pair of you out the back entrance of the kitchen, sitting you down gently on a concrete step.

The harsh chill of the wind did wonders, and after a few more minutes of leaning into him and swaying back and forth, you had calmed down significantly. You sat up, but scooted your butt closer so you could pull him into a proper hug.

He rubbed your back and chuckled quietly as you thanked him.

The crew had finished setting up by the time the two of you came back inside, and your six other team members fell in to step with you, eager to make sure you were okay.

“We can call it a day if you need some more time, noona,” Jimin cooed, “Director Lee said it was fine.”

You sniffle resolutely and shake your head. “Just give me a couple minutes with the make-up team and we can move on. I’m okay, I promise.”

He gave you measured stare for a few moments, then relaxed his jaw and dropped his shoulders. “Okay, sounds good. We’ll go get ready, give you some space. No rush.”

You pat his shoulder reassuringly, and let him herd your teammates out of the kitchen. Yoongi looks like he wants to hang around, but you wave him on with a soft smile.

It doesn’t take long for the make-up stylists to work their magic with ice-packs under your eyes to bring down the slight swelling, and a fresh layer of concealer and foundation to make you look camera-ready again.

You take in a few deep breaths, willing the last of the wobbliness in your stomach to settle, and join the rest of the team.

They’re all lined up in a slight semicircle around a decorative fireplace in the dining area, and it warms your heart to see Taehyung, on the far left, create some distance between him and Jeongguk so you don’t have to stand on the outside.

Before you step into place, a thought comes to you. “Wait, I missed the hint for the spy. What was it?”

Jeongguk grins. “The spy is older than me but younger than Yoongi. A.K.A, it’s not me.”

“Nobody thought it was you anyway, Jeonggukie.” Tae pulls you into a side hug when you slip in between them, and his tight grip makes you think maybe he needs the support more than you do. He always takes it particularly hard when one of his hyungs or you get upset. You let yourself lean into him as the director reads out the instructions for the next challenge, hugging the arm he wrapped around you against your front.

“Your sixth mission is a game of wits. I’ll call out a number from zero to seven, and any of you can raise your hand, but it cannot be the number I called out. You need to succeed 5 out of 5 times to succeed.”

You figured the harsh stakes were to compensate for the fact that this challenge wouldn’t take a particularly long time. “At least this is kind of an impossible game to sabotage,” you muse. “Would be pretty obvious if someone suddenly changed their mind at the last minute to ruin the game.”

Jin narrowed his eyes at you from the other side of the semicircle. “Pretty interesting that you’re already thinking of ways the spy could screw this up, wouldn’t you say?”

“If I was the spy would I really point that out?”

A pause. “You win this round, punk.” He sighs dramatically, whipping his head to the side as if he’s in a k-drama. You chuckle at his antics, his attempt at cheering you up successful as always.

Without further warning, the director calls out a number and the game begins.

The first four rounds go well with everyone managing to avoid the number called out, and you only need one more to win.

“Three!”

Your hand shoots up, and as you all crane your necks to count the hands, you see Jimin, Jin, and Hoseok all have their hands up. A couple of you let out a cheer as victory is yours in less than five minutes, but Namjoon calls out. “Hey, wait, wasn’t Jimin just yawning?”

You all go silent, Jimin’s mouth open in a slight pout like he’s been caught redhanded. “What?”

“I saw you, you held up your hand to your face to yawn, and then when you saw there were only three you put it up higher.”

The room erupts into argument. “I still put my hand up, so it still counts!”

“Joonie, we had the win, why would you bring that up?”

“Yeah, hyung, you just made us fail the mission. Good going, buddy.”

To Namjoon’s credit, even if he was the spy and was making a deliberate attempt to sabotage the game, he has enough common sense to look guilty about the whole thing.

Eventually after conferring with (read: whining to) the director, Jimin finally accepts that his hand didn’t count, and that you had lost the challenge on the final round.

“Director Lee, can we just give up another member for a penalty like we did with the egg challenge?” Taehyung’s great idea has all the team buzzing, and the director reluctantly agrees.

“I say no matter the outcome, we put Namjoon on the penalty since he made us lose,” Hoseok declares.

“That is, if he isn’t already the spy,” you remind them, winking at Namjoon, thoroughly enjoying his hunched shoulders of defeat.

“Missions seven and eight,” Director Lee cuts in, “take place at the Running Man studio. You currently have three hours and forty eight minutes left to complete your final two challenges and guess the identity of the spy in order to claim your reward.”

The cameras cut after a few moments, and you all file your way out of the building and back into the company van.

This time, you get tucked into the back row against the window, with Tae remaining fast against your side, and Jeongguk on the seat beside him. Jin and Namjoon steal the second row, and in the middle sit Jimin and Hoseok with Yoongi on the middle seat between them.

You haven’t spend much time in this neighbourhood, but you can vaguely guess that you’re about twenty minutes drive from the studio, which is in the city centre of Seoul.

You and Tae let Jeongguk lead the conversation, as he seems to be the only one of you three in the back with any energy still left. “What do you reckon we’ll do in the studios? I mean, by the time we get there we’ll still have more than three hours, so they must be pretty long to still make it a reasonable time constraint. If we have loads of time it’s no fun at all.”

You hum half-heartedly, content to enjoy the steady flashing of scenery outside the window.

Hoseok swivels in his seat to face you. “Nah, I think whatever this next one is will be fine, and they’ll have one really big one as a grand finale. This must be, what, two or three episodes all up? Plus the reward and penalty follow-up, whenever that happens. But who do you reckon the spy is?”

Jeongguk wriggles his nose in thought. “Well, if Oscar the Grouch over here,” he kicks the back of Yoongi’s seat for emphasis, “would give us his hint, we’d know better. But we know it’s not me, it’s not him and it’s not Jin. Not gonna lie, Hoseok, the rest of you have kind of all done a terrible job so far, so it could be any one of you. Namjoon messed up that last challenge, Y/n did a horrendous job of the water jug one, you can’t fry an egg to save yourself, and Jimin just always looks suspicious.”

“Hey!”

Taehyung is pulled back into the conversation. “What about me?”

“You’re right,” Jeongguk says, “you’ve been a pretty decent team player so far. But anyway,” he digresses, “it doesn’t matter who’s been bad up until this point. Whoever the spy is will reveal themselves soon enough. Eventually they’ll get desperate enough and try something crazy to stop us from winning. So we just have to sit back and wait.”

Jimin, still upset about the earlier comment, fires back. “You get excluded by the hint and all of a sudden you’re an expert, huh?”

“We’ve been doing this for two years, hyung!” Jeongguk huffs and collapses dramatically back in his seat, staring obstinately out the window. Unfortunately for Jeongguk, it is only a few moments later that you arrive.

The studio that you’re heading to is actually part of a full floor with several rooms on it. The actual studio is where filming takes place, but there’s also a boardroom, an editing room, a break room, and the various small offices of all the head staff. When you weren’t filming or planning, a lot of your time was spent there anyway, playing video games in the break room with Jeongguk, chilling out with a hot cup of tea with Tae, sneaking into the director’s office out of work hours to leave little notes with Hoseok, because he liked the thought of Director Lee arriving in his office only to see a handwritten note with a smiley face and a wobbly heart. This was really your home away from home, and it was fitting that the end of the game would take place here.

In order to make things a little clearer for you all, Lee spent a couple of minutes while equipment was being checked to talk through the logistics of the rest of the game. Both challenges remaining were in the studio, and then you’d take a break for an hour or so while the crew ran over the footage to make sure there was nothing that needed reshooting, before coming back together to finish off voting out the spy, and revealing the rewards and penalties for the game.

It was pretty common practice, you had discovered, to go back to a location later in the day or the week to redo bits and pieces. Sometimes somebody blocked a shot, or the wind ruined the audio, or mishaps occurred in the editing room. It always sucked to try and mimic what you did earlier, knowing that the sincerity of your responses wouldn’t be there. You didn’t think the fans noticed or cared, but for you it was a real downside of the job. Luckily enough, all the footage was fine, and since the studio equipment was always up, it never needed any double-checking. So, it was time to start.

The penultimate challenge was another short one, a classic game of Chinese whispers with headphones on, where instead of sharing sentences, you had to pass a classic dance move down the line, and have the final person guess the song it was from.

All of you managed to do well enough, and another victory was secured in fifteen minutes. This was the round, however, that you would receive the final hint on the identity of the spy.

“Hint number three,” Director Lee announced, “is that the spy used to dance professionally before joining the show.”

You scrunched your nose. Hoseok was a street dancer for several years before joining the variety show and Jimin went to a dance school and performed in a few shows held at his local theatre. None of the other guys had any experience in dancing.

You were, however, also a dancer before you came on. In fact, less than a year and a half ago you had been a member of your local dance academy, teaching part-time.

And the rest of the team knew it.

One by one, they craned their heads to look at you accusingly. You glare back at them. “We’re still on the clock, idiots. Let’s go!”