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puckyess · 3 years

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Gold-digger | Dylan Holloway

In a perfect world, all of my boys win gold

Words: 4K

It was surreal how you could sense his presence. You went from anxious excitement to a feeling of warmth, all within one breath. You watched from a distance as his frame cleared the tunneled gateway. An outsider may have pegged him as an athlete, heading back to school, with the way his broad shoulders filled out that red maple leaf hoodie and thighs that looked thick even in his grey sweatpants. They would have no idea that the boy who was ducking his head was a World Junior Champion.

His head lifts, features set into a frown as he searches the busy airport for you. When his eyes finally catch yours watching him, he breaks out into that goofy grin that you love so much. You let him make his way to you even though you want nothing more than to run to him, simply because you find it adorable that he clearly double times it to get to you. His arms engulf you and you swear he feels stronger than when he left 54 days ago. He lifts you off your feet, crushing you into his chest and yet it’s still not close enough. The act is softened when his hand comes up to cup the back of your head and he buries his face into your hair. A word hasn’t been said between the two of you but it doesn't have to because this moment says it all.

He exhales as he sets you on your feet again, the smile still on his face though it’s softer now. “I’ve missed you”.

Your arms still wrapped around his waist you pull back just the slightest to look up and reciprocate the sentiment. “You’re not allowed to leave me again, like ever”, you inform him.

He chuckles and his finger finds his way under your chin so that he can do what he’s been thinking about for months. “You have yourself a deal” he mumbles before smashing his lips against yours. He’s never been one for PDA, always remaining lowkey and content with keeping things private. So this takes you by surprise, it’s way more heated than he’s ever been with you in public and you’re not complaining one bit.

It doesn’t take more than a second for you to give into his lips, letting his tongue slide into your mouth. Your arms come up to snake around his neck, pulling him down to you. He has one hand on the small of your back, supporting you both as he leans into you, the other finds its way to the back of your neck, trying to leverage you even closer to him to deepen the kiss. All of the emotion of the past two months is evident in the way you both pour yourselves into each other.

When you just about moan into his mouth, you have to pull away. You know what you must look like when you see the way his eyes are blown. His lips are well kissed and still parted and his cheeks are the color of his sweatshirt. He looks both stunned and perfectly pleased, a smirk creeping its way onto his face.

“Welcome home, baby”, you greet him, holding his hands as you raise up on your tiptoes to give him one last, much more innocent kiss before grabbing one of his bags.

“Let’s go home”. Your heart flutters at his use of the word “home”. You know exactly where he’s referring to and love that your home has become his too. His dimple pops as he throws that sweet smile your way. He picks up his other bag and slings an arm around your shoulders, tucking you into his side.

As you make your way through the airport he pulls you closer and places a kiss on the top of your head. “Thank you for picking me up. I really missed you” he breathes out.

Suddenly you stop in your tracks, almost taking yourself out as your fridge of a boyfriend keeps his arm looped around your shoulders as he continues moving forward. He turns around startled.

In all of the excitement of having your baby back in your arms and that kiss knocking you off of your feet you had completely forgotten, but now that you remembered you could barely contain your excitement. “Don’t you have something you want to show me? Like, I don't know...maybe something shiny?” you tease.

He suddenly looks bashful, his face turning as red as it was after he very publicly marked his territory moments ago.

“Come on, D, let me see that gold medal of yours” you squeal.

He pulls you and his bags off to the side so that you’re not in the way and then his hand ducks into the collar of his sweatshirt and comes back out with a beautiful gold medal.

Awe is the only word Dylan can think of to describe you when he finally shows it to you. Your eyes are wide and your perfect lips are formed into a little “o” as you take it all in, the little skater ensignia, the perfect roundness of the medallion, the weight of what it all meant. And then you’re grinning at him with glassy eyes.

He looks so proud watching you take in what is one of his greatest accomplishments so far. But his pride doesn’t even compare to how proud you are of him for working to get to where he is and battling adversity for that medal. You know how much it meant to him to be on the team in the first place, to represent his country, but to actually be part of bringing home the gold brought about a whole slew of emotions for you.

He was a champion and he was yours.

“So what do you think?” He finally asks you, sliding the ribbon around your neck.

“I think you make me the proudest girlfriend in the whole world.”

—

Once you get to your car you throw his bags in your trunk. He walks to the passenger side and opens your door and you smile to yourself, not believing how much you missed such a mundane action. He leans in for yet another kiss before shutting your door and sliding into his side. Immediately his right hand finds yours and he brings it up to his lips to kiss, releasing your hand only to do that really hot thing that guys do when they back a car up and then his grip is in yours all over again.

With the music playing softly in the background and your sunshine back in the car with you it’s like you’re in your own little bubble with him, the good kind this time. You know he feels the same way because he’s much more talkative than back in the airport, in fact there’s hardly a second where the car isn’t filled with his voice. It’s a sound that you’d missed more than you thought your heart would allow and you were more than grateful to have it back. His smile is contagious, as always, but today especially. With every glance your way, his grin accompanies it. He gushes about his journey to the gold medal that was now hanging around your neck.

You make him start from the beginning, how he felt when he first boarded his flight back to his home providence. He admitted how nervous he was since at that point, he was unsure if he would make the team and he knew it was his last chance for that honor. He told you of all things he did to keep himself motivated and hopeful while he quarantined, twice, even though he knew the other guys were out there playing and earning their spots with every minute he wasn’t able to be on the ice. When he says that your daily calls and check-ins were one of those things, you give his hand a squeeze that matches the one your heart does in your chest. He tells you all about the guys, doing his best to describe their personalities and special moments that they shared while in that bubble together.

He indulges your every question, like the best round of 20 questions you’ve ever played in your life. He shares the lows of losing his captain right off the bat to the highs of the calm feeling of the locker room right before that final game. He makes you feel like you were right there by his side.

You don’t want this little moment to end as he pulls into the parking garage and apparently neither does he because he doesn’t make a move to get out of the car. So you continue your attack and ask him what he thought he was doing, looking that good in all of those suits.

When you finally get up to go to the bathroom, Dylan starts to follow you and you have to put your hand on his chest to shove him back on the couch. “I can pee by myself, D, thank you” you laugh. Since the minute you walked through the door, no, the minute you got out of the car he had not left your side.

He looks so sad for a moment and you almost change your mind until you snap back to reality with how ridiculous that would be. “I’ll just be right across the room” you assure him, pointing to the bathroom that was literally across the living room.

“At least leave the door open”, he grumbles.

You roll your eyes, but give him a quick kiss anyway. “You’re so weird, Dylan”, but you do as he requests anyway and he starts a full on conversation with you as you go about your business.

You emerge from the bathroom and head for the kitchen instead of your spot in his arms. When you don’t hear him complain, you turn and look at your boyfriend in alarm, “Are you not going to ask me where I’m going?” you tease him.

He looks guilty like he actually messed up and should’ve asked and you laugh. “You’ve been my shadow for days now, I think this is the first time you’ve actually let me out of your sight”.

The only word that could be used to describe his behavior lately is clingy. You weren’t complaining of course after not having access to your boyfriend in so long, but it was kind of comical how much attention he required. He would follow you everywhere, and demanded to be touching you constantly. Whether it was holding your hand to go get a water bottle or moving your feet onto his lap on the couch to watch a show, he had to be connected to you. If you got up for any reason he would question you, like a lost puppy until he knew what you were up to.

He blushes at your observation, but he doesn't deny it. “That’s the longest we’ve been apart since we met, I guess I’m just readjusting”.

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it” you tell him as you crawl back into your spot in his arms after retrieving your drink. “I missed you too”.

The next few days you get reacquainted with each other, falling back into your routines and of course pressing each other’s buttons.

“Stop glaring at me, you asked for this. Literally, if I remember correctly” Dylan points out.

His comment only makes you furrow your brows even more, your glare deepening as you stare at your god of a boyfriend. There he lay on the couch, sprawled out in all of his golden glory. His blonde hair was perfectly tousled, loose strands dancing across his forehead as he shook his head at you. He was wearing your favorite sweats, the ones that sat low on his hips and hugged his ass just right and to taunt you even more, he was shirtless. But that wasn’t even the best part. The ribbon around his neck, the gold medallion laying against his skin was something you couldn’t tear your eyes away from.

You had a paper to write and his appearance was not helping you get anything done. “Well when I told you to wear it around this morning, I didn’t know you’d look like that” you grumble, still unable to look away.

His laughter bounces through the room at your apparent distaste. “You have to wear the medal, Dylan. No, don’t put a shirt on, I like you just like that.” he mimics you from this morning in a high pitched voice. You don’t know what it was about that gold medal, but it turned you on and he knew it.

You roll your eyes, shutting your computer. You go to chirp him, but he picks that exact moment to raise his arms and stretch out, letting out a groan in the process. Your eyes go wide as you watch every muscle in his body flex, the glimmer and shine of his medal matching the one in his eyes. The smirk that spreads across his face makes you want to choke him, or maybe to be choked you’re not quite sure because your mind is a mess.

“I can go put a shirt on, if that’s what you want” he offers, moving to get up off the couch.

The rate at which you jump up to stop him as you yell, “No!”, is almost embarrassing.

He raises an eyebrow at you, clearly amused at how worked up you are.

“What?” you ask him, trying to brush it off, but there was no hiding how flustered he was making you. He had always been more than attractive to you, that much was obvious. Maybe it was the amount of time you had been forced apart, but he was somehow driving you even more insane every time you looked at or even thought about him. You were obsessed, knowing your man was a gold medal champion.

You thought you could handle seeing him walking around your apartment, shirtless, donning that medal, hell you even thought you wanted it. However, the minute you walked into the living room earlier and saw him standing there with his cup of coffee, leaning against your floor to ceiling windows, the city his backdrop you knew you were fucked.

You swallow hard, trying to push the image from your mind and get your head out of the gutter. “You’re the worst”, you glare at him again. Who knew it would be the absolute worst thing you could’ve said. His already apparent smirk widens.

“That’s not what you were saying last night”.

And with those 8 words, he unleashes a monster. Your composure is gone, if it was there at all and you full on whine his name.

This is when you get the confident hockey player side of him. He grins at his work, propping his head up behind one arm and beckoning you with the other.

“C’mere, my little Gold-digger”.

The end of the day was always your favorite. You thrived at night, even when you were exhausted. You loved looking out and seeing the night sky lit up with the city lights, you loved feeling small, tucked away in your own quiet corner of the world. But most of all, you loved those midnight talks with Dylan. Nothing was off limits with him, from outrageous would you rather that had you questioning whether you were dating a budding NHL player or a middle school boy to deep talks that had you believing with every fiber of your being that he was made just for you.

Tonight as you lay in bed with him, you had a question for him that kept slipping your mind. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why didn’t you just ask one of the boys to pick you up?” you ask, lifting your head off his chest, instead propping your head up on your arm. “I know Ryder’s been dying to see you, he’s been sending me withdrawal texts since we put you on a plane” you joke.

“They don’t know I’m here yet”, he shrugs as if it’s no big deal.

The hand that was tracing patterns on his chest stops and he turns to look at you, anticipating your question. “You didn’t tell them you were back?”

Again he shrugs, “They think I went home for a bit before I’m coming back”.

“Ohmygod your family. Dylan! Did you even see them while you were out there?” you ask sitting up suddenly. As selfish as it was, you had only thought about him seeing his family when he first left. It hadn’t even crossed your mind for him to stay with them before coming back to campus. Now you felt bad that he was with you and not his family, you knew he didn’t get to see them very often.

His hands shoot out to grab yours and he pulls you back into his chest. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. I saw them for a little bit before I left, they knew I wanted to get back though. I’ll be out there soon enough, I didn’t want to keep you waiting”.

You know your eyes are glassy when you look up at him to confirm he meant what he said. “And as much as I love the guys, they’re kind of dominating you know? I just wanted to spend a few days with my girl before we get our third wheel back” he says, giving you a squeeze.

At that you have to laugh because Ryder really had become your third wheel and honestly Shay was your fourth. Whether they did it to bug Dylan or genuinely could not be apart from him you were still undecided, but either way, where there was your boyfriend, there was also your two other boyfriends.

“He’s going to be so mad when he finds out” you tell him giggling at your little secret.

“Not if he never finds out”

“I think he has some kind of radar, D. I’m surprised he hasn’t already come knocking”.

“Don’t say that too loud” he laughs.

And as if on cue, your phone dings asking if you knew when Dylan was coming back. Once your laughter dies out you settle in and relish in the warmth of having Dylan next to you in bed again.

You’re on the verge of sleep when his voice cuts through the darkness. “Y/N?”

You hum in response.

“Are you awake?” he asks, as if your response wasn’t enough.

You roll over so that you’re facing him to see what’s keeping him up.

“I woke you up, didn’t I? Go back to sleep” he whispers.

“You’ve got me, babe. What’s on your mind?”

He hesitates and you think he might’ve gone to sleep after all and so you call his name.

“I’m here. I just-. You know what I was thinking of the whole time I was over there?”

You raise your eyebrows even though you know he can’t see them in the darkness, but he continues on anyway.

“I kept thinking everytime I walked into that building that this was going to be my future. That this is where my career was really going to start”.

You had wondered about that, how he felt and what it was like for him to be spending so much time in the very place where he was going to be playing for the next three and maybe more years. But you had been too afraid to bring it up, for fear of starting a talk about the future that you were unprepared for.

But you swallow your fears and ask anyway, “What was it like?”

You can hear the smile and excitement in his voice when he talks about his future home. “It’s amazing. It was such a privilege to be able to experience that before I get there, to get a taste of what’s to come, ya know? Like I can’t believe that that locker room is going to be mine and those stands are going to be filled with people that want to see my team play. It was surreal and humbling. It started to feel real”, and there’s something about his voice and the way he’s talking that you can tell is leading to something big.

You brace yourself for impact when he swallows hard. He doesn't say anything else, he reaches up and brushes your hair back from your face instead. “Come on, Dylan, you’re scaring me. What aren’t you saying?”

“It started to feel real,” he repeats. “I was in my home, so close to achieving my dream and all I could think about was how I wanted you there with me.”

You don’t feel like it’s safe to let out the breath you’re holding quite yet.

“I thought getting to the next level was the ultimate goal and in a way it still is, it’s what I’ve been working for my whole life, but Y/N it just didn’t feel right to not be able to share it with you too. I know it’s early and I don’t know where I’ll be this time next year, but when I do get there, I want you there with me. Edmonton might be where I’m going, but it won’t be home without you”.

When he feels the wetness of your tears falling on his chest he’s concerned. But he knows you so well and knows what your love language is and so he tilts your chin up and kisses you hard. He tells you with his lips how much he loves you, how much he adores you, how much impact you’ve had on his life. And you kiss him right back, knowing you won’t be able to get the words out at this point. You kiss your relief, your love and your commitment into his soul.

“So I’ll take that as a yes?” he asks breathless as he pulls away.

You nod, equally as out of breath, “I’d follow you anywhere, Dylan Holloway”.

No more needs to be said, the perfect words already professed. He tugs you a little closer to him and shuffles down the bed until his head is resting on your chest and the rest of his body is nesting itself a home in yours. It never fails to amaze you how much he loved to be the little spoon and how his fridge of a body managed to fit with yours perfectly. You fingers card through his hair, earning a content little sigh. You feel his breathing even out and you feel yourself nearing the edge of sleep too.

You swore you would never get enough of the way he held onto you, tight enough to know you were wanted and loved. You would never get tired of the way his voice dropped, in tone because he was fighting sleep for you, but in volume because no one else needed to hear him but you. You would always crave the way his fingers would manage to trace light paths all across your face and arms as he opened himself up to you. There was something so vulnerable and honest about your nights spent with him and you prayed that they never ended.

But his raspy voice breaks through the silence yet again, this time to ask, “How do you feel about silver? I’m bringing you home a Stanley Cup next”.

He lifts his head to flash that goofy grin your way as he soaks up your laughter.

“Silver sounds good to me, baby”

With that he’s satisfied, but even with the new goal, your new pet name still sticks. “Goodnight, my little Gold-digger.”

#dylan holloway #wjc 2021 #ryder donovan #shay donovan

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xomarauders · 3 years

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posted this on ao3 awhile back and had a hard time getting tumblr to upload it, but it finally worked so here you go

content warning for referenced child abuse

The warmth of summer filtered through the window, casting rays of sunshine across the floor of James Potter’s bedroom carpet where Remus was splayed out, tracing patterns into the ridiculously soft material. He was sure that James charmed it to keep it so fluffy, otherwise it would not have survived the footfalls of four, rowdy boys that found refuge here during the summer. It used to be only the three of them—James, Remus, and Peter, that is—until Sirius was able to join permanently halfway through the summer season. His parents had never allowed for him to visit the Potter’s while he was still living under their roof, but now that the raven-haired boy had run away and was officially disowned, well, Remus was sure the carpet would have wilted under Padfoot’s grubby paws by now.

Either way, Remus was sure that there was nothing better than laying on James’ charmed carpet with his three best friends, listening to music from the record player—that had also been charmed to work without electricity—and chatting about whatever came to their minds. They were all sat on the floor aside from Sirius, who was perched in the window, smoking, and watching as the birds flew around outside. Remus smirked—the boy really was such a dog.

“It’s our last years at Hogwarts, boys,” James announced as he pushed his glasses further up his nose, “what are we going to do once it’s all over?”

It was a question that held a lot of weight, depending on how you looked at it. What were they going to do as far as it came to pranks and leaving their legacy at Hogwarts or what were they going to do as soon as they graduated. Maybe get jobs, possibly go to university, more likely join the Order to fight a war they didn’t start. Remus didn’t care to think about any of these things. His future had been something he considered to be doomed since he was four years old and suddenly had to share his mind with a beast that tore apart his body every month. He had never even planned on having the life he had gotten—the chance to go to Hogwarts, to make friends…to fall in love.

He cast glance toward Sirius, whose own gray eyes were already looking to Remus, a thoughtful expression on his face. Remus grinned at him, tilting his head so that his curls fell into his eyes. Sirius smiled back, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He’d been smiling like that a lot, lately. Remus made a mental note to ask him about it later that night.

“I don’t know about you lot, but I have no idea what I’m going to do without all of you around,” Peter said.

“Don’t worry, mate,” James said, patting Peter on the shoulder, “you can’t get rid of us that easy! Marauders till the end, right?”

There was a certain admiration that Remus held for James Potter, the savior of the cursed and the damned. He had banded them all together; the timid boy, the broken werewolf, and the wayward heir to make a family. Remus would never be able to repay James for the unconditional love he’d shown him, but he was willing to try everyday for the rest of his life.

“Marauders till the end,’ Sirius repeated, extracting himself from the window as he put out his cigarette. He joined them on the floor, laying down next to Remus and pressing himself tightly against the other boy. Remus wrapped his arm around Sirius, partially out of habit and partially because it was what Sirius needed, something he was starved of. Touch had been something of a guessing game between the two of them ever since they started their relationship. Neither of them were quite used to being touched in such casual ways until they became friends with James—who was constantly giving out hugs like they were candy—and starting a relationship had made the concept even more confusing. Not only did they have to think about what sort of casual touching was okay for each of them, but now they had to factor in intimate contact. Kissing was okay, just as long as they were alone in the safety of Remus’ four poster bed or hidden in one of the various alcoves they had discovered while creating the Marauders Map. Remus thought it might even be okay here, in James’ bedroom, to sweetly kiss his boyfriend without fear of judgment or ridicule. Still, he let Sirius make those decisions, allowed him to initiate any sort of contact between them because while Remus’ aversion to touch stemmed from not being able to trust himself, Sirius’ came from not being able to trust others. He was easily spooked by any sort of sudden movement that came his way, a side effect of Walburga Black’s outstanding parenting skills, and no amount of James’ casual hugs or Remus’ gentle caresses have seemed to break him of this habit.

“What are you thinking about, Moons?” Sirius whispered. James and Peter were too busy arguing over which record to play next to notice their other two friends.

“You,” Remus said easily. Sirius blushed—an image Remus would never tire of seeing—and reached up with his slender fingers to brush away the curls that had fallen in Remus’ eyes.

“Me,” Sirius said, a hint of astonishment in his voice.

Remus wished Sirius wouldn’t sound so surprised at the idea of someone thinking of him. It hurt to know that Sirius did not quite value himself the same way Remus, James and Peter did and it was times like these where Remus wanted to meet Walburga and Orion Black in person just so he could give them a piece of his mind.

“Lads,” James said, throwing himself on top of them unceremoniously, “let’s head on downstairs. I think mum’s made dinner.”

The four of them trailed down the stairs, Sirius holding Remus’ hand while James raced ahead to slide down the railing. Fleamont was in the parlor, reading the newspaper and looking up as the boys made their presence known. He greeted them all, and asked James in a calm tone to perhaps not ride the staircase like a broomstick. James at least had the decency to turn red before assuring his dad it would never happen again (everyone knew it would). Euphemia was in the kitchen, apron tied around her waist and her gray hair up in a knot on her head. Sirius leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, and she gently reached out to him, not quite taking his face in her hands until she saw the smallest nod of permission.

“My darling,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears, “you look well.”

Remus knew what Euphemia was thinking about as she took in Sirius’ appearance. It was the same thing he had thought of over and over again as he laid in bed at night, his arms wrapped tightly around his boyfriend in attempt to keep him safe from the nightmares that occupied his mind. The frail and beaten Sirius that had collapsed on the Potter’s doorstep those few weeks ago had been nursed back to health by the healing powers and carefulness of Euphemia Potter. Still, it was hard to get that image of Sirius lying half dead out of Remus’ mind. He could hardly imagine what it was like for Euphemia who had seen the worst of his injuries after shoving everyone else out of the room in order to heal him. James, Remus, and Peter had stayed up all night, waiting outside the spare bedroom door where they could hear Euphemia sobbing over Sirius’ sleeping form. Remus would rather have faced the full moon a hundred times instead of waiting those long three days for Sirius to wake up.

“Thanks, mum,” Sirius said. The four boys crowded around the kitchen table, eagerly reaching toward the various dishes Euphemia had spread about. Fleamont had joined them, sitting between his wife and Sirius. James immediately went for his mother’s main dish, filling his plate full before passing it to Peter, who was already nibbling on some naan. Remus loved Euphemia’s cooking. It was different than that of his mother’s—not that he would ever pass up his mam’s wonderful Sunday dinners—and he was happy to able to enjoy the different flavors offered whenever he visited. Euphemia always made far too much, making sure that everyone got their fill as well as some leftovers. She was an angel, truly.

Sirius did not fill his plate as full as the others. He was still very thin, with his jaw looking more pronounced and Remus knew his hipbones were a bit more jutted out. Punishments at Grimmauld Place were harsh and Sirius had been starved well into the first few months of summer. It was still a process, trying to get him to eat without getting sick, but they were managing best they could. Remus watched as Sirius poked at his food, looking a bit scared of it before setting his fork down and letting out a frustrated sigh. James looked up from his own plate, regarding Sirius with a look of concern from across the table.

“You okay there, Padfoot?” He asked, keeping his tone light but Remus could see the worry in his dark eyes. Sirius nodded, picking up his utensils once more.

“Yeah. I’m fine, just…” He trailed off, looking down at the table and not daring to meet anyone’s eye. Remus felt a sudden need to shield Sirius away from everyone else’s intense gaze, the wolf within him becoming quite territorial. He pushed those feeling away, not permitting the wolf access to its most basic instincts in the fear that the wolf might be visible on the surface. Still, even his human mind seemed to want to take Sirius away from the scrutiny.

“Darling,” Euphemia said, “you don’t have to eat it all. Just a few bites of naan if you can bear it. Just to keep up your strength.”

Sirius smiled tightly at her but did not move to eat. The rest of them reluctantly picked at their own food, trying to keep things as normal as possible. Fleamont engaged his son in conversation about Quidditch, asking after the Gryffindor team and what he thought their chances were this upcoming school year. Peter politely asked after the herbs Euphemia was growing in her kitchen—he had a thing for herbology—and she answered each question with detail. Remus turned his attention to Sirius, his hand coming to rest on the older boy’s knee. Sirius flinched slightly and then blinked as he realized it was only Remus.

“Do you want to go on a walk?” Remus asked quietly, rubbing circles with his thumb into Sirius’ thigh. The other boy nodded, standing quickly, and exiting the kitchen. The conversations happening came to an abrupt halt and Remus could feel James’ gaze turn towards him. He looked to his friend, a silent conversation passing between them.

Is he okay?

No, but he will be.

Remus walked out, trailing through the living room and out the back door which lead to the Potter’s spacious garden. When Remus had first visited the Potter’s home when he was thirteen, he had the startling realization that James Potter was very well off. It was a bit daunting, especially since Remus’ whole house could probably fit within one room of the mansion and he had been a bit nervous to even touch anything in fear of breaking it. Of course, Fleamont and Euphemia were no stranger to rough-housing, having known exactly what they were getting into with their own son, and Remus’ worries were quickly put to ease when Euphemia simply waved her wand at a vase that had tragically fallen to the floor amidst their game of dog-pile on Peter. Young Remus had almost forgotten that magic existed outside of Hogwarts, and he was in awe at seeing performed in such a domestic setting.

His favorite part of James’ home though was the garden. It was so big! There were wonderful trees that provided much needed shade on hot summer days, and pools of water run by magic to keep the vegetation alive. There were many times the boys pretended to be magizoologists searching for creatures in a jungle, or highly trained aurors on the hunt for evil wizards and—Remus’ personal favorite—pirates looking for treasure. It was a place filled with joy and adventure and even as the boys got older, it remained their sanctuary. Sirius had spent a lot of time in the garden since he arrived, sitting by himself beneath the starlit sky, crying out for his brother and the family that had hurt him. Remus had watched in privately, not daring to intrude on such moments, but wanting to be within reach just in case.

Sirius sat there now, next to a bed of deep red roses, softly running his fingers across the petals. Remus walked up, careful not spook him, and sat down beside him. He flickered his eyes in Sirius’ direction and noticed the other boy had started crying, but he did not pry. Now was not the time for that. Instead, he let his fingers trail through the grass beneath him and let his words fall lazily off his tongue.

“I read a new book at the beginning of summer,” Remus began, his tone light. “Mrs. Dalloway. It was a quick read. The entire novel takes place over the course of one day, how interesting is that? It’s become one of my favorites I think. Woolf is a great author—Virginia Woolf, she’s the one who wrote it.”

Sirius seemed to perk up at this. “Woolf? Could you be anymore ironic, Moony?”

A light laugh escaped Remus. “Believe me, I know. Mum was worried about that when she got it for me.”

The tension snapped back into Sirius as quickly as Remus realized his mistake. Hope Lupin was a generous woman, young and vibrant with a taste for progressive ideologies and love for everyone she met. She adored her son and kept him safe, never shying away from him despite his affliction with lycanthropy and Remus sometimes forgot how lucky he was to have her in his life until he was sat next to Sirius and realized that the Hope Lupin’s and Euphemia Potter’s of the world were unfortunately not the norm for everyone.

“They hate me,” Sirius says abruptly. “They hate that I don’t agree with them. That I don’t want to fucking pledge my allegiance to some dark lord who wants to kill all my friends and I—” he chokes off, a sob escaping him, “I don’t want to care, Remus. I don’t want to be bothered by the fact that my mother would rather curse me instead of hug me and that my father would rather have me dead instead of tarnishing his precious family name. But I do. I do care because they should care. I’m their son, I am their fucking flesh and blood and if blood is all that matters to them then why don’t they care about me?”

There were tears in his eyes as he looked at Remus, tears that Sirius had been holding back ever since he was eleven years old and discovered that parents were not supposed to punish their children for wanting to be loved, the pain and anguish of that realization that had built up over time finally reaching a breaking point. Remus’ own heart was breaking as he stared helplessly, not knowing what to do. These were not problems children were supposed to have. They were supposed to be young, careless, and dreaming up pranks to pull once they got back to school. Instead, they had to contend with a looming war and parents who were cruel and a curse that transformed you into a monster. This was their life, and it would never be easy, Remus thought, not for them.

“Sirius,” Remus whispered, “there are no words I can say to express to you how sorry I am that you’ve had to deal with any of this. Your parents…they’re wrong. They are so fucking wrong and they are so fucking blind for not being able to love you. You are the most loveable human being. You’re generous and caring and you…you take notes for me. When I miss class. And you always make sure my pillows are nice and fluffy after the moon and you rub those soothing salves on my skin at night. And you make me that special tea whenever I’m sick and you read to me when I can’t sleep. You kiss me like it’s the first time every time and you love me like it’s the only thing you’re meant to do. You clean James’ glasses for him and you make sure his Quidditch gear is ready to go on game day. You help Peter study and you let him go on and on about divination with you despite it being your least favorite subject. You’re the first one up to dance with Marlene at the parties and you braid Lily’s hair whenever she’s feeling upset over her sister. You are one of a kind, Sirius Black. You are a good friend and a good brother and you are the love of my life. Believe me when I tell you that you are loved.”

Sirius stared at him, the tears falling from his eyes leaving trails across his cheeks. He reached out for Remus, pulling the taller boy closer to close the distance between them. Sirius’ lips met Remus’, a tender kiss filled with gratitude and love and the promise of forever. When Sirius pulled away, his eyes were still shining, but there was new fervor there, a look of life that Remus had not seen reflected in those silver orbs for a long time.

“I love you so much,” Sirius said. And he smiled genuinely for the first time in months.

Remus smiled back. “I love you, too.”

“Come on,” Sirius said, standing up and offering his hand. “Let’s head back in.”

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jazinerambles · 3 years

Text

Persona 2 Innocent Sin Review

I wanted to have some time in between playing the game and writing my thoughts for Persona 2 Innocent Sin. I will be referencing it and other Persona games so there may be some light spoilers for games 2-5.

I played the psp version of the game on a Playstation TV. I beat the game at 76 hours on the dot. I have not completed most of the theater missions, but I have completed the main story of the game and did do a few sidequests.

My review will be organized in several sections-gameplay, story, music, characters, LGBTQ representation, extra content, wishlist and recommendation.

Gameplay:

Persona 2 Innocent Sin was released in 1999. Therefore plays as a game from 1999. The PSP rerelease updated menus, changed the difficulty, and added all out attack art similar to P3-P5 for the fusion spells. I love the all out attack animation and although the menus got a little cumbersome, it didn’t really impact gameplay for me.

The biggest complaint about Persona 2 IS is how easy and repetitive it is and the high encounter rate. The battles for the most part are easy and if you set up all your attacks in the first round, you can basically use autoplay until an emergency occurs or you encounter an enemy in which you must change it up.

I never saw the gameplay as repetitive as others do and I feel those who do only just battle and that’s it. I was constantly trying to get all the fusion spells, max up my personas to trade them for items, try different combinations for the demon negotiations and spread demon rumors to get items, spells, and cards (you need cards to summon new personas in the velvet room.) Demon negotiations also allow you a better look into each of the characters’ personalities and relationships. Events in the game will change how the characters react in these negotiations so it is always nice to go back to them throughout the course of the game.

The demons you encounter have emotions. I believe they are intrigued, happy, angry and fearsome. Make them happy and they will offer a pact with you and give you free stuff and willing to spread rumors for you. Make them angry they will fight you. Make them fear you they will run away. Make them intrigued and you get the cards needed to summon personas and even more if you already have a pact with them.

I wanted to return to the big complaint though, the high encounter rate. This was something that I felt hot and cold about. Most of the time this didn’t bother me, because I needed to level up my personas anyway. But when I needed to backtrack and explore further, it did get a little bothersome.

You can use estoma to avoid enemies weaker than you. It is not a passive skill, so once you have a persona that has it, you have to cast it every time it wears off. At the Mu casino, you can also purchase a disguise kit that does the same thing, but it effects last about the same amount of time and it is ridiculously expensive. Just use estoma.

As briefly mentioned above, unlike Persona 5 in which you can just catch Personas, in P2IS there are only two ways to get them. You get cards from demon negations, take those cards to the velvet room and then trade them in for a Persona. But you have to enough cards to summon it and the persona has to be 5 cards within your character level.

You can also talk to the demon painter, for him to make you cards for the specific arcana you want by using blank cards. These are also given through demon negotiations that you have a pact with.

In P2, ALL your characters are capable of changing out Personas, but their compatibility with different personas varies with their Arcana.

The other way to get personas is through the story. There are certain actions that you must take to get the prime personas and then the final personas. These personas are character specific and you can’t give them to other characters.

I wanted to talk about three more things before I move on to the story: rumormongers, fusion spells, and dungeons.

Persona 2IS is based around rumors. Just like P3 is for the dark hour, P4 the midnight channel, P5 around palaces and so on...

To get certain items and progress the story, you MUST gather and spread rumors. There are five characters throughout the game called rumormongers. They will give you information in exchange for receiving information. You then share this information to the detective agency, pay a fee for them to spread them for you, and there you go. rumor spread. As mentioned earlier, there are also demon specific rumors.

Fusion spells were something I really enjoyed in this game. Although hearing “Are you ready? Here goes” and “Let’s go everybody” will be stuck in my head for the rest of eternity...

Basically, to create a fusion spell, members in your party require a requisite spell and then that party member is placed in a specific order when taking turns. Once that spell is unlocked, it will let you know if you have the requisite spells and you no longer have to adjust the order of party members. Some of the spells you need to unlock fusion spells are persona specific. The fusion spells are elemental.

I will not go into weaknesses of elemental spells, I am just going to say that you aren’t “down”’ed like you are in 3-5.

Finally, my first real pet peeve with this game-the dungeons.

Oh boy. Air raid, AeroSpace and one of the four Zodiac dungeons (I am pretty sure its Eikichi’s) gets ALL my hate. There are cheap gimmicks that make the game artificially hard but only for these dungeons and more so, frustrating.

But I am not going to go into detail why, and the other dungeons are not bad at all. But play the game and experience these dungeons for yourself. That is all I am going to say about that.

Story:

This section will be nowhere was long as gameplay. The story did not go where I thought it would, but that’s a good thing. I would go in completely blind if you can. The ending definitely surprised me a bit. I think it has one of the best stories of the persona games.

It does not follow a calendar like the later Persona games and time just blends together. By the end of the game, you won't know if a day, week or month passed from the beginning to the end.

Music:

The music is actually really good. It is the reason why I played the game in the first place. Just don’t look at the soundtracks names. Spotify has it available if you live in the US. You are better off listening to the soundtrack because I promise you that most dungeons songs will be cut off due to the frequency of battles.

Some of my favorite songs are Smile Hirasaka, Unbreakable Tie, Kurosu’s theme, Joker and the Taurus dungeon’s theme.

Characters:

Despite Persona 2 not having social links, I feel like I know these characters better than some of the persona games that do have social links. It is also the only Persona game that I can say without any hesitation that I like the entire main cast.

I truly love them all, but my favorite would probably be Yukino or Maya.

Unlike other Personas, the dynamics for Persona 2 IS are different, because not all of your party members are high school students. The adult characters have adult problems, the high school students have high school problems, and all of them have deep psychological problems and abandonment issues that will take years of intense therapy (or Philemeon) to forget.

One of the biggest themes of Persona 2 is confronting your past and learning from the mistakes of your childhood. And the characters do! And by the end of the game you are so proud of how far they have come. And then things happen...

LGBTQ representation

Let me say that I started P2IS off on the wrong foot, but I am still absolutely justified at being upset by it. One of the very first interactions you can have with a NPC is through a very uncomfortable exchange between you, Eikichi and a transman that is pretty transphobic. And to add the icing on the cake, Atlus refers to him as a “weird woman.”

I was literally going to just stop playing the game like an hour in because of that, but I decided to continue.

What I discovered was a game that has highs and lows when it comes to LGBTQ representation.

You can play as a bi character who can confess his feelings to men and women. *Stares hard at Persona 4 and Persona 5*

You have a gay character that has an interesting story, character development, is unabashedly gay and isn’t a walking stereotype. Nor is his entire arc centered around gay panic.

From what I understand the dialogue from the NPC does get better, but I am not holding my breath.

And the one sapphic kiss scene we get in a Persona game is a kiss of manipulation and not love. So that is a little sad.

But overall, P2IS does try to make an effort. And it definitely makes a better effort than its successor released almost 2 decades later.

Extra content:

Again, Persona 2 doesn’t have social links or a calendar. Please don’t approach it like the other games where you have to fill up your time between dungeons. It is not a necessity, but there are things you can do.

Mu is a casino that you can visit that allows you to play mini games to gain coins that you can use to get weapons, rare items, and even unlock personas. I spent a little too much time at Mu....

You can also talk to NPCs to do side missions. Be careful though. You have to do the side missions in a given amount of time or you may not get rewarded for it. Also P2IS is very much like Final Fantasy 9 where it is much better to go to a place sooner than later, because there may not be a later...

You also have the factory which is an optional dungeon that opens up more and more as you progress through the game.

There is the theater which is a PSP exclusive which has side missions unrelated to the main story that you can play. They are okay.

Wishlist

I hear so many people wanting a remake of P2IS so the game can be more accessible. I am very torn about this. Besides the difficulty and maaybe tweaking the encounter rate a bit, I wouldn’t change a thing. However, I also know that I couldn’t enjoy Shadow of Colossus until the controls were updated. Like I tried and then just gave up.

I honestly don’t want a remake. I don’t trust the Atlus of today with this game.

I do want it to be acknowledged and more accessible though.

But if I had to make a wish list, this is what it would be. Again, this would be a “it would be nice list.”

Make the battles harder.

Update cut scenes? I really like the art for the cut scenes already, but would like some more. Maybe keep the drawings but update the CG?

Social side quests. I do not want social links in Persona 2. However, side quests that allow you to learn more about your character like a social link would, would be something I would be very interested in.

Make the portraits consistent. The art from the original game and the new art put in the PSP game (I am talking about you climax lady) clash so much. Pick one style and stick to it.

I want to fight Ms. Ideal. Let me do it for reasons. Give me a chance to battle her.

I want the option to switch out characters. I love both Jun and Yukki, but I want to be able to play with both.

Let me skip the animation when I create a new Persona.

*EDIT* I can’t believe I forgot this and feel awful I did, but I do think they should keep the trans NPC, but change the dialogue and the the name. It isn’t the NPC that is the problem but the dialogue and actions. Otherwise, I think it would be ok.

I think that’s it.

Recommendation:

So should you play Persona 2 IS? Short answer, yes. Long answer is that it is complicated. In a few months the game will no longer be accessible for psp consoles. The physical version of the game is ridiculously expensive. You will have to accept the fact this game is on psp and its sequel’s psp version never came to English speaking markets.

You may not like the graphics, gameplay, or that it doesn’t feel like the later persona games. And as much as I love this game, that is alright. You do you. But I truly do think you are missing out on a great game. So if you have the opportunity to do so, yeah absolutely give it a shot.

#Persona 2 #Persona series #persona 3 #Persona 4 #Persona 5

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uni-life-tips · 4 years

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Lock Up and Remember Your Keys

his isn't just a Uni-tip or anything...but more of a life-tip. Learn to lock-up your place before bed and learn to carry your keys with you whenever you're out of your place.

Growing up I remember that my parents were always super paranoid about locking up our house before bed every night. They would literally walk around the house, checking all of the doors and windows before they went to bed every single night. I remember a time when my sibling and I slept in our parent's room with them ('cuz our rooms were being used by guests or something) and I remember our family settling into bed for the night only to have my mom bolt out of bed beside me and run down the stairs. I followed her to see what was going on and it turns out she ran downstairs to check to see if she had locked the door to the garage...which she had already done previously. She then wandered over to the kitchen and shut the window tightly before going back to bed. Neither one of my parents ever told us about the nightly ritual of checking all of the doors and windows, but it was something I picked up on from watching them do it every night.

When I went away for University I realized that locking the door behind me was a habit I had adopted from my parents. It was a habit that didn't make me very popular with my roommates. We lived in a co-ed dorm complex that heavily emphasized an open-door policy to "make new friends". My roommates were just like me, fresh out of high school and looking forward to our first time living away from our parents. That was where our similarities ended. I was doing my best to be a responsible adult and that included ensuring the door to my living space was always closed and locked. Anyone that wanted to come in either had their own key or would knock and wait to be invited in. This mentality made me very unpopular and my roommates consistently complained about me to the Housing Authority, claiming that I was maliciously locking them out of our suite every night. My defense was simple: "you have a key--use it" but they would whine and scream that carrying their keys around 24/7 was inconvenient for them and they demanded that I stop closing/locking my doors. I moved out partway through the year, paying a premium to live with fewer/no roommates. I couldn't live with people that refused to lock-up or carry their keys around.

A little over a month after I moved out a letter from the Housing Authority and the Head of the University and whatever circulated. Apparently, there had been a sexual assault on campus-grounds in the dorms and the adult authorities were now insisting that people should be locking their doors and that the open-door policy was ridiculous. Apparenty, a girl in the dorm complex I had moved out of had decided to take a nap in her room--with her door open. A male visitor of another person living on the same floor had walked by on their way out and taken liberties with the napping girl. Note, I'm not saying that the girl deserved it for not locking up in this post--the asshole that chose to take liberties with anyone without consent is clearly the one in the wrong here. I'm not condemning the girl for opting to follow the open-door policy and I'm not saying or implying that she deserved what happened to her because she didn't lock up. Please don't turn it into that sort of debate in my inbox.

Over my years in University I eventually befriended some of the other people that lived on that floor that I had moved out of in the middle of my 1st year. Everyone I had encountered from back then acted oddly. A lot of the ones that had complained about me for being responsible refused to look me in the eye and a handful of the ones that were neutral or friendly toward me when I lived there actually asked me to move back in to "fix" things. I still don't know all the details of what happened after I left, but I've been told that "the place went to shit" after I left.

My roommates were always the loud sort and I was always telling them to turn their music down or to take their partying elsewhere because I lived there too and I was studying in my room etc. Without me there, the partying and loudness was just one problem. The three roommates I left were also HUGE proponents of the open door policy. One even had keys made for no less than 3 of her flings--so 3 random people living elsewhere had keys to the floor, keys to the suite and her bedroom, and basically access to all of the common areas. Pots, pans, and toilet paper constantly went missing from common areas--apparently squirreled away by my former roommate's flings from other floors/dorm complexes.

I have had friends living off-campus tell me about how they've had their place broken into. One of my friends never used to bother locking up before bed until they woke up to find a drunk stranger raiding their fridge at 4 in the morning. Another begged me to devise a mechanism to put a padlock on their fridge to prevent a frequent (live-in) partner of their roommate's from stealing everyone's food. Locking up would have solved a lot of their problems.

Over the years I established 2 conscious habits for myself: 1) Always lock the doors and windows especially if i was going to sleep or going to be away from my place for a while. The people that belong there have a key and anyone else can knock and ask for permission to come in. 2) I always had my key on my person. I'd seen far too many people shivering under a bath-towel (and nothing else) during fire evacuations/drills and I knew I didn't want to be the unfortunate soul that had to run around in naught but a towel, trying to track down the dorm head to let them into their room afterwards. Lock-out fees are expensive and if I had $25 to blow on lock-outs I would have used it to buy myself better food.

Checking doors and windows before leaving or sleeping is a good habit to get into. Carrying your keys at all times is also a good habit.

#uni-life #life tips #safety tips #personal #rant

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aziraphaleandcrowley · 4 years

Text

Tldr: me word vomiting lots of random emotions and thoughts I’ve been having about my life. Would put under a read more but tumblr mobile is shite. Ignore if you wanna, I just needed to throw this into the world cos I’ve been so socially distant from everyone in my life that I haven’t spoken to anyone about this, and I’m not sure I would’ve even if I actually replied to my friends more than once in a blue moon

...............................................................

Me: honestly convinced I’m never gonna find romantic love cos I’m ace and probably aro - at the very least I’ve never been attracted to/interested in someone enough to want to date them and the whole being sexually attracted to someone and looking a people and wanting to have sex with them sounds fake and doesn’t resonate with me at all.

Me: is theoretically a very sex favourable and positive person but the idea of sex with someone I’m not dating is just so weird to me but damn do I wish there was someone who knew me and my likes and dislikes to be intimate with

Me: is super duper disappointed to not experience love/sex but is simultaneously doing literally zero to create opportunities cos I just don’t speak to anyone outside of my family and colleagues, and the one single guy I had any interest in at work is gay and has left.

Me: reads fanfic constantly and I’m now wondering whether it is beneficial in distracting me from my loneliness or enhancing it. I think both. I think I need a break from fanfic at the very least but honestly don’t know what I’d do without it cos it’s been my go to hobby for so many years and I legit read for 30+ hours a week and that’s soo much time to fill???

Me: really doesn’t want to have kids in the future cos I don’t understand kids in the slightest and pregnancy is terrifying and I still feel like a child myself and I know this is something which may change in the future but I don’t think so and my mum bringing up wanting grandkids on a near weekly basis recently is kinda starting to put me on edge cos I’m already starting to feel like a disappointment cos I’m an only child and I’m the only opportunity for grandkids - which I know is ridiculous but it how I feel and that’s valid

Me: with my grandad in hospital (he’s gonna be fine, he would be out of hospital if he actually did what the doctors and nurses said about doing exercises etc) it has made me think about the family I do have which is: my mum, my dad, my grandad and my uncle. That’s it. I have two other uncles and several cousins etc who I see maybe once a year but they don’t really count.

Me: has a handful of really amazing friends who I haven’t spoken to in months and I don’t even really know why. They’ve all messaged me and I just havent replied. I’m not trying to actively push them away like I did with a friend in the past who I just felt drained with in the end whenever we interacted, but honestly every time I get a message I just feel exhausted at the prospect of ongoing social interaction. And it’s silly cos I know exactly the kind of thing I could message people about to start a conversation, like I could talk to Emily about finally watching Hamilton and how it’s been two weeks and I’m still listening to song on repeat and how she was right about how good it is and yet it’s been a week and a half since I’ve thought about sending that message and yet I haven’t and just uggghhhh @me

Me: is horrified by the idea of being alone for life romantically, and knowing that between my ever dwindling family and me not talking to my friends that being alone if more likely that I ever want to think about

Me: wants to live a happy life of my own but don’t know how to. I want to move out but can’t afford to on my own and it’s super impractical when I can live with my parents for £20 per week for food. But god forbid if anything happens to one of my parents I’m gonna be stuck at home forever cos I have so little family and my parents have literally no one else to turn to.

Me: wants to do a masters in gender and sexuality studies writing about representations of asexuality on screen but I know I could write and entire book which would be great for phd level but I missed the deadline to apply cos June was crazy and all I’ve been doing recently is working 6 days a week then working on my car for a day before working another 6 days. And even if I did a masters and maybe eventually a phd I have no idea what I’d actually do with it? I have so little ambition for anything right now and the future is just a void of mystery in which I don’t even know what I want???

Me: is starting to think I might actually be kinda depressed. I’ve thought it on and off for longer than I’ll ever admit but I’d do quizzes online and they’d say I wasn’t so I didn’t really think too much more about it (and yes I know an online quiz is shit and means nothing but there’s no one I would want to talk to about it cos I feel like I have to be strong for the people around me and shit but yeah). I know I’m not happy, but that doesn’t necessarily equal depressed. All I know is I’m uninspired and I feel kinda empty. Doing stuff I do enjoy, if I actually do it, just makes me feel tired half the time so I end up trying to nap instead but then I don’t sleep great either, waking up in the night or when my dad is getting ready for work so I very rarely get a solid 8 hours of sleep. I’m irritable a lot too...

Me: even if I am depressed what does it matter? Like it does matter ofc, but my mum is on media for depression and it’s taking her weeks to get an appointment with the doctor to try and get a different dosage. I’m not a danger to myself or others, I’m unhappy, but who isn’t with COVID going on and there are people who need mental health services more than me. Which is really hypocritical of me to say cos I’ve told my best friend so many times that trauma and mental health etc aren’t competitions of who has it worse but it’s the truth. Also my mum and colleagues access the only mental health resources in town and I do not want to deal with interactions with people I know whilst trying to improve my mental health.

Me: I don’t know how many times I’ve said it in posts like this but something needs to change. I was set on a good course at the start of the year. I was getting out, socialising, doing new things, inspired to cook, learn to new music and change my lifestyle, and then COVID happened and since all of that has slowly drained away and I need to find a change to revitalise that. I’d hoped getting back to having driving lessons and working on my car would be a start, and to be fair it’s been less than two week since I restarted doing that, so maybe I can find a new spark of inspiration still. Within a couple of months I will pass my driving test. Hopefully it won’t take much longer than that to get my car finished and on the road (hopefully it’ll take two weeks to finish putting the rear end back together so we can finally get my car back on four wheels, then it’s just lots of little jobs which hopefully won’t take too long). The weather is supposed to be decent this week so I might work up the effort to go for a walk down the fields which always seems to relax me a little. And the cinema reopens at the end of the month so I’d finally have an excuse to get out of the house (I know COVID is not over and things should not be going back to normal any time soon, but I need to do something other than go work for 4 hours everyday and spend 90% of my time at home and most of that time in bed because I have nowhere else to go). I don’t know what else I can be hopeful for in the coming weeks but that’s a start and just listing them out here has made me feel a little better so.

I keep thinking about Patrick from Schitt s Creek, leaving his hometown to escape a life which didn’t fit him and finding everything he needed in a tiny town in rural Canada, and wishing I could do the same, but I know I’d just end up even more alone because I am not a social person in the slightest and don’t kno how to be despite knowing that me making changes is the only way to improve myself.

And then a line from Hamilton about death is easy, living is harder, and I want to make it abundantly clear that I do not in any way, shape or form want to die, but living is hard and I have an easy life. I have enough money that I was able to loan my dad the money to buy a car, and still have more savings after that than he does, I have a good that if not particularly well paid I do enjoy and I’m good at, my family live me in their own way, even tho I feel that part of my social distance and reluctantance towards others is because no one in my family is particularly socially inclined.

Maybe I just really need a hug.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this anymore but I just had so much build of of words in my brain that they had to go somewhere and this has turned into my go to word vomit place

Things will get better. I don’t know when or how but they will. But they won’t if I don’t get enough sleep for a starters. So off to bed I go. If you’ve read all this thank you, I guess, for listening cos I’m not sharing this with anyone irl just yet. And I’m sorry this is so long but tumblr mobile doesn’t let me put in a read now but I want this out in the world even tho no one will see it

#anyway ignore me #long post for ts #sorry #tmi #rebecca speaks #again #with the amount of posts i jave like this on here im really starting to think i need to find an actual person to discuss stuff with #not sure what therapy options there are in the uk cos all my knowledge come from here which is so us centric #but i think im gonna do some research #tomorrow tho #long post #personal

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closecry · 5 years

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The Back-up Plan (Pagan Min x Reader)

Word Count: 2,223. Rated T for light cursing. Cross posted to my AO3, MadQueen. Based off a recent shitpost I made.

It's 2018. Late 2018… Maybe. Probably. These days, it was hard to pinpoint what day it was exactly. You were on an island Pagan had purchased for his retirement from being the King of Kyrat. What with the constant sunshine and nice weather, it was hard to tell exactly what time of year it was.

Pagan had a calendar in the villa that he used to keep track of time (It went to the year 3000. Which you thought was ridiculous.). It wasn't needed, because while you were on an island in the middle of the ocean, it wasn't without the "necessities".

There were solar panels that were used to power the house, there were satellites that adorned the roof of the villa that could pick up stations halfway across the world, 4 swimming pools, a tennis and basketball court, and of course, Internet Access. Pagan couldn't live without access to Netflix, Prime, HBO GO, Hulu-... all of the subscription services. He had all of them.

Most days for Pagan are spent at the villa, enjoying one of the many activities he could while there.

As it stands, though, you were sitting on the edge of the sand at your favorite beach on the island. It had nice tide pools you enjoyed exploring when the option is made available to you. You were enjoying rereading one of your favorite books, one that Pagan had first introduced you to.

Today, you had been able to convince Pagan to come out with you, and while he was in the shade far away from the ocean's side… he was there. A nice steady presence behind you. He had a radio sitting beside him blaring music in order to be heard over the raging sound of the crashing waves.

The water laps up to your ankles and startles you from your book you had been engrossed in.

You had been sitting on the edge for hours, and the tide apparently had time to rise up to meet you. To be be fair, it was a good book. And Pagan's choice of music had really lulled you into a sense of bliss that left you ignorance of the passage of time.

You sigh, and lean back, your book now momentarily forgotten as you instead focused on the radio behind you and the waves crashing in front of you. It was playing ABBA, one of Pagan's favorite artists. You're not surprised about that, if you're being honest. He adored most music in the same sort of genre, the over the top ballads and upbeat songs being his go to jams. You suppose it did fit his drama queen personality, though.

You lay down against the sand, and your head lulls back in order to focus on getting a good look of Pagan from behind you in the shade tree that he often frequented these days.

For a man that bought a tropical island to spend his retirement on, he didn't really enjoy exploring the edges of the island, or the ruins of the former village, or the small mountain tops that littered the island, or even swimming.

No, he much more enjoyed sitting down in the shade reading through Vogue, a magazine he specifically had shipped to the island monthly. When he didn't have a new copy to peruse he often would pick up a book, but for now, being at the beginning of the month it was, it was time for his magazine.

Pagan had let his guard down on the island, no longer fearful of assassins around the corner, or an uprising in the shadows. He was just allowed to be himself.

The only other people on this island were a few farmers, chefs, repairmen, and cleaners who kept the island's villa and guesthouse up and running… and well, Gary. (You weren't sure Gary's exact job title, he just kind of did whatever Pagan wanted him to. He was deeply devoted to the former king.) There were shipments of whatever exotic item Pagan were craving, but for the most part you were incredibly self reliant.

You didn't have a care in the world on the island, it was bliss. While it was humid, you, unlike Pagan, enjoyed the island for what it was. You explored, and swam, and even had your own little garden by the house… Perhaps that's why he had picked the island, if he didn't himself enjoy the activities?

Pagan was still Pagan, though, somehow always able to tell when eyes were on him from years of being on the run. It was like he had a sixth sense for the thing. So, after a moment, his magazine slides down and he meets your eyes with a questioning look.

You're confident that if It weren't for the deafening noise of the ocean and ABBA drowning out any possible noise that he could make, he would perhaps teasingly ask what you were doing watching him, but as it stands he simply smirks, motions for you to take up the space beside him, and slides the magazine back up after a moment.

There was an empty seat beside him, across from the table where the radio sat. It was an over the top lawn chair, incredibly expensive and adorned in exotic metals in the frame with your name embroidered into the fabric covering the cushions. A set of seats fit for a king and his spouse.

You let out a chuckle at his overconfidence, knowing that he was now waiting for you to join him, but sure enough, after a few seconds you do stand up and make your way over. You couldn't deny, his company did sound preferable to the crashing waves and small sea creatures that had washed up on shore.

You wipe as much of the sand off your body as you can while you walk, and when you end up in front of Pagan you're left with two choices. As it stands, you could easily take the chair beside him, the one that he was motioning for you to take, but the area between his legs looks too tempting for you not to at the very least try.

It wasn't often he denied you anything you wanted, so you're fairly certain he won't push you away if you attempt to share the seat.

You lean down, sitting down at the space between his legs. When Pagan realizes what you're doing, the magazine slides up slightly to make room when you start to slide between his spread legs. You gently lay your back against his stomach and your head against the lower part of his chest. Your arms fall against his thighs where they surround you, essentially making makeshift arm rests.

You half expect him to simply move the magazine up to your head and use it as a sort of stand, as he has done before when you've interrupted his reading by doing similar feats. He especially did it when you were back on Kyrat, where his task had to do more with life and death rather than whatever Vogue was featuring this month. He throws the magazine to the side table, and tangles a hand into your hair, beginning to stroke the strands.

You push gently up into his hand, nuzzling back into his chest with a satisfied smile. Now this, this, was nice. Pagan normally only gave intimacy when it was first initiated, he rarely reached out. He was normally a reserved person, and before you had moved to the island he enjoyed showing his affection in other ways. Mostly monetarily, but his kind words did also hold a sort of reverence for only you.

Pagan can't help teasing you though, always finding a way to do so when at all possible. As it was, with you pushing back into his hand with contentedness, it wasn't hard for him to find something to point out. "Needy." He breathed, but the word was spoken with such fondness that he carried with him in nearly every breath.

He would never readily admit it, but you knew he liked it when he felt needed. Wanted. Before, when he was king, he had hundreds of people constantly reaffirming him. You tried to fill in where you could, and you're sure he understood exactly what you were doing. If he did, he didn't comment on it.

***

You're half asleep when the noise of the radio's static alerts you. You jerk against Pagan's body at the sudden change, surprised. It's cut out from Dancing Queen to a sort of alert noise that's taken the place of ABBA's voices.

Pagan's hand stops it's careful and calculated strokes, and he offers a glare to the radio. "What?" He grumbles, seemingly to the object as though it would answer him back.

As it is, you make no move to get up in order to inspect the radio, but instead watch it with confusion. Perhaps it had somehow switched stations to something else? Maybe it lost signal?

It beeps again and a voice starts speaking, sounding panic when it does so.

"There has been a nuclear attack on United States soil," You hear what sounds like the person shuffling papers.

You move forward, sitting on the edge of the seat now with bated breath. The lazy afternoon turning into the most stress you've had in years.

The voice starts up again after a moment. It doesn't sound any less nervous than it had previously. "It appears to been a direct retaliation from North Korea as a recent change in policy-"

The radio cuts out, and static takes it's place. You stare at it for a moment, your eyes widened with disbelief.

You had known about the rising nuclear threat of the other countries, but you never thought it would come to this. Sure, there would be alerts on the radio occasionally interrupting the stream of music that Pagan had playing, but… they were never like this. Never this severe.

You look at Pagan now, unsure of how to react to news of one of the biggest countries in the world being nuked. Millions other casualties, what with the tech that existed nowadays. There would undoubtedly be retaliation from the United States as well, thereby creating more death. Destruction.

Eventually, Pagan's arm reaches forward and he switches the radio over to the CD that he had in the device, and ABBA once again overtakes the noise of the waves in the background. He was never without his contingencies.

"Well, that's unfortunate." Pagan says, his voice not sounding the least bit sorry or worried. "A real shame." He says, reaching forward as to pick the Vogue magazine he had dropped when you plopped down into his lap.

You reach over to the radio and turn it down, but not off. He would complain if you turned it off entirely.

"Pagan." You say, your voice patient.

Still, he doesn't look up at you, he offers nothing but a simple hum in response, dismissively.

Your eyes narrow at him now, and while you want to take the magazine away and throw as far into the ocean as you can at his blasé attitude to all of this, you restrain yourself to moving a single finger over to his magazine and gently sliding it down, until his eyes meet yours again with a roll that doesn't go missed by you.

He looks entirely unimpressed. "It wasn't my fault, why are you looking at me like that, darling?" Pagan asks, his voice sounding almost annoyed. "I can't control what other countries do, hell, I can't even control what Kyrat does anymore-"

"Pagan," You start, effectively cutting him off, a sigh being unable to hold itself in. "We should still talk about what this means." You say, and after nothing but a raise of his eyebrow in question, you continue. "I mean, they are undoubtedly going to retaliate, and that means that most of the rest of the world is fucked."

Pagan, once again rolls his eyes. You want to hurt him. (Not really, but, still… He's being an asshole.)

His tone is still unworried when he speaks. "It won't reach us here, we're in the middle of nowhere." He assures you, but it's said like someone might talk to a child. As if it's obvious. "And, God-forbid if they drop one close enough for fallout to reach us, we'll simply move to the underground shelter. It has food and water enough for 30 people for another 30 years, the same as the one in Kyrat that Ajay is undoubtedly occupying currently..." He chuckles, and shrugs. "Hell, I believe the one here has it's own set of swimming pools as well, among other things."

He moves a hand to your shoulder and pats it softly. "We'll be fine." And with that, he has the magazine back up. A hand blindly reaches out and the radio is back to the volume it was before.

You believed him when he said you would be fine. The rest of the world might be going to shit, but here, on the island in the middle of nowhere, Pagan's retirement would not be interrupted. He couldn't save the world, society may be collapsing around him, but he could protect what was important to him. His world.

...Pagan never was without his contingencies.

#fc4 #far cry 4 #pagan min #pagan min imagine #pagan min x reader #far cry imagine #far cry #reader #og #my writing

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pollyestergivens · 6 years

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Part 3: Nancy Drew & The Vanishing Set Designer

The Importance of Cohesive, Believable Game Worlds

A wall of text series on how Nancy Drew games largely lost their charm--this time with pictures!

Boasting more than 30 titles released over the course of nearly 20 years, it’s obvious why the Nancy Drew series has experienced changes in graphics. Thanks to never-ending advancements in PCs and artists who continue to hone their craft, the games moved ever closer to an ultra-realistic ideal.

Improved textures and dynamic character animations were some of the most noticeable and appreciated changes that helped to further immerse the player and create a beautiful game world. That said, a convincing game world does not require the latest and greatest graphics--it only requires cohesion. The most realistic graphics in the world are nothing without a skillful designer behind the scenes, setting the stage and making everything feel “right.” Unfortunately, that designer seemed to vanish with increasing regularity as time went on.

Empty Spaces

HER has never had a AAA budget, and that comes with certain limitations. One of the most obvious is the amount of characters that Nancy is able to interact with in each game. Since creating, animating, and voicing characters takes quite a bit of time, there are rarely more than five. This can create some challenges when it comes to creating a game world which feels lively and believable.

Some locations, like the abandoned Thornton Hall or the soon-to-be B&B in Message in a Haunted Mansion need no excuse for their limited cast, but others require a bit of explaining.

Sometimes, a story-driven explanation is given for how sparsely populated a location is. For example, in Secret of the Scarlet Hand, the museum is currently closed to visitors, just like the park in The Haunted Carousel. But other times, a few tricks are needed to seal the deal--and not every game had some up its sleeve.

The Good:

Danger on Deception Island did a good job of making the Hot Kettle Cafe, an otherwise sparsely occupied establishment, feel as if a group of bustling customers were just out of view through the use of sound effects.

Dishes are clinking, people are chatting and laughing, but only Holt and Jenna are ever seen. Yet, the simple addition of those sound effects and a little sign saying the other part of the cafe was occupied helped the player suspend their disbelief.

Perhaps even more impressive, Danger by Design managed to make a public park feel fairly believable through the use of cleverly obscured vendors, street and nature noises, a pesky squirrel, and a suspect visiting at one point.

This location, coupled with the choice to have Nancy immediately appear behind the parfait counter at Cafe Kiki against the sound of chatting customers, allows the game developers to avoid making Paris feel underpopulated even though there are only a handful of NPCs.

The Bad:

Unfortunately, The Phantom of Venice did not succeed in presenting Venice as well as DAN presented Paris. Though the Ca’ itself was beautiful and the musical score was, as usual, wonderful, the vast majority of the locations felt completely and utterly dead.

No amount of heels clicking on the pavement, people occasionally shouting Italian phrases, or flocks of pigeons landing briefly was going to make these locations--which are visited many times throughout the game--feel real.

The game designers chose to set many of the clickable buildings further back, revealing large swathes of empty streets and public squares, rather than having Nancy appear at the front door like she does in many other games.

While I can see they were clearly trying to showcase the unique architecture of Venice, it simply results in a mostly “off” feeling game world since one would expect lots of people to be roaming around.

The Silent Spy--with its basically empty train station--and Shadow at the Water’s Edge--with its barren urban environments--suffer from this problem as well, along with the game I love to hate: The Shattered Medallion.

Even though MED makes a ridiculous attempt at explaining why Sonny Joon is the only member of staff present and conveniently gets rid of the vast majority of the competitors within the first act of the game, it still utterly fails at making the player feel as if they are participating in a game show. Frankly, with the constraints put upon HER by their budget and game engine, I simply cannot imagine how they could have successfully pulled off an authentic game show experience, but the lack of competing teams was far from the only issue with MED.

The Great Outdoors

The trouble with any game world is that there almost always must be a boundary--a limit to where the player can go. Except for games that feature randomly generated locations, players can expect to--sometimes literally--hit a wall at some point. The trick is to make it seem as if there is no wall.

Outdoor locations can make pulling off such a feat difficult, because as the depth of field is increases, more and more objects are required to fill all that space. However, it is by no means impossible, and HER has marvelously pulled it off many times.

The Good:

Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake was the first game to truly offer an outdoor experience. While previous games like Treasure in the Royal Tower and Secret of the Scarlet Hand had walled gardens, DOG gave the player an expansive forest to explore during the day and night.

This game succeeds at giving the player a sense of actually being deep within a dense forest by using layers upon layers of 3D trees. No matter where you look inside the thicket, you never seem to see a “wall.”

Not only that, but allowing the player to wander in the woods rather than having every location be accessible by a jump map--like the motor boat map--makes the game world feel very large, though some players may find backtracking to be annoying over time.

Another contribution to that sense of realism, much like the Hot Kettle trick, is the use of environmental sounds and critters. Songbirds singing in the trees, the famous chirping worms of Pennsylvania, and other woodland noises play almost constantly in the background as Nancy’s feet crunch upon earth and fallen leaves.

The DOG designers also used a limited, cohesive color palette of muted, earthy tones not only in the forest but also throughout the cabin, speakeasy, and ranger station.

The result? A game which, though it may not rival the likes of Skyrim in detail or variety, feels thoroughly cohesive and drips with atmosphere.

Similar success--though on a smaller scale--was achieved by the forest in The Captive Curse, which was full of sounds, had misty depth of field and gave the player a true sense of being lost in a dark, potentially sinister place.

The Bad:

The Shattered Medallion, on the other hand, is one of the worst offenders of a poorly designed outdoor world. Given that this game was almost entirely set outside, HER certainly had a challenge on their hands, but they failed miserably.

Contrast this forest scene with the one from DOG or CAP. Those trees are almost definitely 2D photographs pasted in a row, allowing for almost no depth of field, and it’s the same story for the mountains.

Using 2D assets is not necessarily a no-no, but here they make the actual 3D models--the silver flower stations and the puzzle palace--look wildly out of place.

The same thing is happening in this other half-ass location from MED. A strange collage of photographs with a few oddly lit 3D models pasted on top makes for a very “wrong” feeling scene.

Indeed, almost every outdoor location in MED has this very weird feeling of being on a Hollywood set--like the backdrops could fall down at any moment and reveal the whole thing to be a farce--and it’s made only worse by the almost complete lack of background noise. Admittedly, I have never been to New Zealand--perhaps it really is deathly quiet--but this game could have greatly benefited from some consistent sounds of nature to liven-up its otherwise lifeless locations.

On top of all that, this game seems to have no color scheme of which to speak nor does it feel expansive. A jump map is used extensively for traversing the landscape, with many outdoor locations only allowing the player to take a mere handful of steps in any given direction.

The result? A game which simply feels “wrong” in nearly every conceivable way.

By no means is MED the only offender, though. Similar depth of field issues--though not as egregious--were present in Secret of the Old Clock, and as far as cohesion goes, I think we should all take a moment of silence for this travesty:

All I can say is, whoever approved that design was just...wrong.

The Jump Map

Jump maps can be great time-savers when going back and forth is a key gameplay element, and the Nancy Drew games certainly involve a lot of back and forth. Sometimes they save a player a lot of headache, but sometimes they break immersion--particularly when they attempt to stand in as a cheap substitute for an expansive, believable game world.

The Good:

Danger on Deception Island is one of many games which features a jump map for key locations.

What makes this map work is simple: each location is fairly large and immersive in its own right, and there is presumably little to be gained by forcing the player to click one million times down the actual road to each place.

That said, while the player may jump from the lighthouse to the Hot Kettle with the click of a button, copious amounts of kayaking, exploring beaches and the enormous tunnel system keep the game from seeming too constrained. The player feels as if they really have explored Deception Island, rather than feeling as if they have simply visited a few buildings.

The jump map in DOG, SSH, STFD and various other titles work for the same reasons--the forest, Beech Hill museum, and WWB studio respectively seem so large that jumping around to smaller, more limited locations doesn’t actually feel very limiting at all. Plus, the art style used for the map can often add to the immersion, like the subway and train maps.

The Bad:

Though its map certainly looks plausibly like an amusement park flyer, The Haunted Carousel was the first game with a jump map that truly felt like a limitation.

Though there are double the “clickable” locations on CAR’s map in comparison to DDI’s, there simply isn’t much to explore in CAR’s locations. Indeed, the park feels very tiny, and I can’t say I truly felt like I “saw” Captain’s Cove. Perhaps if even one location had allowed for more open exploration, the game wouldn’t have felt so limited.

In the same way that mini-games and repetitive tasks can serve to artificially lengthen or beef up a game, jump maps can attempt to artificially expand a game world. Sadly, there are even more cheap tricks deployed in service of this goal.

Third Person Perspective

Secret of the Old Clock was the first game to transform the jump map into a driving simulator, and this mechanic was met with mixed reception--it seemed like players either loved it or hated it for various reasons. Regardless of opinion, this game mechanic always introduces a risk: the style of the game changes.

No longer is the player immersed in a first-person, beautifully rendered 3D world--they are now dropped into third-person on a stylized, top-down map. The effect is simple: the player is very aware they are playing a video game.

The Creature of Kapu Cave, The White Wolf of Icicle Creek, The Phantom of Venice, and The Haunting of Castle Malloy all featured variations of this third-person mechanic, and many games afterwards incorporated some form of the driving simulator to varying degrees of success, but Ransom of the Seven Ships went absolutely wild with it all.

From sailing around, to scuba diving, to rock climbing, to digging holes, to driving the golf cart around the island--the player was constantly yanked from the first-person, 3D-rendered game world and thrust into what were essentially 2D mini-games. While the color scheme was consistent, the art style varied greatly, making the game feel much less cohesive than many of its counterparts.

While RAN certainly felt like a very large game in terms of terrain--complete with copious amounts of agonizing back-tracking--it really lacked immersion. Indeed, there is no real sense of urgency like that in The Final Scene--despite it being Bess who has been kidnapped--and the focus is constantly taken off of the mystery at hand and onto figuring out how to drive correctly or sail that godforsaken boat.

A Matter of Preference

Ultimately, I think the Nancy Drew games evolved along something of a sliding scale. In the beginning, the aim was to put the player into Nancy Drew’s shoes, but this aim slowly and steadily shifted towards that of simply creating a game. And the truth is, there is nothing wrong with either aim; it’s all about what experience you’re looking to have.

When I first started playing the Nancy Drew series, I was looking for a mystery-solving simulator and I couldn’t get enough. I’ve played a lot of other detective games, but the ND games were really something special, so when they stopped delivering the same type of product, I really felt like something great had been lost.

Again, there is nothing wrong with game-y games, but there is something to be said about games that try to provide an authentic experience. It’s not every day that an ordinary person gets to solve a mystery--a mystery that seems so plausible that you feel a real sense of accomplishment when you unravel all its threads.

I missed that in so many of the later games, and I think that’s a shame.

Read Part 1: Nancy Drew & The Curse of the Pointless Task & Part 2: Nancy Drew & The Case of the Missing Realism

#clue crew #nancy drew #her interactive #last one i promise

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fanfictionconnectionwordpress · 6 years

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Mystic Messenger Fanfiction | Vanderwood+Seven - Wrecked Ass

***I've been involved in a number of things lately, and this is one of them! This idea was a collaboration with @chaoticstarblossoms, my official FFC artist and best friend. This is what we ended up with - to post for @vanderweek. This is for Day 6 prompt Partners~ Regular posting will resume next week, I'm thinking. ~Let's Connect! FFC***

Vanderwood could hear it. That accursed song. Seven had become obsessed with it lately. More like, ever since Vanderwood had complained about it on a mission, Seven would play the song whenever the elder agent came over to check on the redhead’s work. It was nearly constantly on repeat while Vanderwood would clean - the environment far too dirty for any sensible person to be able to work in, let alone himself with his OCD.

He called out into the bunker as soon as he entered. “Turn that shit off before I tase you!” That was how it always started, and for a while it would be off - until Vanderwood would start cleaning and get too in-the-zone to step away. Seven knew Vanderwood had to accomplish each task before he could pause. That asshole. This time, though, the music didn’t turn off.

The agent stepped into the living room of the bunker - eyebrow twitching at the mess everywhere. Where was the music even coming from? It was fainter than normal. Something was off. Vanderwood undid the clasp on his taser-holster, pulling it back for easy access as he pulled out his gun from its hiding spot. There was something very off about this.

It didn’t feel like there was danger afoot - more like the redhead was up to his tricks again. If there was a trick, Vanderwood didn’t want to be involved. He had to find Seven before shit could go down. Every room would have to be scanned, and he started with the computer room and bedroom - eyebrow twitching at the mess but thankfully able to ignore it now that he was slipping into work mode.

Vanderwood stalked from room to room, holding his gun forward and scanning every nook and cranny before he moved on to the next. Some of the rooms, he could hear the music more loudly than others. Still, it would be a mistake not to check every room until he found the right one. The music could just as easily have been a diversion, and Vanderwood didn’t want to get caught in a trap because he was playing hot and cold with some CD player.

He opened another door, checking around and nearly muttering, ‘Clear,’ to himself before he saw it. A pair of glowing orange eyes lit up. Bloody fucking Hell. What in the God-damn universe was that? Seven had a number of ridiculous things in his bunker, but the things that Vanderwood hated the most were the kid’s gadgets. He built all sorts of robots and creatures, and each seemed more dangerous than the last.

A, “Woof!” reverberated through the room - the apparently robot-dog stepping forward into the dim lighting coming from the opened door. Its mouth opened again - an orange glow appearing slowly. Fear clutched Vanderwood, an emotion which was very rare for him. Typically, he would have rushes of adrenaline but never outright fear. However, there was a bloody fire-breathing robot-dog in the bloody bunker!

Vanderwood popped off a shot or two, slamming the door closed as the beast staggered back. He held the door in place, chestnut-brown eyes widening as the door seemed to grow hot - giving off enough heat for him to worry that his long hair was going to light aflame. It didn’t, but he felt his anger rising even more. Was the little asshole trying to kill him?

With renewed energy, Vanderwood was back to his scanning. Every room from then on was clear - the sound getting louder and louder as he approached the final room in the house. It was the garage. Vanderwood hadn’t thought that the kid would put his, ‘baby cars,’ at risk enough to plot some trick in there, but maybe he was underestimating the redhead’s trickery. Either way - when all of this was over, Vanderwood was going to whoop the redhead’s ass. Or tase him. One or the other. Bloody Hell, why not both?

Slowly, with all the care in the world, Vanderwood opened the door into the garage. He was blasted with the song on an even higher volume that made his already damaged ears ring. The agent kept his gun up, scanning the surroundings. Where the fuck were the cars? That was when he caught it, movement from the corner of his eyes. Vanderwood had previously cleared that space, but he hadn’t looked at the ceiling.

There was now a large wrecking ball coming down from above, falling in a bee-line towards him as Vanderwood jumped back, pressing himself against the wall. Thankfully, the wrecking ball stopped just a foot from him. Seven had apparently planned for that, and he’d also planned for the outfit that he was wearing as he sat atop the bloody wrecking ball, seemingly lip-synching to the music.

Vanderwood couldn’t even make his brain function to put his gun back in its place. He watched, completely dumbfounded, as Seven swung back and forth on the item in what was very clearly a nude bodysuit. Thank fuck that the kid wasn’t actually naked. Though even the idea of it was enough to make Vanderwood shiver.

In the span of a minute - Vanderwood had gone from violently angry to scared for his life, confused as all Hell, and now back to violently angry all over again. “Zero Seven! Get the fuck off that bloody thing!” How had the kid even gotten that into the house? Where were the cars? They certainly weren’t here. Those were some premium luxury cars, too. The agent took comfort in the fact that Seven at least loved those precious commodities enough not to have destroyed them for this stupid trick.

Seven was laughing so hard now that he could barely even hear Vanderwood launching into a yelled lecture. That look on his partner’s face had been worth all of the hard work he’d done to get his baby cars moved to a secure location and then building his wrecking ball from scratch while hanging from the ceiling. Truly, this was his greatest accomplishment yet. There wasn’t even a way for Vanderwood to make him stop, because it was swinging back and forth like the very dangerous one-ton pendulum that it was.

Or so he’d thought. Seven had been so busy with setting up the specifics of how to build it and making sure that he wouldn’t actually hit Vanderwood when the ball fell, that he hadn’t accounted for how short of a time it would take gravity to slow the object in question. Already, its swing was shorter - getting shorter by the second. That detail wasn’t missed by the elder agent.

A dark smirk curved on Vanderwood’s lips as he realized what was happening. Seven had stopped laughing now to throw puns at him, and Vanderwood kept the redhead busy by continually responding - pretending that he still wanted the kid to get off the thing by himself. All the while, he was moving slightly closer as the swing lessened - so that Seven wouldn’t notice just how small the swing had gotten. When it was nearly to the middle of the room, he saw the realization cross the redhead’s face.

He hadn’t planned for this! Seven only realized what was happening when he questioned why he was getting a look at Vanderwood’s face so often now. The redhead sat petrified, trying to come up with the escape plan that he’d neglected to create beforehand. Curse his uncontrollable excitement! Probably the worst part of it was that the older agent wasn’t even doing anything. Seven looked up at the male, clutching the rope on his wrecking ball for dear life.

Vanderwood loved the way that Seven’s eyes were widening, preparing for his impending doom and punishment. He just stood there, letting the guy stew in it. Seven made a nervous chuckle after they’d been motionless for a minute or two, trying to get off of the wrecking ball. “I should get going to work, huh?”

The older agent just pressed his hand to Seven’s back, keeping him in place atop the item. “You want to get to work now? You look busy to me.” The music was making his ears ring more the longer it played so loudly, but he didn’t care right now. Seven deserved some torture after what he’d done. He watched as the redhead shifted uncomfortably on the large sphere, clearly not a good position to be in for long periods of time. “Uh…Yeah…I’d like to get to work!”

This device of his was so uncomfortable that Seven was sure it would wreck his ass if he didn’t get off of it soon. Maybe if he kept pretending like nothing had happened, Vanderwood would be nice and let him off the hook? Unlikely, but he had to give it a try. “I’ll just get right on it!” Again, he tried to move and was stopped. “You’re already on it.” His eyes flicked to the wrecking ball and back to Seven’s face. “You certainly came in like the wrecking ball you are, today.”

Vanderwood shifted, getting some earplugs out from an inner pocket of his jacket and in a deliberately slow motion, inserting them into his own ears. He was probably speaking much louder now thanks to them, but he’d been practically shouting over the music already. “We’ve got plenty of time before the deadline, so why don’t you enjoy your music a little bit longer?”

He could still faintly hear the song past the earplugs, and it was playing in his head, too. At least the painful ringing was gone. That, and there was another reward out of this. Seven would never again play that song - certainly not on repeat. The boy had a sore ass for a week. Vanderwood hadn’t even needed to whoop it to make that happen.

Like this? Want more? Check out my tumblr or website =0 ~Let’s Connect! FFC

#vanderwood #mystic messenger #mystic messenger fanfiction #saeyoung choi #vanderweek #mysmes

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nadeemahmedmumbai22-blog · 5 years

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Doomed in Dubai by Nadeem Ahmed

Me; a Model/Presenter/Fashion event director living in Accrington, Lancashire! Hardly the fashion capital of the world I know! Just a mere small village where news spreads like wild fire! It was a known fact that I was a successful model due to my face being splattered all over the place, even locally! I have always been and still am very committed and dedicated to my work.

Being a model was considered a very unconventional career for a northern lad but I knew from a very early age that I was going to break the mould and do something completely different! A very tough industry to break into but thankfully through a lot of challenges, rejections and hard work I found my path.

My story begins from December 2003. I had completed several modelling assignments up and down the country and was so ready for a break. It had been a successful year and now that Christmas was fast approaching, it was time to wind down, spend quality time with family and break all dietary rules!

Traditionally every year, my family would get together at ours for the festive season.

I lived with my grandparents from a very early age and considered them to be my parents. Our house was the central point for all the family and the thread that kept us all together.

I had a good relationship with most of my family members but there were a few rotten eggs which is normal I guess!

I hadn’t seen my cousins for such a long time because of work commitments and so was more than excited about our get together.

We would talk till early hours of the morning without a care in the world.

On some days we would go food shopping at the supermarket at 3am creating a harmless racket!

We got onto the subject of travelling and lucky for my cousin, she and her family had just returned from a place called ‘Dubai’. A place I had never heard of! In all fairness my geographical skills had never been strong. She spoke about it in a very enticing way. I was sold! I needed a break after working so consistently. It seemed the perfect getaway destination as halal food was accessible throughout with it being an Islamic country. I always ate halal food and the thought of going into a Mcdonalds where I could literally eat anything off the menu was so appealing. So sad but true! She also said that getting around was easy and most importantly it was always baking hot which to me was the biggest plus because I hate the cold!

Before long, I had decided that I would be going to Dubai for my holiday. The excitement was building up thick and fast.

I booked my flight which was going to take me to Dubai via Istanbul.

Once I had received all the confirmations, I broke the news to my family telling them that I would be going away for New Years. They were a bit shocked but at the same time so used to me going here there and everywhere! I felt I really owed this holiday to myself after working so incredibly hard! One of my friends recommended that I should check out a website called www.expatriates.com where people connected from all corners of the world sharing their experiences of travel and living abroad. I was always an organised person and so was on the case immediately. I registered myself on the site and left a message on the forum stating that I would be in Dubai and if anyone could make any recommendations?

I was pleasantly surprised to have received some messages from someone called Ethan who seemed most helpful. He was initially from Brazil but now working in Dubai in one of the opulent hotels. He was kind enough to suggest sorting out my accommodation for me to ensure I got a good deal. We exchanged several messages and it felt safe to say that he seemed a trustworthy guy.

It was decided that he would meet me at the airport in Dubai and escort me to my accommodation.

Finally having got to Dubai after almost missing my flight and paying for a Turkish visa that I didn’t need, I was feeling a bit nervous about meeting Ethan but managed to put the doubt to the back of my mind and just decided to roll with it. After all I was an adult that was capable of looking after myself! Besides, Dubai was one of the safest places in the world from what I had read!

As planned Ethan came to the airport, tallish, slim-built with sleeked back jet black hair. Not even an earthquake could move a single strand of hair on his head. He was very friendly and seemed as nice as his messages so I chilled out and began to feel comfortable in his company.

Not long into my stay, Ethan introduced me to one of his closest friends, ‘Luca Hadad’, a television personality from Lebanon who was working for a very well established company in Dubai.

Luca was quite tall, slender built, very fair skinned with green eyes. His hair was very dark in colour with very tight curls. He was dressed very professionally and oozing with confidence.

I seemed to have bonded very quickly with Dubai and I was sure getting the love back! This crazy love put a very random thought into my head.

The thought of leaving my life in the UK behind and trading it in for a more exotic lifestyle! It made sense, I was meeting the right people, I was so happy and at peace, I even had continual great weather which was a big thing for me! So, in true Nadeem style I literally ripped up my ticket! In those days we didn’t have the privilege of e-tickets.

I had decided Dubai was going to be my new home. I wasn’t going back to the UK!

Being totally spontaneous was nothing new to me. It was my comfort zone. I loved to live life on the edge!

Everything was falling into place so naturally that it felt so surreal.

I found a lovely studio flat in Deira. It was cosy and all mine! I was settling in so seamlessly. I felt so blessed that my family were so supportive of my crazy decision.

I felt I knew Ethan and Luca on a much better level now and we were all getting on so well. Luca even suggested that I would be a great asset working for his company presenting English lifestyle programmes. This brought music to my ears after all my money wouldn’t last forever and I needed to work!

Luca was in touch on a regular basis and he mentioned that he would have to leave his swanky flat in Sharjah because the landlord didn’t want tenants anymore. Me being me suggested that he should move into my place until he sorted himself out. I was just so grateful that Luca was pushing his seniors to have me working for them. It was the least I could do!

A meeting had been arranged at the office for me to sign all the paperwork and get all the formalities out of the way for my new job. I got there early and eager as usual. The paperwork was all in Arabic but Luca just asked me to sign on the dotted line and pay the equivalent of £500 cash for the visa. I thought this to be very odd but paid up and didn’t question it in the hope that I would officially have my visa sorted soon and a full time dream job. He was a friend so trust issues were not even on the agenda.

I had been most productive by contacting several model agencies. To my delight, all the hard work had paid off because the work was coming in!

Then one day Ethan decided that we should have a party at my house to celebrate the big move and friendship and so on. He would supply the alcohol and my job was to get some food. I made it clear to him that I didn’t drink but the curiosity had always lingered with me. I had never in my life tasted alcohol! Ethan bullied me into having my first drink, except my first drink was not a little shot but a whole pint of orange juice out done by Jack Daniels. Needless to say I was paralytic. All I could remember was smashing plates, one after the other which was so out of character for me! I also remember being slapped very hard by Ethan and being thrown into a cold shower with my clothes on! The hangover was the worst anyone could ever imagine. I vowed never to drink again!

Time was flying by and there was still no sign of my visa. Things started to go down in a very surreal way. I was told by Luca that Ethan would be moving into my flat because his contract was coming to an end and that he didn’t have anywhere else to stay. Luca who initially had promised to help me financially with rent and bills seemed to have swallowed his words as there was no sign of even a dhiram from him! My money was running out and I needed financial help. Instead, I was having to pay ridiculous amounts of money regularly for my visa that still had not been processed! Unfortunately I was not aware of the rules and regulations regarding visas in the UAE so I was at the mercy of Luca and his knowledge of these things!

My stress levels were shooting through the roof because now I was looking after two more people as well as myself. They were becoming very reliant on me for food, bills and everything basically. They were blatantly taking full advantage of my kind nature!

I was constantly reassured of empty promises that never saw the light of day! There seemed no end to my misery until Ethan announced that he was going back to Brazil then heading off to London to start a new life. It truly was amazing to hear such good news.

Still no visa however there seemed to be a bit of light at the end of the tunnel as Luca and one of his local friends came up with an idea for a lifestyle television show. I was to be fully involved in recruiting models and covering the fashion aspect for the show. The best part was that the local lady would be able to sort my visa out for me. This was such great news as the locals have a lot of power and can make anything happen at any time! Finally it was all pulling together.

Luca’s behaviour was getting incredibly weird. It’s like he was testing me to see how much I trusted him by doing vile things like putting faeces on my toothbrush and completely denying doing it as no one else had access to my flat apart from him so it had to be him, stealing my phone from right under my nose and making me believe that I had lost it even though I was 100% sure where I had left it before heading out for a casting. He had stooped to an even lower level by pimping me out to a wealthy local without my knowledge by referring to him as a ‘client’ that wanted to book me for a model shoot. When I met the client he had a totally different agenda and shouted at me when I refused to comply with his dirty intentions. He said that Luca had received an advance payment for my time with him and that Luca would not receive the rest of the remaining fees! This was all way too much for me to handle! I was losing my mind! I couldn’t believe I was being punished for being so trusting!

I tried to kick Luca out but I became a victim in my own home. I could not get rid of him no matter how hard I tried! I was trapped!

After shooting a fantastic pilot of the TV show in a wonderful studio in Ajman with all the amazing crew, I felt there was a bit of normality coming my way. No doubt it was going to be short-lived!

I was still without my work visa and realised that my tourist visa was about to expire! This was such a huge worry naturally. Again like a million times before, Luca convinced me that the local lady- Fatima his friend, would sort it out!

It so happened that Luca managed to speak with Fatima after the shoot. She said that we needed to meet up with her cousin as she was too busy and hand over my passport to him. He would then insure that it got to her.

We met her cousin who came to meet us in a very expensive luxury car. He insisted we get into the car. I then handed my passport over to him. He seemed quite genuine and concerned for me. However, that was the last time I saw my passport!

I was officially an illegal immigrant which meant I had a curfew as the police did random checks at night. If I got caught without any id then I would be put straight into jail, no questions asked! I don’t look conventionally British so how would I prove my identity without any official documents? I was a prisoner in a foreign country!

One random morning, Luca was up earlier than normal and all I could hear was the rustling of bags. He was all packed and ready to go back to Lebanon! It was a beautiful surprise to learn that I was finally getting rid of this dishonest, self-centred person who claimed to be my friend but just used me and rinsed me dry of my money!

Whilst leaving, he kept assuring me that Fatima would sort my visa and that I should stop worrying! He had instructed her to contact me as soon as it was done! I still had that glimmer of hope and with that bit of positive feeling I said good riddance to bad rubbish!

My home was once again my own. I was so elated! Words simply could not describe how I felt at that moment!

I went back to bed to sleep and got up feeling fresh and happy!

My peace was brutally interrupted with a heavy knock at the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone which was strange! So who was it? I went to open the door and to my extreme horror, I went flying back with a heavy punch from one of the guys that had come to my house. They were four heavy built guys on the hunt for Luca, who had swindled them out of thousands of pounds too as he had done to me. They knew he lived at my place and so came to get their money as they too were promised working visas but didn’t see anything for their money.

I tried to explain that I too was a victim of Luca’s trap but they wouldn’t have it! I was being severely battered by the ring leader who was amused at my reactions of when I was being hit!

They insisted that it was my responsibility to get all their money back and if I didn’t they would kill me and scrap away every bit of evidence of my existence. I was forced to write a document saying that I owed all of them money and that I would be paying the full amount back to them asap! They needed my fathers name, my UK address and my signature. According to them, this was a bound contract that I had to fulfil! I was told I was not going to get away! They had turned my flat upside down. It looked like a bomb site! They raided my wardrobes and took everything that seemed of value to them including my bag that housed my official documents including my university certificates, birth certificate, college certificates and cash money, not forgetting my mobile phone, my designer belts, clothing, camera and walkman! It didn’t seem like there were going anywhere! I was officially held hostage in my own flat!

I was given just a few hours to get thousands of pounds together. They hit me some more and left leaving my flat empty and lifeless with just a few things scattered around promising that they would be back the following day. On leaving I got my final punch for the day and they finally left several painful hours later!

Naturally I was not in a good way! The Stress and panic was overwhelming as I tried to figure out how I could possibly get such a substantial amount of money together in such a short space of time?

Time flew whilst I was lost in my thoughts on trying to make heads and tails of this surreal situation! It was too late! I got the dreaded knock on the door again. It was full blown aggressive and I felt that my life was about to be shortened! I was finished! They came busting in and continuing with the torture they had started the day before. I couldn’t get the money! It was impossible! I was being strangled and beaten. It was like I was having an out of body experience! It didn’t feel like it was really happening! The truth is that it was and I was living my worst nightmare. I was ‘Doomed In Dubai’!

Things were progressively getting worse and I was told by the ringleader that I would be taught a lesson that I would never forget! I was dragged onto the bed by my hair and held down by all four of them. I fought with my last bit of fight but failed miserably because I was totally outnumbered! Then the most horrific thing that could ever happen to anyone happened!!! The ring leader unbuttoned his trousers and thrust himself in me!! My body rose in the air like a dead corpse!

They eventually left swearing and spitting, leaving me for dead promising to be back! I was bleeding and crying for my mum uncontrollably. I was damaged far more than anyone could ever imagine!

Even though the situation was extreme and I was at my weakest, I needed to find a way out before they came back and finished me off for good! I had no money, no id or anything to my name for that matter. By the grace of God I found a phone card that had fallen on the floor beside my sideboard which miraculously had some credit on it. I rang one of Luca’s friends from the phone booth just outside my flat who I had met a while back because his number was an easy number to remember and for some very strange reason it was stuck in my head. It was a risk no doubt but I had nothing to loose.

I managed to speak to him and he advised me that I should go and stay with him which I did. He turned out to be an angel. He put me in contact with my family who then sent me some money over to get a new passport made from the embassy, a ticket to come back, a mobile phone and anything else that I needed.

Getting a new passport was by far a challenge and a half. I had to go to the police to get an official letter to say that my passport was missing which took weeks. I had to go everyday to the police station and tell my story to different officers. They obviously never exchanged notes! During this time I had become so frail! I was losing my hair, weight and not to forget my confidence which was nonexistent!

My family were in panic mode wondering whether I would ever return to the UK again? There was one particular time where I had lost the will and I remember vividly saying to my mother on the phone that I would never be coming back!

I feel blessed to have amazing friends as one of my friends from the UK found out that I was in trouble. She immediately contacted one of her friends who was visiting Dubai at the time, asking him to meet up with me and to accompany me to all the official offices to get my documents stamped and authenticated. He came to my rescue and was a huge tower of strength.

Eventually the day came when I finally said my goodbyes to Dubai. It didn’t feel real to me at all as I had lost all hope. I wasn’t myself anymore. I had lost everything!

I found it very difficult settling back into the UK. I wasn’t in a good place! I had to start my life from scratch which was no joke at the age of thirty! Every night I would have the same nightmare reoccurring which severely affected my sleep and my health!

Whilst in Dubai I didn’t have time to absorb all what had actually happened to me, I was just concerned about getting the hell out of there, but back in the UK it was starting to hit me more and affect me massively.

One day I took my mum and grand mother to a summer festival where my friend was performing. She had visited me in Dubai but I hadn’t mentioned anything to her about what was going on behind the scenes. We had a nice day and went back home at a reasonable time. Every day I was hating on myself more and more and on this particular day I was at my worse to the point where I ended up taking an overdose of paracetamols. I didn’t want to live anymore! I was found split seconds from death and saved. The ambulance had taken me to hospital and I had my stomach pumped. I stayed in hospital for a good few days and managed to arrange some counselling sessions with a psychiatrist. He encouraged me to get tested because I was sexually assaulted, which I did. I offloaded everything onto him which helped me hugely because it was building and bubbling up inside. I couldn’t bring myself to speak to my family about it!

Slowly slowly I was making progress. My confidence was coming back which was quite amazing. I decided to contact my model agencies to start working again. I loved my work and needed this to keep me sane!

I was truly blessed with another chance in life.

My test results came back negative and I started to enjoy life again.

After settling back and getting into routine I had a fantastic job offer of presenting a travel documentary in the UAE. I panicked but then decided that it would be good for me to go back and conquer my fears plus it was an opportunity of a lifetime to work with such bigwigs of the industry. I followed my heart and accepted the offer. I pulled through nicely after confiding in my colleague who supported me throughout!

I was always a traveller and felt that I needed a change. I was getting a lot of modelling work in London and so saw it as a sign to leave Lancashire and start afresh in London which is exactly what I did!

My life here has been fantastic and exhilarating. Naturally I still have some trust issues even today but not on the same level as before. I have surrounded myself with amazing positive people, my dear friends who have showed me how life should be lived. I am eternally grateful for their unconditional love and support!

It was important for me to write my book because it has helped me close this chapter of my life for good! Also I would not want anyone else to go through what I did, even if it is just that one person that learns from my experience. It’s a hugely educational rollercoaster read with a warning to others especially for people who have the travel bug and want to work and settle down abroad.

On the positive side of things, I am a much stronger person. I have learnt a very valuable lesson the hardest way possible. I have taken something so negative and turned it into something so positive! In my words- “What Breaks you, Makes you”!!!!

#nadeemahmed

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prkcr · 6 years

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hey there demons, it’s me, ya girl...again. and if you don’t know who i am, then my name is sam, she / her, 21, est timezone and i’m so excited to be here! i wasn’t feeling very inspired with luna so i decided to switch her out with an old favorite muse of mine! ( truly i......love this garbage can SO MUCH. ) that being said, let’s look at the theories! aka i’m a buzzfeed unsolved stan and parker’s intro will be under the cut, so feel free to give that a look and message me if you would like to plot!

「 DANIEL SHARMAN, CISMALE, 27, RISE AGAINST. 」┈ did you read that latest viral gossip issue on RILEY PARKER? he is the LEAD GUITARIST in RENEGADE, one of my favorite HARDCORE PUNK groups. they’ve been releasing music for FIVE YEARS now, but viral gossip has only been talking about them for the last MONTH. get this, i think i heard HE COULD BE FACING JAIL TIME DUE TO AN ALTERCATION WITH PAPARAZZI. they’re known as the MISFIT of the music industry, since they have a rep for being DAUNTLESS but TEMERARIOUS, but who knows. maybe that will change once they become #1.

so, this guy right here...riley ignatius parker...will throw hands if you call him anything other than parker. it’s what everyone calls him. you gotta be really special to call him riley and not immediately get decked for it

parker was born to a wealthy family in a small but affluent village called alderley edge in cheshire, england. his family is stupid rich, hails from a long line of architects and business people. he spent his early years sheltered and pampered and homeschooled by tutors and nannies, so his parents never spent much time with him, but that’s okay because he never really got along with his parents anyway.

has an identical twin brother named rian who he never ever talks about mostly because they absolutely DESPISE each other. rian thinks parker is a disgrace to their family name, parker thinks his brother is a sheep who turned out exactly like their parents because he always did whatever they said without question. they haven’t seen each other in ages and for the longest time all their interactions have ended in ( usually physical ) fights anyway.

parker’s always been a HUGE TROUBLEMAKER with a restless nature and desire to ~be free~, so his wealthy, uptight, lowkey shady af parents who are obsessed with the family’s image could never really deal with him and eventually resorted to sending him off to boarding schools all over england, just one after the other bc ofc he kept getting kicked out for one reason or another.

about the only thing he enjoyed about his childhood and schooling were his music lessons. he was taught to play piano, violin, and even the harp. other things like math and history and science didn’t come easily to him at all, but music? he was great at it, and he’s always loved it. during his teen years while away at boarding school was when he first procured an electric guitar and learned to play. along with that, he also discovered punk music, aka the greatest thing in the entire fucking universe if you ask him. far as music goes, he'd found his calling in his early teenage years, but it would take a while for that to really feel legitimate to parker.

he was basically that rebellious kid in all the movies who wore doc martens with his prim & proper school uniform and carried around a pocket knife and cut class to go smoke while vandalizing school property and would absolutely fuck up some prissy pretty boy’s face just for looking at him the wrong way.

literally the only reason he actually graduated rather than flunking out or getting kicked out of every fancy boarding school in the uk was because his father was able to pull some strings aka bought his very last boarding school a whole new library wing. parker did actually consider running away a few times, but there was a part of him really reaaaaally deep down that actually enjoyed some aspects of school ( though he very strongly believes many education systems across the world need a serious overhaul and blahblahblah don’t ask him unless you want a lecture ). anyway, the moment he was done with school, he did finally skip out on...well, everything and everyone and ditched the country altogether, heading out first to new york city for about two years, then california for the last seven.

he’s been completely independent of his parents since the age of 18 and hasn’t had any access to their money since they cut him off for basically running away from home and since renegade only recently hit it big, he’s probably still a little poor tbh.

and since moving to california he’s been jumping from disgusting apartment to disgusting apartment and from shitty job to shitty job. played in various bands on the side, mostly for fun and even sometimes as a frontman himself, but when he joined renegade about five years ago as the lead guitarist, he immediately knew that this was his place. parker absolutely loves being in the band and wouldn’t trade it for anything at all. that being said, the fame that’s sorta popped in out of nowhere in the past month ( ever since renegade signed with a major record label ) has been...something else. being that he’s from a prominent and wealthy family he’s quite used to attention, but he’s also one of those everyone in hollywood is so fake where’s the real people making real music types and seeing as he has a very very short temper...well, parker’s already got a reputation for being a bad boy and yeah, he actually kind of is. he’s especially not a big fan of the paparazzi and is known to be very rude with them and get into actual physical fights with them he will throw hands with a n y o n e i’m telling you. his most recent run - in with a photographer who wouldn’t leave him alone even after parker told him to fuck off a few times ended in him being charged with assault and battery. long story short, he beat the guy’s face in with his own camera. parker’s...eh about it. he doesn’t really care? if you ask him, the guy should’ve just left alone when he told him to and it’s not like parker hasn’t been to jail before. he’s a vandal, a thief, gets into fights more often than he breathes but hey he usually wins so there’s that

i think that’s all i have for backstory atm though i will update this post if i ever feel it necessary. anyway, onto personality!

looks like he could kill you and could actually kill you

that’s it that’s all you need to know

nah jk there’s actually a few more things! first off, he’s basically the living breathing personification of the jerk with a heart of gold tv trope. so, he seems like a major jerk most of the time and that’s because he kind of is. especially around hollywood people, he’s standoffish and snide and just all - around has a bad attitude. he’s very short tempered and impulsive af, but underneath all of that he’s actually an observant and caring person. like, he’s not very book smart but he’s good at reading people and WOW DOES HE FEEL EVERYTHING SO DEEPLY. he’s a ridiculously passionate person. he feels everything all the time. every emotion is felt in extremes and the one that’s usually most prominent? ANGER.

see, parker is just a very angry person because he’s seen the way things are in the world. he’s lived a life of wealth and unimaginable opulence, but then he’s also been so poor that he’s slept beside dumpsters in alleyways. there are so many people out there who need healing in so many ways and he’s seen it for himself so he knows it’s true. yet, nobody really seems to wanna help. so many people seem to be involved in activism for show or for good person points and he just he HATES it. he constantly wants to scream about all of the unfair things going on in the world and how much he wants to just make them better because he is actually a rather compassionate person when someone is in need.

like, he’s the type of guy who says thank you to waiters and janitors and average, working class people — though i imagine anyone who doesn’t know him very well would be surprised by that.

thinks robin hood was a guy with some great ideas

feminist af

extremely sarcastic

also extremely english. he talks with a very thick accent ( similar to how daniel sharman talks actually if you wanted that point of reference for some reason ) and yeah, he’s fulfilling a stereotype here but he doesn’t care — he loves a good cup of tea.

not usually one to initiate conversations but once he actually gets into talking he can be a pretty cool person to talk with. he actually has a lot to say about many different topics and if you can handle his constant like every other word swearing, then parker might just be your guy to have a deep af conversation with at 3am

along that deep af vein, he enjoys the songwriting process a lot and i imagine he’s very involved in it with renegade. he totally doesn’t seem like the type, but he’s got this old messy notebook that he takes with him everywhere and it’s just full of song ideas and other random things. it’s basically a physical manifestation of parker’s brain, so he’s probably not about to just hand it off to some random person. if you want notebook privileges then he’s gotta trust you that’s just how it is

also, a total lovesick fool when he's got a thing for someone — a soft but only for you type and it’s highkey cute af

doesn’t care much for wealth at all. he’s lived that life before, didn’t like it, and these days he’d rather wear his favorite old band shirt stained with motor oil and eat greasy diner food ( mostly french fries ) than have some grandiose celebrity experience.

not the easiest person to befriend or be friends with, but if you do have him for a friend then guess what? you have him FOR LIFE. parker is super loyal — a true ride or die but don’t fuck it up with him because if you do he will hold a grudge forever

which reminds me: he’s got a motorcycle and HE LOVES IT. he pretty much built it himself from scratch and it’s just...it’s literally his child ok he will FREAK IF YOU TOUCH HIS MOTORCYCLE OK /F R E A K/ LIKE DON’T EVEN LOOK AT IT THE WRONG WAY

i feel like his reputation precedes him even though he hasn’t been around very long and that’s definitely thanks that messy altercation with the paparazzi. like, he literally beat this photographer up with his own fucking camera?? word has definitely gotten around and i think some people might be wary or even afraid of him??

though really aside from his short temper he really is and really tries to be a decent guy. anyone who knows him well would see that very clearly and honestly, that’s probably why they stick around even though he can be very difficult.

i think that’s probably enough from me for the moment, right? there’s probably some stuff i’m forgetting, but if i don’t get to a bio page then i’ll just edit this with anything else. i also don’t have a plot page yet but i definitely want all of the connections, so please do feel free to message me if you would like to plot! i’m so excited to write with you all!

#viral:intro #violence tw #this is a disaster and i'm sure i'm forgetting things even though this is novel length nonsense but hey please do message me for plots!

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iswearitoneverything · 6 years

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LOVE YOU, MR. PILOT

This one goes out to @deztinywarriors

Pairings: Jake x mc (Kaira)

Plot: Kaira was tired of constantly being teased by her twin brother, Abel, when it came to her love life. Now that he could tell that his sister had eyes for Jake, he wasnt about to let her live it down.

Warnings: fluff, teasing, classic sibling taunting, daydreaming (I dont know if half of those things qualify as warnings, but there you go.)

ATTENTION: I highly recommend listening to Nat King Cole's "(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons" while reading this fic. That is all. 😘

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"Don't try and deny it, sis. I see the heart eyes bug out anytime he is near you."

"Oh? Like yours do when you see Estela?"

Your twin brother narrowed his eyes at you, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. His gaze shifted to where Estela was sitting, off in a corner by herself, furiously flipping pages of some folders she had found. He turned his eyes back to you and pursed his lips.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

You scowled at your brother and then rolled your eyes at him before pushing passed him. You were in no mood for his attitude and ridicule, so now was the time to find somewhere to be alone. You wandered around the Celestial, finding someone in nearly every place you looked in. From the kitchen, the spa, the vip lounge, to even the wine cellar. One of your friends was in there, no matter where you went. It wasnt until you came upon the Ladie's Lounge that you were able to find some peace.

This was the first time you had actually stepped foot within this room, only knowing of its' exisitance thru Michelle's excited discovery of it a week ago. She went on and on about how this place was a perfect get away for girls, complete with access to the spa. You made your way around the lounge, surveying every thing it had to offer when your eyes caught sight of a small book, lying open upon the table as if it had recently been read. The layer of dust upon the pages suggested otherwise.

You moved over to the book and picked it up carefully, blowing off the top layer of dust and then brushed the remainder off. Your eyes fall upon the top of one of the pages and you discover that this is a book of poems. Intrigued, you turn the book over to view the cover and you confirm that it was infact a book of poems, love poems. The page that the book was opened up to had a poem entited "Love You, Mr. Pilot" and you were fooling yourself if you said your thoughts didnt rush to focus on him. On Jake McKenzie.

Your eyes slowly skimmed across the words, at how the words of love flowed like that of a gentle stream.

'Do you search for me in the clouds

Am I always in your thoughts

Always desiring to be here with me

Do I have your heart

Or is part of it still soaring up there'

Continuing to read on, you absent mindedly sunk down into the cushions of the sofa, bringing one of your legs underneath you.

'Being stranded on this land

Without you by my side

Makes me feel so incomplete

Do you feel the same

Or are you enjoying the flight'

As you read these words, you couldnt help but bite your bottom lip. It were as if this poem was made for you, as if it knew the deepest feelings of your heart. Having spent so much time with him, you knew that you were quickly, inevitably, falling head over heels in love with Jake. With your pilot.

Your attention is somewhat drawn away from the book in your hands, when you hear your friends' laughter echo down the hall. From the sound of it, they were all in the atrium once again, most likely having a small celebration of some kind. No doubt, Zahra and Craig had found some more booze stashed within the hotels' many secret rooms. You felt a pang of guilt, that you ought to go out there and join them, join your twin brother, but the feelings this poem were making you feel kept you rooted where you sat.

'Will you forever be lost to me

Up there in the heavens

Or will you stop running

Enough to feel and cherish

My neverending love'

Your heart began to bang against your chest, the words you read speaking volumes to you. You were completely unaware of someone standing in the doorway, their eyes trained on you and unwavering. It wasnt until they cleared their throat that you jumped and turned, wide eyed, toward the doorway. You were expecting to find your brother there, for him to find another reason to taunt you further. When your eyes met the pair of ocean blues that constantly plagued your thoughts and dreams, you felt your heart skip a beat.

"Jake..."

You breathed as you quickly moved the book to the table in front of you and cleared your throat.

"What are you doing here? Everyone sounds like they're having a lot of fun, which most likely involves liqour of some sort?"

You said with a small smirk as you tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear, watching as he then began to move toward you.

"Eh, not really in a party kinda mood."

You said with a small smirk as you tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear, watching as he then began to move toward you. Jake kept his eyes glued to yours as he walked over, but then his eyes caught sight of something and his eyes lit up.

"Man, I havent seen one of these in awhile. My mom has one, it belonged to my granddad. Can't tell you how many times I've had to try and fix it for her."

He said with a sigh as he walked over to an old phonograph record player, the horn where the music played through was a beautiful rose gold. How was it that you were just now noticing this? It was clearly an antique. Jake ran his fingers over it softly before he then picked up the record and blew the dust off and read the title. A smile came to his lips and he set it back down, turning the machine on and gently dropped the needle down. His eyes moved to yours as the song began to play.

Nat King Cole. '(I love you) For Sentimental Reasons'.

A classic to compare to the phonograph and this room itself. The music was soft and comforting, it transported you back in time, when this song would have been at the top of the charts. You closed your eyes a moment, breathing in a content sigh. When you opened them you found Jake's hand outstretched toward you as you sat upon the couch. Your eyes glided along his arm and up to his face, he was giving you a sincere smile, instead of his characteristic smirk.

"Will you dance with me, Kaira?"

You stared at him silently, incapable of forming words. To give your answer, you reached up and slid your hand into his and his smile grew as he then slowly pulled you to your feet and into his arms. He moved you to the middle of the room and then wrapped one arm around your waist as the other held your hand and lead you around the floor in a slow flow of steps that moved in time with the music.

As the two of you dance slowly, your bodies just inches apart, Jake glances over at the open book upon the table.

"So whatcha readin?"

"A book of love poems, actually."

Jake smirked, giving a slight snort and then raised his eyebrow at you slightly.

"Was there one that stood out most? Made your heart flutter and all that?"

You lock your gaze with his and give a sly smile. Normally you would do all you could to avoid admitting you had feelings for him. But reading that poem gave you the courage to face your fear, so why not give him a hint? After all, who knew how much time you had left together on this island?

"Just one. It was titled, 'Love You, Mr. Pilot.'"

Jake's gaze had been on the book for a moment, but at your words he turned them to you and stared, his mouth slightly agape. As you were pressed against him slightly, you could feel his heart beat pick up its pace. Jake swallowed, his eyes gazing down into yours, as if searching for something.

"Any particular reason for that?"

He finally said, his voice softer than before as your dance began to slow and his arm around your waist began to press you more against him slowly. You knew that being pressed against his chest now, he was able to feel your heart racing as well.

"Take a wild guess, Top Gun."

The two of you had stopped dancing now, maybe even without realizing it. Jake's hands were pulling you closer and his eyes were gazing at your lips as he began to slowly lean in. Just as your lips began to brush against each other, someone's voice behind you caused you both to freeze.

"Ah-HA! I knew it!"

It was Abel. It was quiet for a moment and then you both glanced at each other, your faces still close as you spoke in unison, evident annoyance in your voices.

"Get. Out."

Abel stared and then cleared his throat as he began to shut the door.

"Uh...I think, uh...yeah Diego's calling me, um yeah. Ah...sorry.

He quickly shut the door and you could hear his hurried footsteps as he did his best to get away from any form of sisterly vengeance you might throw at him. You and Jake stood there, still holding each other close as the song continued its tune. Soon your lips finally made contact, your dance slowly beginning to pick up again.

-Voilà!

(I hope this was up to par with what you were requesting, @deztinywarriors ?

The poem belongs to no one really, I just made up what I thought sounded nice?)

TAGS: @mynameisntdaisy @jakenji-stan @jakexmc @xo-endlessmayhem-xo @endless-jake @fairydustandsarcasm @princessmckenzie @itsagoodluckkiss Sorry if I forgot to tag someone!

#jake mckenzie #jake x mc #endless summer #choices

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qanoor · 6 years

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“with you, half the battle / is proving that we're at war / i would give my life just for the privilege to ignore” // moses sumney: quarrel

i don’t really like this song musically (i mean but it’s very very good -- technically, emotionally, every which way) -- i love doomed though, which miel introduced to me (along with plastic, and then riva also played plastic and i thought i liked it better that time but then i played it again and didn’t like it as much again) --

but these lyrics really struck me. makes me think about how much sof would try to show me just how much i was hurting them, how much it took to show me

i should listen to this music again when i have my beautiful bluetooth speaker at home again. i’m at my grandmother’s place & i really should have brought the speaker but i didn’t. my t-coil earphones are pretty crappy with these hearing aids and so the quality of music is... subpar, but, well, what can you do (i don’t know why it was so much better with the previous hearing aids and why the attempts to adjust it haven’t worked)

i feel so sad, so sad, so very sad and depressed. and i’m not writing very clearly, i’m explaining too much, and i don’t want to sleep

anyway, what do you do after you’ve realized you’re at war and the battle is just -- that, a battle.

ugh, music really does sound terrible with these earphones. why must i be consigned to this fate. i should have remembered how shitty it is here when i don’t have access to good speakers or whatever

@epochryphal i’ve been wanting to reply to all the really thoughtful notes you wrote in response to my posts about feeling so broken up about things with riva months ago. and i mean things still suck but they suddenly initiated things again a little over a week ago & we hooked up & i am still very confused about it all & maybe it would be easier to paint myself as a victim but life is never that simple and what do you do about wanting something and then getting stuck with such a feeling of being lost, again, again

last week before coming here i broke down a lot and i lashed out at sof and miel a lot and i still feel so numb and sad about it. i cried and cried and cried a lot for the first time in a while that night and i was so afraid that everything would always be tallied up and measured and waiting, waiting, for doom. anyway that was not the case, is not the case. and still i wish i could trust love more than the bedraggled thing i become, i am.

i’m never going to get into grad school, am i (i feel like this is my pessimistic optimism at work again: if i keep telling myself, trying to prepare myself, keep assuming the worst, maybe something better will happen. the sad thing about life is that it doesn’t work this way. sometimes nothing ever works out and that’s that. or sometimes things do work out but they practically kill you in the process and that’s that, too.)

what is the point of even doing anything.

i don’t want to be in this room with my mother and tomorrow night onwards i’ll have to share a bed with her again because my uncle is coming and there will be a shortage of beds. and i feel so trapped here in the constancy of my dysfunctional family and yet i do this to myself every year because i miss my mother even so and my grandmother is ninety and her abilities are rapidly declining and. i wish i could go outside. maybe i should try to figure out the extremely crappy bus system here and see if i can just go wander around downtown or something. i wish i had my driver’s license already, but the car is currently uninsured and stuck in some hell of my other uncle’s weird fucked up manipulations and, and, i don’t even know the word of it. (the uncle who is coming here is going to rent a car, so we’ll be rather dependent on him)

i wish i didn’t constantly return to this base sense of bodily discomfort around my mother which, despite all my wonderings, is almost certainly not related to any trauma of incest because that hasn’t actually happened to me even though my ocd has concocted a lot of possibilities. but what has happened to me is a divorcing of touch. adolescence was really about learning that touch is a war. cuddling with and (chastely, because there always has to be a fucking disclaimer) kissing your mother suddenly becomes wrong and you’re supposed to seek that with romantisexual partners. so then even platonic touch with friends can’t exist anymore, and, and, i don’t even remember what touch was like with my friends before all of this. probably more passing, light, okay. i am tired of having such disgust/fear at the idea of touch with my mother. again, it would be easy to name this something that it is probably not. but it’s not, and i’m an attention-whore or something, and really this is probably a sad tale of social conditioning and feeling frustrated by how my mother violated (still violates) my personal space boundaries a lot. (she’s gotten better but still.) anyway “personal space” is also a complicated construct without any single meaning and it is a mistake to imperially impose certain meanings over others.

and like let’s be real my social conditioning or ocd conditioning or whatever has led me to the point where i feel viscerally uncomfortable about bodies. where i feel triggered somehow by even accidentally glimpsing naked babies in life (or seeing naked/ almost naked babies in film or whatever), where i am constantly anxious around children, where i have learned to sexualize nudity even as i resist it in my own body and in seeing others, where i am basically. just. the epitome of the exponentiated discourse of othering and perversifying bodies. god, you might as well just transfigure me into a tome by foucault at this point. i am such a fucking confessional cliche. i hate it. i wish i could just -- not be so afraid. not have intrusive thoughts/urges/feelings/whatever. i wish i could just -- and yet, this is really only a hyped up version of normative social conditioning. it’s hypernormative. most people in western(ized) society, which is to say what a lot of the world has become/ is becoming at the cost of most people who are dying or barely allowed to live, have all these anxieties and paranoias, just not as obviously or ridiculously exhibited to my extent. the deployment of alliance is intertwined with the deployment of sexuality.

i don’t know if i’m ever going to be able to get to a place where i don’t constantly confessionally codify and disclose. i don’t think it’s possible, it’s just michael k again and again and again. anyway, i feel like i’m going mad all the time and then i also “optimistically” talk about how i’ve ‘moved on’ from mental illness in my grad school applications (or i have to leave it out altogether). fuck!

anyway the psych ward would be a bad idea at this point for all the usual reasons, but also because my digestive and urinary and other chronic health issues are bad enough that the whole dietary system and trying to have enough time in the bathroom there would be a nightmare, etc. so i guess let’s wait and if i don’t get in to any grad schools then i can make a concerted effort to kill myself again! and then we’ll see.

i’m only going to get sicker & sicker and things are only going to get direr & direr and i just. i wish there was a better way to exist in this world. today i was thinking again about how even if by some miracle any of my work becomes posthumously acclaimed, what is even the point of that? i will never know. what is the point for all the artists and writers whose work was only acclaimed posthumously? they never knew. who are we kidding when we praise them. we allowed them to die without being celebrated and honoured. it doesn’t matter however much we praise them now. (still i’d prefer posthumous acclaim over no acclaim. this is fucking sad.)

i keep saying the same things over & over & over & i hate it.

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janellehd · 5 years

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Reading/Writing Selfies

This is my most frequently used space to work at home. It’s my want to be “office” which used to be my sister’s bedroom however, she moved out so it’s mine now. I feel very comfortable in this area of my home. The way I tilt my blinds gives me just the right amount of light (this was around 5:00 in the evening). Most of the materials I need are in hand’s reach. I keep my Bluetooth speaker on my desk because sometimes I like to listen to music while studying or doing homework; it puts me at ease. I keep my windows open because I like to gaze outside once in awhile to give myself some inspiration and my eyes a rest from the computer screen. Some may call this cluttered but I tend to work slightly better in not so clear spaces. Don’t mistaken me for an untidy individual. I keep my planner to the left of my computer to remind myself of what assignments I have to complete. That big white binder on the far left of my desk, is what holds my gigantic psychology textbook. To the right of the laptop, is my old iPad mini…there’s no valid reason why it’s there. Behind my laptop, there’s a vase I decorated myself with fake flowers inside of it. Everything else on my desk just happens to be scattered necessities. I’ve changed the original photo to black and white because sitting at a desk is where I feel fear and intimidation but also, inspiration for new thoughts and ideas. Along with the filter, I distorted the photo to express the emotions I feel, and what my eyes see after they’ve been glued to a screen for an entire day. After a while, I no longer feel focused and I can’t think straight.

This is my sister’s car which is where I do writing or work on the go. It’s all black interior which makes you feel totally surrounded. All black interiors make me feel like I’m being hugged so, it is a comfortable spot for me. I usually sit in the passenger seat so I have access to the radio or auxiliary cord, and I can also manage the air conditioning. It’s honestly the best spot. The music is what keeps me motivated. It speaks to me. If I’m trying to finish last minute homework, I play trap music, or songs with a lot of bass that make the hood of the trunk vibrate. It makes me bop my head and do my homework quickly yet efficiently. I’m also always inspired by the scenery outside. There are so many things you can see while driving, it’s ridiculous. I see a lot of funny things while driving and it keeps me in a good mood. I don’t work a lot in my sister’s car. It’s only when my family and I are driving a good distance to West Palm Beach, for example. I edited the original photo by using an oil paint filter which gives the photo a soft, silky, slippery feel. It makes me think, “fast” which is exactly what I feel when doing work in the car. I also placed a sticker with a music note inside of it next to the radio to show that the music speaks to me.

One of my favorite places; the dining table. A lot of the magic in my house takes place here. It’s where all the food that’s freshly cooked, baked or ordered is consumed. Sitting in this spot also keeps me in a good mood. I do lots of work here, especially on Sundays because that’s when my mom cooks an entire feast. I will do my homework here all day on Sundays. She starts cooking early in the morning and finishes either in the afternoon or evening. Being in this area is extremely satisfying. I come up with lots of ideas here and my braid is always being fed. It’s not good to work on an empty stomach and that’s never an issue here. When I’m writing a paper, and I feel like I’m not inspired enough, I get up from the table and get a nice, ice cold glass of juice, drink it, refill it then, bring it to the table to drink while writing. It’s one of the best feelings in the world. I might even warm up leftover dinner to eat while writing or, bake chocolate chip cookies to reward myself with when I’m done with the paper. I added a vintage type filter to the photo to give off the homey feeling of home, similar to your grandmother’s house. I scattered different cutouts of food around the dining table to show that I’m constantly surrounded by food in my dining room. The emoji portrays the emotions I feel while in this space. It’s simply beautiful and I live for it.

My bed is a great place to work but can sometimes take advantage of you and be your worst enemy. It’s the safest place ever though. It’s where I lay my emotions, tears, and most importantly, my head. I have lights hung up over by bed head. It gives off a positive vibe. They’re soft and not too bright. I do happen to work in my bed at night time because it only seems right. I sit up with my back against the bed head, put the sheets over my legs, place the laptop on my lap, and get to typing. The good thing about doing work in my bed is that I’m always comfortable no matter what. What I dislike about it is that it distracts me. Instead of typing my essay, I wound up thinking about how nice it would feel to lay down and close my eyes. Rest, is all I can think about when I do work in my bed which isn’t necessarily the best thing to think about while working. If I decide to do work in my bed for the day, that means I don’t plan on finishing anytime soon. I also have Polaroid pictures clipped to each light to bring happy memories to my thoughts. They cheer me up at all times. I changed the color of the photo to purple because it’s my favorite color and it adds warmth and coziness. I also added slight shadowing to the photo to express the feeling of being swallowed or hugged by the space which is what I feel.

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