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sanstropfremir · 3 years

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it's kingdom time for real!!! the first episode is here and mnet finally uploaded the stages from like a month ago so i can actually watch them more than once to review.

happy to see them all actually performing. not the most interesting stages overall, but it was the 100sec one-take so i wasn’t expecting anything crazy. like the performance stages, this is about what i expected at this point in the show.

ranking under the cut, i have Opinions(tm) and they are not all pretty.

(anyone that’s seeing this for the first time, i’m a trained performance designer with over 30 credits and a decade of experience, yes i can talk about this with authority)

a few general notes:

this type of stage that mnet has built is called a traverse, or alley, stage. named exactly for the reason you think. it’s characterized by a narrow playing space with audience on opposite sides, and two entrances on either end. so mnet had a pretty typical setup. there are some advantages to this type of stage:

because of the narrow stage space and usually smaller audience capacity, the performer and audience are in much closer proximity

because of the shape of the space, blocking (choreography but for not-dance) can travel well and be very dynamic

it’s uncommon outside of midsize/small productions so there’s some novelty for the casual theatre goer

however! there are some pitfalls with this type of stage. the hardest type of stage to work with is (theatre) in the round. theatre in the round is characterized by being....in the round. that means the audience is placed 360 degrees around the playing space. which means that they can see everything; every entrance, every exit, every performer’s back, 360 degree sightlines means there is nowhere to hide. and in a medium that relies on concealment to create magic, it’s a tough stage to work with. not saying it doesn’t work. some of the most incredible shows i’ve been to have been theatre in the round, but when you go to those type of shows, as an audience member you understand that there will be some scenes where you only see the actors’ backs. there is no perfect seat in the round. the reverse is true as well, the actors can only act to those in front of them. and like i stated previously, on the production end it becomes difficult to hide things like props/set/costume changes that you might have been able to in another type of theatre. why am i talking about theatre in the round? because traverse works on exactly the same principle. even though the audience is only on two sides, the same issues still arise. directionality is key: a director has to be careful of how exactly the stage gets blocked.

why am i talking about stage formats? because the space always informs the performance, that’s why. i think mnet made a sort of smart choice to build a traverse stage. since the ‘audience’ is a video camera, that eliminates the need to play to the opposing seating banks, and opens up more staging opportunities. it’s a fancy looking stage that does what they need it to.

now here’s my gripes. if you’re going to specifically orient a stage so that it is by nature directional, why are you broadcasting in a format where direction doesn’t matter? if the camera has no fixed position, then you’ve just skipped directly into in the round staging without taking into account the function of the space. it's a round peg in a square hole; yes it fits, but you can see the spaces where it doesn’t quite match up. for a very obvious example, any shot that is not staring directly down the barrel of the stage from left or right has audience in it. and not enough to be worthy of a reaction shots (because those are just cut in in post), but enough to just be there. why would you do that when you could just.....not? just go properly in the round and then you wouldn’t have that distraction. especially when the audience is wearing white. also, there are only so many ways you can stage on a traverse, you’re pretty much limited to directional points on a compass, because there are literal risers in the way. because of the way most groups are choreographed, the member layouts lean more towards having the members in a line than they do layering the members deep. this configuration is fine on a proscenium stage (which is what most stages are), and would even be fine on a traverse stage if you were playing to the risers. you could even do some interesting choreo alterations. but! because mnet has decided that the camera is perpendicular to the risers, that means that most of the formations are not optimized for the stage dimensions and are in fact the opposite dimensions. most of these groups are doing their longest blocking across the shortest area of stage, which is dumb. although it isn't much of a problem because the stage is still very large, but it's still a bizarre choice on behalf of mnet. why would you not arrange the stage so you have more clearance for the camera, the audience, and also the performers? i would have to check back over the rtk performances, but im pretty sure at one point they switch to an in the round stage. why are you not doing that from the start? this would also allow for more built setpieces. although it does remain to be seen if they do switch after this episode, since this particular challenge was a one-take with minimal props/set pieces. which segues to my next point: these groups barely took up the parameters of the challenge, or utilized them effectively! this is also mnet’s fault, mnet if you say that you’re gonna do a one-take, don't cut between seven other cameras!! show us the power of that single point of view! let the groups actually do some interesting blocking with the path of the camera! there’s so many interesting things they could have done, but no!! had to be boring!! i know this is technically an introductory stage, but i also don't care. these groups have (relatively) competent ADs and stylists, they can think outside the box.

ok now here’s my actual rankings:

1. btob

sorry babies, none of you can match them vocally. love you ateez but you sure fucked up picking them to go after you because they blew you out of the fucking water. and everyone else, but ateez cumulatively is the weakest vocally. more on that later. like the performance stage they showcased their strengths and the experience (and training) shows. good use of the directional stage having three vs one that came together in the middle. loved the white suit variations, im especially a sucker for a belted suit jacket. loved peniel's gigantic trench and massive earrings, very mid 90s, his stylist definitely took a lesson in how to accessorize very short hair. always love good use of fog. uniform colour theme, all elements were there to support the vocals. no complaints, chef’s kiss.

2. ikon

hey baby groups? see bobby having fun? do that more. i know you think performance face is sexy and serious but none of you know how to act and you all look dead inside on stage. the lights may be on but nobody’s home. anyways. excellent beginning formation, excellent ending formation, no complicated position changes that make the camera give you motion sickness. fun choreo that they are obviously having fun performing, which goes sooooo far in the success of a performance. only group so far to use silence as an effective device, and the arrangement was interesting and suited to the song+performance. i think it was smart of them not to deploy bobby right away, although it would have been funny to watch after whatever it was that stray kids was trying to do. again, like btob and also sf9, sticking to their strengths. costumes fun and fitting, indicative of both the colour of the group and of the song. nice detail in the monochrome and the black accent details.

3. sf9

taeyang is that bitch and they only way this would have been better is if he had actually grabbed the ties of those two other members (if you think i am going to remember anyone's names other than the people i already know you are wrong). love the confidence to waste a good chunk of your 90 seconds for walking and standing in formation. actual good use of one-take directional camera, even though they ruined it once they started dancing. choreo perfectly fine, lighting good complementary colour scheme, costumes nothing to write home about, surprisingly good projection design? wasn’t expecting that. im not the biggest fan white suit jackets over black shirts but ill give it a pass for the proper suit accessorizing.

4. ateez

i applaud your dedication to the pirate gimmick but boys you don't need that anymore, i promise. hongjoong's lil bloody cough was a fun gag that didn't draw too much attention but fit with the theme. came out of the gate strong with an actual clear narrative, which can be a challenge to do in 100 seconds, and the only group to have a narrative. also actual camera choreo! that was interesting! mnet stop fucking cutting to overhead shots! apparently im destined to always be beefing with the ateez stylists because what was the point of all that? very little variation in texture or pattern on matte all black just made any relevant details disappear. torch gimmick and end formation fun, and the arrangement had an obvious climax. weird and kinda fun projection design, but not helped by concert-style stage lighting. pick one or the other lighting designer, don't make them fight like that! props to them for actually having their mics on the whole time, even though they are probably the weakest group vocally. im also going to be beefing with the choreographer because they are always making seonghwa sing while doing ridiculous moves that make him go offkey. ateez has some of the stronger 4th gen vocals, but they're at a disadvantage because a) none of them have proper vocal training, and b) their main vocal is not actually a skilled singer and is destroying his voice.not a lot of vocals for them to showcase this stage and that was probably for the best. hanya (@changdyke) is in charge of vocals critique and will have more to say about this than me, even though i am also trained. im just here to talk about the production.

5. the boyz

im neutral to positive on tbz because i did really like their danger stage from rtk. this performance is just....fine. I don’t like the arrangement, but that's mostly personal opinion. but it doesn't have a conclusive end and the whole dissonance thing isn't really working for me in this instance. the choreo is quite flippy and tricking is not necessary for an interesting choreo. i did like the throwback/use of modern choreo, i think that's a strong choice for them and it's not something that many other groups are doing, so they should stick more to that than to tricking. the camera choreo is also not good. here’s where the clearance issues and fighting against the stage layout happen! stop making a handheld do a 180! are you trying to make us motion sick? to be fair, this is not the most egregious one, but at least ateez got it right by having a person lead the camera in a particular pattern. also, what even is the theme here? leatherclad boys in the forest? nobody give me any shit saying it's based off one of their music videos or whatever, that shouldn't matter. there should be a clear theme that can be easily identified without prior knowledge of the group, especially when this is an introductory stage and they are a relatively young group. none of the other groups have this issue. that being said, at least the costumes were interesting to look at, although thematically confusing. good use of accessories, texture, and bedazzling to make the black stand out against the stage. the hands in front of the camera were kind of fun but didnt really mean anything? again, back to the lack of clear concept. i did like them reaching out to pull that member forward, it would have been better if they had just left it at that.

6. stray kids

the more i watch this the more i hate it. im not even sorry about it anymore. starters, and i will admit this upfront: i do not like most 4th gen music, so the spiderman meme groups are already operating on a deficit in my point of view. and i particularly did not like this arrangement. same as with tbz, why did it not have a conclusive end? also overuse of sound effects. and stop saying your fucking band name! the only musician that’s allowed to do that is jason derulo and thats because hes a meme now. but twice in 100 seconds? no. and what was the point of that logo/crown reveal? im tired of crown reveals we have seen them so many times by now, we don't need to see it again. was it meant to be that they were carving it into the ground?? very unclear. there was an attempt with camera choreo, and i will admit that the pan up and then back down to the ‘wolf pack’ was probably the strongest moment in the whole performance. the lights were in their mouths, by the way. however, the rest of the choreo is all over the map, quite literally. as with tbz there’s a lot of members in the group and so in order for everyone to get their screen time they break down into smaller groups, which i don't disagree with on principle, but here.........the breakdowns are just tricking, which although eyecatching, does not a very compelling or cohesive choreo make. even the unison choreo is weird, obviously its stylized horror but it just looks awkward and strange. you can make awkward/unattractive choreo work (see taemin’s want, or even move, to some extent)***, but skz doesn't have an ounce of the charisma that taemin has so it just looks awkward. also, that rapid switch between opposite sides of the stage? nausea inducing. ateez was the one with the pirate concept but skz apparently trying to make us seasick. im not gonna say anything about that rap other than it was bad, why was that allowed on stage. the sparkthrower was fun but that's like the 14th gimmick in this 100 second stage and that’s too many gimmicks. costumes are truly nothing to write home about, extremely unclear relation to the theme. if you're gonna be wolves then at least have some fur accents or something. the makeup effects were a bit over the top and not necessary in the actual performance. a hairdresser needs to thin out felix’s hair because he looks like he's wearing one of those lego hair helmets. oh, i did like that one guy’s shirt with the collarbone cutout, but again: how is that relevant to the theme? cmon people!!!! design the whole experience!! im sure there’s more i could write but holy shit this is long and im tired and also i don't want to watch this stage anymore.

ok im done. jesus this is long. again, this is just the intro stage so i suspect that some of my complaints will become null next week, but we’ll have to see! well, what i actually want to see is changmin insulting children but i’m not holding out hope for that to happen. hopefully we see some more spectacle-y stages and i can really go in.

***this is not me saying that taemin has a bad choreo that he’s making the best of. want is purposefully choreographed that way in order to showcase taemin’s ability. same with move. the point of want is that it IS awkward and should not be seductive or appealing and yet it still is. almost like....it’s in the name of the song or something.....

#this is mostly stream of consciousness and has no clear thesis but i do not care #kingdom #kingdom review #anybody that has questions or doesnt understand my theatre jargon just ask im happy to clarify!#do not come at me with the 'if you dont have anything nice to say' bullshit these are performers performing is their job #i can and will critique them on it because it is also my job #like my actual real life job #and this is stress relief and a fun analytical exercise for me #even if this is almost 3000 words.....#kpop analysis #text

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taesbetch · 4 years

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01 | Creatures Of The Night

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Genre: Angst, Fluff, Smut: Vampire!AU

Summary: Creatures of the night, Soul mates, a war between species. You had thought all these things were nothing but folktales. But as the world hidden in plain sight crashes into your day to day life you struggle to keep up. Going from being hunted to the leader of a vampire groups mate, your world is turned upside down and the fight to survive is on.

Word Count: 3.8k

The sun shone directly in your eyes as you watched you family drive off into the distance. Though the heat lay a blanket of warmth around your skin your heartfelt cold as you relived your mothers final words.

"Try not to call us"

Wow. How absolutely fantastic. Standing outside of your home you sighed. You had 10 days to find a new place and figure out how to survive on your own. Your so-called parental protector had found a new boyfriend, one who had flipped your world upside down. Letting out a noise of frustration you dragged your feet back into your now-empty home. Deciding on a nap.

---

The same feeling as the one prior seeped in as you sat in your classroom, the sun blaring through the glass window. You looked towards the clock, trying to think of an idea but nothing particular came to mind. Watching it tick by slowly you remembered that your mum's boyfriend buried around 20,000 dollars in the forest for the so-called apocalypse. Smiling softly you felt a weight lift off your shoulders, there's no way they remembered to dig it up. It had to still be there. Zoning back into reality your ears adjusted to the girl in front of you, her eyes fixed on you.

"Hey did you hear me!" the girl said snapping in front of your face.

"Sorry, i missed it” you stated, pushing your current issue to the back of your mind.

"They said to stay clear of the forest, 4 girls dead, they say by a mountain lion due to the bite marks but I find that incredibly weird considering we don't get mountain lions, Reya what do you think?" the girl asked Reya who was staring out the window obviously not paying attention as well.

You’ve known Reya since before you could even remember. Though the two of you were best friends, Reyes mind was always a hard one too read and it often felt like the gurl held multiple secrets.

"I think that it's the mountain lions," she said turning towards us. Your heart skipped a beat as her eyes bored into your soul almost as if your thoughts had been spoken out loud. "So don't go into the forest," she said sternly as the bell rang.

As the class got up packing up with the rest of the class, you continued to look at Reya in shock as her eyes kept burning into yours. Can she read minds?

"Maybe" she said getting up with a shrug. You almost gasped as your eyes followed her movements.

"Sorry what??" you asked getting up too. You pushed past people in order to catch up with Reya. Just as you both exited the classroom she answered.

"I said maybe, as in maybe its mountain lions, no one can be sure though," she said smiling widely before leaving the classroom.

Quickly making your way home you looked up to the sky noticing how quickly the sun was setting. It is winter...You picked up your pace knowing you wouldn't have a lot of time to find the money. lion smion, there's nothing out there...but still you wanted to be cautious.

After gathering your things and changing your clothes you quickly walked towards the entrance of the forest. The travel seemed like a lifetime even though it was only located 15 minutes from your house.

As you got there you looked up at the trees and back towards the city. You always found it strange how there was just the city and then bam a forest but You’ve never questioned it, and to be honest, no one has needed to. Taking a deep breath you looked at the shovel you stole from your next-door neighbour and began your search.

remembering that he has said be buried it near a large tree with a knifed X into it.

As you kept walking the sky started getting darker and the air was getting cooler. The trees seemed to glimmer underneath the moon but there was something spooky about this forest. Before you could take another step you heard rustling in the distance. Crap. You probably should’ve left a lot earlier.

Your head snapped into the direction of the noise. Was that the mountain lion? Your eyes scanned the empty area as your heartbeat sped up."Hello," you called but it came out more like a terrified wheeze.

"Well, what do we have here?"

Once again your head snapped into the direction of the noise. shocked that it was a voice and not a growl. Your hand came up to your heart, almost like an instinct. As your eyes adjusted your body almost feinted from the amount of work it was doing. With your heartbeat finally leaving your ears your eyes managed to make out a figure in the dark. You could see it was a man and you could make out some of his features but not all of them.

"Oh. Hi you scared me" you said sighing in relief,

"Oh sweetie he hasn't scared you just yet," another male said gasping once again you turned. this man was a little closer than the other one and you perfectly make out his outfit but as he stood in front of the moon his face was a little hidden.

"Mmmmmm type O jungkook's favourite. Maybe we should bring her back to him?" another said popping out from the right. Three males. in the middle of the forest. in the middle of the night. You froze as your heart dropped the feeling of unsettlement kicking in.

"Guys....can you smell that? What rank is it? An ultimate?" another one said as his head turned in different directions. "fuck. We should go" the first one said angrily as they all sighed in frustration.

"I thought they were extinct what the hell," another one said before turning around and disappearing in the shadows. You watched in relief as they all disappeared except one.

"we'll see you again human" he winked at me before disappearing with the rest of his group.

You blinked a couple of times, your body frozen in place as the wind began blowing harsher against your skin. What just happened?

"Oi you idiot"

You turned around, this time without fear as the familiar voice interrupted you. Reya. standing there with her arms crossed angrily she walked forward as your eyes connected. Were people just out in the forest constantly? Is there an event you didn't know about?

"I said not to go into the forest," she said grabbing my arm angrily. “Is this for your mum's boyfriends money? Gosh. is it really worth it ?” she said as she started dragging you back in the direction you came.

I pulled my arm away from hers and stood my ground as she looked at me confused "...They left" you blurted.

“what do you mean they left?” She asked, her eyes softening. You sighed, a cloud exiting your mouth as the cool air had suddenly become colder.

“Mum. She left with that bitch of a boyfriend. I said i wanted to finish high school here so left. And gave me nothing. I’m losing the house in 10 days Reya. I didn't know what else to do...” You explained.

Reya stood quietly. she looked at the ground before placing her hands on her hips.

“so instead of coming to me, you decide the best idea is too rummage through the forest at night?” She asked, her tone soft yet intense.

“well...I know...We’ve been friends for the longest time, but I’ve never been to your house. I haven't met your mum i jus...I didn't want to intrude. You clearly have stuff going on in your private home life Reya.” You said.

Reya bite her lip before hugging you tightly.

“You idiot. I know i have a lot going on. and honestly, I'm sorry that i haven't invited you into this part of my life before its just that its-...well a lot. But my home is ALWAYS open to you y/n. Your my best friend for god's sake” She exclaimed. as she released you from her grip she grabs your hand.

“You're coming to live with me. You can’t say no” She smiled.

“Only if your sure...because I’m going to feel hella bad if I’m an inconvenience to you...Do you have room for me?” You asked, your free hand coming to the back of your neck nervously.

Renya let out a small laugh as she looked at you excitedly.

“Trust me. We have room.”

------

Standing in front of a beautiful mansion, your jaw hit the ground. the driveway was lined with small trees guiding the way to the beautiful house. The wood coloured panels and sleek black colour scheme had you drooling a little bit.

“Yeah, You definitely have room” You whispered, still in shock.

Walking in the house you gawked at the interior the living room area that connected to the kitchen was gorgeous, to the left a glass wall let you see out to the city. You didn't even realise the house sat above the city until now.

"Remee are you rich?" You asked her, still in awe at her big ass place.

"I guess you could say that. Follow me ill show you to your room!" she said running up these beautiful gold plated stairs.

"Is this why no one has ever come to your house? Cause you're worried they'll steal something?" you asked following her through the second floor.

She laughed as she opened up a door to a room.

"no, I'm not that paranoid. Here's your room. We’ll grab your stuff tomorrow but it's currently 11pm and we’ve got school tomorrow” She said the pain in her eyes when the word school came up very evident.

“Yikes did you say 11pm?” You asked in shock. The time had really slipped by.

“I know, kinda crazy. I'll give you a tour of the place tomorrow! The bathroom is through that door there and don't worry ill come get you in the morning. Just rest up and don't worry about your living situation any more. I've got you.” Reya smiled.

“Thank you...really” You stated.

as Reya left your new room with a goodbye you took a deep breath. Looking around at your beige and white schemed room you smiled softly.

You could get used to this.

However, as you let yourself drift to sleep. Red eyes stared from a tree in the distance and a target had been unknowingly placed on your back.

-----------------------

Sis, Wake up!”

You fluttered your eyes open slowly, bright light started invading them causing me to squint. “10 more minutes” you groan as you rolled back under the silky sheets.

“I've been trying to wake you up forever. It's like you were dead!” Renya said hitting me with pillows.

“Remee please don’t make me get up, this has been the best sleep of my life” You whined as you tried to fall back into my peaceful slumber. Reya chucked a uniform on the bed hitting you one last time.

“Well, you can have another great nights sleep when we come back after school. Sis, please don't make me try and convince you to go. I already wanna ditch,” she said happily.

“ugh, We have to go...” You replied as you attempted to move your body. Keyword...attempting.

“Now get up you lazy bum! We have to go to school!” she said before exiting my room. You groaned before throwing the sheets off your body, staring at the ceiling. Hearing birds chirp you let yourself have another minute before you threw yourself out of bed.

---

The class was rioting as the day had just begun. The teacher hadn't arrived to class yet so as the paper was being tossed around and gossip was being spread you took the opportunity too Finally, the doors handle starts to riggle, The classic old door playing up again. But just by the wiggle, the class knew who it was.

Everything seemed to stop before everyone rushed towards their seats picking up any rubbish that was in the way and throwing it in the bin, Reya, who was on the other side of the class started jumping over desks just to get to her seat in time. Just as everyone was seated and was acting ‘normal’ the door slide open.

“Class A year 12. You have new students.” She said before entering in, as she walked in the faces coming in behind her looked so familiar it was scary, the seven boys standing in front of the class were so good looking some girls were actually drooling. One of the boys caught my eye, his dark hair and emo aura intrigued you, he caught me staring and smirked before looking next to me to Renya. blushing hardcore you ignored the tense state of your friend.

As they introduced themselves you watched as Reya nervously played with her fingers, you creased my brows in confusion as she looked at you. Something was clearly bothering her. She tried to smile at you in reassurance but it didn’t work out very well.

“Class would someone please show the boys around before chapel starts,” miss asked, as soon as she said that all the girls in the class shot their hands up except you and Reya. You tried your best to read her but it wasn't working very well.

“We want her to,”

Jin, the boy who looked like the oldest one pointed at you. Shouldn't they be in different year levels?

Everyone’s eyes clicked to me, some girls glared at the back of your head as you slowly got up. “Follow me,” You said softly ignoring how all seven boys stared at you as if you were prey.

walking through the hallways you could hear the boys whispering behind you. The hair stood up on the back of your neck as you pointed to different rooms. explaining what the are.

“and this is the spare classroom, we mostly use in for dance class as there aren’t any desks here, and the walls are soundproof,” You explained opening the door and letting them look in.

“Can you take us inside?” jimin asked as the started to block your exit. “Yer I guess I can,” you said as your heart started beating faster.

Leading them, you walked them in.

“so yer it’s a pretty decent roo-“ You started but as soon as you heard the slam of the door closing and the click of the lock, you whipped around faster than you could say ‘what the fuck’.

The boys all started spreading around the room except Jin who stood at the door with a big as the smirk on his face.

“Erm…is something wrong?” you asked gulping the saliva that was gathering in your mouth out of nervousness.

“Mmmmmm yes something is a very wrong young one,” Namjoon said as he rested his body against the wall sighing “see, you saw some of us in the forest last night, remember that?” Yoongi asked as he gave a faint smirk.

“Oh…that was you guys? Why were you in the forest? And why is it a problem that I saw you?” you asked in confusion, why are they making such a big deal out of it.

“mmmmmm, maybe she didn’t…’see’ us” taehyung said putting focus on the word see as he scratched his head and looked off into the distance

“doesn’t matter…I’m hungry,” jungkook said as he stepped closer and closer towards you.

your heart skipped a beat as his piercing gaze looked straight into my soul. A smirk came onto his face before he closed his eyes and took a whiff.

“My favourite,” he said before opening his eyes, the red of his eyes matched the colour of deep blood. As he smiled at you two fangs diverted your eyes to them causing you to freeze momentarily.

Gasping you backed up against a wall, He laughed at my obvious fear as the rest of them smirked waiting for the scene to unfold.

“Do you know what we are?” he asked the word right on the tip of my tongue.

“Y-y-you’re a-a vampire” you whimpered as you clutched the edge of my shirt.

“See guys! now she knows about us! do you know what happens to humans that find out about us?” he smirked coming closer to you.

“I don’t really wanna know to be honest” you whimpered again, looking around for some sort of exit but there was no point, his ‘posse’ had the place surrounded.

“It doesn’t matter anyway, you’re about to find out” he smirked, opening his mouth wider as his hand held my neck tightly. breathing in you were ready to let out a scream but the front door was pulled open.

Everyone stopped, jungkook’s fangs and eyes disappeared as Reya stood at the doorway. you had never been more grateful to see her in your life than at this moment right now.

“There you are, why are you guys in here? Shouldn’t your tour be done?” Reya asked, the door still wide open, wasn’t that locked?

You shuffled your feet to move out but jungkook who was in front of you, growled softly under his breath.

“Y/N, let’s go,” Reya said motioning out the door quickly.

“What about us? You can’t just leave us alone” taehyung pouted as he swiftly grabbed her hand. Your heart skipped a beat for a second, we need to both get the fuck out of here.

“You’re old enough, I’m sure you can find your way,” she said coldly as she snatched her hand back from his grip.

“If you want your friend you’re going to have to come in and get her” jungkook said as he gripped my arm tightly pulling me into his rock hard body.

Trying to communicate with her through your eyes you watched in fear as she rolled her eyes her temper clearly boiling.

“Well?” taehyung asked as everyone looked on. ,s if what was happening was a game. Reya took a breath before walking in straight towards where you were.

Taehyung smiled and slammed the door shut as some of the boys started laughing.

“not a smart move” jungkook chuckled before his fangs reappeared.

Waiting for an ear-piercing screech you watch on worriedly but your eyes narrowed at the relaxed girl.

I started struggling against his grip as Reya walked closer.

“I only like saying things once, so listen closely. You WILL leave her alone, I’ll let you roam around, but if I see one bite mark on her unscarred skin, or one student in this god damn school dead, I will kill you, now let her go” Reya stated, authority laced in her voice.

Jungkook and his companions laughed as he brought you in front of him, holding you still with one arm and removing your hair in front of your neck with the other.

“And what are you, a low power witch, going to do to stop me” he smirked as he brought his fangs closer to my neck.

Tears strolled down my face as you prepared yourself for the pain...

“Remember what I told you,” she said staring him down.

Before his teeth could puncture your neck, his hands dropped from your body and went straight to his head, he screamed loudly, dropping towards the floor. Jin and Suga ran straight too him. Looking at him confused.

“I wouldn’t exactly call me, low rated,” she said grabbing your arm and pulling you towards her. Confused, you continued to stare at the group of vampires.

“Remee, stop please” you whispered tugging on her sleeve, looking down at the pained boy. She glanced at you confused before stopping whatever she was doing.

As jungkook regained himself he glared up at the two of you. scooting a little closer to Remee you tried not to be as scared as they all circled us shooting daggers into our backs.

“so what are you, middle rate? You don’t smell like an ultimate witch” rap monster asked as he examined her.

“I don’t know, are you willing to find out,” she said glaring at all of them. the tension could be cut with a knife. Your friend was so confident and so unfazed by the blood-sucking boys.

“Now let us go,” she said turning to jimin who was blocking up from the door. When jimin didn’t move she sighed and with a flick of her hand jimin was flung across the room. As he groaned you watched as some of the boys moved away from Reya.

“One time everybody, one time,” she said as she led you out of the room.

As Remee dragged you down the corridors you head was spun. The situation not settling well with you.

“Remee, what the fuck just happened, their…and you’re…and what the hell!?” I exclaimed clutching my head with my free hand.

“I’ll explain once we get back to my house,” she said as we exiting school “were ditching?” you asked, Your brain lowkey breaking down at the knowledge that these mythical creatures were real.

“Yer well I think this situation calls for ditching ya know?” she said as the two of you left school. You tightened your grip on your friend's hand as you knew without her guidance your body wouldn't know how to act. The memory of those red eyes and white fangs burned in your brain as you walked...

What now? Are they going to be after you?

You looked at Reya who still looked calm and composed and something about it calmed you down.

You would be okay...hopefully.

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fang-wolfsbane · 3 years

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Transformers Animated: Morning After: Chapter 02: Recruitment, Sir?

“Congratulations young cadet. You’ve made it as an official medic for the Autobot alliance. Only a few have ever made it to your position, so be proud of yourself and work hard.”

Those had been the words from Highdrive’s commanding officer the moment he stepped out of the Autobot Academy for Medics – A.A.M. for short. The moment he graduated, Highdrive had been certain that he was going to land a position within the Elite Guard, training amongst the best of the best to serve his home planet, Cybertron.

As third in his class, he had nothing but a promising future ahead of him, until an incident within the academy dorms had cost him a far grater demotion than he had thought necessary. He had been clearing out his dorm room for the next occupant when some of his fellow students had suggested that they play one last prank on their teacher as a farewell gift. Highdrive had been reluctant at first, but not wanting to be the odd one out, he’d gone with them. The idea had been to liquify the classroom hallway from one end to the other. A harmless prank, right? He had never been so wrong.

Not only had they used energon – the very life fuel they all needed to survive – but the teacher had indeed slipped on the wet floor, tumbled out of a carelessly left open window, broke not only their entire right leg apart, but had hit their helm hard enough to cause a crack within their CPU. A security guard had heard the commotion, and before Highdrive could even think of turning to ask his so-called fellow classmates what they would do about the situation, he was the only one left behind in the entire building.

It took some heavy convincing from one of his other teachers to get him a lighter punishment than he knew he deserved, but at this point he supposed it was the best he could hope to. When he was told he was to be the assistant medic on a space bridge repair ship, he tried to convince himself that it was a learning experience. He would have preferred the stockade.

With a personal escort, probably to ensure that he didn’t try and make a break for it, Highdrive had walked into the hanger where the repair ship was waiting. It was big, there was no denying that, and old… very old. How the bots in control of the ship expected it to be able to fly was a question all on its own.

Transforming alongside his escort, Highdrive was handed off to the commanding medic he’d be serving under. An old rust bucket whose white and red paint job certainly looked like it had seen far better stellar cycles. Highdrive visibly flinched to himself, not wanting to think of what his mother would have said if she’d heard him think so ill of a bot he was supposed to learn from. It was only because of his status as a medical student that he’d been kept from getting a permanent smack on his name.

Walking up to the bot, Highdrive tried to hide a visible flinch as he held his servo out towards the older mech. In reality, their colours weren’t that different. Highdrive himself sported orange in place of the other mech’s red. In all the stellarcycles he’d spent at the academy, he’s noticed a similar scheme to all of them. He supposed that when it came to saving lives, something bright coming to the rescue was a sign of reassurance to the one awaiting assistance.

Right, that was what he had been supposed to do when he joined the academy. Save lives, not ruin them…

“Uh, it’s nice to meet you sir. My name is-”

“This the kid?” the mech before him grunted, ignoring the outstretched servo, focusing his attention solely on the bot beside him. Highdrive blinked, reigning in the urge to curl his servo into a fist as he lowered his arm back to his side. There was no doubt that the mech had heard all about Highdrive’s reason for joining – if you could call it that.

His escort nodded, and with a muttered ‘good luck’ in the old bot’s direction, turned on his ped and casually strode off, only seeming to glad that Highdrive wasn’t his problem to deal with anymore. Unlike his fist, his distain at the thought couldn’t be hidden from displaying itself on his faceplate.

“Better learn to grind your dentals here kid, or you aren’t going to last long,” were the mech’s first words to him as he turned and went back over to what Highdrive assumed to be an exterior control panel. Assumed being the key word. He could name each and every single component of a bot – even a Decepticon’s because of the few specimens from the war they’d been allowed to study – and give a list of their functions and possible malfunctions, but to take care of a ship? Surely the medic didn’t expect him to learn to do that too, did he?

Shaking his thoughts free from his CPU, Highdrive found himself jogging after the mech. “Y-Yes sir!”

“Sir, huh?” the other bot mused, stopping momentarily as a pair of pinchers revealed themselves from his forearm. It took all Highdrive’s self-control not to ask how long the other had his medical upgrade. Highdrive had been scheduled to receive his within the next week, or he would have, if the whole ordeal with his teacher hadn’t happened. Goodbye upgrade. “Haven’t heard that in a long time.”

“Is… is it a problem, sir?” Highdrive asked, shifting on his peds a little unsurely. “I could-”

“No. No… it’s fine. It shows you at least have some form of respect left in you,” the mech said, getting to work on the panel. Highdrive knew he failed at keeping the smile off his lips, taking the other’s words as a compliment, whether they were meant to come across that way or not.

“My name is Highdrive, sir. I’ll be looking forward to learning from you.”

“Ratchet,” the old bot introduced himself, frowning as he concentrated on his current task.

“That’s a pretty cool name,” Highdrive said, his smile growing until Ratchet’s blue optics focused on him, a clear, silent warning within them. He found himself taking a step back, yelping when he lost his footing and fell back onto his aft over an open toolbox carelessly left on the floor. As careless as freshly spilled energon in a dark hallway.

“Hey, watch it!” Ratchet scolded. Highdrive flinched, assuming the glare to be fixated on him until the floor began trembling as another bot, nearly three or four times his own size came bouncing over like a spry scraplet.

“Sorry Ratchet,” the bot said, one of his peds narrowly avoiding stepping on Highdrive’s digits. Yanking them away just in time almost had his spark stop. Breathing through his vents, Highdrive tilted his helm back far enough to study the army-green mech. From his build, he had probably enlisted in the military, though his supposed clumsiness left much to thought.

“Saying sorry won’t fix this ship if you break another welding wrench – again,” Ratchet hissed through gritted dentals. The bigger bot lowered his helm in shame before his own traditional Autobot blue optics whirred as they zoomed in on Highdrive’s faceplate.

“Oh, hey there! You must be the new bot,” the bulky bot said, now fully focused on, well, ‘the new bot’ as he put it. “Here, let me help you up,” and before Highdrive could even think to protest, he was yanked onto his peds by a lightly throbbing arm. He made a mental note to check his arm over for any possible dents later. “Sorry if I scared ya. I’m Bulkhead.”

“H-Highdrive,” Highdrive said, managing a nervous smile as his servo subconsciously rubbed over the previously grabbed area. Yup, there were definitely a couple of dents he’d need to buff out when he got the chance. “And no worries.”

That seemed to be enough to satisfy Bulkhead, if his smiling jawline was anything to go by. A nano sec later, he was blinking, all giddy again like a sparkling overdosed on sweetened energon. “Oh, you haven’t met Bee yet! Come on, I’ll introduce you!”

Before Highdrive could blink, he was swept up by the large Autobot and taken inside the old ship like some guest of honour. The tight squeeze holding him in place against Bulkhead’s frame was enough to warn him not to get on the other’s bad side.

“Hey Bumblebee! The new bot’s here!” Bulkhead excitedly announced as he took them into what seemed like the command room. In the commander’s chair was a slim, yellow, and grey mech, taking a stasis nap. He couldn’t be the commander, could he? Not wanting to risk upsetting his new superior on his first day, Highdrive took the plunge.

“Uh, it’s g-good to meet you, sir,” Highdrive managed to wheeze out.

“Sir?’ both Bulkhead and the smaller bot – Bumblebee – repeated, blinking at him in surprise as if he had just told them he himself was their commanding officer. Highdrive flinched, instantly regretting his assumption.

“Are you not the commander?”

“Pft, no,” Bumblebee sneered, casually flipping his peds up on the dashboard. All too comfortable with occupying the commanding seat, despite his lack in both title and possibly qualifications.

“Then why are you…?” Highdrive trailed off after noticing the way Bumblebee’s optics seemed to darken. A sore spot. A wound better left untouched. “Noted…”

“So, what frag-up got you here?” Bumblebee asked, getting to his peds, and resting his servos on his hip plating once Bulkhead deemed it safe to release his hold on Highdrive.

“I’d… rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind,” Highdrive admitted, pretending to find an interest in dust that decided the corner was a good place spot to begin its invasion.

Bumblebee casually shrugged his shoulders, pulling over a mop and bucket from who knows where, and shoved them right into Highdrive’s servos. “You’re on clean up duty. Doc bot says we gotta get this old dump clean before the new Prime gets here.”

Highdrive blinked. “Prime?”

“Uh, yeah,” Bumblebee frowned, arching an optic ridge in question, “do you not know what a Prime is?”

“Of course I know what a Prime is,” Highdrive found himself hissing back, earning a surprised blink from the shorter mech. All Cybertronians knew what Primes were. He’d have had to online on some far away organic planet to not know about something so simple about their planet’s culture. Slag, even the Decepticons knew what a Prime was, even if they themselves haven’t been around for eons after the war ended with the Autobots coming out on top. Breathing air out through his vents, Highdrive straightened himself out. “Why is a Prime coming here though? Is there some inspection or something?”

“Nope. Doc bot said he got demoted or something. That he’s lucky to still keep his title after whatever he did,” Bumblebee hummed, casting a glance up at Bulkhead, “though I guess we all are.”

Highdrive didn’t dare ask as he looked to the two objects in his servos. He had no idea Bumblebee could be so right.

#Fanfiction #Morning After #Transformers and tagged Animated #Autobots #Bulkhead #Bumblebee #Chapter #Decepticons #OC #Original Character #Ratchet #Transformers

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erekiosuncreativeideas · 4 years

Text

Reliving An Old Nightmare - Chapter 13

<= Chapter 12

Summary : Snatcher finally gets some "me-time" and everything goes perfectly well! Also available on AO3 : https://archiveofourown.org/works/22337299/chapters/56310040

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Sorry for posting late, but I promise I had a reason to wait. I'm keeping it secret for now, but believe me, it's worth it ! In the meantime, I had the time to finish two future drawings AND the next chapter (which has been SUPER HARD TO WRITE, UUUGH), so I used my time well !

The two drawings you'll see are mine. Sorry if the second one is only a sketch, I didn't have the inspiration or motivation to finish it. I hope you'll still like it nonetheless !

A big thanks to Krekka01 for the correction on this chapter !

Anyway, I hope everyone is fine and safe. Happy reading !

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Chapter 13

Being human was all about feeling things again, Snatcher knew this very well at this point. However, he has mostly experienced bad sensations, such as pain, discomfort, the strange taste and texture of food in his mouth, and having to go to the toilet again. Compared to this, actual good things seemed much less significant. It was a shame, since the ghost couldn’t deny that some experience had been enjoyable with that old body of his: sleeping was enjoyable, just lying down on his bed had been, too. Feeling the wind caressing his face, not feeling cold all the time anymore, being able to feel warm after hundreds of years, smelling food or flowers once again, and experiencing the sense of touch for the first time in centuries. Being human had its pros and cons, even if the cons were more noticeable. Furthermore, the situation he was in didn’t let him appreciate those little things since his mind was focused on something very important: leaving this place as soon as possible.

So, when the shade opened the door of the bathroom, he felt like he had just hit his head against an invisible wall made of many scents. All of Snatcher’s senses were sharp and entering a room with so many toiletries, so many soaps or creams. The ghost’s acute sense of smell was instantly attacked by all the perfumes floating around in that cramped space. He squinted, feeling a headache coming by just how strong the scents where.

-“Oh, this is going to be awful, isn’t it…” he murmured to himself, forcing his legs to move forward. Warmness and humidity floated in the room along with the smells. The bathroom wasn’t very big, despite having been made for the royalty. A big bathtub was in front of him, adjacent to the wall, full of steaming water. The bathtub, just like the bathroom itself, had brown and dark green as the main colour scheme. The walls were beautifully textured and, at some places, had a wooden inlay. Just like he remembered.

Snatcher jumped when something moved in the corner of his vision. He almost facepalmed when it turned out to be his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. He stopped for a few seconds, looking at himself: apparently, humans could look even deader than actual ghosts, good to know. His face was pale, and he had dark rings around his eyes. He had slept plenty the night before, though the day had been quite gruelling, both physically and emotionally speaking. The shade ran his hand through his hair as he sighed longly. Yeah, maybe a bath could be good for him, right now. He threw a last glance at his reflection before turning away. He didn’t want to undress while facing it. Being inside a human body was already disgusting as it was, he didn’t need to see himself naked even more than what he was forced to!

As he turned away, he noticed a pile of clean and elegant clothes on a small table near the sink. They were carefully folded, probably by Simeon. The thought made him anxious again. He didn’t know why, however, he couldn’t help but have a very bad feeling about the “butler”. What he had just seen earlier was quite revealing on the dangerous nature of this new opponent: the latter had been able to scare Vanessa so easily, and Snatcher was sure that it wasn’t an empty threat. Whoever was that guy, he was powerful enough to threaten Vanessa and powerful enough to create a whole dimension himself. This was quite discouraging, to say the least. In this body, Snatcher clearly had no chance.

The ghost shook his head. He needed to think about a plan, not about how risky his situation was. Plus, he hated to think about it, but… he couldn’t forget the fact that he wasn’t alone: the kid was still on her spaceship. She was safer there than where he was, so, for now, the ghost only had to worry about himself.

Turning his back to the mirror, he started to undress. In the right pocket of his pants was the remote given by the hat-wearing brat. It was a bright yellow device with a huge red button in its centre. According to her, if he ever needed to flee or to come onto her spaceship, he would only need to press the button, and it would teleport him to her living room. Snatcher didn’t need to use it right now; however, this was a device he absolutely couldn’t allow himself to lose. He hid it in his used pile of clothes while reminding himself that he would have to take the remote with him before giving said clothes to the servants.

He put the pile on the ground and faced a shelf on which were stocked several soaps, shower gels, shampoos and creams. The ghost frowned, as he tried to remember which was which. Some were missing any label to tell the shade what was what, and he ended up using his memory to pick the good products. He wasn’t really sure but, hey, smelling good was the most important part, right? Plus, it’s not like he would be using this poor excuse of a body more than a few days, so having a wash was just a formality at this point.

He put the products on one of the edges of the bathtub and, slowly and cautiously, entered the bath, starting with the left leg. The instant the warm water touched his skin, Snatcher couldn’t help but get his leg out quickly. The hot temperature associated with his acute sense of touch… it was almost too much.

The ghost hesitated. Should he wait for the water to cool down? The idea of taking a cold bath didn’t tempt him very much, even less than a warm bath. After a few seconds debating with himself, Snatcher rolled his eyes: he had seen much worse than hot water! He was a ghost who had killed many people, for God’s sake!

Still unsure, the shade tried entering the bath again. The hardest part was to ignore his brain screaming at him to get out. The water wasn’t burning, the problem was completely different: Snatcher had forgotten what water felt around his skin, and the new sensation made him extremely uneasy. Plus, the pain in his legs was still there. However, he managed to stay calm and let his body sink under the water, slowly. He gradually let his muscles relax one after the other. With time, he was soon lying down in the bathtub, his head on the headrest behind him.

“Now what?” he wondered, ill-at-ease. He knew what he had to do in theory, yes, but actually doing it was quite… awkward. Not only was he terribly uncomfortable at the idea of touching his own body meticulously, but the action felt so foreign to him as well. Even if he was able to stand up or move his arms without too much difficulty, doing precise gestures was… a little more complicated.

Snatcher carefully took one of the bottles of shower gels and poured some on his other hand, clumsily. A small portion of it fell in the water and the ghost sighed, irritated by his own heavy-handedness. He absolutely couldn’t wait to be back in his spectral form! At least, this one was easy to move around.

Washing himself after so many years without doing so was definitely an experience to Snatcher. His movements were gauche, and he almost let the shampoo bottle fall in the water. Other than that, the feeling of warmness around him was… not bad, if he had to be completely honest. Yes, it had made him uneasy at first, but now that several minutes had passed, the shade felt truly relaxed for the first time in days.

He rinsed his head and skin underwater, and eventually settled in the bathtub, letting his mind wandering around. The first thought that came to him was the “Simeon” problem. The shade had absolutely no idea about who that guy could be. But what was even harder to figure out was the stranger’s motives. What did he want? In what way could all of this benefit him at all? Snatcher didn’t know. He felt like there was some missing piece in his mind, and that he wouldn’t be able to understand anything without it.

The ghost was getting nowhere; he didn’t have enough information to try and guess who that “Simeon” could be. Though, he was certain of one thing: “Simeon” was only a disguise. There was no way the real Simeon could have helped Vanessa build this dimension, as the butler was dead in the present. So… it was only a mask, used to fool him and possibly Vanessa. From what he had heard before, he couldn’t be completely sure if she was aware of the stranger’s disguise or not. However, it was probable, as she wouldn’t have been scared of her own butler otherwise.

Snatcher let his head sink underwater as his mind was trying to come up with hypothesises, in vain. Maybe the kid would know more about what was going on? He supposed that she probably looked up for clues as well, along with fixing her spaceship.

When the ghost felt the need to breathe again, he got his head out of the water and sat down in the bathtub. How long had he been in the bathroom? There was no clock in the room, so there was no real way to know. However, judging from the wrinkles on the tip of his fingers, long enough to get out now.

Grabbing one of the nearby towels, the shade stood up and started wiping his wet body. The action was uncomfortable; not only getting out of the warm water made him feel cold suddenly, but the towel wasn’t really soft and scratched his skin. He quickly dried the rest of his body, wanting nothing more than for it to be over with.

The shade then grabbed the clean clothes and put them on, not without the usual clumsiness associated with his human body. He was now wearing an elegant dark purple shirt, decorated with golden embroidery on the collar. The shoulder pads were golden as well, from which were sewed many strings in the same colour. A long and graceful yellow cape came with it, and Snatcher put it on as well. He was also wearing dark brown skin-tight pants and black and golden boots.

Once fully dressed, the shade made sure to take the remote from his old clothes, this time hiding it in his left boot, against his calf. It was not a pleasant sensation, but it was the best hiding spot with this kind of apparel. He just hoped he wouldn’t press on the button by accident.

He came back to the mirror to do his head, and couldn’t help but be surprised at how much a bath could do to his face. He still looked tired, but at least it was less obvious. He looked so much better- less pale now. He supposed he really did need this bath, after all. And, even if he didn’t like to admit anything relatively positive on his human body, he couldn’t deny the fact that he was more handsome than usual, which was… a good thing? He didn’t know what to think of it, and most of his emotions were mixed feelings: pride, and irritation. In the end, it was hard for him to really think of this body as his. Sure, he recognized his reflection! But the whole situation was extremely weird and uncomfortable for him.

He was about to look away when, suddenly, the surface of the mirror turned completely black. It happened in a blink, and it instantly caught back Snatcher’s attention on it. The ghost’s knitted his brows, examining the surface with caution. What was that? The kid had never talked about that kind of thing!

The shade lifted his hand and, with hesitation, slowly put a finger against the cold surface. He was almost surprised to see that nothing seemed very much different, apart from the sudden non-reflective nature of the mirror. It didn’t reflect anything, as if someone had painted it black entirely. The texture was yet just as smooth as before, which was strange.

Snatcher stepped back, trying to find any explanation regarding that weird phenomenon. Yet, everything looked just as normal. Or, well, almost everything. When his eyes fell on the bath, still full of water, he noticed something very peculiar: the foam of the shower gel was not above the water like it should have been, floating on the surface. Instead, it was floating underneath the water level. This sight made the ghost pause, as if his brain was trying to decode something which was wrong in the first place... as if he was trying to explain an optical illusion. He simply couldn’t. All he knew was that it wasn’t supposed to happen.

-“What the…?” He turned around, trying to find new evidence of weirdness in his surroundings. Something else felt wrong, but, at first, nothing looked out of the ordinary. It took him a while to figure out what was bothering him, and yet it was so obvious: his shadow on the ground didn’t correspond to his human one. It was his spectral one, which had no legs.

The realization made him lose his balance, and he had to hold onto the sink not to fall down. What was happening? Was the rift already collapsing? The kid had told him they had several days left, not a few hours!

Snatcher’s breathing quickened, just like his heartbeat, while he looked all around himself, trying to look for any sign of danger. His eyes moved and examined every suspicious object. However, a few seconds passed without anything new happening. The ghost waited for a bit, trying to find anything unusual. He blinked and looked around, only to realize that things went back to normal.

Snatcher didn’t know how to react. His first reaction was to check on his shadow, in order to see if it was still his spectral one. It wasn’t anymore. Just the regular human one with legs. Behind him, the mirror was back to its previous state, showing the reflection of the room just like his.

The spirit looked just like he had seen a ghost. The thought made him laugh grudgingly as he ran his hand through his hair. It took him a moment to calm down. Okay. So the rift was doing unexpected things, just like the white cracks he had seen the day before, though these were apparently the brat’s doing. Was what just happened caused by the kid’s actions, too? He really hoped so, as the contrary could only mean one thing: the dimension was collapsing much quicker than what they had anticipated, and, in that case, they really needed to leave right now. The guy associated with Vanessa seemed to want him to stay there, though. Was he aware of the instability of the rift? If so, what was he trying to do? There were many faster ways to permanently make a ghost disappear! So why bother with a plot like this? It didn’t make any sense, but that wasn’t really new to Snatcher. Nothing made sense in that dimension.

He had to find that Time Piece and bring it to the hat-wearing child.

Once he got his breathing under control again, he straightened up, looking at his reflection once more. Well, at least he looked more presentable now. His surroundings seemed to stay normal. Maybe it was just a false alarm? He hated to say it... even think about it, but… the ghost couldn’t help but wish for the kid to reassure him, as she was the only person able to explain what was going on to him. He quickly pushed away that thought from his mind. Ha, good one, him wishing the child was there with him, pshhh. Damn human brain and human thoughts.

After a few minutes, the shade shook his head and pulled himself together. Now was not the time; he had things to do, especially that doctor appointment in his room. The sooner he would be able to walk without wincing, the better! And, in the middle of the night, he would try and look for the Time Piece in the manor.

He opened the bathroom door and left the room. He definitely had a lot in his plate.

The spirit walked back to his bedroom and, just to be sure, stick his ear on the door. However, no voices could be heard. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

A man was standing near the windows, looking at the outside with interest. He seemed to be in his late forties and had salt-and-pepper hair. He was wearing a long black coat and was holding a leather satchel. Said man turned towards Snatcher as he heard the door opening behind him.

-“Oh, Prince Alistel!” exclaimed the man, bowing with respect before continuing. “Excuse me for the intrusion. My name is Walter Gyfford. I’m the doctor you asked for.”

Snatcher suddenly realized he had a role to play and put a fake smile on his lips as he entered the room, closing the door behind him. He stepped forward to meet the doctor:

-“Oh, of course!” the shade replied with an insincere joy. He then pointed at himself. “Hum, do I need to undress?” What was the use of letting him new clothes if he had to take them off a few minutes later? The man smiled and shook his head as he let out a small laugh.

-“No, no, you don’t have to, I can heal your legs through your clothes.” The doctor then pointed to the bed with his hand. “Please sit on the bed, if that’s alright with you, your majesty.”

Snatcher hated those names. He had nothing to do with royalty anymore, and really didn’t want to, anyway. Yet, he said nothing and kept his polite expression on his face, reluctantly sitting down on the mattress. He carefully took his boots off, doing his best not to press the button on the remote still hidden in his shoes. Snatcher had to stop himself from letting out a sigh of relief as he put the shoes aside.

The doctor kneeled in front of him, opening his satchel and taking out very different items, such as plants and crystals. It took him a while for him to settle everything down as he wanted, but eventually rose his head to meet Snatcher’s stare.

-“I’m sorry, it might hurt a bit, since it’s a serious injury. Tell me when you’re ready.”

Snatcher couldn’t help but laugh at the doctor’s attempt to reassure him. He had been left to die in a cellar! What could be more painful than that? No matter how painful something could be, he could take it at this point!

-“Don’t worry about me, I’m ready,” he flippantly replied, shaking his head, this time with a sincere smile painted on his lips. The doctor seemed hesitant at his answer, but simply nodded as he began to use his magic.

Snatcher didn’t think it would be that painful. Maybe it only lasted a few minutes, but it lasted far, far more to the ghost. Healing magic wasn’t so painful usually, though his situation wasn’t really usual in itself. He could feel things moving in his legs as the doctor was trying to fix what was broken or just injured in general. Staying motionless was extremely hard, and he had to stop his body from crying from how intense it was for him. It was utterly humiliating. The pain was so strong and made him want nothing more than just rip the guy’s throat open. Fortunately for the latter, the pain started to fade the moment Snatcher seriously considered that option.

The doctor stepped back, his forehead sweating. His face clearly showed how uncomfortable he was at the moment.

-“Are you alright, my Prince?” asked the doctor, continuing in a more reassuring tone. “It’s over now. It won’t hurt anymore.”

Snatcher felt like he was being spoken to like a child, and he loathed that. Though he had to push his pride aside to stay in character. God, he hated having to act like the dumb prince he used to be.

-“Thank you,” he still managed to say, gritting his teeth to gulp down all the threats that might come out of his mouth. He wanted to kill that man so bad now. Luckily for the doctor, Snatcher was in no condition to do so, especially since he also needed to keep a low profile. But that didn’t prevent him from imagining himself doing so. It was deeply enjoyable.

Well, at least, his legs felt good for once, so he supposed that it was worth it. The doctor eventually stood up and bowed once again to him.

-“I’m sorry it was painful. Make sure to limit the physical efforts, and you’ll be perfectly fine!”

The spirit simply replied by a nod, as the doctor turned towards the door. No physical efforts? Well, this was going to be difficult with what he had in mind for the night, but he obviously kept that part for himself.

Just as the doctor was about to leave, he turned to Snatcher and spoke once again:

-“Oh, I almost forgot!” he said, raising his eyebrows as he continued. “Your butler tasked me to tell you that dinner will be ready soon.”

Snatcher’s heart sank in his chest as he suddenly realized that having his legs healed meant that he would have to eat outside of his bedroom. In the dining room. With Vanessa.

This day was never going to end, was it?

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Sorry if this chapter was a little calm compared to the others, but it was needed for the story. The next chapter is going to be wild, don't worry :) I hope you still liked that chapter despite the lack of action !

As for when the next chapter will come out... It'll depend on the surprise, so if I'm not posting as fast as usual, please assume that I'm working on the fanfic in the meantime and/or on another AHIT fanfiction that I may or may not currently write. We'll see :)

And if you want to support me in the meantime, you can watch an ad on Utip. Thank you!

Please stay safe everyone !

=> Chapter 14

#A Hat In Time #Reliving An Old Nightmare #RAON #snatcher #my art #fanfiction

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kayteewritessteve · 5 years

Text

If Only You Knew - 13/19

Description: You arrive home one day to find a wedding invite for two of your best friends from high school. You knew this day was going to come eventually, but even with that said, you weren’t prepared to return home. At least not after 7 years of avoiding Buckhannon, West Virginia. Or rather, avoiding him; your ex-best friend and the secret love of your life. But maybe it was finally time to face your past, to face him, and everything else that happened on that horrible night. Who would have knew that your prom would end up being a total disaster, and the very last night you’d spend in Buckhannon for the next 7 years? you certainly didn’t. That’s for sure.

Catch up HERE.

Word Count: 6,620 ish.

Pairing: Modern!Steve Rogers x Reader.

Rating: 18+

Warnings: Violence. Drinking. Bad and offensive jokes. Possible triggering thoughts, feelings and emotions. Moments of bullying and harsh name calling. Lots of curse words. And a very sloooow burn.

A/N: I sadly don’t own any of these characters. And no beta reader, so I do proudly own all the errors and this story, so there’s that.

July 2018 - Present.

“Red. Who saw that coming?” You laugh as you step out of the change room. You are currently with Hilde, Wanda, Nat, and her Aunt Maria trying on bridesmaids dresses.

Wanda and Hilde laugh with you as they exit the change rooms beside yours. They both glance over at you. “I know, right?” Wanda says and then Hilde adds, “Plot twist.”

A loud dramatic sigh comes from behind you all, “please, you all knew this was my colour scheme for the wedding, don’t act surprised.” Nat shakes her head as she walks over to the three of you to check out the dresses, up close and personal.

You, Wanda and Hilde are currently standing in front of a massive wall of mirrors, in an adorable little boutique on Main Street. The shop was entirely too expensive and exclusive for your tastes, or bank account, but it was charming nonetheless. If it wasn’t for Nat covering the cost if your dress, you’d have fainted at the price tags—You actually still might faint at the price tag, even without it actually attacking your savings account and/or credit cards. The thought of spilling anything on the dress gave you anxiety, as this would definitely be the most expensive thing in your wardrobe. Hands down.

Nat motioning for you to spin catches your attention, and you do as instructed. She looks you over with a sharp eye before turning and motioning the same for Hilde, and then Wanda. Once satisfied with the 360’s her face remains unreadable for a few moments, arms crossed over her chest, giving you all a few final glances before a massive smile breaks out across her face. “They actually look fantastic on all of you, and from the looks of it, they shouldn’t need to many alterations.” She looks back and forth between you three, once more, “what do you girls think?”

You hum for a moment, checking yourself out in the mirror before replying, “I think they look good, mine may just need to be taken up a bit.“ You pull up on the fabric at your thighs, trying to figure out where a good end length would be.

Nat’s Aunt Maria, who up until this point, was so engulfed in her phone you weren’t even sure she knew what was going on, gestures for one of the attendants to come take a look at your dress, without so much as breaking her eye contact with the phone in her other hand. An attendant hastily makes her way towards you without so much as a word.

You just stand there, rather awkwardly, as the attendant begins measuring your legs and pining the bottom of the dress. You aren’t used to this sort of treatment, all your clothes just came from normal clothing stores where you found your size, tried them on, then bought them regardless of if they were a little too long or ill fitting in some places. If you liked them, you liked them. But the lengthier ones you’d always vow to take in to be hemmed, however you’d never actually get around to doing it. Your life was just always far too busy. Or at least that’s what you kept telling yourself. That was your excuse for never actually visiting a tailor.

“I don’t think this one will need any alterations,” Hilde pauses and clutches the back of her dress to pull the fabric taut over her stomach, “except maybe just taking in the waist a little.”

"Mine fits almost perfect, I just need the straps shortened slightly,” Wanda says as she messes with the shoulder straps.

Once again Maria flags over attendants to look at the 2 dresses, though this time she did actually glance up from her phone for a moment.

“But I think other then that, they all fit rather nicely,” Maria muses as she looks over the three of you. Guess she was paying more attention then you thought. But then her phone rings loudly throughout the room and she excuses herself to go answer it outside.

You nod to yourself at Maria’s input, Wanda and Hilde hum their agreement as well, all of you lost in looking yourselves over in the mirror. You tightly spin your hair and hold it up to the back of your head, in a mock up do style, trying to see how the dress will look with no hair on your shoulders. “I adore the colour.”

“Me too,” Wanda adds as she swivels from side to side inspecting all the angles she can.

“And to think you all mocked the colour when you first came out,” Nat playfully scoffs.

“I wouldn’t say we ‘mocked’ the colour,” you hum and move your head back and forth as you think over your next words. “More like pointed out the predictability of the dresses being red. Classic Nat. Though, red has always been your colour,” you smile sweetly at her as you blink your lashes quickly, feigning innocence.

“And it always looks exceptional on you,” Hilde adds as she turns to wink at Nat.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever,” Nat smirks and waves you all off then mumbles, “kiss asses.”

“Well it is a very nice ass,” Wanda shrugs nonchalantly, causing you, Hilde and Nat to burst out laughing. You shake your head and refocus back on the mirror in front of you, as Nat wanders over to speak to the dress consultant.

You look over to other two woman, “does this dress remind you girls of something?” You ask quietly, trying not to interrupt Nat’s conversation.

They furrow their brows as they both turn back to their reflections. You all stand in silence trying to remember why these dresses seem so damn familiar. Then after a few minutes Wanda finally pipes up, “the winter former.”

Your eyes widen, “oh god, you’re right. That’s totally it!” You turn to them again, “this looks just like the dress Nat wore to it.”

“It does not,” Nat says dryly from behind you and you jump slightly. You didn’t even hear her approach you all again, she is like a damn ninja. Always.

“No, it totally does,” Hilde and Wanda say in unison.

Then you add, “the fabric is a little different, yes, but the fit and colour are damn near the same.”

“Not even,” Nat rolls her eyes. “That was a fun night though,” she trails off as a frown takes over her face, and then Wanda quietly finishes the thought for her, “until it wasn’t.”

You cringe slightly at the memory of that night but quickly hide it and plaster a fake smile on your face. “It was a good night, minus the end,” you pause then unconsciously scrunch up your face as you whisper, mainly to your reflection, “and the days following it.”

You can feel their eyes on you, they had all clearly heard you, and one glance around the mirror tells you they did for sure. You see the three of them staring at your back now, looking either concerned, apologetic, or both. You sigh then shake your head, “girls, it’s in the past. No point crying over spilled—punch.” You grimace at your choice in words then step off the platform and head towards the change rooms. Turning back to look over your shoulder and smile, “okay, I’m going to change, as I’m pretty much dying to see your dress, Nat.”

She smiles weakly and nods her head. You know she wants to say more, but leaves it alone. Which you are thankful for, but as you enter the change room, even with trying not to think about that night, your mind is clearly a glutton for punishment. As your thoughts go directly to that memory…

December 2010 - 8 years ago.

You walked into the beautifully decorated ballroom—Yes, ballroom, not gym. The dance was actually being held at Nat’s estate as the school’s gym just wasn’t big enough. No, it wasn’t normal to hold school functions at students homes, but your grad class was larger than normal this year, and there wasn’t really anywhere else that could comfortably fit all the tables for the students in attendance. Let alone allow for a dance floor and a stage.

Plus Nat’s aunt was part of the PTA, and was heavily involved in the school functions, needing to know what was going on around her niece. And what different things were happening at the school. She was a bit of a control freak. So when the issue of needing a location for the dance came up, a few parents offered up their homes for it. Maria being one of them. And after a process of elimination, Nat’s house was chosen just due to its sheer size, in comparison to the other homes volunteered for the party.

Some of the teachers were still used as chaperons even though the dance wasn’t at the school, along with a few of the PTA parents as the group was so large.

Then when the issue of costs for the dance was brought up, Maria had offered to cover all of it, meaning the food and decor, claiming it as her yearly ‘charitable’ donation. So that’s exactly what she did.

But speaking of charitable donations, Steve had awkwardly asked you 2 weeks before the party if you’d want to be his date to the dance. At first you were over the moon, but then you quickly crash landed, as your mind realized he was clearly only asking you because he felt bad for you. And a pity date to the dance was not something you’d even remotely be okay with. No, you’d rather not go at all, then to have to go with Steve, solely because he felt bad that no one else had asked you.

So you had declined his offer, informing him that he should ask whoever he actually wanted to. And that you’d just sit the dance out, if no one else asked you. He had insisted that you were who he wanted to bring, but you weren’t born yesterday. You knew Steve was way out of your league. Hell, everyone at your school knew that. And you’d be damned if you let yourself ruin his night by forcing him to be your date. So regardless of what he said, you told him ‘No’ and to ‘Just drop it, my mind is made up’. So he did, thankfully.

However, three days before the dance, when Nat heard you weren’t planning to attend, thanks to your lack of a real date, she flipped her lid and threatened to damn near disown you if you didn’t go. She even forced you to pick out a dress from her—ridiculously oversized—closet.

Turns out she had to go to formal parties with her aunt often, so she had an insane amount of beautiful—and ridiculously expensive—dresses for you to choose from. So here you were, walking into the ballroom by yourself. Well, that’s a lie. You showed up with all your friends, you just didn’t technically have a date.

Though Steve refused to ask anyone else—regardless of how much you insisted he should—which frustrated the hell out of you. He was always so damn stubborn. The moment you came down Nat’s stairs he had offered you his arm, which you originally shook your head at, and refused to take, but with one stern glare from him you quickly accepted for fear of a ‘brotherly’ scolding.

So even though you had originally turned down his offer, you arrived to the party on his arm. Making your refusal of his offer pointless in the end, which he happily pointed out the second your arm had settled on his. Assface.

But even though you had entered with him, you made sure to keep reminding yourself that he wasn’t actually your date. Even though he had asked you, it had only been out of pity. And he only refused to ask anyone else because he knew you’d end up without a date. Guy was just too damn sweet for his own good, and it drove you batshit crazy.

One glance around the room showed that all eyes were on you entering on Steve's arm, the instant whispering made your skin crawl. This was exactly what you were trying to avoid by turning down his offer. The look of initial shock on everyone's faces that then quickly faded into understanding. Clearly they all figured it was just a pity thing as well. Just as you had. You quickly turned your eyes down to the floor and removed your arm from his, taking a large step to the side. In a desperate attempt to distance yourself from him.

“Y/N?” You heard his concerned voice from above you, and you quickly glanced up at him, noticing the deep frown on his face as he looked down at you.

You forced the best fake, carefree smile you could, but judging by his unchangeable expression he saw right through it. “I’m uh, I’m gonna go find my spot,” you gestured with a thumb over your shoulder.

He nodded slowly, “okay, I’ll come with you.”

“No, that’s okay, really,” you waved his offer off then glanced passed him. Seeing most of the football team currently standing off to the side, obviously trying to get their Captains attention. If their staring and flailing arms were any indication of that. But that was just a guess, on your part. You pointed at them and Steve looked in their direction. “Looks like your needed elsewhere,” you chuckled.

He turned back to you with a sigh, “yeah, looks like it. I’ll go see what they want then come find you.”

It was your turn to sigh now, “you don’t have to babysit me all night, Steve. I want you to enjoy yourself, not be stuck with,” you gestured to your whole form, “the loner crew all night.”

He shook his head, “there was so much wrong with everything you just said. First off,” he glared at you, “it’s not babysitting. You’re my best friend, Y/N, therefore I clearly enjoy being around you, more than anyone else. Which leads into the ‘enjoying myself’ topic. I’d honestly have more fun with you, and your sarcasm, all night then anyone else.” He chuckled and you rolled your eyes, “and lastly, if I remember correctly, I’m also a member of this so called ‘loner crew’. Maybe even more so then you are, as I did, in fact, ask someone but she savagely rejected my offer.” He clutched at his chest like he’d just been stabbed in the heart.

“You’re so dramatic,” you shook your head then poked him in the chest lightly, though sternly. “And you chose to not ask anyone else, so that doesn’t count as being in the ‘loner crew’.”

He smirked at you, “and you chose to reject my offer. So,” he shrugged.

“Only because it was a pity offer,” you scuffed.

“It wasn’t a pity offer!” He huffed and narrowed his eyes at you.

“Okay. Okay. Fine,” you waved a dismissive hand around. “Let’s not rehash this whole debate again.” You grabbed his shoulders and attempted to turn him, which failed miserably. Damn him and his giant ways! “Okay, seriously, go see your teammates before one of them either flails too hard and pulls a muscle, or knocks over some poor unsuspecting student. Think of the students, Steve!” You feigned horror and outrage, causing Steve to chuckle and shake his head.

“You make some very valid points. I’ll go wrangle them in then come find you.” He pointed a finger at you just as you were about to open your mouth in protest, “zip it, Y/L/N. We already discussed this.”

You crossed your arms then pouted at him. “Fine,” you grumbled then spun on your heels and walked away.

You’d found your spot quickly, noting that Nat had sat your whole group of friends at the same table, off in a corner. Thank god for that. With the room as dim as it was, and being in the corner, both you and the table were basically concealed from everyone else.

So as you sat there, alone, embracing your stag status, you peered around the room at all your classmates. People watching was always a favourite pastime of yours, seeing how others interacted, and handled different social settings and personalities, was interesting to you. Trying to figure out if someone was relaxed or anxious based off their body language. Some you could read like a book, others, not so much.

Your eyes landed on Nat and Bucky on the dance floor, standing close and swaying to the music. A smile grew on your face as you watched them for a moment. They were relationship goals to the fullest, and you hoped one day you’d have even a semblance of what they have. Even just a fraction of it would make you happy. As anything was better than nothing at all.

Then your eyes continued on to find Sam and Hilde, standing off to the side of the ballroom, just watching the room. They were laughing loudly and talking animatedly about something, which you couldn’t actually hear, but you could assume it was competitive in nature. They were forever challenging each other, betting on random things, and messing with each other, relentlessly. They were always entertaining to just watch, either up close or from afar. Both being far too competitive for their own good. You knew they were up to something, and the second you saw them shake each others hands, that suspicion was confirmed. They were clearly agreeing on a bet as we speak. About what? You had no clue. But you knew it was probably something both ridiculous and hilarious.

You shook your head and laughed as your eyes continued to scan the room. Finally landing on Wanda and Clint at the food tables, piling their plates high with a little—a lot, in Clint’s case—of everything. Them being not only together, but also at the food tables, didn’t surprise you one bit.

They were like two peas in a pod, and you’d learned early on, that they had become basically inseparable, ever since Pietro’s death. Clint was the main reason Wanda had made it through the loss. He had stayed by her side the entire time, every step of the way, and beyond. He could never replace Pietro, they both knew that, but he helped fill the void Pietro’s death had left behind in Wanda's heart. And oddly enough they almost took on a twin like bond, they could actually have these full on conversations with just their eyes—which was the weirdest thing to witness, no joke. But aside from that, they had a bunch in common. Like how they both damn near ate their weight in food, though they never gained a freaking pound. How they could eat so much and both stay so damn skinny was beyond you.

You laughed to yourself as you watched Clint try something off his plate—that he clearly didn’t like—before he quickly looked around then discarded the offending food back on to its original plater. Acting like he’d never even touched it in the first place. You shook your head then were startled as you felt a tap on your shoulder.

Quickly turning you came face to face with a hand, presented out to you, your eyes drifted up from the hand to see Ezekiel smiling down at you. You didn’t know him that well, besides that he was Kiara—Madi’s best friend’s—twin brother, part of the football team, and from all accounts—that you’d heard at least—he was interested in men, but just hadn’t come out yet. High school students sucked, that was a fact. So you totally understood him waiting till after high school to come out.

“Care for a dance?” He asked sweetly. Had it been anyone else you would have declined, but something in his eyes told you he may have needed this as well. And he was a sweetheart, nothing like his sister, or her friends. You’d interacted with him a few times in passing and could just tell he didn’t have a malicious bone in his body. Plus Steve always spoke highly of him.

So you nodded and slipped your hand into his then stood up, “I’d like that.”

He walked towards the floor and awkwardly put his hands on your waist, keeping an appropriate distance from you. Your arms went around his neck then you both started to dance. “So, having a good time?” You asked.

“I guess,” he shrugged. “Are you?”

“Yeah. I mean, as good of a time as I can have, what with coming to the dance alone.”

He furrowed his brows, “wait, didn’t you come with Steve?”

You chuckled, though it was slightly bitter. “No,” you shook your head, “we arrived together, yes, but he isn’t actually my date.”

“But I thought he asked you?” He wondered out loud.

“Ah, yeah, he did,” you peered around then caught a glimpse of Steve off to the side with his football buddies, all of them having a lively discussion about something. But almost as if he could feel your eyes on him, he glanced over, and before your eyes locked with his you quickly looked back up at Ezekiel, “but how did you know that?”

His eyes widened momentarily, “oh, I duno. Must have just heard it in passing, I guess,” he shrugged again.

Weird. But you’d let it slide. “Who did you end up coming with?” You asked.

“No one,” he smiled weakly and you returned the gesture.

“Aren’t we just a pair,” you shook your head then turned a little more serious. “This might be over stepping, but I just want you to know that I’m sorry high school students suck. And I truly hope you find your happiness one day, Zeke,” you smiled, and this time it was genuine.

He locked eyes with you, “I dunno what you mean,” he trailed off as he took in your knowing look then sighed. “How did you find out?” He asked defeatedly.

“Just a lucky guess,” you shrugged. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. But I mean it, I hope you get everything you want and deserve in life.”

He smiled then looked passed you for a split second before smiling and looking back down at you. “Thank you, Y/N. I hope the same for you as well,” he winked then released you and stepped away before you could respond. Standing in the middle of the dance floor alone was awkward, you should have just kept your mouth shut. Clearly you had offended him, since he had just up and ditched you in the middle of the floor.

But just as you were about to walk off back to your table, you felt a tap on your shoulder once again, you spun around to see your favourite set of baby blues. “Dance with me?” He asked as he offered you his hand. A brilliant smile adorning his handsome face.

“How could I say no to that?” You laughed then took his hand. His hold on you was drastically different from Zeke’s. Yes, his hands were in pretty much the same spot, but he held you much closer. Damn near flush to him. Which, like always, had your mind swimming.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he smirked.

“How’s your night been so far? You managed to save the innocent students from flailing limbs, I see.”

He chuckled and shook his head, “oh yes, the innocent students are safe for now.” Then he looked down at you and you both stared at each other for a moment, before he softly said, “and it’s much better now.” He released one arm from around you to lift it up and tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. His eyes following the motion of it. “Did I mention at all how beautiful you look tonight?” He asked quietly, as his eyes focused back on yours.

You felt the blush forming on your cheeks as you looked down to avoid his intense gaze. Moments like this made pretending your crush didn’t exists damn near impossible. And you knew that if you continued to stare up at him, you’d have another awkward moment like at the lake. One where your heart would win out against your brain, and you’d foolishly attempt another stupid move on him. “You hadn’t.”

“Clearly I never put my thoughts to words then. That’s my bad. Because you look absolutely stunning tonight, Y/N.”

You peeked up at him and the sincerity on his face made you heat up even more. How this boy—who are we kidding, he was basically a man—could be so charming and sweet made your head hurt. He was the total package, and whoever ended up holding his heart one day was going to be one very lucky woman. You were already jealous of her. And how truly blessed she was going to be with him. “Thank you. You look pretty handsome yourself,” you smirked up at him.

“We make a good pair,” he smiled.

Your heart fluttered at the words. If only he meant ‘pair’ in the way you wished it was. You nodded, “that we do.”

The song started to change and you used that to your advantage. You needed to get a little distance from him, before you messed up and either said something stupid or made another unwanted advance. You let go of his neck, then took a step back, feeling his hands slowly slip from around you. “I’m going to get some punch.”

“Ah,” he rubbed the back of his neck, “I’ll join you,” he nodded.

You both walked silently towards the drinks table, it wasn’t exactly awkward, but wasn’t really comfortable either. Then just before you reached the drinks table you noticed him pause beside you, and glanced over your shoulder to see Penelope, Madi’s other best friend, whispering something to him. He looked over at you for a second and the look on his face told you she had asked him for a dance. Before he could even open his mouth you nodded and gestured for him to go. He furrowed his brows for a moment before looking down and shaking his head, then looking back up at Penelope, clearly accepting her offer to dance, as he offered her his hand then they walked off.

You signed deeply, your heart dropping a little, then continued on to the drinks table. You weren’t allowed to be upset by him dancing with other girls. He wasn’t yours. And he wasn’t your date. You had no right to be upset. You shook your head then started to pour yourself a glass of punch, turning around once you had and sipping it as you glanced out around the room. Trying to relocate all your friends once again, which wasn’t hard as you peered over at your table, and saw six shadows sitting there.

You finished off your glass then turned to refill it, but before you could even lift the punch ladle, you felt two hands plant on your back and shove you. You were so caught off guard that you stumbled forward and reached out to try to prevent yourself from falling.

However, one of your hands landed on the rim of the punch bowl and it tipped towards you, dumping all the punch all over you and the floor. You managed to not take out the whole table, but your dress was ruined and the punch was no more.

You spun around and instantly had a few lights flash in your face, then heard that disgusting sound. Madeleine’s laugh. You saw her and Kiara standing a few feet away, phones in hand, laughing hysterically at you. And just like that, Penelope’s invite to dance with Steve made way more sense. You narrowed your eyes at Madeleine then looked down at your now soaked and stained dress.

“Punch is for drinking, Y/N. Not wearing.” Madeleine laughed and gestured to you, “though, oddly enough, it does make you look better in that dress. Or maybe it’s just because it draws the eye away from your face to somewhere less atrocious.”

You went to snap back at her, but realized everyone around you was now staring and laughing. You looked around at all the faces, everyone finding your humiliation hilarious, and that alone made your eyes start to sting as the tears formed. You were mortified.

You locked eyes with Steve from across the room and he quickly released—damn near shoved—Penelope away from him and headed towards you. You shook your head at him, then reached down to hike up the bottom of your now super heavy, soaked dress, then turned on your heel and headed for the doors.

You ran as fast as you could till you made it out of the ballroom, then pushed yourself even more as you ran to head outside, you didn’t want anyone to see you like this. Especially not Steve. You passed a few of the teachers as you ran out front, not paying any attention to them, or their confused stares and shouts. You’d run home if you had to, screw being here.

You finally made it outside and down the front steps. Stopping to catch your breath. “Miss Y/L/N?”

You spun around to see Mr. Banner coming towards you. He was your school guidance counselor and had helped you through quite a few hurdles during your time at Shield High. “Is everything alright?” He asked, then paused as he took in your stained and ruined dress then frowned. “What happened?”

You muffled a sob behind your hand and shook your head, “it doesn’t matter now.”

He stepped cautiously towards you, “I don’t believe that. If it truly didn’t matter then you wouldn’t be this upset. Is there anything I can do to help?”

He was a sweet man, inside and out. He never made you feel uncomfortable or insignificant. And he was always there with an open door and an open ear. You’d gone to him many times over the school year, and he would just listen and give advice where it was needed. He never judged or downplayed your feelings or issues. But right now you just didn’t feel like talking. You knew you should have just stayed home. You broke down and started to cry even harder.

“Oh, Y/N,” he said softly, “do you need a hug? I know I’m not your dad, but my kids tell me I give pretty good hugs,” he shrugged and chuckled. Clearly trying to lighten the mood.

You nodded weakly, you’d have killed for a hug from your dad right now, but you’d settle for a separate dad hug in this case. Then he wrapped you up in a giant bear hug. Which surprisingly felt just like your dad’s. He patted the top off your back comfortingly then after a minute he pulled away. “It’s going to be okay. It gets better, I promise,” he smiled. “Would you like me to call your dad to come get you?” He asked.

You were just about to nod your reply when Steve came frantically running out the front doors. “Y/N!?” He yelled just before his eyes landed on you and Mr. Banner. He paused then headed towards you both.

Mr Banner turned back to you, “would you like me to stay or?”

You looked to him then realized he still wasn’t sure what had actually happened to you, and was attempting to make sure you weren’t put in anymore awkward or aggressive situations tonight. “It’s okay, Mr. Banner. I’ll get Steve to call my dad,” you wiped the tears from your eyes.

“You’re sure?” He asked.

“Yes,” you nodded.

“Okay, well myself and the other teachers are just inside, come find one of us if you need anything.” Then he waited for you to acknowledge what he had said, which you did with a nod, before he turned and headed back into the house. Leaving just yourself and Steve outside, the latter now stopped a few feet away from you.

“Y/N?” He said quietly as he slowly stepped towards you.

You nodded just as a gust of wind blew passed you and a chill ran down your spin. You crossed your arms over your chest, just now realizing how cold it was outside. You’d left your jacket upstairs in Nat’s room, along with all your other belongings. Crap.

He reached out to you but you shook your head, and took a deep breath, “Steve, I’m soaked. I’ll ruin your suit.”

“I could care less about my suit,” he said as he took a hold of your forearms and pulled you into him, wrapping his arms around your shoulders and kissing the top of your head. “Come on, let’s get you inside before you get sick.”

“I don’t want to go back inside,” you mumbled into his chest.

He tightened his arms around you then nodded, “okay, then where would you like to go?”

Peeking up at him you asked through a sniffle, “cheeseburgers?”

He smiled down at you, “of course. Let me just get Nat to bring us your stuff.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and texted Nat, receiving a damn near instant response. Clearly they had all witnessed what had happened, and Steve coming to find you, so they were obviously waiting on word from him. He got the valet to get his jeep, and once it arrived he started it up, then helped you into the passenger seat. Taking care to ensure that all of you dress made it in the car, before he leaned over and cranked the heat to warm you up while you waited.

Nat, Wanda and Hilde came out at that point, and he shut your door, then went over to meet them at the bottom of the stairs. You could hear the slight murmurs of them talking through the closed passenger window. And saw as Nat handed over your belongings and then they all looked passed him to you. Both Nat and Wanda just smiled weakly at you, which you returned, then your eyes shifted to Hilde, who looked like she wanted to punch something. And stat. But she quickly corrected it and nodded her head to you, a motion you also returned. Then they each hugged Steve, waved at you and turned to head back inside.

After a moment, Steve climbed into the drivers seat and handed you your bag, filled with your clothes and belongings.

You both headed to your favourite 24/7 dinner, Huddle House, where you changed out of your dress in the bathroom, then you both just hung out and ate food for a while.

After your late night burger adventure, Steve drove you home and dropped you off. Promising to return once your dad went to bed. Which he did. You both stayed up late and chatted for hours before you couldn’t stay awake any longer and Steve left to head home. Giving you a giant hug before he did.

The night hadn’t gone even remotely to plan, but Steve had helped you get over the embarrassment, and assured you thay no one would even remember in a few days. It had calmed you down and lifted your spirits that night. However, the second you reached your locker, your first morning back at school, you realized just how wrong he was. People would remember, as there was photo evidence to remind them.

Plastered all over your locker, and most of the halls, were printed off and blown up pictures of you, covered in punch, with a range of expressions on your face. You ripped all the photos off your locker but felt the sting of tears, once again, when you glanced around and saw everyone laughing and pointing at you.

Before you could even react you felt someone's hands on your shoulder turning you around and then tucked you into a warm hug against a giant chest. It registered instantly that it was Steve. And then his reassuring whispers in your ear confirmed that thought. And you just clung to him as you watched Nat, Bucky and Hilde yell at the kids around you to ‘piss off,’ ‘grow up,’ and ‘get a life’. While Sam, Wanda and Clint ripped all the photos down that they could find.

Steve walked you to class and then basically hovered over you all day, and the days following when more photos kept being put up all over the school.

After a few days everyone got bored and the photos stopped appearing. But even without the reminders of that night, it stuck in your mind. It’d be years before you finally let go of that memory.

At least until it resurfaced while you were trying on bridesmaids dresses for Nat’s wedding. Speaking of which..

Present - July 2018

“You okay in there?” You hear Wanda ask from outside your change room.

“Ah, yup. Yeah,” you say back as you finish getting dressed in your normal clothes. “Be out in a second.”

Once you leave the change room you take a seat in between Wanda and Hilde, on a small couch in the middle of the room. Wanda informs you that Nat has gone to get her dress on, and that she’ll be out any minute.

The three of you sit and chat until you see the curtains being pulled back on the larger change room off to the side. Then your breath instantly catches in your throat at the sight of Nat in her pure white gown. It has to be thee most beautiful dress you’ve ever seen.

It is stunning, and suits Nat so well. Not to mention it fits her like a damn glove. You feel the tears well up in your eyes, as she steps up onto the podium to looks at herself in the mirror.

“What do you girls think?” She asks as she turns to look at you three, arms stretched out.

“Oh, Nat,” you say in awe, “you’re breathtaking. Bucky is going to have a damn heart attack when he sees you.”

“Yeah?” She asks as she starts to tear up as well. “You think he’ll like it?”

“Are you kidding?” Hilde chokes out with a chuckle as she wipes a few tears off her cheeks, “he’s going to love it.”

“And not just because of the dress, but because you are the one wearing it,” Wanda adds.

Nat nods quickly, and you can see she is attempting to hold back her own tears now. “You three need to stop crying, you’re making me cry!” She scolds but you can tell she is joking.

All three of you stand up and walk over to her, embracing her in a group hug as you all giggle through your tears.

“So you girls approve?” She finally asks after a moment.

“Uh duh,” Hilde laughs.

“100 percent,” Wanda nods.

“Fuck yeah, we approve,” you smile at her as you all continued to hug for a moment, before finally pulling away.

Nat turns, wiping her tears away and looks into the floor length mirror for a moment. Then she abruptly spins to face you three, and her eyes are wide, “holy shit. I’m actually getting married!”

You all giggle at the nervous, shocked look on her face, then nod and all say in unison, “yeah you are.”

“And to Bucky, of all people,” you say as you make of huge show of playfully cringing in disgust.

That makes Nat burst out laughing, along with Hilde and Wanda. Effectively killing her nerves on the spot. Which is the exact thing you were aiming to do.

She calms herself down and then gives you a thankful smile, to which you just nod in a ‘it’s my pleasure’ sort of way. You glance around at your three best girl friends, and realize just how much you’d missed them. And just how much you want them all to be happy, and in your life every day. The thought of having to leave them again in a few short days is not sitting well with you. At all.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

@hopefulmoonobject @caps-lockdown @itsstillnotwhatyouthink @tessvillegas @boxofteenageideas @wangdeasang @giggleberts @casuallydarktiger @theonelittleone @agentbadbitch @ratwrites @starrystellars @bandsandanimefreak @rockyroadthepastryarchy @lovvliies @cuffski @icesoccerer @alwaysright4 @lilsthethrills @imdiegohargreeves @zombiepotterfour @mu-mu-rs @ledandan1244 @straightforwardly @badassbeckettswan @denzmallows @xremember-me-notx @gwynethjodie @lollipopdomination @capstopavenger @jemimah-b99 @rcvenqers @justkending

#au fanfiction #fanfiction #long post #long read #marvel au #marvel fanfiction #steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x y/n #steve rogers x you #steve rogers au #modern!steve rogers x reader #modern!steve #modern!steve rogers #modern au #if only you knew #chapter 13 #no super powers here #alternate universe

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mysticalcroissanthumanoidhands · 3 years

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Women's empowerment

As we all know that India is a patriarchal society where every field of man is interfering with money and women take responsibility only for family and also there are many restrictions. Approximately 50 percent of India's population is only women, it means that this half-way is needed for the development of the whole country, which is still not strong and is bound to many social restrictions. In such a situation, we can not say that in the future, our country will be able to grow without strengthening our half population. If we want to develop our country then it is important that women empowerment be encouraged by the government, men and women themselves.Women's empowerment was necessitated because there was gender inequality in ancient times and male dominated society. Women were suppressed by their own family and community for a number of reasons, and many kinds of violence took place with them and discrimination in the family and society could be seen not only in India but in other countries. For the women, ancient and old traditions have been shrouded in new rituals and traditions since ancient times. In the Indian society, there is a tradition of worshiping women's ladies in the form of a mother, sister, daughter, wife, but this does not mean that the need for development of the country will be fulfilled only by worshiping women. It is necessary today that half the population of the country ie women should be empowerment in every area which will be the basis for the development of the country.Gender inequality is the main social issue in India in which women are lagging behind in men's domination. There is a need to accelerate the empowerment of women in order to equate men and women. The rise of women in all areas should be included in the priority of the nation. Inequality among women and men gives birth to many problems which can emerge as a major obstacle in the development of the nation. These are the birthright of women that they get the equal importance of men in society. In order to truly bring empowerment, women should be aware of their rights. Not only domestic and family responsibilities but women should play an active and positive role in every field. They should also know about events happening in and around the country.

Women empowerment is about making them self-dependent on taking the decisions of life irrespective of the fear of the people and the society. In India the condition of the women is getting worst day by day due to less attention paid to them. It i time that we should understand the power of the women and help them to come out with flying colours. If we give them respect, this will automatically boost their confidence.

Today in India when women empowerment is must and there is a need to give equal rights to them. The problem of being biased towards men should come to an end as women plays a very important role in our lives she is a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother and it is very difficult to imagine success without them so they should be respected by everyone.Women Empowerment is define by providing equal opportunities to women in all sphere of life. Empowerment will enable Women to attain the same position in any field and be treated on a par with men. But still there are several severe incidents of crime against women that the country watches everyday. Today, women always have to be on their guards – be it parks, public transport, cinema hall, educational institute or work place.

Women Empowerment 200 to 500 Words Essays, Notes, Articles, Paragraphs and Speech on Women Empowerment in EnglishWomen Empowerment a serious universal issue that each of us can claim of hearing but do we really understand what is Women Empowerment or is it really important?

The women empowerment means giving power and authority to every woman for taking her own decision in every field. It can well understand in by creating an environment where one can make independent decisions in personal issues, for family or society as well.Empowering women in our Indian society, means treating them as per with men so that they can also take equal participation in the personal, social, economic and political growth of the country. From many years, Indian women have eventuated as strongest pillars in nation building and and again proved that whenever given a chance they can be the best decision makers for themselves, their family as well as the nation.

Crime against women in India is not something that has newly emerged it had always been there in some form. But in today’s world due to improved channels of communication and media involvement we are able to get updated about any unfortunate incident in just few minutes. Gender Equality is definitely the first step taken by the government for bringing women empowerment in India. But the government alone cannot build an environment of growth and development, we also have to make possible effort and develop a sense of respect for everyone. And develop the upbringing of next generation in a way that they know what is right from their childhood that both men and women are equal.We have to work together to remove the male chauvinism from India. Removing the main cause of illness against women is the need of the society. Women in India are no more imprisoned in the four walls of their houses doing household works and look after their family. They should aware of their rights to be independent in every part of life. Programmes like Swayamsidha Programme (an integrated scheme for the empowerment of women), National Commission for Women, Many NGOs working on women rights and Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana, are some of the major steps towards women empowerment and gender equality in India.

Women's empowerment is not limited to only urban working women, but women in remote towns and villages are also raising their voices. Whether they are educated or not, now, in any sense, they do not want to be behind their male counterparts. Regardless of their social and economic background, they are trying to achieve their social and political rights and are also feeling their presence.

Although it is also true that most women do not have to face major discrimination in the society, but unfortunately still many of them have to be separated from different types of emotional, physical, mental and sexual situations and they are often raped , Become victims of exploitation and other forms of physical and intellectual violence.

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alifeleadsimply · 4 years

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Single mom hack: Change to a capsule wardrobe

About three years ago I started playing with the idea of starting a capsule wardrobe. Just never got around to it. Until one day when I realised that simplifying my wardrobe would help a lot towards decreasing my anxiety, my planning time, and ultimately my brain function.

When I say I just didn’t get around to it it is only half the truth. The other half is I was scared. Back then, I owned A LOT of clothes, but from the huge pile, I only bought maybe 10% myself. I love inheriting clothes and have no issue with second-hand threads. So I have jackets and dresses and more that I took from my deceased grandmother, friends and family who outgrew (literally, they picked up weight, as well as figuratively) pieces and a few that other people bought for me. A true mixture of styles, textures and textiles. As I myself have had body issues, and have fluctuated in size over the past few years (3 pregnancies have a lot to do with it) I had not really thrown anything out. What then happened EVERY SINGLE MORNING was I would stand in front of my closet with literally nothing to wear. My clothes were old, stained, ill-fitting and just plain out of style. Then I decided enough is enough! I assumed I was pretty much the shape and size that I will be, so I didn’t really worry about throwing out my “fat clothes”. And I faced that I will most likely never again fit into my pre-pregnancy size 32. So they could also go. After throwing out the old, useless and ugly I was left with what I will now refer to as my core. At this stage the only core that is strong – hahaha.

Before I explain to you what was in my core capsule, let me first touch on why having a capsule is a great idea:

It saves you money. Since everything kind of goes with everything else, you don’t have to worry about individual outfits. Very economical. Great idea if you have to get by on a single income.

It saves you time. Having a kind of uniform means you can (if you wish and if you are inclined that way) grab a top and bottom from the top of your piles and the outfit will not only fit you but also be coordinated. Again, a great idea if getting yourself ready is at the bottom of the morning priority list – the kids must first be ready, then it is your turn.

It saves mind space. Simplifying your daily routines and responsibilities means freeing up headspace that can be used for more important thoughts and decisions.

It saves space. No need for extra storing, or using Husband’s closer because you don’t have enough space. With a capsule, you can make a month’s worth of outfits from a mere 30 to 40 pieces. And they fit in a normal closet.

You see, just benefits all around! Now the next question is, how did I decide on my core capsule? In my case, it was out of necessity and composed out of pieces I already owned. I have not gone out to buy anything. But when that need arises I will follow the following guidelines:

Decide on your basic capsule. That is what I call those items that you own and replace only when they are falling apart. The items that are generally seasonal and kind of usage-dependent. I jotted down my categories and decided each category may have 10 items in it. For me, my categories are:

Exercise (tops, bottoms, bras, trainers)

Seasonal (swimwear, coats, etc.)

Formal (dresses, shoes, tops and bottoms)

Sleep

Around the house

Identify your style. I like wearing clothes that are comfortable, functional and a bit grown-up. My go-to outfit is jeans or leggings with a top or a plain dress. I wear sneakers and pumps a lot and try to stay clear of sandals. So my style is casual. Here I am not talking about formalwear, just your day-to-day.

Identify the lifestyle categories that you get dressed for, then single out your top 3. My top 3 categories would be active, work, and daily.

Decide on the colour scheme of your core. Mine is natural and neutral (brown, beige, grey and black) with accents of blue and berry. Here and there I have something that breaks the mould, but when I have to replace it most probably it will be in a neutral colour.

Now tackle your cupboard. Throw out anything that is ugly, stained, ripped, too big, too small, or that you hate wearing. Look at what you have left. Do the items complement each other? Remove the items that fit into your identified basic capsule categories. Also remove the items that definitely fall into a season, e.g. a floral skirt or woollen pants.

Whatever is left will then form the basis of your core capsule. For it to work, you will roughly need the following:

10 tops

10 bottoms

5 dresses that can be worn all year round

5 pairs of shoes (shoes that you can wear year-round e.g. pumps or sneakers. Your sandals and boots will form part of your seasonal additions so don’t count them in here)

These should be items that you can wear the whole year. Good pieces to have include jeans, tank tops (in the winter wear them under your long-sleeved shirts for added warmth), and dresses that you can wear over long sleeved t-shirts and leggings in winter or as is in summer.

My core cupboard is composed of the following:

4 pairs of jeans (1 black, 1 jegging, 2 comfortable blue pairs)

4 leggings (2 black, brown, coloured)

2 skirts (pencil, long)

4 tank tops (beige, black, white, grey)

3 pairs of sneakers (white, black, navy)

2 pairs of pumps (grey, pinkish)

5 dresses (grey and black long, denim short, blue short, black short, brown long)

The items that are seasonal are packed away, to be taken out when that season rolls around.

We are now going into spring (in Pretoria, South Africa, spring lasts about 4 days then it starts getting warm!) So I will add a few pieces to help with the transition (like light pashminas or light jackets for the cooler mornings and evenings) and again a few different pieces for summer. Think floral dresses and off-the-shoulder tops.

If you are keen to start your own capsule, download my easy printable to help you get started! Also, keep coming back to get the articles on my seasonal capsules, as well as the kids!

Winter capsule for a 5 year old girl

My winter capsule

Enjoy the planning, but even more enjoy the simplicity that you achieve with a capsule.

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#Alifeleadsimply #singlemama

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jasperrollswrites · 7 years

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The Rewards of Loyalty

A commission for @alcharlie, and the first of my Grab Bag commissions - a TF into Bowser, the king of Koopas.

———————

The package was suspicious for two reasons. First, Al hadn’t actually ordered anything. He hadn’t been too frivolous with his spending lately, and as far as he was aware, anything that he might have ordered previously had already been received, so it wasn’t like this might be something that was late arriving. He had no idea what it could be. The size of it was similar to a DVD case - a bit longer, but thinner - but whatever was inside clearly wasn’t anything like that, since it was flexible and could be bent around. It was also...kind of lumpy, but soft.

The second thing that was suspicious about the package was the letter attached to it. The letter had the logo for Club Nintendo on it, which might be all well and good - Al had signed up to the service ages ago, given how he appreciated the company’s work - except for the fact that Club Nintendo didn’t exist any more. They’d replaced it with My Nintendo, so surely any loyalty rewards should have that logo on it, right? It had been two years since Club Nintendo had been shut down, so it wasn’t like their office would be accidentally using the wrong stationery or something.

Al scratched his head through his short, tightly cut hair, and wondered how this might have happened. Was it something they’d sent through but just hadn’t got to him before? Had there been some sort of problem at the post office? He was fairly certain he’d already gotten all his rewards for being a part of that service, but it had been a couple of years ago, so...maybe. He pulled the sellotape that attached the letter to the package, and opened up the envelope, and his little theory was confirmed by the date in the corner - June 20, 2015.

-----

Dear Valued Club Nintendo Member,

As you may have heard, we will be discontinuing Club Nintendo in North America on June 30 2015, after which we will be introducing a new loyalty scheme.

As you have been a supporter of Club Nintendo, we will be sending you several rewards over the next few days, of which this is the first. In the package you received with this letter you will find a set of bracelets based on those worn by Mario’s infamous rival, Bowser. You will also be receiving several other rewards shortly, and will be eligible for extra rewards once we launch our new loyalty service.

We thank you deeply for supporting Club Nintendo over the years, and we hope you look forward to our new service starting soon.

-----

Well...that explained it, Al guessed. Although it seemed weird - he’d thought they’d have just sent everything in one box or whatever. Maybe it was a bonus thing for having been part of the service for so long? It wasn’t like it was a huge thing, anyway. Just some bracelets, apparently. That must be what the lumps where, the spikes on the bracelets. Al set the letter down and took the package, deciding to head up to his bedroom and take a closer look.

As he walked up the stairs, he unwrapped the package, to reveal the bracelets in question. There were five of them, all thick leather bands with buckles. Al poked one of the spikes on the bracelet, to reveal it was made of a soft foam. It made sense, they probably didn’t want anyone injuring themselves on any actual spikes.

He entered his room, throwing the unwrapped packaging in a small wastebin, and putting the bracelets on the bed. Five bracelets seemed a bit excessive really - wouldn’t you just need one? Two at best? Maybe he could share them with friends or something. Although, they were based on Bowser, who did wear all five, so...still, it seemed silly to him to wear five bracelets.

It had been a long week though. Work had been boring and kind of dire, especially today. He was in the mood for something silly and frivolous. He’d try them on for now - probably take them off except for one and wear that around. He began unbuttoning his white work shirt, since it would be getting in the way of where he had to strap them on, if he wanted to be accurate. He took off the shirt, exposing his chest and plump belly. The air felt cold on his skin, but it wasn’t unbearable.

Al took up the first bracelet, wrapping it around his left wrist, and sliding it into the buckle. He pulled it as tight as he could, but it still hung some what loosely around his wrist. Not so loose that he could pull it off straight over his hand, but there was a gap between the wrist and the leather. The same was true of the second bracelet, which he wrapped around his right wrist. He pushed them up his arms, until they couldn’t go up any further, settling around his forearms. However, they slid back down to around his wrists if he let his arms hang down, which was kind of annoying.

The third and fourth bracelets went around his biceps, which they had little problem doing, being wide enough for his somewhat thick arms. He pulled them tight, and unlike the ones around his wrists, there was no looseness, clinging tightly to the arm - maybe a little too tight. He adjusted them slightly to give his arms some breathing room. Once he was happy with it, he took a look at himself in the full length mirror in the bedroom. Not...a bad look. Made him seem kind of punk-y, if he was into that kind of thing, but that was kind of diminished by how obviously fake the spikes looked. It was strange, the leather bands seemed fairly good quality, but then they had these hokey, fake foam spikes on them.

Now for the last bracelet...wait. Bowser only wore four bracelets, or arm bands or what have you, when he thought about it. Where was the fifth one meant to go? Ah. It was because it wasn’t actually a bracelet, was it?

It was a collar.

Al blushed a little. He didn’t think he’d be wearing that one in public, at least. It was kind of...kinky, wasn’t it, to wear a collar? He looked at the window, and walked over, deciding to close the blinds. He didn’t want anyone looking in while he did this. Once that was done, he came back to the bed, and picked up the final strap. The collar.

Well, it seemed wide enough. Slowly, he took the leather strap, and wrapped it around his neck, tying the collar tight, but not so tight as to strangle him. Slipping it into the buckle, he brought his hands back down and looked at himself in the mirror.

It felt a little weird and uncomfortable, with the big foam spikes on it, but most of all...yeah, there was something definitely embarrassing about wearing a collar. Still, he giggled a little at himself - he did look silly, but it was just the thing to cheer him up after the long day at work. He brought his arms up, flexing them a bit.

“Grraarrr”, he growled at the mirror, attempting to a Bowser impression. It was kind of pitiful to say the least, but it was all in good fun. He looked at himself a bit more in the mirror, smiling. Just because you were an adult, didn’t mean you had to give up childish things like having an imagination and enjoying yourself. You just had to...do them less, that was all.

Alright, fun time was over. Might as well take them off, except for the wrist ones. They’d be nice to keep around. He reached up to his neck again, trying to find the buckle around the back of his neck. He fumbled for a second or two...wait, where the hell was the buckle?

He traced around the collar with his finger, all the way around, but the buckle had disappeared. It was leather all the way round, and it was stuck to his neck. What the fu...he looked down at his arms, twisting them over and touching the bands around his biceps and wrists now - the buckles had disappeared for them too. Had he imagined them? No, they’d definitely been there, he’d remembered the feeling as the cold metal had touched his skin, but they were just...gone. Every band and bracelet was just leather now. They were stuck on him. He couldn’t take them off.

Then he looked closer at the spikes, and realized they didn’t look so fake any more. He reached his hand across to touch the spikes on the band around his bicep - it didn’t give at all. It was hard, sharp metal, a far cry from the foam it had definitely been before. He reached up to the collar - they were real there too. Now what was he going to do? How was he going to get these off?

He was distracted from the sudden change in his bracelets from a pain going through his fingers.

It was in his nails, and it was painful enough to make Al yell out loud in shock. It felt like someone was sticking pins into the skin underneath his fingernails - and they wouldn’t stop pushing. His hands clenched, tensing up, and he looked down, holding them in front of himself. He watched in fear as his nails began to lengthen, growing forward...then back across onto the other side of the fingers, the nails going from transparent to opaque as they hardened into white claws, not unlike the spikes on his bands. However, the nails on his little fingers remained normal, which was weird enough in itself - until it became clear exactly what his body had in mind for him.

His hands were starting to get bigger - his fingers were becoming fatter, and as his index fingers grew fat enough to be touching his little fingers, they were slowly absorbed into the index fingers. It was the strangest sensation, his bones melting, fusing together, becoming part of one digit. Quickly, it was over, but his hands were still expanding, getting bigger and bulkier. He flexed the fingers, unnerved by only having three of them now, along with a thumb.

And then the skin started to crack. It was like the skin on his hands had suddenly turned try and was now breaking open in tiny little fissures, only noticeable up close. What was way more obvious was the way his skin was changing colour. From the pale pink of his flesh, it became more sallow, unwell, towards a ill yellow, before brightening, becoming a more vibrant yellow, bordering on a light orange. As the colour began to sweep up his arms, they began to bulk out now too. The fat around his arms was becoming muscle. His wrists grew in thickness, and the spiked bracelets expanded around them, becoming the perfect fit for his new wrists. His arms were big already, but they were only getting bigger and the bands were adjusting to match, as the yellow colour swept up his arms, and over his shoulders.

Now his back muscles were getting larger, thicker, able to hold some serious weight - and they were going to need to, given what was about to happen. Pain streaked across his back, as something similar to what had happened with his nails...claws, happened there, only this time it felt way worse. Something was pushing out of his back, all across his back, from underneath his skin...Al let out a long, protracted yell of pain as big, brutal spikes burst through his skin, and kept pushing out. It was like his back was being split open, while his torso thickened, his hips getting wider. His spine popped, as he grew in size, getting taller as well as thicker, growing a couple of feet at least.

Al was looking down at his own chest - not intentionally, just as a side effect of feeling so much pain on his back that he’d curled over to look at himself - but he was in the perfect position for the next change. As the bright yellow pigment spread down his skin, it left his chest alone...but his chest wasn’t free from changes. As he watched, his chest began to push out into horizontal segments as his belly fat was turned into more muscle for his chest and abs. His nipples seemed to sink into his skin, disappearing like they’d been rubbed out with an eraser, and what was left, from his chest, down across his stomach, down to...what felt like his groin, was a soft, segmented underbelly, like a tortoise might have.

His back felt like it was about to split open, and to some extent it did, as the spines finished pushing through, and the real meat of the change across his back got kicked into gear. Instead of yellow, the skin on his back was turning darker, becoming harder, as it too split into segments - however, these were six or 5 sided segments, surround each spike that had burst through his back, and as it hardened, his back seemed to separate from...itself. It was the only way to describe it, his back splitting away from him, as it became a dark green tortoise shell, yet he could still feel his back, the heavy weight of the new tortoise shell resting on it.

His black work trousers were splitting apart, the belt around his waist strained to breaking point - until it finally broke, the buckle bursting apart and pieces of it flying straight into the mirror, causing it to shatter. No longer held together by the belt, the trousers were quickly ripped to shreds, and his leather work shoes burst open, as his legs thickened, and his feet, doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size. His legs bent at the knee, to help support the weight on his back, and a spiked tail grew out from under the shell, the tail bone extending outwards. His feet were merging together now, his toes melting together like his fingers had done, the bones fusing as the nails grew into another set of sharp claws, and he was left with three, monstrous looking toes on each yellow foot.

His neck was thickening up now, the collar adjusting to fit, and as it did, he heard his voice getting lower with every breath, becoming low and grumbly. The tone of the skin on his head was darkening, going to a dark green like the spiked shell on his back, as the skin on his face broke open into little segments, hardening, becoming reptilian scales. Impossibly, his face was...growing. Around his nose, his mouth, his cheeks, the skin was pushing out, becoming closer to a tan colour as it grew out into a big muzzle on his face. His nose sunk into the expanding skin, the nostrils widening, and he opened his jaw wide, as his teeth became sharper, tapering down to points, becoming fierce fangs.

Now he felt that same piercing pain in his temples, as the sides of his head broke open to reveal horns pushing through, curling upwards, around his head. His eyebrows were getting bushier, his hair getting longer and wavier, and the brown colour became brighter, becoming a fierce, fiery shock of dark red hair, that rolled down the back of his neck, resting on his shell...and with that, the physical changes came to an end. He felt his new hair brush against the ceiling, his horns threatening to embed themselves in it if he stood up straight - not like he could anyway. The weight of the shell on his back forced him to hunch over.

Al stared at his changed self in the cracked mirror. He...he WAS Bowser. There was simply nothing else to say. The bands wrapped around his arms and the collar round his neck...how? Had something...happened to them while they had been stuck in postage for the last two years? They had just turned him into the King of Koopas himself.

...not that he minded.

His face broke out into a familiar, malicious smile, as he looked himself over. He flexed his arms again, and this time, let out a proper, Bowser-like growl...no, that wasn’t enough. A roar! He took a deep breath, and let out a loud roar that shook the house, yelling at his broken mirror. What a reward for his loyalty! He WAS Bowser now! Everything about him was Bowser, and it felt great. He felt powerful, he felt a fire brewing in his belly, and he had to let it out. It felt as natural as breathing, as he felt it fly up his throat, and a fireball burst forth from his maw, smashing into the mirror, the scorching heat instantly causing the glass to melt.

He was Bowser. He was Bowser. The thought came to him automatically. This was who he was now, and it was the best thing. The name Al seemed like a distant memory - he knew it was who he had been, but all of a sudden he cared nothing for that name or that person. That wasn’t who he was any more. THIS was who he was. The King of Koopas, scourge of the Mushroom Kingdom. Bowser, Bowser, Bowser.

And hey, if he was Bowser now...maybe there was a Mario out there somewhere too. Bowser relished the thought. Oh, this time, this time, he would definitely win this time. There was no doubt.

#writing #transformation #bowser #super mario bros

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secretagentspydetectiveninja · 7 years

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The Misadventures of Prince Kim - chapter 13

(aka the royalty AU story)

Note: I feel like this chapter is pretty appropriate considering it’s MLM March right now...

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] [AO3]

The winter party, being informal, was rather relaxed and cheerful. Nobles and royals mingled alike, chatting with each other regardless of rank and sharing food and drinks from the platters on the sides of the large hall. In the middle by the staircase, a very lively band was playing all sorts of very upbeat folk music from various different countries, and the dancefloor was filled with students happily joining in the fun with their friends.

Some humbugs who hadn’t wanted to attend this mandatory event were sitting on the seats provided along the edges, impatiently waiting for an hour to pass so that they were allowed to leave again and do what they wanted. Out of the royal class, only Prince Nathaniel was hoping to leave as soon as he could. Social events made him nervous and he much preferred to avoid them, thank you very much.

There was more than one sprig of mistletoe dotted at various places around the hall, mostly in dark, secluded corners, such a directly under the staircase or right in the very corner of the room behind a large row of stacks of chairs. Ivan and Mylène had already had a sweet mistletoe kiss, and now other members of their class were beginning their own romantic scheming.

“I’m hiding in this broom cupboard if you need me, alright?” Alya whispered to Marinette, before pushing her out into the room and then closing the door of her little hideaway, leaving only the tiniest sliver open out of which to spy.

Marinette gulped and wandered around a little – she had just seen Adrien somewhere around here, now where was he? Oh hang on, there was Nino, she should ask him.

“Hi Nino!” she said, smiling brightly up at him. “You look nice today! Blue is really your colour, you know that?”

“Uh… uh-huh…” Nino said, nodding, smiling rather awkwardly.

“Anyway, is Adrien here too? I mean, I know he must be since this is a mandatory event, but where is he? It would be nice to say hi to him too!”

“He’s, um, gone to get a drink!” Nino gabbled. It was not true. Adrien was hiding behind a pillar just a few metres away, watching like a hawk.

“Right, well, I suppose I’ll wait here for him to get back!”

“Haha… yeah… good idea…”

Without even a word being said, Nino could feel Adrien’s watchful eyes pressing into him, telling him to do something, make a move.

“Actually I wanted to talk to you about something!” he quickly said.

“Oh yes, of course, what is it?”

Tell her you love her! Ask her for a mistletoe kiss!

“There’s this girl I like and I don’t know how to tell her…”

Marinette squealed. “Oh my gosh, do you want my help or something? I could totally do that for you! Who is it?”

It’s you!

“It’s Alya!” Nino blurted out, then had to physically restrain himself from clapping his hand over his mouth. No, why had he said that? How hard would it have been to just tell Marinette the truth?

“Ahh, that’s amazing!” Marinette gushed, her beautiful blue eyes staring up at him filled with affection. “I’ll definitely help you with that! Do you want me to get her to kiss you under the mistletoe, since we’re here?”

“What? No, no, that’s fine! Nothing like that! I mean, I could just… uh… talk to her or something. Yeah, that would be better.”

“Yes, you’re right, maybe take it slow at first. Anyway, I know where she is, I can help you – follow me!”

Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed Nino’s hand and pulled him over to the broom cupboard.

“Alya, I’ve got a bae for you!” she called, flinging the door open and pushing Nino inside. Then she closed the door and quickly grabbed a nearby chair, jamming it under the handle. “I’ll leave you in there for 10 minutes, okay?” she yelled through the door. There were muffled replies and knocks on the door, but she paid them no heed.

Feeling rather pleased with her inventive matchmaking skills, she turned around to head off to get a drink, only to walk directly into Adrien.

“Good evening Marinette,” he said politely, bowing his head towards her slightly. “You look lovely.”

“Oh thanks Adrien! Y-you look lovely too! And lovesome – I mean h-handsome! You look... yeah, handsome and l-lovely!”

“Thank you. Anyway, I have to ask: is it my eyes playing tricks on me, or did I just see you lock Alya and Nino in that broom cupboard?”

Marinette giggled, fiddling with a strand of her hair. “Well I was just m-match… m-m-matching… m-m…”

“Matchmaking?”

“Yeah! That’s the word! And I promise I’ll let them out soon, I just…” It was starting to occur to her that locking two people in a cupboard together was probably not a very nice thing to do. Ah well, it was too late now, she had started already so she may as well go the whole way.

“Make sure you do let them out soon,” Adrien said. “It would be a little upsetting if they ran out of oxygen in there. I couldn’t air to think of Nino suffocating!”

Marinette blinked, staring at him.

“Get it? Air? Because it rhymes with bear?”

“Oh yes! Um… good pun…”

“Anyway, since I don’t see anyone else around that I know, may I have the honour of dancing with you tonight, princess?”

He held out his hand. Trying not to shake, Marinette, wiped her sweaty palm on the side of her dress and then took his hand. Adrien gently led her to the dance floor and began dancing with her to a very lively jig that was being played. It was fun, though Marinette kept feeling like she was going to get something wrong and accidentally whack Adrien in the face. She couldn’t help wishing the band would play a slow song next… so that she could cuddle up to Adrien without suspicion…

Kim had chosen to wait underneath the mistletoe in the corner of the room, hidden behind the stacks of chairs, while Max had gone off to search for Alix. She had to be here somewhere, since this event was mandatory and all.

A noble girl suddenly appeared around this side of the chairs. It was hard to see much of her considering how devoid of light this little corner was, but she seemed to be very pretty, with long auburn hair and vivid green eyes. Kim quickly stepped out from under the mistletoe when he saw that she was waltzing right up towards him.

“Uh, sorry, I’m waiting for someone else,” he muttered, pointing up at the mistletoe that was now directly above her head, but a safe distance away from him.

“Oh, that’s fine,” she breathed, her voice smooth with just the tiniest hint of an Italian accent. “I didn’t even see the mistletoe there. I was simply exploring. In any case, I already have someone to be kissing under the mistletoe… a very beautiful, wealthy young man… I suppose I’ll go find him then…”

She walked off again, her hips moving in a way that made her long dress swish from side to side. Kim had been sure that she was hitting on him. Too bad she wasn’t his type, anyway. She did look familiar, though… Hadn’t he seen Alya chatting with her a few times, down in the square? Maybe they were friends, and that was why he recognized her. He had no idea what her name was, though, only that she was a noble, and seemingly a very wealthy one.

After waiting for a while longer, Alix finally turned up. To Kim’s delight, she went and stood right next to him – though it didn’t look like she’d noticed the mistletoe.

“Alright, Max dared me to stand over here for some reason, he said he’d give me a chocolate bar if I did,” she said. “I don’t know what he’s up to, but I would do anything for chocolate.”

Her voice sounded a little off for some reason, though he couldn’t quite place it.

“Oh, I’m sure he just has, like, a surplus of chocolate bars and he wants excuses to give them away,” he said. He looked up and pretended to sound surprised. “Huh, would you look at that? Some kind of plant stuff? We don’t have that in my kingdom…”

“Kim, that’s mistletoe, duh. It’s all over the place.” She had barely even glanced up at it.

“Well, in that case, I guess… I mean, I’m not saying we should kiss, but like… it’s tradition and everything, so like… only if you want to…”

She suddenly sneezed. Pulling a tissue out of her pocket, she wiped her nose, which was a lot more red than usual. Kim took a step backwards.

“Do you have a cold?” he asked her.

“Yeah. I don’t know who I caught it from but I’m gonna kill them.”

He took another few steps backwards. It was no wonder her voice sounded odd – her nose must have been blocked. “Okay. Don’t come near me. I mean okay I know there’s the mistletoe and so we should totally kiss and everything, but uh… we can postpone that for later, right? When you’re not going to infect me?”

“Sure, whatever,” she muttered. “Just remind me when I’m not ill. Anyway, I’m gonna go find Max and get that chocolate bar off him, not that I’ll be able to taste it with this stupid cold…”

He watched her walk off, still holding his breath until she was fully out of sight. Phew, he hated catching colds. Feeling ill was the worst, especially for an athlete like him.

She hadn’t said no to a kiss… He tried not to get his hopes up too much. After all, she didn’t seem very enthusiastic about it. But still, she hadn’t said no! It was going to happen, it was just a matter of time! Maybe she just seemed uncaring because she was ill? Surely she had to have more of an opinion on it than a simple “sure, whatever”?

Kim stood there in the dark, blushing into his hands, trying not to think about it too hard. And failing. A lot.

Marinette took the chair away and opened the broom cupboard door. Alya and Nino stumbled out, blinking at the sudden brightness of the main hall.

“Sorry for locking you in there,” Marinette mumbled, “I probably should have asked first but once I’d done it I thought I’d just go through with it and I was being silly and…”

Alya laughed. “Marinette, don’t worry too much. I mean, yeah, suddenly locking people in a cupboard is a pretty bad idea, and you’re gonna end up with a rebellion on your hands if you do that to people in your kingdom. But in this case, it turned out not so bad.”

“Marinette, I have a confession to make,” Nino said, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. “The girl I actually have a crush on is you, but uh, Alya told me you like someone else, so don’t sweat it!”

“Wait, what?” Marinette turned to Alya. “You told him?”

“I didn’t say who it was!” Alya said, taking Marinette’s hand. “I promise! All he knows is that you like a guy, and he’s cool with it. And for the record, I do think he’s pretty cute. You hear that, Nino? You’re pretty cute.”

Nino nervously finger-gunned at her. “I, uh, think you’re pretty cute too.”

Marinette giggled. Perhaps setting those two up had somewhat worked after all, even if throwing them in a cupboard together was not the best way to go about it.

Adrien, meanwhile, was feeling rather warm from his energetic dancing on the dance floor, and headed towards the less crowded corners of the room to cool himself off a little. Who knew Marinette was such a good dancer? He’d been having a lot of fun with her.

To tell the truth… he missed the way she used to speak to him. Something had happened recently, and he couldn’t figure out what, but now she just always stuttered around him, like she didn’t know what to say to him. Had he done something wrong? After all, she didn’t treat other people like that. Hopefully by hanging out with her more often he could regain a sense of the Marinette he knew before.

Wandering around, lost in his thoughts, he absent-mindedly headed for the emptiest spots in the room that he could see. It was dark here, and now that it was late evening and dark in general, even the light through the windows couldn’t make it any brighter around here.

There was someone standing over there, never mind going in that direction then – wait, it was just Kim, his friend.

“Hello Kim!” he said, walking up to him and tapping his shoulder to get his attention. It seemed like Kim had been lost in thought about something too, or perhaps someone.

“Oh, hey Adrien,” Kim said feebly, turning to look. All of a sudden, his face went bright red, almost as red as the clothes he usually wore. His eyes momentarily flicked upwards to something on the ceiling, then back down again at Adrien.

Adrien looked up at the ceiling and –

Oh.

There was mistletoe there. Right above them.

“So, uh…” Kim was now staring off to the side somewhere, determinedly not looking at Adrien. “That mistletoe… it’s, um… considered good luck and tradition to um… well, isn’t it?”

Adrien could fill in the blanks himself. He knew perfectly well what mistletoe was for during yuletide celebrations.

But… Kim was a boy. Did that count?

It hardly mattered if it counted. What mattered was that if Adrien’s father found out, he would be livid. He would say Adrien was in so much trouble. That the school was a bad influence. That Adrien was being a rebel.

Looking up at Kim, with his handsome face and tall, athletic figure… Adrien couldn’t help but wonder if being a rebel was such a bad thing. Especially if it wasn’t quite on purpose, which it very well might not have been, considering how he could feel his heart beat speeding up when he thought about it.

Yes. He wasn’t being a rebel on purpose. Boys could look beautiful too sometimes, right? And if a beautiful, handsome boy asked for a kiss, well… what if Adrien didn’t want to say no? Did that still make him a rebel? What would his father say to that?

Never mind. It didn’t matter what his father said. It was time for Adrien to live his own life now, not just what his father wanted him to do. And if Adrien was going to kiss a boy, then so be it.

A short while later, Kim found Max sitting on the steps to the terrace just outside the main hall, a drink of lemonade in hand.

“Hey, Max, can I talk to you about something?” Kim asked, sitting down beside him. “It’s something really, really weird. Like, really weird.”

“Of course,” Max replied, putting his drink down. “What’s up?”

“Okay, well, um. Just say that there was this guy. And he totally definitely liked a cute girl. And it’s not the first time he’s liked a cute girl, he’s liked loads of cute girls before. He’s definitely into cute girls. Well… just asking, but…” Kim ran a hand nervously through his hair. “…would it also be possible for him to be into cute guys? Even though he’s a guy himself? Like, is that a thing that can happen?”

“Yes, Kim. That is indeed a thing that can happen.”

“Oh, okay. Is it bad?”

“No, it’s not bad at all.”

Kim breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks Max, that’s reassuring… To be honest that wasn’t an imaginary scenario. Not completely. I mean, I’m not sure, but there’s this one guy… He’s really awesome. And nice. And I knew I liked him a lot as a friend, but I didn’t really think about it in any other way because I didn’t know that was even possible, but… I can’t deny it. He’s really cute.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Wait, really? You like a cute guy too?”

“Oh yes,” Max sighed. “I like a very cute guy.”

“Wow, what are the odds of us both being like this?”

“A lot higher than you’d think, actually. It’s not uncommon.”

“Is it like, something more common in your kingdom?”

“It’s surprisingly common everywhere, Kim, people just don’t talk about it because it’s been so engrained in everyone not to. But at least in my kingdom it’s much more accepted these days, so hopefully in other parts of the world it soon will be too.”

“Wow.” Kim looked up at the moon, resting his head on his hand. “I had no idea before today. I honestly never thought about it. And I guess I’m not entirely sure, maybe I just like him like a friend, I don’t really know… it’s kind of hard to tell…”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to know.”

“Yeah, I guess not. I never was very good at judging my own feelings, was I? And anyway, it’s not like Adrien would like me back, so…”

“Adrien?”

Kim suddenly went red, throwing a hand over his mouth. “Wait – no – I meant – ugh, dang it!”

“Don’t worry, Kim, I won’t tell anyone,” Max chuckled. “Adrien is rather exceptional, I can’t blame you for being into him. Anyway, I meant to ask this before: did you kiss Alix after all?”

“It’s not Alix who I kissed,” Kim said rather quietly, looking away. “She had a cold so she said she’d do it some other time, and then uh… Adrien turned up, and…”

“And that’s what got you thinking about all this. That makes sense.”

Kim buried his face into his knees, mumbling, “I can’t believe I had my first kiss, and I can never tell anyone about it because it was with a guy.”

“Well, I’m always here if you want to talk about it.”

“Thank you, Max. That means a lot. You’re just… the coolest best friend ever. I feel like I don’t say it enough. So thanks for being so awesome all the time.”

“It’s no problem.” Max picked up his glass of lemonade. “So, did you want to go back into the party or do you think you’re done for tonight?”

“I’m definitely done,” Kim said. “I think I’ll just go back to my dorm. Goodnight, Max.”

“Goodni– mffhgfh!”

Kim had suddenly pulled Max into a big bear hug, and he didn’t let go for a long, long time.

#he was a guy. and he was another guy. can i make it any more obvious #anyway you can tell i headcanon kim as bi can't you #and also adrien and mari and alya and nino for that matter but yeah #and max can be gay. and alix is aro ace. and kim is also demi #and juleka is a lesbian #there we go it's perfect now #royalty au #miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic #le chien kim #max kante #idk who else to tag there are a bunch of people in this one...#guess who the wealthy liar italian noble is btw #random stuff #the misadventures of prince kim #aish writes

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tumblunni · 7 years

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Mannnnn I just cannot get over how many great well-developed relationships there are within the Rune Factory 4 cast! Its just great how much all the different love interests interact with each other outside of their romance route, and how all the non-romanceable characters are still an equally big presence by being family/mentors/employers/best friends/etc to the love interests and to each other and everyone has a job role in the town and they have so many great interactions and just GAHHHH its so great!! Its like one big family made of families made of families then you marry into the family and the family and also the family perhaps. THEN YOU HAVE A CUTE CHILD. aaaaaa

Anyway.. umm.. lol... Yeah THIS IS BUNNI JUST FLAILING AT HOW GREAT THE GAME IS

ALL THE FAMS:

Ventuswill the mentor lady best friend/team mum/LITERALLY THE GOD OF THIS COUNTRY AND A GIANT DRAGON man i just cry forever for her aaaa Everybody’s own unique love for her, and how she kinda unites us all as a family aaaa The butler family coworker trio who met each other because of her! I really like to see it as clorica and vishnal having a brother sister relationship, they dont get any particular big scenes together but they just seem to be such cute friends who never have any of the rivalry you’d expect when theyre both competing as volkanon’s students. VOLKANON IS LIKE YOUR GRANDPA AND HE IS THE BEST CHARACTER The whole restaurant fam! You get to see it expand as the story goes on! And aaaa its just so heartwarming that porcoline adopts all these random homeless people and aaaa!!! DYLAS LEARNED TO COOK. THEY ALL LOVE THEIR STUPID TWIRLY GOOFBALL DAD. And its so nice that these very different personalities end up coming together and being like siblings when they probably wouldnt have befriended each other if not for this random stroke of chance. Its just so cute seeing margaret looking out for her new brothers, and dylas being so polite and formal to arthur, and arthur just being all ‘haha i dont know anything about having a loving family what a rare novelty’ *constantly crying inside* And they bicker sometimes and when they team up theyre a super powerful force, and theyre all like the parents to porcoline’s childishness and aaaaa super talented restaurant fam, super colourful quartet of hugs aaaa THEY ARE MY FAVOURITE OKAY And Forte + Kiel adorable siblings with the unique plot and semi tragic aspect of living alone together at a young age and each trying to take the place of their deceased parents and protect each other And then Bado is like their weird adoptive uncle who’s lived next door since back when their parents were alive, and promised to keep them safe. but he’s kind of a wreck of a man who’s perpetually messing up his silly get rich quick schemes but DEEP AT HEART HE CAAAAARES! but still he is kind of a mess and would probably turn up drunk on their couch half the time. i love him he reminds me of sirius black if he ate del boy from Only Fools And Horses to absorb his strength And then there’s Illuminata who’s like Bado’s evil twin kinda?? They should have more interactions, theyre the bad influence grownups duo XD And I just love the underrated relationship between her and her ‘sidekick’ amber, and how she’s kinda like a big sister who doesnt wanna be called one. I totally only have you here to serve my nefarious purposes! Umm, I mean, my purposes of justice!! And then she’s often playing the cool big sis to all the various female characters in the town, even though at the same time she’s also part of the ‘adults who need a mom friend’ group XD I think margaret and forte actually win the crowd of the true mom friends even though theyre not the oldest (I also like that they have an unlikelu friendship together, though i wish if margaret is allowed to have a canonical gay crush then why isnt she allowed to be a gay marriage option...) And then Lin Fa and Xiao Mei kinda dont stand out as much cos theyre more of a very normal mother and daughter, beyond Lin Fa just being this spacey super nice but super clumsy person. She’s not quite the funny parent-child like porco and co, but she’s funny in her own way cos of how cheerful and positive she is about all her failures. Xiao Mei got all the common sense! Its also nice and cute how Xiao Mei is physically clumsy but super competant and mature, while her mum is perfectly elegant yet completely scatterbrained. And they’re both totally huggable, Xiao Mei dont be jealous that everyone has crushes on your mum! I feel so bad when she’s all ‘i’ll never succeed cos i cant be cute in the same way as her’, as if there’s only one definition of feminine beauty or whatever. CAN YOU NOT SEE YOUR MUM HAS FLAWS TOO. you are powerful togetherrrrrr! i am just so envious seeing these characters with supportive mums that’re like their best friend and they can talk about everything together ^_^ And then there’s the doctor family with the super lovey dovey married couple of funnyness and mushy mush, and they adopt some orphans too~! EVERYONE ADOPTS EVERYBODY: THE GAME. I love seeing the cold and distant Dolce warm up to them and regain her faith that she wont be hurt if she loves someone again. Also Pico is very cute and hilarious! Even if again I get very annoyed at this game having so much queerbaiting, lol. I kinda laughed at the wiki saying dolce and pico were ‘like sister’, i mean seriously?? Pico is like your typical ‘looks like a child but is really 100′ love interest and dolce is the poor harem show protagonist who never asked for this XD I do like though that even if it seems dolce very much doesnt requite pico’s feelings, theyre still best friends either way. Pico’s super comedic flirting attempts seem to come off like she’s completely aware that dolce doesnt love her back, and she just wants to make some humour out of the situation to let dolce know she still cares about her even if they’re never gonna date. Its nice, we dont often see relationships like that in fiction, a childhood friend who confess a crush, gets turned down, and it actually ends positively and they remain friends. Its just a shame it had to be like... one of the few openly LGBTQ characters in the game, and nobody is ever allowed to date anybody or have a happy ending or be a romance route or even mention the word gay, even as theyre constantly being incredibly vocal about how its canon these characters have crushes on each other. gahhhhh. I mean we literally have doug and dylas proposing to each other and confessing their love but LOL HA its just a ~wacky misunderstanding~ but btw lets just rub it in that they are VERY MUCH intended to be seen as gay by the audience but theyre not ~really~ gay even when we say they are and GAHHH okay sorry im getting offtopic now :P Anyway its really sad that Pico is stuck as the same unchanging ghost child while her best friend grows up and marries someone else. And man, she had to spend all those years guarding monster form dolce until someone was able to free her, and we dont even know how pico died so her life could have even more tragedy in it. After all that I guess its a relief that she can be this comic relief jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold manzai duo partner to dolce and also like the freeloading friend on her metahphorical ghost couch. And its nice how much the doctor couple completely accept ‘dolce’s friend’ and are some of the few people who never remotely worry about her haunting the town. And then AAAAA there’s the four guardians themselves who’re like a family cos they were all people who were like family to ventuswill in different time periods, and then met each other for the first time when they were purified from their monster forms and bonded over how much they all love the same friend. And theyre such a badass quartet of cool monsterfolks!! And I like that they have lil relationships inside the quartet, like how dolce and amber are polar opposite sunshine and grumpiness but dolce secretly likes her a lot more than she lets on, and how leon likes to tease dylas but also kinda be his wingman. And I like how leon takes this role to a lot of the other batchelors too, he’s this totally shameless frat boy big brother figure XD “HEY PROTAGONIST DO YOU WANNA HEAR ABOUT DOUG’S SEX LIFE” And then aaaa doug and granny blossom AAAAAA granny blossom is probably the character who gets the least scenes, backstory, and general focus, but I still love her a lot. And they have a good dynamic together! I like that it starts off seeming like just a completely normal grandma granson relationship, but then you learn later that he’s adopted, and that he actually began as a spy for the evil empire who realized the error of his ways after infiltrating the town and finding so much love inside it. And then he’s just so scared cos blossom’s illness might bring her to an early grave, and he’s always being disobedient and rebellious because he wants to do anything to protect her even if she tells him not to put himself at risk and AAAAAA

why are there so many amazing fams and theres even so many small hints of characters who maybe only interact once or twice and then there’s room to headcanon even more fams and AAAAAA and the protagonist’s place in the complex web of fams is up to you to decide!! ITS LIKE EVERYTHING I EVER WANTED IN A GAME

oh and randomly I liked that xiao mei’s father isnt a major character in the game, but there’s not any tragic reason or anything. he’s just a travelling merchant and lin fa is very accepting of her husband being gone off on trips for long periods of time, she has every confidence he will never stray away from her and she supports him pursuing his travelling dreams! and also it was funny how his one brief appearance has him with the generic traveller 3d model, to point out how much he isnt a main character compared to his wife XD and it was just really cute how happy everyone was when he visited, and how the player accidentally helps improve their family business! and aaa the backstory story about arthur’s mother is SO DAMN SAD, and dolce’s biological parents who she left behind when she sacrificed her life, and just AAAAA even the tiny one-line-only minor fams are such quality fams FAMS GAME REVENGE OF THE FAMS

#bunni plays rf4 #please someone shut me up

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gdmm203advertisingdanihaynes · 4 years

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Advertising - Design Report

Danielle Haynes

For this module we had to select a charity and create a campaign around them. The charity I chose was Mind - for a better mental health. The reason why I chose a mental health charity is because I know a few people who suffer from mental health and I wanted to expand my knowledge. Before doing any research, I thought that mental health issues were genuinely triggered by social media and the pressure of having to look a certain way or if you did not have the money to buy all these super expensive gadgets etc. But now my opinion has changed, yes social media does have something to do with mental health issues but only a percentage. There are so many different reasons as to why you or someone you know might be suffering. Different mental illnesses are caused by different situations. For example, people might be depressed because someone close to them passed away, some one could have anxiety because they might have had a car accident in the past so now they get anxious while traveling. When something life changing or traumatising happens to us our mental state will most likely change.

The reason why I decided to chose Mind is because I was very familiar with their logo as I have seen it before but do not know much about them as a charity. So I was intrigued to find out more about them and what they have to offer for people who needs the help.

When researching into them I discovered that they already have done so many campaigns, some their own and some partnered. Mind’s campaigns are all about awareness and from that I decided to do my campaign around awareness.

I found making my strategy document very difficult, I really struggled. I think what I found hard was getting my head around the fact that the problem to solve and the proportion had to relate to the strategy statement but with that being said, if I did not have a stagey document, I would have really struggled to find a starting point for ideas. For my four strategies I had were Education - to help educate people what mental health illness is, Support and Empathy - to help people know that they don’t have to chose to suffer in silence, Defiance and Overcoming Adversity - people find it hard to find inner strength and lastly Lifetime Guardian - people don’t know when mental health is going to approach them.

Next, I moved on to creating rough sketches for for each strategy. I did find it hard at first but when I started to pick out words from the ‘problem to solve’ and the ‘promise’ I just focused on them because those words are the ones that stood out to me and felt that they were the most important. For example, in Education the word ‘stigma’ caught my eye and I used that to base some of my ideas. I made sure that for each strategy I had at least two. When we had our one to one with STUFF, they both seemed to find my ideas from my Education strategy the strongest because they said to them it felt like I already had a campaign going with my hashtag that I had on the sketches which wad #stopstigma.

Once, I was settled on my call to action which was awareness and what path to go down due to sketches, I then went straight into developing the illustrations and typography. The more I experimented with type, layout, colour and illustrations the more I got an insight on where I was going. I did decided to do everything digitally because with Mind’s style it looks hand written but I decided to do handwritten digitally. I could not find Mind’s main typeface so I decided to recreate it the best I could with the brush tool on Illustrator. I feel that it worked really well and that the final results look professional and neat. When I had my final outcome for my illustrations, I started to figure out what strap-lines would be the most effective and make people think. To do so I looked back at my strategy document and looked and some phrases that I had typed up in there and I found some really effective ones like “Mental health issues are apart of life”, “There is still stigma still attached”. With the stigma quote I did decided against using it as a strap-line because I felt that it was many too punchy so thats when I decided to create the hashtag #StopStigma. I felt that it was a good way for people to interact and get involved.

So for my 48 sheet billboard designs, I ended up creating three different ones. So, my first one resembles the strategy as a whole, it is a illustration on a question mark with a human face attached to resemble people not knowing or quite understanding what mental health issue is and I decided to pair it was a rhetorical question to get people thinking. My second design was a illustration of a tree that indicates “mental health issues is apart of life” so I instantly thought of ‘the tree of life’ and the strap-line I paired that with was “Its human to tackle mental health issues”. I used this one because I just wanted something that reassures people when coming across my billboard. My final design was illustrations of Mind’s logo and a illustration of a brain, which was arranged to show that more people have a brain that has a lot going on than a calm, normal looking brain. The strap-line I chose for this was was “Tackling mental health issues is ok”. Again I wanted something that was reassuring.

For my colour scheme throughout my whole campaign is yellow, blue, white, purple and black. I stayed with Mind’s colour scheme because I felt that I didn't have any reason why I should have changed.

My second advertising route I chose was social media. I felt that with my charity being mental health, I thought social media had to be a must. I decided to create posts that would be posted for a suffer to see and hopefully give them that little bit of reassurance or motivation they needed if they cant go and see Mind or don’t want to talk to anyone. The posts just have statements on them with my hashtag as Instagram is all about hashtags so I thought it would tie in perfectly.

My third advertising route was a radio ad. I decided to create a radio ad because people have such busy lives that sometimes people might not have the time to watch TV, so with that being said if people haven’t got the time to walk or in a hurry they might drive or get a taxi, so thats why I chose a radio ad. I descried to have two different roles playing in the same ad.For instance, you have the narrator who talks to use and asks you rhetorical questions and then you have the voice of someone who works for Mind. They tell you why you should chose Mind and their experience. What I love about my radio ad is the contrast of the voices and how both conversations are completely different. One is questioning you and the other is educating you. If I was to redo it I would definitely try and make it sound louder. To me it is very quiet and some parts do sound a bit shaky in some areas.

For my final advertising route, I created an event poster. My event was a coffee morning that people can come along to no charge and have a chat over a coffee and a slice of cake. Wanted my event to be chilled out and something for everyone to get involved. I created a different version of T.L.C as a little something to sum up what the event is about. For my event its stands for T - TALK, L - LEARN and C - CONNECT. For my final outcome for my poster I did want to take photos of it in a shop window and which I was going to do in my coffee shop that I currently work in, however, due to the policy I was not allowed so I decide to take photos around the college and I also made some mockups of what it could have looked like in a shop window. To go alongside the poster, I made some mock ups of coffee cups because I thought it would be a nice touch and also a great way to advertise further. The designs I used on them was the statements from my social media posts because I thought it would be a nice way for people to see them if they don’t have social media.

Overall, I am very pleased with all my final outcomes and believe that they are the bets of my ability. If I had more time I would have asked around to different coffee shops asking if they would be ok with me placing my poster on the window but I feel like the ones I have are just as effective.

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blancagriswold · 7 years

Text

Our Boobless Bride Dawn on her first wedding anniversary

Today, its our Boobless Bride Dawn‘s first wedding anniversary with Steve and she has written a very special post telling us all about their first year of Marriage. NB: brace yourselves for a hell of a read. It breaks my heart to see a very dear friend of mine have to go through this. But its so important we all talk about it and help in any way we can. ~ Maria

All photographs by Maria Farrelly Photography

My First Year Of Marriage

It’s hard to believe that it was a year ago that my sister-in-law Beth and I embarked on the first part of the marriage adventure. We headed to Wrexham to collect Jessie, the VW Split Camper. Wedding car, Honeymoon, Taxi and Camping adventure. I still remember the fear of the ‘slow brakes’ as we started rolling down the side of a mountain. And to be honest, that was the scariest part of the whole wedding. I found myself the day of the wedding – composed, excited and just so so happy. I know that your wedding day is supposed to be the best day of your life, for a lot of brides it is the total opposite. But for me it was. It was bursting with laughter, love, fun and a massive party with all those around me that I love. Everybody had an absolute blast and it made Steve and I very aware of how fortunate we are to have such loving friends and family around us.So, we toured Wales in ‘Jessie’ and loved our family camping trip. We were a proper family – not conventional but still a happy little family; Me, Steve, Imogen, Madeleine and Yvie. Made up of step parents, parents, step kids and daughters but so unbelievably happy. It reminded me that the happiest times are being together, not spending money and paying for theme parks; but playing rounders, surfing and playing games together. Although it was not an ‘easy holiday’ it was perfect. At the time, this was THE honeymoon. However, thanks to the wedding party’s generosity, we were able to have a beautiful honeymoon in Mauritius – just the two of us! (Admit it, you just sang that in your head). We met some fantastic friends and enjoyed some ‘us time’. However, as in life nothing is perfect – while we were away Steve was head hunted for a dream job (so negotiations were rife throughout the trip) and the sale of our house fell through. It was a very harsh reminder that even in paradise, life has a funny way of throwing things your way. Little did we know how much could change in a year! And this crap was nothing to worry about.

When we got back to ‘real life’ we worked hard to re-sell the house and finally found the house of our dreams. I had lost my father in the April, so when we found this house – I felt like my dad had somehow played a part in it. My dad’s Chinese sign – a dragon, everything at his funeral was blue as he was a MASSIVE Blue Bird supporter. This was a blue house, on Dragon Way; it was destined to be. While Steve worked like a dog, I was able to co-ordinate the house being turned into ‘ours’. Every single part of it was chosen together; the decorating, light fittings, furniture, colour scheme, bedding… you name it, we chose it together. (Like most couples I showed Steve what I liked, we ‘discussed’ it until he realised I was right and then he agreed. Like I said, we chose it ‘together’ lol.) For the first time in a long time I felt Steve and I were truly together; married, living together and settled. Don’t get me wrong, I paint this as a blissful event – but it was far from it; chasing workmen, tidying dust and constant tip runs made married life stressful in the beginning. Poor Steve coming off nights to a constant sound of workmen and machinery. But we got there – because we ALWAYS made time for each other. By Christmas our happy ever after was here. My follow up scans were clear, my check-ups good and I had just started applying for new jobs to start in Easter/Summer.

Steve and I know how important time is. Time together. Proper dates. So every Friday we did something even if only a film. Then once a fortnight we embarked on alphabet dating and had some incredible fun doing them; Arcades, Boat trips, Clay Pigeon Shooting, Devon, Egg Hunt, Forests, Glamping, H…..

Then BAM… it’s all totally f*@cked up! A lump. A BLOODY LUMP! The C word didn’t even give me chance to enjoy my happy ever after. Didn’t even get half way through the bloody alphabet. How can I have had a check-up less than a month ago and now the dreaded lump – the lump that tells me I’ve definitely lost my battle with C. She’s won. I know now the hope of a long happy ever after was gone… as if it returned in less than 2 years it would be incurable. Through my tears and shaking body I held on to the hope that I had caught it early enough to remove it and start again with treatment – but I knew that was a long shot. Scans, scans and more scans, and I’m given my prognosis. Terminal. That bloody word. The word you only want to see at an airport. Ok, so 10 years…. 5 years…. Nope – the average is 11 months. How? I feel so well?! This was not supposed to happen. Not so soon after having my happy ever after. FFS. What have I done to deserve this hand? I ask myself this question daily. It’s part of my mantra these days.

I’d be lying if I said I’m not terrified of death, what happens when I die… the horrible thoughts that we all push to the back of our minds as they make our tummy’s flip and mouth dry out. But through my own anguish and heartache the real pain I feel every day is for my girls. My poor girls. 12 and 8 years old. How can life be so cruel. Then I think of my poor Steve. How selfish it was of me to pull him into this nightmare… thinking love would get us through. Then my poor mum, brother John and his wife Beth. They haven’t fully grieved over the loss of my dad and here they are again – living this nightmare with me every day in true ‘Abram’ style. Solid. Brave. Defiant. We close ranks and rally around and we are a force to be reckoned with.

Life will never EVER be the same again. It is so unfair. Two perfectly healthy people have 2 beautiful girls. Who would believe 7 years on our girls would have both parents terminally ill. It is unbelievable! So as he has every other time before, my Angel is there… by my side, never faltering. Putting up with my mood swings, my utter despair and yet still looking at me as if I am the most beautiful person in the world. I thought he was my angel. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he is my children’s angel. The person who can help raise them as a team effort with my wonderful family.

My friends have all been incredible too, all helping in their own little ways. One came around to make random cocktails (and have a looooong lie in the next day) – Sorry A! Others have sat drinking tea and watching films. Some have helped financially while others have entertained the girls. Some have even enabled me to do special days with the girls like trying on wedding dresses (Staff at Do You Believe are legends) while others have organised fund raisers that proved to be a legendary after school party. Some have organised photo sessions, others have sent me photos from times gone by. Some people I have never even met have donated – it’s incredible, others have reached out on social media. Every single one playing their part in the drama that is my life. From school, college, uni, work, ponty, holidays – you name it, they’ve been there. One has touched base with her god daughter all the way from Tel Aviv and one has even gone as far as to get married – just for me! (lol… okay – it may be because she’s in love with her soldier, but we both know really, she’s getting married this year so that I can be there and enjoy her special day with her). All in all… I have simply amazing friends. This kindness gives me strength every day. I love you all and can never tell you how grateful I am and do it justice.

So now it’s time to stop crying and FIGHT. FIGHT HARDER THAN I HAVE EVER FOUGHT. So here I am on a clinical trial… praying for my miracle. I am reminded daily that a long life is unachievable. I keep telling my clinical team that I WILL be that miracle that sits there in a few months and is told that I am NED. The most amazing letters in the alphabet. No Evidence of Disease. (This would mean I am still incurable – but am keeping the cancer under control). With Triple Negative Cancer, it tends not to be receptive to treatment – but, for some it does and no one knows why they are the lucky ones. So I remind my nurses and Doctors that I am indeed the chosen one. I see their looks sometimes; a mix of fear that I do not understand the severity of my situation and sadness that I am deluding myself as experience says I am wrong. But I don’t buy it. No-one will tell me when I am going to die. I will decide… and it will be when there are ZERO options left as I will try everything! I will NOT go down without a fight.

So screw you Cancer. This is only the FIRST of MANY anniversary’s with my man. I mean the present I got him is legendary – I have to be able to buy more. Where there is life there is hope. Where there is love there is hope and where there is hope there are miracles. And if my fight is not as long as I hope it will be – I have had the privilege of knowing my fate. I have been able to do memory days with the girls, talk through memories and photographs and simply be together. Not stuck is school, marking every night, working 70 hours a week. Good. Quality. Family Time. So, you see, I am not the cursed one I thought I was – I am blessed. Not many mums are lucky enough to have this special time. So, as I go off to my romantic weekend in Cornwall with tranquillity and a hot tub, I thank you… all of those that have helped and continue to do so. You know who you are – too many to mention. But I beg you – every single bride… follow my very simple rules in life and you will be happy;

Live every moment

Laugh every day

Love beyond words

Dance like no one is watching.

Wow, Dawn my lovely… you know how much I value our friendship. You are one very special woman! Myself and all the other Cwtch girls are right here for you and will do everything we can to help! (even if that means making more cocktails ;) ~ Maria x

Liked this? You might also like these! :)

Bride to be Diaries: Our Boobless Bride finds THE dress.

Please Help Our Boobless Bride Dawn And Her Family

Bride to be Diaries: Introducing The Boobless Bride.

Boobless Bride: We Aren’t Just Brides, We Are Women

Boobless Bride Found Her Venue

The post Our Boobless Bride Dawn on her first wedding anniversary appeared first on Cwtch The Bride.

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itbeatsbookmarks · 7 years

Link

(Via: Hacker News)

March 22, 2017

· technical gaming

Secret colours of the Commodore 64

In 1991 I was fourteen years old. It would be fair to say I was obsessed with computers. I proudly owned a brown 'breadbox' Commodore 64 with an exotic upgrade - an Oceanic 5.25" disk drive:

In May that year, I was reading COMMODORE FORMAT and devouring the C64 game reviews. Suddenly I read a caption that stuck with me for years afterward. Underneath a screenshot of a colourful robotic dragon, it read:

Hold on... You can't get this colour on a 64! Well, you can if you swap pale green and cyan 50 times a second!

This was astonishing to me.

Thanks to the wonder of the internets and the passion of some great magazine archivists, we can excavate the exact page at which I goggled, long ago:

This was freaky. When you owned any 8-bit computer, you became intimately familiar with its colour scheme. This simple photograph blew my mind. That blue colour just wasn't possible.

According to the caption, by presenting two colours to the eye and alternating them quickly enough, a whole new colour emerged. What would this new, secret colour look like on your crappy early-90s CRT television? The screenshot was only a hint. Would it glow? Would it flicker?

Twenty-six years later, I found out the answer.

This article is all about colour switching on the Commodore 64. There are interactive examples to play with below. I haven't found anything else on the topic, so it's possible this is the only resource on the subject.

Let's take a moment to understand why secret colours were such a big deal.

The palette was the computer

Palettes were important.

A typical 8-bit computer could only display sixteen colours. Those colours were fixed in hardware when the computer was designed.

This meant the palette defined fixed boundaries for your computer. It constrained how the visuals looked and felt. It fundamentally differentiated the Commodore 64, from the ZX Spectrum, from the Apple II, from the Amstrad CPC. You could instantly tell which computer was responsible given a screenshot.

As you'd expect, hardware palette design was crucially important. With only sixteen colours to work with, digital artists needed carefully-chosen tones to help them represent the real world.

It didn't always go well. Pity the garish palette wired into the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, which produced visuals like a hot shit aneurysm:

As it happened, the Commodore engineers did a great job. The pic below shows the palette at the top left. The rest of the image explores the pleasing gradients possible with the C64.

Notice that:

It has earthy tones that match real-world objects. Compare with the hue explosion of the Speccy.

It has many shades of grey. This lets you render monochrome images as well as things like metal. Finally the neutral grey shades can be slotted into ramps with other colours to blend them together - you can see these on the right.

So C64 owners were accustomed to screens like this:

The pixellated images above would look much better - more subtly blended - on your typical fuzzy CRT television.

After years of obsessively looking at it, this palette is firmly embedded in my mind. The colours are immediately recognisable. They resonate with the frequency of nostalgia, and make my brain tingle. I actually use these colours as my avatar on Github:

With this in mind, the idea that you could break this boundary and invent new, secret colours on the C64 - and trick the eye into seeing something that didn't exist - that was high wizardry.

Colour switching

If you swap two colours rapidly enough - say at 50 or 60 frames per second - you can fool the eye into seeing something that isn't there. On a machine with sixteen colours, just one or two extra can add a lot to a scene.

Since today we all live in the future and you are reading a fully programmable document on a supercomputer, let's try it.

Simple demo

Here's a square flipping between two colours - red and blue - every second.

Click or tap on the square to alternate the colours at 60fps (or specifically, the maximum refresh rate of your current browser and display. It would be cool to see this on a 144Hz refresh monitor).

Notice how a third colour appears? That shade of purple is not being displayed. Only red and blue are appearing - your eye is fooled into seeing a colour that isn't there. I promise I'm not cheating. That's colour switching in action.

Hit the square again to slow it down and check.

Dragon Breed demo

So way back in 1991, I was intrigued by that review but never actually owned the game. What did Dragon Breed actually look like?

First of all, it turns out that fancy colour switching isn't used in the game at all until you hit the end of STAGE 3, when a robot dragon boss shows up glowing in that weird cyan.

Sidebar: One interesting reference is to check out the original arcade game. Since we live in the future, you can play the Dragon Breed arcade in your browser right now (hit the power button, wait for boot, press 5 to insert coin then 1 to start). That's pretty mind-blowing. Unfortunately to see the dragon we're interested in, you'll have to play to the end of STAGE 3. Good luck with that.

So surely someone's captured this effect on a C64 longplay video? Well after some digging I found our famous robot dragon boss on Youtube (audio warning):

VIDEO

There are two problems with this video. Because it's captured at 30fps,

It looks like shit. The sprites flicker distractingly, and

The colour switching effect is completely lost.

If you were to play the game on an emulator at 50/60fps, the effect is convincing.

Sidebar: A note on frames per second. The European PAL C64 updated at 50fps, whereas the US NTSC systems updated at 60fps (reference). Weird huh? This means the effect would be slightly more convincing on a US machine.

Can we show the Dragon Breed effect on a web page? Well, let's play through to STAGE 3 (using cheats, phew) and screencap the boss in a couple of frames side by side:

Next, with a bit of JavaScript we can alternate the images and see the original effect at 60fps. On a phone, you might need to zoom out a bit first. Again, tap or click to slow down or activate the colour switching:

Look at the three images all together - a totally new colour has emerged!

Also notice the flickery dragon tail: this is a limitation of sprites on the C64. The hardware didn't support enough sprites to give the player six tail segments and render all the enemies; so only three are displayed at a time and alternated every frame, producing the flickery side-effect.

We did it! We recreated Dragon Breed colour switching in the browser. Are we done?

Palette demo

Nope. If those two colours can be combined, what other combinations are possible? Put another way, what is the set of all possible secret colours on a given machine?

Let's find out. Put on your shades for this one! We're going to generate every unique pair of colours possible on the Commodore 64 in one glorious epilepsy-bomb. Again, tap or click to switch modes:

Pretty cool huh? It looks like the tartan for the Scottish clan McPuke.

Bear in mind every flickering square above is a unique pair of colours. I highlighted the combination that's used in Dragon Breed by giving it a border.

Notice that some combinations have a nasty strobe effect and will definitely make you feel ill. But not all of them! Why do some work really well? It all depends on brightness. Two colours of equal brightness will blend perfectly; whereas say black and white will flicker violently.

With switching in fast mode, find a blended colour that you like. Now tap to slow it down and see which two colours are mixing to give you that hue.

The End

And that is the story of how I read about secret C64 colours in 1991, and then twenty-six years later finally got to see them. If you're still interested and have functioning eyes, read on for bonus content.

Contribute to this article

Do you know any other games - for any computer - that use this approach? If so, let me know in the comments.

I'm collecting examples in the appendix below. I'd love to know if the Speccy ever did this...

References

Appendix: Full 1991 article

Before the internet, computer magazines were the only way you found out what was happening in the world of technology. It's difficult to describe how exciting it was to get your issue of ZZAP! 64 or COMMODORE FORMAT and read reviews of all the new games, or check out adverts for the peripherals you'd beg your parents/Santa for.

For maximum nostalgia, here are the full pages of that Dragon Breed review from COMMODORE FORMAT:

Appendix: Colour switching references

This is a list of every reference to 8-bit colour switching I've found on the web.

COMMODORE FORMAT issue 5, Dragon Breed review:

"Extra colours are achieved using colour switching, where pixels are assigned alternate colours every 50th of a second. This gives the impression of a completely new shade!"

COMMODORE FORMAT issue 13, Q&A:

"There's no way to increase the number of colours in the 64's palette, but there are clever software routines to give the impression of more colours. Activision's Dragon Breed uses very rapid colour switching to give an intermediate tone, and PD coders have produced a 'Fli-Pic' facility which enables you to use more than four colours per char block."

COMMODORE FORMAT issue 32, Mayhem in Monsterland developer diary:

"As with our background graphics we wanted more than the C64's 16 colours for sprites. However, we can't use the same method of colour mixing that we're using for the level graphics (see CF28) because we haven't got enough sprite colours. So I added a different colour mixing routine for the sprites. This rapidly flashes between two colours (of equal brightness) to create new shades."

C64.com's interview with the Dragon Breed programmer, Ashley Routledge:

"I especially recall the dragon with that strange shade of blue/cyan."

Appendix: How to flip images at 60fps

In writing the programs for this article I discovered it's pretty awkward to get two images to flip at 60fps without visual artifacts.

GIFs (true GIFs, not GIFV) are too slow for 60fps.

Manipulating a backgroundImage works but flickers like hell.

To make this work you need to create a couple of Image objects, set their src attribute and wait for them to completely load (using an event) before starting your animation loop. Phew! If you need this, view source for this article or check out this gist.

OK that's really it! Thanks for reading. If you've enjoyed this I'd love to hear from you below.

#IFTTT #Feedly

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