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exeggcute · 11 months

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the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators; reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

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lexyeevee · 11 months

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it's wild to see myhouse having escaped the orbit of Doom People, because so much of it specifically riffs on doom in a way that is laser-targeted at Doom People, to the point that i just wouldn't have expected it to be nearly as interesting if you don't pick up on that stuff

right from the outset, "my house" is even a recognizable genre, because doom was among the first approachable platforms for creating a 3D space, and if you give random people the ability to create a 3D space then many of them will just try to recreate their own house. (i want to say jp lebreton even made an effort to play through every house map on the idgames archive at one point, though hell if i can find it now.) there was in fact already a "myhouse.wad", from 1995!

frankly it's incredible that someone (or someones) put so much effort into this map and then had the gall to simply post it on doomworld as "myhouse.wad", because that is a thread title that guarantees the fewest possible people will bother to look. there are posts in the thread where people outright admit that they only checked because they were surprised how many replies a "my house" wad got.

so anyway, okay, the "classic" doom wad experience is that you download a wad, it contains exactly 1 map, and it has zero custom textures or music or other frills. most wads from the 90s are like this; if you're lucky you might get a bad midi rendition of a metallica song. nowadays there are texture artists and musicians and everything collaborating on full map packs, but "just a map" is still kind of the default mapping experience and is recognizable to anyone who's been around doom for sufficiently long.

and myhouse riffs on absolutely every aspect of this:

• the music is the MAP01 music, Running From Evil, which is just the music you get if you supply your own map in the MAP01 slot and do nothing else. so a ton of 90s maps had this same track as their background music, so everyone has heard it a zillion times. it is ingrained into so many people's skulls. subtly fucking with it is a great way to fuck with the player

• the house uses only stock doom 2 textures, or occasionally light modifications of them. again this is just what you get if you make a map and don't supply any other resources, so the stock textures are very familiar. only later, with sufficient poking around, does the map introduce new textures, which really help sell the impression of being swept away to Somewhere Else

• if you take the exit, you go to MAP02, Underhalls. this is the expected experience because doom wads replace what's already there — you're not really supplying a "new map pack" or anything, you're overwriting a map from the original doom 2 progression. (there are ways to fiddle with this now, but in vanilla doom 2, the level progression was hardcoded.) so the "ending" of a no-frills single-map wad is always, always to transition to Underhalls. the opening shot of Underhalls is practically like seeing the credits. so roping Underhalls into the experience is completely unexpected, because Underhalls is the sign that you've escaped back to regular doom

• the super shotgun is "hidden" in Underhalls, in probably the best-known super shotgun location in the whole game, because it's the first time you can get it

• incidentally Underhalls itself feels uncanny, because the player camera height is higher than usual to make the house's proportions feel sensible. (part of the trouble with exact recreations of real spaces in doom is that the camera is weirdly low.) i was actually convinced that myhouse included a modified Underhalls, but no, it's stock doom 2 Underhalls, it just feels off when you're slightly taller

but wait, there's more

• silent teleporters are a feature from boom, a very early doom derivative that added a number of helpful mapping features and is basically considered only half a step beyond vanilla. so shifting between two versions of a space without interruption isn't completely unexpected. it's only later that the portal use becomes more obvious

• although if you're especially canny, you should notice that the second version of the house shows both the upstairs and downstairs windows in full, which is impossible — doom cannot do room-over-room. (in fact this is accomplished with a semi-obscure zdoom feature called sector portals — essentially, the whole second floor and the space outside it are a separate area, and the "ceiling" of the yard becomes a view up through the "floor" of that second space.)

• swinging doors are a hexen feature (polyobjects) that gzdoom inherited. (heretic and hexen were modifications of the doom engine, and zdoom started out as a merge of all three codebases into something that could play all three games.) they might also be in other fancy engines (eternity?), but they are very distinctly not a doom thing. if you're deeply familiar with doom's limitations then they'll jump out at you immediately, but if you're looking at doom like it's any old 3D game then maybe not so much

• recreations of other humble real-world locales are also a somewhat common theme, and remind me in particular of Doom City, from way back in 1995

• a very common desire for players is to "uv-max" a map, i.e. reach the exit on ultra-violence with 100% kills and secrets. if you can't do this, the map is (reasonably) considered broken. it is comically impossible to do this in myhouse, and anyone with the skill to create the map would be acutely aware of this

• the extra weapon frames look to be borrowed from the well-known smooth doom, which adds extra frames for everything and is just pretty dang slick overall. so it's not merely "ho ho, got you, smoother weapons" but specific integration of another familiar project

• this might be reaching a bit, but mirrors are specifically a nightmare in zdoom's software renderer because they work by rendering all visible geometry as if it were physically present on the other side of the mirror — and if there be any actual geometry back there, it will also get rendered and you will have a big fucking mess. so a mirror in the middle of a room is a laughable idea. this is somewhat less of a concern now that the hardware renderer is basically the default, but it's still a spectre looming over the very concept of mirrors, so the way mirrors play out in myhouse is very funny to me

there's probably more, like, the way it intercepts noclip is a stroke of genius and not something i've ever seen done before. but i hope you get the idea

#doom #myhouse.wad

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the-final-sif · 4 months

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Dream's Response Summary

Dream posted a response to various accusations, covering just about everything ever because he was done with this shit. I've done my best to summarize it here, but I recommend going and watching his whole video. This is going to be extremely summarized for readability and I'm only going to cover stuff I consider serious so anything about speedrunning is getting skipped.

The tl:dr is: Dream never groomed anyone or had inappropriate contact with anyone underage, he provided proof that one accuser flat out lied, and the other ""accusation"" was from a third party who was never involved. The actual supposed victim released a statement that they were never groomed, nor a victim in any way, never was asked about someone sharing information about them, and wants everyone to shut the fuck up.

Police were never actually contacted, both twitter accounts were lying about doing so to make their claims seem real. Also the supposed snapchat video shown is a very obvious fake.

He covers Manatreed, the run down is the guy was a childhood best friend he grew up with and who was struggling with homelessness. Dream helped him, and never knew about the battery charge (Manatreed had lied to him about it). When Dream spoke to Manatreed's ex girlfriend, she was very clear she never wanted any of this publicly out there, that she was happy that Dream had been helping Manatreed and she wanted the best for him.

Dream still doesn't know exactly what happened with that situation, he has since lost contract with Manatreed, all he knows is he was trying to help a childhood friend and got lied to.

The first allegation from Oxy/Anastasia, he's extremely clear they only ever messaged in twitter dms and he disproves the claim about the texts/tik tok. He has a google voice number hooked up to his tik tok account for obvious reasons, and she was showing imessage texts. This is not possible, which means she was lying.

As part of this, Dream scrolls through his twitter dms and shows he responds to fans all the time and talks to people in his community from all over. He also shows how he's friends with and has hired people that were fans of his, including people like Foolish.

He discusses Amanda, the two of them messaged on instagram back when he was a much smaller creator. He showed/posted the transcript of the two of them talking about normal stuff. They had been messaging since 2020. He did attempt to post a complete transcript of those messages, but she had deleted some of her messages and he doesn't have a way to recover them.

Dream explains that Instagram has a "feature" where if you ever reply to someone, then you literally cannot remove their ability to message you without blocking them. Something I did not know about instagram and which is fucking wild.

Since he replied to her in 2020, that meant she could message him forever and her notifications would be constantly showing up for him. He attempted to delete her messages/her ability to message him back in 2021 and showed proof of this, but realized he couldn't. Dream also in doing so accidentally deleted the context to her messages that she was a fan and basically everything prior to 2021.

Since he didn't remember her (what with the prior messages deleted), she was dmnig him from her personal account without fan content on it and was talking about being a streamer, he assumed she was a smaller streamer he knew and was talking to her as such.

They were talking about music so he gave her his personal snapchat to talk and because he wanted to get some feedback on a new song he was working on. He wanted to send the song via snapchat so he could be reasonably sure it'd stay private.

Dream categorically denies any sexting with Amanda or sexual messaging at all, he goes through why she most likely did this (he had been ignoring her messages and made a new snapchat with only close friends). He also downloaded his own data (something Amanda refused to/failed to do), went through the snapchat logs and did see some messages, but never saw either of his supposed compliments to her.

Amanda claimed Dream deleted her dms and that's why she couldn't provide any of the evidence she claimed she had, but Dream showed those same DMs very clearly undeleted. The dms were never deleted and she lied as an excuse.

Amanda lied about going to the police. Dream had his lawyers file a bunch of requests, and track down the police station that she went to based on the photo. They filed every request possible for any information with this police station, and there was no record of Amanda visiting the station or any records relating to Dream whatsoever. So either she lied about filing anything, or she told a story such that the police filed literally no paperwork whatsoever about the situation. Not even a report.

Dream sent the police station a copy of his own drivers license and Amanda's information so they could contact him if anything did come up, and nothing ever did. Nothing was filed, nobody cared.

Dream got swatted several times as a result of online harassment, including his family, and the harassment was overwhelming and awful for him.

He addresses the gumball situation, he showed up to a birthday party for a friend, gumball's VA was there and kept getting aggressive with him. While on facetime with some friends, Cantu ended up hitting Dream to impress them. Dream was obviously put off by this, but at the end of the night people ended up ubering together and Dream ended up in an uber with Cantu. He thought it'd be fine since other people were involved.

Cantu dropped his phone out the window made the uber driver pull over to look for it and got in trouble with the police. The uber driver tried to talk to Cantu about handling the police in the future, and Cantu started calling the uber driver slurs and claiming the uber driver had "down syndrome".

Dream got involved, trying to defend the uber driver, and Cantu threatened to kill him and called him slurs. Later Cantu apologized and Dream wanted to forgive him. Only later, Cantu started spreading lies about him and calling him a pedophile, so Dream realized the apology wasn't sincere and called him out for his behavior.

The third party who had been filming all of this saw what Cantu was doing lying about Dream and trying to claim none of this happened. They reached out to Dream and gave him the actual video as proof of what happened. Cantu tried to threaten them out of sending Dream the video of what happened, but they ignored him and sent them anyways. Dream also had the uber driver in his video backing up what he said.

Finally, the Jamie Allegations

Jamie is a mutual friend of several people that Dream knew, she did not post the allegations, she was never contacted about any of this she made an explicit statement that she was never groomed or a victim in any way.

Dream and Jamie meet prior to Dream being a youtuber on bbh's minecraft server, they were both fans of Skeppy. Which is why Jamie was followed by Dream, Skeppy, Vurb and some other youtubers in their friend group.

Jamie is still active online and put out her own statement, the person in the screenshots never gave permission for any of this to be put out, and they are very clear that the messages were taken out of context and that the claims made are false. The person in the screens is clear Dream is not a groomer, they never accused him of that, and that the twitter account is lying.

The snapchat video shown is very obviously fake, because snapchat just magically opens itself, there's no finger or button use interacting with the screen.

The burner account never actually contacted the police, Dream records him calling to the department they claimed to contact, and the person answering is very clear they have no contact from this person.

The supposed recent document posted is a fake convo of someone using a fake twitter account to talk to "Jamie", Jamie did not talk to them and it's just fake.

All of this was incredibly damaging for Jamie, who had no idea what was going on, and was getting harassed/stalked/having her irls contact.

Dream has also faced waves of harassment over obviously fake allegations, people have just been taking them at face value. He also shows how easy it is to fake these things as I have done.

He's been swatted, harassed, his family has been swatted and harassed, he's been scared for his own safety several times. It's been awful for him, and all based on fake shit. He's not stepping back from minecraft, but he is stepping back from twitter and no longer engaging with people behaving this way.

Also his ping pong record was undefeated.

#sif speaks #dreamwastaken #dream smp #dream #grooming mention #stalking mention #gumball #nicholas cantu #discourse #video summary #abuse mention

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Masterlist Nat Masterlist

Relationship: Natasha x Reader

Summary: A girl with no memories but her time as a prisoner at Hydra, is found by the Avengers. Natasha instantly wants to help the girl to recover and enjoy a normal life.

Word Count: 6396

Nat's POV:

Another day, another Hydra base. This one was the home of their super solider programme. It's where the Winter Soldier was created. So, this base was personal. Steve had initially wanted Bucky to stay behind on this one, but he was determined to come and take down the base which had destroyed his life.

Whilst Steve and Bucky worked their way through the building to plant the explosives, Tony and I were exploring to get as much intel as possible. Tony had found their offices and was downloading as many of the files as he could whilst also collecting anything that looked of value.

I meanwhile had stumbled across what I can only describe as a hospital from a horror movie. I can see rooms with hospital beds, but they all had straps on them, medical tools filling trays alongside the beds. I try not to think about what had gone on here. I eventually reach what looks like a prison. There are a number of cells, but they are all empty. Well, I thought they were until I reach one in the farthest corner of the room.

I had to do a double take when I saw a young woman huddled in the corner of her cell. Her eyes were filled with absolute terror. I manage to unlock the door and slowly make my way towards her, but she shrinks back further, trying to get as far away from me as possible but the wall is preventing. "P-please. No. I-I can't take anymore." She begs, tears filling her eyes. My heart breaks for her. Looking at her body, I can see dark bruising and some lacerations. "It's ok. I'm not here to hurt you." I try to reassure her, keeping my distance so she can see that I'm not a threat.

"I'm here to help you. To get you to safety." I try once again, hoping that she can see that I only want to help. "Bombs are planted." Steve confirms through the comms. "I've got everything I can. Nat are you done?" Tony asks, but I ignore it, not wanting to scare the girl more. I felt like I had to help her. I have to save her. "My name is Natasha. What's yours?" She asks me. I activate my comms so the others can hear. That way they'll know I'm safe and that I can't talk.

"I. I don't know. I don't remember." She starts to cry at that and all I want to do is wrap my arms around her and protect her. "That's ok. We can help you with that. Can you come with me, and we can protect you. Make sure you're safe." I ask her, reaching out my hand to her, but keeping my voice as soft as possible. She looks between my hand and my eyes. The pain and fear are swirling through her blue eyes. "I promise we won't hurt you. Me and my friends are the good guys. We just want to help." I say with a smile, hoping to put her at some ease.

She goes to reach out, but she hesitates. "It's ok. You're safe now." I promise her. I can see those words have an effect on her and she reaches out her trembling hand to take mine. I slowly stand up and use my other hand to help her to her feet. She stumbles and I can see how weak she is. When was the last time she had a good meal or saw the sun?

"I've got you. You're ok." I continue to reassure her as we make our way slowly out of the base. As soon as we reach the outside, she holds her hand up to cover her eyes as she squints at the bright light. But I notice that she takes a deep breath too, as if she is savouring this moment. She surely can't have been kept in that cell the whole time, could she?

We get closer to the jet and her body tenses as she sees the three men waiting for us. "It's ok. They are my friends. They won't hurt you." I encourage her to carry on walking. Her grip on my hand tightens, but she trusts me enough to follow me onto the jet. Sensing her fear, all three of the men keep their distance. Even Tony is being considerate. I see her eyes go wide as we board the back of the jet. "Wow." She whispers as her eyes take it all in. "It's pretty cool huh. This is our quinjet. It's going to take us back to our home where we can get you checked out and looked after." I tell her.

She looks exhausted but I can tell that she's too scared to even attempt to sleep. I guide her to a chair and strap her in. I then grab a bottle of water and take it over to her. I had noticed how chapped her lips were, suggesting that she is dehydrated. "Here, drink this. We'll get you some nice food when we get home. I just need to go and talk to my friends. But I'll just be over there. You'll still be able to see me ok." I tell her with a soft smile. Her panicked eyes dart between me and the three men waiting for an explanation. But she nods, slowly bringing the bottle up to her lips. A relieved sigh escaping as she swallows the cool liquid.

I stand up and make my way over to the others. "Who's that?" Tony asks straight away. "I don't know. I found her alone locked in one of the cells in what seemed to be a medical area. She doesn't remember her name and she's clearly been mistreated for a long time." I explain. I can see pain on Bucky's face as he observes the young woman. "Do you recognise her?" I ask but he shakes his head. "No. But I know that they did some pretty horrible things to people in that place. She's probably been through hell and back." He says, pain radiating from his eyes.

"I'll start going through all the files we have to see if I can find anything on her whilst we head back. I'll also get Cho and Bruce ready for the new arrival. She'll need a full medical. Just from observation she's severely malnourished and has had some injuries." Tony offers up, heading to the other end of the jet, knowing that she needed space right now.

I slowly make my way towards her and take the seat next to her. "How are you feeling?" I ask her, but internally scold myself at such a stupid question. "Who are you?" She answers my question with one of her own. "We're the Avengers. We try to stop the bad guys." I explain loosely. "What are you going to do with me?" Her voice is so timid as she talks, her tone laced with fear. "We just want to help you. We'll help you heal and start a new happier life. No more being locked away or fearing for your life." I tell her with a wide smile.

She doesn't speak again, lost in her thoughts. But I can see that she is completely aware of her surroundings. At any noise, her eyes flick to the source, a small flinch appearing. I stay sat next to her as Steve flies us home. I want her to feel some comfort and know that we're not going to hurt her.

After a couple of hours, we start to descend into the compound. Her whole body tenses as we touch down and the door slowly begins to open. Wanda and Yelena are both waiting like they always do when I return from a mission. But they can instantly see to keep their distance at the added presence of our new guest. "The red head is my best friend Wanda, and the blonde is my sister Yelena." I explain to the girl as I help her out of her seat, showing that they are not a threat to her.

She nods slowly, but her gaze is searching every new thing that she sees. She was exhausted when we found her, I can't believe that her body is still functioning now when she's been so alert for the entire flight. Her body is in flight or fight and I can tell it's taking every ounce of her to be aware in case she needs to protect herself.

I guide her to the medbay where Bruce and Cho are waiting. I can feel that Wanda and Yelena are following behind, but the others have left to give us space. Thankfully, they don't follow us into the bay, choosing to observe from outside. "This is Bruce and Dr Cho. They are here to help you. They won't do anything to hurt you. I promise." I reassure her, directing her to the bed in the middle of the room. But her breathing is becoming ragged, and her eyes are frantic, full of fear.

"Hey, look at me. You're ok. You're safe. They won't hurt you." I reiterate, cupping her cheeks so her gaze is focused on me. "I'll be here every step of the way. Ok." I smile and she nods slowly. "Hi, Dr Cho is going to examine you if that's ok. We can get an understanding of your physical condition and how we can help you." Bruce explains, his soft voice seeming to calm the girl slightly.

Bruce leaves the room, pulling the curtain to give us privacy as Dr Cho begins her examination. I have to fight off a gasp when the girl's shirt is removed, and I see that her torso is covered in scars and new wounds. "Did they do this to you?" I ask her, an anger bubbling inside of me. Her gaze drops to her hands as she nods. I look at Cho who's got a look of sorrow on her face.

She carries out the rest of her examination and we both help her into a clean pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. I take the girls hand and give it a squeeze. "You're doing great. You're being very brave." I comfort her and I swear I see her lips turn up ever so slightly. I look through the window and see Cho and Bruce talking before they both re-enter. "Ok. We just need to do some blood tests and then we'll clean up your wounds." Bruce explains, turning to get a needle.

But as soon as the girl gets a glimpse of it in his hands, she starts to panic. "N-no. No. You said you wouldn't hurt me." She cries, looking between me and the needle in Bruce's hand. "He's not going to hurt you. He just needs to take some bloody to make sure you're not sick." I try to explain in an attempt to calm her down, but she continues to shake her head. "No. No more needles." She states at whisper. I look to Bruce who is unsure how to proceed. But we're interrupted by Tony entering.

"Wait." He says and we all turn towards him. Bruce places the needle back down on the tray and I feel the girls body relax. "I found your file." Her says looking directly to the trembling girl with a warm smile. "Your name is Y/n. Do you remember that?" He asks softly. She thinks for a moment but shakes her head. "That's ok. At least we know what to call you now. Are you ok if I share what I have here?" He asks her and she slowly nods.

"Y/n here is 22. She was taken by Hydra when she was 12." He explains to us, and I let out a small gasp. She's been in that hell hole for 10 years?! "She was a subject in their medical testing. Though it doesn't go into too much detail as to why. It just states that they were successful in removing all memory of her past." I feel such a sadness for Y/n. For her only memories to be of that base, being tested on daily. "They tested serums." Y/n's voice breaks the temporary silence, making us all look to her.

"Go on." Tony encourages. I've never seen him like this. He's so paternal towards her. It's warming to see. "There was a group of us. They tested the serums they wanted to use on their super soldiers. The serums I was given were meant to induce self-healing." She continues to explain, her gaze firmly fixed on her feet. There's a shocked silence to hear that. She was there purely as a test subject, presumably only there until they had succeeded, or she died.

"That's how you got these injuries? They were testing to see if it worked?" I ask when it finally dawns on me why she has so many injuries. We all watch as her head slowly moves in a nod. "After each test they would burn, cut and bruise me to see if it would generate any healing." She explains. I feel like I could cry. She was tortured for ten years. It's a miracle that she is even here with us today. Her body must have taken a hell of beating.

There is complete silence in the room as we take in what she just told us. We've seen horrible things in our time, but never seen one person go through so much for so long. Tony clears his throat and takes a careful step forward. "Y/n. I can promise you that we will never hurt you. We just want to help you, but we need to make sure you are healthy. If they injected you with a serum, the only way for us to ensure you're ok is to take some blood. I know you have had enough of needles, but once this is done, we'll take you to your new room." She speaks calmly and clearly which works.

"Ok." She agrees quietly. "I can stay with you if you like?" I offer. I want to be here for her. I want to help her heal, to protect her and never let her go through anything like this again in her life. "Please." Another whispered reply. I take her hand once again and give it a squeeze. "Keep your focus on me. Ignore what Bruce is doing. When we're done here, I can show you your new room and you can have a shower if you'd like?" I offer, trying to distract her. It only partial works as her eyes scrunch up as Bruce puts the needling into her arm. "You're doing great. Y/n." I tell her, squeezing her hand to offer her some comfort.

Once Bruce is all done, he cleans up Y/n's wounds and clears her to go to her room. She'll have to come back daily to get her dressings changed and her injuries checked and cleaned, but otherwise she was free. Something that obviously was alien to Y/n. "Come. Let me show you to your room." I tell her, standing up and waiting for her to follow. She does so slowly, her body clearly starting to shut down without her consent.

Thankfully, it's not far to her room. "Here it is." I say, opening the door for her. "My room is next door and Wanda's is across the hall." I point to the doors so she can see. I then step inside the room but she doesn't follow. "You can enter Y/n. You are free to come and go as you please. This is your home, not a prison." I explain to her, realising that she probably has no memory of her own room. Assuming she ever had one in her childhood. "There are some clothes in the wardrobe and draws, but we can go shopping to get you something you like in the coming days." I explain, opening the doors and draws to show her.

"This is your own bathroom. There is shower gel, hair wash, a toothbrush and toothpaste." I point out and then show her how to work the shower. I'll leave you to get cleaned up. But I can come back to get you for some dinner later this evening if you'd like. Though you are free to leave the room before hand if you want to." I say, trying to make it clear that she doesn't have to wait for command here. "Thank you, Natasha." She gives me the faintest of smiles and I find myself getting a little lost. She really is beautiful. "Please, call me Nat. All my friends do." I tell her and her smile grows slightly.

After leaving Y/n, Wanda and Yelena are quick to question me on the new addition to the compound. I struggle a little to hold back the emotion when telling them how I found her and what she's gone through. What has she done to me? I normally have complete control of my emotions, but when it comes to her, my feelings are so much stronger.

They both promise to support Y/n as much as they can without overwhelming her. Wanda is probably best placed to help her. She's been through something similar, although not to the same extent. I hope that in a few days when Y/n has settled more, that she might be comfortable to talk to her.

I speak with Tony, and we agree that it is probably best that we don't throw her in the deep end with a team dinner. Instead, we keep it to just four of us. Tony and I, who's she's familiar with, and Yelena and Wanda, who we want her to feel comfortable with. As she is so malnourished, Bruce has given us some indication on the foods and portions she should have over the coming weeks until she's able to regain her body weight. Wanda takes this as her mission to cook her the tastiest of meals with the limited ingredients.

Y/n is very quiet during dinner. Only talking if directly asked a question and only moving or doing anything if she is given approval. It's going to take time for her to realise that she doesn't need to have permission to do anything here. That she isn't confined to her room until someone tells her she can leave, or that she can't eat until she is given permission. But I know that I want to be there for her through every step of the way. Supporting her as best I can.

__________

Y/n has been here for a little of three weeks now. She's starting to look a bit healthier. Her wounds are healing nicely, she's putting weight on and she's getting colour back to her face. She loves spending time outside, basking in the sunshine. I guess if you've not seen it for 10 years, you don't want to miss out. She's slowly becoming more comfortable with the team. Everyone is great with her, not pushing her and understanding her boundaries.

She's probably closest with Tony, Wanda, and myself at the moment. But she's getting better with Yelena and Bucky. She still won't do much of her own accord. We make sure that she's not cooped up in her room or missing meals because she's waiting for someone to say it's ok for her to do so.

One night, I'm not able to sleep. My mind is lost in thought of Y/n. She fills most of my thoughts each day. We're getting glimpses of her true personality and I love it. She has a quick wit, though I can tell she is hesitant to use it. Scared of any repercussion. But it's becoming more apparent as the days go by. She's also extremely kind. She's so thoughtful of others. She's making such an effort to learn about everyone on the team.

Wanda and Yelena tease me. It's very clear that I like her. I tried to hide it after the first week, but it's no use. Wanda can literally read my mind and Yelena knows me better than anyone. Besides, I don't want to hide those feelings. Not from them anyway. I think it's far too early to even broach that topic with Y/n. At the moment, I want to be the best friend to her that I can be. We have time.

Whilst my mind is replaying Y/n's laugh on loop, I hear a muffled cry. I focus on the sound and notice it's coming from Y/n's room. I jump up and make my way next door. I knock on her door but get no response. "Y/n, it's Nat. Are you ok?" I question. Again, I don't get a response, but I can hear muttering and crying. Worry taking over, I open the door to be greeted by an empty room. The bed perfectly made.

I rush through the room to check the bathroom, but as I pass the bed, I hear her voice. My head turns and I see Y/n lying on the floor with a thin blanket draped over her. She's having a nightmare. I kneel down next to her and carefully place my hands on her shoulders. "Y/n. It's Nat. You're ok. You're just having a nightmare. Come back to me." I say as calmly as possible. Which is hard when I'm seeing her in such a panicked state. Not a split second later, her body shoots up and she starts to gasp for air, her eyes flicking around the room, trying to find something to ground her.

"Hey, Y/n. Look at me. Focus on me." I tell her, cupping her face so her eyes land on me. "You're safe." I remind her. "Try and take a deep breath with me." I instruct her, doing exaggerated breathing myself to guide her. It takes a while, but eventually she's able to copy and her breathing become less ragged. I slowly run my thumb over her cheek to help calm her as her eyes flick over her room once again. "The bed too soft?" I question and she nods, looking at her hands in shame.

I place my finger under her chin and raise it. "Don't be ashamed. I was the same after I got out of the red room. Took me a few months to get used to sleeping in a bed. I always felt like it was suffocating me." I share. She's listening to me intently as I speak. "I feel the same. I'm used to the hard floor." She mumbles. "How about this. Why don't we lie together in the bed. You don't have to sleep. We can just talk." I suggest. This helped me when Clint would sit and talk with me.

She nods and I help her to her feet. I then move to the bed and pull the duvet off. I grab the blanket and lie on the bed and tap the space next to me. I know the quilt will be too much to start of with, but she needs to keep warm. She takes the spot next to me and I hesitantly place my arm around her shoulders. I smile to myself when I feel her relax into my hold. I lay the blanket over us both and we spend the rest of the night just talking. It was probably the most I've heard her talk. She would ask questions about how I adapted after the red room, and I would offer tips on what might also help her.

After that night, our relationship only grew. She still slept on the floor at night, but I would always go to bed with her, and we'd lie in the bed until she was feeling like she was drifting off. I would leave and she would get comfortable on the floor. As time went by, she started to sleep a little. I was so proud of the progress she was making. "It's ok Nat. You can go to your own room tonight. I need to start doing things myself and it's not fair to keep you from your own room." She tells me which makes me frown. "But I like this time with you Y/n." I admit easily.

She smiles widely at that. "I do too Natasha, but you're not always going to be here. I need to get used to doing this on my own." She makes sense but I still pout at her. "Doesn't mean we can't still cuddle." She says shyly. "One more night?" I request and she sighs. "Ok." She chuckles, opening her door for me.

I'm loving the person that Y/n is becoming. Or returning to be, I guess. She's finding herself and it's a journey I'm proud to be a part of. Her and Wanda have grown close. They have a sisterly relationship. Wanda has helped her come to terms with what happened to her whilst she washeld captive by Hydra. They have a shared experience and I'm glad she's got someone that she can share that with.

She's grown more confident, and I was so proud of her when she started doing things of her own accord. We were sat watching TV and I noticed Y/n's gaze kept going towards the kitchen. I paused the movie and look to Y/n. "Everything ok?" I question and she quickly nods, returning her gaze to the TV. "You can tell me." I assure her and she huffs. "I uh. I want a snack." She admits as if she's just admitted to a felony.

"The kitchen is there, and Tony did the shopping this morning so there is plenty on offer." I encourage her, trying to motivate her, not giving her the go ahead to do it. This was the first time she shared a want, and I was keen for her to take it without needing permission.

I watch as she hesitates, Wanda and Yelena's gaze also on her. Slowly, she pushes up off the sofa and makes her way into the kitchen. She's in there for about 10 minutes before she comes out with a small KitKat bar in her hand. I was so proud as I watch her eat the chocolate bar. When she was done, I wrapped my arm around her and held her close. "You never have to ask to get food." I remind her and she slowly nods before resting her head on my shoulder.

__________

It's been three months since Y/n joined us and it has genuinely been the best three months. She's a completely different person to the one that arrived with us. She's still shy, but she understands her freedom and she is finding her footing. She spends a lot of time with Tony in his lab. Turns out she's got a technical brain and loves working on his gadgets. The whole team have fallen in love with her. She's like our own personal ray of sunshine. Which, considering how she was when she arrived, is a miracle.

I think it is safe to say that I am in love with her. I want to spend all my time with her. She's the last thing I think of before I go to sleep and the first thing in the morning. I'm infected by Y/n, and I love it. I just don't know how to approach her about it. I don't want to scare her away. But I'm like 90% sure she likes me too. We've had a couple of moments where we've almost kissed, but it's never resulted in anything, and I never want to pressurise her to do anything.

Our little bubble is burst though when I'm sent on a week long mission. I've been away for day missions, but nothing longer. I've always been home by the evening, having a snuggle with Y/n before bed. I'm going to miss being with her and I can tell that there is an anxiety for her too. But maybe this will be good. It'll give me time to think clearly about how I'm going to approach this whole situation.

Y/n's POV:

The first couple of days of Nat not being here were hell. I realised that she was my security blanket. I knew I was safe if she was around. Don't get me wrong, I know none of the others would hurt me, but with Nat, I feel completely safe and protected.

It's been a bit of a whirlwind three months. I never knew that life could be like this. All I knew was the darkness of the place I was held. The pain and fear that I lived in constantly. I don't know why I kept fighting to stay alive. The easier option was to let go. But I didn't. Now I think it's because deep down, I knew I hadn't met Nat yet and she was meant to change my life.

She has been so patient with me, helping me acclimatise to being 'normal'. She's always there to support me, allowing me to find my way in my own time. In the odd moments that I'm not with her, I crave to be with her. It's a feeling I'm not familiar with. I don't have it with anyone else here. Yet I like all of them. They have become a family, something I didn't know about. Or at least didn't remember. But with Nat it's different. It's like everything I do is for her.

Seeing her smile and laugh is my favourite thing. To most people she has this tough exterior, but I've never seen that directed at me. I've never felt anything but kindness from her. She's a big softy towards me. Though I've learnt not to say that to her. Sam made a joke about it and he was swiftly on his ass. Much to everyone else's amusement.

After Nat had been away for a couple of days, I decided that I couldn't mope around without her. She wouldn't want that. Instead, I spent time with Wanda and Yelena. They both had become like sisters to me. Both protective, but also quick to make fun of me in a light-hearted way. I love the relationship that I have with them, and it's them that keep me sane for the rest of the week.

It's Friday and we've been notified that Nat and Steve are returning from their mission. I jump off the sofa and run towards the Quinjet landing pad. But as I get closer, I see Bruce and Cho waiting. "What's wrong?" I ask Tony who's just joined us. "Nat's hurt." Is all he says. I feel like someone has just kicked me in my stomach, making all the air leave my lungs.

I just stand there as I watch the jet land and Nat be rushed off the jet on a gurney. As she passes me, I rush to keep up, not wanting to be far from her. She looks in a bad way. There is so much blood. Too much blood. I watch as Bruce and Cho rush around trying to fix her. I can see from the machines that her heart rate is becoming thready.

I step forward and hold her hand, feeling her cold skin which sends a wave of panic through me. "Please don't leave me." I beg her as tears start to fall. "Y/n, we need you to stand back." Bruce asks quietly, but I don't want to let her go. I can't lose her. He asks again and I know I need to let him do his job. My mind is focusing on her being with me, alive and healthy. She has to survive. I go to drop her hand but there is a soft glow which makes Bruce and Cho stop in their tracks. "Y/n what's going on?" Tony asks me with a panicked voice. "I-I don't know." I respond, fear washing over me.

"Oh my God look." Tony points out towards Nat. I turn to see what he's pointing too, but I start to feel lightheaded. My sight starts to blur and all the sound around me becomes muffled and the next thing I know, I'm surrounded by darkness.

_________

"Please wake up." I hear a distant, pleading voice. But I still only see darkness. "You told me not to leave. I'm asking you the same thing." The voice begs. Is that Nat? Is she ok? Confusion washes over me as I try to figure out what's going on. Sounds become more prominent, and I can hear the slow beeping of a machine. "Y/n?" The comforting voice calls. "Her heart rate is changing." I hear a male voice now speak. "Is that a good thing?" Nat questions. Why can't I see anything? "Yes, very good. It's getting stronger." The other voice confirms.

I start to feel a pain in my head, and I squint my eyes to stop the pain. "She moved." Nat points out. Slowly, my eyes start to open, but the bright light only aggravates the pain in my head. "The lights. Dim them." A third voice says. As the glare of the light reduces, I open my eyes further and they land on Nat. I quickly sit up, shocked that she's beside me, conscious. "Whoa! Stay down Y/n." She tells me, gently pushing on my shoulders. "You're alive." I whisper and she nods. "I am. But you need to take it easy." She tells me in a warning voice.

I look around me and see that there are wires attached to a drip and a heart monitor. I then meet the concerned gazes of Tony, Wanda, and Yelena. "What happened? Last I remember you were the one in the medbay." I say, trying to sit up. "You healed me." Nat says with a look of disbelief on her own face. "Excuse me? I what?" I question, not sure that I heard her properly. "You healed me. But it drained you and you passed out. You've been unconscious for two days, your heart barely beating." She explains.

"How are you feeling?" Bruce asks, stepping forward. "My head hurts, but other than that ok." I admit and he nods. "It seems like one of the serums they injected you with enabled you to heal others. They were so focused on self-healing, that they didn't even think to check for that." Tony says. "I healed you?" I turn back to Nat asking for clarification. "Yeah. Not even a scar left on me." She says holding up her shirt to show where two bullet wounds once were. I reach out and run my fingers over her abs in disbelief.

"I thought I lost you." I agonised, remembering the fear I felt that she was slipping away. "I can't live without you." I admit through tears. "And you don't have to. I'm here. Safe and sound because of you Y/n. You saved me." Nat says taking my hand. I hadn't noticed that everyone else had left and it was just the two of us now. "I owed you after you saved my life." I tell her through a watery chuckle. "I would save you ten times over Y/n. You have changed my life. When I woke up and I saw you on the bed next to me barely clinging to life yourself, my heart broke." She expresses, her own eyes glossing over.

"Y/n, you mean so much to me. You have changed my life since you came into it. I can't hide my feelings from you anymore. I love you. I'm in love with you. I know you might not feel the same, but I have to tell you. I can't bare the thought of something happening to one of us and you not knowing the depth of my feelings." I'm in shock as I listen to her speak.

Is this what I've been feeling for her too? Love? I can see pain start to grow in her eyes as I don't respond, the shock almost incapacitating. Tears fall down her cheeks as she goes to leave, but thankfully, my body reacts, grabbing her hand and pull her back. Before she can even say anything, I cup her face and bring her towards me so I can connect our lips.

The sensation is electric as if the world had disappeared and it was just the two of us in this moment. Our lips move in perfect harmony. Nat's hands rest on my hips, giving them a gentle squeeze. My whole body feels a warmth rush over it, butterflies erupting in my stomach as our lips dance together, sharing every feeling we need to share in this moment. As our movements stop, I rest my forehead against hers. "I think I love you too. I've had this feeling I've not been able to understand for a while. But that kiss just explained everything." I say with a laugh as Nat's smile grows.

She leans in and kisses me once again, this one more hungry as my back hits the hospital bed. She deepens the kiss, our tongues exploring each other's mouths, as the passion and desire between us intensified. I let a small moan out into the kiss as she presses her body against mine. That noise causes her to pull back slightly, and I let out a little whine. "Patience my love. This is all new for you and I want to do this properly." She tells me, which causes me to raise an eyebrow at her in confusion. "I want to go on a date with you." She smirks.

Thank God, she made me watch endless rom coms these last few months or I'd have no clue how this whole thing was meant to go. But over time we grew together, not rushing our relationship. It was perfect to me. When I looked in her eyes, all I saw was pure love and I hope she saw the same in return.

She made me unbelievably happy. There was a time that I never thought I wouldn't get a happy ending. A time when I questioned my purpose. But now, led here in Nat's arms, feeling safe, protected, and loved. I finally understood why I had to keep fighting. I needed to get to her and live our lives together in happiness.

#natasha romanoff x y/n #natasha x reader #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff #avengers fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #black widow x reader #black widow

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antariies · 2 months

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how to build a chair........... director's cut ∠( ᐛ 」∠)__ this is about to be a very long very self-indulgent post where i just talk about my own writing. i also doodled on all the pages i think it makes the whole thing more fun to go thru. welcome to my ted talk

SIKE before i begin. credit where credit is due, this post was the start of it all. it changed my brain chemistry my jaw was dropped i was in awe i was obsessed and before i even finished it i knew that i would eventually have to make something similar for the commander or else i would be cursed to think about it for the rest of my life. and i Was cursed for like two years every day i would just be like........ is today the day i sit down and draft the commander chair fic of my dreams....... maybe tomorrow......

and then i got accepted as a writer for the gw2 zine ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ the chair idea was actually my backup option in case my first idea didn't pan out, and thank god it didn't, bc this one worked so much better. (still working on my initial idea, just turning it into a full fic! it was wayyy too long to be a zine submission.)

this is the chair i used. i downloaded the assembly instructions and tried out a bunch of different free pdf editors until i found one i liked, which ended up being sedja. if anyone's interested in doing something like this, i recommend printing out the pdf and writing directly on it! it was a lot easier for me to just figure out everything on paper first and then digitalize it after :P here's a picture of my physical copy

okay actually getting into it for real this time !!!!!

1. yeah i could've just erased the ikea logo and left a blank space but then i realized i could turn it into an in-universe joke. and then i ran with it.

2. i ripped this straight from the product description on the website. thanks ikea

3. i'm not sure if anyone went and looked it up, but it's a real item code!

hehe :3c

4. if your commander willingly goes to therapy i'm happy for them but TO ME? you'd have to drag the commander kicking and screaming. it's not that they don't know that something is wrong with them, they know, and they know YOU know. you're just never supposed to talk about it. they don't look at their own psych eval results bc that's none of their business.

5. i normally avoid specifying the commander's race when i write them bc i enjoy the challenge, but for the zine i was assigned to write about a norn commander! as a human main i was uhhhh very ill-equipped. but that just meant i had to study up on my norn lore (•̀ᴗ•́)و i spent hours on the wiki, then went around interviewing norn mains for their opinions, which was great fun :D it all helped me narrow the focus of my piece: joining the war on commander objectification on the side of commander objectification (ㅅ´ ˘ `)♡ and no one self-aggrandizes quite like the norn commander!

and to balance that i knew my narrator had to be patronizing as shitttt. they've clearly been following the commander since the beginning and seem to know a lot of intimate details about their life, despite not thinking very highly of them. wonder who that could be :3c

6. i can't stop making references. so the original part number is actually #122620 in the manual but i've changed it here (and on the previous page!) to #082812, as in 08/28/12, the date gw2 was released! no real reason for it, @dalennaugw suggested it for funsies and i liked it. if you're my pal and i show you a wip and you have a cool idea for it, chances are i Will put that shit in. hi dale if you're reading this

7. another thing about me. i loveeee repetition. here the word "over" is repeated four times to match the picture. honestly a lot of the creative process for this piece was just staring at the pages and figuring out how to tie the pictures to the commander in ways that weren't extremely corny or trite. idk why i enjoy writing like this when i could be frolicking in the beautiful prosaic meadows of a word doc instead but. it's like i see a tiny little restrictive box and i'm like OH BOY can't wait to think inside of that thing!!! i like when the format matters just as much as the content and in some cases informs the content. am i making any sense here. well all you need to know is that i'm a virgo and my favorite book is house of leaves

7. aw fuck just realized i wrote 7 twice. whatever i'm not changing it this is 7 part two now. the theme of my piece is glory, what it means to the norn commander, and how far they're willing to go for it.

8. does norn culture place emphasis on seeking individual glory Yes are norn also very community-oriented Also Yes. i think it's common to see norn kids napping together in a big pile, usually after they've worn themselves out playing games outside. it makes sense practically (apes together warm) and socially (pack bonding good) but that's just my hc. growing up i used to share a bed with my cousins all the time so it's normal to me.

a young, naive not-yet-commander, with no real combat experience, has no point of reference to compare a "blaze of glory" to. but the way everyone talks about it, it must be a good thing. a wonderful thing. a reward fit for a life well-fought and a legend hard-earned. so they imagine it must feel like falling asleep surrounded by the people they love, who love them in turn.

9. .........i was playing a lot of ace attorney when i wrote this page. i wish i was joking 👍🏼

10. ohhh shit the truth come OUT this whole chair thing was all a ploy just so i could write about the departing. again.

will i ever stop thinking about her. reply hazy, try again later.

11. out of all the pages, this one has the most emphasis on text placement, like comparing the enlarged picture of the screw to a sword, the numbers counting the screws, and "up up up" being arranged to mimic a wisp of smoke.

i also wanted to lean into the viking/norse mythology influences with my word choice.

12. more nods to norn culture. i didn't know they referred to the six human gods as "spirits of action" until i was doing the research for this piece :O

and the domain of the lost is called a hall of ghosts....... cause valhalla.....

13.

i'm sorry this so funnyyy. SAYS the guy who literally clawed their way back to life for a rematch.

me when i'm in a sore loser competition and my opponent is the COMMANDER!!!

14. arms as in "limbs" and also arms as in "armaments" :•]

15. haha get it because the picture makes it look like there are two mirrored speech bubbles while the text paints two opposing interpretations of the norn commander. one that's selfless and humble versus one that's selfish and vainglorious.

16. and the best part is IT DOESN'T MATTER which one is true bc at the end of the day no matter what their motivation, balthazar is dead by their hand. ofc i'm of the opinion that the most compelling interpretation of the commander is both, simultaneously. contradictions are good for the soul.

17. i could've name-dropped kas, the only person present that would do something like that, but i felt it was better to leave it ambiguous.

18. low-hanging fruit. the metaphor was so obvious here but i had to do it. for the culture

19. the alternate title for this piece was "THIS COULD BE GLORY". "how to build a chair" was only supposed to be a placeholder title til i figured out a better one, but the innocuousness of it grew on me. also i came up with the other one too late and had already advertised under the chair title lol

20. my first instinct was to end it with something more reassuring, like "what you have built so far is enough" but that would've been an ooc switch-up for a narrator who has been nothing but snide and detached this whole time. gotta stick to my guns

21.

obligatory chair joke as the last line. for realsies though it’s meant to be an earnest appeal to the commander to take a break, to have a seat, but it’s also a challenge. are they willing to lean on their friends? are the bonds they’ve forged strong enough to hold their weight? are they willing to put their faith in someone else’s hands? are they brave enough to try? well. only one way to find out.

also guess what that wasn’t even the real last page of the manual. it's THIS

but no way i was letting this be the image we ended on. IT LOOKS LIKE A DICK AND BALLS!!!

and on that note, THANK YOU if you made it this far!! a very special shout-out to @hawkepockets, my lovely boyfriend and beta reader, without whom this piece would not be nearly as polished. i would bring him pages to look over and he would say Scrap half of those lines you can do better than that. kill your darlings. i would complain and argue for a few minutes then we would revise. rinse and repeat until we had honed this thing to perfection. i can't stress enough the importance of having a second pair of eyes on your work throughout your creative process, even better if it's someone who challenges you. i don't even pay him 🫶🏼

and if there was anything i didn't cover that you still have questions about, please feel free to shoot me an ask! (ㅅ´ ˘ `)♡ thanks for reading! see u later dudes ;P

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #my writing #for once i have nothing to say in the tags bc i already talked so much in the body of the post.#ummmmmmmm meows cutely !

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nicksbestie · 12 days

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hi! i’m not sure if you’re requests are open, but if they are could you write one where chris’s gf is a little and she’s scared to tell him? thank you so much 💜💜💜

We Should Talk - C. Sturniolo

Summary : Chris discovers something that you weren't ready to tell him yet, and a tough conversation ensues.

Warnings : 1634

Word Count : Crying, mentions of anxiety

Pairing : Chris Sturniolo/Reader (romantic)

A/N : This is an age regression fic, which is purely safe for work and innocent. Any hate/disrespect towards me, my work, or readers, will not be tolerated.

Chris had a lot of social media. Of course he did, his entire job was on the Internet.

He had to have a social media presence to continue to keep that career afloat, but there were some apps that he just didn’t see a purpose in keeping. Every now and again he would redownload some of them just to see what all was going on in their fanbase on those specific apps, but he never really stuck around for long. One of those apps was Twitter, and it was arguably one of the most toxic platforms he had ever seen. Their fanbase wasn’t terribly chaotic, but the app just had so much discourse going on in it at any given point in time that Chris had never felt like it was worth it.

However, he was intrigued, so he had decided to download it and make a burner account so he could be private about his existence on the app, not wanting his notifications to be filled and his direct messages to be completely clogged. That did wonders for his ego every now and again, but he also never checked them and eventually it got overwhelming. But as he finished setting up the app, he saw something unrelated to his fanbase that he wasn’t expecting, at all.

When you finish setting up your account, the app asks you if you would like to sync your contacts. Chris had no issues doing this, as it would make it easier to view some of his friend’s profiles without having to search for them. To put it shortly, he wouldn’t have to go stalking. But one of the accounts that popped up after his contacts finished syncing caught his attention. It was an account covered in pastels, and the biography under it was very… interesting.

“nxsl agere <3 big age __, little age __. obsessed with my daddy who doesn’t know he’s my daddy… yet? nsfw dni!!!”

The thing that really threw him for a loop was that when he looked to see which contact was linked to this account, he read the words “in your contacts as : my girl .” He was confused when he saw this, and curious as well, having not known about this account. He thought he had known about all of your social media, as he followed you on everything except Twitter, but he had still seen your personal Twitter account, but he had no idea you had another one. He wasn’t angry or anything, not being a controlling boyfriend, just more intrigued than anything else. He had never seen an account like this, so he began to scroll through it.

He simply became more and more confused as he looked through the account. He saw a ton of posts about childlike things, coloring, shows, even pacifiers and bottles, and he found so many tweets in what seemed like baby talk, nearly all of them referencing your “daddy”. He really just didn’t understand what that meant until he scrolled through some replies on a post about an ask game, where your mutuals could ask you any questions, and one of them had asked you if you were single. You had of course replied with no, and the same person had asked if Chris was your carer. He didn’t really understand what that meant, but as he saw your reply, it seemed to fall into place.

“i think of him that way, but he doesn’t know. i hope he’ll be my daddy eventually!”

Daddy? The thought of it threw him for a loop. Chris was completely uncomfortable with any sort of daddy or parental kink, but there was something about this that really made him think it had nothing to do with sex. He hadn’t seen anything inappropriate at all, and he had been scrolling for a while now. So he wasn’t grossed out, because even in the biography of the account it says that it wasn’t sexual at all, but he didn’t know what to make of it. Finally, he turned to Google for help.

With the help of an Internet browser, he was able to decipher that the word “agere” was an abbreviation, for a thing called age regression. He continued to go down the rabbit hole of research and articles, and the more he read about it, the more the account made sense. He wasn’t confused or weirded out, if anything he felt sad that you hadn’t been able to come to him about this. He didn’t know how long you had been hiding this from him, and his heart hurt at the fact that you felt like he couldn’t know about it. He only felt worse for you when he saw some sad tweets, deciphering through the baby talk, seeing you upset that you were alone.

When he found out that it was normally caused by a lot of trauma or mental health issues, he realized that it really did fit his girlfriend. You had been through a lot in a short amount of time, and he couldn’t blame you for feeling so desperate to find something that helps you. He was happy for you, more than anything, because clearly this was helping you for the majority of the time. You of course had your sad moments, but he felt like there were a lot of good moments to outweigh them. From your account presence, you seemed like you were genuinely a lot happier, filled with pure and childish joy. The more he understood, the more he wanted to be there for you, to fill that role that you clearly also wanted him to do.

So, then came the problem of how is he going to bring this up to you? He didn’t know how he was going to move forward with this information without scaring you off or causing you to panic. You weren’t home right now, you had gone off to hang out with a friend after work, and he was expecting you back quite soon, so that only gave him a little bit of time for him to figure out how he was going to approach the situation. By the time he heard your car pull into the driveway, he was thinking that the best idea was probably to just sit down and talk to you about it, so that was exactly what he was planning on doing.

He greeted you the same way he normally did, hugging you and telling you he missed you, and he waited until after you’d eaten and were curled up in bed together, enjoying the time you got to spend relaxing with each other to bring it up.

“Babe?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we talk about something? It’s not bad at all, though.”

You were definitely on edge a little bit, despite his reassurances.

“Sure, what’s up?”

Chris didn’t move any part of him from the way he was, not wanting you to sense a change in body language and freak out.

“So I downloaded Twitter today and decided to set up an account, and you know how it asks you if you want to sync your contacts?”

“Yeah.. what about it?”

You were thinking that your personal account had been linked to your number, not your secret one, so you were on edge, but hadn’t figured out why he was bringing this up yet.

“Yeah. So, an account linked to your number came up, one that I didn’t know existed.”

Your cheeks immediately flushed red and you broke eye contact, knowing exactly what he meant now. You could feel the tears coating your waterline, anxiety building in your chest, feeling like a bomb ready to explode. You waited for the ball to drop, for something terrible to come out of Chris’ mouth, but he simply just held you closer.

“I think we should talk about it, okay?”

Nothing but a short “I’m sorry” slipped through your lips, and Chris looked confused at your response.

“For what, baby? You did nothing wrong, I’m not angry at you.”

The realization that he had probably, if not definitely, seen everything, caused a couple of the tears to fall from your eyes, as you desperately tried to stop them from becoming full on waterworks. Chris let out a soft hum, pulling you impossibly closer, wiping tears off of your face.

“It’s okay. I promise, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk much, I can. I did research on my own, I think I understand what’s going on, I just want you to tell me what you want from me, okay? I want to be here for you, I want to help wherever I can.”

The lack of judgment, the pure acceptance, the increasing love, made you unable to hold in any emotion any longer. You cried, and Chris simply held you, letting you cry all of your feelings out.

“You’re safe with me, okay? I’m not going to judge you. I know you’ve been alone in this for a while, and that can change if you want it to. Do you want that?”

He didn’t get a verbal reply, but he could feel the nod against his chest.

“Okay. Do you want me to be your daddy?”

Another nod, and you pulled your face away from his shirt, feeling bad when you saw the giant wet patch, and he immediately reassured you.

“Don’t worry, babe, it’s just a shirt. I can change. It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

“Thank you.”

His smile was bright, as to soothe your fear, but his eyes showed sympathy.

“You don’t need to thank me. I’m more than happy to be here for you. I love you, and you’re going to be okay.”

As you whispered your own confession of love back to him, you knew it was true.

taglist : @blahbel668 @mattsgirlfrieeend @69isabella69 @mayhem-72 @iculdstealurgf @iluvm4ttsturni0l0 @sturnioloslife @heartsforkarina @nervousrebelglitter @sturniclo @elliegrace-7 @mattsturnioloisbae @strnilo

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waves-against-a-cliff · 5 months

Text

Roommate!Ghost x you

I know I’m not the first person to think of this but now it’s stuck in my head. Definitely gonna be multi parted as my brain warms up in the microwave of fanfic ideas.

No content warnings but mdni

Being roommates with Ghost or Simon as you know him. Well, rent prices are just ridiculous and he had been on the roommate app you had downloaded. He didn’t talk much, that was the first thing you realized. Basic questions that were listed on your profile but you just got the feeling that he was just being thorough. He ran a background check and could feel something stirring within his gut. Such a cute thing lookin’ for slightly reasonable rent prices in this city. You were in university, he didn’t know what you majored in but he could easily squeeze that answer out of you later. Part time job at a local cafe and a perfectly clean record. Even better, you were fucking stunning, so of course he picked you. Why wouldn’t he?

Another thing you noticed about Simon is that he was gone, a lot. When you asked he just blandly answered “Military.” Before he got off the couch and made a beeline to his room. Fuck, he had to be a human heater, his spot was perfectly warm. Whenever he was deployed you tried to keep everything nice and tidy. It was easy to fall into a routine while he was gone, this roommate that felt more like a guest that appeared and stayed for a week or two before disappearing again. Sleep, eat, go to your classes, work, clean and study before bed. It was finals week and your final projects were piled up to the ceiling as you worked tirelessly at the table. You had worked through your fourth cup of coffee but it just wasn’t doing the trick as the words blurred together. Your heart stops, your blood runs cold as you hear the door open.

You shot out of the chair, it skidded across the floor with an awful noise and there in the doorway was a man in a skull balaclava. The scream that left you was blood curdling as you threw the nearest item to you at the man, which just so happened to be your textbook. “Ah fuck!” The man cursed as it hit his head and you blinked. Simon. You just attacked your roommate and if your blood hadn’t turned to ice before, it sure was now. “Bloody hell.” He muttered and shut the door behind him, “What’da do that for?” He asked as he ripped off his balaclava, some kind of paint around his maple brown eyes.

“You scared me.” You muttered before you repeated it again but stronger this time, “You scared me. Simon, what the hell? Why do you look like you’re about to rob a place?”

He barely contained his snort, strangled down the smile that threatened to break out on his lips. “What are you doing up so late?” You glared him, breezed past him with your shoulder barely clipping his jacket covered arm as you went to your textbook turned defense weapon. Without another word you gathered your stuff up and went to your room. Leaving Simon standing there in the living area with his balaclava in one hand, slightly dazed before he realized he left his duffel bag out in the hall. “Fuck.” He muttered, though he wasn’t sure if he was cursing leaving the duffel bag outside or you for making his gut twist and nearly making him snort.

#ghost x you #ghost mw2 #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley #roommate!au #roommate!ghost #cod simon riley #simon riley imagine #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley cod #simon riley x reader

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loveysloveclub · 4 months

Text

meeting the freshmen - the man! au

in which, mark and ethan ruin molly's chance of making a good first impression with the new freshmen.

"god! i am so excited!" molly explained as she dropped onto the couch of her new home for her sophomore year of college. the group of sophomores had been back at school for about a week now, and were finally going to be able to meet the new freshmen that would be joining their hockey team.

"why?" ethan scoffed from beside her, engrossed in a game he was playing on his phone. the boys had yet to set up the new television in the sophomore house, so, instead of playing play station like they usually would, they had all downloaded a variety of games on their phone.

"because we get to meet the new freshies." molly stated in a 'duh' tone. mark chuckled at her from across the room, also engrossed on a game on his phone. "you're like the same age as them."

"you're like the same age as them." molly mocked the boy, pulling her own phone out of her pocket to text dylan about how annoying their friends were. "i do not sound like that!" mark exclaimed, offence dripping from his tone.

molly opened her mouth to rebut his claim, but was cut off by ethan. "and stop talking shit about us to duker." ethan butted in, his eyes not leaving his phone screen. "i'm not talking shit about you to duker." molly's phone pinged, the reply from dylan agreeing with her making her laugh loudly.

"yes, you are. you guys always do it." ethan rebutted, rolling his eyes before switching off his phone and sliding it into his pocket.

"can we go? we're gonna be late for bowling." mackie asked, slightly annoyed by his unreliable new roommates. "god forbid we're late for bowling!" molly exclaimed, her hand flying to her chest in faux horror.

mackie raised his eyebrows at the girl. and she suddenly felt as if she was a child being scolded by her parents. "i can't find my shoes." molly told the boy, holding her socked feet up in the air.

"we're going bowling, you don't need shoes." dylan explained as he also walked into the living room, also shoeless. "that's the dumbest thing i've ever heard you say." mark laughed, earning a confused face in return.

"is it though?" ethan asked aloud.

"i'm right here, you know?" dylan threw his arms up. "text molly about it." ethan shot back, a small grin tugging at his lips as he watched the smaller boy begin to get agitated. dylan simply shrugged before grabbing his phone and tapping his fingers against his screen aggressively. mere seconds later, molly's phone pinged with another message.

"dylan wants you to know that your on his shit list and he won't be speaking to you for the rest of the day." she read aloud, eyes flickering over to ethan who was reading the message from over her shoulder.

"molly." luke said, walking into the room with her shoes in his hand before throwing at them, to which molly barely caught without elbowing ethan in the face.

"okay, let's go!" mackie exlciamed, ushering everyone up from their spot on the couch. molly walked at the back of the group, laughing as she watched dylan get a scolding from mackie whilst luke laughed from beside him.

the girl didn't even flinch when an arm wrapped around her shoulder. "omg! i'm so excited to meet the new freshies!" mark squealed in her ear. "they're gonna be sooo cute!" ethan exclaimed from the other side of her.

"i'm gonna glue your dick to your forehead, estapa."

"what about ethan?" mark was offended that he was the only one who was being threatened. "i have much worse things in store." molly huffed before stabbing her now shoed heel into ethan's toes before walking faster to catch up with the rest of her friends.

it was no surprise to any of their former teammates that the group of sophomores were the last ones to arrive to the annual hockey bowling day. the group of six usually spent more time arguing then getting ready and were often late to just about everything.

it was also no surprise that dylan and molly had both gasped upon arrival, talking hurriedly about the bowling place selling slushies and running off hand in hand. the rest of the sophomores didn't even bat an eye as they continued to greet the rest of their teammates.

"you must be luca." ethan stated before doing what molly liked to call 'the douchebag' handshake. all guys did it, she thought it was funny. it was as if it was their love language towards one another. "yeah, and this is my brother adam and rutger and nick." the boys all went down the line doing their weird little 'douche' handshake. if molly wasn't currently overfilling her cup and spilling slushy all over the floor, she would have dropped dead with laughter right in that moment.

"i thought there was six of you?" rutger questioned aloud, his eyes raking the rest of the team for anyone he might have not met. "there is." ethan replied, a devious smirk on his face as he pointed over to the slushy machine where dylan was currently hunched under while molly over filled his mouth with blue ice.

"that's dylan drinking from the machine and the one trying to drown him in blue raspberry slushy is molly." mark told the group, the four freshmen holding back laughs of their own as they watched the duo get in trouble by the worker.

"i wouldn't be laughing if i was you, dylan's nice and all, but molly?" ethan began, a small grin on his lips as he spoke before blowing out a breath of air. the four already nervous freshmen tore their eyes away from dylan and molly to look at the edwards boy. mackie rolled his eyes, not even bothering to attempt to fix the mess they were creating before stalking off some place else.

"what do you mean?" adam asked, his eyes flickering back and forth between the blonde girl and the three boys who stood in front of her. luke had a confused expression on his face whilst mark seemed to understand the game that ethan was playing.

"yeah, molly's real mean until she thinks you're good enough to be friends with her."

"no she's-" luke was cut off when ethan elbowed him in his stomach.

"shit she's coming over. she so knows we were talking about her." mark exclaims. "yeah, she looks pissed." ethan laughed slightly before dragging a still confused luke away from the crime scene, mark following behind the two.

molly had since lost duker, who decided he needed to get something hot to eat since he could no longer feel his tongue. but she couldn't wait to meet her new teammates any longer, so she opted to leaving the numb mouthed boy in the line for food.

she watched with furrowed eyebrows as mark and ethan laughed at something with the new freshmen before stalking off, and dragging luke with them. approaching the four new faces, all of them turned to her with looks she could only describe as concerned.

they looked at her as if they had seen a ghost.

"hello?" her eyebrows were furrowed and her lips were turned upwards. but none of the boys spoke. molly chalked it up to them being nervous.

"slushy?" she asked as she held out the multi coloured liquid. all four boys glanced down at the slushy, "is it poisoned?" one of them asked, eliciting a laugh from the girl. "yeah, i put the rat poison i carry around in my pockets in it when no one was looking. no, you weirdos, it isn't poisoned. why would it be poisoned?"

"mark and ethan said you weren't very friendly." one of them spoke cautiously, earning an elbow into the stomach from his friend beside him. "mark and ethan are also going to wake up with missing limbs." molly grumbled before stomping away from the group of four, leaving them in a state of confusion.

she approached the two laughing sophomores, who were currently talking to their new captain, nolan moyle.

nolan took one look at molly and stood up from his seat. "i don't know what you two did, but i'm not saving your asses again."

mark and ethan's smiling faces dropped when they saw the sour face their friend was pulling. "it was ethan's idea!" mark immediately said when molly stood in front of them. "dude!" ethan shot back, shooting his friend an incredulous glance.

"you told them i wasn't a nice person?" molly exclaimed, her voice hushed to a whisper type of yell to avoid any of their nosy teammates eavesdropping. "we were just joking around. c'mon maxxy, everyone knows you're a nice person." ethan told the girl.

"they don't! they've never met me, and now they think i'm going to poison them." molly had had enough, and opted to saving her breath and not yelling at the two boys in the middle of what was supposed to be a fun day. instead, she stomped over to luke and flopped down on the couch beside him.

"you good, maxxy?"

"i'm calling ethan's mother and telling her he got someone pregnant." molly announced, angrily snatching her phone out of her pocket, only for luke to snatch it out of her hand and shove it in his own pocket.

"the freshmen will figure out you aren't a horrible person, and are only mean 70% of the time." luke shrugged, the statement earning him a slap upside the head.

"i'm never mean."

"yes, you are. but we love that about you, they will too. trust me on this, maxxy." and with that, luke stood up and travelled to the other side of the room, taking molly's phone with him and leaving her to sit there in a state of boredom.

usually, she would be messing around with mark and ethan but they were both on her hit list and it would be a successful day if neither of them went home with a broken foot in the shape of a bowling ball.

"why are you sitting here alone?" her eyes snapped up to truscott, who eyed her suspiciously. "am i a mean person?"

"do you want me to answer that honestly?" he replied, a humorous smile on his face. "you're meant to say, 'no you're perfect molly. we all love you, molly'. not whatever you just said."

"i'm not getting involved." he shook his head before stalking off to ask someone else what had happened.

molly released a huff of frustration, glancing down at her shoes as she clicked the tops of them together. upon hearing multiple pairs of feet approach her, molly lifted her head, expecting to see some of her teammates tell her that it was time to start bowling. she hoped not, she had no faith that her pink bowling ball wouldn't end up flying in the direction of where mark and ethan were sitting, both boys sending her apologetic pouts from across the room. what she didn't expect was to see all four new freshmen towering over here.

the one in the middle, who had long blonde hair and a backwards cap on his head, smiled shyly before holding out a cup full of blue ice. "slushy?"

molly smiled before taking the cup. "i'm luca, this is my brother adam, rutger and nick."

"it's nice to meet you."

"we wanted to let you know that we don't believe what ethan and mark told us." rutger nodded his head in agreement to what nick was saying.

"thanks ladies, i appreciate the gesture." molly smiled up at the group. "even though i have been informed that i can be quite mean, i promise never to be mean to any of you because you're all children."

"aren't we the same age?" adam asked, his eyebrows pulled together in confusion. "hush now, child." molly held up a finger, silencing the boy.

"yo! freshies, it's your turn!" nolan yelled from across the bowling alley.

"but seriously, thank you." molly repeated, smiling softly at the group of freshmen, who all nodded their heads whilst adorning shared smiles before walking off.

molly released a sigh of relief at the fact that the freshmen were no longer scared that she was going to poison them, leaning back in her seat.

her moment of relaxation was cut off when a body jumped into the spot beside her and a pair of arms wrapped loosely around her neck.

"we would like to formally apologise." ethan began from beside her, pulling on a piece of her blonde hair lightly to get her attention. molly's eyes narrowed, but she made no effort in moving away from the boy or pushing mark off of her.

"continue."

"we shouldn't of did what we did, we thought we were being funny." mark told the girl, his hands fiddling together in front of her face. molly smiled at the nervous action. "and if the freshmen thought we were being serious and do anything to offend you, we'll sort them out. we promise." ethan continued, holding up his pinky finger.

molly slapped his hand away. "you can't do that."

"why not?"

"because i've adopted them all and taken them under my wing. so, that means they're my children and you're not even allowed to look at them wrong."

"is this why you were so excited to meet them?" mark asked as the trio watched from afar as luca and rutger celebrated one of them getting a strike. molly hummed in confirmation, "i didn't have anyone to look out for me my first year, i didn't want them to feel the same." her voice was quiet now as she shrugged her shoulders in an attempt of brushing her feelings off.

"well, now you've got someone. two someones to be exact." ethan cheesed from beside her.

"you guys are still going to wake up with missing limbs and angry phone calls from your mothers."

#umich hockey #ethan edwards #umich #mark estapa #dylan duke #luca fantilli #rutger mcgroarty #umich wolverines #luke hughes #umich hockey imagine

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batsvnte · 4 months

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𝐆𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬 — 𝐉𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐮𝐚𝐧 , 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐝𝐞

pairings! Jing Yuan & Blade (separate) ;; Black gen!reader (They/them) ఌ angst w/comfort, platonic relationships ఌ cw! mc is mute, implied use of sign language, blood + mention, death implied on Blade’s part, ooc maybe, spelling mistakes/improper grammar, not proofread ఌ synopsis! A new soul is tasked to guide spirits to finally cross with peace ఌ song rec! All is Soft Inside - AURORA

Xenos’s notes - I kinda just downloaded a bunch of games last night for no reason. This was mainly inspired off of Spiritfarer and I love that game sm.

With Jing Yuan, he found you intriguing.

You were neither dead or alive. You were an soul that was wandering among the universe to find ones that were lost. Most of were strangers that you have never met before. Few of them were family that you long lost since you had started traveling the universe. Everywhere you had been, except for the Xianzhou Loufu. The natives were long live species, and a spirit had warned you that it wouldn’t be necessary to go to Xianzhou. Solely because of the dangers that lurked around the corners.

Jing Yuan barely even sees you. You haven’t visited for nearly 500 years. Since there was problems arising of the fallen becoming mara-struck and immortalized to never be able to pass, there was nearly no point of you coming back. Which brings a surprise to the Ten-Lord commission of the whispers that you were here. One thing leading to another, here stood Jing Yuan in your vicinity with your back turned to him.

“Spiritfarer..” His voice was smooth yet filled with an sense of wonder. Giving an his infamous smile as he caught your attention. “What brings you here to the Loufu?”

His gaze turns over to the woman next to you. One who was always accompanying you on your journey through the universe (aside from the little white lion cub that was tailing after you). She explains what the situation was and why you were here. It was apparent that you needed supplies for the spirits and the ship at hand. Mainly food since one had been so curious about the Xianzhou.

It was a moment of silence for Jing Yuan. Thinking over what has been said as he kept his gaze locked onto you. In your hands, you were carrying a basket of goods. Who knows how much longer you would have to stay. But he might as well help you with whatever tasks that you need to get done.

Jing Yuan was an man of patience. He enjoys hearing about what type of people you’ve met on your own and what it was like within the universe. The general loves all the trinkets you show him, showing a feign of amusement when you had showed him the bottle of lightning that you accidentally brought along. This, of course, doesn’t go unnoticed by Yanqing who had came into the gardens during the midst of you showing the lightning bottle to Jing Yuan. He made a little note to later make sure that you weren’t by yourself when it’s raining. Especially when Yanqing was with you.

He was aware that all of your tasks were complete for the time being. Yet as you two bid your farewells, he snuck a little gift onto your hand without you barely realizing it. It was a golden pendant with the linings engraved into a lion. One that reminded you of the lion cub that you shamelessly had to drag away from Mimi countless of times due to it wanting to bother her.

“Till next time, spiritfarer—“

He was nearly cut off by the sudden embrace of yours. Jing Yuan was caught off guard by this. Seeing how you were tightly hugging him as if you truly didn’t want to depart from this world. He gave a gentle smile to you as he wrapped his arms back around you. The small height difference was good enough for him to lift you up, squeezing you tightly. It almost felt like forever before you pulled away from him. Everything was at peace with him.

But with Blade, you couldn’t tell what he thinks.

Every so often there was a chance of running into him. It was never when he was alive, nor really dead. He was struck with mara and immortalized with no key way of knowing what can truly kill him. The first few times you ran into him, you managed to stay some distance since his body was constantly moving but also fading. He was on a thin line of Life and Death, but you both always knew what side he’ll always be on.

You lost count at the amount of times you’ve seen him. With an shaky sigh, you racked up the courage to approach the man who was lying face down on the ground. Nudging him gently to at least get him to acknowledge you. Which indeed worked out since he turned his head over towards you. Blade’s gaze was on you in an instant.

Were you someone who was here to harm him? Blade was on on the verge of his last breath but he couldn’t run away from danger of the world. Even in the state that he was in.

Your arms snakes under his torso. Trying your best to lift him up and help him to his feet or at least sitting up so you can get a proper look at him. The lion cub that was by your side watches as you helped Blade to be in an upright position. He didn’t do anything to protest against it. His silence was enough to know that he wasn’t done with the life he was bear to live. And yours was enough to know that you couldn’t do much for him.

It was a little cycle that happened. You would find Blade on the verge of death, and it would lead to him being brought back to life due to the mara almost immediately. On rare days you would find opportunities to get to at least know who he was. When his body has been too damaged beyond immediate repair, the time you shared will be longer as well.

It was one of those days. He was sitting alone in an empty ally. His body fading in and out at random moments, and this time with you by his side. The mara was always the one cause of his memory loss but he felt solace with you. He couldn’t remember fully of what you’re like. He knew that you weren’t a threat to him. He knew that you were an important person. But he just can’t remember much about you. Even when he did it was when he was alive and breathing well.

Blade’s eyes were consistently tracking your hand as the other was holding a snack for him to take. It didn’t matter if he was a spirit or a living being, you still offered food and water for him to take.

You paused briefly before turning your fully attention over to Blade. A solemn look upon your face that he knew. It was almost time for him to go. He watches as you stretched your arms out a little as if you were implying for something. He tilts his head towards you in response, debating whether if he should accept or not.

Blade knew it wouldn’t make much difference but he raised a hand a few inches from the ground. Letting you do what you wanted to do. Within a few moments, you wrapped your arms around him. Your embrace was warm which made him feel much more at ease than he was before. Though his body tense up slightly at the gesture. He was use to it, but he had an fear of causing any harm to you.

It took his a few moments for him to return the hug. Wrapping only one arm around you since the other was damaged badly. Resting his chin ontop of your head with his eyes closed. He felt you squeezing him tightly as if you were begging for him not to go.

Once he opened his eyes he was in the same place before. Only that you and the little lion cub was gone from your places. His body healing himself to make him conscious of what was happening in the living world. He feels the mara stirring within him once more. Blade casted his eyes elsewhere, the warmth of the hug slowly fading as if it was just a memory he made to give himself some sort of comfort.

He must’ve died. How marvelous.

#— ghouul frights #hsr blade #hsr jing yuan #jing yuan x reader #blade x reader #platonic relationship #blade hsr x reader #jing yuan hsr x reader #i got a little detailed on Blade hakcjdowkfl

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artsyjedi · 1 year

Text

Life on its form

Any driver x fem!ooc (only mentioned as she)

WARNINGS: driver dies, there are references to depression (mentions of giving up). HEAVILY ANGST - if you find something else, let me know.

Also there's probably some grammar mistakes here and there.

A/N: it's the saddest thing i've written in a year but I couldn't waste the idea. Hope you enjoy :)

From books to movies, love seems to be this enormous thing that works like missing pieces from a puzzle.

Love is supposed to fulfill the empty spaces.

And is very common to hear people say: “It takes effort, and sometimes it’s tiring. But it’s worth it.”

So, during every single relationship, she tried. She tried her best to make it work – because that’s what it takes, right? To some she was loud, to others she was more of an introverted. Fun but not funny, you know? At one point, to one of her partners, she was just enough. She never got too angry or too sad or too happy.

Her partner loved when their friends talked about her. About how good she was, how they wished their own partners were like that. She never complained when he went out with his buddies, wasn't jealous when he got too close to another woman. She was a good girl. His good girl.

It was tiring. But… love requires that. You need to give to receive. And they were good. They were also enough to her. Even when they got mad, like mad-mad, everything was just fine.

For four whole months, they had planned this trip to enjoy the always so beautiful and fun European summer. When the day arrived, they simply said she should go alone, that they weren't on the mood and would be a terrible company. And, on top of all that, they said:

"You should go alone, make friends. It's gonna be good for you. For us, you know? To be apart."

Great. She thought. That clearly meant the relationship wasn't on its best moment. Ups and downs (even though it was more downs than ups). That’s what relationships are made of. No need to think any deeper.

So was right there, on that small country on the northen coast of the Mediterranean Sea, that she learned that love is actually simple and effortless. It comes, stays and requires nothing.

He taught her that. All he wanted from her was sweet nothing.

What was supposed to be a four week trip, became two months. And then three. Between somewhere here and there, she texted her now ex to let them know she wasn't coming back.

All her friends and family thought she had lost it. Who ends a three years relationship because of some random person they just met? They truly thought she had gone mad (to which she responded: yes! Madly in love!).

Was after a great night where they lived, laughed and loved, that he told her he was a Formula 1 driver. She imediatly wanted to cry. Not because of fear of everything being too much, or because he started to ramble about his plans with his ever so excited smile.

She cried because, for the first time in a long time, she felt safe. It didn't matter what would happen, if he was famous, if she would need to deal with all types of people.

He had her. She had him. Nothing else mattered.

When they had to leave the little world they had created during those months and go back to reality, all they felt was deep and raw love.

And then the months became a year. Then a year and a half. And then two years. And then they were living together. What started with a small space on his drawer, became a full section on his closet.

When routine started to catch up, during times where her work demanded more and so did his, with more and more races being add to the calendar, they decided to create a sort of system. Something silly. Something them.

They downloaded some apps for couples, so when they couldn't be together, they could still do things together. Their favourite was one where they could draw. Also, at the end of each day, they would write down to each other those detailed text messages talking about all things.

He also started to leave notes on the pockets of her clothing before leaving. Sometimes he would write poetry, something to make her laugh, or some sort of reminder of how much he loved her. He also loved to leave things with the notes: small gifts, from jewelry to chocolate.

No matter what happened, she knew it would always have something.

But it’s been three months since his accident. Three months she hadn’t found a note, the drawing app widget is nothing more than a white empty board and there is no more detailed messages.

She hadn’t attended the race that weekend, having too much work to do. They did made plans for going to this fancy restaurant he always wanted to try, though. Such a shame they never made it.

Would be a lie to say she remembers much from the days after the news. Actually, she barely remember the day itself. She knows she was the first to get to the hospital, that she was the one to call the family (both hers and his), and then talk with the team.

Some said they were sorry, some tried to find something to blame trying hard to sooth the situation.

But that was life on its form.

Even if it had someone or something to blame, what difference would make? He wasn’t coming back. She wouldn’t hear his laugh anymore, or his tantrums, or his rambling. She would never see again the way he used to lean against every surface he could, or how bad he was at hiding his emotions.

She would never touch him again.

And grief it’s different to every person. There’s no right or wrong way to feel it – as her therapist said. People feel what they feel when they feel and there's nothing you can do to change that.

She accepted easily, better than she thought she would, at least. She did got depressed on the first days, of course, but she kept on going. Always foward.

For first week of her work vacation, she went to her family house. No one dared to say anything. She was laughing, going out with old friends - what was surprising, considering they were sure she would give up.

But that's something she could never do.

She does have something to live for. The memories of every single moment they had together, good or bad, are worth living for.

Now it's been two days since she came back. The apartment is so quiet she allows herself to wonder why she didn't cried yet. From the balcony, she sees the sun making its way towards the line where the sky mets the sea. In a few minutes, it'll also be gone.

She smiles. Once, her therapist asked her "in one word, and just one, describe your love and why"

She answered that their love was just like the ocean. Not because it's unstable or deep, as some people say. She chose the ocean because it's endless and most likely, it won't ever go away. Now thinking better, she should've had chosen waves instead of ocean: always moving, always coming and going but never dissipating completely.

And that’s what their love is: something that will never just go. Now, some days she feels more, some days she feels less. But it’s there.

With this thought, she decides to change her clothes and do something she's been doing her best to avoid: to wear the last cardigan he bought. It was during that week, it came inside of a beautiful box and he had smiled saying, "i have great plans for this one".

Making her way to the small beach in front of their building, she takes a deep breath and fels that stupid feeling again. The one that puts her on the edge of something that never comes no matter how hard she tries. As if there's something waiting right around the corner.

The sky is now a mix of purple, pink and orange. It's beautiful. The wind becomes cold while she just stands there, feeling the sand wrap her feet. The waves crash, coming and going and then coming again.

It's when a bird flies too close to her that she puts her hands on both pockets. A reflex. Something so normal but that means a lot, specially when she feels one of her hands brush against something.

And there it is. She finally went over the edge, finally saw what is around the corner. Her eyes gets watery, she can feel tears falling down her cheeks and sees the wet dots being created on the sand. She laughs. Suddenly life is less heavy.

Her body almost gives in, but she manages to sit properly. With another deep breath, she sees what he left for her.

Two years ago, during a race week on the US, they managed to scape go to Santa Monica. He insisted on going to the photo booth and she hated every single one of the pictures. He told her to chose one to keep, the others could go.

And he carried that one with him everywhere. Either on his wallet or inside of his helmet.

And now the picture is on her hand, wrapped in a small paper. She's sure it was already there when he gave it to her, and when he kissed her goodbye for the last time.

On his crap handwriting, was written: a memory for you to keep until I come back.

Seing the sun finally disappear and the moon rise on the other side, she reliases she created another memory for her to keep on living for.

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kittievampire · 1 year

Note

So long/odd request but hear me out

Mc and Lucifer are in a sugar-rotting relationship and brothers and undatebles react

Lucifer spoils Mc so much like…mammon gets in trouble he gets hung from the ceiling Mc does the same thing they get away scot-free Satan has been begging for a cat for eons nope! but Mc wants one of course. He gets them tons of expensive gifts and if Mc ever wants something they only have to bat their eyes at him. It's not like Mc is using him though they dot on him a bunch too. And whenever they get in a fight loud moans are followed within a few minutes (if you know what I mean) but feel free to ignore 💙

I was in the middle of class when I read this and I was WHEEZING

I am a firm believer in Lucifer spoiling the MC rotten and leaving his brothers to fend for them damn selves but denying any sort of favoritism

I only did the brothers this time, I hope that's okay 😭😭😭

Sorry this took so fooking long to make 🥲

Lemme see what I have in my bag, my dear~

Click here if you wanna request!

Warnings: Very suggestive, jealous bros lmao L

Enjoy.

You and Lucifer had been dating for a few months now. Though, one would think you'd just gotten together with the way the two of you treated eachother. Or maybe that you were newlyweds in your honeymoon phase.

Lucifer treated you like a goddess. There was constant praise and worship, he'd drop everything if you asked, and he'd spoil you rotten with his love. You would return the favor, of course. Every now and then you'd surprise him with a new cursed vinyl, which he'd listen to all night if not spending it with you.

However, the brothers believe that you're getting totally unfair treatment.

Mammon

Baby boy was spending a lot more money than usual

He was playing a new gambling game he'd downloaded on his D.D.D.

When Lucifer got home, he immediately scolded the second-born for a solid 45 minutes

He announced that Mammon was on "lock-down" and wasn't allowed to ask anything of anyone, nor was he allowed to spend money

He was hung from the ceiling

And Goldie was taken away, too

Mammon was pissed the fuck off

So, when he noticed you were spending a lot more money, he did tease you for being greedy

"Oi, human, ain't splurgin' on shopping supposed to be mine and Asmo's thing? Lucifer's gonna be on yer ass if ya spend too much. Just be careful."

He says this and is genuinely a little worried that he'd see you hung from the ceiling as well

Lucifer confronts you about it in front of Mammon

"My Love, may I know why you've been spending so much grimm recently?"

First off, Mammon didn't like how he started that

How come you got that sweet conversation starter?

What he got was, "Mammon, what have you been wasting your money on this time?!"

Though, he still suspected it'd go downhill, and that he'd need to jump in to protect you at some point

"Oh, just some things... I can't tell you what they are, but I promise this is a rare occasion, Luci." You said, gifting him a kiss on his cheek

Lucifer smiled at you. "Alright, as long as you're being responsible, I trust you."

...

WHAT?!

"WHAT?!" Mammon shouted, earning a slight jolt from you and a look of annoyance from Lucifer

"What, Mammon?"

The Avatar of Greed froze. "I-I-! Y-You—" He paused before letting out a small groan

"Nevermind. Forget about it, yeah?"

Leviathan

Snekboi missed roughly a week of school and wasn't attending his online classes

He was grinding this new game he got so he could keep his spot as one of the top players!

He just couldn't afford to take his attention off of his D.D.D. for a second, the price would be too high!

Of course, Levi ended up being scolded by Lucifer

"Your priority must be your studies, Levi, do you intend on dragging Diavolo's name through the mud?"

How Diavolo was relevant was beyond him

But, Levi still had to sit through a lecture

He also got his D.D.D. taken away from him for a week

Not only did he lose top-spot, but he lost a majority of his self-esteem as well

So, he was obviously worried when you started skipping as well

"Uhh, MC, I'm not sure you should stay home today. Lucifer's not too kind to those who slack off."

But, his warnings fell upon deaf ears

You decided to take a few days off, deciding that you just really didn't feel like going to RAD

You woke up with a migraine one day, couldn't get sufficient sleep the other, and you just took another day to catch up on sleep and what work you had

Leviathan actually tried to stop Lucifer when he saw him outside of your room

"Lucifer, maybe they were feeling really bad or something, I don't think punishing them is a good idea, please show mercy! They're just a human!"

"Quit your whining, Levi. Or do you want to be given the Mammon treatment?"

This made Levi yelp and cower behind him, watching as Lucifer knocked on your door

You answered it, and Leviathan bit his nails nervously

"Hey, Luci," You said, greeting him with a small kiss to the cheek

"My Love," He started softly. "Are you feeling alright? You haven't been attending your classes. Is something wrong?" He asked, a hand reaching up to caress your cheek.

Error 404 not found

Leviathan.exe has stopped working

You smile sweetly. "I'm okay, Lucifer, I just really wasn't feeling up for RAD these past couple of days. It's nothing to worry about, promise!" You say, quite enthusiastically.

...

NANI THE FUCK?!

Levi SWORE you were about to get bodied

But, no

Lucifer just smiled, chuckled softly, and left with an "Alright, take care of yourself, Love."

Bullshit

You're fucking hacking

Satan

Satan wanted to bring a cat into the HoL

Lucifer reminded him of how he brought more cats than were allowed and "turned the House of Lamentation into the House of Cats"

Very fucking salty about it, but ultimately got over it (for the most part)

He saw you bring a little feline home and immediately rushed to your side to help you take care of it

It was a stray with a few wounds from other cats

He helped you bandage it and feed it, all the goods

"MC, I must warn you that Lucifer isn't exactly fond of pets... Let alone cats," Satan said, stern gaze meeting yours

You tilted your head in confusion. "Why is that?"

Satan was a bit hesitant to tell you, so he gave you the shortened and sweet version

"We had a bit of a cat problem a while back, he just really doesn't like cats. Dog people, am I right?" He scoffed

"Satan, what did I say about bringing in cats?"

Satan lowkey jumped a bit and turned his head

The fuck did he come from, bro is teleporting or some shit

You immediately hold the kitty close to your arms, looking up at Lucifer with doe eyes

"Luci, I'm sorry! I was the one who took in the cat, but he was hurt! Please, can we just keep it for a little while, at the very least?" You begged, the black cat in your arms meowing at Lucifer

Satan sighed. He was about to tell you that it was no use, that Lucifer couldn't be bought or reasoned with on this topic. That may have been his fault and he was sorry, but there was absolutely no way Lucifer would budge on this-

"Fine."

...

What

Satan sat there dumbfoundedly before the two of you as you continued to converse, trying to process the events that had just taken place

Lucifer said yes

To you

For a cat?

Huh...

He was upset for a mere moment, but then a light bulb went off in his mind

Perhaps he could use this to an advantage

Satan's definitely going to try and get you to be a wild card whenever him and Belphie are pulling pranks on Lucifer

Just so the eldest will be a little more lenient

Now he knew Lucifer's weakspot

He found himself laughing maniacally in his mind as he realized just how much him and Belphegor could do with you as a cushion whenever they'd get in trouble

Asmodeus

"But, Lucifer, all of products in my favorite cosmetic brand are going on sale today! I have to get every single one of them or else I'll be..." Asmodeus gasped

"Trashy!!" He cried out, practically leeching off of Lucifer's arm as he continued to beg

"Asmodeus, no! You and Mammon are both on lockdown for the rest of the month! Now, get off of me!"

Lucifer managed to pry his younger brother off of him and slammed ether door shut to his office, leaving a near-on sobbing Asmodeus in the library

That's when he heard you

"Lucifer, must you always be so rough on your siblings?" He heard you ask, making him gasp and sigh dreamily. "Oh, darling, you always come to my rescue when I need it!" He said, his voice not loud enough to penetrate the door

"MC, I suggest staying out of my family matters. They have nothing to do with you."

Asmodeus could tell from the other side of the door that an argument was likely about to ensue

However, when the two of you started raising your voices, he could also sense some... Arousal?

"Oh!"

"Oh."

It wasn't long before he could hear your moans and whimpers from the other side of the door, lewd slapping noises making him step back a bit

Asmodeus couldn't help but giggle a little

He honestly didn't mind this as much as his brothers did, he found it really entertaining that the two of you endulged in his sin after such a heated argument

Asmodeus approves 👍💖

Beelzebub

Poor baby gets scolded so often for raiding the fridge, especially late at night

He's usually told to go to bed, and that these late-night trips to the fridge aren't good for him, all that

He couldn't help it, it was his sin! That was no fair!

Lucifer ended up putting him on lockdown after 11pm, meaning no trips outside of his room whatsoever

Beelzebub would usually try to get some snacks into his room before that time, but he usually ran out rather quickly and was left with a rumbling stomach

That's when you came in, holding two arm-fulls of snacks

Quietly, you pushed the door closed with your foot

You knew Belphegor was a heavy sleeper, but you still wanted to be quiet anyway, so as not to wake the Avatar of Sloth

You saw the gluttonous ginger perk up when he saw you

"MC?"

You smiled, dropping down the snacks before him

"Lucifer didn't say I couldn't raid the kitchen. I figured you'd be hungry, so I got you some snacks."

Bro bear-hugs you

He lowkey almost breaks your spine with how tight he holds you

"Thank you, MC! Can I call you sister, please? Get married to him quick so I can call you sister!"

You blushed at this comment, chuckling softly

"I'm working on it, I guess," You choked playfully, patting his back

"Beel, I need to breathe."

Not really all too jealous

A bit sad, but he gets over it when you bring him food

Lucifer never says anything about it tho when he finds out you're the one who's causing such a snack shortage

Belphegor

He was constantly scolded for pulling all kinds of pranks on Lucifer

There was that time he threw his D.D.D. in the trash, lit his coat on fire

All harmless things

So, when he catches you attaching a can of whipped cream to... Something in the fridge, he immediately raises a brow at you

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"Ahhh, just setting up a little surprise," You chuckled out

At first, he thinks it's for Beelzebub, but Asmodeus had taken him shopping with him earlier with the promise of free food afterward

"For..." Belphie trailed off, hearing footsteps nearing the kitchen

Immediately you close the fridge and take your seat in front of a plate of food you'd made yourself earlier. "Sit down," You whispered to the Avatar of Sloth

As he shuffled to a seat next to you, he realized what you were up to and put a hand over his mouth

Lucifer walked into the kitchen, greeting you and the youngest with a smile and a "Good morning."

You picked up a piece of the pancakes in front of you with a fork, putting it in your mouth and humming to yourself. "Luci? Could you pass me the butter?" You asked softly

Lucifer nodded, turning and opening the fridge

Immediately, whipped cream sprayed all over his face, some falling onto his chest

Belphegor bursted into a fit of laughter, immediately giving you a high-five and wiping a tear from his eye as he clutched his stomach

"Oh, that was good!" He choked out in between laughs

Lucifer turned to look at the youngest, wiping off a large portion of the whipped cream on his face

"Belphegor, did you do this?"

You snickered beside him, looking up at Lucifer

"I thought you'd like a snack, Luci~" You hummed out, giggling softly

Belphegor mentally prepared himself for a 45 minute lecture

There was a pause, making him shift a bit in his seat as his laughter died down

Suddenly, Lucifer began to laugh

It started out small

Then, his laughter boomed in the room, bouncing off of the walls

"Huh,"

This confused the fuck out of Belphie

Like, ummmm what

"You've gotten me, MC, well done. I needed that laugh." He said, walking over to you and wiping some whipped cream off of him, putting it on your nose

He dismissed himself, saying he was going to wash this off of him

Belphegor was silent for a moment

"Hm?"

"You get laughter and boops after pranks and I get lectures and scoldings... Favoritism at it's finest. The Anti-Lucifer League could make use of this."

He'd explain more, but he was getting too sleepy

Shit was fun asf to write, thanks for requesting

I hope you enjoyed this, anon!

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