#(I might take time later to adjust framing and add some effect) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

henfox · 3 years

Text

KYLOSOLO’S/KRYLORENS’ STEP BY STEP BASIC GIFFING TUTORIAL, inc. ALL RESOURCES:

this is part one out of two not don’t worry, part two is just me filming the process, i just had to put it onto a separate tumblr post since i can’t place it in this one. PART TWO HERE: [x]

i’ve been giffing for about over six years and it’s only very recently that i feel i’ve got a grasp on a pretty good method, for me at least. if you’re reading this you probably have prior knowledge already but this tutorial is also going to go over the basics as if you know nothing. → this is just how i do everything and my ordering process, there are way better gif-makers out there but i know how finicky the process can be so i wanted to give out all my tricks! it might seem like a lot but it becomes second nature easily. (let me know of any broken links and or questions.) just to note i use windows not mac.

SORRY FOR SPELLING AND GRAMMAR ISSUES, i really pushed myself and i struggle with articulation.

things you will need/learn: (it’s all free!) →the ones in bold are essential. —adobe photoshop; i use cc2020 which you can get here: [x] —mpv; (a frame captures, i’ve used pretty much every type over the years, even ps’ inbuilt one but this is my favourite & this tutorial on how to use/dl it is the best) [x] —***at least 1080p footage; if you don’t have any you can still use this frames folder to follow along with me :) [x]*** —4k video downloader [x] —a megasync account [x]

actions: —@kylos tumblr sharpening; (these are just my favourites you can use any you find/make really but this makes your gifs look even more hq) [x] —@kylos twitter sharpening: [x] —@rory-amy tumblr/twitter save; (i just use the save action out of this pack and it’s a LIFESAVER) [x] —if you’re not sure how to put these into your ps i’ll show you how later on in this tutorial.

how to learn colouring + how to add subtitles correctly + how to make hq twitter gifs: —all later on in this tutorial with links to my own resources and might have my twitter watermark by mistake.

*what this tutorial isn’t including: —how to t*rrent. —how to upscale footage. —how to make multiple gifs/gifset are crop them the same way/move frames over to a new document; (i’m just focusing on how to make one simple gif) —how to use gradient/html text for captions but here’s a great tutorial on it. [x]

i just want to give a big shout out to @kylos because all her tips are just amazing and top-tier!!!

‧͙⁺˚*・༓☾ ☽༓・*˚⁺‧͙ ok now onto the good stuff! ‧͙⁺˚*・༓☾ ☽༓・*˚⁺‧͙

★ how to load in and sort out your layers: [1/2] ★ —once you’ve dl the frames or gotten your own you’ll need to load them into ps like this;

when load layers pops up, you can select individual files (for a more complicated set this is good) but i prefer to just use the folder option. now select your captures folder from wherever you saved it. depending on how many frames/how hq they are will effect how long the loading time is. it can really vary. —ONE THING YOU SHOULD NEVER DO: is take EVERY OTHER FRAME when making your gifs this destroys the flow of them and is an older method to gifs that isn’t needed.

—if your ps is brand new you’re going to have to add some stuff, which i’ll show you how to do. — first go to window and select TIMELINE and ACTIONS. then move your ADJUSTMENTS bar up and close the tab it came from since you won’t need those. (if you ever do, just click workspace and then RESET ESSENTIALS) and next you’re going to click on your timeline bar, then CREATE FRAME ANIMATION. — *your screen should now look like this:*

—then on your timeline bar at the right top corner there’s three little lines, click that. then select MAKE FRAMES FROM LAYERS and after SELECT ALL FRAMES and next REVERSE ALL FRAMES. (depending on the ps you use your frames might be like mine and need to be reversed, just click the play icon on your timeline to make sure). —i always play through the gif before doing anything and i noticed the gif frames are a bit long for my taste so i’m going to press my shift key and then select up to frame ten by right clicking (they should now be highlighted) and click the trashcan icon on the TIMELINE bar to delete them. you can trim your gifs at the end doing this if the mb is too high and your gif doesn’t load when uploading. currently tumblr is up to 10mb and twitter is around past 15mb. —after deleting your frames you then need to SELECT ALL FRAMES again and then CONVERT TO TIMELINE.

★ how to crop your gifs: ★ ***here is when i like to do it: (4th icon on the bar on your left)*** —however, you can do this before or after, just as long as it isn’t after making it a SMART OBJECT or sharpening. —there should now be a new a bar on top of your gif and next to RATIO is where you should put your dimensions in (as in width:height)

—there are tumblr dimensions but i find you can be more lax with them, i like to change it up a lot but for now i make square gifs around 450px x 450px and rectangular ones around 500px x 340px but it’s up to you. if you’re really struggling and see a set with a size you want to use yourself you can study the size of it by inspecting its elements on desktop, and rounding up. but i would recommending doing it yourself. making your own style is the fun of it!!! —for twitter the best size is 600px x 600px. this is a square, sometimes frames can’t just fit neatly into this shape/sizing so find what’s best or copy my tumblr dimensions if you’re struggling.

***note: when cropping your gif you can get weird transparent lines around it. → to get rid of those when cropping your gif, you have to: crop inwards a bit, (or as much as you want) and move the cropping square/shape a bit into the middle.

now, make sure you go to IMAGE on top bar select and put in your gif dimensions.***

‧͙⁺˚*・༓☾ ☽༓・*˚⁺‧͙

★ back to your layers: [2/2] ★ —now go to your LAYERS bar and select every frame with an eye icon next to it, right click and select on top of them and select CONVERT TO SMART OBJECT. this should leave all the frames you have deleted earlier and those have no eye icon, you can select those akin to how you did it on your TIMELINE bar, just use the trashcan icon on your LAYERS bar or just select DELETE LAYERS when right clicking.

★ how to insert and use actions: ★ —to do this you need to locate your actions folder. so, go to your adobe photoshop file, right click on the ps icon and then click ‘FILE LOCATION’ then search in it for ACTIONS. next if your action(s) are downloaded go open another file explorer tab:

then drag and drop it like this: —if it says administer permission is needed click yes.

—once you’ve done this head back into ps to use the ACTIONS, first to sharpen, then to save: —you’re going to click the arrow icon on the sidebar on the left side to your LAYERS and then the three lines as shown here:

—you’ll see where it says SELECT HERE, do that and then click the arrow icon below it and just click continue if you get the make layers error, this won’t affect anything. (sometimes gifs can glitch at this stage but just undo or you may need to restart your gif.) —ok now your gif is sharpened! if you think it’s too much you can add gaussian blur from the FILTERS bar at the top but i just prefer to lower the opacity by double clicking the bars next to the word SMART SHARPENED which has now appeared x2. —for me gif colouring at this stage is hard because playing the gif in this mode blurs it and i like having the individual layers so this is where the action pack (save) comes in handy! *it also saves you from having to open your gif at the end and adjusting to 0.07 sec bug to 0.05 gif speed the action auto does it to 0.05 for you (which i’ll explain next.) just select the action the exact way you did sharpening. just scroll down to where it says save. —now your ps should look like this (this is a good point to save, but i’m the worst and do it after i colour usually.)

adjust the gif speed by double clicking the numbers if you want to change it from 0.05 speed but even if your gif is short making it anything more slower or even faster can mess up your flow. the best range imo is around 0.04-0.06, although i usually never stray from 0.05. i also like to put do not dispose on all the frames (which you again can do by shift clicking or the three lines on your timeline to get select them all and then any frame right clicking to do that should work for both things.)

★ how to colour (basic not colourful): ★ —now this is the best part for me, however it’s the most tricky and vague in a way. one psd (your saved photoshop document that contains your colouring and usually the gif too) might not work for the next gif even if it’s the same film or ‘footage’ and getting your own style can take a long, long time. you can use other peoples psds but i find making your own is the most rewarding. but! i have studied those psds given out and incorporated them into my own style over time. —*so, what i have decided to do is just that. i have made a base psd for this gif for you to study. but i really recommend looking at other tutorials to teach you how to do that. i’m just gonna get you started, which i hope no one minds. i did try and make it less my very blue-toned grunge style and more ‘normal’. [x] —note 1: select all of the adjustment layers on the side and then to put them into a multi-set just select DUPLICATE LAYERS and put them onto your document/next gif. be smarter than me and don’t name randomly or keyboard smash your psds, sorting out your psds makes life so much easier trust me and you can reuse them!!! (i keep ALL of mine in folders in my documents and then they are sub-dived). —note 2: i like to go more extreme and lessen the vibrancy/saturation and then constantly edit and mess with the opacity rather than being subtle, there’s so many ways to do this. so again, it’s just messing around. however, even if you all your frames selected sometimes this can bug out and mess up one of the frames. so, keep watch on that and either undo or just duplicate the new version of your adjustment layer and delete the bugged one.

*if you do want me to make a how to on my colouring that goes more in-depth/colourful please let me know.

★ how to add perfectly in the middle subtitles: ★ —here i’m going to give you my subtitles with its settings preset, but edit it to your own liking! [x] —if you’re loading it in, different sizes/factors effect your subtitle placement and your text can looks random like this:

so what you’re going to do this: drag it into the place you want and then make sure your text bar looks like this:

—since this is also an adjustment layer you can get the same bug of it being fixed on one frame only and then the rest are how it used to be. so, just duplicate it into a new file like this:

—and after duplicating it back onto your main gif and get rid of the old one.it should be good. (again, this is just my own learned solution) —this is also applicable to twitter watermarking which i’ll mention later on.

now that you’ve done all of that and hopefully saved your gif it’s time to export it!

the save settings i use:

★ how to make hq twitter gifs: ★ —read this tutorial, already linked above but: [x] —if you’ve read everything above then making a hq twitter gif won’t be a hard adjustment, you just need to change and add a few things. —first: make sure it’s 600px x 600px (you can change this but to get the best result) —second: use the twitter sharpening action!!! you can adjust this, but twitter can really repress the quality if you use just the tumblr one, or your preferred method. although some footage needs you to lower the sharpening or else it can look like a lot, but don’t be afraid it’s an easy fix! —if you’re adding subtitles make them a bigger than you would for tumblr just make sure it doesn’t go through the bottom left side of your gif. —before posting, make sure you have watermarked it! which you can only do on the top left/right corner and bottom right or else it’ll get covered up! you can also place in somewhere else if you’d like it’s up to you. —the video of me making a gif will be one for twitter so if you’re unsure about anything from this or the entire tutorial hopefully it clears that up. :)

it should look something like this, just in your style!:

✨✨✨ now that should be everything!!! if you have made it this far, thank you for bareing with me and let me know if there’s anything confusing!!! this took a very long time of planning and making so if it helped, interact with this post? <3 ✨✨✨

#big shout out to everyones resources mentioned!!!#gif tutorial #mine #mine: tutorial #mine: gifs in txt #ft. charlie barber

122 notes · View notes

yuutta · 3 years

Text

Tutorial: Comic Book Gifs

I got a request for a tutorial on how I create gifs stylized like comic books, so I will be walking through how I made this gif (from this gifset):

Tutorial under the cut:

I’m going to break this tutorial into 3 sections: organizing the panels, creating the comic book “look”, and adding the sound effects.

1. Creating the Panel Layout

1. Start by deciding how you want your “layout” to look. These really don’t have to be too fancy: usually I’ll just do rows of 1 or 2 panels, but if you need help getting a rough idea of what a layout might look like here are all my comic book edits. Again, nothing too fancy (unless that’s what you want).

It’s probably best to plan which gifs are going in which panels in advance but I kind of make it up as a go.

2. Create a new psd and start in video timeline mode. Then using the rectangle tool, draw the rectangles based on your desired layout:

3. Create the gifs you will use for each panel. (Note: It’s important that the # of frames in your gifs are all the same.) Make sure the gif is in video timeline mode & is converted to a smart object. No need to sharpen yet - we will do that later. These are the four gifs I will be using (one per panel):

The framerate is a little fast right now but that’s ok - I will fix this at the very end.

4. Now, you want to drag your gifs onto the psd.Use a clipping mask (ctrl + alt + G) to attach the gifs to the “panel boxes”. To resize your gifs within the panel you can just use ctrl + t.

So this is where we should now be at:

4. Final step is to add borders. So click on the rectangles, and then click on add layer style -> stroke to add a border. Personally I like the borders a little thicker to make it look more “comic book-y”. So I use a 5px stroke with position set to center:

And this is what our gifs should look like now:

So now we’re done with the setup, and we can move onto styling.

2. Styling the Gifs

1. Start by just applying your usual sharpening settings (I used a surface blur & smart sharpen).

2. After that, add a poster edges filter to the gifs. You can do this by clicking on filter -> filter gallery -> artistic -> poster edges:

These are the settings I used for this gif, but I do tweak them a little depending on the set (I’d recommend playing around with it a little until you find the setting you think works nicest for whatever scene you are giffing):

3. Click on the little arrow next to it and adjust the opacity. I usually like to set it to 50%:

4. Now, to add the halftones click on filter -> pixelate -> color halftone. These are the settings I recommend using:

5. Click on the little arrow next to the halftones filter and adjust the blending options. I recommend setting opacity to no higher than 50%. You can use overlay, soft light, or darken - again, I usually play around with various setting until I find whatever I think looks nicest. These were my settings for this particular gifset:

So now our psd looks like this:

6. Final step is to add some coloring - I went for a bright & greenish coloring, so this is what I ended up with:

And now the gifs are complete. All that’s left is adding sound effects.

2.1 Save and Reopen (Optional)

A thing I like to do before adding sound effects is to save my gif and then work with the gif as a fresh psd. My photoshop starts to get really slow once I add all these filters. Adding the sound effects requires analyzing every single frame and this is a pain when photoshop is being slow. I find saving my gif and working with that instead makes photoshop much more tolerable so I do recommend these quick steps:

1. Save your gif. this is what it looks like currently:

2. Open your gif in photoshop:

3. Switch to timeline mode & convert to smart object:

4. Save as a new psd, which we will now be working on.

Ok, now onto the sfx!

3. Adding Sound Effects

For the sound effects there are actually two parts here: getting the sound effects and then animating them:

3.1 Getting/Making Sound Effects

First step for adding sound effects is to get the actual png images you will use. I actually got all my sound effects off the a:tla comics. This process is pretty straightforward:

1. Open the online comic book (I recommend comiconlinefree(.)net), find the sound effects you want and take a screenshot (I use snipping tool for this). For this particular gif, I am using the ‘shing’ sound effect from the bottom panel:

2. Open the screenshots in photoshop, and use the pen tool click on each letter, then right click 'layer via copy’. You should now have a separate layer for each letter.

3. Highlight all of the individual letters, right click, and convert them into a smart object. Then add stroke (I used 3px):

You can also use layer style -> color overlay if you want to change the color.

And I repeated the process for the swish sound effect:

Now that we have our sfx, it’s time to add them to the gifs!

3.2 Animating the Sound Effects

Ok, this step is definitely the most tedious. I recommend doing this one panel at a time. So let’s start with the first one.

1. Using the timeline feature, go frame by frame until you’ve decided where you want your sound effect to start. This is the frame I’ve decided I want the sound effect to start on:

2. Now drag the sound effect onto the psd and use transform (ctrl + t) to resize accordingly:

3. Add a layer mask (layer -> layer mask -> reveal all). Using the rectangular maquee tool, draw a rectangle around the panel the sound effect will be in:

Then right click -> select inverse. Now, with your layer mask selected, click on the paint bucket tool. Set the color to black and click on the psd. Unlink the layer mask from the layer by clicking on the link symbol in between them. Your layer mask should now look like this:

This will prevent your sound effects from flowing outside the panel.

4. On the videotime, click on the arrow to the left of where it says ‘Layer 30′. Then click the little clock to the left of ‘Transform’. It should now look like this:

5. Move a couple frames ahead. Click on the diamond by the transform button:

Now, use transform (ctrl + t), to resize/rotate/move your sound effect to where you want it to be in this frame:

6. Move a couple frames forward and repeat:

Continue doing this until your sound effect animation is over.

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for the other sound effects you want to add. This is how I animated the ‘swish’ sounds in the 3rd panel:

8. Now our gif should look like this:

9. Final step: save your gif, reopen and adjust the framerate (if necessary). And this is our final product:

And we’re done! Then you can just repeat for every other gif in the gifset!

I hope this tutorial was helpful - please let me know if anything is unclear/there are any questions. If you use this tutorial to make a comic-style gifset I’d love to see your work so please tag me in it! I track #kahtaras

#mine: tutorials #mine: all #completeresources #itsphotoshop #allresources #dailyresources #quirkyresources #ihaveresources #onlyresources #ps tutorial #gif tutorial

397 notes · View notes

gr-ogu · 3 years

Photo

Hello! As requested, here is a tutorial on how I make my gifs. I would like to preface this by saying there are many ways to make gifs, and there’s no right or wrong answer imo. This is just how I personally go about doing so!

I will be using PS CC 2017, but as long as you have the video timeline option, it shouldn’t matter too much; on any version of PS, you should be able to adapt anything I mention here! You will also need some kind of screen recording software. I’ll talk a little more about that under the cut.

To start, you need the source material you will be making the gifs from! I get mine from snahp(.)it (avoiding links so tumblr hopefully doesn’t banish this from the tags lmao) and I always opt for either 1080p or 2160p. Not all laptops will support 2160p as it’s 4K, but either works great! You just want your gifs to be the best quality possible.

Next is where the screen recording comes in. I don’t use the screencapping method to make my gifs (where you use a program to cap a clip and then load those caps into a stack in PS). This isn’t for any particular reason… it’s just how my friends, (who very kindly taught me to gif), had always done it, so it’s now how I do it too. Personally, I find the quality to be just as good as the screencapping method, and have never noticed a difference between the two.

As I have a PC, I use the software built into it for screen-recording. If you go here: theverge(.)com/2020/4/21/21222533/record-screen-pc-windows-laptop-xbox-game-bar-how-to – you can see how to use the XBOX screenrecorder to record from files you have d*wnloaded. This also works on some streaming sites, but I think it depends on what browser you use. Personally, I recommend Firefox, as that seems to bypass a lot of the blocking and ads that occur when trying to do this sort of thing.

For MAC users, I have been told handbrake works well, as it converts MKV files to MP4, which can then be used to make gifs. You only need to convert part of the file to MP4 depending on how much you want to gif, and this also bypasses the screenrecording stage, as you can edit MP4 clips on Quicktime. I am told you can split them into smaller clips by going to edit > trim and it saves the new clip!

I have also used anyvideoconverter for small clips, but I can’t say what it does to the quality of your video, or how big of a file it lets you put in! With the XBOX screenrecorder, it doesn’t matter what type of video files you get, as the recording will save to MP4 anyway.

LOADING YOUR FRAMES

Now, go ahead and record whatever clips you want to gif. Make sure you have the video timeline open, by going to window > timeline. Then, go to file > import > video frames to layers.

Next, select and open your clip from where it has saved (with the XBOX recorder, it saves in video > captures). You should see a little window pop up, where you can move the sliders back and forth to clip your recording to whichever part(s) you specifically want to gif. I recommend trying not to load a lot of frames into photoshop at once, but I would be a hypocrite to say that, since I do it a lot lmao. Just be patient if you do!

Once you have chosen the length, click okay. Never, EVER, I repeat NEVER click the button that says “limit to every __ frames”. This really ruins the flow and quality of your gif—it’s better to have shorter, but smoother gifs, I promise. And with tumblr’s new 10 MB limit, it shouldn’t be a problem anyway!

Then, your frames should open up. What we want to do is make them into a smart object, so we can edit all the layers at the same time. To do this, click the small button in the left-hand corner. ALWAYS click this first. If you don’t, it will only convert the first frame to a smart object and the gif won’t work.

Give it a second to sort itself out, then, on the right-hand side, select all your frames at once using the shift key.

Then, go to filter > convert for smart filters. This might take a minute. Don’t click anything else in case PS gets angry lmao, just leave it for a second and it’ll do its thing. The more frames you have, the longer it takes! Now we have our gif, but it needs to be cropped, sharpened and coloured!

CROPPING

You want to start by selecting the rectangular marquee tool on the left-hand side, then drag it across by clicking and highlighting the area you would like to crop your gif to, like so:

What I tend to do is select everything inside the black lines you sometimes get around your gif (this depends on what file you d*wnload), and also the tiniest bit inside the sides. This is because I’ve found if you crop it right up to the edge, you get a tiny bit of transparency on the sides of your gifs, which I’d rather avoid.

Once you have your desired selection, go to image > crop. Now, the dimensions for tumblr are 540px width, so all your gifs have to be that width. However, the length is up to you. I really like big gifs, so sometimes I even make a full square, or even longer. It’s entirely up to you, and what kind of set you want to make.

For the purposes of this gif, I will stick to what I usually go for, 540px by 350 px. This will mean you’ll have to crop some width off, but that’s okay, since Marisa isn’t central anyway. The cropping is always trial and error for me, as sometimes people move out of the frame within in the gif. The best thing to do is just try it, and then move the slider in the timeline window at the bottom to see if the person stays inside the gif, and if not, adjust accordingly.

Next, go to image > image size:

In this box, if I put the width as 540, the gif is a smaller height than I want, as it keeps to the dimensions of the gif when you load it into PS. That’s okay, just put the height you want instead, and we’ll crop off the excess.

Then click OK. Using the rectangular marquee tool again, we need to remove the excess width. Part of the reason I like this version of PS is that it tells you the width of your selection as you do it, but you can always use the ruler as a guide, and check the size of your image by going to image > image size again.

Again, use image > crop, and your gif should now be the correct size!

You can also use the crop tool in the timeline window to crop the length of your gif:

However, I tend to wait until later on to do this (which will be explained further down!)

SHARPENING

Next you want to go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen.

These are my settings. However, 0.4px is very sharp, too much so, but that’s easily fixed.

Go to filter > blur > Gaussian blur and then set it to 1.0.

Now on the right-hand side, we need to reduce the blur, so double click the little adjustment button, and change the opacity of the blur. I usually go for 20-30%!

Then click OK, and that’s your sharpening done!

COLOURING

I picked this scene on purpose as it’s dark, so good for showing how to colour a gif. I have a base psd which consists of some very basic adjustments, but it mostly exists so I don’t forget what adjustment layers I like to use. I adjust them every time I make a gif, essentially colouring each gif from scratch.

In this case, the psd actually makes it darker. So, what I will do is turn each layer off, and adjust as I go. A lot of people say using lots of adjustment layers ruins the quality of your gif… I have never found this to be true, as long as you are gentle with them. If you whack the brightness right up to the top, it’s going to ruin your gif no matter if you use 1 adjustment layer or 100. I would just say use your common sense, and adjust a little at a time!

I start with a simple black to white gradient map set to soft light, because I think it helps you see depth once you add some brightness to it. I usually do this on about 10%, or more if needed. It’s probably unnecessary, I just like how it looks!

Then, I move onto using curves and levels. This is where things can diverge depending on who you’re colouring. If this person is white, it doesn’t matter too much. If they’re not white, you don’t want to white wash them. My best advice is to play around with it. By adding vibrance and other (usually the red) selective colour settings later, you can ensure you don’t change the person’s skin tone from what it originally was. You can also use layer masks at varying opacities (various shades of grey), on your curves and levels, to remove some brightening so that you’re not changing anyone’s skin colour. Just brighten slowly and check in with yourself honestly about how your gif looks.

Some people don’t like using levels, or curves. It’s completely up to you. I tend to use both because levels are good for bringing depth, even if not brightening (though I like to use them for that as well).

One thing you can do is use the white point of the gif to make PS adjust the curves itself, however I like to drag the sliders myself and see what it looks like. Just make sure it’s not too bright, as we will be using further layers to brighten more, after.

Next is levels. The slider on the left controls the black point, the one in the middle controls the midtones, and the one on the right controls the white points. The black brings depth, the midtones adjust the overall brightness, and the white points produce stronger highlights. Again, you’ll get a feel for how this works as you practice. Just don’t use the white point excessively, especially if your characters are not white.

Then I add vibrance (+20!), because we’ve removed a lot of it when lightening the gif. Next is exposure, which I find brings out the highlight and shadow areas more effectively:

Then colour balance! This helps with scenes that might be a certain colour, i.e. too blue, too green, too red, etc. Moving the sliders in the opposite direction of the colour your gif is will counteract it. The best thing to do when accounting for different colours, is to make a new layer every time you change colour, so that you don’t get confused. I always add a new layer for colour balance and selective colour if I want to change more than one thing. So one for red, one for yellow, one for pink, etc.

A layer of brightness just to make the gif pop, and because the scene is extra dark, I added a very gentle extra curves layer:

SAVING YOUR GIF

Time to save the gif. You can go ahead and file > export > save for web (legacy) now, but then you’ll have to reopen the gif to reset the frame rate from 0.07, to 0.05. Instead of doing that, I use a modified action. The original was made by the very talented @elenafisher! So I do not take credit for that at all. You can find the original here: elenafisher(.)tumblr(.)com/post/190817437374/gif-sharpening-action-2-preview-download and in my resources tag. Please reblog it if you’re going to use this!

To use an action, first make sure you have actions turned on in window > actions. To load in your action, go to the little lines circled, and then load the action from your downloads:

Obviously if you don’t want to sharpen your gifs yourself, you can use the action as it is, and it will give you a beautiful glowing effect. If you’d just like to use it to flatten your gif into frames like I do, make sure to take out all the items I have highlighted:

Until it looks like this!

Make sure you have the layer under the file name highlighted, and then click the play button at the bottom! (If you get a screen saying select all frames cannot be found, don’t worry, just click continue!) You can delete the layer that does that if you want, I just keep it in case I realise I’ve forgotten to do something, because you can click cancel and edit your gif before you flatten it. Of course you can undo the steps to get back to the smart object version of your gif, it just takes longer!

And now your gif is in frames and set to 0.05 already, so you don’t have to change the speed! All you need to do now before saving is change the gif cycle to “forever” in the bottom left-hand corner:

Then to save the gif go to file > export > save for web (legacy). Sometimes, the gif is bigger than the tumblr 10MB limit. You’ll be able to see this in the bottom left-hand corner of the gif save settings. If this is the case, I like to preview the gif, to see whether it would be best to cut frames off of the beginning or the end, or both. When you’ve decided, you can select the frames at the bottom, and in the right-hand side panel, and delete them both using the little bins/trash icons.

I keep checking and deleting frames until I get the gif under 10 MB! Just don’t delete frames from the middle, as then you’ll have the same issue as if you selected “every other frame” when making the gif: it won’t flow!

Lastly, these are my save settings:

So that’s it! That’s how I make all my gifs. Blending I do when the gifs are in the grouped, smart filter stage, whereas text I add on during the framing section above! Really hope this is helpful, please feel free to ask any questions you may have! 💖

#gif tutorial #tutorial*#completeresources #yeahps #chaoticresources #allresources #mikesmom #usergeo #userava #usertix #usersmile #usertom #if you'd like me to cover anything more advanced just shout #i wanted to show how i add text too but tumblr wouldn't let me add any more pics #but people can let me know if that's something you'd want!

504 notes · View notes

kiekiecarrera · 3 years

Text

Background Text Effect Tutorial

Got asked by @owenpatrickjoyners how I did the effect for this gif:

First of all, let me preface by saying that this actually took a whole lot of time and it still came out really choppy, so the first tip I can give you is if you’re gonna do this effect, you better have a shit ton of patience and choose a gif where the character doesn’t move alot because it will make things so much easier.

I’m using photoshop 2020.

This is an advanced tutorial that supposes that you already know how to create gifs and add text (i’ve explained how to add text layers here, if you want), so the first thing you wanna do is make the your gif, resize, sharpen, add adjustment layers and whatever else you want to add and then save the psd files (just as a precaution).

Once you’re satisfied with the gif, open your animation timeline bar to the frames animation mode.

This is what mine currently looks like (I’m just doing 8 frames for the tutorial):

Now we’re gonna add the text layer that’s later gonna become the background. I’m choosing The Bold Font as my font, set to Bold, size 29pt, line spacing set to 30pt.

You’re gonna fill the page with the text so it fills the whole space, then you’re gonna make sure the first frame in your animation bar is selected and you’re gonna set the text layer’s opacity to 60.

The first thing you’re gonna do is duplicate the text layer to match the number of frames you have. I have 8 frames, so I’m creating 8 text layers. Then you’re gonna hide them all by clicking on the small eye icon next to them:

Your text should now be hidden:

So, this is where it gets tricky, because to get a good result (which I didn’t really manage that well), you have to work the layers one by one.

Start with the first layer. Make sure the first frame is selected in the animation bar, and click on the small eye icon of the first text layer to make it appear.

For the first frame, if you make any change, it applies to the rest of the frames, so before we do anything else, we’re gonna make sure it doesn’t. To do that, just select all the other frames, and hide the text on those by clicking the eye icon:

Now, select the first frame again. Add a layer mask to the text layer by clicking on the mask icon at the bottom of the layer tray.

Your text layer should now have a small white rectangle next to it. Click on that rectangle, grab a hard round brush, make sure the selected color is black, opacity set to 100%, and use it to hide the text on Alex. You do that just by clicking and dragging the brush all over him. I’m starting with my brush sized to 37, but depending on what I need, I might change the size to make sure I get the edges.

If you don’t know much about layer masks and how to use them, I’ve explained it a little bit in this tutorial.

Basically, the black brush hides anything on the layer, and the white brush makes it reappear.

As you work and mask the text, you’ll notice the white rectangle start getting some black color in the shape you’re hiding. Once you’re done and satisfied, your frame should look something like this:

Now you’re gonna move on to the next layer. You’re gonna select the second frame on the animation bar (which should only show owen with no text). You’re gonna make the second layer of text appear by clicking on the eye, add a layer mask to it like we did before, and then start masking the text on owen the same way you did before.

Alternatively, you could just duplicate the original text layer and work on the existing mask, but you would have to go back and hide that layer from the first frame and all the other frames. It’s up to you.

And now you’re gonna repeat the process on each frame. Select a new text layer, add the mask, hide the text on owen. It takes a whole lot of time, energy and patience, and if you look closely at my og gif, I didn’t do much of a good job, lmao.

This is why I mentioned it might be better to use gif with minimal movement - if the characters are not moving, the edges stay aligned and you can use the same layer on multiple frames instead of having to do them one by one.

Anyway, once you’ve done all your frames and layers, your psd looks something like this:

And once I save (check this for more details on my save settings), my gif looks like this:

And that’s it!

If I skimmed over anything or you feel it’s not clear, just hmu and I’ll try to do a better job at explaining things :)

I hope this works for you! <3

#tutorials #resources #photoshop 2020 #photoshop tutorials #gif tutorials #my edits #kinda #tuts*#owenpatrickjoyners

79 notes · View notes

bunsblr · 3 years

Text

Tu... torial? Pt. 5.

Final part of my tutorial! This is a little all over the place, because that’s how I am in this stage of editing. Also I didn’t proofread this...

Open this in dashboard for best view of the screenshots.

Disclaimer: I have no formal training for any kind of graphics stuff, I work in an office as a receptionist - I serve coffee for a living. I am absolutely self taught and while I consider myself pretty comfortable with photoshop, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t about a gazillion of other things that can be done that I have no idea about. There are people far superior than me in the Sims community. This is just how I do it, with techniques I have picked up through the years. Some things I go over in these will be pretty basic, some things a little more unorthodox. Disclaimer 2: My edits take time. This is what I do to relax, one edit takes several hours for me. Sometimes days :))) Disclaimer 3: My photoshop is in Swedish, which is my first language. I tried my best to find the English translations for every step that I do.

Tools used: The Sims 4, Adobe Photoshop 2020, One by Wacom Pen Tablet (very basic and unfancy).

It´s hair time baby! I very much enjoy drawing hair on sims. I make a new empty layer on top of my base Sim layer.

This is where having a drawing tablet makes a huge difference. We need the brush to be sensitive to pressure to get the effect of hair strands. I chose a hard brush, small small size (how small depends on the picture size of course, but I usually land somewhere 6-9 px)

I pick up a color from the hair, I usually starts with a medium light color.

I start by drawing strands around any tips of the hair so they don't look quite so solid. I do this part with both short and long hairs. Hot lazy tip: straight unlayered hairs is the absolute easiest. This is a layered hair so I start with the bottom and work my way up. I pick up different colors from the hair as I go along, to add dept.

Continuing up in the hair and add strands to the pointy bits.

When I feel like the pointy bits have been softened I select one of my hair brushes. I use these ones by Para Vine.

I start painting "around" the hair with one of the lighter colors picked up from the hair, changing the direction of the brush every once in a while for a more natural result.

After this the hair is looking a little fuzzy, so I'm going to go back with my small harder brush to fill these parts out.

I don't add a lot of them, just small bits here and there for filling.

This is a little overkill but... now we have some of that "squary" thing going on in the hair as well that are still showing through our painted layer. Now we could paint over these, but painting can actually be overdone and I wan't to keep the hair recognizeable because the creator put a lot of work into it! So I go into liquify and smooth over any wonky lines still showing, just slightly.

A comparison of before and after hair. Still recognizeable, but softer.

This is our result so far. We've come a long way, but we're not done.

At this point (or actually sometimes sooner) I add an adjustment Curves layer, this will not end up in the finished image, this is just to give me an idea of what the image might look like with more contrast (which we will add later). I keep this at the very top of the layer panel and turn this on and off as I go. Very important to have it turned off if we are going to eyedrop a color and use that to paint, since it would pick up the wrong hue if we have it turned on.

Now I still want the front of my sim to be a little darker to fit my lighting, but I don't want to go over with any more shadow. So I duplicate my Sim layer, and go to Layer -> Adjustments -> Curves. This will only change the active layer, as opposed to creating an adjustment layer down in the Layer panel that will change all layers below it. I drag the curve down a bit to make my new Sim layer darker.

I add a layer mask to my new Sim layer, and bucket fill it with black color so the new layer gets hidden.

I chose an absolutely HUGE soft brush, with medium opacity, and starts painting white on the areas where I want the new darker layer to be showing. And blend by going back with black where the line is to harsh.

Time to add some highlights. I create a new empty layer between my two Sim layers, and add a clipping mask by holding Alt and hovering on the line between the new layer and my bottom sim layer, until the little square with the arrow symbol comes up and then click. This will make whatever I do on my new highlight layer, only show up on the areas where the layer underneath is filled.

Time to paint. I disable the curve adjustment layer for this. I choose a bright color, in this case a light pink because I didn't want a contrasting color for this picture. I go with a big soft brush around the edges where I want my highlight to hit. In this case, the arm, the hand, the arch of the back and the calf. I didn't add anything to the face in this picture because I didn't like the way it looked, but usually a little highlight to one of the cheeks is just *chef's kiss*

And somewhere around here I got really stuck and really struggled to follow with this tutorial. I felt the picture was lacking something and I tried several different things. I added light rays, tried creating different light sources, there was a moon at some point. But I ended up with just a simple additional gradient shadow down in the right corner (on a new layer down in the Background layer group). Life changing…

And then I didn't like the pink highlight on the skin (sigh, this is how I work, but it’s not recommended to be this indecisive) so I removed that and added a more beige-yellowee highlight instead. And forgot to take a picture after the highlight was added....

And now I go into nitpicking mode. I add a new empty layer on top of my Sim layer, I add it under the highlight layer so it automatically takes on the clipping mask of the Sim layer, I name it Clean-up Crew and go in to refine anything slightly wonky. Picking up colors with the eyedrop tool and going over flaws with a tiny brush.

When I fixed this little light area on the back of her head I left the Clean-up Crew layer and went to my Hair layer instead, because I still have that separate and it's above all the other layers.

I thought my sim was a little too far down in the picture so I moved her up by selecting my whole Sim layer group and the layer on which I have her ground shadow, chosing the move tool and pushing them up. This will move all the layers in the Sim layer group as well as the ground shadow layer equally.

I'm telling y'all, nitpicking mode could go on forever. Added more strands to the bangs.

Noticed a little pointy part on the calf, so I wen't into Liquify on the base Sim layer and smoothed that out. Since the highlight layer has a Clipping Mask corresponding to the Sim layer, the highlight stayed in place.

I duplicate my Sim layer group once more, and merge the layers within this group. So now the Hair, Highlight and Clean-up Crew is all merged onto the Sim layer. I hide the previous Sim groups.

With my new Sim layer selected, I go to Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation. I want to make my Sim a little less bright so it will match the background a bit better.

I drag down the Saturation and Brightness slider a bit until I like what I see. After this I save my whole image as a PNG-file because from now on I want to edit the whole picture but still want to keep this psd-file as it is for anxiety purposes. Important: I disable my curves layer before saving this as a picture, I don’t want that brought with me into the next steps because I will be adding new curves there.

I open my new saved PNG-file. I go to Filter -> Convert for Smart filters. This will allow us to go back and change any filters we add to this layer. I go to Filter -> Camera Raw Filter and for some reason this window opens up humongus. I start by dragging down the temperature. How much depends on the picture, usually more if it's nighttime.

I pull up the Whites a bit for a cleaner look.

Now I add a Curve Adjustment Layer. Now you can add Contrast in the Camera Raw Filter as well, but I prefer the curve layer because I like to control the different levels. This way I can make my darkest parts a little brighter, giving just a little washed out flair to it all.

I select my background layer again and go to Filter -> Noise -> Add Noise and choose a level that I think looks good. This just brings the picture together a bit more. Also vintage vibes :)))

I add my frame (because it´s my aestethic and I think it looks cool on tumblr) by resizing my workspace and adding a filled white layer underneath the background layer.

I resize my picture (Image -> Image Size) because we don't need it to be huge.

And they I just fine tune the Filters and Curves until the end of time :’)))

And that is that my friends! That’s the end of the tutorial! I hope you could follow somewheat and that someone found it useful. Thank you for reading and never be afraid of contacting me if you have any questions :) I’m very friendly.

#ts4 edit #tutorial

61 notes · View notes

pateldevs · 3 years

Note

Hi! I hope I'm not bothering you, but I love your mood board edits and was wondering if you could explain how you go about making/colouring them? I see lots of places to find gifs but turning them into a set is so hard. Thank you in advance!

hi! first of all thank you so much and second of all it’s not a bother at all! i am happy to give some of my own tips even if my explanation probably isn’t super helpful. i won’t give like a ps tutorial but below the cut (since i included example gifs, it’s VERY long) is my process for my latest jily aesthetic:

i keep track of all my ideas/sets in a spreadsheet (which i won’t show bc there’s a lot of info i’d have to blur/black out) but i always have a list of what scenes i need to gif/what gifs i’m editing and where i’m getting them from. i also include a couple extra ideas in case the gifs i have planned end up being too hard to color or don’t fit in the set. i’ve found it’s best/easiest to start w the list bc there is literally nothing worse than spending hours on a set and then not being able to complete it.

as for actually finding the material, i have a pretty healthy number of scene packs saved in my giffing folder, esp. for things i know i will gif frequently. most of the time i will peruse youtube, vimeo, and instagram for any aesthetic scenes. i also have a lot of gif packs saved specifically for the purpose of making mbs (usually i mix my own gifs w gif packs), if you msg me i’m happy to direct you to some gif packs i use regularly or you can check my #resources tag. a couple tips for finding material:

always opt for download when possible, i used to screen record and the difference when i switched to downloading was astronomical. (it’s easy to lose quality and esp if you’re on mac, quicktime duplicates frames so either you have to manually delete those extras or you get sort of choppy gifs when you load them into ps.)

always use 1080p or better, 720p will work in a pinch for 268px or 177px gifs since you can make up some of that resolution loss with sharpening, but don’t go any lower than that, just love yourself.

for pale sets, look for the right colors. i tend to look for scenes w high color contrast especially if it features poc so it’s easier to color without whitewashing, ie if the subject is a person then i look for light colored or blue/green/violet/white backgrounds. it’ll make your life wayyyyy easier. this also means if you’re making a set try to find scenes with already similar lighting bc you won’t have to work so hard to make it look cohesive.

here’s a quick rundown of what i do before coloring:

import all frames and save all the files in a folder together!!

play around with frame delay so all the gifs are moving at about the same speed, usually keep it between 0.03-0.05s

crop and resize gifs (i use 268x145 most of the time)

convert to timeline

when it comes to coloring it can be really hit or miss, i’ve recently gotten back into my groove but i was having sooo much trouble earlier this year. in general, don’t stress yourself out!! sometimes it’s easier to just find a new scene/gif (hence my list of extras!) than to try too hard to fit a gif into your set. i color all my gifs by scratch (ie no psds) but i tend to follow the same pattern, i’ll explain using these gifs/psd as an example since then i can also explain how to fix white-washing:

first off when you’re coloring gifs with poc always always always make a layer mask so you can compare the edited and unedited skin tones directly! i use the marquee tool to make a selection in the middle of the character’s face, select the folder of my adjustment layers, and hit ‘add vector mask’ (the third button from the left on the layers panel, it’s a white rectangle with a circle in it).

i almost always begin by using hue/saturation layers to highlight and delete certain colors. here i highlighted red and raised the lightness on yellow by a lot since it’s a very yellow scene. then i use a combination of brightness/contrast, levels, and curves layers to brighten the scene. here’s what i have now:

i add a gradient map set to black/white, change the blending to exclusion, and lower the opacity to between 5-10% (depending on the scene) to lighten the contrast further:

then i add back a little depth with selective color in neutrals and blacks:

now i have two main goals: 1. add contrast between the background and the subject, and 2. brighten the scene into a pale gif. to do this, i use color balance to tweak the color of the background, taking out the yellows. this step works best if there’s at least some shade difference between your subject and background, otherwise isolating the two will be impossible. here’s what i have after adding color balance:

i use hue/saturation to selectively highlight the background color. in this case i chose to adjust magenta and used the color picker (the first eyedropper on the left) to identify the exact shade i wanted to lighten. now i have a fairly neutral background and a colorful subject, which gives a sort of pale effect:

and now i use a curves layer and a selective color (white) layer to brighten further:

before i go further, i start fixing white-washing. keep in mind that some variance is normal since you are naturally changing the lighting of the scene; this gif shows it rlly clearly bc of how yellow and dim the lighting is, so some lightening is to be expected. however, both because the vector mask shows a lot of whitening and because i’ve giffed dev patel before and have a general idea of what he looks like in this type of lighting, i know what needs to be fixed, so i go back in under the psd/adjustment layers with a combination of selective color (red and neutral) and hue/saturation layers to darken his skin again:

now that some more contrast has been added in, i can go back to working on the psd and use curves and selective color to play around with the background again:

i use another hue/saturation layer and a black/white gradient to tone down oversaturation:

usually i leave those layers on top, so if i want to make any adjustments (like lightening the background more), i go in under those two. in this case i tweaked the whites and reduced the contrast a little to get this:

again, you can see his skin tone has changed from the original, but variation is to be expected given how much brighter the room is, the fact that i took out a lot of yellow lighting, and the brightening effect of the computer screen in front of him. some other things to keep in mind when coloring:

when you add layers to correct white-washing, you’re likely to end up with overly red/orange skin tones (red-washing). this can be fixed by upping cyans in the reds, desaturating/darkening the reds, or adding b/w or desaturation later on.

when in doubt, it’s better to be darker than lighter (the issue with white-washing is that it promotes colorism, and there is nothing inherently wrong with a darker skin tone) but really. just put in the effort to color poc correctly.

when changing the lighting a lot it helps to look at pictures of the subject in natural/bright lighting, since you get a better idea of what their normal skin tone is.

don’t try to squeeze all your selective color layers into one. you’ll get less grainy gifs if you separate them out and work one by one.

TURN OFF NIGHT SHIFT/NIGHT MODE! yes i KNOW it’s bad for your eyes (especially if you’re like me and gif at night, when the lighting outside isn’t changing every 20 seconds) but your gifs will look VERY different under f.lux or night mode compared to daytime screens. especially if you’re giffing at different times of day, blue light filters can really change the way your coloring appears. best to keep it consistent.

my sharpening settings vary depending on what i’m giffing but in general i do two layers of smart sharpen (500% with radius between 0.2-0.4, 10% with radius at 10px) and then gaussian blur at 2.5px and adjust the opacity so it’s somewhere between 15-20%. i try to strike a balance between smoothing out the graininess from selective color, and sharpening details like clothes and hair. here’s what i ended up with for the gif above:

then i rinse and repeat for the rest of the gifs in the set! i tend to start with the gifs that i know will be hardest to color, which is usually the darker ones (coloring is limited by how much i can brighten the scene) and those that include poc (again, limited by how much i can brighten and adjust the scene’s lighting without white-washing). then i check set cohesion as i go, using those first few gifs as benchmarks. once i have all 8 (or 9 or 10) gifs, i play around with composition and try to balance and vary the subject, colors, and composition of gifs next to each other. i go back and make a couple of adjustments here and there according to what i observe and what i think might improve the overall appearance.

and that’s pretty much it! i hope this was helpful, if you have other questions feel free to message me and i’d be happy to help/troubleshoot. happy giffing!

#Anonymous #*#resources #answered #sorry this was sO long but i hope it helped on the coloring end #tbh i exceeded my own expectations with the dev gif lol #yeahps #completeresources #chaoticresources #tutorial #coloring tutorial

54 notes · View notes

idyoma · 3 years

Text

The Best Ways to Learn a New Language

Some of the Best Ways to Learn a New Language

My name is Tamara and I have always been interested in languages, how people communicate and how we can interact even more by learning new languages. I was able to take an international exchange program in 2019 and I started taking this interest to a new level by learning and interacting with friends and people that I was lucky to get to know.

I continue studying and trying to learn from home and this is what inspired me to write this article to help more people achieve their language goals and share some of my favourite ways to learn a new language.

People often recognize that being multilingual is associated with career benefits, but did you know that language learning can also enhance your cognitive health? Too often, people graduate from school and leave foreign languages behind in the classroom. Yet, there are some surprising advantages to tackling language learning later in life, too.

As you learn a new language, you build up your communication skills, supercharge your brain with heightened activity in its language centers, and possibly even open yourself up to new work and travel experiences.

Fortunately, today’s language learners have a wide range of instruction options, like Idyoma, that don’t tether them to a traditional classroom. Finding time to learn a new language outside the home can be difficult for people with full-time jobs and busy households. By learning a new language at home, you can adopt an instruction schedule that suits your time frame — and you can fit in practice when it’s most convenient for you. As you decide whether to embrace ESL or learn Japanese, Spanish, or French, keep the following information in mind to help you create a learning dynamic at home that supports your learning style.

Best Ways to Learn a New Language

Benefits of being mulitlingual

Setting up your learning space

Top 10 tips for learning fast

Tips for teaching kids a second language

Why You Should Learn a New Language: The Benefits of Being Multilingual

Although there are many new pastimes one might embrace — knitting or gardening, web design or data science — to fill time, learning a new language is both enjoyable and professionally useful. Today, the career marketplace is highly global.

Bilingualism and multilingualism can catapult your resume to the top of an employer’s list, especially if the company is international and relies on its multilingual staff to communicate across borders. Learning Korean or German can open up an entire range of job opportunities that you may never have thought of before.

Of course, there are other benefits of learning a new language, too. Language learning actually enhances your mental health. As we age, our cognitive function can diminish just as our physical health can. But, language learning can reduce that cognitive decline, slowing its process as you forge new neural pathways.

When you learn a new language you can boost your ability to focus, keeping our minds alert and agile. Many people who engage in language learning report that the time they engage in the study actually improves their mood. As you focus on the enjoyment and challenge of your lessons, you’ll focus less on the stress of all things left undone, giving your mind the opportunity to recharge and rejuvenate from your usual anxieties and inner chatter.

Finally, you might opt to learn a new language so that you’ll be prepared to get out into the world and explore. Being multilingual makes you a more skillful traveler, building confidence and helping you navigate new, far-flung places for a grand travel experience. And learning a new language improves your communication skills — a core interpersonal and professional talent that’ll get you far in relationships, in business, and beyond.

How to Set up the Ultimate Learning Space

Of course, before you start pricing hotels in Barcelona or Paris, you’ll need to begin language instruction. But before you hire a language tutor or sign up for an online class, prepare your learning space at home so that you have everything you need to support your learning goals conveniently in one area. If you have a home office, you can enlist that space to learn, but you don’t have to dedicate an entire room to your new initiative. A special niche in your bedroom, kitchen, or family room will also suffice.

As you set up your language study area, you’ll want to ensure that it’s both quiet and comfortable. Distractions will prevent you from learning effectively. Opt for a space with good acoustics, since you’ll be doing a lot of language listening. Good lighting is important since you’ll be doing a lot of reading and writing. A desk or small table and comfortable chair are essential furnishings for your study area — but why not take your language learning space to an even more exciting level?

Whether you’ve opted to learn Hungarian or Turkish, why not set up your space with some international flair for inspiration? Add some travel posters to your wall, and keep a globe handy. Incorporate the spirit of your Spanish independent study with a Mexican blanket slung on your chair, or enhance your study of Chinese with some picturesque paper lanterns hung near your window. By creating a fun language learning space, you’ll have a special space with a retreat-like atmosphere that may very easily become your favorite place in the house.

Top 10 Hacks to Learn a New Language

Once your study space is ready and you know what language you want to learn, it’s time to get down to business. Consider all the various applications available for learning a language at home. The following hacks will help you transform yourself into a multilingual virtuoso — or close to it! Keep them in mind as you develop your language learning goals and make your plan.

Enroll in an online course

Formal instruction is a good option for individuals who prefer to learn a new language with a more-or-less traditional dynamic. If you’re concerned that independent study isn’t conducive to your learning style, consider this tried-and-true learning route. A formal course features highly structured lesson plans, assignment deadlines, and interaction with a teacher and classmates, albeit virtually.

Download the app

You’ve probably seen the advertisements online for any number of language learning apps. Less formal than an online course, these apps still offer learners a rich level of instruction designed to help them progress at a clip. Apps are ideal for independent learners who don’t have time to meet consistently for an online class.

Update your library card

Your local library system will have a wealth of materials to enhance your language-learning experience. Plan to borrow language dictionaries and picture books, novels, and even films in the language you’re learning so you can read, watch, and practice your listening skills. Check out materials in person or reserve them online and pick them up at your convenience.

Quality earbuds, headphones, or speakers

When you’re learning to speak a new language, you need to be able to hear your learning materials clearly. A speaker that crackles or earbuds that cut in and out will compromise your learning experience. Plan to invest in quality listening devices so that you can hear instructors or your language learning app with crystal clarity.

Use flashcards

Flashcards work for kids, and they will still work for you, too. In fact, if you have kids, you might want to enlist their help — invite them to quiz you on your German verbs after you quiz them on their multiplication facts. You can also find flashcard apps for literally any language you want to learn.

Hire a language tutor

There comes a point when you might hit a stumbling block or a series of obstacles while learning a new language. Don’t despair! Check with area colleges, and engage a language tutor. This can be especially helpful if you’ve never learned a foreign language before or you want to stay on track and pick up speed as you move from beginner-level learning to the more complex, intermediate stages.

Find a learning partner

Convince your bestie, spouse, partner, or friend to consider learning a language with you. When you have a partner, you can keep each other motivated and take turns studying at one another’s homes. Of course, ideally, you’ll want to find someone who’s just as enthusiastic about learning Russian or Portuguese as you are, so choose your language learning pal wisely.

Listen to native speakers

One of the complaints that many students of languages have is that classroom and app models are too formal and not the stuff of everyday language you’ll hear on the streets of Rio, or Naples. Use your devices to track down native language speakers — like watching and listening to videos on the internet. This is particularly helpful if you plan to travel to the country whose language you’re learning.

Be kind and patient with yourself

Too often, people abandon their language pursuits because life interrupts them, and they find it difficult to resume their studies. Keep in mind that it’s okay to learn at your own speed and tempo. It may be asking too much of yourself to learn Italian in six months. If you need to adjust your goals, do it! The key is to keep going — and don’t be afraid to revisit old lessons when you need a refresher.

Immerse yourself in culture

Language learning may seem tedious at times, especially if you’re struggling with tenses or complex sentence structures.

Maintain your motivation to keep learning by immersing yourself in the culture of the language. Learning Greek? Invite your best friend to a luncheon at your favorite Greek restaurant. Learning Spanish? Set Saturday nights aside for a tapas feasting! You’ll find that cultural immersion boosts your learning — and enriches your life.

Tips to Teach Kids a Second Language

Speak It

If you speak a second or third language and you want your children to learn it, the first step is to speak it with them. Children learn through repetition. Consistency is necessary to develop a habit, so the more your kids listen to you speaking in another language, the easier it will be for them to grasp it.

Music

Just like for an adult, listening to music in a different language is one of the best tips to follow when trying to learn a new language. For both children and adults, starting with kid’s songs with easy and basic words can work best.

Audiobooks

For bedtime or nap time, you could aid yourself by using audiobooks. Following a story with the help of native speakers can work wonders for children to learn different intonations, accents, and vocabulary while also entertaining them.

Have fun

Doing fun activities in the language you are trying to teach your kids is another great way to help them grasp the language. If you grew up in another country, do you remember what activities you enjoyed when you were a child? You can plan a fun afternoon with games from your home country to do with your children. If this is not the case and you are just trying to teach your child to learn a new language, games with new vocabulary are always the best bet.

Video

Another good idea is to let them watch tv or movies in another language. Not only tv shows where they interact with the audience work, standard format movies, cartoons, and shows can help you at home, they don’t need to spend hours in front of a screen. This is only to aid you in the repetition, consistency, and the develop a habit side of the process. Remember it is important that they have access to other intonations, accents, and vocabulary for them to acquire the language faster.

Space to Learn

You can set up a special space for them to study. If they are being homeschooled, they would probably already have a designated space for their study work but if not, you can choose a corner in the kitchen, your home office, or their playroom for this purpose.

Things to add to their study space:

Get them a small table or desk their size with chairs.

Set up a whiteboard on the wall with markers for them to write down vocabulary words or to draw.

Corkboards are great to stick images and vocabulary words to.

Shelves for their storybooks and dictionaries.

Be sure to have good light.

Add color. Remember children’s classrooms are always colorful, this makes them feel in a fun and exciting environment. Bright colors stimulate the brain and can help children retain information.

Add storage. If you want to avoid clutter, add boxes or drawers for them to keep things they work with.

When is the best time to learn a language?

When young, human beings acquire new languages, they don’t actually learn them, so you could say the best age to learn a second language is as a young child.

But even if it’s easier to learn languages as a kid, don’t get discouraged. Remember that you can achieve anything you set your mind to. It’s scientifically proven that learning a language as an adult can also have its advantages. As adults, we can follow and understand grammar rules, so learning in a more technical way is easier for adults than for children.

Learning a new language enhances your life in numerous ways while providing you with a marketable skill. As you learn a new language, you’ll develop new communication skills, keep your brain agile, and even discover new writers and artists to read and enjoy as you encounter them in your studies.

Before you know it, you’ll be fluent in the language of your choosing, and who knows where you could go from there?

Written by Tamara Segal

#best ways to learn a new language #new language #tips to learn a new language

11 notes · View notes

demenior · 3 years

Text

Dem’s Big Post About The Spn Fics Part 1/2

aka The Wrap Up to celebrate To Exist Again and To Become a Man now being finished!

(This will be a long post. This is your only warning.)

Admittedly this is a bit of a weird thing to be doing, but I wanted to try it out for 3 reasons:

I love talking about my own work and

It functions really well as a self-reflective tool for me to improve on, and

I can answer some big questions people might have because there was a LOT of worldbuilding in these stories.

We’ll start off with reflective stuff, and move into the juicier world-building focused stuff later into the post. There will be major spoilers for both fics to come!

To begin with a funny anecdote, Why Did I Write These Stories?

I was beginning to write and work out the story that I wanted to write for Spn (what will now be To Destroy a Man. As I was writing the scene, I realized I had a LOT of ideas and while I was trying to avoid as much exposition as I could, it became quickly apparent that I was needing to create my own au (this scene eventually became chapter 34 of To Become a Man). A short prequel seemed like a good idea, to quickly hash out the ‘prior’ events that I needed to go through so all the readers could be on the same page. While plotting out prequel points, I realized Sam and Dean were going to have drastically different experiences during the same time period, and I was trying to figure out who’s pov would be better for which scenes, and how to keep momentum when they’re going through such radically different types of changes. Ultimately I decided to split their povs, which I also thought would be a fun project! And I naively assumed each pov would take about 2 chapters each, rounding out to maybe 15k total.

I had my ending points: Dean n Cas soul-merged and (basically) married, Cas on the lam from heaven and a complete anomaly, and Sam juiced up full of powers and a weird mix of archangel and antichrist but still 100% human and ready to fight God.

Now I needed to add weight to these changes, so I wrote 200k of build-up.

Am I proud of these fics?

OF COURSE I AM!!! These are the longest fics I’ve ever written AND finished AND in the fastest freakin turnaround ever (both were finished writing, barring edits, in like 6 months holy shit)

I didn’t write a single scene that I “didn’t” want to write. If I had trouble writing it, as in it was fighting me, I scrapped it. Most obviously was the scene in Dean’s pov where he and Sam were intended to meet some other hunters and Dean declines working with them because he’s nervous about being outed as queer. It was meant to be a good scene! I wanted to introduce some new characters! But it just wasn’t working so I said ‘thank you, next!’.

But it means this story was an absolute joy to write. Because for a while all I was doing was ‘if I wanted to write one scene into supernatural, what would I write?’ and then just DID that!! It’s why there’s a lot of ‘Salmondean do dumb shit or have really dumb heartfelt conversations’ scenes.

Would I change anything?

If I’d been less eager to start sharing, I might have planned out the story beats a little tighter so there were less ‘soft’ chapters and a draw/pull for people to come back and keep reading. I felt Dean’s story specifically lagged at points and could have used some tighter editing (there was a noticeable lull in directed movement between Dean n Cas getting together, until Sam corrupts Amy).

I also probably would have held Sam’s story until I’d finished Dean’s so I could make the two line up better! Probably could have inserted more scenes into Sam’s fic that way, and made sure things were a little more consistent. In an ideal world one concept I had was to release 1 chapter from each pov every week that would correspond to the same time frame so we’d be getting real-time SalmonDean pov narrative. Unfortunately that didn’t work!

The biggest takeaway overall is for me to focus more on what moves the plot, and to make my scenes do more than 1 thing so I can cut down on wordcount and increase my efficiency.

Of course every writer will find things they want to fix in anything they’ve ever written, so these are minor “mistakes” at best. I’m so dang proud of these fics.

Onto more interesting things!

How Did I Put These Fics Together (because it’s different than anything I’ve ever done before)

Normally when I write a story, I plan out the beats I need to hit, see where I need to insert any kind of foreshadowing/buildup, and then write from A to B to C and so on and so forth. Hence, this is why I can normally post things as I complete chapters, because it’s all a linear progression.

For these two stories, rather than linear plot/a normal story structure, I just sat and free-wrote any and every scene that came to mind and then pieced them into a kinda-linear form like putting a quilt together. You’ll note that this is why there’s not a lot of internal callback or a feeling of sense of time flowing within the fic (save for points where I went back and specifically edited it in). How long does the story take place over? Hard to say! Your author has the barest grasp on linear time even on a good day (how many times did I say ‘see you on [wrong day]’ at the end of chapters lmaaoooo)

This also meant EXTENSIVE editing on the back end once I decided in what order I wanted my ‘quilt pieces’ to be. Hard to say if this is a bonus or a negative!

But I did want to try and capture the vibe of the lives they lead, as a bit of a ‘slice of life’-style story, when the slice of life is the profound weirdness of the Winchester roaming life, and how things are status quo- until everyone almost dies oh shit!! And then they have to keep living because no therapy we die/undie like Winchesters. Do I think I captured this effectively? Hmm. Good question.

Dem where the FUCK did the inspiration for a lot of the magic and creature weirdness even come from?

Honestly? Music, primarily. And completely mishearing lyrics!

Nightwish ‘Ever Dream’: the line is ‘my song can but borrow you grace’ and because my brain is scrambled eggs on a good day, I heard ‘grace’ ‘song’ and ‘borrow’ in that order and have had, for YEARS, the mental image of Cas borrowing Dean’s soul to power himself up for battle.

From there I’ve always been enamored with the ‘wavelength of celestial intent’ descriptor that Cas drops in s6 for “what he is”.

I also really like ocean metaphors mostly because I’ve been obsessed with the ocean and things in it since I was like… 5??? So really this was me just rolling with what I know lmao. I love using (somewhat) accurate scientific metaphors for very intangible things!

I was also finishing my degree in biology/ecology while writing these fics and I think it shows

Stars ‘The Night Starts Here’ gives us the series title and the fic titles. Except for ‘To Exist Again’. TEA was almost titled ‘The Upwards Fall’ because I wanted all 3 of the Main Stories to have titles from this song, but I couldn’t make anything else work in tandem with the series name ‘The Love It Takes’ while also working for Sam’s personal story. So Sam, as always, is the rebel <3

Stars ‘Up In Our Bedroom, After The War’ is basically the vibes of the whole story. TFW has been, literally, to hell and back!!! There’s a bit of melancholy and sadness, a lingering dark, but the chance of a bright new tomorrow and a soft start.

Let’s Talk About Themes in The Story! What were you looking to accomplish?

My earliest notes for TFW are, as follows:

Dean’s journey of self-discovery (who am I when I’m not trying to be Dad?)

Dean wants to settle down! He wants a big family! He wants to be domestic!

Basically: Dean doesn’t want to have a short life of hunting. He wants to live!

Dean’s journey of realizing he’s bi, and him accepting that

Dean’s relationship to Sam is both older brother/parent

And continuing Dean balancing these roles while also letting Sam be an adult

Dean’s Big Issues/Fears about never being good enough for people to want to stay with him (these are effectively highlighted in that Cas thinks he’s not useful enough to be wanted)

Sub Plot:

Castiel’s autonomy

Cas’ fall from grace, to trying to restore Heaven, to wrecking it further

He’s majorly depressed by the end of s7 (before purgatory)

Wants to stay in Purgatory but doesn’t tell Dean

Remains depressed after leaving, but resolved to keep living on because he’s clearly meant for something

After the seraphim reveal: does he have free will?! How does he grapple with this? How does he live in a way he can be proud of?

And lastly

Sam gets his powers back CAUSE THATS HOT

where tf did they go????

he got them from Lucifer?????

sleeper agent??????

Sam is The Chosen One

Accepts that he is More Than Human and to celebrate all parts of him

Lucifer and Sam friends?? Work together????

Sam needs autonomy in his choices/his life

If you compare these to the overall arc of TFW within the two stories, I think I got a lot of them! But you’ll also note a lot of these things aren’t concrete goals that are easily measurable (ex: Dean wants to learn to bake pie. In chapter 1 he starts a fire in the kitchen. By the end of the story he finally makes A Good Pie.) part of the lack of concrete milestones was why I felt it was important to tell Dean (and Cas’) story by going back to the point they meet, in s4! Dean’s gradual change towards his feelings for Cas, his relationship to Sam (heavily influenced by the s7 events of this fic) and then his own relationship with himself were such slow burns that I felt it would be a disservice to try and cram a change like that into a timeline like “1 year”.

I felt like these subtle changes and adjustments actually felt a lot truer to life-- people often change in very small, gradual ways over time, even without realizing it and often times not consistently! If only we could all gain skills like the sims, where we can easily level up and remain at that high level of performance!

So the Guy Who Ate Satan, A Celestial Nuke that Developed Sentience, and Dean walk into a bar…

Sam’s story in Spn The Show has always been a ‘chosen one’ kind of narrative. Sam is living with one foot in the realm of the monsters, and I wanted to bring that back full force! It really makes sense for him that he should only continue to grow in power, might, and magic!! As the story progresses.

Cas also got a power up! I do desperately love in the show that he was kind of a grunt/nothing angel, and so even when he defected to TFW he was a huge help for them, but in the scale of things he was an annoying fly to most other angels. It really worked for the underdog story of s4/5. In this I wanted to give him a power up, and originally it was actually going to be close contact with Sam that eventually changed Cas into something unknown (you can still see traces of this in ch34 of TBAM, where Death remarks ‘Castiel could be [Sam’s] first creation’. But for a combo of reasons: how Sam’s magic needed to have intent, the entire concept of free will and consent, and how much I wanted Dean and Cas to have their effect on each other, I decided to go with the route that Cas has actually always been something angel-adjacent rather than becoming something new. TFW/Supernatural has always been about free will and making your own story, so I amplified that with Cas.

Dean has always been A Normal Guy, which is part of the appeal of him and Sam (2 normal dudes!) taking on the Very Not Normal. As explained above, Sam’s story is ‘normal guy finds out he’s the chosen one’ and so, in a story about very large concepts and huge monsters and acts of magic, I felt it was very important to keep Dean as normal as possible. To the point it became a running gag to me, personally, in that ‘no matter what cool shit happens around him, Dean has to stay as Just A Guy’. And it’s a very humanizing role that allows the story to have the scale it does!

What were the most important themes in your story?

Sam’s Autonomy

I wasn’t even going to include the plot about Lucifer’s death in this story— that was going to come up in a later story, actually! And rather than Sam having ate Lucifer, the original idea was that they’d become a SamandLucifer entity (this harkens back to a concept I wanted to write when Swan Song first aired).

That storyline would have involved a lot of mental ‘Sam and Lucifer discuss what it means to live, which one of them is more worthy of life and if they do deserve to destroy the world for the pain they’ve been forced to go through, just to create the dichotomy of good and evil for everyone else’ discussions. There would be a lot of talk about how Sam hates and fears Lucifer for the pain Lucifer put on Sam, how Lucifer hates Sam because he and Sam are the same but Sam’s brother loves him anyways, etc.

Ultimately that was scrapped because Sam’s entire story in the show is always about how the world and everyone around him manipulates him and that he never actually gets to make choices about his own life or body that aren’t influenced or part of someone elses’ design. And that always bothered me that Sam was never allowed to be himself without having to be ashamed of it, and I wanted to make sure that Sam’s triumph of being proud of himself/proudly choosing to exist (again) was evident in his story

In the end I needed Sam to have this visceral win over his tormentor. As the story shows, in this case Lucifer was abused and put into a position where he was incapable of empathy and could only express himself in violence. Sam even understands this! But it doesn’t change the fact that Lucifer tortured Sam in unimaginable ways for thousands of years.

With that in mind I didn’t like the idea of Lucifer and Sam having “co-ownership” of their new identity, so I made the choice that Sam had to be the survivor. This tied in well with Sam’s new crusade to restore free will to the universe, because he’s breaking the narrative of his own story!

While Castiel wasn’t a pov character, his own autonomy and free will was equally as important. You’ll note that many, many paragraphs and conversations revolved around that theme and that in the end Cas followed himself (and love!) which ensured his freedom of self <3

The Brothers are WEIRD PEOPLE!!!! And Codependent to a Worrying Degree, but It’s Also How They Survive

It’s very hard to show “unusual” relationships when you’re writing from the pov of the two people who don’t think there’s anything weird about their relationship. Sure, they say ‘yeah it’s probably weird that we still share a bed’ but that’s kinda more in line with ‘I had a nightmare and I want to be close to the person who makes me feel safe’. Hashtag normalize co-sleeping when you need it!!!

From there I did try to point out how the boys have a weird perception of lifestyle in the little things they did.

From thrifting everything from clothes to appliances to books (thrifting is a valid lifestyle! It’s incredibly handy when you’re on a budget.)

To never actually having condiments or knowing how to use a dishwasher cause they’ve lived in a car, a motel room, or squatted in old houses their whole life.

I tried to have them wear each others’ clothes or casually swap things as much as possible. They live out of each others’ pockets!

Also the brothers are just weird people!! It’s hard to show from their pov, cause they don’t know how far off from normal they are, but like…

Everything about Sam and Amelia was NOT right like holy shit those two were wilding in their grief. They are very lucky things worked out for them and that they got to be hashtag Weird Girls together

Dean explicitly, in the story, gets horny after killing stuff!! Violence has done a number on his psyche and he’s gotten some wires crossed that maybe shouldn’t have been, or maybe could be worked out in a safe space but… uh… how likely do we think Dean is gonna go find a safe space to deal with any of his shit???

LOVE!!! Love is truly what this whole story is all about

If you’ve read the stories, you know how much emphasis I put on love. Love is the strongest force in the Spn Universe! It’s what averted the apocalypse and saved the world (Swan Song), it’s what created free will (Cas’ entire arc!) I love love!!!!

I went out of my way to not put any definitions on platonic love vs romantic love because I think love is love is love and how you express that is the difference. Neither is more powerful than the other because LOVE is powerful!! Sam and Cas are the most important people in Dean’s life and he loves them equally! He shows this by giving Cas kisses and stealing Sam’s socks.

It’s a personal pet peeve of mine when I have to hear explanations like ‘I love you, like a brother’ or ‘I love you, but like, as a friend because I’m a lesbian and you’re a man’ etc etc in media. If you have to continuously define how your characters love each other, then I don’t think you’re doing a good job of portraying their relationship. So you’ll see that I never put those parameters in any conversation. Dean DOES muse that he loves Cas differently than he loves Sam or Bobby, specifically because there is a romantic and sexual tone that his feelings for Cas takes, but not because he loves Cas more or less than he loves Sam or Bobby.

Which means, if you haven’t realized it yet, the Series + Fic Titles are meant to be a complete sentence because the power of love IS the thesis of this series:

The Love It Takes To Exist Again (Sam’s journey!)

The Love It Takes To Become a Man (Dean’s journey!)

The Love It Takes To Destroy a Man (TBA)

And now for fun stuff. Behind the scenes!!

What’s Something People Probably Don’t Know?

The demonic fungal/hydrothermal vent growth on Sam’s arm was thrown in literally as I was posting the chapter because I had just finished a 48 hour cram session of writing a report on tube worms for an ecology class (I was chanting my tube worm song as I wrote it) and it ended up being a HUGE hit with both readers and myself. But it was so last minute I had trouble fitting it in more throughout the rest of Sam’s story!

Cas’ orders? That may or may not have bound him to Dean and removed his free will? Were written into Sam’s story and I went ‘oh SHIT that’s compelling’ and then left them there as a ‘guess I’ll figure that out when I get to Dean’s story lol’

Originally Dean and Cas were supposed to get together after having their souls bonded, and have been in a UST limbo the entire time before that. Mostly because I think the entire concept of ‘we just got married of the soul I guess we should try dating?’ is very funny. CLEARLY the two of them were way more eager to fall in love than I anticipated (thank you Cas for your honesty) but you can still see shades of this original idea here and there (especially in ch35 of TBAM)

I never intended Dean and Benny to connect so well!! Benny was going to reunite with Andrea, she was going to live, and they were going to go off into the world and leave the story. And, uh, here we are. I’m still debating if I need to adjust the relationship tag or not haha. Polyamory is fun, especially when I was planning for Sam to be the polyamorous brother...

Speaking of, I can’t believe I forgot about Sam and his sexuality! If I rewrote TEA I would have had Sam contemplate more on his lack of sexual appetite due to trauma, up until he meets Benny and he gets to rediscover how he wants to be a sexual person

Many of Sam and Dean’s absolutely stupid sibling conversations were lifted near-verbatim from conversations I’ve had with my siblings

And lastly...

Dem where’s Kevin????????????? Where is our sweet baby boy????????

He’s SAFE!! He’s in the Hunter pipeline somewhere cause Sam handed him off to Bobby’s people. He and his mom are safe and at some point they probably got rib sigils like SalmonDean did against angels, but for demons. I didn’t have room in this story for him!!! But my baby boy is SAFE and I want to get him back to university because it’s WHAT HE DESERVES!!!!

To that point: god there were/are SO many characters that I just didn’t include in the story so far because I didn’t feel comfortable including them without stalling the story for them. To that point: pretty much everyone who is alive/dead in s8 is that way in this story, except Bobby who gets to live.

[Check Out Part 2 for reader questions!]

#the love it takes series #to exist again fic #to become a man fic #dem speaks

9 notes · View notes

litttlesilkworm · 3 years

Text

Chicken and Beets

Dear Comrades,

Here is another entry for the Chernobyl New Year Challenge 2021: a recipe + a bit of a story to go with it. The story turned out more than a bit sad, I must confess 💚💛💜

This project shares a common ingredient with our delightful collaboration with @alyeen1 on Valoris-themed cocktail recipes - beets! Check out our cocktail post if you haven’t gotten a chance yet!

As @alyeen1 has pointed out in the cocktail post, the idea with using beets comes from the fact that there is an untouched plate of boiled chicken and beets on Valery’s desk as mentioned in the Ep. 3 script:

We can, indeed, see the plate in the foreground in the frame below:

I wanted to imagine a little riff on this detail in a form of a scene that would take place later - in Moscow, not long after Boris and Valery come back from Chernobyl for good. It is New Year’s Eve, and Boris is having Valery over at his apartment to celebrate the arrival of 1987 together, just the two of them.

For the story and the recipe (and a picture of food), please click below!

Content warning: food/appetite, canon-consistent sad themes (”5 years”).

@shark-from-the-park @elenatria @drunkardonjunkyard @green-ann @johnlockismyreligion @borislegasov @owlboxes @seaweednpeanuts @attachedtofictionalpeople @gwinny3k @kylos-scarf @scarlettestar @the-jewish-marxist @cinemaocd @natasharedfox @ignalina-c0re @potter012 @stellan-pip-69 @art-is-a-malady @antonellachan4567 @hereliesnils @sunset-and-periwinkle @thegreenmeridian and everyone else!

“Something smells amazing, Borya,” Valery exclaims as he steps into Boris’ palatial apartment. He carefully sets two large white cardboard boxes, both tied with a string, and a canvas bag with bottles of champagne on the floor of Boris’ spacious hallway, and takes off his fur hat.

Boris is wearing a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, black trousers and a red checkered apron. The heat of the kitchen has given his face a very appealing kind of sheen, a few errant strands of gray hair have fallen on his forehead, and his smooth cheeks look flushed. He seems excited about something, as if he has a secret that he is itching to reveal - but has to hold off on it for some only known to him dramatic timing.

He looks so attractive that the sight of him quite literally takes Valery’s breath away.

In the very next moment, Boris dives for his lips with a precision and determination of a hunting hawk. The tone and pitch of Boris’ contented hum, the way he holds Valery, the way he runs his fingers through his ginger hair as it crackles with static electricity, the way his thumbs rub circles on Valery’s cheeks, rosy from the biting wind outside, all tell the same story. It is a happy story, Valery knows. The one about how much he missed Valery, and how grateful he is to have Valery’s love, and how pleased he is to greet him here in his warm home, on this New Year’s Eve, and how he has prepared a surprise, and how much he’d enjoyed the process of preparation, and how excited he is to reveal it.

They part eventually, smiling, breathing “happy-new-years” into each others’ mouths.

Boris’ gaze falls on the packages Valery carefully carried from Yeliseevsky market down the iced-over sidewalks.

“You’ve brought champagne, wonderful! And dessert-”

“I couldn’t decide between eclairs and the Napoleon, so I got both,” Valery says shyly, feeling his face getting warm. In reality, he got both because both looked so tempting to him. He is the one with a sweet tooth.

“Remember the box of frozen eclairs I found in the freezer at the restaurant at Polissya?” smiles Boris.

Valery nods enthusiastically. A good memory.

“It was the first thing I’ve seen you eat at Chernobyl like you actually had an appetite! It was a relief to see you excited about food. Do you remember what they used to feed us from the mobile kitchen?” Boris asks as he helps Valery out of his coat, shaking the snow off it.

“Yes,” Valery says with a bit of dramatic shudder. They are like two soldiers reminiscing about the shared misery of a foxhole, Boris and him. “Pikalov’s unit has the best chemists and engineers in the Soviet Union - but not exactly the best cooks.”

Boris laughs heartily in agreement. “Remember what they used to serve most often?”

“Hmmm?” Valery cocks his head to the side and looks at Boris quizzically. “Boiled chicken and beets?”

“Right!” exclaims Boris. “Chicken that tasted like cotton balls.”

“And the beets! They must’ve boiled them all afternoon - they hardly had any color left in them,” adds Valery.

“You barely touched that food anyway. I was worried you will start wasting away. You would have a few bites if me or Nikolai were eating with you but if you were left alone with your calculations - forget it...” Boris waves his hand.

“That’s not true!” Valery exclaims, indignant. “I ate what everyone else was eating!”

“You know, after you told me that isotopes don’t go into butter, I’ve taken to buying slabs of butter from the few villagers who had stayed behind. I would put buttered bread on your plate as you worked late into the night in your corner of the suite. You would finish your piece without noticing it and then I would slip you another one. After I fed you five or six of those I could be content and go read my Pravda.”

The revelation catches Valery completely off guard - he recalls the buttered bread, yes, but he truly, honestly never realized that Boris had been slipping him an entire daily calories’ worth at nighttime. All he remembers is his papers, his calculator, his logarithmic ruler, his aching neck and a constant crushing sense of dread that he might be completely, irredeemably wrong with his projections.

“I know you’ve never noticed,” Boris tilts his head and looks at him softly, crinkles gathering around his laughing eyes. He reaches to squeeze somewhat disoriented Valery’s shoulder, shaking the younger man back and forth gently. “But I knew that I got you fed, and that was good enough for me.”

Something beautiful and sad rises inside Valery and spills into a mist of tears in his eyes. It’s not what he wanted or expected of himself this evening, but he can’t help it.

A tinny voice deep inside him, like a small radio hidden under a thick pillow, scrapes at him in its metallic, nagging cadence - this won’t last, you fool. This - all of this - won’t last. You’ve seen his radiospectrogram, you’ve seen yours. Your bones are chock-full of strontium, both of you. Your leukocyte count is starting to look bad. He’s got that new cough whenever he lies down, and it doesn’t seem to go away.

Every time Valery hears that cough is like a razor to his heart.

“Please don’t take him,” he thinks now as he lies awake during oh-so-common for him sleepless nights, with his face pressed to Boris’ broad back, listening to the soft sound of his breath - the amazing sound of life that is dearer to him than his own.

“Please don’t take him,” he says to someone he doesn’t know how to talk to, to something he isn’t sure exists beyond the electrons orbiting the clumps of protons and neutrons. Beyond the quantum uncertainty. Beyond the cosmic void.

After he knew the cough was here to stay, he seemed to have adjusted his nighttime bargain. “Please don’t take him first.”

The vision of Boris in his red apron blurs and trembles in Valery’s eyes, sliding slightly sideways and downwards. He blinks the veil of tears away, wiping his eyes with his small hand so he could see his love clearly again.

“You look so handsome tonight, Borya. And I love you so much,” Valery says softly, a wet sound escaping his throat. “So much.”

“Valera,” Boris wraps his arms around him in an attempt to quiet whichever emotion is roiling his lover, grumbling softly near his ear, “do you know what it meant for me to take care of you in the midst of all that... madness? It kept me together, too, you know - loving you. And you look amazing in blue.”

Boris’ hands slide down to stroke Valery’s plump sides clad in a soft blue sweater vest as he says that.

"Thank you,” Valery closes his eyes and breathes, soaking in the comfort of Boris’ touch.

“I want to dance with you later tonight,” he mumbles into Boris’ shirt.

“Yeah,” Boris answers softly into his hair. “Yeah, that would be good.”

Boris’ arm is around Valery as he leads him into the living room, where a holiday table is set next to an enormous New Year’s tree adorned with a red star and coated generously with silver tinsel.

Valery has been saving space in his belly all day and is now finding himself, in fact, very, very hungry.

As Boris shuttles back and forth between the living room and the kitchen with bowls and serving platters, Valery fusses with the wires of the champagne bottle, looking worriedly at the chandelier.

“I’ve got Olivier salad, red caviar sandwiches, oh! - pickled mushrooms, so good,” Boris recites proudly. “And for the main course... you wouldn’t mind if we had chicken and beets tonight, would you? Like in the old times?”

He pauses for a proper dramatic effect. The look of momentary dismay on Valery’s face must be so comical that it makes the older man laugh out loud.

“Don’t worry, love - it’s the good kind. This one you wouldn’t want to pass up,” says Boris, beaming, and proceeds to fill Valery’s plate. “Eat, Valera, eat.”

The winter winds are wailing hard outside, but here in the warm living room the air is filled with the clinking of cutlery and Valery’s delighted humming as he devours Boris’ creation. Even the nagging metallic voice in Valery’s head seems to have quieted down to an indecipherable murmur, as if tucked away behind a thick wall somewhere. Really, he can barely hear it at all.

* * *

Recipe: Chicken Delmonico + Warm Beet Salad with Pears, Gorgonzola Cheese and Walnuts

For the chicken, I followed Emeril Lagasse’s excellent Chicken Delmonico recipe exactly (just the chicken, not the mushroom part), except that I didn’t make my own spice mix the way he suggests, but instead combined store-bought cajun spice mix with salt in a 5:1 ratio.

The key to this recipe is to be generous with the seasoning!

For the beet salad, I did the following:

Ingredients:

6 medium-sized beets

2 large ripe pears

⅔ of a cup of walnut halves and pieces

⅔ of a cup of Gorgonzola cheese crumbs

Extra-virgin olive oil

Lemon juice

Salt and pepper

1. Scrub the beets with a brush, rub with olive oil and wrap in foil. Roast in a 350 F (175 C) oven for 40 min, then let them cool until you can comfortably handle them. Peel the beets and chop them into ½ inch-thick slices, set aside.

2. Toast walnuts in a 350 F oven for 6-7 minutes, chop, set aside.

3. Peel and chop the pears into slices similar in size to your beet slices.

4. In a large mixing bowl, combine beet and pear slices, toasted walnuts and Gorgonzola. Add olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste, and mix well. Enjoy!

#chernobyl #valoris #chernobyl new year challenge 2021 #valery legasov #boris shcherbina #cw food #cw appetite #valoris fanfiction

41 notes · View notes

sage-nebula · 3 years

Text

Game Review — New Pokémon Snap

In 1999, a photography game centered on the world of Pokémon was released. Ever since then, I have hungered for a sequel. And now, 22 years later, my wish was finally granted.

Overall Score: 9/10

While I am still puzzled that they didn’t create and release this game for either 3DS or Wii U, since both had built-in cameras, overall I couldn’t be happier with this and I definitely feel that it was worth the 22-year-long wait. Head under the cut (and onto my blog) for more detailed thoughts on what has honestly been an excellent game.

The Pros:

Everything is GORGEOUS. The environments, the pokémon, literally everything. Even setting aside the glowing effects of the Illumina phenomenon (particularly at night when it really stands out), everything about this game is visually stunning. The colors are bright, but not blinding, and you can see that everything was crafted with care. There aren’t any areas that feel unfinished or unpolished. It is beautiful to look at, which is rather important when you’re making a photography-based game.

Each area changes as you increase your research level, so that even though you will have some run-throughs of the courses that are the same as you experienced before, you’ll also find new paths and see different pokémon as you go through the courses more and more times as well. For instance, when you first play through the Florio Nature Park, the Bidoof are in the process of building their dam. But later, their dam is completed. And this is just one example of how things change; believe me, there are lots of changes as time passes and you go through the courses again and again, making them feel far less repetitive than they did in the original game. (Not to bash the original game, which was on the N64 and thus had a lot less space to hold data, of course. I’m just saying.)

The pokémon behaviors are also so great. You have the Bidoof building their dam, for example, but you also have Alolan Raichu surfing the sand dunes, or Espurr levitating rocks for the fun of it, or Pikipek bringing fruits back to nests on Toucannon’s orders. On less happy notes you also have things like a group of Mareanie chasing down a Corsola, but I mean, it’s a well-established fact that Mareanie eat Corsola, so that’s just nature. The point is that this isn’t a game where the pokémon are just standing around waiting to have their pictures taken. The pokémon feel alive and it’s clear that so much thought went into their behaviors to make it feel as if life is teeming around you as you go through the courses, because it is! It’s excellent.

Although this is a sequel game (and it makes it clear that it’s a sequel game, which I’ll talk about more in a second), it’s also incredibly accessible to those who have never played the original. Even if you never heard of the original before, you can jump right into this one with mostly new characters and a brand new story. And I think that’s great, considering the original game came out 22 years ago and is probably somewhat hard to find now, especially if you don’t have a system with access to a Virtual Console to play it on. (Which wouldn’t be a problem if we had the Virtual Console on the Switch, Nintendo, but that’s a separate discussion.)

That said, it is a sequel game and all of the nods and references to the original game are things that I love. I mean, first off, Todd Snap is back and he had a major glow-up. But even setting that aside, it’s mentioned how the NEO-ONE was based on the old vehicle that Todd used (the ZERO-ONE), how Todd used to take photos for a different professor (Professor Oak), the final Illumina Pokémon’s level is a huge callback to the Mew level in the original Snap, et cetera. Although this game was called New Pokémon Snap likely so that people wouldn’t think they had to play the first game first, it’s pretty clearly Pokémon Snap 2 and I love that.

Along with the courses themselves changing as you progress through the game, there are also day and night versions of almost every course so you get something different on them even before making more progress. Additionally, each course has multiple different routes that you can take if you find them / want to, and Elsewhere Forest in particular has zones that change depending on the season, which offers even more variety and things to discover. Again, it doesn’t feel boring to keep going through the courses because there’s always something new to find.

Everything is streamlined and plays excellently. The menus are cleaned, I haven’t noticed any lag in gameplay no matter how much is going on on-screen . . . everything is smooth, clean, and fresh, and again, adds to how much of a joy to look at this game is, on top of making it a joy to play as well.

The online features are implemented really well. I absolutely love that you can post photos to share with people around the world, but also that the feature isn’t obtrusive and in your face, so if you want to ignore it, you can. But the process itself is seamless, and the fact that you can add filters and stickers to make memes out of the photos is hilarious and a well thought-out feature, particularly since this is the age of social media, so having a Pokéstagram just makes sense.

I enjoy that there are little missions that you can complete that are posited as being posed naturally by the other characters. You’re given clues of what to do, but often you’re not told outright, which can make some of them fun to figure out (and others the shot itself is challenging enough so you don’t need a riddle, haha). While fulfilling the requests can be a bit irritating (more on that in a bit) I like that there’s additional material to do in addition to the main story that unfolds as you go through and gives you plenty of stuff to do even after you’ve completed the main story.

The characters are all pretty great. There’s one character I don’t enjoy very much, but otherwise the characters are good and add charm to the story.

These characters still don’t know anything about photography (the rule of thirds is so basic and no one here knows it), at least they’re not as obvious about it as Professor Oak was, always scolding me for not getting pokémon in the center of the frame. So toning down the obnoxiousness on that was nice, I will give them that.

The environments are so varied and so cool. Like sure, you have your basic jungle, your basic grasslands, your basic volcano . . . but also your underwater, your magic forest, your ancient technicolor ruins. And I mean, I don’t even want to diss the other areas because the volcano area was incredibly vivid, the snowy mountain was beautiful, and so on. Again, I don’t want to gush too much about how beautiful this game is, but it is and the wide variety of places to take pictures makes it all the more incredible.

As I mentioned in the missions bullet, there is plenty of content to do even after the main story is completed, which is a definite plus. Filling your Photodex aside, there are also Course Scores that are enabled once you complete the main story and an additional time of day for an already unlocked area that is unlocked as well. This means that even after you clear the game, you can still have fun trying to get different shots and discovering new things, which is always a bonus in my book.

Motion controls are included, but they are entirely optional. So if you want to undock your Switch (or if you are playing with a Switch Lite) and you want to move your Switch around like an actual camera, you can! But if you have any physical limitations that would make doing that hard for you (or if you just don’t feel like it), you don’t have to and the motion controls are actually turned off by default. I haven’t used them myself because I’m not a fan of motion controls so I can’t tell you how good they are, but I can say it’s a plus that the motion controls are 100% optional, rather than forcibly included like they have been in other Nintendo games.

The Neutrals:

All of the different tools you get are basically the same as the original game, with a few slight (and sometimes silly) changes. For instance, they’re now calling apples “flufffruit” because “fluffruit are actually a lot softer and don’t hurt the pokémon” even though . . . they’re very obviously apples. Like very obviously apples. I get that they don’t want to encourage throwing apples at animals for the sake of picture taking / they don’t want to make a kid feel bad if they accidentally (“accidentally”) knock a pokémon in the head with one, but . . . come on. They’re apples. They’ve also decided to take away the Pokéflute and make it a random music player instead, and Illumina Orbs replaced Pester Balls for both story reasons and for the same reason why we can’t call apples apples anymore. Honestly, all of this is fine, just something to mention, though I will say it took way too damn long to unlock the turbo feature, damn. Pokémon are fast, guys! Give me my turbo sooner!!

Sometimes the “tips” that Professor Mirror gives during the photo evaluations . . . don’t actually fit the situation at all. Like I can’t tell you the number of times he’s told me about getting the whole pokémon in the frame when the pokémon is in the frame, or like “throw a fluffruit to get the pokémon to look right at you!” even though the pokémon is staring into the camera like they’re on The Office. It’s not a huge deal but it makes me think that Professor Mirror might need his vision prescription updated.

I understand that this is also the age of the smartphone, but I do find it disappointing that we’re essentially given a smartphone camera (or at most a point-and-shoot) versus the SLR camera that Todd very obviously had in the original Snap (and even has here). Granted, we didn’t have to adjust for aperture or shutter speed in the original game and I wouldn’t want to do that here either, but it’s about the aesthetic and the fact that having professional nature photographers have actually good cameras is more fitting than handing them a smartphone and saying, “have fun!” Again, I get why it’s a smartphone now, but it still is a little disappointing, even if not an actual detraction from the game.

It is confusing that we have wild Alolan form pokémon when this is not Alola, especially since they didn’t make it equal by adding in Galar form pokémon too. (And on that note, there seems to be a lack of Galar pokémon at that.) I think it would have been cool if they’d designed some Lental form pokémon for this game specifically, although I get that this isn’t a game developed by Game Freak so I understand why that wasn’t done. All the same though, the presence of Alolan form pokémon when this isn’t Alola was still a bit weird.

It’s rather easy to breeze through the main story if you don’t want to take your time revisiting areas to get better pictures / boost the research level. While the main story is longer than the original game / there are more areas than the original game, it’s still pretty short. Ordinarily this would be a con, but since there are so many things to do even after you beat the main story, I’m putting it in the neutrals section instead.

The Cons:

While the missions are fun, it is frustrating that you have to do them again if you capture a photo of the mission before the mission is formally handed to you. This is especially true if it was a hard to get shot that’s difficult to replicate. I understand they want to put challenge in the game, but it’s a bit frustrating you can’t point to your photodex and have the mission be cleared if you’ve already done it. You also can’t get the pokémon doing the requested thing in a different part of the course (or a different version of the same course, or even just a different course altogether if a pokémon appears in multiple areas), which is fine, except that you can only turn in one photo per pokémon. This can make it particularly frustrating when you technically get a photo of what was asked for (e.g. Wingull doing a loop-de-loop) but it’s not the specific Wingull you were supposed to take a picture of, so it doesn’t count.

I have noticed a few bugs or typos here or there. Like one time the text box said “Rita” even when it was clearly Mirror talking, and there have been other times when the game is like “you can’t submit photos if the pokémon is not in the Illumina State” even though Wishwashi was GLOWING BRIGHT PINK because I had just thrown an Illumina Orb at it. Little things like that are things I think could have been better smoothed out in QA, but ultimately aren’t too much to deal with and don’t happen very often.

The alternate paths are a bit too finicky sometimes. Like I managed to get on the swamp path once and haven’t been able to manage it since. I was on research level 3 in Elsewhere Forest for a good long while before Espeon decided to show up, which blocked me off the second exit and guaranteed winter route, too. Again, I love that there are secrets in this game, but I tried to replicate getting into the swamp area twenty times in a row after I had just done it with no success, so it can be a bit frustrating at times.

There isn’t really a true conclusion to the main story. I won’t give spoilers, but essentially the story revolves around uncovering the secrets of a myth that happened in the Lental region thousands of years ago. You get close . . . but the story ends before you get any real answers. You’re just left to speculate. In a way this makes sense, since it’s not like you’re time traveling, you’re just taking pictures. But it is still a little annoying for anyone who is interested in things like the lore of the Pokéworld and who might like actual answers to the questions set up (such as myself).

Anyway, overall, this game is amazing whether or not you played the original, and I highly recommend it to everyone who likes Pokémon even a little. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another 22 years for the next one. (But if we do, it will probably be worth the wait.)

#pokemon #pokemon snap #new pokemon snap #2021 game reviews #i am still playing it but since I finished the main story I figured I should go ahead and post the review

11 notes · View notes

yuzukult · 4 years

Text

under the moonlight || junmyeon & reader

title: under the moonlight pairing: junmyeon/suho x reader genre: ceo!reader, hint of soulmate!au, slow-burn words: 8.4k notes: continuation to [city lights]’s junmyeon, journey to him healing his own heart after letting go of his first love for her to be with his best friend who so happens to be her soulmate (chanyeol) // did this because junmyeon deserves some love & also may be a second part + will profread when i get the chance!!

part one || final

Though the living room was filled with laughter and yelling from drinking games, Junmyeon’s attention was locked on the girl of his dreams who stands in the kitchen in the arms of her soulmate, face snuggled into his chest while mumbling a ‘thank you’ for the surprise birthday party that he’d planned for her. In response, he lets out a chuckle as he places a delicate kiss onto her forehead.

Junmyeon knew it would’ve been selfish if he neglected Chanyeol’s wishes when he barged into his bedroom of their shared apartment, hair disheveled with a stressed look washed over his face. “I can’t do this anymore, I need to be with her. She’s all I think about, night and day. I haven’t even had a real conversation with her yet I know everything about her... and I love but hate everything about her because she makes me feel like I can’t live unless it’s with her.” He was aware that the younger male was going through the side-effects of refusing a relationship with his designated soulmate, evidently on the brink of detonation. It was time to let her go, no matter how much he loved her. She belonged to Chanyeol.

The moment Junmyeon picked up the phone to ask Chanyeol to check up on her while on his business trip, he sensed over the phone Chanyeol’s wariness at the sight of the girl’s frame in bed, shivering from a fever. It was that very second it became clear to him that Chanyeol was biologically her soulmate, someone she could never let go even if she tried. Both of their dreams would be flooded with the thoughts of each other, sleepwalking mid-day to meet unconsciously, and yearning for the embrace of one another though far apart.

Goodbyes were rough. But the goodbye with her especially was the worst.

Telling her that she wasn’t made for him and that they couldn’t be together while her eyes were brimming with tears was the hardest moment of his life. Breaking the heart of the woman he still loved was never in his plans. But Chanyeol was his best friend and watching him deteriorate day by day was just as painful for himself.

So he sacrificed his love so that they could be together.

“Junmyeon, you don’t know how much it means to me that you came.” She says, voice soft. They’re standing in the corner of the living room, separated from the group just enough to hear the other speak. “I know how uncomfortable it must be for—”

“Don’t say that.” He interjects, adjusting the black beanie that sits on his head. “I meant what I said that day months ago. Just because we aren’t together like that doesn’t mean I won’t be in your life anymore. You were more than just a girl I dated, I loved you.”

He lied. He still loves her. But he’d never say that.

She’s chewing on her bottom lip, hair cut shorter from their last exchange that strays fall out from the hair-tie and over her face. He wishes he could push it away and behind her ear but that’s crossing the line.

“I loved you too, Junmyeon. You know that.”

“But you love Chanyeol now.” He adds, grabbing his jacket off the coat rack. Junmyeon was ending his night earlier than the rest, claiming that he wasn’t feeling too well from having to wake up early and sleeping later for an assignment at work when really he couldn’t bear to watch the two of them together for long, his heart still healing. “And I’m happy that it’s working out.”

His first love stands there for a moment, silent, despite the sounds coming from the main area as she walks him toward the front door. “Why are you so quiet?” Junmyeon questions, raising a brow.

“Chanyeol and I talked about the topic of marriage.”

Marriage. He hasn’t even fully recovered from the break-up yet and she’s already moved on entirely.

“But... I’m not ready. I still think of you.” The words would have been more comforting if it resulted with her in his arms instead.

“We both need to move on.” He sighs, one hand on the doorknob and his heart still in hers. “It’s going to take some time but it’ll be worth it in the end. The torture from being without him will stop.”

“How did you know?”

“Know about what?”

“That I had those side effects. I never told you about it.”

Junmyeon sighs, finally turning the handle to open the door. “You started looking more and more tired each day and you complained about it often. So I did some research to see what was wrong. It’s a side effect from denying your soulmate.”

Forcing himself into work everyday was hard.

After spending so much time with his first love, she was close to convincing him to drop his day job for a career in music. Working in a corporate office was gnawing on him alive, not to mention how unbearably stiff the suits were while he sat at his office for over 8 hours a day.

“Hey,” Someone says. Her voice is tender and calm, capturing his attention. “Junmyeon, right?” You were peeking your head into his cubicle, too short to completely reach over the walls.

You were the CEO of the company he worked at, the founder of a skincare line that you developed the formulas on your own with hands-on operations and testing, utilizing your degree received after University where you studied in the States. He’d only been part of the business team for a short period of time and hadn’t even gotten to meet you yet, despite how heavily involved you were on the floor.

“Yes, I’m Junmyeon,” He says quickly, breaking his gaze before standing up, bowing and extending his hand for a shake. “Sorry about that. Wasn’t expecting to see you.” You repeat his actions and if he didn’t know any better, he’d think you were mocking him.

“Sorry, it’s okay. I came unannounced. Should’ve probably called or something right?” You ask, scratching the back of your head agonizingly, slightly unsure how to act in social situations. “I just thought I could stop by to talk to you.”

“I’m available to talk. Something wrong?”

Straightening the pencil skirt that hugs your lower half, you grin cheekily at him. “I’ve been going around lately, trying to understand the jobs of the people who work here. We’ve been doing so well that I wanted to meet the people who were extremely involved in the impact. Would you like to go out for lunch with me?”

Blinking blankly, Junmyeon is taken aback. You— the woman ran an entire company with products on the shelves of huge department stores to high end private shops just for the elite to take him out to lunch?

He glances over at his lunch bag that sits on the corner of the desk, pausing for a moment. And almost as if you read his mind, you say, “We could always put it in the fridge for tomorrow. Come. Let me take you out for lunch, Junmyeon. Company’s treat!”

Dropping by your office before making way out, you snatch the jacket off the back of your office chair, slinging it over your shoulders.

Junmyeon just stands in the doorway entering in, leery about coming in any further. Despite you being the one asking him to tag along, he still felt the invisible wall between the two of you, a CEO and just some guy in the business department.

Your office was massive— the windows were stretched from corner to corner, ceiling to floor, with a view of the city that was breathtaking. On the opposite side had a glass wall, seeing out to the rest of the floor where employees work, but oddly enough you never had the blinds of it opened.

“Why are you standing there so awkwardly?” You chuckle, grabbing your wallet, phone and keys from the top of your desk. “You know that you can come in here, right? I don’t bite.”

“Sorry,” he mutters, rubbing his nape anxiously. “Just kind of feels like I don’t belong here.”

You roll your eyes, walking toward him and out the room as he follows, closing the door behind. “Junmyeon, you’re always welcomed in my office. Any problems you have are mine as well. Don’t hesitate to talk to me about anything, I own an entire company for God’s sake! I would do anything I can to help a fellow employee.”

In his department, you had a reputation. Men thought you were hot— so attractive that whenever you’d walk by and greet everyone on your way to your office, they’d drool, eyes never leaving your bare legs or bottom. Women were more of a split category; some resented you for gaining the attention of men so easily, others admire your hard work and ambitions, yet trying very hard to accommodate any of the employees’ issues personally. It was hard to please everyone.

“Johnny,” You call out your assistant, his desk sitting several feet outside of your office. “I’m having lunch with Junmyeon today.”

Johnny is a skyscraper. But when he’s sitting down, he seems so small next to you, almost like a little grocery store in the corner of the block of a big city while at his desk.

“So you’re ditching Eunwoo today?”

“Never said I agreed to having lunch with him. If he comes, just say I left. I’m having lunch with Junmyeon.”

Leaning back in his seat, he has his arms crossed against his chest, squinting at you. Junmyeon always questioned the relations between you and Johnny, but after observing the entire conversation, it seems like he’s just a concerned friend. Most likely why you keep him around.

“Should I say you’re having lunch with Junmyeon? Might piss Eunwoo off.” He says, gesturing toward Junmyeon when he says his name.

“Why are you trying to piss him off? I said I was over it.” You click your tongue, waving off Johnny in dismissal afterwards. “Whatever, I said I’m leaving. See you after lunch.”

“You’re probably wondering who Eunwoo is,” You unlock the doors of your car, opening the drivers side when Junmyeon stops in his tracks. “He’s my ex.”

“Wait— you’re driving?”

“Yeah, how else would we get there?” Sliding into the driver’s seat, he hesitates for a moment before following into the passenger side.

“Just didn’t think you’d be driving.” Junmyeon responds, putting on his seatbelt over his body. “Were you supposed to meet with your ex today?”

“He assumed.” Pressing the start button, the engine of the Audi roars, a sweet sound to any car enthusiast’s ears.

“You don’t think I drive?”

“More like... I thought you had a driver.”

You shake your head, pulling out of the garage of the company’s building, driving in the direction of a restaurant he’s not familiar with.

“Where are we going?”

“Pick: a five star restaurant or a restaurant that deserves it?”

“The latter.”

“A man after my own heart,” You joke, glancing over his direction with a sweet smile. “My favorite spot. It won’t take long.”

It’s a ramyun restaurant hidden within a large city without much foot traffic, but he wasn’t going to doubt your plans.

After handing the waiter back your menus with your orders, you rub your hands on your skirt sheepishly. “Uh, do you have a girlfriend?”

Shocked by the sudden question, Junmyeon’s jaw slacks.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, have you met your soulmate yet?” Once the words leave your mouth again, you groan at your lack of execution of holding small talk. “Sorry again, ignore that. Didn’t mean it like that.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend and no, I haven’t yet.” He thought your reaction was cute. It was understandable how people were so easily smitten by you. “Do you?”

“No,” You say, voice a bit disappointed but your face doesn’t show it. “But I’m too busy anyway. I meant to ask because you’ve been working endless hours and I was afraid it was taking you away from someone at home.”

You were worried about him. It was different from the way his first love showed that she cared, she was more of a person who showed that she was worried, less vocal than you.

“No,” He chuckles light heartedly. Coming into your car, he was tensed and intimidated by your presence, but seeing the way you stuttered your words made you seem more human than how the employees made you out to be. “I’m alone. No one is nagging at me at home.”

“Ah,” You say, tapping your fingers onto the wooden table. “I see. I’m really impressed with your work, Junmyeon. How did you get into your career field?”

“Just seemed simpler at the time,” He admits, leaning back into his chair. “It was an easy major that my group of friends were considering, and although I really wanted to pursue music, I knew I needed some stability.”

“Music?” You ask as the waitress comes by with glasses full of water as you bow your head in appreciation. “Are you still interested in it?”

“Mm, sometimes. I’ve produced some songs here and there, I enjoy working with my creative side.”

“Would you venture out of your comfort zone?”

“I mean, if I could I would. But I have bills to pay, so I stay where I am now and do the best I can at it.”

You’re quiet for a moment as the server comes by, delivering your bowls of ramyun to the table. The aroma coming from the food made your mouths water, and your stomach growling in hunger in the process. “Sorry,” Your cheeks flush pink. “I’m kinda hungry.”

“Don’t apologize,” A smile tugs on the edges of his mouth softly. “It’s natural.”

Your stomach tightens at his smile but you brush it off as just a reaction from starving yourself from yesterday’s lunch. Business has been blooming, taking time away from your everyday from actually taking care of yourself. Taking Junmyeon here was supposed to be a learning experience about him, something you said you’d try doing frequently with your employees, but getting to eat at your favorite restaurant was your own version of self-care.

“How would you consider working in my marketing department? Well, more of the design or creative team. I have commercials and clips they play in stores to produce, and if you’re interested, maybe you can dip your toes in that. Both working with music and filmography?”

Junmyeon stops in the midst of blowing the steam from his raging hot noodles, lips pursed. “Wait, what?”

After chewing a mouthful of the delicious ramyun that awakens both you and your tastebuds, you blissfully lean back in your seat. “Jesus, just one bite takes me away.” You compliment before sitting back up, preparing yourself for another spoonful. “What I’m trying to say is, if you’re interested, you should consider working in the marketing department. I can’t offer you a record deal, but I can get your foot in the door somewhere.”

“I haven’t shown you a portfolio or anything.” He says, sweat beads forming on his forehead, and he’s not sure if it’s from anxiety or the temperature of the noodles.

“You don’t need to. It’s a learning experience and you grow and improve as you go. I trust that if you enjoy it enough, you’d get better with it. If you don’t, that’s okay. Feel free to tell me and I’d be more than happy to put you back in the business department, hauling away with meetings and conversations with both men and women that you probably hate with a fiery passion.”

“You’re not serious, are you?”

“Do you want it or not, Junmyeon? I’m a busy woman, I’m trying to eat my noodles.”

Knocking on the tall wooden doors that lead into your office, he discreetly opens it slightly, peering before completely entering. He calls out your name, the gentlest sound you’ve ever heard as your head snaps in his direction. “You asked for me?”

“I did!” You point to the seat across from your desk, gesturing for him to get comfortable.

“What could I do for you?”

You’re finishing up an email, eyes glued on the monitor before hitting the ‘send’ button before fully giving your whole attention to the male in front of you. “It’s been a week since you’ve started in your new department. How is it?”

You were right, it had been an entire week since you’ve last spoken, occasionally exchanging glances in the office, and Junmyeon can’t believe how quickly time had passed by. You had transitioned him in the marketing department, with hopes that he could get some more exposure to a different part of the industry since his dreams fit more with dipping into his artistic skills. He was enjoying the new experience so much that he had forgotten how much time had passed, assuming he’d only seen you several days go.

“It’s been a week already?” He says without thought, running his fingers through his lightly styled hair. You can’t help but notice the way he makes your breath hitch but you dismiss the feeling by clearing your throat. “I guess I’ve been enjoying it so much I haven’t even noticed how quickly time has passed.”

“That’s good to hear!” He actually seemed delighted with his new job. One of the perks of being in your position was being able to do things like this and see people change, see people be happy. If it fit your means to do it, you’d make it happen. “I’m glad. Please feel free to tell me if you’re having any issues. I’m flexible, if you’re not content with what you’re doing, I can always transfer you somewhere else within the company, or even back to where you were.”

“Can I ask something?”

“Sure, shoot. What is it?” You rest your arms on your large glass desk that seemed so tiny in your spacious office.

He’s quiet for a moment, licking his lips in thought. “Why are you doing this? I didn’t think it was possible for me to... just switch out of my department and do something entirely new. I don’t have the skillset for it, nor a degree or anything.”

Shrugging, you purse your lips, eyes circling the room. “Because life isn’t easy. Not everyone is going to find what they enjoy in their high school years when they’re applying for colleges. Hell, college isn’t necessarily the place you’re guaranteed to find what you like anyway.”

“But you did?”

“I did, but I got lucky. I’ve witnessed enough people go through those feelings. Graduating from a university with a degree you worked hard to obtain in four years, only to realize that this isn’t what you want?” Taking a brief moment to organize your thoughts, you continue. “I want the people who work for me to be happy, Junmyeon. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them, if it weren’t for people like you. In actuality, I think I work for everyone here since everyone is working to make my dreams come true. It’s only fair if I try to do the same.”

Junmyeon wasn’t quite sure why, but he was comparing you to his first love again.

There was a huge difference between the both—few similarities like how independent the two of you were, how immersed in your careers you’d been, and how much you cared for other people. It’d been the first time in a while since he’d been so observant and drawn someone, so distracted from his ex that he found himself wanting to know more about you.

“That’s... selfless.”

“Just a thought.” You grin, tapping the pads of your fingertips against your desk again. It’s a habit of yours when you’re dubious about your next action, he picks up. “Do you think you can show me some of the things you’re working on before they air?”

“I heard you got a new job,” Chanyeol says from beside, startling Junmyeon as he’s grabbing a couple pieces of pork onto his plate. “How’d you land such a great deal? You’re producing the commercial for that skincare line you used to work for, right?”

“Somewhat right,” Junmyeon responds, a bit distracted by cooking the raw meat, placing the completed ones on Chanyeol’s plate. “I still work for that company. They just transferred me out the department to try something new.”

“No way.” Chanyeol’s eyes are huge, but they’re bulging out his head from surprise. “How did that happen?”

Junmyeon shrugs however a smile sits brightly in his face. “CEO asked what I wanted to do, I told her, and here we are.”

“Sounds like she likes you.” Minseok interjects into the conversation, popping open another bottle of cold beer. “You won the heart of the big CEO lady already? Sounds like a Korean drama,” He says, wriggling his brows suggestively.

Junmyeon denies. “Honestly, she does this thing where she has lunch with several employees to get to know what they do everyday since there has been growth in the company.”

“So you’ve had lunch with her?” Jongin is in on the conversation now, eyes from all the men at the table glued into Junmyeon.

“Uh, yes?”

“So, it was a lunch date.” Sehun invites himself in.

“No, it was just a boss and employee lunch. What’s up with you guys?”

“You’ve never really... talked about a girl lately.” Jongdae points out faintly, almost like he’s scared to pull a nerve. “At least, not for this long.”

“She’s nice... I just don’t think someone like her would ever like someone like me, though. She’s attractive, nice, and caring— but guys, come on. She owns an entire skincare line that are on the shelves of every store.”

“Stop talking down on yourself,” Chanyeol’s speaking now, and his warm orbs are comforting when they meet with Junmyeon’s. “There’s no guarantee that you’ll meet your soulmate, especially since the age is coming up. Doesn’t hurt to try shooting your shot with her, right?”

The age. The age where once you turn thirty, your chances of ever meeting your soulmate declines almost to 2%. Junmyeon has already hit the ripe age of 29 with only a year left before his probability descends into the abyss.

“I can’t hit on her.” He furrows his brows, stuffing his cheeks with a bite of kimchi. “She’s my boss.”

“Be discreet. Give her some subtle hints. If she doesn’t reciprocate, then abort mission and pretend you were just being nice.”

Junmyeon rolls his eyes at his friends’ advices. They were constantly interrupting each other with new ideas after another before someone taps his shoulder. “Junmyeon?”

“Oh— hey. Hey!” He says your name; he always says it the same way, the way that it warms your heart to the point you just wish you could grab his arms to wrap around you so you could doused yourself in his scent. He had an impact on you but you held your composure. Maybe you were starting to crush on him, if you haven’t already, because he was just so kind but he’s the type to be kind to everyone.

“Uh, guys. This is my boss...” He introduces, scratching his head. He continues on naming the rest of his group, hesitant about the whole ordeal as you wave cheekily to them all.

“You guys can just call me by my name, I’m not Junmyeon’s boss outside of the office.” You turn to look at the older male, hands stuffed into the front pockets of your jeans.

Even in the horrible brightness of fluorescent lighting, you managed to still look seamlessly beautiful in Junmyeon’s eyes. Your attire was distinct from the everyday work apparel yet you still appeared put together. Maybe Junmyeon was the one crushing.

“Come join us!” Chanyeol says quickly, gesturing the seat on the other side of Junmyeon as Jongdae slides over to give you enough room.

Junmyeon clicks his tongue, feigning a hit to Chanyeol before looking over at you. “I’m sorry, are you here with someone? I don’t want to take you away from them or force you to sit with us if you don’t want to.”

“Ah, honestly, I was just going to order something off the menu and take it home to eat. Unless you don’t want me here?”

“Oh, no, of course I want you here, come,” Junmyeon responds, tapping the empty seat beside him. Timidly, you shrug your shoulders before taking up the offer and settle at the side of Junmyeon.

Throughout the night, being with Junmyeon and his friends let you discover a completely new side of him. With them, he was considered the ‘mother’ of the group, nurturing and looking out for the rest of them, despite not being the eldest. He’s admirable, so Yixing remarks, but also selfless because he never has himself on his mind other than his friends and family.

When Junmyeon excuses himself to the bathroom, you learn that he sacrificed his relationship with the girl of his dreams so she could be with her soulmate regardless of the fact that she didn’t want to be with him because he rejected her. You find out that Chanyeol was the friend, and that he wants nothing more than to help find happiness for him as well.

You pay for dinner. Junmyeon argues with you about it for a brief moment before you jokingly threaten that his job was on the line and he pouts in return. You’re almost bold enough to tell him that if he lets you kiss his pout that he could pay.

“Uh... Why are you in my office?”

“You cancelled on lunch last time. And a few times before that. I wanted to come so I can spontaneously take you out for dinner instead.”

You squint your eyes at the male in front of you, throwing the pen in your hand on your desk heatedly. “Catch the hint? I’m not very interested in the idea of having lunch with you. Or anything, really.”

“The idea, but you haven’t done it yet.”

Eunwoo is probably the cutest guy you’ve laid your eyes on but after dating for three years, it became evidently clear that the two of you didn’t click at all. Girls were at his beck and call, and you were growing tired of having to tell him which girls had bad intentions. You felt like his mom. He’s too sweet but it was starting to hurt your pride a bit when rumors were going around that he was flirting with others so you immediately put a stop to the relationship.

“Eunwoo,” You sigh heavily, leaning back in your swivel chair. It’s around 5:00PM at this point, your day filled with meetings and tasks regarding a new launch approaching soon. “This... is really sweet of you. But we broke up.”

“I’m obviously here to try again.”

“You’re so oblivious about women all the time! I’m tired of teaching you, I need someone who doesn’t need to be groomed to fit me.”

There’s a knock on the door, and both your heads snap toward the direction to only see Junmyeon’s head peeking into the room. “Uh, sorry, am I interrupting something? Johnny said I could come in.”

You wanted to call Junmyeon your own personal superhero because he’s standing there in what seems like his best work outfit, and you’re almost drooling at the sight of him. Maybe it was because it was already so late in the day, and he looks like he’s been at his desk for a long time since his tie is loosened around his neck, and a button is undone.

“No, please, come in.” Eunwoo’s glare could pierce through you right now but you keep your gaze away.

“Sorry,” Junmyeon bows at the other male before Eunwoo takes a seat in the corner of the room where the black leather couches were. He wasn’t backing down any time soon. “I... finished the video.”

“Oh?” He’s handing you a small flashdrive that you take willingly, inserting it into your computer before clicking around on your desktop before you reach your destination.

“Do you have headphones or something?”

Your brows crinkle in confusion. “What?”

He pulls out his keys, flipping open a case that holds his AirPods, placing it into the palm of your hand as you tilt your head when he rounds your desk, helping you bluetooth the device in. “Why are we doing this again?”

“Just a bit embarrassed about my first project. I don’t actually want to see you watch it.”

Eunwoo has his legs crossed, eyes shooting darts in the direction of you. He must be bursting with jealousy with how Junmyeon is seemingly close to you, making his way back to the seat in front of your desk, settling comfortably. Eunwoo observes that this is definitely not the first time the other male has been in your office.

After a few moments, you pull the buds out from your ears, placing it back into the white case and returning it to Junmyeon. “Wow... I--... Honestly, Jun, that was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. I mean I have some notes, don’t take it the wrong way, but... this is different.”

“I hope you mean a good kind of different?”

“Of course.”

He’s gifting you that warm smile again. “Send them over. I’ll take a look and send you an updated version.”

“You like him.”

“Hm?” You hum heedlessly, typing away on the computer with your comments still fresh in your mind. Junmyeon had left your office moments before, taking his leave home.

“You have a crush on that guy. I just saw you give him that look.” Agilely turning your head to face your ex-lover, you heave out a sigh. “What look, Eunwoo?”

“You used to look at me like that. I remember it because it’s when I knew that you returned those feelings for me and I went for it.”

Frustrated, you push your keyboard away. “What? I can’t just look at a guy now? All of the sudden you’re an expert at these things? And why does it even matter? We’re not together anymore.”

“Because he’s competition? What else?”

“Eunwoo, get the fuck out please.” You say through your gritted teeth before throwing a post-it note stack at him as he makes his way out your office. “Okay, okay! I’ll be back though!”

There’s another knock at your door. Glancing at the clock that hangs above your desk, it reads 8:30PM and you could have sworn you told Johnny to go home hours ago. If it wasn’t Johnny, then...

Getting up from the couch full of loose papers and your laptop, you walk up toward the door, swinging it open. “Eunwoo, didn’t I tell you to fuck off—”

“Uh, I take it that the guy in the room earlier was Eunwoo then?”

In a pair of grey sweats and a T-shirt, Junmyeon is standing in your doorframe underneath a baseball cap. In his hands are bags of takeout, raising it up for your viewing once your eyes laid on it.

“What’s this?” You step aside to let him in, watching as he reorganizes the papers on your coffee table and places them onto another part of the couch, setting up the food. “You didn’t seem like you were going to cave into having dinner with that guy, and the launch is happening soon. I figured you’d still be here and skip dinner.”

In all honesty, this is what you would’ve wanted Eunwoo to do. Back when the two of you were dating, you had been stuck in the same scenario— couped up in your office, drowning yourself in paperwork without any time to make back home until the night before the launch day to get ready for the event. You wanted Eunwoo to take notice, doing something similar as to this, bringing food to you instead of forcing you to go out when you didn’t have much time to spare.

“I— I don’t know what to say. Thank you, Junmyeon, really. I was starving, but with how security is at the door at this time of night, delivery would’ve been a bit of a hassle.”

“Don’t sweat it, boss.” He jokes as you sit on the couch and he plops himself onto a seat across from you. “I got you the ramyun you had last time from that place you took me.”

“You did? How’d you remember what I ordered?”

“It was so spicy, I smelt it and sneezed a couple times.” Snapping the disposable chopsticks, he hands you the pair. “Plus, who would forget a name like ‘the Diablo Ramyun’? There’s a picture of a dragon breathing fire right next to the name on the menu.”

Junmyeon kept you company that night. He eventually started reading Webtoon comics on his phone after having dinner, laying on the couch before falling into a deep slumber, mouth agape. Grabbing a spare blanket you kept for nights you spent in your office, you drape it over his body, and pulled off his hat.

He looks angelic like this— albeit he has drool streaming from the sides of his mouth. Not obligated to stay, but nonetheless he did, all because he didn’t want you to be alone or feel lonely. Although you insisted he should go home, he contends, eventually winning the argument by comfortably designating the spot on the couch to himself.

You don’t miss those soundless nights in your office anymore. Junmyeon’s snoring along with your tumultuous typing sets a new standard of bliss.

It’s been about two months since that night and Junmyeon is frequent in your life.

He’s on speed-dial when you want to try new restaurants or go to events that are in the city, and he never fails to come by your side to keep you company. Sometimes, his smile catches you off guard, fluttering your heart, but other times, you think he feels as though his presence is necessary because you gave him his dream job.

“So, rumor has it: Junmyeon sleeps over at the office.”

“What makes you say that?”

Johnny eyes you suspiciously. “Other than the fact that he leaves your office bright and early in the morning with slightly damp hair with an outfit that’s just barely different from the day before?”

Your breath stops, but your fingers continue to tap away at an email. “Does he?”

“So, you sleeping with him?” You stiffen, scowling at your assistant. “No, I am not.”

“What’s he doing in here then?”

“He just... sleeps over whenever I’m having a late night session.”

“Oh, so you are sleeping with him.”

“Johnny.” You say firmly. “I am not. He just keeps me company ‘cause I’m all by myself here and it’s dark out.”

He’s reclining in the armchair in front of your desk, toes pushing off the ground while rocking the seat. “Why don’t you just ask him out if you like him that much? Why are you wasting your time just... ‘keeping company’ instead of... being his companion.”

“I’m his boss.”

“And? That’s a sexy thing. He might like a strong, self-sufficient woman. Hell—I know I do. But you’re not into me, so I’m gonna help Junmyeon if I can’t help myself.”

Ears now crimson, you admit defeat and lounge in your large work chair with a cumbersome sigh, playing along with his game. “I don’t have time to date.”

“He’s here at least once a week spending the night with you. You have time, and if you don’t, he’ll make the time to be with you.”

Pausing a moment in thought with a hum, you hit the tip of your fingers against the glass desk. “I’m not his type.”

“Oh hush, I see the way he looks at you. He thinks you’re gorgeous.”

Pursing up your lips, you assert, “I don’t believe that. What if I meet my soulmate?”

“Stop doubting your looks, he practically salivates at the sight of you that it’s all over the floor. Also, that soulmate thing? That never stopped you from dating Eunwoo, so why is Junmyeon any different?”

You shrug, playing with the pen in front of you. “His ex dated him and ended up being with her soulmate.”

“You honestly think you’re going to meet your soulmate? Tell me. You were in that research group for a couple years, what’d you gather from that?” If it wasn’t for HR, you’d probably have you hands wrapped around Johnny’s giraffe neck by now.

Back in University, you decided to partake in the Soulmate Research Group for your co-op program, rationalizing that this could help you find your ‘the one.’ The group resulted in slapping you into reality, educating you the chances of finding your soulmate had declined to almost none when considering the probability. It was the worst year of your life, having to come to terms that this fairy-tale that everyone in your life had made love seem was just something that only lucky people got to cooperate in.

“I... yeah, I know. It’s just so many goddamn people met their soulmate already, what about me? What makes me so different from the bunch?”

Johnny says your name, this time sweetly with a tone he never uses. “I never met my soulmate either. But Junmyeon is almost hitting 30, right? Imagine how he’s feeling. He can’t even get laid by a pretty girl that he sleeps in her office for on the most uncomfortable couch, let alone find his soulmate.”

“Do you like me?”

“What kind of question is that?” He glances at you quizzically, fixating his attention back under the hood of your car, twisting off the cap of your car sump, checking the oil levels. An oil light had popped onto the dashboard a couple days ago and you texted Junmyeon what he recommended to do, only for him to dispute that he’d check it himself.

“I don’t know, just answer it. Do you like me?”

He chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief as he wipes the oil rod with a rag. “Of course I like you. Why else would I hang out with you and change your oil?”

“No,” You groan, leaning against your front headlights, slouching in annoyance. “Like... not as a friend. As a woman. More than a friend, someone you want to date.”

He stands, slack-jawed.

“Listen— I totally get if you don’t see me in that way, but Johnny said he saw the way you looked at me, and I figured, ‘hey, why not try to ask him out’ so—“

“Of course I see you that way. Who doesn’t? I kind of just assumed you weren’t into me since you were always rejecting my advances.”

“Advances?”

Lifting up the dirty rag in his greasy, stained hands, the sides of his mouth twitches upwards. “Like I said, why would I change your oil? Plus, how many nights have I slept in your office on that god awful couch? I also have a toothbrush in your bathroom. And spare underwear. Need I say more?”

Chewing on your bottom lip and watching as he finishes up, closing the hood of your car, you tap your shoes anxiously against the concrete ground. “Can I ask you something else?”

“What is it?”

“Can I kiss you?”

You can already imagine how difficult showering is going to be later, but with Junmyeon’s plush lips pressed against yours, how could you complain about his tarnished hands underneath the fabric of your shirt, caressing the skin of your waist?

Guiding your hips to sit onto the hood of your car, your arms snake around his neck, playing with the longer strands of his hair that brush against his nape. The way he kisses feels like he’s going to suck the air out of your lungs but you couldn’t care less— you finally had him in your embrace and you weren’t going to let go.

He’s amiable, even though it’s contradicting that he’s tugging on your lower lip between his teeth, your lips swollen and plump from the aggressive make-out session. He doesn’t push too far, just right where you’re comfortable, especially when you’re in your opened garage out for your neighbors to see.

You’re not sure how much time has passed but he’s already claimed the territory in the middle of your legs, towing you close with a grip on your thighs. Placing the palm of his hands on either side of you on the car, he grins cheekily after pulling out of the kiss, heavy pants against each other’s face.

“Did my boss just make-out with me?” You slap his chest, rolling your eyes in unison. “Stop it. I know you’re enjoying this, I feel it.” Wrapping your arms around his lower frame, you pull him close, pressing your crotch against his as his groans. “Now you stop it. I’m not taking you here.”

Junmyeon is a gentleman. He declares that he wouldn’t be taking you anywhere near the bedroom until he takes you out on a proper date, in spite of the fact that you both had broken his rule of no kissing and no sex before a date.

If you thought that you had everything you wanted before, you were wrong. Not until you met him.

“I met my soulmate.”

Straightening the paperwork on your desk, pretending to preoccupy yourself from this conversation and stay cool, you place the manila envelopes flat back on your desk, eyes eventually locked on the figure in your office. “Okay?”

“This means we can’t go back to what we ever were again...”

Feelings of uncertainty arise in your stomach—it’s obvious it’s jealousy. Was it because he found his soulmate and he was never coming back or that you haven’t even met yours?

Eunwoo stands in the middle of the room, hands in the pockets of his dress pants, contemplating what to say next.

“We’re not together anymore.”

He knows this—he knows this so well with the amount of times you remind him that it’s embedded in his brain, nonetheless in the general picture of things, Eunwoo always thought that you’d find your way back home and into his arms. He’d tell you this, despite the amount of times you’ve rejected him, but hearing now that he really won’t come back because he has a soulmate hits different.

Maybe Eunwoo had been a back-up plan. There’s never 100% bliss in a relationship, and you never saw yourself getting married to him and having kids but the thought of having Eunwoo in the back of your head meant that even if you didn’t find ‘the one,’ Eunwoo would be the replacement. It sounds fuck-up, it all sounded fucked-up but who would love a woman who ran an entire company by herself and barely have time for anyone else in her life?

“It means... I officially can’t come back to you anymore and you can’t expect for me to fall back into your hands like putty. I’m done... but it doesn’t mean I don’t love you anymore.”

“I know, Eunwoo.”

“It’s just— it’s my soulmate.”

“Don’t miss out on that opportunity.” You say sternly.

Thwarted by your reaction, he snaps. “I’m so sick of this. I should’ve just given up sooner—I’ve been in your life for 6 years, we dated for 3, and you can’t even be happy for me? You can’t even tell me that you still love me although you’re the one who left me?”

Head dropping onto the back of your chair, you close your eyes for a moment. “Eunwoo, I’ll always love you, I never thought I had to remind you of that. But we never worked out, we stopped clicking after a year in. We’re on different pages, we’re doing different things, and I never had the time to spend with you anymore.”

“It wasn’t that you never had the time, you never made time.”

“Don’t say that. I didn’t have time. You never made the effort to spend it with me.”

“What?” He says sharply. “Tell me, what could I have done differently? I want to hear it?”

Running your fingers through your strands of hair frustratedly, you grumble in discontent. “I wanted you to be here with me on those nights I spent in the office. I wanted to have dinner with you here, but you always insisted we go out. I wanted you to be part of my projects, do things with me because we’re in the same field, yet you couldn’t even do that. I wanted you to be around and try in other ways even if it was hard to spend time with each other.”

“You’re the one who stopped trying!”

“I stopped trying when I saw how much effort you were putting into meeting these girls instead of me! How do you think I feel when you’re out buying coffee and delivering it to your co-worker? You couldn’t even do that for me.”

Clenching his jaw, he gives you a look before saying his last words. “You’re right. Maybe we weren’t right for each other.” As he’s walking toward the doors existing your office, you silently say, “She was your soulmate, wasn’t she? The co-worker.”

He turns to look at you, eyes sudden soft compared to moments ago. You were right. You’re always right.

Junmyeon is handsome in this lighting but it’s difficult to focus on the date with your argument with your ex from earlier.

He planned everything for the night—the lights, the picnic blanket, and wicker basket filled with delicious foods that he had cooked himself, a skill that he had been trying to improve lately since his roommate, Kyungsoo, had left for the military, and Chanyeol moved out to live with his soulmate.

Pulling out two wine glasses, following with a bottle, he pops the cork out before pouring some into yours. “So, what’s on your mind?” Snapping back into reality, you laugh awkwardly, rubbing your arm.

“I’m sorry? Did you say something and I missed it? Nothing’s on my mind.”

“No, something is definitely up in there. I can see it in your face.” Handing the glass to you, he’s taking out the rest of the food from the basket; he’d packed everything from kimchi to kimbap, even cheese and deli meats. There was also pie— jesus, did he have to try so hard to get to your heart? You would be melting in his affection at this point if your head wasn’t so occupied.

“Uh... honestly, there’s something. But I’m not really in the mood to talk about it because it might ruin our date.”

“I’m afraid it would ruin our date if you don’t say anything.” He raises a brow.

Shoulders dropping in defeat, you take a sip of your wine for a boost of confidence. “Fine, fine. Eunwoo met his soulmate.”

Junmyeon nods, lips pursed. “Ah, I see. And you always thought that if it didn’t work out with someone else, you’d at least have Eunwoo?”

You freeze.

How’d he know that?

Almost like he read your thoughts, he’s speaking as he’s unraveling the plastic off the plates and containers. “I can kind of tell. You never fully pushed him away. If you didn’t want him in your life at all, you would’ve asked Johnny and the building to kick him out once he went through the lobby doors. Never happened— he’s even on your calendar for lunch, even if you don’t go.”

“You’re rather observant, aren’t you?”

“So I’ve been told.” He grins, taking your hand and giving it a light kiss. “Listen, I understand. Does it have to do with the soulmate thing?”

“A bit...”

He shakes his head in condemnation, gaze drifting off at the sun that slowly begins to set in the horizon. “I hope you’re not upset because of me just because my ex left me for her soulmate. Not everyone meets their soulmate, you know? So if you met whomever it is, I’d want you to be with them.”

Ugh, Junmyeon is the epitome of a perfect man. It had been a thought that was on your mind recently, although you knew your chances of meeting your soulmate was slim, there was always that chance.

“Thank you, Junmyeon. I feel the same way about you, you know.” With that, he nods in agreement before sticking a fork into the cheese, lifting it up to your lips. “Less talking about sad stuff now. Cheese?” With a smile, you comply with his offer and open your mouth.

The sun has long disappeared for the night and his friend, the moon, makes an appearance. Junmyeon is even more beautiful under the moonlight, if possible, laying on the blanket with his head resting on his arm as he admires the stars in the sky.

Dinner was amazing— Junmyeon never fails to impress. You have to thank Chanyeol’s soulmate later on for going back to him because if it wasn’t for their bonding, you would’ve never actually met him. The previous year had taken a toll on you; the constant traveling from Japan, China, and Korea was deteriorating your health that you’d spend most of time in your office. Junmyeon didn’t even meet you until about two months ago.

Your mind wanders off. Questions like: ‘how did Chanyeol meet his soulmate’ and ‘what stopped him from wanting to get to know the girl’ or ‘did any of your other friends meet their soulmate’ all flooded your head. You figured the night had been going so well you’d avoid the topic of soulmate and save those questions for another time. After what seemed like a moment, another inquiry lights a bulb over your head.

“Wait... we never talked about this before, but do you have a marking?”

“Of course,” He looks at you confusingly. “We all have markings.”

“But I never saw yours, and you never saw mine.” You clarify, and he nods at your statement. “Well, okay, yes, that’s true. Did you want to see it? Where’s yours?”

“On my hip-bone.” You respond, tugging down on the fabric at the hem of your shirt gingerly. Eyes bulging at your response, his body tenses. “What?”

Meticulously lifting the end of his shirt up, there’s a daisy that sits on his hip-bone and you finally understand why he’s giving you such a strange reaction. Mimicking his actions, you show him yours— a daisy.

#junmyeon #suho #junmyeon x reader #junmyeonxreader #suhoxreader #suho x reader #exofics #exo fic #exofanfic #exo fanfic #what else do i tag here hmmmmmmm....#gyukultfics #exo #kim junmyeon

149 notes · View notes

scripttorture · 4 years

Note

Hey! My character is made into an experiment by the government due to him having a supernatural ability. The one who handed him over was his partner, who has been a part of that organization all along. He is usually a very confident person, powerful and extroverted. I'm not sure how his mental state is supposed to change? I don't feel like the whole loosing their will to live and becoming incredibly depressed thing would fit him as a person. How could I still show that the torture effects him?

There isn’t a sure fire answer to how any one person will change when they’re tortured. We know the possible symptoms, but most people won’t experience every possible symptom and we don’t have a way to predict who gets what.

There’s a post that talks about the possible symptoms over here.

Here’s the thing though: there is a lot of variety in survivors, in the symptoms they get and the way they personally express those symptoms. Some people do become suicidal. Some people do become depressed. And some people do lose their faith in humanity.

But there is not one universal survivor experience.

This means that there’s a big range in realistic responses. It also means that as a writer you actually have a lot of options. You should be picking 3-5 symptoms from the list of possible options, but the list has 14 things on it and some of those things can manifest in multiple ways.

I think that, since we can’t predict symptoms, the best thing you can do as a writer is pick symptoms based on what you feel fits your character and story best.

Depression and suicidal thoughts don’t do that, so let’s have a look at some of the others.

Memory problems are incredibly common in real survivors and are almost never portrayed accurately in fiction. You can read about the four basic types here.

I’d really encourage you to use one of these if you feel it fits your story. They create a lot of interesting narrative challenges for the character and they can make for really good emotional/introspective moments. If for instance you want to explore self-doubt giving the character memories he later finds out are inaccurate could feed into that, leading to him questioning whether he ‘really’ was betrayed.

General forgetfulness (ie low level difficulty forming memories) can give the character a lasting disadvantage in everyday life, creating a much more traditional injury-recovery arc as he tries to find adaptions to this new normal.

Intrusive memories, when handled well, can help create a deeper connection between the reader and the character. Because it lets you create situations where the character’s mood flips in an instant, the other characters don’t understand why but the readers do.

Memory loss can be trickier, mostly because it’s rarely handled well in fiction. It doesn’t effect older memories, such as childhood memories, the person’s name etc. It almost never effects memories of torture itself. But it does effect other aspects of the time they’re held, the period prior to capture and sometimes a few weeks after release. It’s a distressing and disorientating experience and it’s a good pick if there’s any sort of investigation or prosecution.

Because memory problems (especially memory loss and inaccurate memories) are a big part of why torture trials are really hard to conduct. Having the character find that he doesn’t actually remember the crucial details and watching the process of people trying and failing to help him, that can be a really powerful addition. It’s also a good way to form a rift between him and his friends without depression or having him lose faith in others. It gives a reason for any distance between them, even if it’s an emotional rather then logical reason.

Read through the masterpost and really think about whether any of these memory problems could fit your story.

Narratively speaking memory problems don’t link the character’s personality but they do have a strong impact on plots and sub-plots. Memory loss, inaccurate memories and intrusive memories will all effect the character’s emotional arc and sense of self. They can also throw up barriers for the character.

He might be missing a couple of crucial details about his life before he was snatched. He might have some key details about how and where he was snatched wrong. Think about how those sorts of problems could feed into your plot, because they can add interesting conflicts and challenges.

Chronic pain is also incredibly common in torture survivors and it often doesn’t have a single cause. Back, muscular and joint pain are particularly common.

It can lead to a character seeming angry, unapproachable, anti-social or like they have a hair-trigger temper. It can also make it seem as though they have really bad mood swings or a short temper.

This can lead to interesting character moments as non-survivors struggle to empathise with an ‘asshole’ while the survivor is struggling to express the fact they’re in physical pain. It can also lead in to discussions of disability and the way we treat invisible disabilities in society.

It can also often be improved by, again, life style adjustments and sometime medication.

If you wanted to use addiction as a symptom then chronic pain is a common reason behind addiction in survivors. Essentially they start taking more and more powerful pain medications in order to try and feel ‘normal’.

Chronic pain doesn’t always lead to addiction though. Making good, consistent life style adjustments (using a mobility aid, being able to sit instead of having to stand for long periods and so on) can help keep pain at manageable levels allowing a healthy relationship with pain medication.

Insomnia is another really common symptom in survivors. This basically means the character is always at least slightly sleep deprived. Which has knock on effects on absolutely every part of a person’s life.

You can read about the effects of sleep deprivation here.

I’d suggest thinking carefully about what you need the character to do before using this one. It might sound counter intuitive but a character with disabling chronic pain is probably more capable of the occasional bout of superheroics then a chronically sleep deprived character is.

Insomnia caused by mental illness is also notoriously difficult to treat. Medication for the mental health problems survivors tend to have makes it harder to sleep and reduces the quality of sleep. Medication to ‘make’ people sleep often decreases the quality of sleep, when it works. It does not work for everyone.

Essentially don’t treat insomnia as an ‘easy’ option with less impact on the character. It impacts every part of a person’s life, making them more likely to get sick, slower to react, more emotionally volatile and less able to learn/remember everything.

There are so many things that insomnia effects that- well I find it easiest to think of it as a permanent lowering of ability across all categories. This does not mean that a character automatically becomes incapable of things; it means they are worse at them then they were before.

If they were already really good at something then other people might not notice the difference. But the character himself will. Which can have a knock on effect on self esteem.

Any of the things I’ve mentioned can result in social isolation. Because survivors can come across as aggressive, volatile and inconsiderate which can lead to people… avoiding them. Especially when other characters don’t have a good understanding of mental illness or experience dealing with trauma survivors. (Having said that, remember that a pretty significant proportion of the population experiences mental health problems at some point in their life. Think about how likely experience vs ignorance is, rather then assuming one or the other.)

Isolation exacerbates pre-existing mental health problems.

And any combination of the above symptoms make up the frame work of any long term personality change. For instance you describe this character as confident and capable: if he gets multiple forms of memory problems does that impact his confidence in certain areas? And if it does how does he cope with that? It could be by expressing his self-doubt but it could also be by taking a more passive role within a group, letting others take the lead instead of stepping in.

I have an old ask over here that goes through how I pick symptoms for a character and how I vary them depending on the sort of plot I have in mind.

Wrapping up, I think that we make these symptoms individual when we consider how the symptoms interact and what that means for the character.

Depression does not have to mean someone looks overtly miserable. It can look like nausea, like struggling to eat and sleep, like being quieter in social situations. It can feel like going through life disconnected from the world, not so much the presence of misery as the absence of joy.

You’ve listed these characteristics; confidence, power, extroverted and survivors can hold on to all those things. As always the central point is nuance. Because that confidence probably won’t be completely unshaken anymore, that extroversion might not be effortless anymore, his relationship with that power could change.

The character might have developed a lot of self doubt and, though it’s a struggle, continue to make firm ‘confident’ decisions because he feels that’s important either to himself or to everyone else. It could be a way of him showing that he’s still ‘strong’, that he survived, that he can still support the other characters.

The character could still be extroverted and depending on the symptoms you pick socialising might be harder, it could take up more energy. He might be hiding the cost from his friends. Or, another common way it plays out, is that he could just come across as… a lot more inappropriate: making dark ‘jokes’ that non-survivors don’t find funny, having obvious mood swings that make others uncomfortable. You get the idea.

Torture does change people. But those changes are unpredictable and they often don’t look like we expect.

Our fiction often tries to use depression and suicidal ideation as an excuse to turn survivors into passive objects. They are not.

One of the things that stood out to me the more I looked at prominent survivors was anger. Because yes, despair is possible, common even. But so is spite and vitriol and rage. So is determination.

There is more then one way to be powerful. Confidence does not need to be unshakable to be real.

In essence: you are aiming for an understandable change in what is already there, not an excision of the characteristics you’ve already established.

As a final note you might want to take a look at the masterposts I have on medical experiments (which you can find here and also here.) It’s worth deciding whether you want to show unethical but genuine experiments, or torture. You can have a look through the tags on unethical experimentation and pseudo-scientific torture for more information.

I hope that helps. :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#writing advice #tw torture #tw medical abuse #writing survivors #writing recovery #tw suicide #effects of torture #torture and memory #chronic pain #insomnia #choosing symptoms #writing symptoms #unethical experimentation #pseudo scientific torture #fantasy ask

75 notes · View notes

libermachinae · 3 years

Text

Fault Lines Under the Living Room

Part III: Watch - Chapter 8: Registered Purple

Also available on AO3 Chapter Summary: Drift thinks he has the situation on Vitrious handled when he receives unexpected support. Chapter Word Count: 3134

---

Wing had taught him a mantra.

Many mantras, in fact, a few glyphs composed to hold him to the path of redemption and humility, charity and strength. Most he had deleted moments after being taught, having witnessed by then the intangible, transient nature of words, but this one he’d kept. He had never recited Wing’s version in full, his bastardization of the lines one of the few acts of rebellion he could get away with, but like most of the training he had received in Crystal City, he had discarded the substance and retained the structure.

In the years since, he had modified it as his circumstances changed and his path wound out of sight. Its recitation had proven one successful method to ground himself, so he focused now on the words, the shape of the glyphs against his thoughts.

My name is Drift.

He dodged behind a pillar as the spot he had been standing on exploded, a hail of blasterfire igniting the organic soil in his wake. The shots followed him, peppering his defenses, and he knew he had only a moment before the porous material gave way.

I’m not an Autobot.

He ducked, rolled, and unfurled into a sprint out the other side. Grit’s crew hesitated, their aim swinging wide before locking onto their target, giving him enough time to dive behind a larger building, a step closer to the cliff wall the city backed into. A lucky shot clipped his shoulder pauldron, sending him stumbling, but he was back behind cover before they could follow it up with a more decisive blow.

I’m not a Decepticon, either.

He pressed his back to the wall and waited for the barrage to let up. Rogue Decepticons tended to go heavy on ammo and light on fuel and medical supplies, but even Deathsaurus’ storage capacity was limited, and these runaways had nothing on that mammoth. The shots eventually petered out, replaced by footsteps.

“That’s it? You think you can just sabotage my operation and run?”

Drift’s spark burned at the reminder of Grit’s business on this planet: non-aligned organic labor procurement. Slave trade. They did not deserve their Deceptibrands, to count themselves among a movement that had fought for freedom. It was an effort to remind himself that he had already been stripped of his badge and was no longer obligated to defend it, and further effort to convince himself, again, that the symbol no longer represented the ideals he had sworn himself to. The people of Vitrious, they were the ones who needed his anger right now. Not a long-dead dream.

He braced his hands against the ground.

What I am is in trouble.

Drift sprung as the muzzle of a pistol appeared around the corner. Pushing off, he lobbed himself over the wall, onto the roof. Two strides and he landed on the other side, crouching to absorb the impact. He was up and sprinting again before Grit could register which way he had gone.

He was looking for an opportunity to catch one on their own, but the trio stuck together and moved as a unit. Hoping he might force them to spread out, Drift jumped for a narrow ledge, sacrificing a moment of vulnerability for the sake of speed. From his new vantage point, he spotted the pier. He considered it, adjusting his plans.

I’m also—

His thoughts were cut short by the roar of a shuttle’s engine.

Drift leapt from the wall and landed back on the rubble strewn street. Not as maneuverable, but like Pit he was going to stay up top to be fried by Grit’s reinforcements. Or the Galactic Council executive force, come to cleanse this system of its Cybertronian problem. He kept moving with his head down, not wasting the seconds it would have taken to look up and confirm. Either presence meant things were about to get complicated.

He stole into an alley just as heavy artillery formed the percussion over the engine’s bass with the Decepticons on vocals, the onslaught driving them to panicked shouting. Galactic Council, then, Drift reasoned. Decepticons gave each other a chance to posture before they started blasting.

Drift’s opinion on the Galactic Council was complicated. He trusted their judiciary system, insofar as he doubted there was anything better. Certainly not where his own kind was concerned. Cybertronians had failed at holding each other accountable for their crimes, given that judge, jury, and prosecution tended to be guilty of actions one step removed from those of the defendant. Their shared history had resulted in societal biases, and while Bumblebee and his enemies might have been trying to reestablish their sense of justice to one another, there yet remained a galaxy of people who did not have the luxury to wait for Cybertronians to realize they were incapable of convicting themselves. The victims of their atrocities deserved control over their justice, and the Galactic Council courts had structures and precedent to provide it.

Galactic Council defense squads operated on a precedent of eliminating Cybertronian threats at any cost. Its structures included battle cruisers, drone swarms, and mobile tactical arrays. They were not lawless entities, but they had been granted all necessary privileges to apprehend those who were, and had, in Drift’s opinion, become that which they had been commissioned to destroy. A single recon squad versus a handful of desperate rogue Decepticons could level a minor metropolitan neighborhood, and most of their standoffs occurred in locations with significantly less infrastructure than that. Drift never called the Council before all combat capable Cybertronians were subdued and removed from vulnerable areas, because otherwise it almost always ended up like the nightmare scenario he was now racing toward.

His priority trees reoriented: he had to get the fight out of the city. He remapped his route and updated acrobatic and combat protocols, shifting stealth to standby. His plating flared out to catch the sun as his pauldrons relaxed, swaying with each step to create a blinking effect. He revved his engine and pushed it into a lower gear, opting for more power, and drew his swords, using them to add volume to his movements as he jumped and spun, landing mid-stride on a roof.

That his optics registered purple when he looked up did not disrupt his momentum and only barely adjusted his plans. A rival group, here for their share of the cube, would be less likely to kill potential merchandise but have no qualms about murdering Grit before the Retins could serve their own justice.

Drift charged forward, up onto a ledge and then across, rooftop to rooftop. The newcomers were staying high and playing cautious, likely because their ship was more transport shuttle than combat vehicle. Offensive capabilities amounted to a single turret lowered from the underside of the ship, but the rapid-fire machine gun was much more intimidating than Grit’s shotgun and his team’s pistols. They were returning fire, but their shots angled wide or fizzled out before they breached the hull, the few that left a pockmark of warped metal the only reason Drift’s acrobatic leaps had yet to gain him any attention.

He got a foothold in the battered outer wall of a tower and launched himself up, arm outstretched. He caught a ledge and propelled himself further, calculating his trajectory in the split seconds he spent with hand or pede on the wall. Up, higher, he flung himself, until he was brushing the sky with his fingertips, brought high by the weight of his frame.

With one final leap, he reached the peak.

From here, the shuttle was still above him, but close enough that he could have seen into the cockpit, had he the time to adjust his lenses that much. Instead, he bent to one knee and retrieved a throwing knife from his lower leg. He pulled his arm back, lining up a shot at the central forward end of the viewshield, approximately where he remembered the pilot’s seat to be. He doubted it would penetrate, but maybe the noise would—

His comm buzzed.

He startled, losing his aim, at the assault of static from a component that had gone too long without use. It was not white noise, though: it peaked and valleyed, following the pattern of speech, until the sound coalesced into recognizable syllables, spoken by a familiar voice.

“Drift, it’s us.”

He almost dropped his knife.

“Ratchet?!”

“And Rodimus,” Ratchet said. “He wants me to say hi. He’d do it himself, but he’s focused on those guys that were giving you trouble.”

“Stop shooting!” There would be explanations later; he had come up here with a purpose, and despite his brief shock, he had not forgotten it. “The Retins are still down there.”

“Got it.”

The turret stopped firing, though it remained engaged and ready, staring down at Grit where he and his crew had been backed into a corner. Their shouting turn to celebratory whoops, assuming their enemies had run out of ammo, and their own assault gained a new vigor as they pressed their assumed advantage.

“No guns,” Rodimus agreed as he joined the channel. “What do we do about them?”

“I’m taking care of it,.” Drift stooped to slot his knife back in, using the familiar motion to calm his scrambled thoughts.

“How do we help?” Ratchet asked.

“By staying out of the way.” He stood and jumped, scaling down the tower pede over hand a fraction faster than he had ascended it. He landed in a roll on the ground, stealth programs back online, and made his way in the direction of Grit’s shouting. There was more rubble the closer he came to the center of town, chunks of walls that had been blown out and shards of glass, and he focused on keeping his movements light and quick, hard to trace as he came closer to listening audials.

“Decepticon ship, fragging answer me,” Grit demanded from around a corner. Drift stilled; he stalled his fans and dropped his engine. “You have some nerve, showing up here without an ident. Who do you think you’re gonna fool, a colorblind Autobot?”

“50 shanix that jerk is dead,” one of the others said. They had stopped shooting.

“What’s the point?” the third asked. “You saw him jumping all over the place like a flashy piece of target practice. I could’ve blasted him myself with my aiming module offline.”

“Just not with your blaster fully loaded, huh?”

“Screw stripper, you weren’t any better.”

“Decepticon shuttle, this is Grit of Polyhex. You’d better answer, or we’ll blast you out of—”

Drift whipped around the corner with an elbow aimed at the back of Grit’s head, where he should have found the exposed juncture between spinal strut and helm. Instead, he hit solid armor, and though Grit stumbled forward a couple steps it was nowhere near the complete freeze Drift had been banking on. He started to reach for a gun, so Drift knocked it away, then danced back as the others realized what was happening and started shooting.

Drift was back where he had started, in close quarters and surrounded. He cursed himself for not realizing how thick Grit’s plating would be while he dodged the incoming fire. He leaned to the side as he hopped out of the way, then back twice and behind a wall. They were following fast, though, he only had a couple seconds to—

“Incoming,” Ratchet warned, before the gunshot.

Drift looked up and saw the shuttle had descended, its hatch lowered with a familiar, flame-like beacon spilling out. Rodimus kneeled at the edge, an oversized Earth rifle perched on his shoulder.

He fired again, the gunshot accompanied this time by the sound of a solid matter bullet hitting plating. Drift peeked around just in time to see one of Grit’s grunts topple over backward with a dent in the front of his helm. Rodimus’ weapon didn’t puncture armor, but it packed enough power to put a bot in stasis.

“Got ‘im!” Rodimus shouted.

It was also concentrated enough to minimize the risk of collateral.

Drift sprung over his cover to the other Decepticon, who had just enough time to shout, “Hey, that’s an Auto—” before a sharp blow with the heel of his hand knocked him back. The Con automatically reached up to his face and Drift took the opportunity to sweep his legs out from under him, ending with a firm kick to the helm that put him out as well.

Grit was alone, swinging his gun between two targets. Drift withdrew his sword as he stepped forward, mindful of the gun but not scared of it.

“Should I shoot him?” Rodimus asked. Drift held up his hand, wait.

“That was a scummy trick,” Grit growled, finger starting to squeeze around the trigger.

Drift moved. Grit fired and he felt the plasma burn the air past his audial, but then he was in front of his assailant, sword pressed to the fuel lines in his neck.

“This was barely a trick,” he said. “Now, enslaving people? That seems pretty ‘scummy’ to me.”

Grit glared at him, optics fritzing. He glanced at the sword, then the gun in his hand.

“You should drop it!” Rodimus called down. “Drift takes things like disarming literally!”

Grit glanced at Rodimus, realized his mistake, and looked back at Drift. Miraculously, his lapse in judgment did not result in getting his head cut off, and that realization seemed to be what forced him to stand down. His optics settled into a steady glow and he set the safety on his gun before dropping it. Drift waited for the clatter before he retrieved his cuffs and fastened them around Grit’s wrists.

“What’s the plan now?” Rodimus asked as Drift set to cuffing the other two. He was surprised the others had not dropped into the fray. Ratchet had the excuse of being confined to the cockpit, but it seemed exactly like the kind of dramatic entrance Rodimus preferred.

Something wasn’t right.

“Same as before,” Drift said. “I take these three to the authorities and we leave the citizens of Vitrious alone.”

“Want us to watch these three while you go get it?” Ratchet asked.

Drift paused snapping on the last pair of cuffs to swivel and side-eye the shuttle.

“Uh, no,” he said. “You do realize how sus that sounds, right? I've had no one but rogue Decepticons for company for," he realized he had no idea how long he'd been out here, "a while, and that’s still the second sketchiest offer I've been made.” He glanced at Rodimus, and this time zoomed in. His face was pinched, frame stiff with tension. “What’s going on?”

He was not looking for an answer, though, his processor already generating the scenario and inserting it into his queue like it was fact. It laid out the team: a back-alley medic could retune a vocalizer, a gifted outlier could copy a frame, and enough living people were owed vengeance against Deadlock to fund the venture. Well honed instincts had him standing up, hands moving to clasp the hilts of his swords.

“We’re here for you,” Rodimus said.

“Then get down here.”

Rodimus stared at Drift. He set the rifle down behind him, at the top of the hatch, but he made no move to disembark, nor did Ratchet lower them to the open street.

“Why are you here?” Drift demanded.

“It’s complicated,” Ratchet and Rodimus said simultaneously, and Drift bristled. He drew his swords and put himself in front of the prone Decepticons, senses cast outward in case this proved to be a distraction.

“Whatever business you have with me, fine, we can deal with,” he said, “but that’s personal. You’re going to leave these bots and this planet alone.”

“Fraggit, of all the lousy—we’re not here to hurt anyone, Drift,” the voice that sounded like Ratchet’s said. “Least of all you.”

The tips of Drift’s swords came up as his grip tightened.

“We need your help,” Rodimus said. “Have you ever heard of the Enigma of Combination?”

Drift’s guard did not waver, but he combed through his archives for anything relevant and was surprised when several files were flagged. Those were old memories, from well before he had joined Turmoil’s squad: a decade in which his service was turned over to Shockwave to act as a research assistant. Test subject might have been a more accurate term, but since he had been designated Subject A and assigned to pull the trigger, Deadlock had stuck around long enough to earn a more permanent title.

Shockwave never mentioned the Enigma outright. Deadlock discovered it while flipping through research materials, trying to pass the boring period between trials, a few entertaining horror stories hidden within the precise jargon. Long lost and, he had assumed, made up.

“Where did you hear about that?” Any potential impersonator could flip through a copy of the Lost Light Insider and gather he had history with Ratchet and Rodimus, but these details were top secret, and he doubted Shockwave cared enough about Subject A to send experienced hitmen after him.

“It’s an ancient artifact, from what we’ve heard,” Ratchet said. “It’s…”

“It’s weird,” Rodimus said, glancing toward the cockpit.

“We have it onboard.”

Drift sheathed his sword, though he kept his position in front of Grit.

“You didn’t—”

“It’s complicated,” they repeated.

“Frag,” Ratchet swore.

The story was outlandish and the circumstances suspect, and Drift’s logic centers were trying to work through his complex feelings even as he shoved them down. It meant something, that the latest reminder of his old life came in the form of these two bot specifically. There was a story here, and it seemed he was intended to hear it.

He glanced at the Decepticons, then back at the ship.

“There’s a clearing west of the city,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere else. I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay,” Rodimus said. “Will you be alright with those guys?”

“Yes.” He turned his back on Rodimus and finished clamping on the last set of cuffs, focusing on keeping his hands gentle while he handled the unconscious prisoner. The other was starting to stir, and Drift debated whether it would be easier to let him wake up or put him back into stasis.

“We’ll see you there, then,” Ratchet said.

They waited to leave until Drift was standing again, one body lugged over his shoulder and the other supported with an arm around his back, Grit walking out in front of them. He heard the raise, then the engines fire, and the shuttle gently peeled away from the city. Drift watched it to confirm its direction before he grunted to Grit to start moving.

“Fraggin’ Autobots,” Grit muttered. Drift was inclined to agree.

#maccadam #transformers #ratchet #rodimus #drift #dratchrod #my writing #fault lines #longfic #ghhh it took a while but we MADE IT

7 notes · View notes

supernaturallyobsessedchic · 4 years

Text

7 Days to Die - Part 3

Escape

Pairing: Jensen x Reader

Warnings: Language, mentions of cannibalism, blood, SPN level gore, I’m making non-con poking around a women's “area” a thing, consider it a warning, violence, nightmares, night-time cuddles (fluff).

Word Count: 2,926

Main Masterlist

7 Days to Die Masterlist

Mobile Masterlist

Summary: After traveling all day, the reader gets physically exhausted and suggests to rest up in a nearby house. They are in for a fight for their lives, and need to escape.

They walked down the long dirt path, winding and turning, changing from dirt to gravel. Silent, yet the occasional distant gunfire.

“So,” Y/N begins.

“Y/N, sweetheart, I’m sorry but I’m not in the mood to talk.” Jensen says. Shoulders slumped, as he still works through his friend’s death.

“I know, it’s just so quiet I feel like I’m gonna lose my mind.” She says. “We gotta talk, lighten up the mood somehow.” She adds.

He sighs. “What do you wanna talk about?” he asks. Giving in.

“I want to learn more about the camp. Are there more jobs than the ones you and Jared talked about? Are there schools? What do you do?” she asks.

“There are schools, like we said a lot of us had to step into these roles, learning as we went.” He explains simply.

“How was the family? When you last seen them, I mean.” She asks.

“Well, kind of hard to determine when they’re sick. We’re going through a sickness of some kind at the camp. That’s why Jared and I were in that town, we were scavenging in pharmacies, and finding some hard-core meds for them.” He explains. “Danneel and the kids aren’t doing too hot. Fever, chills, worse than the flu.” He adds.

“Let’s scavenge more while we’re heading back. Maybe we’ll find something.” She says.

“I’m planning on it, but I haven’t seen much, other than the occasional military checkpoints that are now abandoned and wiped clean.” He says.

“Let’s set up camp then, look at that map of yours and see if we can’t find checkpoints.” She says.

“My map doesn’t have checkpoints on them.” Jensen states.

“No, but mine does.” She says. Pulling her map out of her backpacks side pouch.

“You’re just now mentioning this?” Jensen asked.

“Didn’t know why you’re scavenging. But I’m mentioning now.” She says.

“Well we still got a ways till the next hold out of ours. We’ll head there, map out our next move and plan on scavenging tomorrow.” He says.

“Sounds like a plan stan.” She says with a smile.

Sun was starting to set, a light rumble of thunder heard in the distance can be heard. Even a flash lighting up the forest.

“Jay, are we almost there, my legs are shaking.” Y/N whined. He lifts the map up to see how far they were.

“Shit, we still got a few miles yet, but we’re close.” He says. Stretching his legs, a bit, he was getting tired too.

“But there’s a mansion right there, let’s just head there.” She says pointing to a large house like mansion. Similar looking to the house in Home Alone or even Achilles’s house in Assassin’s Creed III.

But her knees decided to give out at her weight. Jensen heard the thud of her hitting the ground, hurries to her side, wrapping an arm around her, helping to lift her up to her feet. Leaning against him, in his side she tries to walk.

“Alright, we’ll head to the mansion, rest up but we got to head to the hold out, never know who could be occupying these places.” Jensen says, helping her to the mansion.

They get to the door; it was as if there was someone waiting on them. As they ascended the stairs the main entrance opened.

An old lady, definite grey hairs peppered in her old styled bun. She dressed out of time, dressed like it was colonial times.

“Oh, lovely, a lost couple.” She says, wiping her hands on her apron on her dress. A pretty blue dress with a white apron at her waist. “You are more than welcome to stay.” She adds.

“We’re just gonna rest up for a bit.” Jensen says.

“That’s fine dearie, dinner’s in the oven, you two can freshen up in my guest bedroom.” She says. Letting them in. On cue for the storm to let out a down pour. She gazed up at the sky from the door, despite the porch being there. “And just in time too.” She adds.

“Yeah.” Jensen agrees.

“Follow me, I’ll show you to your room.” She says.

“Wait, she said couple when we walked up,” Y/N says.

“Oh, we’re not a couple, just acquaintances.” Jensen says.

“Oh don’t fuss honey, I know a couple when I see one.” She says.

“She needs her eyes checked then.” Y/N whispered. Jensen holding back a chuckle.

They head up some more stairs and she leads them into a very large room. Filled with a large bed, a small couch, and even a bathroom.

“I’ll leave you be; dinner will be ready around 7.” She says. And heads down the stairs.

“I have a bad vibe about this place.” Y/N says.

“Me too, just sit, rest up. I’ll shower real quick. If your up to it, I want you to shower too. And we’ll be out of her hair.” He says.

“I like that plan.” She says.

Jensen sets her on the bed, Y/N rubs her legs to relax the muscles a bit and help blood flow.

Sounds of footsteps could be heard climbing the stairs, an old man in a butler suit stood at the door.

“If the mister and misses are ready, the mistress would like you to join her in the sitting room.” He says. Even his voice sounded aged, he looked older than the old lady, but tall and slender.

“In a minute, he’s just now getting in the shower.” She told him.

“Very well.” The butler says before bowing his head before leaving.

This is too strange. She thought.

She continued to massage her legs to soothe the ache from them.

She heard the shower shut off, and moments later a refreshed Jensen left the bathroom.

“She must be relying on a water tank or well, because I lost the hot water through that.” He said, looking relaxed.

“At least you look better, more relaxed.” She said.

He smiled, seeing a hint of a bright pink on his cheeks.

I made him blush. She thought with a giggle.

“She wants us with her in the sitting room, she sent a butler.” Y/N says getting up on more stable legs.

“Feeling better yourself by the looks of it.” he comments.

“Yeah, just needed to sit and massage my legs a bit.” She says.

They exited the room and descended down the elegant stairs to find the butler near her in a sitting room.

“You cleaned up so well.” She says as they entered.

“Thanks.” Jensen says.

“Just needed company or something?” Y/N asked kindly.

“Yes, an old lady like myself living out here all by her lonesome, it can feel really lonely out here.” She says.

“What’s your name?” Jensen asked.

“Gretchen.” She answered.

“Gretchen, you did well with the upkeep of this house.” Jensen commented.

“Thank you.” She says. “Please, have some tea.” She offers.

Y/N and Jensen pick up the cups full of the amber colored drinks. Taking small sips.

“And might I ask what your names are?” she asked.

“I’m Jensen Ackles.” Jensen introduced.

“And I’m Y/N Y/L/N.” She introduces.

“Y/N, well, that’s a very pretty name.” she says.

Before they know it they finished their teas. But Y/N was the first to feel something.

“You okay Y/N?” Jensen asked.

“I feel, funny.” She says, blinking a few times to adjust her eyes.

Jensen slowly felt similar effects. Growing drowsy, the both of them.

“What’d you put in our tea lady?” Jensen asked.

“You’ve been traveling a long way; you need to relax.” She said mischievously.

Y/N slumped back into the couch, passed out, Jensen fell at his side, landing in Y/N’s lap. Passed out as well.

“Tommy, take them to the lab. I’m sure Herbert will want to see if we can harvest them.” She says.

The tall old butler doing as told.

Jensen woke in a strange place, feeling woozy and funny. Shaking his head to shake the feeling away as best he could he gets up. Y/N did the same.

As they wake up more, they’re not in the same cell. An empty cell separated them.

“Y/N, you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, freaked out. But yeah.” She answers.

A slight pause.

“I told you I had bad vibes from that woman.” She hissed.

“I know. Old people, they’re easy to fool us like that. Because we always think of them as vulnerable.” He says.

“Not entirely true, sample A, the crazy Gretchen lady.” Y/N said. “God, it was my stupid idea to come here.” She begins to panic.

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up. You didn’t know it was occupied.” Jensen says trying to lift her spirits.

Footsteps interrupted them, and there stood a fat old man. Bald, wore the white lab coat with black rubber gloves up to his forearms. And wore old style goggles. He looked like a mad scientist.

“Women, frail looking yet strong.” He says. Accent matching to any mad scientist. German.

“Excuse me!” Y/N says, offended.

And the scientist moves to look at Jensen.

“Nice healthy build.” He says.

Pacing between Jensen and Y/N, he decides on his next subject.

“Let’s have a look at you.” He says pointing at Y/N.

Terror filled Y/N. What was he going to do to her?

A big assistant, god awful looking. Covered in scars, burns, stitches, no eyelids or lips, hideous long claws. Big, strong, borderline overweight and muscular. He was let into her cell for him to lift over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry to the scientists lab and table.

She screams and fights him as hard as she could, but it didn’t faze him.

“No!” Jensen shouts. Yanking at his cells door. “Y/N!” he shouts.

“Jensen!” she shouts back.

I lost Jared and now I’m gonna lose her. Jensen thought. As he tries to find a way to escape, with tears threatening to escape.

He hears the first of her screams of pain. The screams thrashed her throat.

Jensen yanked his cell doors again, and noticed it giving.

He looks at the frame, it’s rusted. Rusted bolts, that should hold it in place in the threshold.

“Keep at it, I’ll break free.” Jensen says, as he continued to yank at his door. Harder. And harder.

The screams got louder. He yanked harder. Then the crack and snap of rusted metal. His door fell out of the threshold and his hands. Out of his cell he looks around him, he needs a weapon to take on that big fucking guy.

Finding a machete on the nearby tool table in a room adjacent from Y/N’s cell she was in.

“Hang in there kiddo, please be alive when I get there.” He prayed.

She was stripped down to nothing, covered in cuts, some deep and gushing blood darker than red. Laid on a vertical table.

She shook against her restraints as he worked at her in her sensitive areas. One of the areas being between her legs.

“Still fertile, that’s good.” The scientist says as he stood up. Holding up makeshift tools to do a PAP smear.

“Little pig!” was heard behind Jensen.

Instinctively, he swung his machete high, hiding the big fucking guy in the neck. Severing arteries, the big guy bled out, falling to his knees.

Jensen quickly turned his attention back to Y/N. And she was alone.

Where is he? He thought.

He hurries to her.

“Hey, talk to me sweetheart. You okay?” he asks.

“I’m still alive, if that’s what your asking.” She groaned, panting. The amount of pain she endured in that short period of time was enough.

“Okay, we don’t have time to find your clothes, we need to get you out of here.” He says.

“Okay.” She agrees.

He works at her bindings. Getting her hands free.

“Behind you!” she shouts.

Jensen takes his machete to swing high at head height again, but the scientist ducked, and with a short blade, stabs Jensen’s side.

Jensen let out a grunt from the pain.

“NO!” Y/N shouts.

“Can’t have you leave just yet, you’re the main course.” He says.

Cannibals, these people eat people! Y/N thought. As she worked to get her feet free.

“Yeah well,” Jensen begins. Taking his machete stabbing the scientist in the chest. “We aren’t hungry.” He says.

The scientist drops dead. Jensen withdrawing the blade.

“Herbert?” the old lady called out.

Jensen was growing annoyed.

“I won’t be offended if you just killed her out right, I mean she did drug us for this.” Y/N said.

“Agreed.” Jensen says.

“NO!” the old lady screamed when she saw them escaping.

The sound of a chainsaw filled them with pure fear. Nightmares come true.

“She’s got a chainsaw!” Y/N shouts.

Jensen turns, dodging her swings of the power saw. Y/N manages to get her feet fully free and she slides off the vertical table.

The lady cackled like a witch as she tried to take Jensen out.

Despite her pain, she managed to find a knife, very sizable. It was shorter than a machete but longer than your typical tactical knife. She grabs it and with the witch’s back turned Y/N slashes the back of her neck. The witch flinches at the pain, swinging the chainsaw at Y/N. Y/N ducks, missing the attack. And stabs the witch under her chin. Seeing the tip of the blade go through her head.

Withdrawing the blade the old lady drops dead.

“I hope that butler don’t put up a fight.” Jensen says panting.

“Same.” Y/N says.

They managed to escape the lab, with no further fighting. Jensen setting aside some of his clothes for Y/N. And utilizing the old hags medical tools, Jensen was able to patch Y/N up, and she patched Jensen up as well.

“I still blame myself; I mean all of this would have been avoided if I just toughened up and walked a few more miles.” She says as she stitched up his side.

“Well don’t. I don’t blame you.” Jensen says.

They sat in silence as she finished stitching him up.

“I’m just glad the butler didn’t put up a fight.” She says.

“Right, for an old lady she really put up a fight. I was getting tired.” Jensen says.

“Well, either the sun’s rising or setting, we haven’t eaten. Running on adrenaline alone can only give you so much energy.” Y/N says.

She wraps a bandage around his torso, also holding down a gauze in place to apply some pressure to the wound. Taping it down with a light tap.

“Your set though.” She says.

“Not a bad job, better than Jared. Either too tight or too loose the man couldn’t figure it out.” He says.

“I don’t blame him; I mean he’s patching up his best friend who’s like a brother to him.” She says. “I wouldn’t want to make it worse or even have it be not enough.” She adds.

“Yeah.” Jensen says, agreeing.

“Do we hide out here, or head to your hold out?” She asked.

“This place, though it looks nice. It freaks me out, after what we’ve been through.” He says.

“I agree.” She says.

“Let’s hit it.” He says, grabbing his pack. And she grabbed hers, along with Jared’s old one that held the medical supplies they managed to loot earlier. Escaping, more like walking out, with their lives.

On their short walk, Jensen wraps an comforting arm around her shoulders, holding her close. She leaned into his side as they walked. Feeling safe. Jensen getting a fire going in the cabins fireplace, like he does at every cabin. She crashes on the couch.

“Why do you always sleep on the couch?” Jensen asks. “There is a bed in the hallway you can crash in, I bet your back will thank you.” He says.

“The last cabin I crashed at; the bed was…gross. Covered in a wet dust, smelled of mold and mildew.” She says.

“These cabins we stay in, Jared and I stayed in them in the past. We’ve cleaned up each time. And they’re cabins we always crash at on hunts. Come on, go to bed.” Jensen says, taking her hand, guiding her to a room that had two full beds.

“I mean they do look clean.” She says with a shrug.

“They are.” Jensen says. “Sleep. I’ll be in, in a minute, got to look around, make sure we don’t get jumped in the night.” He says.

“Okay.” She says with a yawn.

It was a while that he was out putting the zombie blood painted border to keep walkers away, but he managed to make sure they’re safe. As he reenters the cabin he hears a cry.

“Jensen!” it was Y/N, she was crying out his name.

“Y/N!” Jensen shouts back.

Enters the bedroom to find her in bed, completely fine. But her face, showing signs she’s in the midst of a very bad nightmare.

“No, not him!” she shouts. She writhes, cringing at whatever horrible vision she was seeing.

“Hey, hey, sweetheart, I’m right here.” He says, sitting at her side on her bed.

It’s like she can sense him there. She tosses and turns toward him, trying to cling to him.

It’s settled, I’m sleeping with her. He thought.

He takes his boots off, dressing in comfortable bottoms, still in his t-shirt he climbs in her bed. Brings her into his chest, cuddling her. Feeling her tremble under him, he holds her tight. Whispering in her ear she’s fine, he’s fine. They’re all okay.

She eventually stopped, and relaxed. As did he, letting sleep take him.

Keep the feedback coming, What do you think? Favorite part? Was it too scary? Or not scary enough? Comment or ask to let me know what you think so far. :)

Copying and reposting someone else’s content is plagiarism and illegal. This work is property of supernaturallyobsessedchic. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. These works contain material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of these works may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. An electronic reference link to the original posted work may be provided for purposes of promotion or assistance of publication by the readers discretion, if proper credits are given to the author in the re-post. 10/14/2020

Jensen Tags:

@luci-in-trenchcoats, @supernatural-jackles, @becs-bunker, @mlovesstories, @winchesters-favorite-girl, @backseat-of-deans-67chevy, @salt-n-burn-em-all, @moonlight-on-her-skin

22 notes · View notes